Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Rasulis]

Donald and Republicans want to give Americans cancer, it seems.

You may be right.

Iowa has the second highest rate of new cancer cases in the U.S. It is also one of the states with the highest cancer prevalence rates. However, potential cuts to federal funding for medical research threaten future progress in cancer treatment.

[gondrin]

You may be right.

Iowa has the second highest rate of new cancer cases in the U.S. It is also one of the states with the highest cancer prevalence rates. However, potential cuts to federal funding for medical research threaten future progress in cancer treatment.

"Make America Cancerous Again"

[Rasulis]

Anyone with a functioning brain could have seen that Trump pretty much was going to either back off of Israel completely or outright help them genocide Palestine(both Gaza and the West Bank).

So those Arabs in Deerborn, how do you like your vote now?

Apparently not too thrilled.

"It's like, what did you think? What did you think he was going to do?" Ali told NPR. "What did you think he was going to say? And now people have to live with the consequences of their decision to vote for him."

[Breccia]

(backs a Nazi king)

Opinion summarily handwaved.

[gondrin]

Let me respond to this by quoting the Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania:

https://x.com/i/lists/889515778243870721

I know this will make some anti-semites mad. But they had a good run of it during the Biden administration. Look back on the good times when you could do whatever, and only get some stern words in return.

They can, of course, decide that the federal cuts are worth it to maintain their tolerance or establishment of content-discriminatory policies, intimidation, harassment, property destruction, and assault. Naturally, while saying it actually doesn't like those things, all the while showing that nothing will be done. They have a $15 billion endowment, so if that's what they want it used for, by all means.

https://x.com/JGreenblattADL/status/1898138184711835956

I detest antisemitism. However, much like any other fascist rhetoric, at least in the US, it is neither illegal and is, in fact, constitutional to espouse those things and the government cannot suppress it outside of legit calls to harm.

I will argue against that rhetoric all day and night.

And also your first link does not work as it probably got deleted.

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Apparently not too thrilled.

"It's like, what did you think? What did you think he was going to do?" Ali told NPR. "What did you think he was going to say? And now people have to live with the consequences of their decision to vote for him."

And they get no right to complain about what is happening. They voted for Trump, they get to have their face eaten by the leopards.

[Breccia]

And also your first link does not work as it probably got deleted.

Add that to the list of "nobody should ever cite Twitter as a source". If someone important says something important, it'll be picked up elsewhere. In the meantime, it's just Some Guy On Twitter.

[Rasulis]

"Make America Cancerous Again"

The impact to everyday people is real.

Iowa has high cancer rates. Trump's cuts to CDC and NIH are already hitting the state

Evenhouse herself is 73 and has had multiple cancers — in the soft tissue near her spine, as well as her thyroid, blood, and left leg. Most of her doctors work in Iowa City — an hour and a half's drive from where she lives in Pella, the small town best known for manufacturing windows that go by the same name.

Mahaska Health, on the other hand, is a 25-bed hospital that's in Oskaloosa, relatively close to home. From there, Evenhouse can remotely access doctors from around the state to help her decide her care. Recently, for example, a team determined surgery on her back could be performed locally. "For me to go to Iowa City, my whole day is gone," she says. And often it takes up her husband's day, too, because sometimes Evenhouse cannot drive herself home after treatment. So she appreciates the ability to access nationally renowned specialists in her cancers close to home. "It's really an advantage for me because I can see the experts; I can get their input."

But the Iowa Cancer Affiliate Network, which connects Mahaska Health to a group of medical specialists, is funded by federal grants that face immediate, drastic cuts.

Iowa has the country's second-highest incidence of cancer — a rate that's accelerating. Only Kentucky's rate is worse. Doctors, hospitals and policymakers have been trying to fight the threat on multiple fronts, from attracting much-needed health care talent, to trying to increase screening, especially across the state's vast rural areas, where patients tend to get diagnosed later with late-stage cancers. But various Trump administration cuts, from contract freezes to funding caps on research institutions, could hamper or shut down such efforts, potentially leaving Iowans further behind in their fight against cancer.

