EPA Punishes Employees Who Sent Zeldin “Declaration of Dissent”

On Thursday the Environmental Protection Agency placed at least 139 employees on administrative leave after they signed and publicized a “declaration of dissent” against Administrator Lee Zeldin and the greater Trump administration.

“Since the Agency’s founding in 1970, EPA has accomplished this mission by leveraging science, funding, and expert staff in service to the American people. Today, we stand together in dissent against the current administration’s focus on harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions, and disregard for scientific expertise,” the letter, sent to Zeldin on Monday, read.

“Since January 2025, federal workers across the country have been denigrated and dismissed based on false claims of waste, fraud, and abuse. Meanwhile, Americans have witnessed the unraveling of public health and environmental protections in the pursuit of political advantage. Today, we come directly to you, Administrator Zeldin and our elected officials, with the five concerns outlined below. We expect your deliberate consideration of these concerns and look forward to working with you to restore EPA’s credibility as a premier scientific institution. Communities across America are counting on you to lead EPA in carrying out its mission.”

The EPA has been the target of hundreds of grant cuts, which Zeldin has enthusiastically participated in under the thumb of DOGE, and more troubling rollbacks in federal regulations are on the horizon.

The declaration goes on to note five main concerns: undermining public trust, ignoring scientific consensus to benefit polluters, reversing the EPA’s progress in America’s most vulnerable communities, dismantling the office of research and development, and “promoting a culture of fear, forcing staff to choose between their livelihood and well-being.”

The EPA promptly placed each employee who signed the letter on administrative leave, saying that it has a “zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November.” There is no indication of what further punishment will look like if it happens.

Donald Trump’s budget bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives Thursday and now awaits the president’s signature, will balloon immigration and border enforcement spending astonishingly—so much so that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s budget will overshadow every single federal law enforcement agency, and U.S. spending on immigration enforcement will surpass all but 15 countries’ military budgets.

The bill allocates about $150 billion to immigration enforcement through 2029. ICE will receive about $75 billion from that total sum, more funding than any other law enforcement agency in the federal government, according to the American Immigration Council, or AIC.*

According to AIC senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, each year, ICE will now be flushed with more cash than the FBI; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the U.S. Marshals Service; and the Bureau of Prisons combined. In fact, with the bill’s passage, Reichlin-Melnick told Democracy Now!, ICE will become the largest federal law enforcement agency “in the history of the nation.”

Further, per a report from Newsweek, Trump’s immigration slush fund will be so expansive as to rival the resources of some of the world’s most well-financed militaries. If the money going to U.S. immigration enforcement each year on average for the next four years were the budget of a country’s military, the report found, that country would have the sixteenth-best-funded military on the planet—just below Canada’s, and above Italy’s and Israel’s.

The far right is already celebrating the bill’s immigration enforcement provisions, which right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk tweeted will give MAGA “a standing army.” Such gloating is, apparently, far less hyperbolic than it sounds. And with newfound billions at its disposal, this “standing army” will only wreak further havoc and trample further upon civil liberties than it already has in communities nationwide.

* This piece has been updated to clarify the amount of money ICE is expected to receive.

Wisconsin Representative Derrick “Little Bitch” Van Orden stooped to a new low Thursday after passing Donald Trump’s behemoth budget bill.

While other Republicans have tried to obfuscate the fact that Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” will serve to enrich the wealthiest and shred the social safety net, apparently Van Orden is not one of them. In fact, he’s more than happy about it.

Van Orden reshared a post on X hitting back at White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declaring “VICTORY!”

“17 million people just lost health care. 18 million kids just lost school meals. 3 million Americans just lost food assistance. And $3.5 trillion was added to the deficit. All for a tax cut for Trump’s billionaire donors,” read the post, from an account called Logical Luminary.

“YES!” Van Orden wrote, excited about the laundry list of benefits he’d just voted to strip away from his own constituents in Wisconsin.

But within a few hours, the post was deleted. Thank God the internet has screenshots for this kind of thing.

The bill will cut nearly $1.1 trillion in health care spending over the next decade, leaving an estimated 12 million people without Medicaid by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The bill also directs nearly $300 billion to be cut from SNAP through 2034, putting a greater burden on the states to fund the essential nutrition program—or not. And the CBO projects that the bill will add nearly $4 trillion to the national deficit over the next 10 years.

