POLITICO:
Poll: Trump's own voters begin blaming him for affordability crisis
Americans continue to say affordability is out of control, and they place the responsibility on Trump, The POLITICO Poll found.
New polling shows many Americans have begun to blame President Donald Trump for the high costs they’re feeling across virtually every part of their lives — and it’s shifting politics.
Almost half — 46 percent — say the cost of living in the U.S. is the worst they can ever remember it being, a view held by 37 percent of 2024 Trump voters. Americans also say that the affordability crisis is Trump’s responsibility, with 46 percent saying it is his economy now and his administration is responsible for the costs they struggle with.
Well, the Senator is right about that. Every official agency that has anything to do with RFK Jr is discredited, from CDC to ACIP to the FDA.
Get your information from the American Academy of Pediatrics or the American Academy of Family Practice.
CNN:
ACIP delays vote on potential changes to hepatitis B vaccination for newborns
Vaccine advisers to the CDC delayed until Friday morning a vote that could lead to dramatic changes to hepatitis B vaccination practice in the United States.
The advisers, who were handpicked by US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier this year, had expressed confusion about what they were voting on after the language changed a number of times, and said they wanted more time to consider it.
The committee had been scheduled to vote at 2:30 p.m. ET Thursday.
New England Journal of Medicine:
A Threat to Evidence-Based Vaccine Policy and Public Health Security at the FDA
Authors: Robert M. Califf, M.D., Andrew C. von Eschenbach, M.D., Michael A. Friedman, M.D., Brett P. Giroir, M.D., Scott Gottlieb, M.D., Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., Jane E. Henney, M.D., David A. Kessler, M.D., Mark B. McClellan, M.D., Ph.D., Stephen M. Ostroff, M.D., Norman E. Sharpless, M.D., and Janet Woodcock, M.D
Twelve former commissioners of the FDA express concern that the agency’s recent moves will undermine a regulatory model designed to ensure vaccine safety, effectiveness, and availability.
As former commissioners of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — who collectively guided the agency’s oversight for more than 35 years, through myriad public health crises — we are committed to medical product safety and identifying new medical evidence with the speed, rigor, and openness that the public should expect. We are deeply concerned by sweeping new FDA assertions about vaccine safety and proposals that would undermine a regulatory model designed to ensure that vaccines are safe, effective, and available when the public needs them most.
It’s beginning to look a lot like … a traditional midterm election
With an unpopular president, Democratic overperformances are par for the course
Even though Trump was the surprise winner in 2016, it’s been long enough to forget that 2018 was a normal midterm election. His job approval rating sunk to 44 percent over the course of his first two years in office, and Republicans got thumped, losing more than 40 House seats.
That’s what happens to parties when they have an unpopular president in the White House. Yes, the GOP gained two Senate seats in 2018, but that was because of a favorable map and Democrats defending a disproportionate number of seats that cycle.
Now, almost a year into Trump’s second term, it looks like we’re on the same course.
"Double down": Trump's base sees ultra-MAGA as answer to GOP stumbles
Confronted with a growing string of GOP underperformances in off-year elections, key pro-Trump activists see more MAGA — not less — as the only solution.
Why it matters: The reaction suggests a movement uninterested in grappling with the limits of its appeal — a departure from the panicked introspection both parties have traditionally undergone after off-year disappointments.
- Yes, it's common for one flank of a party to argue that failed or underperforming candidates didn't devote enough attention to its preferred policies.
- But MAGA is no longer just a wing of the GOP — it's the party's main engine.
David R Lurie/Public Notice:
Republicans in the era of Late Trumpism
The end is in sight — and it's not pretty for the GOP.
Throughout her meteoric political career, [Marjorie Taylor] Greene had been a staunch opponent of the Affordable Care Act, and declared during her first House campaign that she wanted to see “Obamacare repealed in its entirety.” More recently, she supported the deep cuts in Medicaid included in the GOP’s politically disastrous “Big Beautiful Bill,” despite the fact that the ACA is now supported by a supermajority of voters and that many of her constituents rely on Medicaid and ACA subsidies.
But in October — in the midst of a government shutdown caused by the GOP’s refusal to even negotiate over an extension of the enhanced ACA tax credits — Greene declared she had begun listening to her constituents and now favored extending the tax credits. Until recently, such an about-face by a darling of the Republican right would have been just as unbelievable as Greene’s confrontation of Trump over the Epstein files. After all, staunch opposition to the ACA has been at the center of Republican ideology since the Tea Party era.
While the emerging vision of Greene (as well as of her fellow extremists) is far from “small government” Republicanism, it does not reflect a turn toward moderation or tolerance. During a recent CNN appearance, she advocated for platforming neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, and repeated some of her favorite antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark:
The Three Dumbest Republican Self-Owns on Health Care
How the party hurts itself, its voters, and the country.
REPUBLICANS SAY THEY DON’T HATE health care programs, but they’ve been fixated for years on ideas that pretty much scream ‘let’s abandon everyone and everything that we pretend to care about.’
It’s all on display in recent GOP health policy choices that will do harm to people, principles, and political groups that are, allegedly, party priorities. Here are three examples:
...
3. A third and final own goal is the conservative fantasy that real men don’t need insurance, and the insistence by some (Kristi Noem comes to mind) that the Medicaid expansion shouldn’t cover able-bodied, single men. But why not? They are likely working—at low-wage jobs that don’t offer insurance. They could get cancer or have an accident, just like anyone. They could be forced into medical bankruptcy. This is a decency issue, a productivity issue, a family finance issue, and a hospital survival issue. It’s also common sense.
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FOLKS, do you have questions on the redistricting wars (especially tonight)?
Bolts just launched a call for questions today: Tell us what you want to know... on new maps, about lingering questions, about lawsuits, on VRA threat, what where it means for 2026?
Reply below, or there's a form in here:
— Taniel (@taniel.bsky.social) 2025-12-04T23:29:57.838Z
Pete Hegseth Confessed to a War Crime — And America Shrugs
From Nuremberg to Trumpworld, Cliff Schecter dismantles the toxic normalization of atrocity — and demands the accountability our heroes fought for.
I exited the suburban, Cincinnati movie theater last night to a light breeze. For some reason—instinct?—I looked up at the shimmering stars in the night’s sky for a brief moment. Something about it—maybe the knowledge history’s actors have gazed at that same starry sky?—always brings a sense of peace.
It was more challenging this time. As I stared off into the distance, I pondered the all-consuming portrayal of The Nuremberg Trials I’d just seen in the similarly named film, “Nuremberg” (side note: Russell Crowe is spellbinding as Hermann Göring).
A reminder of when the world—or at least what was left of it—dragged itself out of the rubble, looked at the mass murder and destruction on an industrial scale it had barely survived, and said: Never again.
Not “never again…unless the former back-up weekend Fox-bro turned bantam-weight, Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, feels like committing a war crime.” Not “never again, unless killing people helps ease Trump outta his deep-dementia slumber, momentarily, and misdirects Americans from the Epstein Files.”
No, it was simply: never again.
