“Thanks to a bill approved as part of the package that ended the federal shutdown, intoxicating hemp products will be federally prohibited as of November 13, 2026, a year after President Donald Trump signed the legislation. Unless Congress intervenes, that ban will put an end to a $28 billion industry that offers psychoactive beverages, edibles, flower, and vape cartridges to consumers in dozens of states.”
VPNs are needed for basic privacy, hiding from government overreach, working from home, and corporate security. Banning them like a bill in Michigan does, would be bad economically and an attack on liberty, privacy, and security.
“Republicans once talked seriously about aligning taxes and spending. They cared about economic distortion, simplicity, and broadening the tax base. Now, too many just want the sugar rush of tax cuts without fiscal discipline. Meanwhile, Democrats want to vastly expand the state and pretend that billionaires alone can foot the bill. Both sides are wrong. The math doesn’t work, and the morality of the reckless spending is worse.
Those who want to frame this bill as pro-growth are dreaming. They’re relying on unrealistic economic assumptions about a short-run bump to justify the consequences of long-term debt increases—and banking on cost-disguising budget gimmicks that nobody takes seriously.”
Repeated Republican presidents and Congresses have told us that tax cuts will pay for themselves, and they repeatedly have not paid for themselves. Tax cuts like these are budget busters.
Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is horrible policy and greatly adds to the debt and deficit.
Trump’s superpower is his ability to threaten members of congress with primary challenges. Republican members of congress know the bill is a bunch of shit shoved together, but they voted for it anyways because they are weak cowards.
Congress is broken and has been broken for some time. Regular order where Congress members debate and understand bills is dead.
States like Alaska got a sweet deal by avoiding some of the bad policy coming from the bill. This was done to convince senators to vote for it.
Huge debt, bad policy, and sweetheart deals…where’s the tea party!?
“These reversals may be surprising, but they were not remarkable. It was par for the course for congressional Republicans who, in recent years, have shown a proclivity for taking bold, theatrical stands before meekly capitulating in the face of political pressure — particularly from President Donald Trump.”
“The popular child tax credit will receive a slight boost from President Trump’s signature tax and spending bill — but there are caveats.
Currently, taxpayers who make under $200,000 annually as a single filer, or $400,000 if filing jointly, can qualify for a partially refundable credit of up to $2,000 for each child they claim as a dependent who is under age 17 and a US citizen or qualifying noncitizen.
The new legislation increases the credit to a maximum $2,200 per child. Without the bill, the maximum credit would have reverted to $1,000.
But the increase, which amounts to a 10% bump, follows years of rising prices that have chipped away at the value of the original benefit. And many extremely low-income children — in addition to US citizen kids of undocumented parents — will be locked out of the payments altogether.”
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“To qualify for the refundable portion of the child tax credit, which is called the “additional child tax credit” and can be worth up to $1,700, taxpayers must earn at least $2,500 in annual income. (A refundable tax credit can lower tax liability past zero, potentially generating a refund.) Families who make less than that receive no benefit, while many more children are in low-income households that earn just enough to receive part of the benefit but not enough to receive the full payment.”
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“The average benefit for taxpayers with children who made between $10,000 and $20,000 in 2022, for example, was $800, according to the Congressional Research Service. That pay range includes people who worked full-time jobs at the federal minimum wage. Families earning between $200,000 and $500,000, meanwhile, saw an average benefit of $2,810.”
“As Republicans began to consider their bill in January, Trump promised to “love and cherish” Medicaid. But he ultimately embraced the cuts as necessary to get the bill passed and lobbied reluctant GOP representatives and senators to go along.”
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“Other entitlements like Medicare and Social Security, which both serve elderly people, were deemed too politically risky to touch. Trump has been even more adamant about not reducing benefits in Medicare and Social Security, a cornerstone of his first campaign in 2016, than he was about Medicaid.”