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The unemployment rate rose to 4.6%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Tuesday, the highest level since September 2021 when the economy was still recovering from massive COVID-19 job losses. The 4.6% unemployment rate is higher than the 4.5% the Federal Reserve Bank predicted it would peak at this year, and marks yet another troubling sign for the economy that President Donald Trump has crippled with his nonsensical tariffs. “Con job president” by Clay Jones The unemployment rate is worse for specific subsets of the population. Black workers have an 8.3% unemployment rate—a whopping 2 percentage point increase since January, when Trump entered office. Roughly 800,000 fewer Black workers were employed in November than they were in November a year prior. Ultimately, the economy added just 64,000 jobs since September. However, the economy lost 105,000 jobs one month prior, meaning job growth was actually negative over the last two months. “The US economy is in a hiring recession,” Heather Long, chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote in a post on X. “Almost no jobs have been added since April. Wage gains are slowing. 710,000 more people are unemployed now versus November 2024.” Long blamed the hiring recession on “a combination of tariff impacts, AI, and cost cutting.Americans are feeling it.” Even worse is that the BLS said nearly 1 million people are underemployed, working part-time jobs for economic reasons because they cannot find full-time work. With a jobs report like this, it's no wonder Americans have negative feelings about the economy. Layoffs have picked up in recent months, as companies contract due in part to Trump’s tariffs and the economic uncertainty they’ve unleashed. And prices are continuing to trend up, no matter how much Trump wants to claim that he’s brought costs down. Related | Trump says his economy is perfect, facts be damned It’s why Trump’s approval rating has plummeted over the past month, with voters voicing their discontent in a series of elections in which Democrats vastly overperformed their 2024 margins and even flipped seats that had been long held by the GOP. Republicans have begged Trump to take the economic concerns seriously. However, Trump has not heeded their calls, instead telling Americans they should simply buy fewer items if they can’t afford them. “You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils. That’s under the China policy, you know every child can get 37 pencils—they only need one or two, you know they don’t need that many,” Trump said, adding, “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter, two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls.”
The unemployment rate rose to 4.6%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Tuesday, the highest level since September 2021 when the economy was still recovering from massive COVID-19 job losses. The 4.6% unemployment rate is higher than the 4.5% the Federal Reserve Bank predicted it would peak at this year, and marks yet another troubling sign for the economy that President Donald Trump has crippled with his nonsensical tariffs. “Con job president” by Clay Jones The unemployment rate is worse for specific subsets of the population. Black workers have an 8.3% unemployment rate—a whopping 2 percentage point increase since January, when Trump entered office. Roughly 800,000 fewer Black workers were employed in November than they were in November a year prior. Ultimately, the economy added just 64,000 jobs since September. However, the economy lost 105,000 jobs one month prior, meaning job growth was actually negative over the last two months. “The US economy is in a hiring recession,” Heather Long, chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union, wrote in a post on X. “Almost no jobs have been added since April. Wage gains are slowing. 710,000 more people are unemployed now versus November 2024.” Long blamed the hiring recession on “a combination of tariff impacts, AI, and cost cutting.Americans are feeling it.” Even worse is that the BLS said nearly 1 million people are underemployed, working part-time jobs for economic reasons because they cannot find full-time work. With a jobs report like this, it's no wonder Americans have negative feelings about the economy. Layoffs have picked up in recent months, as companies contract due in part to Trump’s tariffs and the economic uncertainty they’ve unleashed. And prices are continuing to trend up, no matter how much Trump wants to claim that he’s brought costs down. Related | Trump says his economy is perfect, facts be damned It’s why Trump’s approval rating has plummeted over the past month, with voters voicing their discontent in a series of elections in which Democrats vastly overperformed their 2024 margins and even flipped seats that had been long held by the GOP. Republicans have begged Trump to take the economic concerns seriously. However, Trump has not heeded their calls, instead telling Americans they should simply buy fewer items if they can’t afford them. “You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils. That’s under the China policy, you know every child can get 37 pencils—they only need one or two, you know they don’t need that many,” Trump said, adding, “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter, two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls.”
Daily Kos
'A hiring recession': Trump's tariffs devastate job market
The unemployment rate rose to 4.6% , the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Tuesday, the highest level since September 2021 when the economy w...
