Sen. Joni Ernst To Constituents Regarding Medicaid Cuts: We’re All Going To Die, Someday

Say That Again

from the let-them-eat-caskets dept

I’ll start this off by acknowledging that, sure, there are times when it is perfectly reasonable to say, or even shout, “We’re all going to die!” Say you’re on a plane that has just lost all engine power and is hurtling towards the ground, for instance. Or perhaps someone has asked you the question, “Name one thing every human being has in common.” In each of those situations, the phrase is fairly appropriate, and I’m sure there are others.

But if you’re a Republican senator fielding questions from constituents at a town hall event and you are questioned about your support of Medicaid cuts despite the negative outcomes that will result, your response probably shouldn’t be, “Well, we’re all going to die, for heaven’s sake.” And, yet, that is precisely the route that Joni Ernst chose to take.

The exchange began with an attendee complaining to Ernst that the bill would give significant tax breaks to the ultrawealthy while kicking some people off Medicaid and food assistance programs. Ernst said the only people who face getting booted are those who should not be on Medicaid in the first place.

“They are not eligible, so they will be coming off,” Ernst said, which is when she was interrupted by the attendee who yelled, “People are going to die!”

“People are not — well, we all are going to die, so, for heaven’s sakes,” she said, prompting resounding jeers.

This is one of those things that is not technically wrong, but serves mostly as a non sequitur. Sure, we’re all hurtling towards death in some form or another, as Nietzsche pronounced in his philosophy all those years ago. But the general idea of, you know, medicine is to prolong life for as long as possible. Medicaid helps provide healthcare for plenty of people, primarily disadvantaged or poor citizens. The claim that 1.4 million illegal immigrants are on Medicaid is, unsurprisingly, almost entirely made up.

She later claimed that 1.4 million undocumented immigrants are receiving Medicaid benefits. That figure, which the White House and other top Republicans have also cited, is based on a Congressional Budget Office analysis that said that one provision of the bill would cause 1.4 million people to lose coverage (including but not limited to those without verified immigration status).

But even so, this kind of callous response to a reasonable concern by the very people Ernst represents is very much a Things Not To Say In Politics 101 sort of thing. Acting so cavalier while essentially acknowledging that support of the bill will result in lives being snuffed out before their time is, well, fucking evil. Even if were the case that some illegal immigrants, or even many of them, were benefitting from Medicaid, those are still people’s lives. To hand-wave their deaths away as though it were nothing is the sort of thing that should result in a psychiatric evaluation, not re-election.

If you were assuming that Ernst must surely have apologized for this by now, you’re right. If you were assuming that the apology was genuine or made things better in any way, hoo-fucking-boy, are you ever wrong.

Now, at great cost to my own desires, I’m going to go ahead and just leave entirely alone the juxtaposition of the Tooth Fairy and Ernst’s god as though a sizable portion of the world saw those two things as fundamentally different. Applaud me, because that took effort.

Instead, I’ll simply point out that it takes an incredible amount of entitlement to fuck up the political messaging as badly as Ernst did, only to turn around and essentially call the audience at her town hall event stupid and childish. So, let me try to clear this up for the senator.

I go to the dentist, even though some day, no matter what, my teeth will fall out. I go to the gym, even though some day, no matter what, my body will decline into a doughy bag of goo. I take my car to the mechanic for regular upkeep, even though some day, no matter what, that car will be fit for the junk yard. And I access my own privileged ability to get medical care, even though some day I’m going to die.

My humble suggestion is that we should have senators representing us who understand these distinctions. It appears that we have at least one example of a senator who does not.

Filed Under: death, death cult, healthcare, joni ernst, medicaid

Illinois Lawmakers Ban Police From Ticketing And Fining Students For Minor Infractions In School

Legal Issues

from the of-course-the-cops-don't-like-it dept

This story was originally published by ProPublica & the Chicago Tribune. Republished under ProPublica’s CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.

Illinois legislators on Wednesday passed a law to explicitly prevent police from ticketing and fining students for minor misbehavior at school, ending a practice that harmed students across the state.

The new law would apply to all public schools, including charters. It will require school districts, beginning in the 2027-28 school year, to report to the state how often they involve police in student matters each year and to separate the data by race, gender and disability. The state will be required to make the data public.

The legislation comes three years after a ProPublica and Chicago Tribune investigation, “The Price Kids Pay,” revealed that even though Illinois law bans school officials from fining students directly, districts skirted the law by calling on police to issue citations for violating local ordinances.

