USA | United states of America

Paywall bypass: http://archive.today/enlWM

and on this issue of so-called "intellectual property," I suppose I'm with the Chinese.

House Republicans came together to pass their domestic policy megabill early Thursday, after weeks of internal conflict and last-minute intervention from President Donald Trump.

The 215-214 vote is a major victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, who largely kept his conference together after days of around-the-clock negotiations with holdouts. ... The bill includes a fresh round of tax cuts sought by Trump, as well as hundreds of billions of dollars in new funding for the military and border security.

...

This is arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Thursday morning. “Great job by Speaker Mike Johnson, and the House Leadership, and thank you to every Republican who voted YES on this Historic Bill! Now, it’s time for our friends in the United States Senate to get to work, and send this Bill to my desk AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!”

Democrats have their own names for the measure, including “the GOP tax scam” and “one big, ugly bill.” Minority party leaders are deriding the bill by pointing to nonpartisan forecasts that it would increase the federal deficit by trillions of dollars and cause more than 10 million people to lose health care coverage, while shifting resources away from the lowest-income households and to the wealthiest.

In a lengthy closing speech ahead of the final vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Republicans of bankrolling tax cuts for the rich with cuts to safety-net programs like Medicaid and SNAP food assistance.

“And people will die. That’s not hype. That’s not hyperbole. That’s not a hypothetical,” Jeffries said, before a heated exchange about “decorum” with the Republican presiding over the floor.

• Invidious
• Youtube

TL;DW:

• Trump and his lackeys are plunging America and even US citizens further into the 1984 rabbit hole with intimidating people on their political views starting at the airport.
• Trumps aims to give large corporations larger tax cuts while American citizens pay more of them. High income elite citizens are given benefits/special priviliges while everyone else gets the boot.

David Steiner, a former CEO of the nation’s largest waste management company who currently serves on the FedEx board of directors, is poised to take over control of the U.S. Postal Service, becoming the nation’s 76th postmaster general.

The announcement of Steiner’s appointment, which heightened concerns from postal unions over possible efforts to privatize the USPS, was made Friday by Amber McReynolds, chairperson of the USPS’ Board of Governors, during a meeting of the independent group that oversees the service.

Every year, the U.S. National Civilian Community Corps, better known as AmeriCorps NCCC, organizes teams of volunteers to help communities across the U.S. with environmental work, including habitat restoration, emergency response and wildfire mitigation. It’s also the latest federal agency on the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) chopping block. Most of the staff have been placed on leave and volunteers abruptly sent home.

archived (Wayback Machine)

• Invidious
• Youtube

"Everything is a better option than paying these tariffs. There's no world in which it makes sense for us to pay these tariffs and sell these products in this region (US).

It makes more sense for us to give up on this region and move to another region."

• Rob Teller, Hyte Product Director.

^For context Hyte's margin is 5% before the tariffs. The retailers would benefit from the tariffs situation whereas the manufacturers and OEMs would still be stuck with their previously set margins.

https://archive.ph/bJlpI

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/32103955

Archived

A U.S. electric vehicle battery manufacturer with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has suspended its permit application to build a plant near a Michigan National Guard base following fierce opposition.

Chuck Thelen, CEO of Gotion Inc. — a “wholly owned and controlled” subsidiary of Chinese company Hefei Gotion High-Tech Power Energy Co. Ltd. (Gotion High-Tech) — said the decision stemmed from the firm’s ongoing breach of contract lawsuit against Green Charter Township, according to the Big Rapids Pioneer. The township soured on the $2.4 billion project in November 2023 after voters recalled numerous officials following a series of reports revealing Gotion and its Chinese parent company’s ties to the CCP.

“I applaud the people of Mecosta County as Gotion pauses their permitting process, but their fight is not over,” Republican Michigan Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the CCP, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Gotion must announce it will finally listen to the people, and end its projects for good.”

[...]

Questions about Gotion’s CCP-ties began to arise around March 2023 when The Midwesterner reported Gotion High-Tech’s “Articles of Association” required the firm to establish a “Party organization and carry out Party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the Communist Party of China.”

[...]

The House Select Committee on the CCP investigated Gotion High-Tech in 2024 and “found their supply chains are reliant on forced labor as part of the CCP’s ongoing genocide of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province,” Mooleenaar told the DCNF.

[...]

Meanwhile, Michigan residents — like Joseph Cella, the director of the Michigan-China Economic and Security Review Group — engaged in grassroots activism to oppose the CCP-tied company. Cella served as the U.S. Ambassador to Fiji during the first Trump administration.

[...]

“[They] refused to follow the directives given to state and local governments on dealings with China-based companies to exercise vigilance, conduct due diligence, and ensure transparency, integrity, and accountability are built into the partnership to guard against potential foreign government exploitation,” Cella said. “It is important that executive branch agencies, Congress, the Michigan Legislature, and citizens continue to scrutinize and investigate this ‘deal.’”

[...]

https://mstdn.social/@DemocracyMattersALot/113063952703333947

BREAKING: Following Donald Trump’s debacle at Arlington National Cemetery, Vote Vets released this devastating ad calling out Donald Trump for his BS. Retweet to make sure all Americans see this.

Click link for video (1 min, 33 secs) hosted on a Mastodon instance