This Attack on Medicare

 

A huge, huge story broke just before the holiday weekend, but hardly anyone is talking about it. Let’s change that, shall we? Here’s the story: Donald Trump and Dr. Oz* are rolling out a pilot program to fundamentally change Medicare. They want to require senior citizens to get prior authorization for some healthcare services, and here’s the kicker: Artificial Intelligence (AI) gets to decide whether medical care is approved or not.

Believe it or not, it actually gets worse when you dig into the details of these “AI Death Panels,” which we’ll do in a moment, but if you’re already caught up on this story, here’s what you can do right now:

Email Congress right now and tell them to block Trump’s AI-powered attack on Medicare enrollees’ healthcare.

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Introducing AI Death Panels

Medicare has historically covered more procedures, with fewer hoops to jump through, than for-profit insurance companies. Whereas private insurers callously limit care and require “prior authorization” before covering many services or procedures, Medicare offers broad coverage that’s comparatively transparent and simple.

Not anymore, if Trump and Oz get their way. The Trump regime wants to introduce prior authorization -- one of the most hated aspects of private insurance -- to Medicare, and they’re outsourcing those life-changing authorization decisions to unproven AI companies.

It gets even worse: AI developers will be paid based on the value of requested services or procedures they reject -- meaning AI companies would directly profit from denying needed care to seniors.

In short, if a computer program decides that you “don’t need” a medical procedure -- even if your doctor recommended it -- an AI executive gets paid while you get left holding the bag. Remember when the GOP invented the term "death panel" in their scare campaign to stop the Affordable Care Act? That was totally manufactured nonsense. This is actually happening. Trump is rolling out real-life AI Death Panels.

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OUR DEMANDS

These for-profit AI Death Panels will roll out this January in six pilot states: Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington. The pilots will reportedly be limited to about 17 procedures to start, but if they achieve their goal -- cutting costs by denying a lot of people a lot of care -- they could expand to more procedures and more states.

This attack on Medicare creates massive political risk for Trump and his GOP enablers in Congress. Medicare is one of the most popular public programs in US history, and hardworking people typically don’t respond well when politicians interfere with their health decisions.

That gives us an outside chance of swaying enough congressional Republicans to take action to stop AI Death Panels before they roll out -- or failing that, make them pay a HUGE political price in 2026.

Step one: Let ‘em hear it. Give ‘em hell.

Email your Members of Congress right now! Demand that they stop AI-powered Medicare service rejections and use the upcoming federal budget fight to restore healthcare funding.

Email Congress Now

This is just the latest dystopian move in Trump and Republicans’ campaign to systematically dismantle our healthcare system at the behest of corporate backers and billionaires. With a huge federal funding deadline around the corner, now is the time to fight back hard.

In solidarity,
Indivisible Team

P.S. We focused much of this email on the Republican side of the aisle. But we need to put pressure on Democratic members of Congress, too, because it’s important they use all their leverage to protect healthcare. Whether Dems or Republicans represent you in Washington, email your senators and representative now.

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*Did you forget that Trump picked (and GOP Senators confirmed) another disgraced TV star, Dr. Oz, to run the federal agency in charge of Medicare and Medicaid? That’s right, millions of seniors’ healthcare is in the hands of a famous snake-oil salesman!

"The rush to deport children in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend"

 

In the early hours of Sunday morning [August 31], in the middle of a three-day holiday weekend, the Trump administration attempted to take children out of government custody and ship them alone to their country of origin, Guatemala.

On Friday, Priscilla Alvarez of CNN broke the story that the administration was planning to move up to 600 children from the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), where they are held according to law until they can be released to a relative or a guardian living in the U.S. who can take care of them while their case for asylum in the U.S. is being processed.

ORR is an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. Its mission, according to its website, is to promote the health, well-being, and stability of refugees, unaccompanied alien children, and other eligible individuals and families, through culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and strengths-based services. Our vision is for all new arrivals to be welcomed with equitable, high-quality services and resources so they can maximize their potential.”

