Trump doesn't know what's in his Big Beautiful Bill?

What an agony we are going through this July...

First we had the push toward Trump's big ugly bill passed on July 3, and now we're figuring out how to live with it, how to continue fighting the effects of the $79 billion given to ICE, and how to prevent the bill's many cuts to health care for Americans.

Three sources say that when Trump was negotiating with a few Republicans holding out against the bill in the House of Representatives on July 2, he said "There are three things Congress can't touch if they want to win elections: Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security."

"But we're touching Medicaid in this bill," said one Republican.

Trump mumbled something not recorded on tape. Maybe it was, "Oh, I didn't know." Or maybe it was a denial that this bill includes cuts in Medicaid--$1 trillion in health cuts total.

Jamie Raskin: "The extraordinary thing about that is that, of course, all  of these people have gotten in line despite their own misgivings because Trump is leading the way, but Trump might not even understand what's in the bill. So it's a very dangerous moment when you think about what democracy is, and it doesn't speak well for what has become of the Republican Party. 

Raskin went on to say: "Now some people think that it's just Trump's devilishly clever politics where he's already distancing himself from a bill that he knows will be a nightmare, and then he'll blame it on somebody else for not having told him what was really in there."

Chris Hayes: "My read on this is that he doesn't really care that much one way or the other." Thank you to All in with Chris Hayes for airing this report on Fourth of July weekend.

• The bill approves spending of about $4.5 trillion total.
• It includes tax cuts of about $1 trillion for billionaires & corporations.
• It cuts more than $1.1 trillion from Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare over the next ten years.
• It will add $3.4 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years--or more depending on how you predict details.

Sources:

"House Passes Sweeping Bill..." NY Times, July 3, 2025

https://www.crfb.org/blogs/breaking-down-one-big-beautiful-bill  

        --detailed estimate as of June 4, 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzmLp9RoLws

See also Senator Elizabeth Warren's post on Facebook:

Being brave in the 21st century...

 

"Grant us wisdom, grant us courage / For the facing of this hour" wrote Harry Emerson Fosdick in 1930, composing lyrics for a hymn that begins with the words "God of grace and God of glory."

He had no idea how bad the next 10-15 years would be, but he had served as a chaplain in World War I. 

Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, chose those words of Fosdick for the first page of How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith, published in 2023.

In order to counteract all the bad news around us, I'm reading this book and listening to her read it aloud via Audible.

I'm also tending the flowers in my garden and enjoying those in the streets around me as I walk my dog, Neenah.

Flowers are brave. They don't give up. Given half a chance, they bloom--rooted in the crack of a rock or in soil that has had no rain for months. 

Each one has a mission to grow, unfold, and lift a smiling face to the universe, whether there's a human around to see it or not. 

Sometimes a deer comes by and eats the flowers. If not, they fade, lose their petals, and grow seeds that ants or birds or humans eat.

Some of the seeds sprout and bring more flowers, but always they give life in one way or another.

Animals are brave too and humble. They never know what's next, but they carry on. Deer endure rain and freezing winters. Coyote venture into city streets in search of their next meal. Abandoned dogs cower in shelters but wag their tails if someone takes them out. Neenah spent time in a shelter.

May we be brave like the flowers and animals as the terrible news of bombing, starvation, and genocide assaults us daily.

May we  grow, unfold, and lift a smiling face to the One who made us all.

May we give life in one way or another and do our best to stop the killing, starvation, and disease. 

Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil, as Jesus taught us to pray.

Where there is genocide, let me sow life.

Kathy McTaggart - Doing her part to stop violence

 

Katherine K. McTaggart  

(1943-2012)

Kathy McTaggart, champion for violence prevention

Katherine McTaggart, better known around the community as Kathy, was loved by the countless young people whom she befriended over her 16-year career as a licensed therapist at various Santa Monica schools. Her specialization was working with adolescents and their families.

Her official title was School and Community Partnership Coordinator in the SM-Malibu Unified School District. In the early 1980s, Kathy was the on-site therapist at Olympic Continuation School, where she counseled high-risk and gang-involved students. She met with their families and enabled many young people to stay in school and resist drugs and other dangers that their peers were involved in.

Kathy developed a genuine rapport with her students, which in turn led to long-lasting friendships. Over the years she stayed in touch with many of her former students, both those at Olympic and those at Santa Monica High School.

In 1988 Kathy was honored as YWCA Woman of the Year. She was active in youth-serving organizations in the community such as the Police Activities League (P.A.L.), where she served on the Board of Directors. As a part of city and county social service networks, she had extensive knowledge of community resources for youth and families. 

Violence Prevention

Violence Prevention aims to prevent the infusion of physical, emotional, and psychological distress from occurring.  Instead, meaningful dialogue serves as a preventive measure to ensure that violence does not become a solution to disagreement or a developing problem.

In the first decade of this millennium, Kathy and others in Santa Monica connected to form a Community Violence Prevention Coalition. We sought solutions to youth and community violence through education, community dialogue, and advocacy for services and policies that would result in violence prevention and intervention. Conflict de-escalation was a central training we supported.

Education and early years

A valedictorian of Suffern High School in Suffern, New York, Kathy graduated from Smith College summa cum laude in 1965 with two BA degrees, one in social work and one in art history.  Then she earned two MA degrees in art history and in child development from New York University, followed by another MA in Family and Child Counseling (MFCC) from CSU Northridge. She married and raised two sons.

Prior to settling in Santa Monica, she had worked in Hong Kong, Indonesia, and New York.  She is a person of value who will always be remembered.

"A baby is God's opinion..."

We are in dark days, but Carl Sandburg had a comment for us in times like these: "A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on."

When I gave birth to my first daughter, my grandmother gave me a small white cushion with those words embroidered on it.

Now as, my granddaughter approaches her first birthday, the felon in the White House is doing his best to make sure that the world as we know it does not go on. 

He wants to banish the people of Gaza from their war-torn land by the sea and convert their homes into a playground for the very rich, a Mediterranean resort like Monaco--and somehow add Canada, Greenland, and other nations to the fifty United States.

God has another opinion--that old people and their old prejudices of world domination should not go on.

My grandmother's family owned slaves in Georgia, "But they were good to their slaves," she would say. 

They weren't good enough to free them, and she occasionally used figures of speech that were racist. I remember thinking, when she died, that it was necessary for one generation to die and be replaced by a new point of view.

You will die, nightmare president. You will be replaced, and the people younger than you will learn from your mistakes.

From Carl Sandburg, Remembrance Rock (NY: Harcourt Brace, 1948) Ch. 2: 

"A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had my choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo plants, don't compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern. Yet it is also the oldest of the ancients." He continues: Before humans learned how to make fire or a wheel, they knew how to make a baby (paraphrased).