GOP Representative Robert Bresnahan voted for Trump’s budget on Thursday, conveniently after he dumped his shares of stock in a Medicaid provider.

The Pennsylvania representative sold his Centene stock in May, just one week before he voted “yes” on an early House version of the budget bill that crippled the health care system. By Thursday, when he voted for the final version of the bill, Centene stock had plummeted by 43 percent.

The Pennsylvania representative had a vested interest in seeing health care get slashed. He knew that ripping Medicaid and hospital funding from millions of Americans would help him make a quick buck before his stocks tanked in value. This is yet another classic example of congressional insider trading, a rampant issue on Capitol Hill. Representatives and senators on both sides of the aisle use the specific knowledge they have, due to their positions as legislators, to impact stock prices and make off with as much cash as possible in the process.

“Protecting his stock portfolio while ripping away health care from 17 million Americans. This is Washington at its worst,” Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote on X. “We need to ban Congressional stock trading.”

“Wow. So he votes to gut Medicaid and throw 17 million people off of their healthcare and then dumps his Medicaid related stock to cover his own ass?” Representative Maxwell Frost echoed. “That’s just evil and cruel.”

Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is on its way to his desk thanks to a 218–214 vote in the House.

MAGA representatives, however, could hardly wait after the vote was over to reveal that some of their biggest advertising points on the bill to working-class America were actually complete duds.

Speaking with Fox News, New York Representative Mike Lawler confirmed that the bill’s “no tax on tips” and “no tax on overtime” provisions would expire just before Trump’s term was out.

“This bill starts to make significant savings across the entirety of the federal government so that we can actually reduce spending and bring down the cost of living for Americans,” Lawler said. “This is a big win for Americans across the country; you look at the tax provisions, the doubling of the standard deduction, the enhanced child tax credit, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime—”

But the Fox reporter interjected to correct him: “Those expire in 2028, correct?”

“Sure, within the tax code, but that’s normal,” Lawler said. “The objective here is to provide real and immediate relief to Americans all across the country.”

But the bill is not expected to save the government any money. Instead, Trump’s key legislative victory—which will slice taxes on the ultrawealthy and corporations—is expected to add upward of $6 trillion to the debt, according to a projection from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez scorched the “no tax on tips” provision during a heated floor speech Tuesday, telling lawmakers that, “as one of the only people in this body who has lived off of tips,” the promise was little more than a “scam.”

“The cap on that is $25,000,” she said, “while you’re jacking up taxes on people who make less than $50,000 across the United States, while taking away their [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance] program, while take taking away their Medicaid, while kicking them off of the [Affordable Care Act] and their health care extensions.”

The “big, beautiful bill” will also gut $880 billion from Medicaid and other crucial social programs, a detail so ill-favored by Americans that conservative lawmakers stopped holding town halls after the line item was announced due to staunch opposition from their constituents.

But Lawler wasn’t concerned that passing Trump’s glorious budget agenda could have ramifications on their own elections come midterms.

“Do you think that this could come back to bite Republicans next November by any chance?” Fox asked him.

“No, once the American people understand everything that is in the bill as opposed to what the Democrats have told them is in the bill, they are going to support the largest tax cut they have seen. Had we not passed this bill, you would have had the largest tax increase in history,” Lawler said.

That’s by design: Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 arranged for individual provisions to expire at the end of 2025, effectively forcing a tax increase for the majority of Americans by 2026.

Ocasio-Cortez, in turn, slammed the New York conservative, writing that “it’s not normal.”

“Lawler voted to make the tax breaks on billionaires PERMANENT while making the no tax on tips (just for those making less than $25k) EXPIRE in just 3 years,” she posted in response to Lawler’s interview. “He’s also kicking tipped employees off Medicaid, ACA, and clawing back their SNAP.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is being delusional as ever about the exorbitant cost of Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

During an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street Thursday, Bessent did his best to defend his title as a “fiscal hawk” despite the estimates from the Congressional Budget Office that say Trump’s behemoth budget bill will add trillions to the national deficit.