The last few weeks have revealed a growing trend in Donald Trump’s presidency that his inner circle would prefer to remain shrouded in secrecy. Unlike in his first term, when Trump dominated the Republican Party with an iron fist and the slightest public criticism from a GOP lawmaker meant a political death sentence, the president now looks undeniably weak. Republicans across the country have taken note of the fact that Trump simply isn’t who he used to be. His threats no longer deliver results, as his recent failure to pressure Indiana’s supermajority of Republican state senators into mid-cycle redistricting made abundantly clear. After a string of high-profile political failures and still damaged by the MAGA base’s rage over the as-yet-unreleased Epstein Files, Trump is limping into the 2026 midterms with less political juice than ever before. “Trump’s big, beautiful wall” by Mike Luckovich It’s getting harder for the GOP to hide its concerns about what Trump’s incompetence means for next year’s elections. In a shocking private statement last week, Trump’s handpicked RNC chairman Joe Gruters admitted that Republicans are facing “almost certain defeat.” The leaked admission, first published by The Bulwark’s Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, sent the GOP into a coast-to-coast tailspin. As Gruters emphasized multiple times in his remarks, the last year has been a catastrophe for Republicans. “It’s not a secret. There’s no sugarcoating it. It’s a pending, looming disaster heading our way,” Gruters said. “The chances are Republicans will go down and will go down hard … this is an absolute disaster.” Gruters may be the first Republican leader willing to sweat Trump’s growing national unpopularity out loud, but he’s hardly the first to head for the lifeboats. This year saw GOP lawmakers resign or retire from Congress at a staggering rate, including four in the last month alone. In total, 29 Republicans have announced they will not seek reelection in 2026, nearly 60% of all retirements or resignations this year. Some have gone quietly. Others are choosing a megaphone. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has marked her own impending departure with a wave of criticism aimed at her own party leaders, including the admission that the same Republicans who swear loyalty to Trump in public also mock him behind his back. As Emily Singer noted, Greene’s departure is a “canary in a coal mine for MAGA,” not only because it narrows Speaker Mike Johnson’s already razor-thin House majority, but because Greene was once one of Trump’s closest and most influential allies. But Trump’s popularity headaches aren’t limited to stinging broadsides from his former friends. Earlier this month, the White House announced a plan to mask the damage of Trump’s tariffs by sending American families a $2,000 “tariff dividend check.” The check wouldn’t have made up for how much most families have spent in the months since Trump’s tariff policies sent prices skyrocketing, while simultaneously adding to a national debt that has already leapt past $38 trillion on Trump’s watch. Senate Republicans weren’t buying it; and for once, they were willing to say so. Trump’s $2,000 payoff fell flat with GOP leaders who are more concerned with the record $1 trillion that Trump has added to the debt in under a year. When Trump hinted that he’d be willing to bypass the Senate and send out the checks himself, even allies like Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy snapped back. "I think it's got to come through Congress," Kennedy said, adding that the White House could find itself facing Senate investigations if it tried to cut them out of the equation. Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy It’s hard to imagine Republicans feeling so comfortable criticizing Trump in 2017 or even 2020, but his latest stretch of unpopularity is record-breaking in its own right. At no point in his first term did Trump ever face such a long period of unpopularity across so many issues. And unlike in his first term, Trump’s MAGA base now directly blames him for failing to address rising prices and rising corporate layoffs. One Politico poll found that nearly 40% of Republicans thought Trump had mishandled the economy in his first year. His handling of the economy also scores dismal numbers: An Economist/YouGov poll conducted between Dec. 5-8 found him 16 points underwater on economic issues—the lowest point of his political career. But no crisis looms quite as ominously on the horizon as the vaulting cost of health care. Congressional Republicans looked to Trump to propose a path forward that would avoid the punishing increases to Americans’ health insurance premiums, only to find the president uninterested and “hands-off” about their biggest political liability. Last week a proposal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies failed in the Senate, in large part because Trump simply refused to get involved despite frantic Republican requests for his help. For the Republicans still trying to win reelection next year, Trump now looks more like a liability than an asset. Trump’s mishandling of the economy and health care has convinced Greene that there’s no hope left for Republicans ahead of 2026, when she expects voters to punish the GOP for their legendary level of incompetence. “I do believe at this time that Republicans will lose the midterms, and I think that’s unfortunate,” Greene said in a CBS News interview last week. “I very much wanted to be part of a Republican majority in Congress that solved problems for the American people, that delivered what we promised to America.” Voters—even those who supported Trump in 2024—are waking up to the fact that Trump and the GOP have made their lives worse in nearly every way possible, and that the White House has no plan for pulling them back from the financial brink. The smarter Republicans recognize that with voters this angry, distancing themselves from Trump is now a matter of political survival. With veteran Republican lawmakers retiring from the party in droves and even more facing tough reelection campaigns in dozens of swing districts, the party’s panic has never been more palpable. As they fight to avert a possible electoral wipeout in November, the GOP needs a strategic and savvy leader more than ever. Unfortunately, all they have is Trump.
On Monday, President Donald Trump fired off a hateful Truth Social post about Rob Reiner, the legendary Hollywood director who, along with his wife Michele, were stabbed to death in their home. Trump said that Reiner—who has spent millions championing Democratic candidates and progressive causes such as LGBTQ+ equality—was killed because he hated Trump. “Clinging to the wreckage” by Jack Ohman "A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS," Trump wrote. "He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!" It's hard to know where to begin to unpack how absolutely deranged and sick Trump's post really is. First, we have no idea why Reiner and his wife were murdered. TMZ reported that one of Reiner's sons has been arrested, suspected of slitting both Reiner and his wife's throats after an argument with an unnamed family member—though there was no information on what the argument was about or who the family member was. The suspect, Nick Reiner, has long struggled with drug addiction. No matter what the argument was about, to suggest that Reiner and his wife deserved to be killed because they disliked someone is beyond sick for anyone to say, let alone the president of the United States. Yet that’s par for the course for Trump, who danced on the grave of the late Sen. John McCain, called military members who died “suckers and losers,” and seems to delight in the pain he inflicts on others daily. But what’s more, Trump’s disgusting comment about Reiner is especially galling because Trump himself had vowed to use his power of the presidency to punish anyone who he accused of using rhetoric that led to the death of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist who was also brutally murdered. Related | Trump uses Kirk's death to silence critics—and voters aren't pleased "For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today and it must stop right now,” Trump said on the day of Kirk’s death, adding that he was going to go after anyone who "contributed to this atrocity and to other political organizations that fund it and support it.” For example, Trump tried to force ABC to get late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air, after Kimmel spoke about how Trump and his MAGA allies were trying to gain political points from Kirk’s killing. At the end of the day, Trump is such an egomaniac that he couldn't help but bask in schadenfreude when someone he disliked was brutally murdered. And his comment was so appalling that even some Republicans grew a spine to criticize it. “Regardless of how you felt about Rob Reiner, this is inappropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who has become a thorn in Trump’s side, wrote in a post on X. “I guess my elected GOP colleagues, the VP, and White House staff will just ignore it because they’re afraid? I challenge anyone to defend it.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has become increasingly critical of her once Dear Leader, also called out Trump’s post. “Rob Reiner and his wife were tragically killed at the hands of their own son, who reportedly had drug addiction and other issues, and their remaining children are left in serious mourning and heartbreak. This is a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies,” Greene wrote in a post on X. “Many families deal with a family member with drug addiction and mental health issues. It’s incredibly difficult and should be met with empathy especially when it ends in murder.”
