Odds and Ends — 17 June 2025
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, AI, and Debt:
Tron’s Wall Street hopes could implode with TRX as collateral
Trump’s ’Revenge Tax’ Could Threaten Investment
Foreign investment into the US could be threatened by Donald Trump’s new ‘revenge’ taxes.
A provision within the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will allow the US to apply higher taxes on foreign individuals, businesses and investors connected to jurisdictions that impose ‘unfair foreign taxes’ on US individuals and companies.
EU Risks Becoming Crypto ‘Flyover Zone’ Between US, Asia: Franklin Templeton
Coronavirus and Public Health:
Threat in Your Medicine Cabinet: The FDA’s Gamble on America’s Drugs
CDC Virus Expert Quits After RFK Jr. Purge
A senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who oversaw respiratory virus surveillance has resigned and raised concerns about the future of vaccine policy as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. upends the agency’s long-standing approach to immunization.
Politics:
What the actual fuck? New Rules Allow VA Doctors to Refuse Care
Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump.
Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1934606531980296560
https://twitter.com/burgessev/status/1934743736312807918
Senate Republicans Propose More Aggressive Medicaid Cuts
Senate Republicans are proposing cuts to the Medicaid program for low-income and disabled people that are more aggressive than policies the House passed to help pay for President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax package.
———— Autocracy R Us ————
Trump Seeks to Reward Loyalty of Federal Workforce
Donald Trump is accelerating efforts to transform the nonpartisan, merit-based federal workforce into one that demands and rewards loyalty to the president.
The ongoing shift would ditch decades-old rules that were intended to ensure that federal hiring, retention and promotion decisions are based largely on employees’ skills and experience.
https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1934609680430477363
Prosecutors told to prioritize, publicize cases tied to Trump immigration protests
Trump Officials Reverse Guidance on Immigration Raids
The Department of Homeland Security on Monday told staff that it was reversing guidance issued last week that agents were not to conduct immigration raids at farms, hotels and restaurants — a decision that stood at odds with President Donald Trump’s calls for mass deportations of anyone without legal status.
Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including its Homeland Security Investigations division, told agency leaders in a call Monday that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants.
https://twitter.com/chucktodd/status/1934427597074563387
https://twitter.com/acnewsitics/status/1934481256219373849
NCAAP Won’t Invite Trump to Its Convention
The NAACP will not invite President Donald Trump to its national convention this year — the first time in the civil rights organization’s 116-year history that it has excluded a sitting president — citing what it described as his attacks on American democracy.
———— Everybody Loves a Parade ————
https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/status/1934646681800409344
———— Israel/Iran ————
https://twitter.com/grok/status/1934270359651615169
How Trump Flip-Flopped on War with Iran
Donald Trump had opposed Israeli military action against Iran, favoring negotiations over bombing. But in the days before the strikes began, he became convinced that Israel’s heightened anxiety over Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities was warranted.
After a pivotal briefing from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, on Israel’s plans and U.S. options for supporting its operation, he gave tacit approval to Israel to have at it and decided to provide limited U.S. backing.
Last-Chance Diplomacy or a Bunker-Busting Bomb?
…Trump is weighing a critical decision in the four-day-old war between Israel and Iran: whether to enter the fray by helping Israel destroy the deeply buried nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, which only America’s biggest ‘bunker buster,’ dropped by American B-2 bombers, can reach.
If he decides to go ahead, the United States will become a direct participant in a new conflict in the Middle East, taking on Iran in exactly the kind of war Mr. Trump has sworn, in two campaigns, he would avoid. Iranian officials have already warned that U.S. participation in an attack on its facilities will imperil any remaining chance of the nuclear disarmament deal that Mr. Trump insists he is still interested in pursuing.
———— Blatant In-Your-Face Corruption ————
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1934664740866752924
Trump’s Smartphone Can’t Be Made in U.S. for $499
Despite the language in the press release, Eric Trump indicated that the first wave of phones wouldn’t be built here…
So it’s possible—even plausible—that these phones would initially come from China because, at that price point, only Chinese makers like Xiaomi and Oppo have hardware to match.
https://twitter.com/jgoldbeck/status/1934712028901593093
———— Putin&Krasnov vs. Ukraine ————
https://twitter.com/JayinKyiv/status/1934641664292778455
Putin Isn’t Actually Enjoying This
Trump is turning out to be a liability for the Kremlin.
https://twitter.com/ChrisO_wiki/status/1934723022407020569
———— Smoot-Hawley 2.0 ————
Trump’s Trade and Tax Policies Stall Battery Boom
Battery manufacturing began to take off in the United States in recent years after Congress and the Biden administration offered the industry generous incentives.
But that boom now appears to be stalling as the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers try to restrict China’s access to the American market.
Trump’s Tariffs Risk Damage to Service Sectors
…Donald Trump says U.S. factories hollowed out by rapacious foreign competition can produce well-paying new jobs only if they are protected by the highest tariffs since the 1930s.
But those trade barriers may damage the larger and faster-growing part of the economy: the services industries that employ more than 80 percent of American workers. Since January, manufacturing payrolls have increased by 6,000 jobs, a fraction of the 470,000 new providers of services such as financial advice, health care and education, who generally escape presidential notice.
———— Melon Husk ————
Inside DOGE’s Chaotic Takeover of Social Security
The drama offers a case study in how Elon Musk’s team sought to run a critical government agency through misinformation and social media blasts — and how longtime employees responded.
———— Mors Imperii ————
https://twitter.com/alifarhat79/status/1934350596326437229
Trump Broke the Law by Withholding Library Funds
The Trump administration broke the law when it withheld funding for the nation’s libraries, a nonpartisan government watchdog said on Monday, a finding that inches the White House another step closer to a legal showdown over its powers to reconfigure the country’s spending.
The decision by the Government Accountability Office was the second time in two months that oversight officials have found fault in the ways that President Trump and his top aides have tried to circumvent lawmakers in their quest to reshape the federal budget so that it conforms with their political views.
Trump Removes MLK Bust from Oval Office
The civil rights icon’s likeness, once central in the Oval Office, has been relocated while Trump hosts Charlie Kirk, who’s called the Civil Rights Act a “mistake”
MyPillow boss Mike Lindell loses $2.3m defamation case
Serendipity:
https://twitter.com/RealKateMelvin/status/1934637020325802296
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