The cuts have already affected Bri McNulty, who was terminated from her public health job by the Trump administration earlier this month.

The 23-year-old had moved to Iowa City on a prestigious fellowship from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention a year and a half ago to help an under-staffed public-health group trying to coordinate the state's cancer-prevention efforts. Now McNulty will likely need to go back home to Williamsburg, Va.

McNulty grew up fascinated by the bubonic plague and hoping to one day work at the CDC. "Everyone knows about the CDC; you hear about them all the time," she says, " I think they've always been amazing and I've loved learning about the work they do. Even in movies like Contagion. I think those also shaped my dreams of working for them."

After getting her biology degree, McNulty applied for the agency's elite Public Health Associate Program, and she says she was one of 66 people chosen out of more than 1,000 applicants. McNulty was assigned to the Iowa Cancer Consortium, and although she knew no one and had no connections to Iowa City, she cried with joy when she received the news.

She moved in early November 2023, and advocated for vaccines to prevent cervical cancer, maintained databases tracking local disease trends, spoke at events and created educational materials promoting cancer screening.

Just after Valentine's Day, McNulty, who'd just received a positive performance review, received an email "removing" her from her job. Other associates in her program were also among the 1,300 people cut from the CDC, and they received the same emails, criticizing their performance using identical language: "Unfortunately, the agency finds that you were not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge and skills do not fit the agency's current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the agency."

Kelly Wells Sittig, executive director of the state cancer consortium where McNulty worked, disputes the email's assertions about McNulty: "We were really happy with Bri's performance and growth."

McNulty's was one of only 5.5 full-time positions, Sittig says, and if the CDC program sponsoring her fellowship disappears, Iowans will lose opportunities to attract the health care talent the state so desperately needs. "We need young people coming to Iowa, working in our public health and health care workforce and our cancer control workforce," she says.

Personally, McNulty feels disappointed and betrayed for where the cuts leave her options: Graduate school she can't afford, or trying to find work in her field.

"Job hunting is also intense now because you have these extremely highly educated, wonderful people who all just got let go at the same time and are all looking for a new job, and it's just going to be even more competitive than it was before."

McNulty says the irony is that there is a lot of demand for public-health expertise like hers, yet she worries many people don't understand the critical role federal funding plays in their lives. "People hear that there are cuts being made in CDC and their thought is, 'Oh, they're only getting cut from DC or Atlanta' — and that's just not true," she says. "Federal employees, field workers, specifically, we are in your communities and doing the help that we can."

Losing talent is one of the outcomes that will hamper all health efforts, says Mark Burkhard, director of the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Iowa, where he is among a group of cancer control experts trying to better address Iowa's increasing cancer rates statewide. "It's not just the funding, it's the talent they're bleeding, because you can't get anything done without the talent."

Burkhard says he had been hoping to expand use of centralized cancer specialists to patients in rural hospitals around the state. Rural hospitals historically haven't been able to offer the kinds of support, therapy, transportation assistance, nutrition guidance and other ancillary cancer-care services some larger urban hospital centers can offer. "Advancing that network to deliver quality care will be interrupted if we need to focus on our budgetary needs," he says.

Retracting those supports would also affect the work of people like Dr. Daniel Kollmorgen, Mahaska Health's surgical oncologist.

Kollmorgen grew up and worked in Des Moines for 25 years before moving to Oskaloosa two years ago, hoping to fight Iowa's especially high rural cancer rate from a 25-bed hospital that serves 16 counties, mostly in the southeastern part of the state.

"The reason we have more Stage 3 and 4 cancers in rural Iowa is oftentimes due to lack of screening or lack of awareness, lack of transportation," he says.

To address those inequities, Kollmorgen relies on databases funded by the National Cancer Institute that track local disease statistics, which allow him to identify and target hot spots for outreach promoting screenings, for example.

