Wednesday Reads

Good Afternoon!!

I’m illustrating this post with relaxing paintings today, because I desperately needed a break from current events.

It seems I may have been wrong about Elon Musk’s departure from the White House. On Saturday, I wrote that I thought he would continue to work with and influence Trump and DOGE. But then Musk began attacking Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”

Actually, it seems as if Trump has fired Musk, and Musk is not happy about it. Lawrence O’Donnell discussed it on his show last night. Here’s what Lawrence had to say:

Musk has been slamming Trump’s budget bill since their last meeting in the Oval Office, and Trump has not responded so far. Here’s the latest:

The Daily Beast: Elon Musk Keeps on Dissing Trump in Flurry of New Posts.

Elon Musk continued his rampage against Donald Trump’s spending bill on Tuesday night, setting the stage for an ugly showdown with the president’s faithful.

“Mammoth spending bills are bankrupting America!” he wrote, sharing a graphic depicting rising national debt over the past three decades. “ENOUGH,” he added.

He also responded with a “100″ emoji to an X user who wrote that Musk had “reminded everyone: It’s not about Right vs. Left. It’s about the Establishment vs the People.”

He then posted an American flag emoji under a post from conservative satire site The Babylon Bee, highlighting a story titled, “The Lord Strengthens Elon One Last Time To Push Pillars Of Congress Over And Bring Government Crashing Down.”

Earlier Tuesday, the billionaire unleashed hellfire on Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, lambasting the president’s flagship legislative package as “outrageous,” “pork-filled” and a “disgusting abomination.”

“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it,” he wrote of the package, which scraped through the House last month solely on Republican votes.

Also from The Daily Beast: Insiders Reveal Why Musk Is Trashing Trump’s Bill: ‘Elon Was B*tthurt.’

Elon Musk’s full-throttle assault on Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” is less about fiscal policy and more about bruised ego, insiders say, claiming the billionaire is “b-tthurt.”

A path in the woods, by Vincent Van Gogh

The drama reportedly began when Musk’s pick for a top federal post, billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman, was rejected by Trump’s inner circle. Sources said it was Sergio Gor, Trump’s longtime aide and current personnel chief, who blocked the nomination.

“This was Sergio’s out-the-door ‘f–k you’ to Musk,” a White House source told Axios.

This triggered a rift which started with the Tesla CEO soft-launching his dissent last week, hours after his time as a “special government employee” had elapsed.

In a sit-down with CBS News’s Sunday Morning, the Department of Government Efficiency architect said he was “disappointed” with the bill, which he said “increases the budget deficit” and undoes his cost-cutting task force’s work.

Not that Musk actually did any real cost-cutting.

He soon went nuclear against the bill in a series of public posts that culminated in him labeling Trump’s economic legislation “outrageous,” “pork-filled,” and a “disgusting abomination.”

“Elon was b-tthurt,” one source said.

Insiders have now told Axios that his dissent has spiraled into a full-blown meltdown. Musk is reportedly rattled because the bill slashes the electric vehicle tax credit—a key benefit for automakers like Musk’s Tesla….

White House officials also reportedly hurt Musk’s feelings by blocking him from staying on in some capacity after his “special government employee” status was up after 130 days of service.

He was similarly annoyed, sources said, when the Federal Aviation Administration decided against using his Starlink satellite system for national air traffic control.

The White House overlooking his ally, Isaacman, served as the final straw on Saturday night, Axios reported.

Why isn’t Trump pushing back? HuffPost: Lawrence O’Donnell Reveals Why Donald Trump Hasn’t Dared To Clap Back At Elon Musk Yet.

Donald Trump has so far kept silent on former special government employee Elon Musk’s criticism of his “big, beautiful” spending bill as a “disgusting abomination.”

On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell suggested why the typically “explosively rageful” president has not yet said a thing.

By David Hockney

“That is how you know who Donald Trump fears in this world,” he said. “If you attack Donald Trump and Donald Trump says nothing, Donald Trump’s silence is the biggest expression of fear that he has.”

