King George III Redux inhabits the Oval Office now that we’ve reached the tipping point separating democracy from a dictatorship! King Donald is openly flouting the courts and the rule of law in deporting US residents to his mega-prison in El Salvador, and is now threatening to do the same to American citizens who displease him, one of the grievances against King George enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. The test case seems to be in the person of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of Maryland who was whisked off the streets and sent to the notoriously evil prison in El Salvador…admittedly a mistake as disclosed in court by a Justice Department official, who was then axed from the job for committing such an error against the administration. In an Oval Office meeting with Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele, Trump declared that, “the homegrowns are next…you gotta build about five more places…it’s not big enough.” If Abrego Garcia can be kidnapped and flown to a foreign country’s prison, then American citizens are in jeopardy. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “The Government’s argument…implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including US citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.” Alaska’s Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, said, “we’re all afraid” of freely speaking out against Trump, simply because she knows from experience that he will respond with petty vengeance and irrational retribution. She, along with every GOP officeholder, is responsible in some fashion for the destructive rise of Trumpism, so it would be remarkable for any one of them to speak up about the dismantling of our democracy. Murkowski sees that the fear of Trump has risen by degrees not seen before, admitting that she is “oftentimes very anxious” about speaking out, even though she has been one of the foremost critics in her party. Responding to a question from her audience about how we should address people who are fearful of the current political climate, her response was, “We are all afraid.” Allowing that statement to briefly sink in, she then said, “It’s quite a statement. We’re in a time and place where — I don’t know, I certainly have not — I have not been here before. And I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real. And that’s not right. But that’s what you’ve asked me to do and so I’m going to use my voice to the best of my ability.”

Matt Kerbel from Wolves and Sheep on Substack, writes, “This is a very revealing response, and it seems as though Murkowski recognizes in real time just how revealing it is for a US senator to admit to a constituent she is afraid to use her platform for fear of retaliation and she doesn’t know what to do about it.” Kerbel surmises that she isn’t necessarily worried about political retaliation, since she lost her Republican primary in 2010, but then won re-election through a write-in campaign — a somewhat amazing feat to get over 100,000 voters to spell her name correctly on the ballot — she is worried about her personal safety! Trump’s vindictiveness could also cause problems for Alaska, her constituents and their businesses. Kerbel says, “She is also pulling off the cover of Washington Republicans who are expressing their fears in private.” She expressly said, “We are ALL afraid.” The writer asks, “Is it not right that retaliation is real? That’s what Murkowski appears to be saying, and it is inarguably true. But is she also recognizing as she speaks that it is not right to hold a position of power and be afraid to use it? As Murkowski pivots back to the constituents question, she leaves the impression that what’s not right is her reluctance to speak out.” As she confesses being anxious about herself and using her voice, she then assures her audience, “But that’s what you’ve asked me to do.” Kerbel accuses her of saying less than she probably thinks she does, as she shifts to the future tense, acknowledging things left undone, with a promise that she will do more. He speculates that she will keep a low profile and talk to her colleagues, be a charmer without upsetting the relationships she has built — but in the end, she doesn’t know, and for the sake of the country she needs to figure it out fast. “She will not find an easy answer. But we have reached a moment when, and if, she cannot embrace the uncomfortable, then perhaps the answer is to step aside for someone who can — or let the voters do it next year,” Kerbel concludes.

Murkowski has repeatedly criticized the Trump administration’s policies and the mindless devotion of those within the GOP. She has rebuked the president for casting aside our allies in his alignment with dictator Vladimir Putin, and for his Oval Office performance against Ukraine’s Zelensky. Her opposition to Elon Musk and his DOGE chainsaw’s destruction of government agencies she describes, “as hard as anything I’ve engaged in in the 20-plus years in the Senate,” when she has to face constituents who have been fired from their positions without notice, afraid to speak up from fears of retaliation. Trump backed a challenger in her 2022 reelection campaign, but she was able to be victorious, and even if Musk steps up to finance a challenger for her post, that would not be until 2028. Stephen Colbert, on The Late Show, said the ‘administrative error’ that sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to rot in the El Salvador prison was a “mistake made on purpose” as a way to publicly threaten American citizens with with same fate. “We’re not on our way to a dictator-ship, we’re on the ship,” as he pondered whether there might be a “break-glass-if-Constitution-stops-working-mechanism.” Colbert also offered his take on Trump’s physician’s comments after the recent physical exam, referring to the president’s “active lifestyle,” especially his “frequent victories in golf events” which contribute to Trump’s well-being. Colbert’s rendering of the statement: “His well-being is also due to a cruel, indifferent universe where good, hardworking people are routinely diagnosed with terminal illnesses, but an objectively evil monster who only eats cheeseburgers and fried chicken lives forever. The world is chaos. There is no God, proven by his frequent victories in golf events.”