Kollmorgen also worked to expand his hospital's reliance on the Iowa Cancer Affiliate Network, the teams of disease experts who help him with cancer patient Kathie Evenhouse's care, for example, and reduce patients' transportation burdens. "We review complex cancer cases at our small hospital on a regular basis, but we can Zoom in pathologists and specialty surgeons and others from around the state, and we're starting to try to build that so we can bring that care to the patients locally," he says.

Kollmorgen says the myriad federal funding cuts to research institutions and through federal contracts could reverse some of the progress the state has made. "When we don't have these funds to help reach out to those patients, I think we'll see the numbers continue their upward trend."

That poses a conflict for Kathie Evenhouse. She voted for President Trump and supports, in concept, federal spending cuts. But now she also sees the downsides.

"It is hurtful to the good things to cut it off — but I do think that we have to do something," she says. But she says she wishes the cuts were — like surgery, more precise: "I think it could have been done with a scalpel instead of a hatchet."

We need to fire all those cancer experts and researchers. They are useless.

Sarcasm aside, I hope people realize that we are discouraging highly qualified people from going into public service.

[Edge-]

Let me respond to this by quoting the Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania:

I'm not interested in Fetterman's opinion, no thanks.

Do you have an opinion of your own?

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The impact to everyday people is real.

Iowa has high cancer rates. Trump's cuts to CDC and NIH are already hitting the state



We need to fire all those cancer experts and researchers. They are useless.

Well, we know how donald thinks, he told us during covid.

If you just fire everyone who works in cancer research, prevention, care, and testing then you can't have anyone getting diagnosed with cancer.

And if nobody is getting diagnosed with cancer, there is no cancer, and America is cancer free.

That's who reality works according to Donald, and I have yet to see Republicans challenge him on that.

[gondrin]

I'm not interested in Fetterman's opinion, no thanks.

Do you have an opinion of your own?

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Well, we know how donald thinks, he told us during covid.

If you just fire everyone who works in cancer research, prevention, care, and testing then you can't have anyone getting diagnosed with cancer.

And if nobody is getting diagnosed with cancer, there is no cancer, and America is cancer free.

That's who reality works according to Donald, and I have yet to see Republicans challenge him on that.

Fetterman is about as much of a Democrat as Mike Pence is. I figure he will either turn Independent or outright state that he will be in the Republican Party here soon.

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So, anyone got a definition for fraud? Because, as far as I can tell, there is a very specific definition when talking about fraud, especially so in government. It means that you used resources for something else that it wasn't appropriated for and had no authority to do so. Fraud is a very real and very illegal event.

Because Musk sure as hell is using the term "fraud" for much more than its actual narrow definition.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...34ccaec7&ei=10

[Edge-]

Because Musk sure as hell is using the term "fraud" for much more than its actual narrow definition.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...34ccaec7&ei=10

republicans don't know the definitions of words, more at 11

elon is a south african pedo guy, i'm not sure if english is his first language so maybe he needs to have an american help interpret for him?

[Breccia]

Because Musk sure as hell is using the term "fraud" for much more than its actual narrow definition.

My favorite part:

“We found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud,” Trump said in his remarks to Congress

He has not, to nobody's surprise.

A spartanly furnished web page with columns of numbers and bar charts on a dark background is the only official window into billionaire Elon Musk's effort to slash U.S. government spending and the size of the federal workforce. However, the view it offers of the cost-cutting enterprise is often muddied by major errors.

Trump and Musk's Department of Government Efficiency say that in just six weeks they have already saved American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars through rapid-fire moves to cancel contracts, fire workers and root out fraud and waste in the government.

The only support for the assertions comes from data posted by DOGE to a newly created website that went live last month. But in the last two weeks alone, DOGE has deleted hundreds of claimed savings, including some of the largest items it had previously boasted about.