Musk, the world’s richest person, pumped a fortune into Trump’s 2024 election campaign. Trump rewarded him with the top role at the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, which was tasked with slashing public spending. Musk left last week.

The president likely now fears Musk may use his cash against Trump-backed candidates in GOP primaries, said O’Donnell.

Trump “fears the richest person in the world convincing Republican members of the Senate and the House not to vote for Donald Trump’s budget bill that Elon Musk now calls a ‘disgusting abomination,’” he added.

Meanwhile, Tesla is in trouble. Yahoo Finance: Tesla stock slumps amid Musk-Trump budget rumpus.

Tesla (TSLA) stock slumped Wednesday in the immediate fallout of the very public policy blowout between President Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

The one-time leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) whined angrily on Tuesday, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” adding, “Shame on those” in the House who voted for it.

Musk added early Wednesday morning, “If the massive deficit spending continues, there will only be money for interest payments and nothing else!”

Musk’s rhetoric on Trump and the Republican-backed “big, beautiful bill” was ramping up recently with Musk’s comments to “CBS News Sunday Morning” and hit detonation levels with Tuesday’s post….

Musk’s closeness to the Trump administration had been seen as a boon for Tesla, given its range of business with SpaceX and NASA and the regulatory levers NHTSA could pull with getting autonomous driving rules in place for Tesla’s robotaxi testing.

But demand weakness in the EU and recent protests at US Tesla showrooms have followed Musk’s controversial foray into politics, causing some Tesla owners to become alienated by Musk, specifically by his right-leaning tendencies, DOGE, and outward support of President Trump.

Tesla’s big robotaxi test is slated for June 12 in Austin. Much of the company’s value is tied to whether it can fully unlock autonomous driving for robotaxi purposes and individual owners.

I’ll believe that when I see it.

Today, the Congressional Budget Office released its estimate of the cost of Trump’s big ugly bill. Politico: House GOP gets megabill’s official price tag: $2.4T.

Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper released its full score Wednesday of the tax and spending package House Republicans passed along party lines last month, predicting that the measure would grow the federal deficit by $2.4 trillion….

Path in the field, Tatiana Karchevskaya, Indonesian artist

And while top Republican lawmakers are expected to downplay the significance of the complete price tag from the Congressional Budget Office, the numbers will influence what lawmakers are able to include in the final package they are endeavoring to send to President Donald Trump’s desk this summer.

The scorekeeper’s analysis will also be used to determine whether the bill follows the strict rules of the reconciliation process Republicans are using to skirt the Senate filibuster and pass the measure along party lines.

Because Republicans in the Senate are now making changes to the package the House passed two weeks ago, the budget office will need to score the cost of each piece of the new version senators are assembling, followed by another full price tag for the whole package.

Unlike the earlier scores CBO released of the separate chunks of the House bill, the analysis released Wednesday takes into account how policies in one part of the package might influence the budget and economic impacts of others. It also shows that the House-passed legislation would lead to nearly 11 million people going uninsured, with more than 7.8 million of those individuals getting kicked off of Medicaid and millions more losing coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

Here’s the full CBO report.

Could Joni Ernst’s Senate Seat be vulnerable because of the big ugly bill?

David Dayen at The American Prospect: The First Casualty of the Big Beautiful Bill?

Yesterday, the Yale School of Public Health sent a letter to Senate Democratic leaders with a new analysis showing that the One Big Beautiful Bill’s changes to federal health care programs would kill more than 51,000 Americans annually. Nearly 15 million are liable to lose health coverage as a result of the bill, due to enrollment changes on the Affordable Care Act exchanges, Medicaid cuts that are the largest in U.S. history, and the end of support for the Medicare Savings Program, which grants access to subsidized prescriptions. Those cuts would cost about 29,500 people their lives, the Yale researchers estimate. Another 13,000 largely poor nursing home residents would die from the repeal of the Biden administration’s safe staffing rule, which would remove the minimum number of nurses on call in those facilities. And close to 9,000 would die from the government’s failing to extend enhanced premium support for the ACA that expires at the end of the year, making health coverage unaffordable for another five million Americans.