“The Price Kids Pay” found that thousands of Illinois students had been ticketed in recent years for adolescent behavior once handled by the principal’s office — things like littering, making loud noises, swearing, fighting or vaping in the bathroom. It also found that Black students were twice as likely to be ticketed at school than their white peers.

From the House floor, Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat from Chicago, thanked the news organizations for exposing the practice and told legislators that the goal of the bill “is to make sure if there is a violation of school code, the school should use their discipline policies” rather than disciplining students through police-issued tickets.

State Sen. Karina Villa, a Democrat from suburban West Chicago and a sponsor of the measure, said in a statement that ticketing students failed to address the reasons for misbehavior. “This bill will once and for all prohibit monetary fines as a form of discipline for Illinois students,” she said.

The legislation also would prevent police from issuing tickets to students for behavior on school transportation or during school-related events or activities.

The Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police opposed the legislation. The group said in a statement that while school-based officers should not be responsible for disciplining students, they should have the option to issue citations for criminal conduct as one of a “variety of resolutions.” The group said it’s concerned that not having the option to issue tickets could lead to students facing arrest and criminal charges instead.

The legislation passed the House 69-44. It passed in the Senate last month 37-17 and now heads to Gov. JB Pritzker, who previously has spoken out against ticketing students at school. A spokesperson said Wednesday night that he “was supportive of this initiative” and plans to review the bill.

The legislation makes clear that police can arrest students for crimes or violence they commit, but that they cannot ticket students for violating local ordinances prohibiting a range of minor infractions.

That distinction was not clear in previous versions of the legislation, which led to concern that schools would not be able to involve police in serious matters — and was a key reason legislation on ticketing foundered in previous legislative sessions. Students also may still be ordered to pay for lost, stolen or damaged property.

“This bill helps create an environment where students can learn from their mistakes without being unnecessarily funneled into the justice system,” said Aimee Galvin, government affairs director with Stand for Children, one of the groups that advocated for banning municipal tickets as school-based discipline.

The news investigation detailed how students were doubly penalized: when they were punished in school, with detention or a suspension, and then when they were ticketed by police for minor misbehavior. The investigation also revealed how, to resolve the tickets, children were thrown into a legal process designed for adults. Illinois law permits fines of up to $750 for municipal ordinance violations; it’s difficult to fight the charges, and students and families can be sent to collections if they don’t pay.

After the investigation was published, some school districts stopped asking police to ticket students. But the practice has continued in many other districts.

The legislation also adds regulations for districts that hire school-based police officers, known as school resource officers. Starting next year, districts with school resource officers must enter into agreements with local police to lay out the roles and responsibilities of officers on campus. The agreements will need to specify that officers are prohibited from issuing citations on school property and that they must be trained in working with students with disabilities. The agreements also must outline a process for data collection and reporting. School personnel also would be prohibited from referring truant students to police to be ticketed as punishment.

Before the new legislation, there had been some piecemeal changes and efforts at reform. A state attorney general investigation into a large suburban Chicago district confirmed that school administrators were exploiting a loophole in state law when they asked police to issue tickets to students. The district denied wrongdoing, but that investigation found the district broke the law and that the practice disproportionately affected Black and Latino students. The state’s top legal authority declared the practice illegal and said it should stop.

Filed Under: citations, fines, illinois, police, police in schools, school resource officers, tickets

How I Built A Task Management Tool For Almost Nothing

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the all-the-information-is-in-the-task dept

This is part two of my series on using AI tools to fight back against tech company control. Part one explained why we can get beyond just begging billionaires to fix our tools. This part shows exactly how I built my own tool — with zero coding skills and almost no money.

A few weeks back, I got tired of productivity apps that don’t work the way I think and decided to build my own. Not for millions of users or venture capital — just for me. Using nothing but plain English prompts to AI tools (what’s referred to as “vibe coding”), I now have a task management system that works almost exactly how my brain works, costs almost nothing to run, and can’t be enshittified by some growth-hacking product manager.

As a joke/homage to the absolutely brilliant UK TV show Taskmaster, I call my app, “L’il Alex,” in honor of the show’s creator “Little” Alex Horne who is, after all, the “Taskmaster’s Assistant.” Which is exactly what I need. An assistant to help me with tasks.

Like plenty of people, I’m obsessed with productivity but terrible at productivity tools. I’ve tried dozens of different systems, but none stuck. I’m one of those awful people who keeps a mental list of tasks, supplemented by email, calendar chaos, and browser tabs I swear I’ll get to eventually.

This means things fall through the cracks — but more importantly, it means I’m constantly fighting tools designed for someone else’s workflow, not mine.