Hi all! Daily Kos is in the middle of the biggest transformation we’ve taken on in more than 20 years, and I want to keep you fully in the loop as we build it. This is your community, and you deserve to see how it’s coming together behind the scenes. The move to WordPress is well underway. If you want the background, I’ve written about why we’re doing it, and you’ve already met your Community Advisory Panel—which has been deeply involved every step of the way. Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas We’re on track for a March launch, and if everything continues as planned, you’ll get your first hands-on look in January, when the public beta opens. I can’t wait for you to take it for a spin! One of the biggest decisions recently was choosing a new commenting platform. WordPress’ native system just can’t support the volume and complexity of what you all do here every day. That sent us into a serious search for something powerful enough to handle Daily Kos-scale conversation. Only three companies were viable candidates. One was easy to dismiss: too expensive, and reliant on a one-size-fits-all AI moderation engine that set our teeth on edge. That wasn’t ever going to be acceptable. No part of this community’s moderation is getting handed off to a robot—especially not in the current political climate, where it’s obvious how easily that kind of system could be abused. That left two strong contenders, each with real strengths and drawbacks. We pulled in the Community Advisory Panel early, gave them full access, and even brought the two finalists in to pitch directly to them. It was a tough call. The panel wasn’t unanimous. But after a lot of evaluation and discussion, we chose Viafoura. It’s the most fully rounded option for what we need right now, and I think a lot of you will love what it brings. Comments Viafoura’s commenting system is fast and reliable, and already serving huge publications like People and The Telegraph. It keeps all the basics you expect, and adds a new “featured comments” area where authors and moderators can pull standout contributions into a dedicated tab. Viafoura also has an AI model designed to surface constructive comments. We’ll experiment with it, but nothing replaces human judgment, and manual picks always take priority. Here is another look at this feature, this one from Viafoura’s own internal pitch documents: (“HQB” is what Viafoura calls its AI-selected comments. It stands for “High Quality” something.) One thing I’m hoping for—and we’ll know more during implementation—is that community authors will also be able to pin comments in their own stories and diaries. That’s not guaranteed yet, but you know I’m pushing for it. And of course, this new “featured” tab won’t replace or interfere with our long-running community Top Comments. That series is sacred. We can name this tab anything we want. Viafoura also delivers tools that open up new kinds of engagement we haven’t really been able to offer before. Q&A We’ll be able to host live structured Q&As—think Reddit AMAs (Ask Me Anythings), if you’ve seen those. They’re essentially real-time interviews where a guest answers questions submitted by the community, often producing some of the most informative and engaging conversations on the internet. With Viafoura’s version built directly into the site, we’ll finally be able to run those kinds of interactive sessions here with experts, candidates, staff, and community members. Live chat The live chat feature has huge potential. Think of it as a fast-moving, real-time conversation thread that updates instantly as people post. Debate nights, election nights, major breaking news—all of it becomes fodder for live community discussion without the clunkiness we’ve been living with. There are also ways the community itself might use running chats, and I’m already imagining what a Pootie chat stream would look like! Behind the scenes, Viafoura’s moderation tools are light-years ahead of what we have now. They won’t be visible to you, but the difference will absolutely be noticeable. The team will be able to manage trolls, spammers, and bad-faith actors more quickly and effectively, which means a cleaner, smoother commenting experience for everyone. Of course, there are compromises. The advisory panel wasn’t split for nothing. The biggest early obstacle was that Viafoura didn’t support embedded images in comments. That was a dealbreaker for us, but they agreed to move it to the top of their development queue. We expect that functionality to be ready by launch, though it won’t appear during the beta period. Images won’t tie into our site’s media library, so you’ll upload from your device each time, more like traditional social media. A harder short-term limitation is that Viafoura doesn’t yet allow embeds of any kind in comments—not images, not videos, not social media posts. That is changing. As part of our negotiations, they committed to tackling embeddable content immediately after finishing image uploads. Their current timeline puts this gap somewhere between zero and six weeks after launch. Not ideal, but it’s a temporary limitation. And importantly, this limitation applies only to comments. WordPress stories/diaries will support full embeds from Day 1. While all this is happening, we’re also using the migration as a chance to clean up our site navigation. We’re not doing a full redesign at the same time—that’s a recipe for cost overruns and chaos—but we are stripping away 24 years of clutter. Right now the site header is overloaded with hashtags, menus, icons, and a search bar that barely functions. The new version simplifies everything down to the essentials: Ignore the purple Ks; they’re just mockup artifacts. This isn’t the final version, and the menu items may shift, but the direction is clear. Log in, and the simplified look remains: We’re also removing the big top-of-page ad, which goes a long way toward giving the site a cleaner, more modern feel. At launch, the search bar will only index stories. Because the comment system is separate, comment search won’t be ready immediately, but we’re exploring ways to add it after the migration. There’s a lot happening behind the scenes, and it’s all moving quickly. I’m excited for you to see the beta in January. This migration isn’t just a technical upgrade—it’s a chance to set Daily Kos up for the next 20 years, with tools that support the community you’ve built and the conversations that make this place what it is. If you’re on the Community Advisory Panel, thank you for your guidance. And if you’re not, know that you are absolutely part of this process. Every decision we make here is about creating a better Daily Kos for all of us.
