In “Employers are failing to insure the working class – Medicaid cuts will leave them even more vulnerable“ at The Conversation, Sumit Agarwal explains, “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 7.8 million Americans across the U.S. will lose their coverage through Medicaid – the public program that provides health insurance to low-income families and individuals – under the multitrillion-dollar domestic policy package that President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025…That includes 247,000 to 412,000 of my fellow residents of Michigan…Many of these people are working Americans who will lose Medicaid because of the onerous paperwork involved with the proposed work requirements…They won’t be able to get coverage in the Affordable Care Act Marketplaces after losing Medicaid. Premiums and out-of-pocket costs are likely to be too high for those making less than 100% to 138% of the federal poverty level who do not qualify for health insurance marketplace subsidies. Funding for this program is also under threat…And despite being employed, they also won’t be able to get health insurance through their employers because it is either too expensive or not offered to them. Researchers estimate that coverage losses will lead to thousands of medically preventable deaths across the country because people will be unable to access health care without insurance.”
From Greg Sargent’s “Trump’s Threat to Jail Enemies Darkens amid Brutal New Poll Slide,” at The New Republic: “President Trump’s Justice Department is now criminally investigating James Comey and John Brennan, apparently in retaliation for their rolein the Russia probe. Trump vowed that they may “pay a price”—a direct threat to try to jail them on no basis whatsoever. Meanwhile, Trump is ramping up the paramilitary presence in Los Angeles. All this comes as Trump’s approval is at a low point in polling averages and a striking new Gallup survey finds him plummeting fast on immigration, a remarkable indication of deep underlying weakness. We think all this is related: Trump’s displays are meant to scam us into thinking he’s fearsome and strong—making political resistance appear futile—yet all the authoritarianism is causing public backlash, weakening him in polls further. We talked to Talking Points Memo editor-at-large David Kurtz, who’s been sharply dissecting Trump’s threats. He explains how deep the abuses are running at DOJ, how Trump’s authoritarianism is meant to mask political weakness, and why this toxic downward spiral portends worsening lawlessness to come. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.”
You know it’s getting rough for the Adminstration when even the Financial Times has a headline like “Donald Trump’s Maga base split over handling of Jeffrey Epstein files.” By all appearances, the Epstein mess may finally attract some bull dog reporting. Or you could check out “Now Trump Says Forget Jeffrey Epstein: He urges MAGA to give up a conspiracy tale that he and his allies promoted” by the Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal. Journal. Then there is “A Timeline of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s Relationship as It Draws Renewed Attention” by Rebecca Schneid at Time magazine and “Playbook: Trump’s Epstein headache isn’t going away” by Adam Wren and Dasha Burns at Politico, who note, “At what should be the height of his political powers — having racked up signature wins in enacting his sprawling GOP megabill, bending U.S. allies to his will on defense spending, launching a successful and limited attack on Iran with no meaningful reprisals on U.S. forces — President Donald Trump is instead facing a fast-metastasizing MAGA rebellion over his administration’s handling of the files from the criminal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein…WHAT MAKES THIS TIME DIFFERENT?: To a degree we have truly not seen over the past decade of Trump as a national political figure, his movement seems genuinely fractured. The Epstein case is fundamentally different from past divisions inside MAGA because it undercuts Trump’s self-styled brand as a speaker of uncomfortable truths, a slayer of sacred cows and a tribune of the people. This isn’t just a policy or ideological disagreement like, say, the MAGA unease over the Iran strikes; this cuts to the heart of his very political identity.”
On the other hand, as Dan Friedman reports in “Stop Taking the Epstein Bait, Dems: Democrats don’t need conspiracy theories. There are more than enough real Trump scandals” at Mother Jones: “MAGA world is melting down over the Justice Department’s recent conclusion that Jeffrey Epstein had no client list or history of blackmail, and that he wasn’t murdered. But the right isn’t alone. Some influential Democrats and left-leaning pundits have latched onto the controversy, too—succumbing to the temptation of suggesting that these findings are part of some grand conspiracy to cover up Donald Trump’s ties to the late pedophile…Here is the problem: There is no real evidence that Epstein—who died in 2019 while jailed on charges that included sex trafficking of minors—possessed any information incriminating Trump…Each day offers new and urgent evidence of the president’s expanding record moral and professional failure. He just signed a bill that cuts a trillion dollars in Medicaid and boots millions from their health care. He has swarmed Los Angeles with ICE agents, Border Patrol, and military troops and has sent innocent men to a brutal prison in El Salvador, apparently for having tattoos…His ever-changing tariffs are screwing up the economy. He tried to steal the 2020 election, pardoned the rioters whose violent attack on the Capitol he incited, and is using the Justice Department to harass political foes. He has leveraged the power of his office to extract gifts and payments for himself and his family, including recently forcing Paramount to pay $16 million to the foundation behind his “future” library to settle a meritless lawsuit as it seeks federal approval for a merger…That’s a lot of real stuff to fault. But at the same time, unverified speculation on the left that Trump might have been involved in Epstein’s crimes is reaching a crescendo—distracting from Democratic efforts to highlight overt Trump wrongdoing in other matters.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/gay-lesbian-trans-rights.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&fbclid=IwY2xjawLg_2ZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHhy6eRIUHzgUoaDisBBDa7hGbfdlNPbAZixi8B1hce6zEqXxQC_vGLm_akCT_aem_MmIjQGsV6by_ky3H2X_gqw
Why and how transgender elite radicalism is setting back gay rights and feminism
Most heterosexuals wouldn’t know it (as well as too many LGBT people), but the original goal of many gay activists wasn’t legal gay marriage but the abolition of marriage as a legal concept.
