Thursday was another big news day, with mixed results for those defending democracy.
The reconciliation bill is in trouble because Republicans “swung for the fences” in recognition that this may be their last chance in a generation to fund a billionaire tax cut by slashing benefits earned and paid for by hardworking Americans.
The Supreme Court issued a blow to Planned Parenthood that was part of a broader war on women and a long-term effort to curtail the standing to bring civil rights lawsuits under Section 1983.
And Trump and his surrogates experienced emotional meltdowns typical of two-year-olds when they realized that the global press isn’t going to accept Trump's lie that Iran’s uranium enrichment program was “obliterated” by the US bombing raids. Indeed, Republican Senators effectively admitted that Trump was lying after receiving a classified briefing on Wednesday.
I am traveling on Thursday to the NOVA Women’s Summit in Tysons Corner, Va., so I have stitched this newsletter together on a plane, in an Uber, and in my hotel room. It may be a little rougher than usual. Thanks for your understanding. (I will speak at the Summit on Saturday afternoon. If you are attending, please say hello!)
The reconciliation bill hits a roadblock with the Parliamentarian’s ruling regarding Medicaid cuts.
The Senate Parliamentarian ruled on Thursday that several key provisions relating to Medicaid cuts violated the Byrd Rule. As a consequence, those provisions must either be removed or pass on a separate vote that exceeds the filibuster threshold (60 votes). Senate leadership has said that Republicans will not overrule the Parliamentarian. See The Hill, How Medicaid ruling could blow up Senate GOP's plans on Trump 'big, beautiful bill'.
The ruling is significant because it demonstrates that Republicans grossly overplayed their hand despite holding a trifecta. The GOP is desperate to cram their “MAGA wish-list” of cruel provisions in the reconciliation bill because they know that individual provisions are wildly unpopular and will likely fail if brought to the floor in a piecemeal fashion.
The Byrd Rule is a statutory provision that codifies Senate procedure. In general, legislation in the Senate is subject to the filibuster—i.e, a 60-vote requirement to bring a bill to the floor for an “up or down” vote. But the filibuster has exceptions, most notably, reconciliation bills (because the Senate does not want the annual business of passing budgets to be subject to the onerous 60-vote threshold).
Reconciliation bills can pass with 51 votes—but only if the provisions in the bill relate directly to appropriations of funds or collecting revenue. If not, the Byrd Rule requires that “extraneous provisions” that do NOT “produce a change in outlays or revenue” are subject to the 60-vote threshold. Democrats control enough votes in the Senate to prevent Republicans from passing provisions determined to be “extraneous” by the Parliamentarian.
Republicans can overrule the Parliamentarian’s determination with (oddly) only 51 votes. But doing so would set a “precedent” that would blow a significant hole in the filibuster forever—something that Republicans are loath to do—because they know that their future is as a minority party.
As a result of the Parliamentarian’s ruling, Republicans do not have sufficient savings to pay for the billionaire tax cuts. GOP leadership has proposed eliminating an adjustment to the “state and local tax” deduction, which has led to protests from blue-state GOP House members. See Raw Story, Republican erupts at GOP leaders' offer: 'Nowhere near the realm of possibility'. Similar fights over other provisions favorable to the rich and famous will also be on the chopping block.
The GOP may still pass a reconciliation bill that devastates many social and health benefits programs. But the road just became significantly more difficult because Republicans can hear the footsteps of the 2026 elections and the No Kings Day protests gaining on them. They are desperate to pass something before more Americans wake up to the cruel and greedy bill designed to reward the top 1% for purchasing the presidency for Donald Trump.
Reactionary Majority attacks Planned Parenthood, women, and civil rights
On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that Planned Parenthood clinics in South Carolina could not bring a claim under Section 1983 to challenge a state law that prohibited any Medicaid funds from being spent at a clinic that provides abortions, even though the Medicaid funds were not being spent on abortions.
The decision is virulently anti-woman, anti-reproductive freedom, anti-Medicaid, and anti-civil rights. See Ian Millhiser, Vox, The Supreme Court’s disastrous new abortion decision, in Medina v. Planned Parenthood.
In Medina, Neil Gorsuch wrote the opinion for the reactionary majority by overruling a precedent that was less than a decade old. At root, the question was whether a federal statute conveyed a “right of action” to individuals affected by state laws that interfered with patient choice of healthcare providers.
It was painfully clear that South Carolina violated a federal right to choose a healthcare provider. The relevant federal statute provides,
A State plan for medical assistance must … provide that … any individual eligible for medical assistance (including drugs) may obtain such assistance from any institution, agency, community pharmacy, or person, qualified to perform the service.
