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1. Lifting the ban on refugee admittances
2. Ordering foreign aid money to flow
3. Getting billions in frozen funds to flow

On Friday, February 21, former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg posted: “A defining policy battle is about to come to a head in this country. The Republican budget will force everyone—especially Congress and the White House—to make plain whether they are prepared to harm the rest of us in order to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest.”
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Now the party is torn between those members whose top priority is more tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations, and those who want more tax cuts but also recognize that further cuts to popular programs will hurt their chances of reelection.
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So Trump and the Republicans have a math problem. It was always incorrect to say it was the Democrats who were irresponsibly running up the debt, but it was a powerful myth, and Republicans have relied on it for at least 25 years. Now, though, there is a mechanical issue that belies that rhetoric: the debt ceiling, which requires Congress to raise the ceiling on the amount the Treasury can borrow.

On January 21, 2025, the U.S. Treasury had to begin using extraordinary measures to pay the debt obligations Congress has authorized. In order for Trump and the Republicans to get their tax cuts, that debt ceiling will have to be raised. But a number of MAGA Republicans are already furious at the growing debt and the budget deficits that feed it, and they say they will not raise that ceiling unless there are extreme cuts to the federal budget. Other Republicans realize that the cuts they are demanding will be enormously unpopular, not least because for all their rhetoric, it is actually Republican-dominated districts that receive the bulk of federal monies.

The Republican Budget Bill Will Kill Americans
I wish I was being hyperbolic, but the facts make clear that the MAGA GOP bill ensures Americans die through sickness, homelessness, and starvation

I have long said that in the United States we do not suffer from a lack of resources for those in need, we suffer because we cannot satisfy billionaire greed.

Last night House Republicans voted to gut Medicaid and slash food and housing assistance for millions, just to hand trillions in tax cuts to 800 billionaires and billion dollar corporations. All this while America already leads the developed world in infant and maternal mortality, lowest life expectancy, and the highest levels of wealth and income inequality. This Republican bill will further exacerbate each of these crises. This bill is not about fiscal responsibility. It is about cruelty and concentrating power in the hands of the ultra-rich at the expense of everyday Americans. Below I share what’s in this bill, it’s current status, and one important call to action you can take to help block it in the Senate. Let’s Address This.

Trump Rescues Johnson From Humiliating Vote Flop After GOP Chaos
The president had to whip a key vote himself to save Republicans’ “big” and “beautiful” budget bill, a source familiar told the Daily Beast.

A child is dead from measles.
5 things on my mind and answers to your questions

1. This didn’t happen randomly. West Texas has pockets of alarmingly low MMR vaccination rates. In the area where this outbreak began, one in five children is unvaccinated. Measles spreads like wildfire in unprotected communities—it’s the most contagious virus on earth. On average, one infected person will spread it to 12–18 unvaccinated people.
2. Measles is not just a rash. While many children recover from measles, some die of pneumonia caused by the virus.
3. Social media is full of falsehoods—including from the HHS Secretary himself. Today, Secretary Kennedy briefly addressed the outbreak, but we caught three major inaccuracies
4. To every West Texas parent getting their child vaccinated now: You are making the right choice.
5. This outbreak isn’t over.

‘Fantasy’ AI Video, Shared by Trump, of Gaza as Luxury Resort Draws Scorn
One scene from the video, whose origins are unclear, shows President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sitting shirtless at a pool with drinks. Hamas condemned it as ‘disgraceful.’

How does Elon Musk use the word “fraud” to dismantle the US federal government?

The term is not as an attempt to describe the world, but to change it. It is a political tool, used by a politician to justify a political action: regime change to oligarchy.

The word “fraud” operates in six ways.

1. The bait and switch.
2. The linguistic inflation.
3. The state of exception.
4. The slander of civil servants.
5. The delegitimation of government as such.
6. The ennoblement of oligarchy.

You can ignore Trump slyly hinting to the Lord’s chosen that he just might call off the next election.

“Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians.”

But don’t ignore this: Trump won’t be calling off the election because he doesn’t have to. The Fix for 26 is already in.

The United States has stronger barriers to autocracy than Hungary. But as we can see when we look around, they may not be as formidable as we hoped. It would be foolish to assume our barriers will easily stand up under the Trumpist autocratic assault. It would be foolish not to see that here, too, democracy is at risk.

These Republicans have apparently forgotten Churchill’s definition of appeasement: It is feeding the crocodile and hoping it eats you last.

On the day before the third anniversary of the brutal, lawless invasion of Ukraine, Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream pressed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on whether it’s “fair to say” that Russia’s attack was unprovoked. Hegseth responded that it’s “fair to say it’s a very complicated situation.”

This is a good illustration of the difference between a complicated question and the complications of answering a simple question honestly. The answer to the question “Does this dress make me look fat?” may be simple enough, but answering it honestly can be quite difficult in some circumstances.

Hegseth is hardly the only prominent Republican official who has dodged the question since the president outrageously claimed that Ukraine “started” the war. Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, also repeatedly refused to answer the question.

Let me start with where we used to hear “she made him do it” all the time–in sexual assault and gender violence. The logic was that somehow women were very powerful, which is why they got raped and beat up–their power consisted in making men to do things, which men were powerful enough in the sense of brute force to do but powerless in the sense of moral agency or self-control to resist doing.
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“She made him do it” operates in politics too. The most recent example is Trump’s declaration that somehow Ukraine’s President Zelensky was responsible for Russia’s invasion of his country, declaring “But he should never have let that war start.” The war began with Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, well before Zelensky’s presidency and well into Putin’s, so there’s that. As Aaron Blake at the Washington Post notes, “Since the war’s earliest days, Trump has frequently talked around any sort of blame being cast on Putin…. Almost every comment deprives Putin of agency and casts what’s happened as a result of the Biden administration’s (and now Zelensky’s) failings.” Trump envoy Steve Witkoff blamed Ukraine too, saying Russia was “provoked,” as if Ukraine was wearing a miniskirt.