Marriage was seen as patriarchal, heterosexist and generally outdated.
It wasn’t until gay politics became more of a mass phenomenon that gay marriage was popularized.
There were strategic reasons for this in political and legal terms, but one of the key factors was the realization that non-elite gays didn’t actually oppose the concept of marriage.
In fact, working class gays were very much traditional and had aspirations for marriage with all the related trappings (weddings and other celebrations). They also wanted to be able to have kids (adopting their partners’ or via other legal and medical means).
Opposition to marriage mostly came from currents of some strands of radical feminism as well as historical opposition of many leftists (socialists and communists) to marriage as a bourgeois (coopted by capitalism) institution. (Interestingly there was also a strand of activism that wanted to focus on getting rid of age of consent laws entirely, instead of equalizing them.)
The same history is now happening to transgender activism, but in reverse. While gay politics have become mainstream and popular, transgender ones have become wholly radicalized and elite driven.
While gay legal rights were developing (decriminalization and demedicalization, minor rights and eventually civil unions), the same political discussions, processes and developments were taking place regarding transgender rights.
During the 1980s and 1990s specially, gay and transgender rights settled on two strategies, one regarding speed and one regarding message.
After backlashes related to referendums, elections and court cases, it was clear that progress wouldn’t be achieved all at once, for everyone and everywhere. It also became evident that progress could stall and even be reversed.
At the same time, the AIDS crisis created a new sense of urgency as well as momentum. AIDS took many people out of the closet involuntarily and also reduced the available timespan for their activism. AIDS radicalized activism, but also made it more focused and practical. Gays and HIV positive people had to become policy experts (wonks), including on scientific issues.
After many failures in both politics and science, incrementalism was accepted regarding speed and moderation was accepted regarding message.
Effective treatment, not a cure or vaccine, became the short (and de facto the medium term) goal for AIDS activists. Reducing HIV stigma was also important, but was never really a major focus of activism. For educating the broader population there was acceptance on the use of non-gay cisgender (and preferably white) figures as major spokespeople. This is how we eventually get the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act.
Civil unions became the short (and de facto the medium term) goal. Marriage became a distant goal in general (a place like New York couldn’t get marriage until 2011). Even civil unions were seen as politically difficult in many states that still criminalized sodomy, homosexual sex, transvestism, etc.
Moderation in message required outreach. Outreach required spokespeople. Actors and musicians became some of the key spokespeople. Politicians took a back seat.
Activists were careful to not be seen as antagonizing or needlessly divisive or aloof.
So while today everyone talks about how Stonewall was a riot, people forget that it was not a particularly successful event or movement.
The 1960s and 1970s actually saw changes that were even more incremental (restricted to the biggest cities) and larger and more consequential backlashes (nationwide).
From Stonewall to the 1980s gay activism was mostly still an elite and urban affair.
This elite and urban model is the one that now dominates transgender activism.
Furthermore transgender activism is full of both internal contradictions and contradictions against some of the main messages of gay activism.
While gays have relied on the immutability of sexual orientation, the new transgender activism says that all matters regarding sexuality, be they gender identification, sexual orientation or gender expression are up for instant change and individual choice.
In this they contradicted not only gay activism, but also decades of their own transgender activism.
Transgender activism used the same framework of immutability to get the transgender condition accepted as a disability that qualified for governmental support for sex realignment.
This was done because before government support for sex realignment (via public health plans as well as government regulation of private health plans) only wealthy people could afford sex realignment.
There was always a tension between the goal of expanding access to sex realignment and the stigmatization of transgender people.
Transgender activism chose to be pragmatic and to put the needs of working class people above those of elites.
