07/01/25

Good morning! It’s Tuesday, July 1st.

International Joke Day

Oh buddy… if ever there was a day for a Kim.

Hey, what do you call a can opener that doesn’t work? Omg wait… oh no, this is real… I just remembered that this is the opening to the news! I can’t do this!

Jokes at the end!

In the meantime…

And now, the news.

Update: Idaho

-via AP News

Starting with an update on Sunday’s shooting in Idaho, which left two firefighters dead and a third injured. Thankfully, thanks to the quick actions of those fire responders, including those firefighters, including those firefighters who were there to fight a fire, it does appear that those numbers will not increase.

It’s awful, don’t get me wrong. It’s horrible. But the quick actions of those first responders kept it from being much, much worse.

Here’s what we know now.

The shooter was 20-year-old Wess Roley, who once wanted to be a firefighter, and it appears he attacked these firefighters after they asked him to move his car.

After that interaction, he set that fire and then, for hours, firefighters and first responders were under fire.

20-years-old.

Asked to move his car.

He died by suicide after a multi-hour search.

Update: Boulder, Colorado

-via BBC

And in Boulder, Colorado, 82-year-old Karen Diamond, who was one of the 12 victims in the June 1stantisemitic attack during the peace walk in remembrance of the hostages that are still being held by Hamas, has died.

82 years old.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who carried out the attack and has already been charged with a federal hate crime as well as state charges of attempted murder, has now been charged with first-degree murder.

Update: Idaho (But a Different Part)

-via ABC News

In a different part of Idaho, Brian Kohberger, who was charged with the murder of four college students in 2022, has agreed to plead guilty and thus will avoid the death penalty.

Instead, he will be sentenced to four consecutive life sentences.

Consecutive!

You die? You gotta come back, do jail all over again. Three more times.

Plus ten years for burglary.

Which I think should be at the end.

Just because, at that point, he’ll be extra annoyed.

The state will also seek restitution for the victims and their families.

The trial was set to begin next month, and prosecutors expect sentencing will now take place at the end of the month.

He is expected to officially enter his guilty plea tomorrow.

DOJ Announces Health Care Fraud

-via NPR

On Monday, the Department of Justice announced that they have charged a Pakistani national with a $650 million fraud scheme that primarily targeted an Arizona Medicaid program that offered, among other things, addiction treatment for Native Americans.

$650 million!

He ran this scheme through 41 different clinics!

Here’s what he did – this is for educational purposes only! Don’t, like, take notes or anything. He worked with the clinics and billed the state for services that were never provided, not provided as billed, or were just medically unnecessary.

Who were these people at the clinics that were like yes, we’re cool doing this? Because most of the patients that were enrolled, and didn’t get any treatment, were either people experiencing homelessness or Native Americans.

And they were just like, money money money!

And, and!, this is one of nearly 200 cases that the Department of Justice announced on Monday. Because they want to crackdown on medical fraud.

Good! Please do! And while you’re doing that, could ya go to Arizona and make sure the people that were denied those services, ya know… get them?

When reached for comment, the Republicans said, and that’s why we’re getting rid of all Medicaid. To help you!

No no. Well…

One Big Dumb Bill

-via NY Times, Washington Post, and Axios

Hey, let’s talk about the One Big Dumb Bill!

What? If they can give it a lame name, so can I! The absolutely bonkers bill is actually being voted on, so now I’m prepared to talk about it. Should I have been talking about it more? Probably, maybe? I don’t know… there’s so much news! And everything before this has been a bunch of PR and back and forth and hot goss.

Now we’re here. Let’s really talk about it.

As you may recall, Trump wants his budget on his desk to be signed by Friday. Why Friday? Because it’s the end of the week?

No, because he’s got that big loser energy baby! Fourth of July! That’s why! Symbolism!

Like, please guy – you symbolize enough.

Anyway, so he’s desperate to get this done by Friday, which means this is the week to get er done.

The bill narrowly, like, just barely, passed through the House, and now it’s to the Senate. But there have been changes between the House and Senate. Which means if it passes the Senate, which is a big TBD, it still has to go back to the House to be voted on again.

So we are at the Senate voting part right now.