I’ve tried dozens of task management tools, and they all suffer from the same problem: they’re built for the mythical “average user” rather than how any specific person actually thinks. The closest I’ve found is Intend.do, which calls itself an “intentionality” tool rather than a productivity tool.

The key difference with Intend is that rather than loading up a million tasks that you never get to (the downfall I — and many others — have with most task manager tools), Intend is focused just on today. You create a few larger goals, and then each day, you jot down which tasks you want to do towards those goals. It makes it very simple to do that, and then as you go, you can check off what you accomplished. It also asks you some questions, and checks in with you over time.

Intend gets daily planning mostly right, but it can’t handle future task planning the way my brain works. There’s a hacky Workflowy integration, but it’s awkward. More fundamentally, Intend has strong opinions about how I should work, and like every other tool, forces me to adapt to its worldview. It got me maybe 65% of the way there — which is why I kept abandoning it.

This is the core problem with all productivity software: you’re renting someone else’s vision of how work should happen. When that vision doesn’t match yours, tough shit. You adapt or you leave. But you never get to actually control the tool.

So I decided to build exactly what I needed: daily planning like Intend, but with integrated future task management, and none of the philosophical baggage (some of which may be great for others, but didn’t mesh with me!). A tool that adapts to me, not the other way around.

Here’s where the “vibe coding” magic happens — and it’s way simpler than you think. I started with two popular AI coding tools (Bolt and Lovable) and just… asked them to build what I wanted. In plain English. No technical specs, no wireframes, no user stories. Just this:

I would like to create a kind of task manager, with the focus being on what you need to work on today, but which will also store “future” tasks. The main goal would be to let me choose which tasks I will work on that day, put them in a list and check them off, while also listing out future tasks that can be stored in a separate screen, but which can then easily be added to today’s tasks as necessary. It would also be useful to have the system nudge me if I put a task in “today’s tasks” multiple days without accomplishing it, perhaps asking me if I want to break it up into multiple tasks. The tasks can also be separated into different categories of tasks so I can organize what types of tasks they are. The categories should be changeable/editable. Tasks should be movable from category to category, and I should be able to prioritize tasks. Also, it should be possible to set tasks to be recurring. Tasks should also be able to store clickable links and notes. Future tasks can have dates attached to them. There should be a daily “check in” at the end of the day to see how I’ve done.

I wanted to try multiple platforms partly out of curiosity, but mostly because this is the beauty of vibe coding: if one AI interprets your request in a way that doesn’t click, you just try another. You’re not locked into anyone’s interpretation of what you need.

With that, both created initial versions of this tool. Bolt called its version “TaskIntent” while Lovable called its version “Future Focus Daily.” I started playing around with each one, making some suggested changes or explaining how I wanted things to work slightly differently. Each service gives you a certain amount you can prompt the system for free each day (with Lovable it’s 5 free prompts, with Bolt it’s based on the number of tokens you use, but is roughly 5 free prompts).

After three days, I realized that the version Lovable had created was closer to what I wanted and decided to just focus on that one (this is also where I renamed it to “L’il Alex”; RIP “Future Focus Daily”). This highlights something important about vibe coding: different tools interpret the same request differently, and finding the right fit is part of the process. It’s not about the “best” tool — it’s about what works for your specific brain.

At that point, I also thought I’d see if I could build and deploy the tool for myself for no money, based on just giving it five prompts per day. By that third day, I started using the tool to manage my tasks. The only major problem I ran into early on was a realization that, despite my connecting this new app (at Lovable’s suggestion!) to a database at Supabase, it initially was storing all my tasks locally. So when I logged in on my phone to see how it worked as a mobile app, it was empty. But all it took was a single prompt to rectify that, and now my tasks are stored in a database.

My plan to do the whole thing for free hit a stumbling block a few days later, when I realized that while Lovable’s free account gives you five free prompts per day, there is still a limit of 30 total per month. So, after about six days of using it, you’re likely on hold until the next month starts.

At that point, I tried a few other approaches. I had connected my Lovable project to GitHub, so I had a repository with all the code, and I saw that Bolt had recently integrated with GitHub as well. I tried to open the repository with Bolt to see if I could continue working on it there, but it… didn’t work. It literally would ask me which project I wanted to use in GitHub, I would click on the repository, and Bolt would just reload as if nothing happened.

Then, at the suggestion of a friend, I tried to import the project into Firebase Studio, owned by Google, and built on top of Firebase. As with Bolt, I first tried to pull in my GitHub repo, which worked… except, for reasons I don’t understand, the AI features then all seemed disabled. After messing around with it for a bit and getting nowhere, the same friend who recommended I try Firebase Studio said “it might just be faster to ask Firebase Studio to recreate the project from scratch.” I gave it the same prompt and… it created “Momentum Flow,” with its own interpretation of the prompt.