On its face, the statute recognizes the right of “any individual” to obtain healthcare from a provider of their choice. But the reactionary majority’s hostility to Planned Parenthood and reproductive choice caused the majority to ignore the plain language of the statute and concoct a rationale that held the statute was not for the benefit of “an individual.”
Worse, Gorsuch included an “ominous line suggesting that, in the future, his Court will read Medicaid laws very narrowly.” Gorsuch wrote,
Though it is rare enough for any statute to confer an enforceable right, “spending-power statutes like Medicaid are especially unlikely to do so.
In short, the Supreme Court has announced a special presumption against the ability of individuals to enforce their civil rights to sue for violation of federal law—effectively green-lighting the rights of states to deny Medicaid benefits with impunity. That result is particularly disingenuous because the statute in question explicitly recognizes the rights of individuals under Medicaid to select a healthcare provider of their choosing.
As Millhiser writes, “After Medina, that means that much of federal Medicaid law may effectively cease to function.”
The attack on Planned Parenthood extends the assault on the full personhood and equality of women under the Constitution. The reactionary majority isn’t content to return the question of reproductive liberty to the states; it is helping the states to dismantle Planned Parenthood clinics that are often the only source of reproductive care in many rural counties!
As explained by Planned Parenthood,
In many communities Planned Parenthood is the only clinic offering reproductive health care, including contraception, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, abortion services, pregnancy testing, cancer screenings like Pap smears and breast exams, and other preventive services. One third of Planned Parenthood’s revenue comes from state and federal government funding, including Medicaid, to provide health care services.
According to Planned Parenthood’s 2022-2023 Annual Report, abortion services make up 4% of all the health services they provide, and federal funds rarely go toward abortion care (only in cases of rape, incest and life-threatening situations). The vast majority of the state and federal funding goes to reimburse reproductive and preventive services.
In short, the Supreme Court just made it significantly more difficult for women, especially poor women, to obtain contraception, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, cancer screening, Pap smears, breast exams, and other preventive services.
The decision in Medina is nothing less than a continuation of the war on women that the Roberts Court has been waging for a decade (at least). For a review of the recent jurisprudence, I highly recommend Leah Litman’s article in Slate, The Supreme Court’s Radical Right Turn Is About Restoring Patriarchy, Plain and Simple.
Leah Litman’s closing paragraph describes the stakes:
When the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion insisted that no other rights would fall. The statement was ridiculous at the time, and has aged even worse over the last three years. The Republican justices’ transformation of the law, and the political movement they are part of, was never just about “abortion.” They are about women’s place in the law, and the country.
But it is not just women who are the target of the opinion in Medina. Gorsuch has signaled that the Court is targeting Medicaid in general. The Court’s “anti-Medicaid” jurisprudence threatens the health insurance of one-in-five Americans.
Approximately 1 in 5 Americans obtain medical insurance through Medicaid, but many are unaware of this fact because their Medicaid insurance may be provided under a different name. For example, Medicaid is also known by these names (among many others): Denali Care (Alaska), Health Care (Arkansas), NJ Family Care (New Jersey), and Health First (Colorado).
There is a solution to the Court’s anti-woman, anti-healthcare, anti-Medicaid stance: Congress can provide that beneficiaries under Medicaid have the right to challenge state laws that violate, change, or contradict the federal laws that regulate Medicaid.
Today, we have more reason than ever to rise up and take back the government from the hands of MAGA extremism. We must do so in particular to help restore the full equality of women under the Constitution.
Senate Briefing raises more questions about Iran bombing by US
CIA Director John Ratcliffe and other US intelligence officials briefed the Senate on the US bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear processing facilities. If the administration thought that the briefing would support Trump's false claim that the raids “obliterated” the nuclear processing facilities, they were sorely disappointed by the comments of Republican Senators after the briefing. See MSN/FactCheck.org, Questions Linger About Iran’s Enriched Uranium Stockpile After U.S. Airstrikes.
Senator Lindsey Graham revealed the surprising fact that the enriched uranium “was not part of the target” in the raids—so the fact that the uranium still exists doesn’t bear on the success of the raids.
See Time Magazine, Senators Unconvinced of Effectiveness of U.S. Strikes on Iran.
Per Time, Lindsey Graham said,
“I don’t know where the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium exists, but it wasn’t part of the target set.”
Senator Cotton also acknowledged that eliminating Iran’s uranium stockpile was not the mission’s focus. “It was not part of the mission to destroy all their enriched uranium or to cease it or anything else,” he said.
As GOP Senators were acknowledging that the enriched uranium likely escaped US bombs, The Financial Times reported on Thursday that
preliminary assessments shared with European governments “indicate that Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile remains largely intact following US strikes on its main nuclear sites,” and that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium “was not concentrated” at the Fordo plant when the U.S. bombs hit the site.
