The Department of Education may spend as much as $6.54 million to provide security for Secretary Betsy DeVos, who appears to face threats no greater than any previous Education Secretary.
On a day like this it is hard to focus attention on anything else. But news and the everything else happening in the country continues. On that note, I wanted to make sure you know that over the weekend Congress allowed funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to lapse. CHIP is a 90s-era law which provides health insurance coverage for some 9 million children from low income families across the country. The Senate does not seem to have made a conscious or deliberate, collective decision to discontinue CHIP. They just ran out of time because they spent most of the legislative calendar trying to repeal Obamacare. Here’s a look at the chances of re-passage and which states are going to be hit hardest and first by the (for now) end of funding for the program.
TPM Reader JP writes in to note that, as he put it, the number of deaths in Las Vegas is greater than many of the most famous battles of the Revolutionary War. These are quite different eras, settings, contexts. Let’s stipulate that it is hard to compare such radically different events. Still, the bare numbers tell a story.
Lexington & Concord, 1775: 49 Americans killed. Read More
Allegra Kirkland walks us through the first details emerging about Stephen Paddock, the now-dead shooter in last night’s massacre that led at least 58 dead and literally hundreds injured.
I woke up this morning, pulled my iPad off my nightstand and opened Twitter to see if there was any overnight news. There was a horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas. I spun around to get a handle on the scope of the attack, the death toll and other basic facts. Then I started thinking through what has now become a basic ritual. Read More
Here’s part two of my podcast interview with Bhaskar Sunkara, founder, editor and publisher of Jacobin Magazine, Episode 23 of The Josh Marshall Show. (If you missed part one, you can find it here.)
TPM Reader JL shared these thoughts about the progress of the unfolding situation in Puerto Rico … Read More
As I’ve read and reread these hideous three tweets which I transcribed below, I’ve realized they are not just a disgrace but something like a primary text of Trumpism. Everything is there. Read More
On Twitter this morning, stung by criticism, President Trump attacked the people of Puerto Rico, all American citizens, as lazy and disorganized people who “want everything to be done for them.” I am cutting the verbatim text out of the tweets here.
“The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump. Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.”
There’s more. But I don’t think we need to hear more after these words. Read More
Folks, this is the last weekday or our annual Prime sign-up drive. Our goal for this drive and for September was to get to 23,000 members. That puts us on track to get to our 2017 goal of 25,000. We are currently at 22,999 members. If you’re a regular TPM reader, we need you to sign up. Just click right here. If you can sign up now, just click and don’t worry about reading the rest of this post. If you’re not sure or if you give me a solemn assurance that you’ll remember to click and sign up and reading the rest of this post, then it’s okay to join after the jump to read the rest of this post. Read More