I played around with it a bit more, but quickly realized that Firebase Studio definitely expects a bit more knowledge/experience to use and is not nearly as seamless as Lovable. For example, knowing I needed a database backend, I asked it to set that up and (not surprisingly) it suggested I use Firebase. But… rather than set it up, like Lovable did with Supabase, it just told me I needed to set it up manually. And I kept running into similar issues, where it would suggest what I should do, rather than just doing it. I’m sure that’s great for actual programmers, but my goal here was different.

For what it’s worth, I also tried another tool called Adaptive.ai (it named my app FocusDay), which seems pretty cool, but after running into a few more issues with it, I gave in and decided that my goal of a totally free app was too ambitious and agreed to pay $25/month for 100 prompts at Lovable. It turns out that you actually get more than that, as Lovable gives you five free prompts a day (use ‘em or lose ‘em that day), and after you use those up, you get those 100 additional prompts. So, in reality, you can do somewhere between 100 and 250 prompts, if you time it right.

Since then, I’ve been iterating the app to work exactly how my brain works. It’s probably terrible for anyone else — but that’s the point. For the first time in years, I have a productivity tool that doesn’t fight me.

This is what total control over your tools actually looks like. Here’s the “plan your day” page, which I either use late at night for the next day, or early in the morning for the upcoming day:

Tasks age visibly so I can see what I’ve been avoiding. Everything flows the way my brain actually works.

I prioritize tasks however makes sense to me that day. I can mark what I’m working on now versus next, and it automatically organizes itself around my actual workflow.

At day’s end, it checks in with me the way I want to be checked in with — not with guilt-inducing streaks or gamification bullshit, just some simple stats and details about the day (and it lets me create follow-ups on tasks I completed recently).

The system handles my unfinished tasks exactly how I want: no shame, no penalty, just moving them back to the future pile for tomorrow’s planning session, with the kind of notifications I want. So each day starts fresh, and I get to plan out how I want my day to go.

The whole thing has worked brilliantly since about day three. After two weeks of daily use, I’m genuinely hooked — not because of gamification tricks or habit-forming design patterns, but because the tool actually serves me instead of fighting me. I’m still tweaking some things here and there, but the tool just works. For me.

Here’s the real magic: when I want a new feature, I just ask for it. Last week I decided I wanted habit tracking integrated into my task flow. A few prompts later, done. No waiting for the next product roadmap, no hoping some PM thinks my use case matters. No upsell on it as a “premium” feature. I just had the system build it.

I also added a bookmarklet for capturing articles to write about and turning them into tasks as well as an email integration for turning emails into tasks. These weren’t planned features — they were just friction points that annoyed me, so I eliminated them.

The email integration required setting up a webhook through IFTTT — the AI initially suggested Gmail could handle webhooks directly (wrong), but it quickly pivoted to working solutions. This is typical of vibe coding: the AI makes occasional mistakes, but iterating toward working solutions is still faster than begging some company to maybe add your feature request to their backlog.

Sure, there are still some small bugs to fix and features to add. But here’s the difference: when something doesn’t work the way I need it to, I can actually fix it. I’m not stuck filing support tickets into the void or hoping the next update doesn’t break something I rely on.

There have been minor annoyances — occasionally when I asked it to add a feature, it reverts older changes or gets weird design ideas — but I can just tell it to fix things and it does. Compare that to every other productivity tool I’ve used, where design decisions that annoy me are just permanent facts of life I have to accept.

Intend got me 65% of the way there. L’il Alex is already at 85% and climbing. More importantly: when my needs change, the tool adapts. I’m not locked into someone else’s vision.

This is exactly what vibe coding is for: solving personal friction points without waiting for permission from product managers whose incentives don’t align with yours.

So, for all the folks who are concerned about centralized control and losing agency over their digital lives: there are now more options beyond just yelling at tech companies or hoping for better government regulation. For personal productivity tools, workflow automation, and small community projects, you can actually build what you need, no coding skills needed. The tools exist, they’re accessible, and they work. Sometimes the best way to escape someone else’s control is to just stop asking, and just take charge.

Filed Under: agency, autonomy, intentional software, l'il alex, personal productivity, task management, taskmaster, vibe coding
Companies: bolt, google, intend, lovable

Stop Begging Billionaires To Fix Software — Build Your Own

Culture

from the take-control-for-yourself dept

This is part one of a two-part series on using AI tools as one piece to fight back against tech company control of our lives. Part two shares the details of how I built my own task management tool in a few days for next to no money and without any coding skills. But first, we need to talk about why this matters.

