I did what?
Senator Jeff “Hawl’in-ass-out-of-there” Hawley is a guy who likes to raise his fist defiantly, and then bravely fold his cards and run away at the first opportunity. So it was no surprise that after sharply criticizing the Big Beautiful Bill, he voted for it anyway.
Lisa Murkowski (pictured above questioning her life choices) is no coward. She’s a woman of principle–her principle apparently being “Get what you can for Alaska, and the rest of the country be damned.” It’s that kind of moral courage that makes me also question her life choices. At least, Alaska whalers can sleep better tonight.
Meanwhile, the Trump Administration has withheld nearly $7 billion in appropriated funds from key education programs–including programs for teacher training, before-and-after school programs, programs for English language learners, and adult literacy programs. The New York Times noted that the Administration did so with “little explanation.” Actually, the Times exaggerates the amount of explanation that the Administration offered. A fairer characterization would have been “with virtually no explanation.”
The reasons for the move seemed to be as mysterious to the U.S. Department of Education as it is to the rest of us. The department, which had the unenviable task of announcing the withholding of the funds, advised anyone with questions to go ask the Office of Management and Budget.
But I have a theory about why the funding for one of the programs was withheld. Typically, when the Administration discontinues programs, it says the programs are not consistent with the Administration’s policies and priorities. (It bears noting that the White House denies that it is freezing the educational funds; it is just conducting a “programmatic review.“) It would certainly make sense if the Administration decided that adult literacy programs are not consistent with the Administration’s policies and priorities: after all, Donald Trump isn’t much of a reader.
So this is a little of what the MAGA party has wrought in the last 24 or so hours. In both the vote on the Big Beautiful Bill and the Administrations’s decision to withhold crucial education funds, we have yet more opportunities to marvel at the party’s lack of character and its laser-like focus on benefiting itself and its billionaire supporters, while giving the middle finger to everyone else.