“I don’t believe in the CBO forecast,” Bessent said. The latest estimate from the CBO found that the legislation bill will add nearly $4 trillion to the national deficit over the next 10 years. An analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute think tank projected the budget bill could add upward of $6 trillion.

Bessent pushed back on the CBO’s prediction that the bill will have only modest effects on long-term economic growth.

“If you turn up the growth projections to something like 2.8, 3 percent, which was achieved during President Trump’s first term, then the debt disappears,” Bessent said. “The other thing too is, are we growing the GDP faster than we’re growing the debt? Which I am sure will happen over the remainder of the president’s term.”

In January, the CBO had predicted that growth would cool to 1.9 percent in 2025 and 1.8 in 2026, down from 2.3 percent in 2024. The agency estimated that real GDP would then grow by 1.8 percent per year, on average, through 2035. Under Trump’s budget bill, the CBO estimated the real GDP would increase by an additional 0.5 percent on average through the 2025-2034 period, putting the yearly increase at roughly 2.4 percent—not anywhere near the 3 percent Bessent wants to offset the deficit.

As it turns out, you can’t just adjust projections based on what’s convenient for a political agenda. Still, House Republicans voted later Thursday to pass Trump’s sweeping, 887-page budget bill, a wildly unpopular piece of legislation poised to further enrich the wealthiest and tatter the social safety net.

House Republicans on Thursday passed Donald Trump’s sweeping, 887-page budget bill, an unpopular piece of legislation that is poised to further enrich the wealthiest Americans while tattering the social safety net.

The House of Representatives passed the bill 218–214, with every “yes” vote coming from a Republican. Only two Republicans, Representatives Thomas Massie and Brian Fitzpatrick, were brave enough to join Democrats and vote against the legislation.

The bill includes historic rollbacks of social programs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it will strip 17 million people of their health insurance by 2034 due to its cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and deal the most severe blow to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, in the program’s history. By some estimates, the bill’s Medicaid cuts alone are projected to cause 51,000 avoidable deaths per year.

And it will staggeringly transfer wealth from less wealthy to ultrawealthy Americans. According to the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, it is “the most regressive tax and budget law in at least the past 40 years.” Trump and other Republicans are sure to try to distract from this by pointing to the bill’s sops to those expecting populist reforms—such as its “no tax on tips” provision—which themselves are “designed in ways that limit their benefits for less affluent taxpayers.”

And, of course, it will supercharge the Trump administration’s barbaric war on immigrants, pouring $100 billion into Immigration and Customs Enforcement, all while the American public increasingly considers the agency’s actions of late to be going too far. This part of the bill, Vice President JD Vance implausibly argued, makes all of its odious effects “immaterial” by comparison.

All this while adding an estimated $3.3 trillion to the nation’s debt.

Moments after Donald Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July, he demanded something unexpected from his doctors: a CT scan of his brain.

The then-presumptive Republican presidential nominee claimed that he wanted the image as proof of his intelligence, likening the scan to an IQ test, according to an excerpt of the upcoming book 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, obtained by The Washington Post.

“Back in Trump’s room, he told the doctor he wanted a CT scan. The doctor asked why, and Trump said he felt like he needed it. He went down the hall with a squad of Secret Service agents to get the scan,” the excerpt reads. 

Trump then pressed for the image while ignoring a call from President Joe Biden, who had rung him via Trump’s then-campaign co-chair Susie Wiles.

“He asked to see the ‘film’ from the scan. The doctor said that wasn’t done anymore, and offered him a written report,” the excerpt continues, but Trump was dead set. “I want the film,” he said, according to the book.

Wiles then went to retrieve a copy of the scan image. While she was gone, Trump explained to an aide that he wanted the CT scan because he believed they “tell you that your brain is good, so I just want to have that.”

CT scans are used to detect fractures, blood clots, internal bleeding, cancers, or other ailments via cross-sectional scans of the body. They have never, however, been used to assess a person’s intelligence à la some contemporary belief in phrenology.

Trump could have been confused—MRIs have been studied as a potential intelligence indicator due to their ability to measure brain activity while resting, according to CalTech.