Earlier this year, I wrote about how people need to take back some control and agency over the tools they use online. As I wrote at the time:

The internet was supposed to liberate us. Instead, it’s left us feeling helpless, waiting for billionaires, governments, and tech giants to save us.

The most insidious thing about Big Tech’s takeover of the internet isn’t the concentration of power — it’s how it’s trained us to beg for scraps from our digital overlords.

So I decided to practice what I preach: I built myself a sophisticated personal task management tool using only AI — no coding knowledge required. Within three days, I was using it to manage my workday — and I keep making it better.

Here’s the thing: I know many of you think AI is overhyped bullshit. That it’s just another way for tech companies to extract value while delivering nothing useful. And you’re not entirely wrong about some of the hype. But, at times, those same AI tools can actually help you escape the very companies peddling them.

You can actually use those big tech company AI tools to escape some of “Big Tech’s” hold on your digital lives.

I now have a tool that works exactly to my specifications. I control the code, the hosting, the data. No company can enshittify it. No growth hacker can “optimize” it to extract more engagement. No billionaire can wake up one day and decide to charge for verification badges, import Nazis, or kill third-party apps.

It’s personal. It’s intentional — in that it’s based on my own intentions directly, rather than forcing me to fight a service provider’s best interests when they conflict with my own.

This is what “vibe coding” offers: the ability to build personal tools without knowing how to code, using natural language to create exactly what you need.

It’s not software from some big company trying to upsell me, grab my data, or control me.

In my original post earlier this year, I pointed out that we now have a generation of internet users who grew up entirely on giant platforms controlled by billionaires who believe their only recourse for anything is begging those same billionaires — or the government — to fix things.

But the nature of an open internet is that you have agency and you can make some choices yourself, taking back the power for yourself, rather than demanding that others make them for you.

The early internet was about many people building things themselves, often for themselves. The rise of giant platforms trained us to accept their constraints as immutable facts of digital life. But they’re not.

Yes, there are legitimate concerns about AI, including about the companies that provide it and how they operate. But dismissing the technology entirely means missing how it can be weaponized against the very systems of control we’re trying to escape.

Let me be clear about what this is and isn’t good for:

• Do use it for personal productivity tools, workflow automation, and small community projects
• Do think of it as digital DIY — sometimes you need a professional, sometimes you can handle it yourself
• Don’t use pure vibe coding for anything involving serious security, payments, or legal liability
• Don’t build public-facing apps expecting millions of users — at least not unless you’re okay dealing with major problems down the road

For social platforms, protocols like Bluesky’s AT Protocol are key (disclosure: I’m on the board). But for personal tools that don’t need social? Vibe coding changes the game entirely.

It was only in early February of this year that Andrej Karpathy coined the term “vibe coding” to describe using AI tools to code things for you without needing to worry about all the details. You literally just chat with an AI until you get working software.

The concept exploded. By now, just four months later, there are already at least 15 books on Amazon about it (though the only serious ones — by Steve Yegge/Gene Kim and Addy Osmani — aren’t out until Fall, and I assume many of the others are AI generated slop).

This isn’t just “AI-assisted coding” where you still need to understand programming. This is describing what you want in plain English and iterating until it works. No coding knowledge required — my own coding skills are basically non-existent as the last time I really did anything directly with code was in the 1990s.

It turns out to be quite powerful. And liberating.

Ernie Smith used vibe coding to improve his own workflow, building a tool to use Obisidian (the popular note taking app) to post directly to his blog, which is built on Craft CMS. Smith, who is not prone to hyping AI tools notes how this seems like the proper use of the tool:

This is a situation where LLMs helped me solve a “me” problem without getting in the way of anyone else. I’m not going to be using LLM-created copy or images. But I did just figure out a way to save myself a ton of time when uploading a post, which I hope will make it easier to do so over time.

That’s exactly it. This isn’t about creating the next unicorn startup or replacing human creativity. It’s about solving personal friction points without waiting for some company to maybe add the feature you need (right before they pivot to crypto or whatever).

My task management system cost almost nothing to build and runs exactly how I want it to. No subscription fees, no feature creep (unless I decide to add those features), no suddenly discovering that my workflow has been “optimized” for someone else’s engagement metrics. No chance of waking up and finding out that my tool is owned by a fascist.

This is what taking back control actually looks like. Not begging Zuckerberg to “do better.” Not yelling at people on social media. Not hoping the government will save us. Just building what we need, for ourselves, on our own terms.

