We should not cancel the equivalent of 7 percent in annual GDP all at once, which would trigger a deep recession. But identifying the real sources of inefficiency in our government—the trillions funneled to elites—can preserve resources for programs to help those in need. And it can display the values of an opposition party that has strayed from its core purpose of fighting for the little guy.
This American Prospect piece is a great example of how journalism can provide context, and reality, in the face of deceit. There are all kinds of ways to cut truly wasteful spending, the author shows, noting that the billionaires pushing the "DOGE" scam aren't interested in those.
The commentary takes too long to get to the good stuff, but once there it's loaded with evidence-filled suggestions. Two examples: Our insane health care system leads the list, with the corrupt "Medicare Advantage" operations carving away more than $80 billion a year in overpayments to insurance companies that in many cases are outright but unpunished fraud.
Meanwhile, a long section on the Pentagon highlights the most unaccountable part of the federal government. Military spending consistently fails routine audits – meaning that the government literally doesn't keep decent records of how it's spending our money – and gives some of America's most rapacious companies no-bid contracts producing defective weapons and other gear. Accountability? Surely you jest.
Imagine if there was a functioning opposition party in Washington, and what it could do with this.
“As senators prepare to consider the next leaders of our federal health care agencies, they do so amid the proliferation of online misinformation about vaccines and increasing outbreaks of vaccine-preventable illness among children,” said AAP President Susan J. Kressly, M.D., FAAP. “Their leadership in this moment is so important, which is why I’m urging them to support science and protect our communities. Pediatricians stand ready to talk about the settled science with our elected leaders.”
The nation's top association of pediatric doctors feels compelled to "educate" U.S. senators who are considering whether to confirm the odious Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services. A few months ago, the idea of such an appointment would have seemed ludicrous. Now? The most prominent American anti-vaxxer could soon be in charge of the nation's public health agencies.
The Republicans control the Senate. Several will vote against Kennedy, most likely Alaska's Murkowski and Maine's Collins. Both are reliable Trump votes when the chips are really on the line, but the party's margin is such that they can pretend to be independent in this case.
It's truly terrifying that doctors are now forced to spend their valuable time defending a decades-old health policy that has paid unbelievably vast dividends: the near elimination of common childhood diseases that used to sicken countless kids and kill some of them. The nightmare scenario of their return, thanks to the refusal of zealots and misinformed but well-meaning parents to do what's right for their kids and communities, is stark testament to our nation's disintegration as a place where reality matters.
Kim and the other Democratic senators seem to be playing by the old rules of partisanship, according to which they must be choosy about the number of nay-votes they cast in order to maintain their credibility among independent voters, the press corps and the Republicans. They are forgetting their own people, however, who believed them when they said a second term for Donald Trump would be a menace to decency, democracy and the rule of law. In compromising with a menace, they risk their reputations among Democratic supporters.
This commentary is a reminder of the dismal reality in the Democratic party: In so many cases, Democrats are simply weak.
They bring handshakes to Republicans' knife fights. They gain absolutely nothing by being cooperative with Trump's extremist cabinet nominations, and lose more and more of what little credibility they have as an opposition party.
Chinese models have gotten so good, so fast, that even those outside the tech industry are taking note: The Economistmagazine just ran a piece on DeepSeek’s success and that of other Chinese AI efforts, and political commentator Matt Bruenig posted on X that: “I have been extensively using Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude for NLRB document summary for nearly a year. Deepseek is better than all of them at it. The chatbot version of it is free. Price to use [its] API is 99.5% below the price of OpenAI’s API. [shrug emoji]”
DeepSeek is the nickname of the suddenly noteworthy Chinese "AI" product – one of several, in fact – that has everyone in tech circles chattering. This article is a good way to catch up.
The U.S. AI barons – mainly huge companies that are spending what look like insane amounts of money in a modern land grab (or so they believe) – are also working feverishly to foist off as much of the tab as possible on you and me. And this will only make them more eager to pull that scam off before it's too late.
Tech and politics are basically the same thing these days, especially given the way Big Tech CEOs have bent their collective knees to Trump. So I fully expect the president to ban DeepSeek on their behalf as a "security" risk – that is, if it works as it appears to do, massively undermining the U.S. companies' bloated operations with much more efficient code.
Incidentally, allow me to make a suggestion to any journalist who might be reading this: When stock prices drop in an industry sector that is in a grotesque bubble, maybe you should explain the context instead of publishing and airing holy-shit panic attacks. And if the plummeting one-sector ("AI" in this case) prices trigger a broad meltdown because big institutional investors speculated on bubble stocks, maybe you should have taken note of the risk they were incurring for all of us before now.
During Donald Trump's first term as President, I tracked his administration's actions and positions on open access. I plan to do the same during his second term.
The director of the Harvard Open Access Project has launched a brilliant one-person project called "The Trump administrations on open access to research" – a wiki on which he's collecting links that show the gamut of the regime's attitudes, and acts, toward public access to information. (Unsurprisingly, in policy and action, Trump and his people are overwhelming hostile to providing public access to research generated from taxpayer funding.)
It's a noteworthy project by itself, but I flag it here as a model for what journalists could do on a variety of topics. The most obvious need for a project like this? Create a comprehensive archive of the infinite corruption in Trump world.
In just the past few days there have been many individual reports of corrupt acts, but zero reports showing the context – the astounding breadth and depth – of the pervasive sleaze of Trump, his family, his appointees, his corporate allies, and his business partners.
News organizations could do the same kind of thing with environmental policies and acts and "Justice" Department doings; among others. If they cared to provide context, that is; as we know, however, context is not something journalists do very often.
This newsletter is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money. For more details, please read my About page.
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David Dayen
John Stoehr
Carl Franzen
