Dumpster dive, democracy edition | May 29, 2025

Dumpster in distress

"Discovering and receiving the truth takes work, whereas producing and receiving the false is effortless"

— Simone Weil

• The "One Big Beautiful" budget bill is also being called the Trump Tax Scam. It's callous and cruel. The bill passed in the House, but it still needs to pass in the Senate. If the Senate makes any changes, it goes back to the House, and on and on it goes. Take action and make your voice heard: Contact your elected members of Congress and tell them that you oppose this bill for any of the following reasons:

  • Robert Reich exposes some of the atrocities, including tax breaks that will put nearly $390,000 annually into the pockets of the top 0.1 percent of earners, while the lowest of income earners will lose money. Make that make sense. It will be the largest redistribution of wealth in the history of the US, stealing from the poor to give to the rich. The bill will cut Medicare by $500 billion, 8.6 million individuals will lose Medicaid coverage, $3.8 trillion will be added to the federal debt over 10 years, and we'll all be stuck paying the interest.

  • Reich also highlights a provision that would allow Trump to ignore judicial orders, essentially making him "king."

  • Indivisible calls out even more devastating consequences of the bill: 15 million people would be without healthcare (my family included), 11 million people would be without food assistance (kids would go hungry), the trans community will be denied gender-affirming healthcare, one-third of Planned Parenthood health centers will close, home utility bills will increase, and college will become unaffordable and unattainable for many.

  • Adam Schiff confronts EPA administrator Lee Zeldin about the consequences of his plans to cut the agency by 55%. The plan favors polluters like Big Oil and funds tax cuts for the rich. Americans, in turn, will sacrifice clean(ish) air and water, since contamination from forever chemicals, microplastics, lead, and other toxic substances will worsen. Zeldin, while he flips nervously through a stack of papers, takes a moment to channel his inner toddler and tell Schiff he's an aspiring fiction writer. [YouTube, 5:30]

  • But wait, there's more! One provision calls for removing a $200 registration fee for gun silencers (in place since 1934), another for setting up "Trump Accounts" (actual name, obvious who insisted upon it) to incent American women to produce American babies. The provision to repeal the excise tax for tanning beds was removed after it was met with laughter and a cheeky comment: “There are certain elected officials who appear to have a certain orange hue about them. Maybe they want to make sure tanning beds get a little bit of special credit.” [Huffington Post]

  • The "One Big Bloated" budget bill is over 1,000 pages long, so I'm sure there are plenty of other horrors not listed above.

  
  

• Get ready to hit the streets and join the national "No Kings Day" protest on June 14. It's easy to find an event near you.

  
  

• I've been attending protests not because I want to, but because I must. I would much rather spend my time not protesting, but we are on the edge of a precipice and the threats to democracy and human liberties are very real. I'm further motivated by research that shows if 3.5% of a population participates in a peaceful protest then serious change follows. Every body counts; let's do this! [Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School]

  
  

• The June 14 protest coincides with Trumps' birthday and an ostentatious parade that's being marketed as a "tribute" to those who have served the US over the past 250 years. The expected cost for this egomaniacal event is $25–$45 million, excluding the costs to cleanup afterward and to repair damage to city streets not intended to handle the weight of parading military tanks. [Intelligencer]

  
  

• Here's an idea: If Trump really cares about those who have served (he doesn't), why not use those millions to help veterans? Then perhaps I wouldn't have needed to ask the homeless vet in the wheelchair why he was busting up a road sign across the street from our house, to find out that he wanted to use it as a ramp to get up the stairs to his friend's house, where he would be able to charge his chair battery so he could get back to his encampment. Never mind that he'd spent the day downtown, his requests for handouts ignored, so he wasn't able to buy wipes and adult diapers to compensate for incontinence issues after losing his legs in war. At least he didn't suffer the fate of his best friend, who he saw get his head blown off. True story.

  
  

• If you too are appalled by the abhorrent waste of taxpayer dollars to fund a parade fit for a dictator, submit your concern about "Waste, Fraud, and Abuse" by June 15. Using the script provided, you can either call the Government Accountability Office at 1-800-424-5454 to leave a message, or submit an anonymous complaint online by visiting the GOA website and clicking Report Fraud. I did both and found that calling was faster and easier. [Take Action Network]

  
  

• I can't stop talking about perhaps the most important book I've read, "On Freedom" by Timothy Snyder, acclaimed Yale historian and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller "On Tyranny." Elegant, considered, and insightful, this collection of essays applies to all of us, regardless of age, race, gender, nationality, culture, social status, or political affiliation. What I expected to be a book I should read turned out to be a book I wanted to read. Immensely readable, it was hard to put down and easy to pick up. Published in 2024, the book details the very threats to freedom that we now see playing out every day during Trump's second regime, and those threats are escalating quickly. All the more reasons to show up and take action, whether in the streets or from the comfort of your home.

  
  

• If you need inspiration for your next protest sign, check out these 15 signs from the April 5 Hands Off protest, as selected by Meidas+.

  
  

• Even profit whore Amazon wants in on the action:

  

• Representative Al Green (D-TX) has filed articles of impeachment against Trump. I'm curious to see how far this will go, since an earlier attempt by Representative Shri Thanedar (D-MI) was withdrawn after it received backlash from party leadership. I commend the effort, though, and I can't argue with his reasoning. [Axios]

  
  

• Dr. Heather Cox Richardson shares her thoughts on impeachment. Trump or no Trump, the Republican party wants a Unitary Executive leader. That explains all the voter suppression. [YouTube, 5:07]

  
  

• Separately, Dr. Richardson shared this uplifting news: Political scientist Adam Bonica noted last Friday that the Trump regime suffered a 96% loss rate in federal courts in the month of May. Those losses were nonpartisan: 72.2% of Republican-appointed judges and 80.4% of Democratic-appointed judges ruled against the regime.

  
  

• Those loss rates just got an uptick after three judges—appointed by Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama and Trump himself—ruled unanimously that Trump exceeded his authority with the vast majority of the tariffs he's imposed. [Meidas+]

  
  

• It was hard to miss Trump's mental decline this past weekend, as it was on full display in his Memorial Day rant and bizarre commencement speech to West Point grads. Riddled with comments about drag queens, yachts, and trophy wives, the speech came off like a page from Mad Libs. But have you seen him ramble about groceries? Watch as he struggles to grasp the concept in this segment from The Daily Show. You might laugh, you might cry. [YouTube, 7:16]