Of course the taxpayer is picking up the bill for Trump’s medical care, and also for the physician who narrates the president’s canned, prepared statement on his outstanding condition following the ‘exam.’ Coincidentally, Trump recently signed yet another executive order, this one aiming at a delay in Medicare negotiations for a broad category of prescription drugs, all in response to a lobbying campaign by Big Pharma to fight efforts to rein in its pricing policies. The order, entitled “Lowering Drug Prices by Once Again Putting Americans First,”  puts Robert F Kennedy Jr in the forefront to work with Congress to “modify” price negotiations as established under the Biden administration — negotiations which had previously yielded worthy results, despite the industry’s efforts to have the courts overturn the outcome. One specific aspect of the order calls for a four-year extension of the period during which small-molecule prescription drugs are exempt from price negotiations with Medicare, usually not for a period of nine years after FDA approval. Small-molecule drugs, usually taken in pill form, represent 90% of medications currently in circulation, so the four-year extension represents a significant span in which to earn even more profits. Drug policy advocate Steve Knievel, of Public Citizen, warns that by pushing back negotiation dates for drugs will likely reverse any recent progress on this issue, doing the opposite of the executive order’s loftily titled goal. Knievel sees Trump’s proposal undermining Biden’s singular achievement to address forty years of Big Pharma’s price gouging, a “total capitulation to the demands of drug corporation lobbyists that want to continue to overcharge Medicare beneficiaries and taxpayers.” The advocacy group ‘Protect Our Care’ said, “Trump just caved to Big Pharma — again. The only winners here are the drug companies.” A group called ‘Seniors 4 Better Care’ is revealed to be a front for a lobbyist-led shell group called the ‘American Prosperity Alliance,’ and its ads deceptively appear to be targeting Trump and his MAGA group, while GOP lawmakers receive pharmaceutical industry campaign cash to support the objectives laid out in Trump’s order, which only echoes lobbyist’s language against any negotiations. Merith Basey of ‘Patients for Affordable Drugs,’ says, “This is yet another attempt by Big Pharma to rig the system in its favor — at the expense of patients.”

Gregg Gonsalves writes in The Nation, “The scope and scale of attacks on the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the firings of thousands of staff, and the broader shutdown of programs and slashing of budgets across HHS are unprecedented. Institutions are reeling, imperiling frontline work to protect public health and aborting progress on new advances in the treatment and prevention of infectious and chronic diseases.” Gonsalves questions ‘why’ this is being done, “some framing the cuts as a response to Kennedy’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ agenda, or an attempt to downsize a government gone wild — anything to try to shoehorn the rationale for these actions into some sort of standard, political logic.” What he sees “is a purge of the administrative state, of universities, of expertise, consistent with China’s Cultural Revolution, or the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia as it dismantled the tsarist civil service, and sans the bloodshed of those events, the comparison is still relevant.” “The goal is to get rid of an entire set of people and institutions in the service of a radical ideology. While the short-term effects of the administration’s policies have been well-articulated, the long-term ones are just as chilling. In less than 100 days, President Trump has created a lasting legacy: We have lost a generation of expertise, of systems built up to care for our nation and provide for our collective future in terms of scientific advances,” he writes. If Trump is gone from the scene, these resources won’t just spring back to life — people are seeking other opportunities, students and trainees are missing their chances to enter their chosen professions and they won’t wait around indefinitely for the political winds to change. Gonsalves says some government agency officials are being offered positions in remote areas of Alaska or Montana to remain in federal service, the consolation being that they aren’t getting a bullet to the head as they are marched into the countryside to face a kind of exile. He writes, “We’re in deep trouble. The midterms, the 2028 elections, should they change the balance of power in Congress or who is in the White House, all come too late. The patient is bleeding out in the waiting room. American science, public health, and healthcare will be damaged for a generation or more.” Answering the ‘why’ this is being done, he concludes, “Because this is what they want — psychologies or philosophies are irrelevant at this moment. We are living through times that are now focused on destruction as a central goal, meant to inflict pain and suffering on millions now and into the future, long after THEY are gone.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr is seeing incoming flak after his claims last week regarding what people living with autism CAN’T do, getting slammed after asserting that the disorder is “preventable” and on an epidemic scale in the US. In a press conference, Kennedy quacked that, “These are kids who will never pay taxes,” which prompted Ronny Chieng of the Daily Show to ask, “Wait, that’s what you’re going to lead with? That’s like a big tragedy for you? It’s not even accurate, I mean, autistic people do pay taxes. Are you thinking of art history majors?” Chieng then played a video of conspiracy theorist Kennedy babbling, “They’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date.” Chieng blasted RFK’s claims as “ridiculous,” saying, “Autistic kids will never write poems? Well, who wants kids to write more poems? That’s something we SHOULD be preventing. Who even made RFK the judge of what makes life worth living? I’m sorry they’ll never know the joy of planting bear carcasses in Central Park.” Rex Huppke of USA Today quotes in his column, Dr. Eric Fombonne, an autism researcher and professor emeritus at Oregon Health and Science University, “Of course it’s ridiculous. If it’s coming from the mouth of the guy who drinks raw milk and brags about eating roadkill, there’s a near-100% chance it’s going to be ridiculous.” Huppke reminds us to not forget who wanted the charlatan in charge of HHS: “This is the Republican Party’s guy. They signed, sealed and delivered him, handing our nation’s health to a snake-oil salesman.”