It’s not easy to wring a compelling message out of legislation that will cause 51,000 deaths. You can lie that the cuts aren’t cuts, but that only gets you so far. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), for example, was clearly flummoxed when confronted at a town hall in Butler, Iowa, last Friday with the fact that people will die because of the bill. So she went philosophical.

“Well, we all are going to die,” Ernst said, in one of the most misguided attempts to quiet constituent fears I’ve seen in my political lifetime.

The reaction was immediate both in the room and on social media. And instead of walking back the comments, Ernst doubled down with a creepy “apology” video of her walking through a cemetery. “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth,” she said, before snarking about the tooth fairy and making a pitch for embracing Jesus Christ as a personal savior who guarantees life in the hereafter.

Now, Ernst may have a challenger for her Senate Seat. From the David Dayen post above:

About 200 miles from Butler, in Sioux City, state representative J.D. Scholten was getting ready for the funeral of a local Democratic activist named Gary Lipshutz. Former Sen. Tom Harkin, whose seat Ernst now holds, was at the memorial service. “What she said was going viral as I walked in,” Scholten told me in an interview. “I thought about all the work Gary was doing, and at a funeral you question your life and your purpose. When she doubled down, which was very disrespectful, I was like, game on.”

Scholten, 45, who nearly beat anti-immigrant nationalist Steve King in a northwest Iowa congressional seat Donald Trump won by 27 points in 2018, had been mentioned on short lists of potential challengers to Ernst. But his timeline was set to later in the year, in part due to his summer gig as a pitcher on the minor league Sioux City Explorers. Then Ernst implanted her foot directly in her mouth. “She was not wrong in that we all are going to die, but we don’t have to die so billionaires can have a bigger tax cut,” Scholten said.

He decided to immediately announce a campaign for Senate, thereby making clear it was a direct response to the choices Republicans are making to skyrocket inequality and harm millions of vulnerable Americans.

Click the Prospect link to read the rest.

More on the Ernst town hall from Stephen Gruber-Miller at The Des Moines Register: What’s next for the Iowan who shouted ‘people will die’ at Joni Ernst over Medicaid cuts.

The Iowan who became part of a viral moment by recently shouting at U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst that “people will die” because of proposed Medicaid cuts is a Democrat who is using the moment to launch a campaign for the Iowa House.

India May, a 33-year-old from Charles City, drove to Parkersburg on May 30 to attend Ernst’s town hall. As Ernst was answering a question about Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax cut bill, May said she “got a little worked up.”

She shouted at Ernst, “People will die!”

Ernst’s response was, “People will not — well, we all are going to die. For heaven’s sakes, folks.” [….]

In the wake of the town hall, May capitalized on the resulting attention by launching her campaign for the Iowa House of Representatives in 2026.

May is the director of the Ionia Public Library and is a registered nurse and a death investigator for Chickasaw County.

She first moved to northeast Iowa four years ago from Kansas.

She is running for Iowa House District 58, which includes Chickasaw County and parts of Floyd and Bremer counties.

Trump tariff news: Trump’s steel tariffs take effect today.

One more on the big, ugly bill from The New York Times: Electricity Prices Are Surging. The G.O.P. Megabill Could Push Them Higher.

The cost of electricity is rising across the country, forcing Americans to pay more on their monthly bills and squeezing manufacturers and small businesses that rely on cheap power.

And some of President Trump’s policies risk making things worse, despite his promises to slash energy prices, companies and researchers say.

This week, the Senate is taking up Mr. Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill, which has already passed the House. In its current form, that bill would abruptly end most of the Biden-era federal tax credits for low-carbon sources of electricity like wind, solar, batteries and geothermal power.

Repealing those credits could increase the average family’s energy bill by as much as $400 per year within a decade, according to several studies published this year.