DOGE claims to have slashed $105 billion so far, but it is impossible to verify that calculation because the unit has so far posted a detailed breakdown for only a fraction of those savings, and that accounting keeps changing, according to a Reuters analysis of the data.

Yep. Not only was the highest claim so far $100 billion, and not "hundreds of billions", most of that claim was incorrect and most of it is hidden.

"Wait, hundreds of billions? He didn't say-"

Trump lauded the group's work in his address to Congress on Tuesday, claiming Musk's group had identified "hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud," far more than what the administration had previously claimed.

"We've taken back the money and reduced our debt to fight inflation," Trump said.

We've already explored how most of the "savings" were already paid contracts that, no, weren't taken back. Because that's how contracts work. And I am also calling bullshit on the claim it's reduced debt, because that would require actually paying something, which in turn would leave a paper trail or receipt. We haven't seen those, and Trump's word is worthless.

Musk has said he is operating transparently in his cost-cutting effort, but budget experts like Martha Gimbel, director of the Budget Lab at Yale, a non-partisan budget analysis organization at Yale University, disagree.

"Anyone can put numbers and words on a website," Gimbel said in an interview. "In order to be transparent, the numbers and words have to be accurate. They've already been shown not to be accurate so why should I trust it?"

If President Musk had found hundreds of billions in fraud, it would be splashed over every website in DC and FOX News. It is not. The logical conclusion is that the fraud they're bragging about finding does not exist.

"If they found fraud, which as Gondrin pointed out is a specific and legal definition, why hasn't anyone been arrested? Musk owns the Executive Branch."

Because they didn't find the fraud they claimed. Or, they're incompetent. Neither trait is redeeming.

[tehdang]

I'm not interested in Fetterman's opinion, no thanks.

Do you have an opinion of your own?

Sometimes, you see a thought just perfectly expressed by another, and there's no reason to change a thing! Yes, I share his opinion. But if you don't have a response, that's fine.

I detest antisemitism. However, much like any other fascist rhetoric, at least in the US, it is neither illegal and is, in fact, constitutional to espouse those things and the government cannot suppress it outside of legit calls to harm.

Actions speak louder than words. I've seen plenty of people that pay lip service against antisemitism, but when it comes to college campuses, they suddenly fill up on excuses. Very frail excuses.

I will argue against that rhetoric all day and night.

Like classifying "content-discriminatory policies, intimidation, harassment, property destruction, and assault" as "rhetoric" which you oppose. Columbia had their chance, now comes the consequences.

https://x.com/SenFettermanPA/status/1898080811301454149

I guess if you missed all the hubbub, maybe this is the proper response: we're just setting right all the stuff you ignored or missed, no need to reconsider the historical record.

[gondrin]

Sometimes, you see a thought just perfectly expressed by another, and there's no reason to change a thing! Yes, I share his opinion. But if you don't have a response, that's fine.

Actions speak louder than words. I've seen plenty of people that pay lip service against antisemitism, but when it comes to college campuses, they suddenly fill up on excuses. Very frail excuses.

Like classifying "content-discriminatory policies, intimidation, harassment, property destruction, and assault" as "rhetoric" which you oppose. Columbia had their chance, now comes the consequences.

https://x.com/SenFettermanPA/status/1898080811301454149

I guess if you missed all the hubbub, maybe this is the proper response: we're just setting right all the stuff you ignored or missed, no need to reconsider the historical record.

And once again, if it is a bunch of protesting, that is protected by the First Amendment and any college or university that takes public dollars cannot prohibit those things. They can state that you can't block normal course of business but they cannot block someone from protesting whatever it is they want to protest. If it is actual harassment, property damage or actual physical assaults(verbal assaults are protected by the First Amendment), those are actual crimes and can be charged as such.