President Donald Trump has issued a “symbolic” pardon of Tina Peters, once the clerk for Mesa County, Colorado, but now a convicted felon for a little light election security breach to try to overturn the 2020 election results. It turns out that when you do an actual crime, such as using your position as county clerk to give a random, unauthorized fellow election denier access to secure election equipment, you actually get convicted. Tina Peters The problem for Peters—and Trump—is that Trump cannot simply wave his pardon wand and free her since she was convicted in state court. And of course, Trump can’t pardon state court convictions, much to his chagrin. This fake pardon seems to have come about because, earlier this week, a federal magistrate denied Peters’ attempt to get a federal court to release her on bond while she appeals her state sentence. The magistrate pointed to a basic, bedrock principle of federalism and the courts: Federal judges can’t just reach down and meddle in state criminal cases. So, of course, Trump took to Truth Social to yell about it, granting Peters “a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election!” Okay, grandpa, let’s get you to bed. Trump has been banging this drum for months now, saying he will impose some unspecified “harsh measures” against Colorado if it doesn’t free Peters. Those harsh measures haven’t yet materialized, but at least Peters gets to feel special getting her fake pardon. The Department of Justice also keeps trying to free Peters, filing a “statement of interest” in March, saying that “reasonable concerns have been raised” and that it was part of their larger review of cases “across the nation for abuses of the criminal justice process” and that it was part of the efforts to end the weaponization of the federal government. Cool story, bro. But this is state court and state government. The Federal Bureau of Prisons also got involved, seeking to transfer Peters from state to federal custody, where she could presumably get the Ghislaine Maxwell “special treatment for Trump friends” level of amenities. A cartoon by Pedro Molina. Or perhaps the muddled thinking is that, if she is somehow transferred to a federal prison, then Trump can magically pardon her for her state crimes. The fake pardon follows Trump’s other symbolic pardons—which are, again, not a real thing—of Rudy Giuliani and other election-denying cronies who got jammed up in state court. But that gosh-darn federalism keeps stopping Trump from being able to tell states who they can and cannot prosecute. In all seriousness, this is a wholesale attack on federalism. It’s the Trump administration telling Colorado repeatedly that it does not acknowledge state sovereignty and does not believe the state can take action against its own citizens in its own courts if Trump doesn’t like it. That’s not how the United States works. But this administration doesn’t care.
Wisconsin's Ron Johnson has a history of spreading vaccine misinformation. Now he's giving credence to assertions about the therapeutic powers of chlorine dioxide, a disinfectant and deodorizer. “It is all lunacy," one expert said. By Megan O’Matz for ProPublica For years, Sen. Ron Johnson has been spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation about COVID-19 and the safety of vaccines. He’s promoted disproven treatments for COVID-19 and claimed, without evidence, that athletes are “dropping dead on the field” after getting the COVID-19 vaccination. Now the Wisconsin politician is endorsing a book by a discredited doctor promoting an unproven and dangerous treatment for autism and a host of ailments: chlorine dioxide, a chemical used for disinfecting and bleaching. The book is “The War on Chlorine Dioxide: The Medicine that Could End Medicine” by Dr. Pierre Kory, a critical care specialist who practiced in Wisconsin hospitals before losing his medical certification for statements advocating using an antiparasite medication to treat COVID-19. The action, he’s said, makes him unemployable, even though he still has a license. Kory has said there’s a globally coordinated campaign by public health agencies, the drug industry and the media to suppress evidence of the medicinal wonders of chlorine dioxide. His book, according to its website, contends that the “remarkable molecule” works “to treat everything from cancer and malaria to autism and COVID.” The book jacket features a prominent blurb from Johnson calling the doctor’s treatise: “A gripping tale of corruption and courage that will open eyes and prompt serious questions.” Chlorine dioxide is a chemical compound that has a range of applications, including as a disinfectant and deodorizer. Food processing plants apply it to sanitize surfaces and equipment. Hospitals use it to sterilize medical devices, and some municipalities use low levels to treat public water supplies. Paper mills rely on it to whiten wood pulp. Safety experts advise those who handle it to work in well-ventilated spaces and to wear protective gloves. A health care worker prepares a shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. Concentrations in drinking water systems higher than 0.8 milligrams per liter can be harmful, especially to infants, young children and fetuses, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Still, for many years people in online discussion groups have been promoting the use of chlorine dioxide in a mixture that they call a “miracle mineral solution,” ingested to rid people of a host of maladies. The Food and Drug Administration has warned that drinking these chlorine dioxide mixtures can cause injury and even death. It is not medicinal, despite Kory’s contention. “It is all lunacy. Absolutely, it’s 100% nonsense,” said Joe Schwarcz, director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society in Montreal and an expert on the threat of pseudoscience. Schwarcz has written articles about the so-called miracle mineral solution, calling it “a poison” when it’s in high concentrations. Kory’s book, set to be released to the public in January, argues that word of chlorine dioxide’s effectiveness has been suppressed