Alvarez notes that unaccompanied migrant children are considered a vulnerable population and are covered by the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. That law gives them enhanced protections and care, making sure they are screened to see if they have been trafficked or are afraid of persecution in the country they come from. Congress has specified that such children can be removed from the country only under special circumstances.

Nonetheless, the administration appears to have removed about 76 of these children from the custody of ORR—the only agency with legal authority to hold them—where they were waiting to be released to a relative or guardian and transferred them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Once they were in ICE custody, the administration planned “to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or even torture,” according to a U.S. court.

At about 1:00 in the morning, Eastern Time, on Sunday, August 31, advocates for the children filed a suit to prevent the administration from removing them. Shortly after 2:30 in the morning, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan got a phone call about the case, and by 4:00 she had issued an emergency order blocking the removal and scheduled a hearing for 3:00 that afternoon. She moved it up to 12:30 when she learned that the administration was already moving some children out of the country.

Legal analyst Anna Bower was on the call for the hearing and reported that Sooknanan said: “I got a call at 2:36 am because the government chose the wee hours of the morning on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend to execute a plan to move these children. That's why we're here. And I tried to reach the government.

I have been up since then…and didn't reach anyone from the government until later this morning. And the imminence that the plaintiff claimed proved true, because, in fact, those planes *were* loaded. One actually took off and was returned. And so, absent action and intervention by the court, all of those children would have been returned to Guatemala, potentially to extremely dangerous situations.”

Some of the children were actually in a plane to be removed while the hearing was underway. Sooknanan required the government to report to her when each child was back in ORR custody. By noon Monday, according to the government’s lawyers, all the children were back in ORR custody.

The rush to deport children in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend, in apparent violation of the law, looked a great deal like the administration’s removal of undocumented immigrants from Venezuela to the notorious terrorist CECOT prison in El Salvador in March... 

-Heather Cox Richardson

Trump's Dictatorial Ambition

 

One of legacy media’s common refrains—“Trump is testing the limits of [fill in the blank]”—is among the most revealing (about the media imploying it, that is). The phrase reminds us that obfuscation and evasion, not truth-telling, are driving their approach to covering Trump 2.0.

When corporate and billionaire media suggest that Donald Trump is testing the limits of the Constitution or executive authority or congressional Republicans’ self-debasement, one conjures up a vision of deliberate inquiry.

It assumes a level of intentional, rational analysis, a set of intellectual skills Trump has never demonstrated. Worse, the deceptive phrasing gives one the false impression that Trump would retreat if the “tested” scheme did not work or proved unnecessary (or if courts disallowed it). But it is not a “test,” if he plunges forward regardless of facts, deterrents, public reaction, or nettlesome lower court decisions.

Trump is not “testing” the limits of executive power in trying to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook. He is blasting through the plain letter of the law, violating the bipartisan consensus that the central bank should be insulated against political pressure, and putting at risk our economy so he can force the Fed to cover for his failures (i.e. fiscal and trade policies that are driving the economy into a ditch). “Testing” makes it sound so much more benign, which obviously is the point. Such language normalizes and justifies (Just testing!) his serial assaults on the Constitution and rejection of reality.

Likewise, media spinners of conventional wisdom prattle on that Trump is taking us into “uncharted” territory or waters. They would have us imagine he is a daring explorer seeking to pursue new adventures that predecessors lacked the courage to do. No one proposes the accurate alternative: that he is a crazed nihilist bent on blowing up legal, moral, and political norms that no predecessor had the galling disrespect to challenge.

We also hear the frequent observation that Trump is advancing an “unprecedented” argument or position (Tren de Aragua is a nation for purposes of the Alien Enemies Act! His toady’s baseless accusation against a Fed governor is “cause” for firing a Federal Reserve governor!), as if no one as clever as he ever devised a theory of the Constitution that would allow him to do whatever he pleases. Directly informing Americans that such an argument is preposterous, indicative of someone with contempt for language and the courts, is apparently verboten.