Under the draconian DOGE budget cuts, the Administration for Community Living will be disbanded and its so-called ‘critical’ programs will be integrated into other HHS agencies — the most important of these being ‘Meals on Wheels,’ known for providing more than 261 million meals to older adults, assistance such as respite care for over 1.5 million family caregivers, and independent-living services to almost 250,000 people with disabilities in 2022 alone. The ACL is budgeted only $2.5 million a year, so it remains to be seen if this is considered a ‘critical program,’ despite Trump’s claim, “We love our seniors.” Richard Festa, executive director of advocacy group ‘Alliance for Retired Americans’ says those are empty words played against the drastic cuts already seen at HHS, leaving many to go hungry due to the needless cuts. Elon Musk’s DOGE posse has already cut billions in funding for maternal health care, research and community programs, leaving providers struggling and expectant mothers without critical care — Brooklyn-based maternal health advocate, Sevonna Brown, had to immediately stop her work after DOGE froze more than $2 million in funding – all this in spite of Musk’s claim that declining birth rates worldwide is a threat to civilization. Time for Musk to go for child number 15? On his show, Jimmy Kimmel reported that Elon has fathered “many mini-Musks” in order to “seed the world in his own image” — not surprising to Kimmel since we already know “he loves babies,” having spent $300 million to get one elected president. Kimmel reports that The Wall Street Journal published “a bonkers account of Musk’s efforts” to recruit women to carry his children, and then buys their silence with multi-million dollar nondisclosure agreements, with sources saying there could be “many more mini-Musks out there that no one knows about.” Kimmel asks, “Who says romance is dead? You’ve heard of ‘Alien v. Predator? Elon might be both.”

The satirical Borowitz Report has Andy writing: “A South African man who invested millions in Donald J Trump is in a ‘state of shock’ after losing a fortune, the man said on Monday. ‘I’m still trying to process what went wrong,’ he said. ‘If Donald Trump can’t make money, who can?’ The man said he was ‘baffled’ that his investment had soured, given Trump’s ‘unparalleled track record of business success.’ ‘I just don’t understand how this happened,’ he said. ‘He seemed so smart on The Apprentice.'”

With the April 15 tax filing deadline behind us, Helaine Olen, managing editor of the American Economic Liberties Project, reports that Intuit, parent company of TurboTax has received its tax refund — in a manner of speaking. TurboTax has spent two decades lobbying against the IRS making it easier for people to file taxes online, and it seems that Intuit’s $1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration committee has done the trick — while claiming the donation was “part of our decades-long commitment to bipartisan advocacy.” The trick is on the American taxpayer who will no longer be able to file simple tax returns online for free, with the administration’s elimination of the IRS’ Direct File program. The National Retail Federation’s annual tax return survey says that 40% of US adults will prepare taxes themselves using computer software, which is a $31 billion market for Intuit and H&R Block, after Americans have spent 1.7 billion hours preparing their returns. Contrast this to more than three dozen countries where government sends eligible taxpayers a pre-filled return, which the filer signs and returns if it is accurate — if not, the taxpayer can dispute it. During the Clinton administration, Congress passed a law ordering the IRS to come up with, by 2008, a ‘return free’ offering for people with simple returns — the clock is still ticking on that. Such a system would not be difficult to create, since we are simply sending the government information it already has on W2 and 1099 forms — the complexity lies with the tax prep industry who earn huge profits by charging to perform a service which should cost nothing — it’s all just a make-work scheme even if we don’t see the truth — but now we don’t even have the free option. Enjoy your refund, TurboTax — baby needs new shoes, or maybe a Tesla.

Here’s one to keep an eye on: Trump’s MAGA team has contacted the IRS to review audits of “high profile” friends of the president, one friend being conspiracy theorist Mike ‘My Pillow’ Lindell. Mikey has told a judge that he’s struggling to pay court-imposed sanctions because his finances are “in ruins” and his credit rating has hit bottom among lenders, and is now unable settle with voting software company Smartmatic. With friends in high places, Lindell may not have to face the pending audit at the IRS, but it is suggested this is all just a misunderstanding and that Treasury may have ‘misconstrued’ the request, having to do with Employee Retention Credit from having to lay off hundreds of employees. Accused of failing to hand over financial documents to the court, Lindell claims he has nothing to hide. “They’re not going to silence me. I will keep going until we get to paper ballots being hand-counted and melt these voting machines down and turn them into prison bars,” he said. Jimmy Kimmel joked, “Lindell may be the only person on Earth whose life was better when he was smoking crack.” Watch this space!