by government and medical forces that need people to remain perpetually ill to generate large profits. The use of the word “war” in the title is fitting, Kory said in a recent online video on his co-author’s Substack. “In the book I detail many, many assassination attempts of doctors who try to bring out knowledge around chlorine dioxide,” he said. Johnson confirmed to ProPublica in an email that he authorized the statement on the cover. “After reading the entire book, yes I provided and approved that blurb,” he said. “Have you read the book?” ProPublica asked Kory and his co-author, Jenna McCarthy, to provide an advance copy, an interview and responses to written questions. Kory did not respond. McCarthy wrote in an email to ProPublica that she was addressing some of the questions on her Substack. (She did not send a book or agree to an interview.) The book “is a comprehensive examination of the existing evidence and a plea for open-minded inquiry and rigorous research,” she wrote on Substack. She dismissed warnings about chlorine dioxide’s toxicity in high concentrations, writing: “Everything has a toxic dose — including nutmeg, spinach, and tap water.” She said that chlorine dioxide is being studied in controlled settings by researchers in the United States and Latin America and that “the real debate is how it should be used, at what dose, and in which clinical contexts.” Her Substack post was signed “Jenna (& Pierre).” Johnson did not agree to an interview and did not answer questions emailed to his office by ProPublica, including whether he views chlorine dioxide as a world-changing medical treatment and whether he believes the FDA warnings are false. “It’s Called Snake Oil” Johnson has been an advocate of Kory’s for years, calling the doctor as an expert witness in two 2020 Senate hearings. In one, Kory championed taking the drug ivermectin, an antiparasite medicine, to treat COVID-19. In 2021, an analysis of data from clinical trials concluded that ivermectin could reduce deaths from COVID-19 and may produce other positive effects. McCarthy cited that analysis in her Substack response. In 2022, however, the American Journal of Therapeutics, which had published the study, warned that suspicious data “appears to invalidate the findings” regarding ivermectin’s potential to decrease deaths. A syringe of of ivermectin, a drug used to kill worms and other parasites and intended for use in horses only. Later clinical trials have found no beneficial effect of ivermectin for COVID-19, and the FDA has warned that taking large doses can be dangerous. The drug’s manufacturer has said it hadn’t found any scientific basis for the idea that ivermectin can effectively treat COVID-19. Kory, though, continued advocating for ivermectin. In 2024 the American Board of Internal Medicine, which credentials physicians in certain specialties, revoked Kory’s certifications in internal medicine, pulmonary disease and critical care for making false and misleading public statements about the ability of ivermectin to treat COVID-19. Hospitals and many insurance networks typically require doctors to be board certified. Kory vigorously fought the disciplinary action, arguing to the ABIM that he provided substantial medical and scientific evidence to support his recommendations for addressing COVID-19, though not the “consensus-driven” approach. He also sued the board in federal court, citing his free speech rights in a case that is still progressing in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On Substack, McCarthy excoriated the ABIM, saying it “bullies physicians” and “enforces ideological conformity.” In 2022, Johnson and Kory penned a Fox News op-ed opposing a California bill that would strip doctors’ licenses for espousing misinformation about COVID-19. The bill became law but was repealed after a court fight. A federal judge found the statute’s definition of misinformation to be too vague, which could infringe on doctors’ right to free speech. Johnson, who has been in Congress since 2011, has a history of advocating for experimental treatments and viewing the government as an impediment. Dr. Peter Lurie, president and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a public health advocacy group, said that among members of Congress, Johnson was “an early adopter of anti-science ideas.” Lurie said that Johnson is no longer an outlier in Washington, which now has many more elected lawmakers whom he considers anti-science. “What may have started off as the cutting edge of an anti-science movement has now turned into a much more broader-based movement that is supported by millions of people,” he said. Earlier this year, Johnson held a hearing highlighting a flawed study claiming that vaccinated children had an increased rate of serious chronic diseases when compared to children who were not vaccinated. The conclusion questions the scientific consensus that vaccines are safe. The study’s researchers chose not to publish it because of problems they found in their data and methodology. In November, Johnson and Kory were listed among the speakers at a conference of the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that stirs anti-vaccine sentiment. It was launched in 2018 by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose FDA is considering new ways to more closely scrutinize vaccine safety. HHS did not respond to requests from ProPublica about Kennedy’s views on chlorine dioxide. At his confirmation hearing, Kennedy praised President Donald Trump for his wide search for a COVID-19 remedy in his first term, which Kennedy said included vaccines, various drugs, “even chlorine dioxide.” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kory’s publisher is listed as Bella Luna Press, which has issued at least two other titles by McCarthy. “Thanks to the Censorship Industrial Complex, you won’t find The War on Chlorine Dioxide on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble. We had to design and build this website, figure out formatting and printing and shipping, and manage every aspect of order processing ourselves,” the book’s website states. (A representative for Bella Luna could not be reached for comment.) As this new book is released, the autism community is also grappling with another controversy: the unsubstantiated assertion by Kennedy that Tylenol use by pregnant women poses an increased risk of autism. In addition, under Kennedy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revised its website in November to cast doubt on the long-held scientific conclusion that childhood vaccines do not cause autism. Some parents of children with autism, desperate for a remedy, have long reached for dubious and at times dangerous panaceas, including hyperbaric oxygen chambers and chelation therapy, used for the treatment of heavy metal poisoning. Neither method has been proven effective. Helen Tager-Flusberg, director of the Center for Autism Research Excellence at Boston University, said Johnson has “acted extremely irresponsibly” in lending his name to a book making claims about chlorine dioxide treating autism. “Wisconsin is filled with experts — clinical experts, medical experts, scientists — who understand and have studied autism and treatments for autism for many many years,” she said. “He’s chosen to completely ignore the clinical and the scientific community.” People with autism may take medication to reduce anxiety, address attention problems, or reduce severe irritability. Many benefit from behavioral interventions and special education services to help with learning and functional abilities. But there is no cure, said Tager-Flusberg. Referring to chlorine dioxide, she said: “We have had examples of this probably throughout the history of medicine. There’s a word for this, it’s called snake oil.” In her response on Substack to ProPublica, McCarthy wrote that “chlorine dioxide is being used to treat (nobody said ‘cure’) autism with life-changing results.” The Search for Miracle Cures The mother of an autistic son, Melissa Eaton of North Carolina, heard Kory reference his book in early November on The HighWire, an internet talk show hosted by Del Bigtree, a prominent vaccine skeptic and former communications director for Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign. She then looked up the book online and noticed Johnson’s endorsement. Eaton for many years has worked to expose people who peddle chlorine dioxide and to report apparent injuries to authorities. She monitors social media forums where parents discuss giving it to their children orally or via enemas. Sometimes the families reveal that their children are sick. “They’re throwing up and vomiting and having diarrhea and rashes,” Eaton said. Some adherents advise parents that the disturbing effects indicate that the treatment is working, ridding the body of impurities, or that the parents should alter the dosage. “Most of these kids are nonverbal,” Eaton said. “They’re not able to say what’s hurting them or what’s happening to them. The parents feel they’re doing the right thing. That’s how they view this: They’re helping to cure autism.” The idea that chlorine dioxide can be a miracle cure began to spread about 20 years ago when a gold prospector, Jim Humble, wrote a book claiming his team in Guyana fell ill with malaria and recovered after drinking safe amounts of chlorine dioxide. Humble later co-founded a “health and healing” church in Florida with a man named Mark Grenon, who called himself an archbishop and sold a chlorine dioxide solution as a cure for COVID-19. They described it as a “miracle mineral solution,” or MMS. Grenon went to prison in 2023 for conspiring to defraud the United States by distributing an unapproved and misbranded drug. The scheme took in more than $1 million, according to prosecutors. Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. An affidavit in the case filed by a special agent with the FDA Office of Criminal Investigations noted: “FDA has received numerous reports of adverse reactions to MMS. These adverse reactions include hospitalizations, life-threatening conditions, and death.” Grenon, who is now out of prison, told ProPublica that he too is writing a book about chlorine dioxide. “My book will tell the truth.” He declined further comment. Chlorine dioxide is currently used in many ways that are not harmful. It is found in some consumer products like mouthwashes, but it is not meant to be swallowed in those instances. (One popular mouthwash warns to “keep out of reach of children.”) It’s also available to consumers in do-it-yourself packages where they combine drops from two bottles of different compounds — commonly sodium chlorite and hydrochloric acid — and add it to water. Hikers often carry the drops, or tablets, using small amounts to make quarts of fresh water potable. But numerous online shoppers post product reviews that go further, referring to it as a tonic. Various online guides, some aimed at parents of autistic children, recommend a shot-glass-size dose, sometimes given multiple times a day and even hourly. That can far exceed the threshold the EPA considers safe. McCarthy, addressing ProPublica on Substack, wrote: “You point to various online guides that offer what could be considered dangerous dosing instructions. We agree, the internet is a terrifying wasteland of misinformation and disinformation.” In the Substack video, Kory said he felt compelled to spread the word about chlorine dioxide much as he did about ivermectin, even though it cost him professionally. He no longer has a valid medical license in Wisconsin or California, where he did not renew them, according to the Substack post. His medical licenses in New York and Michigan are active. “I like to say I was excommunicated from the church of the medical establishment,” he said in the Substack video. As a result, he said, he turned to telehealth and started a practice. In the Nov. 6 HighWire episode hosted by Bigtree, the discussion included talk not just of chlorine dioxide’s medicinal potential but also of how cheap and easy it is to obtain. “On Amazon, it’s literally, you get two bottles, well, it comes in two,” Kory started to explain, before stopping that train of thought. “I wouldn’t know how to make it,” he said.