The studies rely on similar reasoning: Electricity demand is surging for the first time in decades, partly because of data centers needed for artificial intelligence, and power companies are already struggling to keep up. Ending tax breaks for solar panels, wind turbines and batteries would make them more expensive and less plentiful, increasing demand for energy from power plants that burn natural gas.

That could push up the price of gas, which currently generates 43 percent of America’s electricity.

On top of that, the Trump administration’s efforts to sell more gas overseas could further hike prices, while Mr. Trump’s new tariffs on steel, aluminum and other materials would raise the cost of transmission lines and other electrical equipment.

These cascading events could lead to further painful increases in electric bills.

Trump tariff news:

By David Hockney

The Guardian: Trump’s 50% tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum come into effect.

The US has doubled tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum imports to 50%, pressing ahead in the face of criticism from key trading partners with a measure that Donald Trump says is intended to revive the American industry.

After imposing and rapidly lifting tariffs on much of the world, only to reduce them, Trump last week refocused on the global steel and aluminum markets – and the dominance of China.

Trump signed an executive order formalizing the move on Tuesday. Higher tariffs “will more effectively counter foreign countries that continue to offload low-priced, excess steel and aluminum in the United States market and thereby undercut the competitiveness of the United States steel and aluminum industries”, the order said.

The increase applies to all trading partners except Britain, the only country so far that has struck a preliminary trade agreement with the US during a 90-day pause on a wider array of Trump tariffs. The rate for steel and aluminum imports from the UK – which does not rank among the top exporters of either metal to the US – will remain at 25% until at least 9 July.

About a quarter of all steel used in the US is imported and data shows the increased levies will hit the closest US trading partners – Canada and Mexico – especially hard. They rank first and third respectively in steel shipment volumes to the US.

The Washington Post: Businesses brace for steel and aluminum tariffs, which double today.

Tariffs on steel and aluminum are doubling to 50 percent Wednesday, adding higher costs and new uncertainty for businesses across the country that rely on metal imports for machinery, construction and manufacturing.

In the order doubling the tariffs, which said it would take effect at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time, President Donald Trump wrote that the higher levies “will provide greater support to these industries and reduce or eliminate the national security threat posed by imports of steel and aluminum articles and their derivative articles.”

But for American companies that rely on specialized metals that aren’t available domestically, the order set off a fresh scramble to raise prices and rethink hiring and investment.

“It’s a big, eye-catching tariff: 50 percent is a high number,” said Gary Clyde Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “Aluminum goes into all kinds of products — aircrafts, autos, construction — and steel is used throughout the economy, so you’re talking higher prices and lost jobs across the U.S. manufacturing industry.” [….]

U.S. manufacturers say the sudden onslaught of tariffs is making it harder to operate. Many rely on foreign sources of steel and aluminum to make their products and say it’s been tough to find domestic suppliers.

A few more recommended reads:

Reuters: Exclusive: CDC expert resigns from COVID vaccines advisory role, sources say.

Pediatric infectious disease expert Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos of the U.S. CDC resigned on Tuesday as co-leader of a working group that advises outside experts on COVID-19 vaccines and is leaving the agency, two sources familiar with the move told Reuters.

Panagiotakopoulos said in an email to work group colleagues that her decision to step down was based on the belief she is “no longer able to help the most vulnerable members” of the U.S. population.

In her role at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s working group of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, she co-led the gathering of information on topics for presentation.

Her resignation comes one week after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time vaccine skeptic who oversees the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, said the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women had been removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule.

The move was a departure from the process in which ACIP experts meet and vote on changes to the immunization schedule or recommendations on who should get vaccines before the agency’s director made a final call. The committee had not voted on the changes announced by Kennedy and the CDC does not yet have a permanent director.

The Guardian: US immigration officers ordered to arrest more people even without warrants.

Senior US immigration officials over the weekend instructed rank-and-file officers to “turn the creative knob up to 11” when it comes to enforcement, including by interviewing and potentially arresting people they called “collaterals”, according to internal agency emails viewed by the Guardian.