The companion piece shows you exactly how I did it for myself. But the why should already be clear: because what good is the open internet if we’re not using it for our own purposes.

Filed Under: agency, big tech, control, decentralization, enshittification, vibe coding

Daily Deal: iOS UX & UI Design Course

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) design are two very different fields that work toward the same goal: create a functional product that’s a breeze for users to use and interact with. The iOS UX & UI Design Course breaks down the differences between both and helps you apply this knowledge to your app-building pursuits. You’ll get hands-on training designing the home screen of an app, learn about microinteractions, and bring your project to life with InVision, a prototyping, collaboration and workflow tool designers use across the industry. It’s on sale for $20.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

What’s Left Of CBS Just Can’t Stop Kissing Donald Trump’s Ass

Deals

from the “Pathetic,”-he-said.-“That's-what-it-is.-Pathetic.” dept

Let’s be clear: CBS/Paramount, like many corporate U.S. media outlets, initially responded to the threat of authoritarian rule by kissing Republican ass in a bid to curry favor. CBS management has long made it clear that access and ad engagement are significantly more important than the truth. But the company’s looming acquisition by Skydance has taken existing fecklessness to the next level.

It’s looking increasingly likely that CBS/Paramount executives are going to give Donald Trump a huge pile of money to not only gain FCC approval of their $8 billion merger with Skydance, but to settle Trump’s completely bogus lawsuit(s) trying to bully the company away from doing basic journalism.

There’s even some reporting from the right wing NY Post (for whatever that’s worth) claiming that CBS/Paramount executives are considering promising Trump that they’ll run free “public service announcements” (read: pro-Trump, right wing propaganda ads) to finalize the settlement:

“A proposal to break the legal quagmire between CBS News parent Paramount and President Trump involves the Tiffany Network running millions of dollars in public service ads for causes that appeal to the administration, On The Money has learned.”

Pathetic. CBS majority owner Shari Redstone just wants to get out of the media business. The guys looking to buy CBS, most notably Larry Ellison’s son David, have been kissing Trump’s ass on the daily. There’s every indication that once CBS is acquired, they’re going to push the already fairly pathetic media arm of the company further to the right, a la Washington Post or the LA Times.

Kissing Republican ass and telling weird right wing zealots what they want to hear is where all the money is. Telling people the truth risks upsetting governments, advertisers, and billionaire ownership. It also likely results in a loss of broader advertising engagement and makes it less likely you’ll be invited to the next White House Christmas party.

As a result, all the journalists and executives left at CBS with any integrity are jumping ship. Curiously, state senators in California are launching an “investigation” into whether any part of this bizarre bribery scheme violates any state laws against bribery and unfair competition. Semafor, in typical “both sides” fashion, frames this all as a difference of bipartisan opinion:

“The settlement talks have infuriated many staff members at CBS as well as many national Democrats who believe that Paramount is caving to pressure from Trump to settle a frivolous lawsuit.”

CBS/Paramount absolutely is caving to pressure from Trump to settle a frivolous lawsuit. It’s not an opinion. They’re not being subtle about it. The Trump administration is abusing government power and trampling the constitution in order to bully the U.S. press into feckless compliance. And it’s working. Whether a California Senate inquiry will hold anybody accountable for it is another matter entirely.

This is all the culmination of decades of U.S. failures on media policy and antitrust reform. Historically bipartisan “U.S. media policy” has involved rubber stamping problematic media mergers, allowing the ad-based modern media to turn into a monolithic, ad-engagement chasing dumpster fire jam-packed with propaganda and corporatist infotainment, all managed by some of the least competent people imaginable. We spent decades paying empty lip service to real journalism, and the check is due.

The end result has been positively fatal for U.S. journalism, collective consensus, an educated public, and an informed electorate.

The only real way out of this mess is for CBS executives to find a backbone, cancel the merger, and tell the Trump administration and Brendan Carr to go fuck themselves. They can afford the fight, and they’d have plenty of support. But because that would be a bigger, more expensive hassle than throwing independent journalism and ethics in the toilet, it’s very clear which direction CBS is ultimately headed.

Filed Under: antitrust, consolidation, free speech, journalism, media, mergers, shari redstone
Companies: cbs, paramount

CDC Decides America’s Children Could Do With More Lead In Their Blood

Failures

from the won't-somebody-poison-the-children!?! dept

With all the conversations we’ve had in the past few months about the decline of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under the leadership, or lack thereof, of RFK Jr. and Donald Trump, you might have been left with the impression that everything at HHS is broken beyond repair. But that’s not entirely true. Despite the rash of budget, staff, and grant cuts that have kneecapped HHS, you can still get a great deal of information from the HHS website, for instance. As an example, here is the CDC site’s page providing information about lead poisoning in the country. It describes how the agency began measuring blood lead levels (BLLs) nationally in 1995 to find where elevated BLLs exist, especially in children, in order to deploy federal resources to combat its occurrence. The CDC page has this to say about BLLs generally in terms of their impact on children.