The rent is too damn high, and two New York Democrats are trying to fight back. First, New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Michael Lohan Jr.—brother of actor Lindsay Lohan—alongside his business partners at Peak Capital Advisors for allegedly deregulating 159 rent-stabilized housing units across 31 buildings through illegal means. “It is no secret that New York City is already battling an affordable housing crisis, and yet Peak and its operators still chose to line their own pockets at New Yorkers’ expense,” James said in a statement from Dec. 1. “Let this lawsuit be a warning: When corporate developers and bad landlords try to cheat housing laws, my office will always take aggressive action to stop them.” According to James, the law says landlords can end rent stabilization on an apartment if it requires “substantial rehabilitation,” but her office, in conjunction with New York State Homes and Community Renewal Commissioner RuthAnne Visnauskas, claims that “none of Peak’s properties met these strict legal requirements.” Peak also allegedly misled tenants into signing leases that misconstrued the units’ rent-stabilization status. This kind of alleged behavior highlights an ongoing struggle for New Yorkers. Rent is climbing—even for rent-stabilized apartments—and little has been done recently to slow it. New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, shown in November. Enter Democrat No. 2: New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. In less than a month, he will move into Gracie Mansion, and he is already working on fulfilling his campaign promise to freeze rent for stabilized tenants. On Tuesday, in a closed-door meeting, Mamdani met with real estate executives and members of two industry groups. After the meeting, Mamdani told reporters that he was open to hearing the real estate world’s concerns and finding “areas of collaboration” between them. He was also scheduled to meet with advocacy groups for unhoused people. Daily Kos reached out to Mamdani’s press team for comment on the Peak Capital Advisors case as it relates to his housing efforts, but we did not receive a response by time of publication. Outside of his closed-door meetings, Mamdani has given a glimpse into how he plans to stop the rent hikes for stabilized housing. As members of the city’s Rent Guidelines Board approach the end of their terms, Mamdani will replace them with people “who understand that landlords are doing just fine,” according to a video on his campaign website. “Last March, the board found that landlord incomes rose by nearly twice the increase of their expenses. The median income for a rent-stabilized household is $60,000 a year. Any rent hike could push them out of this city," he added. Mamdani seems to know the appeal of rent stabilization in the city that never sleeps. After all, he’s giving up his own pad in Queens to live in Gracie Mansion once he takes office in January. It remains to be seen if Mamdani will have what it takes to truly help middle- and low-income New Yorkers in their battle to remain New Yorkers for years to come—but he and James seem to be making serious moves.
Where does Republican Rep. Nancy Mace find the time? She’s a 24-7 transphobe, a lady you do not want to find yourself in line with at the airport, and a creepy bathroom cop. But since she’s sort of a Renaissance Man of bigotry, she cleared a bit of her schedule to introduce a bill that would require the renaming of Black Lives Matter Plaza to “Charlie Kirk Freedom of Speech Plaza.” Mace announced this in a press release on the three-month anniversary of Kirk’s death, because apparently, we celebrate three-month anniversaries of people’s deaths now? Do we have to do this monthly? Rep. Nancy Mace Here’s part of Mace’s justification: “After Charlie Kirk was assassinated in cold blood, the nation responded with zero riots, zero looting, zero injuries, and zero destruction. Americans gathered in prayer, peace, and unity, exercising the very free speech rights Charlie spent his life defending.” Lady, you ghouls hounded literally everyone who expressed even the mildest lack of worship of Kirk, getting them fired and doxxed. Free speech, mm-hmmm. Also according to Mace, we should rename it because Charlie said so: “Prior to his death, Charlie Kirk himself visited the site and called for an end to what he termed ‘mass race hysteria,’ stating ‘Make America Great Again, get rid of Black Lives Matter Plaza,’ while characterizing the plaza's designation as part of divisive policies under former D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.” So, although Kirk’s death had nothing to do with the plaza or Black Lives Matter or anything even remotely related, we should strip the plaza of its name, because Kirk popped off some racist claptrap about it once. Oh, Mace is also doing it for the police who were mistreated during the George Floyd uprising: “Our officers were assaulted, vilified, and abandoned in 2020. This redesignation sends a clear message: we will always stand for American values and fiercely defend the brave men and women who wear the badge.” Huh. Wonder if Mace feels that way about the officers who were assaulted, vilified, and abandoned on Jan. 6. No, no she does not. Indeed, she bristles at even being asked by the press about whether it was appropriate for Trump to pardon violent Jan. 6 offenders, including those who assaulted police. You see, it’s fine that they were pardoned because “The folks who were at J6 and have served their time for the crimes they did. They’ve done that, and I support President Trump.” Well, the whole point of those pardons was that people did not actually have to serve their time. When further pressed about Trump’s pardon of an insurrectionist originally sentenced to serve 40 months for assaulting a police officer, she just said “He is released and I support that” and then decided to attack the media. “Somebody like you and the legacy media wants to give everybody a pass for Antifa members, Black Lives Matter members that tried to burn cities down and didn’t serve a single day in jail.” This bit about demanding that Black Lives Matter Plaza be renamed isn’t just racist. It’s also about undermining Washington's home rule. The D.C. council voted to symbolically designate Black Lives Matter Plaza in 2020, and the law became effective in March 2021, but Mace is here to remind Washington that Republicans get to overrule the will of the people of the District. Related | Florida college finalizes partisan descent with Kirk statue Honestly, Mace is late to the game here. Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott proposed renaming some chunk of Washington’s streets after Kirk way back in October, but he didn’t have the stones to go full bigot and demand that it replace the Black Lives Matter Plaza. Wuss. Takes a woman to do a man’s job. Do you think there will be a statue?
