Hey everyone. Welcome back and happy Wednesday. Good to have you here.
Our top story today: the Trump administration is pulling the plug on Medicare subsidies that keep prescription drug costs down for about 25 million seniors. The White House says it is ending a bailout. They can call it whatever they want, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s going to make things more expensive for seniors, not cheaper.
We’ll also get into the President embarrassing himself at Lindsey Graham’s funeral, a bipartisan breakthrough on new Russia sanctions, the confirmation of Jay Clayton as our new intelligence chief, and a leaked memo that admits the GOP’s communist scare campaign isn’t moving voters.
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Let’s get to it.
1. Trump Administration Ends Medicare Drug Subsidy
On Tuesday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced it is ending the program that holds down premiums for Medicare drug plans.
Medicare Part D is the drug coverage roughly 25 million seniors buy through private insurers. Two years ago, with premiums about to jump, the Biden administration set up a program to hold the line. It knocked money off every senior’s premium and capped how much any one plan could raise its price in a year.
And it worked. Premiums didn’t spike. It worked so well that when Trump took office, his own administration renewed it for another year.
So what changed? Here’s the explanation given by Trump’s pick to manage health coverage for 68 million Americans, Dr. freaking Oz: “We are stabilizing the market so this bailout is no longer needed. Premiums will go up by less than $10 for most Medicare recipients, with many even seeing lower premiums.”
But those numbers do not hold up against what his own agency told reporters. Yes, about a quarter of seniors will see premiums hold flat or drop. Another 30 percent get hit with less than $10 a month. But the remaining 45 percent, nearly half the program, are looking at $11 to $20 more a month.
To put that in perspective, the average plan runs about thirty-six dollars. So for millions of seniors this is a jump of 30 to 50%. And most of these folks pay their premium straight out of their Social Security check. That payment is estimated to go up about four percent next year to help cover the rising costs of things like groceries and rent. Which, let’s be honest, that’s not going to be enough. But now it needs to cover this too.
This President has repeatedly promised seniors he would never touch Medicare. Anybody who said otherwise was fake news. Democrats who warned about it were fearmongering.
Well, millions of seniors are about to open their mail and find out that the fake news was right. And the final numbers come out this fall. So they are going to watch their premiums spike at the same time they’re deciding how to vote.
2. Trump Nods Off at Graham's Funeral
The casket was at the Capitol in the morning. Then the service moved to the National Cathedral. And it was packed. The Trump family, the Vice President, Netanyahu, Zelensky, and much of the Senate. Graham’s pastor gave the homily. Trump gave the eulogy.
As you can expect, Trump made a fool of himself. Before we get into it, I want to show you one clip in full. Just watch:
For anyone who’s just listening, the video shows Trump pulling out a container of Tic Tacs in the middle of the service and when he tries to put one in his mouth, he misses. And it falls to the ground. His second attempt is successful, after feeding himself like a toddler with a Spaghetti-O. It was just too good of a clip not to include.
But there’s more. Start with the eulogy. Trump couldn’t get through his own prepared remarks without arguing with them. He made it as far as the line about how well liked Lindsey was, then stopped and corrected himself:
He also brought up the time he read Graham’s personal cell phone number out loud at a rally. Graham’s sister was sitting right there. He just can’t help himself.
And after he sat back down, the cameras stayed on him. They happened to catch the President, once again, having a very long blink:
Of course, the White House says he was reflecting. Their spokesman said anyone who thought otherwise was, quote, “a depraved moron.”
Lindsey and I saw the world differently by the end, and I said so plenty of times. But he gave this country more than three decades, in uniform and in Congress, and yesterday was supposed to honor that. It’s a shame that Trump, an eighty year old President of the United States, could not hold it together for an hour.
3. Senate Advances Graham's Russia Sanctions 86 to 12
Tuesday night, the Senate voted 86 to 12 to advance a Russia sanctions package tougher than anything this country has enforced before. Graham wrote it with Democrat Richard Blumenthal, worked on it for more than a year, built it to 62 cosponsors, and locked down the White House’s blessing in the days before his death.
It goes after the whole war machine. The energy sector. The banks. The defense industry. The oligarchs. The shadow fleet sneaking Russian oil past sanctions. Zelensky, in Washington for the funeral, walked over to the Capitol and watched the vote from inside the chamber.