There is no known safe BLL. Exposure to lead can seriously harm a child’s health. Millions of children are being exposed to lead in their homes, increasing their risks for:

• Damage to the brain and nervous system
• Slowed growth and development
• Learning and behavior problems (e.g., reduced IQ, ADHD, juvenile delinquency, and criminal behavior)
• Hearing and speech problems

Well, I’m no doctor, but gosh golly gee, that seems bad! Like, the kind of thing a federal government that has protecting its own population as a supposed chief aim would want to combat. And, in touting its own progress on that same page, the CDC agreed at the time the page was written in 2024.

The decrease is most likely a result of an intense coordinated effort to control or eliminate lead sources in children’s environments by:

• Government officials
• Healthcare and social service providers
• The communities most at risk

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is a child agency of HHS, has its own page on the topic as well. There they talk again about how this was historically a much larger problem, but one that still remains and needs to be addressed through a coordinated and likely federal effort.

Researchers estimate that half of the U.S. population, more than 170 million people, were exposed to harmful lead levels in early childhood. “The scope of such widespread exposure, particularly from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, suggests the legacy of lead continues to shape the health and wellbeing of the country in ways we do not yet fully understand,” according to the researchers. Lead exposure is associated with IQ loss, for which even small deficits can have a meaningful adverse effect on people’s lives and on society.

The Biden-Harris Administration actively works to protect communities from lead exposure. More than 9 million homes, schools, daycares, and businesses receive their drinking water through a lead pipe, putting people at risk of lead exposure. A whole-of-government effort is deploying resources across federal, state and local governments to address lead hazards. Read more in this May 2024 brief: $3 Billion to Replace Toxic Lead Pipes and Deliver Clean Drinking Water to Communities Across the Country.

There’s not a lot of ambiguity in any of this. Lead poisoning and any level of BLLs, particularly in children, are problems worthy of combatting. To say that we don’t want lead in the blood of our children ought to be as uncontroversial a position as one can take. And, yet, it appears that one of the victims of HHS’ budget slashing is the very program designed to help local communities, particularly those in poorer areas.

On April 1, the staff of the CDC’s Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program was terminated as part of the agency’s reduction in force, according to NPR. The staff included epidemiologists, statisticians, and advisors who specialized in lead exposures and responses.

The cuts were immediately consequential to health officials in Milwaukee, who are currently dealing with a lead exposure crisis in public schools. Six schools have had to close, displacing 1,800 students. In April, the city requested help from the CDC’s lead experts, but the request was denied—there was no one left to help.

That Milwaukee example is an interesting one, as it offers us yet another opportunity to watch RFK Jr. simply obfuscate and/or lie in response to it. In a hearing, members of Congress asked RFK Jr. directly about the Milwaukee issue. Kennedy assured those lawmakers that he had a crackerjack team from HHS on the ground in the city working on this. Turns out, not so much.

Milwaukee Health Commissioner Mike Totoraitis told NPR that this is false. “There is no team in Milwaukee,” he said. “We had a single [federal] staff person come to Milwaukee for a brief period to help validate a machine, but that was separate from the formal request that we had for a small team to actually come to Milwaukee for our Milwaukee Public Schools investigation and ongoing support there.”

Kennedy has also previously told lawmakers that lead experts at the CDC who were terminated would be rehired. But that statement was also false. The health department’s own communications team told ABC that the lead experts would not be reinstated.

Look, I realize that we’re in a brave new world in which Trump officials can just do whatever they want, say whatever they want, and that they all have an expectation that they are untouchable. But at some point, there have to be consequences for a Cabinet member sitting before Congress and lying through his teeth. Hearings. Inquiries. Charges for contempt of Congress, or for lying under oath. Something. Anything.

Children are suffering and will suffer even worse because of this nonsense, all while Kennedy plays “pin the tail on my own bullshit” with lawmakers. This simply cannot go on.

Filed Under: bll, blood lead levels, cdc, health and human services, hhs, lead, lead exposure, lead poisoning, maha, nih, rfk jr.