The intelligence assessments said the stockpile “had been distributed to various other locations,” the Financial Times also reported.
When reporters asked Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth about these reports after the Senate briefing, Hegseth melted into a puddle of testosterone and tears. As Charlotte Clymer wrote on her Substack, Charlotte’s Web Thoughts,
This morning, Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Secretary of Defense, delivered what could most charitably be called a pretty bad press conference.
Less charitably, it would be fair to say Mr. Hegseth bombed his press conference more effectively than he did Iran.
Hegseth berated a female Fox News reporter, Jennifer Griffin, calling her “the worst” for asking about widespread reports that the enriched uranium was moved from Fordow before the US bombing.
Hegseth also bizarrely claimed that the bombing mission was the “most complex and secretive military operation in history.” That’s plainly not true—most everyone in the US knew that the B-2 Bombers were on their way to Iran about ten hours before the bombs fell on Fordow. As Clymer notes, Hegseth needs to brush up on his history. He appears to be unfamiliar with D-Day, the mission to kill bin-Laden, and the still-secret operations of Delta Force that have not (yet) been accidentally texted to a reporter for The Atlantic.
The childish temper tantrums of Trump and Hegseth are all the worse because every new fact undermines Trump's claim that the Iranian facilities were “obliterated.” But in making themselves objects of scorn and derision, Trump and Hegseth are undermining the credibility of the United States—an injury to an important strategic asset that will matter greatly in a future crises.
A few notes on Trump's reign of terror against immigrants
There were more disturbing stories about Trump's cruel campaign of terror against immigrants in the US who have led productive, law-abiding laws since entering the US. Although I do not have time this evening to discuss, the stories warrant your attention:
See The Austin Chronicle, Texas Man Born to U.S. Soldier on U.S. Army Base Abroad Deported: He has no citizenship to any country, despite SCOTUS case.
This is a disturbing article that highlights the illogic and gratuitous cruelty of the rush to deport millions of immigrants.
See CTV News, Canadian dies in ICE custody, Canada seeks more information.
See The New Republic, Republicans Now Want to Track Immigrants Wherever They Go.
The GOP’s new Homeland Security funding bill would require “all non-detained migrants” to wear GPS tracking devices, a demoralizing “alternative to detention” that is part of the Trump administration’s continuing immigration crackdown, according to Migrant Insider.
“Non-detained” includes asylum-seekers and even students. Tracking millions of innocent people like endangered animals will be a tall task, a challenge that will likely go to another seedy private surveillance corporation.
Concluding Thoughts.
One hundred twenty-eight Democrats voted against a resolution to impeach Trump for his unilateral and unconstitutional decision to bomb Iran. They were angry with Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) for bringing a resolution that they believed was doomed to fail, placing them in a tough spot between constituents who want Trump impeached ASAP and those who want to proceed at a more measured pace. See Axios, "Completely unserious and selfish": Democrats fume at rogue Trump-Iran impeachment vote.
Check out the Axios article above if you want to get a sense of the temporizing and rationalizations that the 128 Democrats gave for not wanting to vote on the impeachment resolution now. (Those voting against the resolution included Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi.)
I understand that politicians don’t like being forced to take a position before they have to, especially when their constituents may be divided on an issue.
But I believe the 128 Democrats are badly out of touch with their constituents. Moreover, enforcing and defending the Constitution is not a matter of convenience or popularity. If we don’t defend it when doing so may be unpopular, we may not have the ability to defend it when the electorate finally wakes up to the peril that threatens our Constitution every day.
Democratic faithful are upset and angry with their elected representatives who don’t seem to “get it.” If they don’t want to impeach Trump for unilaterally bombing Iran, how about his refusal to spend money appropriated by Congress? Or his repeated refusal to obey court orders? Or withholding federal funds from universities because he disagrees with their political positions? Or his withholding of security clearances from law firms because they promoted diversity in hiring? Or withholding emergency funds from states with Democratic governors? Or pardoning the violent insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6? I could go on, but you get the gist.
So, if it’s too inconvenient for you, don’t vote to impeach Trump over the bombing of Iran. But there are plenty of other instances that justify impeaching Trump—and the widespread anger at “do nothing” Democratic representative and Senators who can’t be bothered to defend the Constitution.
The rising tide of concerned Americans who will inevitably sweep away MAGA extremism will not stop there. We are in this mess, in part, because many Democrats in Congress are more concerned about re-election than preserving democracy. We now have a list, and we will be checking it twice in the run-up to 2026.
Talk to you tomorrow!
PS—I plan to hold my regular Saturday morning livestream at 9 am Pacific / Noon Eastern.
Daily Dose of Perspective
It has been a while since I have included an image of the always awe-inspiring Wester Veil Nebula:
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