Officers were also urged to increase apprehensions and think up tactics to “push the envelope” one email said, with staff encouraged to come up with new ways of increasing arrests and suggesting them to superiors.

“If it involves handcuffs on wrists, it’s probably worth pursuing,” another message said.

The instructions not only mark a further harshening of attitude and language by the Trump administration in its efforts to fulfill election promises of “mass deportation” but also indicate another escalation in efforts, by being on the lookout for undocumented people whom officials may happen to encounter – here termed “collaterals” – while serving arrest warrants for others.

The emails, sent by two top Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officials this past Saturday, instructed officers around the country to increase arrest numbers over the weekend. This followed the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, and the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, pressing immigration officials last month to jack up immigration-related arrests to at least 3,000 people per day.

One of the emails, written by Marcos Charles, the acting executive associate director of Ice’s enforcement and removal operations, instructs Ice officials to go after people they may coincidentally encounter.

“All collaterals encounters [sic] need to be interviewed and anyone that is found to be amenable to removal needs to be arrested,” Charles wrote, also saying: “We need to turn up the creative knob up to 11 and push the envelope.”

We’re already living in a police state.

AP: Trump administration revokes guidance requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortions.

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it would revoke guidance to the nation’s hospitals that directed them to provide emergency abortions for women when they are necessary to stabilize their medical condition.

That guidance was issued to hospitals in 2022, weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upended national abortion rights in the U.S. It was an effort by the Biden administration to preserve abortion access for extreme cases in which women were experiencing medical emergencies and needed an abortion to prevent organ loss or severe hemorrhaging, among other serious complications.

The Biden administration had argued that hospitals — including ones in states with near-total bans — needed to provide emergency abortions under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. That law requires emergency rooms that receive Medicare dollars to provide an exam and stabilizing treatment for all patients. Nearly all emergency rooms in the U.S. rely on Medicare funds.

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it would no longer enforce that policy.

The move prompted concerns from some doctors and abortion rights advocates that women will not get emergency abortions in states with strict bans.

More women will die.

A Pathway in Monet’s Garden, Claude Monet

Military.com: Hegseth Orders Navy to Strip Name of Gay Rights Icon Harvey Milk from Ship.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to take the rare step of renaming a ship, one that bears the name of a gay rights icon, documents and sources show.

Military.com reviewed a memorandum from the Office of the Secretary of the Navy — the official who holds the power to name Navy ships — that showed the sea service had come up with rollout plans for the renaming of the oiler ship USNS Harvey Milk.

A defense official confirmed that the Navy was making preparations to strip the ship of its name but noted that Navy Secretary John Phelan was ordered to do so by Hegseth. The official also said that the timing of the announcement — occurring during Pride month — was intentional.

Military.com reached out to Hegseth’s office for comment on the move but did not immediately receive a response.

However, the memo reviewed by Military.com noted that the renaming was being done so that there is “alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture,” apparently referencing President Donald Trump, Hegseth and Phelan.

CBS News: Navy set to rename USNS Harvey Milk, mulls new names for other ships named for civil rights leaders.

The U.S. Navy plans to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, a fleet replenishment oiler named after the slain gay rights leader and Navy veteran, and is considering renaming multiple naval ships named after civil rights leaders and prominent American voices, CBS News has learned.

U.S. Navy documents obtained by CBS News and used to brief the secretary of the Navy and his chief of staff show proposed timelines for rolling out the name change of the USNS Harvey Milk to the public. While the documents do not say what the ship’s new name would be, the proposal comes during Pride Month, the monthlong observance of the LGBTQ+ community that also coincides with the anniversary of the Stonewall uprising of 1969. WorldPride celebrations are being held in Washington, D.C., this year.

The documents obtained by CBS News also show other vessels named after prominent leaders are also on the Navy’s renaming “recommended list.”

Among them are the USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg, USNS Harriet Tubman, USNS Dolores Huerta, USNS Lucy Stone, USNS Cesar Chavez and USNS Medgar Evers.

That is beyond sickening.