Appeals Court: Yeah, Of Course Ken Paxton’s Investigation Into Media Matters Was Bullshit

Legal Issues

from the stating-the-obvious dept

A federal appeals court just delivered yet another reality check to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s transparently retaliatory investigation into Media Matters — and the timing couldn’t be better, given that the FTC just opened its own bullshit investigation into the same organization for the same supposed “crime”: reporting factual information that made Elon Musk sad.

Here’s what happened: Media Matters published a single article documenting that big brand ads were appearing next to neo-Nazi content on ExTwitter. No one disputes this happened (no, not even Elon, though he does complain that they weren’t fully transparent in how they found those ads). But some advertisers paused their spending, which enraged Musk enough that he (egged on by Stephen Miller) convinced state officials in Texas and Missouri to weaponize their offices against Media Matters for the sin of accurate reporting.

This was in addition to Musk’s own filing of lawsuits in multiple countries against Media Matters (not to mention Musk telling advertisers to “go fuck yourself” if they didn’t want to advertise).

It should be pretty blatantly obvious why this is dangerous. When state prosecutors start investigating journalists for publishing inconvenient facts, that’s not protecting the public — it’s textbook government retaliation against speech.

Media Matters went to court to try to stop these investigations, and a district court judge blocked both Texas’ and Missouri’s investigations, calling out how they were obviously unconstitutional retaliatory attacks on Media Matters’ First Amendment protected speech.

Texas appealed to the DC Circuit. On Friday, the DC Circuit upheld the lower court opinion. The opinion was written by the 84-year-old Judge Harry Edwards, who basically says that the district court’s findings that this was an attack on First Amendment speech is obviously correct:

The First Amendment generally “prohibits government officials from subjecting individuals to retaliatory actions after the fact for having engaged in protected speech.” Hous. Cmty. Coll. Sys. v. Wilson, 595 U.S. 468, 474 (2022); see, e.g., Boquist v. Courtney, 32 F.4th 764, 774 (9th Cir. 2022). As the District Court correctly recognized, Appellees’ complaint is not focused merely on the chilling effects of the actions taken against them. Rather, the heart of Appellees’ claim is that the actions taken by Paxton are justiciable and warrant relief because they involve concrete and felt acts of retaliation against a media company and one of its investigative reporters for having exercised their protected rights of free speech.

The opinion calls out how Paxton tried to pretend his investigation wasn’t retaliatory even as it quite obviously was:

Paxton additionally argues that Appellees’ complaint should be dismissed because it does not raise a justiciable claim. We disagree. Paxton has elided the compelling evidence of the campaign of retaliation against Appellees so as to mischaracterize the action before the court. This case is not simply about a pre-enforcement challenge to a non-self-executing CID, as Paxton would have it. Rather, Appellees have alleged present, concrete, and objective harms (not merely “chilling effects”) resulting from retaliatory government actions that have adversely affected their newsgathering activities and media business operations. Accordingly, Appellees have satisfied the injury-in-fact requirement of standing and may pursue injunctive relief for their First Amendment retaliation claim.

Here’s the most damning part: Judge Edwards points out that Paxton provided no argument at all “to dispute that the investigation was retaliatory.” In other words, a state attorney general couldn’t even be bothered to deny that he was abusing his office to punish journalists. That’s not legal strategy — that’s confession.

Instead of defending the legitimacy of his investigation, Paxton tried to hide behind procedural arguments, pointing to a case about challenging hypothetical future enforcement. But as Edwards makes clear, this isn’t about some potential future harm:

This case is quite different. Appellees in this case are not challenging a general government policy; rather, they are the specific targets of a retaliatory government investigation. Indeed, as noted above, Paxton readily declared that he was targeting Media Matters for investigation in a press release and interviews. Shortly thereafter, he then served the CID on Media Matters as part of the investigation. Thus, there is no hypothetical harm or a threatened future enforcement action because the retaliatory investigation has already begun.

The timing of this ruling is perfect because FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson just launched his own investigation into Media Matters for the exact same “offense” — accurate reporting that upset a billionaire. Ferguson should read this opinion carefully, because the DC Circuit just explained in very clear terms why using government power to punish journalism is unconstitutional.

But, of course, Ferguson probably doesn’t care. The cruelty is the point. These investigations aren’t meant to uncover wrongdoing — they’re designed to drain resources, chill reporting, and send a message to other journalists: step out of line and we’ll weaponize the state against you.

That’s how “free speech” works in the Trump admin.

The DC Circuit just told state prosecutors they can’t get away with this authoritarian bullshit. Now we’ll see if federal agencies got the memo.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, andrew ferguson, elon musk, free speech, ftc, ken paxton, retaliation, texas
Companies: media matters