These lame weasel words seem designed to avoid saying the obvious: This wannabe dictator has been gleefully shredding the Constitution; he is the Framers’ worst nightmare and the sort of autocratic figure “conservatives” used to denounce (and prepared to arm themselves against).

The cowed corporate media (the same that has paid off Trump with phony settlements, turned themselves inside-out to curry favor with the Dear Leader, and studiously avoided thorough investigations into his physical and mental decline) resort to these expressions in order to duck the most important issue of our time.

They appear deathly afraid to acknowledge that we are turning into a police state. We should stop expecting this faction of the media to recognize that democracy is being imperiled by the unending attacks on the rule of law, American values, and our constitutional structure.

To normalize Trump means cringing media outlets need not “take sides” or flatly speak the truth. They can continue the pretense that this is a president like any other president. They can keep access to newsmakers and insist they are neutral in the fight between democracy and authoritarianism.

That does not mean the rest of us have to tiptoe around the truth. In citizens’ interactions with politicians, Democratic politicians’ speeches and messaging, and across independent media, clear-eyed Americans can lay out exactly what is happening.

This is not simply a matter of linguistic hygiene. If we soft-pedal Trump’s reign we wind up habituating the public to dictatorship. As political scientist Daniel Ziblatt (one of a group of academics who has consistently sounded the alarm that we are falling into authoritarianism) explains:

Democracy rarely dies in a single moment. It is chipped away via abdication: rationalizations and compromises as those with power and influence tell themselves that yielding just a little ground will keep them safe or that finding common ground with a disrupter is more practical than standing against him.

Trump is not Hitler (although he increasingly ruminates that others want a dictator), but the United States increasingly looks an awful lot like the Weimar Republic, which, Ziblatt points out, provides us with the “enduring lesson … [that] extremism never triumphs on its own.”

He argues that a dictatorship “succeeds because others enable it—because of their ambition, because of their fear, or because they misjudge the dangers of small concessions.” And they minimize the consequences that flow from cocooning a dictator in the language of routine politics.

In the end, many Trump enablers—including cowering press outlets—may be crushed by the dictators’ boot, but their demise is not nearly as tragic as the suffering inflicted on the most vulnerable people, i.e., those who lack the resources and power of toady politicians, multi-national corporations, or giant media conglomerates. So please, let’s dispense with piffle (“testing,” “uncharted,” “unprecedented”) and instead speak bluntly:

Trump is trashing our Constitution with the expectation that the Supreme Court’s MAGA majority will let him (as it has done every step of the way), and the Republican quislings will cover for him.

In resisting linguistic sloth and denouncing gaslighting, American can impede Trump’s dictatorial ambition. Whether we collectively confront MAGA politicians, feeble media outlets, and our fellow citizens with searing clarity will be the real “test” for our democracy.

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Green Tea and a Vitamin Supplement Could Protect against Alzheimer's

 

A natural compound found in green tea forms a powerful brain cleaner when combined with a common vitamin, researchers have found, potentially putting the brakes on the buildup of waste associated with diseases such as Alzheimer's.   

What makes the discovery particularly exciting is that these substances can be attained through a healthy diet and are widely available as dietary supplements that have been cleared as safe by regulators.

The findings are the result of a study by researchers at the University of California Irvine (UC Irvine) on the antioxidant epigallocatechin gallate  and The findings are the nicotinamide, a type of vitamin B3 that's made naturally in the body from niacin-rich foods such as cereals, fish, nuts, legumes, and eggs.

"By supplementing the brain's energy systems with compounds that are already available as dietary supplements, we may have a new path toward treating age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease," says biomedical engineer Gregory Brewer.

In tests on lab-cultured mouse neurons, epigallocatechin gallate and nicotinamide were shown to boost the energy molecule guanosine triphosphate (GTP), found in brain cells. GTP provides essential energy for cleaning up dead cells, with a lack of the compound previously being linked to the development of Alzheimer's in aging brains.