So why did 12 senators vote no? Because of how the bill applies the pressure. To squeeze Moscow’s customers, it lets the President impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on the biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas. China and India top that list.
And that word, tariffs, is the sticking point. In February, the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that this President never had the authority to impose his global tariffs. That power belongs to Congress. Five months later, here is Congress handing a piece of it back. In the words of Senator Peter Welch of Vermont: “this would be a blanket delegation of congressional tariff authority to the executive.”
The authors of the bill say the guardrails are real. The tariff ceiling was cut from 500 percent down to 100 to win votes, and the new powers expire after five years. But some Senators were not convinced.
Look, I want to see Russian sanctions more than anyone. But after everything we’ve watched this President do with tariffs, I can’t blame anyone who hesitated to hand him that kind of power. The House has already left for August recess, so we’ll have to wait until September at the earliest to see if Mike Johnson gets this to the President’s desk.
4. Every Democrat Votes Against Trump's Spy Chief
When the President nominated Jay Clayton for Director of National Intelligence, it initially got bipartisan praise. Some of that goodwill came from his alternative. For weeks the office was run by Bill Pulte, an unqualified housing regulator who used his previous job to investigate Trump’s political enemies.
But some on the left genuinely liked Clayton. Mark Warner, the Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, said he had known and respected the man for years.
Then came Clayton’s confirmation hearing. Under oath, Clayton refused, over and over, to answer simple questions on topics like the 2020 election. He just couldn’t bring himself to hurt Trump’s feelings. So when the Senate officially voted to confirm him last night, it was split down party lines. Not one Democrat voted for him.
Even without their support, Clayton inherited the reins to our intelligence, and the huge mess that comes with it. Pulte spent his last hours in office bragging about everyone he’s fired, as he reduced the office to half its pre-Trump size.
And that same office was behind the declassified documents used by the President in his primetime election denial speech. Of course, those documents didn’t actually support what Trump was saying, but that didn’t stop Pulte from spreading his lies. And it seems like it won’t stop his replacement either:
So Pulte is gone, and I’m glad he is. But the problem in that building was never Pulte at all. It was the man he worked for. Clayton has the same boss now, and he’s shown exactly what he’ll do to challenge the President. Absolutely nothing.
5. Leaked GOP Memo Tells Members to Say Communist
For the past month or so, Trump has turned to one particular word to describe his political opponents: communist. Not socialist. Communist. He made that distinction clear at a rally on Monday:
It’s worth noting that this same President instructed our government to hold stake in about 30 American companies. I think Marx himself would approve of that. But communist is a big scary word, so he uses it anyway. And now we know why.
Yesterday, a recent strategy memo sent to House Republican offices was leaked. Among other things, it included a poll that found Americans fear communism much more than socialism. So members were instructed to stop treating them as separate words, because they are “fruit of the same poisonous tree.”
By attaching extreme labels to the left, Republicans are trying to rescue their own reputation before the midterms. And they have a lot of work to do. Another poll this month found that while about half of voters are less likely to back a democratic socialist, even more were turned off by a Trump endorsement. And the MAGA label did the worst of all. After all their talk about Democrats, the most toxic brand in American politics is still the one on the President’s hat.
So whenever Trump goes on his rants about communism, just remember where it’s coming from. He’s trying to save himself from a complete midterm embarrassment. And it’s not going well.
Some other stories that caught my eye:
Iran fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at American forces early this morning, shattering a pause in the fighting that had held for about three days. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it targeted the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base and the headquarters of U.S. Central Command in Jordan. Hours earlier, American and Saudi fighter aircraft struck what Central Command described as militia logistics and weapons sites across eastern Iraq, calling it a response to more than 30 drone attacks in 72 hours.
FIFA announced yesterday that it will create a new subsidiary to hold its commercial and event operations, with plans to sell a large stake to an investor group led by Joshua Kushner. Kushner is the brother of Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law, and the plan was reportedly discussed with the Trump administration. Gianni Infantino, FIFA’s president and Trump ally, called the deal a “democratization” of the sport. Infantino gave Trump FIFA’s first-ever Peace Prize earlier this year, and Trump is now reportedly pushing to install him as UN Secretary General. After the deal, FIFA says it will remain the majority owner and keep control of governance and scheduling. UEFA, the governing body of European soccer, called it a line that should never be crossed and said the sport is not FIFA’s to sell.