The current president has tried (and failed) several times to inflate perceptions of his brainpower.  During the 2024 presidential election, Trump took several cognitive exams, which he claimed to have “aced,” though his recollections of the tests called into question whether he had actually taken them at all.

While bragging about his results to the press, Trump would invariably tweak the questions he allegedly received on the test, at times boasting that he had correctly recited five words and performed basic multiplication, while at other times insisting that he had passed thanks to correctly identifying a whale. That is, in spite of the fact that the test’s authors reported that none of the three versions in circulation actually had a whale on them.

Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries has broken former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s record for longest floor speech in an attempt to delay voting on Trump’s destructive budget bill.

The House minority leader on Thursday spoke for eight hours and 44 minutes in an attempt to delay a vote on the bill, which is expected to rip away health care for the most vulnerable Americans in exchange for tax breaks for the wealthy.

“I feel the obligation, Mr. Speaker, to stand on this House floor and take my sweet time to tell the stories of the American people. And that’s exactly what I intend to do. Take my sweet time, on the behalf of the American people. And that’s exactly what I intend to do,” Jeffries said on Thursday. “On behalf of their health insurance, on behalf of their Medicaid, on behalf of their nutritional assistance, on behalf of veterans, on behalf of farmers, on behalf of children, on behalf of seniors, on behalf of people with disabilities, on behalf of small businesses, on behalf of every single American—I’m on this House floor after 6 a.m, and I am planning to take my sweet time!

“Folks in this town talking about draining the swamp—guess what? You are the swamp,” Jeffries said hours later. “You are the swamp. We’ve never seen anything like this ... the type of corruption that has been unleashed on the American people.”

Kevin McCarthy held the previous record for the longest House floor speech, when he delivered an over-eight-hour speech in February 2018.

Jeffries’s efforts, while impressive, will likely do nothing to ultimately halt the budget bill, as the GOP still has the majority.

This story has been updated.

Measles is on the rise in Kentucky.

Health officials in the state confirmed that the disease has spread to Fayette County, marking the seventh case of the highly contagious illness in Kentucky since the beginning of the year. Previous cases had been reported in Woodfood County.

There are five active measles cases in the Bluegrass State, four of which are connected to the current outbreak, while another unrelated measles case was reported in Todd County last week, according to state health officials.

The life-threatening disease has so far infected 1,267 people and spread to 37 states in what public health experts are describing as the worst measles spread of the century. The majority of those cases are in Texas, where local officials have reported at least 753 confirmed cases since January. Ninety-nine of those cases were hospitalized, and at least two cases—who were unvaccinated, school-aged children—have died. An unvaccinated adult in New Mexico has also died of the disease.

Measles hasn’t been a national concern since 2000, when the long-term use of a corresponding vaccine proved so effective at minimizing risk and exposure to the disease that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared measles eradicated from the United States.

But the virus’s dormant status has been challenged by anti-vaxxers, who have opted against medicating their children in fear that vaccinations could cause autism. One such conspiracist, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has refused to combat the ensuing measles outbreak with vetted science—instead, he has issued guidance that the illness can be treated by simple vitamins.

In April, Kennedy fell short of offering a full-throated endorsement of the MMR vaccine that has historically been used to treat measles, telling CBS News that his agency was focused on finding treatments for unvaccinated individuals while falsely claiming that the jab had not been “safety tested” and was not effective for long-term prevention. As of 2025, there are no known effective treatments or cures for measles.

The return of historically eradicated diseases is due to a growing movement of anti-vax parents who refuse to provide their children with the same public health advantages that they received in their youth, mostly in fear of thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories. The researcher who sparked that myth with a fraudulent paper lost his medical license and eventually rescinded his opinion. Since then, dozens of studies have proven there’s no correlation between autism and vaccines, including one study that surveyed more than 660,000 children over the course of 11 years.

But America’s is not the first measles response that Kennedy has bungled. Under Kennedy’s stewardship, the anti-vax nonprofit Children’s Health Defense had its own questionable history with the disease. Preceding a deadly measles outbreak on Samoa in 2019, the organization spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines throughout the nation, sending the island’s vaccination rate plummeting from the 60 to 70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones. That year, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were those of children under the age of 5.