And once again, that same fascist rhetoric, that fascist protesting, is PERFECTLY LEGAL within the United States because of the US Constitution. Specifically the First Amendment. Both in the freedom of assembly and the restriction on prohibiting speech by a government or otherwise public body. I absolutely detest their rhetoric but they are still allowed to espouse it as disgusting as it is. It is no different than a bunch of people protesting against Muslims or Christians or Catholics or Nazis or any other group of people.

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So, what happens when you get what you want and you realize that it isn't exactly what you want? Well, this video goes about explaining a bit on what is happening and how past ruling is basically making it harder for OPM, DOGE and Musk to actually win any lawsuits with what they are doing with the Government.



BTW, the SCOTUS overturning the Chevron Deference is why now the Courts pretty much are the only body of government that can actually determine if something is legal or not. Before, they were "defer" to the actual departments and their experts on what is legal or not. The big irony is conservatives have been wanting to get rid of that for a long while and now they got what they wanted, that ruling is one of the very things being used against them as now.

[Breccia]

Actions speak louder than words.

Such as cutting federal support to a college because you disagree with their protests of your genocide. That action is unConstitutional. Which I doubt matters to you, since you support him as a king.

[gondrin]

So, how will our resident Trump posters feel about this? Trump trying to unilaterally deny people who qualify for student loan forgiveness if they work in public service careers and work for non-profits who are deemed to be engaged in "improper activities". SCOTUS already ruled that Biden couldn't change how student loan forgiveness is handled. Neither can Trump.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/care...0cca01a0&ei=40

[NED funded]

Cutting funding from Universities bc there is speech you dont like is dangerous. Its actually insane the free speech party is having this opinion?

Would you have been okay with Biden cutting funding to universities when Jan 6 deniers were invited?

[Corvus]

Trump is now saying russia is 'easier to work with' than Ukraine. Well, when you are the governor of russia's newest oblast and doing your bosses bidding while working against their victims, of course it is.

[Jastall]

Cutting funding from Universities bc there is speech you dont like is dangerous. Its actually insane the free speech party is having this opinion?

Would you have been okay with Biden cutting funding to universities when Jan 6 deniers were invited?

It's shockingly unsurprising how swiftly cancel culture is back on the menu when it's Trump and his friends hearing opinions they don't like.

[Xyonai]

It's shockingly unsurprising how swiftly cancel culture is back on the menu when it's Trump and his friends hearing opinions they don't like.

Yeah the novelty on their hypocrisy wore off years ago. Now it's just kind of exhausting.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Anyone with a functioning brain could have seen that Trump pretty much was going to either back off of Israel completely or outright help them genocide Palestine(both Gaza and the West Bank).

So those Arabs in Deerborn, how do you like your vote now?

I'm convinced the Deerborn Arabs were a psyop, and before you call me some crazy conspiracy theorist, Jill Stein was throwing a lot of (Russian) money around to anti-Harris grassroots movements with an emphasis on the Israel/Gaza conflict being central to why those people were so vocally anti-Harris over it. Most of these groups are SILENT as Trump promises a blank check to Israel to finish Gaza now, so it's pretty obvious they're enjoying their paycheck and just planning on living in the US from now on.

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It's shockingly unsurprising how swiftly cancel culture is back on the menu when it's Trump and his friends hearing opinions they don't like.

Honestly, at this point calling out their hypocrisy is pointless. We KNOW they're hypocrites. We KNOW they don't care about absolute free speech, just their free speech. We KNOW they aren't anti cancel culture, they're against cancel culture that negatively affects them only. Calling them hypocrites does nothing to them though, it only fuels them. It doesn't change any votes because people who voted for Trump already knew what they were voting for, and if they didn't they're too stupid to understand the truth of it all anyway. Trump promised to be the msot transparent administration in history, but he refuses to answer tons of questions about what Elon is doing. He said he'd release the full unredacted Epstein files and all they're doing is releasing the Epstein files with Trump's name redacted.

The only way to fight against MAGA is to humiliate them and continue to dog them on how poorly the economy is doing for the average person.