During a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was forced to justify her department’s pressure for a military veteran to leave the country as part of President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant push. When asked by Democratic Rep. Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island how many veterans her department has deported Noem denied it all. “We have not deported U.S. citizens or military veterans,” she responded. YouTube Video In response, Magaziner held up a tablet featuring a live Zoom call with Sae Joon Park, a former resident of Honolulu, Hawaii. Magaziner explained that Park is a military veteran who was shot twice while serving in Panama in 1989 and that, after suffering from PTSD, Park was arrested for nonviolent minor drug offenses. “He is a combat veteran, a Purple Heart recipient. He has sacrificed more for this country than most people ever have,” Magaziner said. “Earlier this year, you deported him to Korea, a country he hasn’t lived in since he was 7 years old.” Magaziner noted that Noem has broad authority to decide who is removed from the country and asked her to reexamine Park’s case, which Noem claimed she would do. A cartoon by Clay Bennett. In June, Park left the United States, telling a local TV station that he was pressured to self-deport after DHS said he would be imprisoned for his drug offenses. He left behind a mother suffering through early-stage dementia and his adult daughter and son. “I won't be there for a funeral, like my daughter getting married, just there's a lot of things connected with it. I definitely know that,” he said at the time. The Trump administration has been under fire for targeting veterans as part of its anti-immigrant operations. Some estimates indicate that more than 10,000 veterans have been deported by the Trump administration. “They defended this country. They raised their hand and they swore to uphold the Constitution, and then they come home and we say, ‘Oh, thanks for your service, get out.’ It’s wrong,” Air Force veteran Michelle Byrd explained at a November protest in Arizona, Unable to meet Trump’s mass deportation goals, the administration has now embraced a self-deportation strategy. The goal is to threaten people with undocumented status with imprisonment or denial of financial services in an effort to force them to remove themselves from the country. People like Park are being caught in the crossfire. And while Noem tries to busy herself with photo ops and gushing over Trump, pretending that the problem doesn’t exist won’t make it go away.
Linda McMahon is out here as the secretary of whatever shards of the Education Department are left, and now she’s bragging about how proud she is to end a Biden-era loan forgiveness plan. McMahon announced Tuesday that the Trump administration is ending the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) repayment plan, which lowered payments and interest rates and forgave loan balances after 10 years of payments for loans of $12,000 or less. An additional one year of payment was required for every $1,000 beyond that, with a maximum repayment term of 25 years. Education Secretary Linda McMahon stands beside President Donald Trump as he signs an executive order in April. This is thanks to a sham settlement between the Trump administration and several GOP states that sued the Biden administration for creating the SAVE plan. The settlement, such as it is, is just to kill off the plan entirely, and the Education Department could not be more pleased. “Thanks to the State of Missouri and other states fighting against this egregious federal overreach, American taxpayers can now rest assured they will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for illegal and irresponsible student loan policies,” said Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent. Let’s recap. Former President Joe Biden’s tweaking of student loan forgiveness rules was considered the most pernicious overreach of executive authority known to man, per Chief Justice John Roberts. But President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the Education Department is well within his power. According to Kent, “The law is clear: if you take out a loan, you must pay it back." Really? Payment Protection Program loan forgiveness was already up to $757 billion in 2023, whereas the SAVE program—if you believe McMahon’s numbers—would cost $342 billion over 10 years. But what about if you commit massive fraud and owe the government and your victims money? No you don’t, as long as you bribe Trump for clemency. No repayment obligations there! Related | Trump follows through on promise to destroy the Education Department It’s mighty convenient to have this settlement come along and kill SAVE, one of the few lingering student loan forgiveness options. Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” eliminated everything save for a “standard plan,” where the only relief is getting more time to repay larger balances and a “repayment assistance plan,” which may offer some relief to low-income borrowers and people who can’t make the payments of the standard plan. So in theory, some of the 7 million borrowers who will be kicked off of SAVE in the next few weeks could go on that plan. Except, whoops, it doesn’t exist until July 1, 2026. It’s crazy how long it takes to develop a plan like this but how swiftly the administration can move when it wants to restart collections on student loans. The administration is deeply committed to destroying access to higher education for anyone who isn’t white and wealthy, and destroying SAVE is just a part of that plan. The “One Big, Beautiful Bill” also capped graduate school loans at $200,000, which is generally not enough to cover law or medical school. The definition of who qualifies as seeking a “professional degree” has also changed to now exclude nurses, preventing them from accessing higher loan amounts that are available for professional or graduate degrees. A cartoon by Pedro Molina. Trump is also trying to hobble the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program by giving McMahon the complete authority to declare that any employer isn’t actually a public service employer, and therefore ineligible for loan forgiveness. But that’s sort of unnecessary, since 99% of people were rejected from loan forgiveness during Trump’s first term anyway. But maybe none of this matters in light of the fact that the Education Department is considering privatizing the federal government’s $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio, which would be ridiculously chaotic for borrowers. Student loans are the perfect playground for the Trump administration. By making loans less attainable and less affordable, they ensure that none of the “wrong” people get to go to school, particularly to study law and medicine. By screwing with loan forgiveness, Trump can dole out treats to favored groups while withholding them from others. You know who does get loan forgiveness? Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons, that’s who. By treating student loans as an asset to sell, the administration essentially gets to play with house money, a windfall at the expense of borrowers. It’s deeply cynical, anti-democratic, and quintessential Trump.