After the decriminalization and (partial) demedicalization of transgender identity were achieved, the underlying tension was resolved in a way that took many steps further away from any kind of compromise.
In the quest to get transgender people to not be treated as suffering from a “disorder”, transgender activism chose to fight any obstacles in the way of self-identification.
On the way they forgot that the law and sex are still too deeply intertwined. From birth certificates, to driver’s licenses, passports, marriage licenses all the way to health services, access to sex seggreggated sports, prisons, political quotas, preferential contracting in government procurement, etc, sex matters. Except for clothing, which is rarely regulated by government, the law mostly deals with sex, not gender.
So they chose to fight the law in the broadest sense which requires not major societal changes, but enough for the rest of society to notice.
Nowadays the goal is not recognition or accommodation of transgender people in the opposite sex, but to make sex and gender entirely optional and personal characteristics to be chosen at any point by individuals with the government not being able to question motivations or require any sort of proof. A good example is the creation of X as a sex category in government documents.
By making sex and gender optional, they may be stripped of their legal essence. But this cuts both ways, both in positive and negative terms for different persons and contexts.
This matters not just to gay people, whose protected sexual orientation is now reduced philosophically to the status of another “sexual preference” (just like we always opposed).
It matters to women who have fought for specific sex related services and accommodations. Healthcare, education, sports, all kinds of political and economic quotas, support and accommodations for childbearing. These all now have their foundations shaken.
Something as simple but fundamental like sex disaggregated statistics can become increasingly unreliable.
Sports and prisons have so far received the most attention for good reason. These are contexts in which long term self-identification needs to be balanced against the risk of short term self-serving cynical or profit/attention seeking behaviour.
(Controversies around bathroom access should be resolved with increased privacy in bathrooms for everyone and controversies around children’s issues could be solved by applying the currently existing possibility of court supervision of medical interventions on children).
But in countries that use sex related political quotas there has been controversy too (as well as in the US -see case of David Hogg as DNC Vicechair-).
Making policy becomes unpredictable when people can change who they are depending on what they may want to achieve at a given moment.
But it is mostly the gay rights movement and women who are under threat.
The changes demanded go even beyond the law.
In a stunning contradiction, transgender activists end up making gender so central to their lives and the rest of society that people have to introduce gender into non-gender related conversations.
It used to be that feminists fought for gender neutrality in language.
Now transgender activists want to make gender pronouns part of everyday life regardless of relevance.
While misgendering shouldn’t be minimized, as a society we already had prefixes to make clear people’s sex.
A proliferation of different kinds of pronouns just shows the lack of internal coherence and consensus even inside transgender politics.
Either gender matters so little that people should be able to identify and act however they want or it matters so much that society should pay for sex realignment and change all sorts of laws and customs. Which is it?
Furthermore if gender is not a binary and you can mix and match at will why should the state have anything to do with gender at all and not just focus on biological sex (that is genetic sex which is determined at birth based on visible sex characteristics for the overwhelming majority of people)?
If anyone can become a woman for whatever reason, why should women get any advantages not related strictly to biology? Does the historical oppression of women matter at all anymore?
Transgender activism that is internally incoherent and mostly unaccountable to the people it advocates for has become the face of LGBT politics.
It ignores the history of gay rights activists and feminists.
It is allowed to damage left wing politics in general with so far very limited pushback.
In a context of rising authoritarianism this requires everyone on the left, but specially feminists and gays to debate a healthier path forward.
Democrats don’t have a coherent strategy as a party to deal with the Medicaid and SNAP cuts and new work requirements.
New York’s governor has taken the lead by saying that she opposes new tax increases so the state can take a bigger role in healthcare and the safety net.
Congressional Democrats have not presented a strategy either. Will they attempt to reverse the cuts during the annual budgetary process in 2025? What about if they regain control of the House? After 2027?
We already saw that Democrats basically accepted welfare reform during the 1990s and left many people stranded. The working class also includes the poor. NAFTA wasn’t the only reason the party lost support.
New work requirements were not matched with adequate funding for new training, childcare, etc.
There is only one Marxist party in the US and it is Republicans. They want to eliminate the safety net so that people have to immediately accept whatever jobs are in the market. Then these jobs get subsidized and people get trapped in low quality jobs with no prospects. Democrats won’t talk about this.
Healthcare represents a particularly important issue. Will Democrats argue that healthcare should be a universal right? Or accept de facto accept the gutting of Medicaid?
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Democrats should support a balanced budget constitutional amendment that requires raising taxes for either new spending or new tax cuts while preserving flexibility during recessions and congressional recognized wars against the US.
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Democrats won’t be able to get rid of the Trump tariffs if the continue becoming a major source of federal tax revenue.