Right now, as of recording on Monday night, Senators are voting on amendments to the bill. It is going… very slow!

To give you an idea of what Monday looked like – Washington’s Senator Murray wanted to remove a provision in the bill that would have blocked Planned Parenthood from getting Medicaid payments. This will close about 200 clinics in the country. Uh oh!

Because a Senator raised their hand to say this one – bad! The Senate then has to vote on it. The Senate voted and, unfortunately it didn’t have the votes and it will stay in the budget bill.

So that’s what’s going on right now. Which means that you still have time to call your Senator and tell them how you feel about the bill. Let me give you a quick rundown of the bill, and then you can see how you feel about that bill:

Hey, remember Medicaid?

That’s what we’ll all be saying after this goes through. This bill will kick nearly 12 million people off Medicaid and 3 million people off SNAP benefits.

The bill also requires stricter work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks.

12 million people!

Quick note – that Planned Parenthood thing? That actually won’t save a dime. It will cost $.1 billion. It’s worth it to them to ADD to the budget. Isn’t that amazing? Willing to add to the budget, to put lives at risk.

Anyway, onward. Forward.

It increases the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. Allocates $350 billion for immigration and border enforcement. Great. $25 billion into a Golden Dome which… I can’t even talk about but he wants to build a defense system like Israel has, that would intercept any attack but again – big loser energy – so of course it’s a golden dome. He’s been talking about it since his first term. Literally it’s just an idea. But now he’s going to put $25 billion towards it. Guaranteed nothing will come of this still.

Roll back clean energy. Who needs to breathe anyway?

5-year ban on state AI-regulation. You’ll likely recall that this was the thing that Marjorie Taylor Greene was like what? If I had read the bill, and known this was in it, I never would have voted for it!! You mean… if you had done your job?? Okay….

The House version of this bill was predicted to increase the deficit by $800 billion and people were like whoa whoa whoa! That’s really bad.

And then it got to the Senate – and now it’s predicted to increase the deficit by $3.3 trillion!

That’s more!

So the Senators are voting on it as I record this. We’ll see what happens. Who knows what today will bring.

Elon is still big mad about the bill and is again saying there needs to be a new political party that cares about people.

Oh man… you’re so close. You almost have it. Because there… is?

And even though he said he was done spending money on politics, on Monday he said that Republicans who vote for this budget, “will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth."

He also said, "If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day."

Dude. If you really cared, you would spend the money and get ranked-choice voting off the ground in every state. You’d spill about how you definitely paid to help Trump cheat to win last year. You’d spill all the tea about what you really know about how Trump spends his time.

But you don’t care. Also… you suck.

So… there are just tweets you’ll chicken out about and delete later.

Funny to talk about now, I guess.

Will this pass the Senate?

Unknowable.

Eventually a budget needs to pass. The big wild cards are: Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Florida’s Rick Scott, Utah’s Mike Lee, and Wyoming’s Cynthia Lummis. Though I’m sure there are deals to be made there. But those four originally withheld their votes on Sunday for the procedural vote, which is the vote that needs to pass before the bill can make it to the floor.

Two Republicans that will be harder gets are North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Kentucky’s Rand Paul.

Rand Paul, as we all learned when he was all upset about not getting invited to a picnic, just needs to be invited to the party.

Thom Tillis is the more interesting story because on Sunday he announced his retirement and then was like, PS this budget bill blows!

So I imagine he’s a strong no.

Murkowski has never voted with Trump, so she’s a harder one to get.

We’ll see.

You can call Congress! (202) 224-3121

Let them know where you stand. This budget bill is bad!

And that’s it, that’s the news.

Actually, that’s not all the news. There’s one story that I was going to talk about, and then I was like, no, save it.

Because it’s gonna make me crazy. I started to write it and I was like – I can’t lose out this early in the week! But this story is gonna be the thing that does it!

So… that’ll be in tomorrow’s episode. Look forward to that!

Hey, what do you call a can opener that doesn’t work?

A can’t opener!

But more than that joke, which seems impossible because that’s the greatest thing that’s ever been said, but in actuality you are the greatest thing that’s ever been said or even thought – I’m proud of you.