GTP-boosted neurons were shown to help the brain clear out damaging clumps of amyloid beta proteins, which have long been linked with the progression of Alzheimer's. The compounds also reversed damage associated with age in brain cells.

While GTP has previously been linked with neurodegeneration, the study reveals how levels can drop over time, especially when Alzheimer's is involved. 

The researchers speculate that the combination of epigallocatechin gallate and nicotinamide may return GTP to levels found in younger cells. "This study highlights GTP as a previously underappreciated energy source driving vital brain functions," says Brewer.

Earlier this year, a separate study linked green tea with fewer white matter lesions in the brain, and in turn a lower dementia risk, though the research didn't prove direct cause and effect. Nicotinamide has also been implicated in protecting neurons from the effects of stroke and neurodegeneration.

Thanks to this research, we know that GTP might be part of the reason why – and that epigallocatechin gallate and nicotinamide could make a critical difference together. It's going to take some time to turn this into a treatment, and it's important to note that this has only been tested in mouse cells in vitro, but the results are encouraging. "As people age, their brains show a decline in neuronal energy levels, which limits the ability to remove unwanted proteins and damaged components," says Brewer.

-David Nield, Science Alert, NewsBreak

"Republicans, before the Donald Trump cult took hold, frequently railed (rightly so) against communist and fascist regimes that nationalized industry, indulged in crony capitalism, and substituted propaganda for the free flow of reliable information. Well, well. How times have changed"

Mr. Trump has attacked workers in other ways. He has gutted the Department of Labor through cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency. He is also rolling back Labor Department rules from the Obama and Biden administrations that allowed home care workers to earn overtime and farmworkers to campaign for better working conditions. And he has severely undermined the National Labor Relations Board, which handles thousands of unions' matters every year by firing its head and nominating corporate-friendly figures to steer its operations away from supporting workers.

Organized labor, for all its talk about solidarity, remains deeply divided on how best to approach organizing, politics and Mr. Trump. Certain labor leaders, particularly Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, have embraced Mr. Trump and his brand of Republicans, particularly around immigration restrictions. Other unions with memberships that are heavily white and male also lean toward Republicans. But they still represent a minority of union members.

In 2024, union workers were among the only demographic groups where Democrats improved (https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2024/general-results/voter-analysis) their standing compared with 2020. Perhaps that reflects efforts by Joe Biden to be, as he put it (https://theconversation.com/bidens-labor-report-card-historian-gives-union-joe-a-higher-grade-than-any-president-since-fdr-228771), “the most pro-union president in American history.”

Unions have the internal support, structure and organizing capacity to support the fight against Mr. Trump. Yet no one in the labor movement has taken the public role of countering Mr. O’Brien and making it clear to the American public that most unions are strongly opposed to Mr. Trump.

 If the labor movement wants to fight for its survival, it must return to mass mobilization tactics, reminding Americans that their rights come through working together — not through supporting a president who talks about helping American workers while slashing worker safety regulations, supporting tariffs that raise the cost of consumer goods and stripping workers of their legal rights to contracts.

All this is happening at a time when Americans’ approval of unions is the highest it has been since the mid-1960s.

One cannot overstate the significance of Mr. Trump’s attacks on government workers. Public sector work has become organized labor’s power base, allowing the total workforce’s union membership rate to remain at around 10 percent, despite less than 6 percent of private sector workers having unions.

Based on actions Mr. Trump has taken this year — and without any notable public pushback from supposedly pro-labor Republicans like Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio — it is unlikely that there will be any unionized federal workers outside of policing agencies by the end of his term in 2029.

Mr. Trump has attacked workers in other ways. He has gutted the Department of Labor through cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency. He is also rolling back Labor Department rules from the Obama and Biden administrations that allowed home care workers to earn overtime and farmworkers to campaign for better working conditions. And he has severely undermined the National Labor Relations Board, which handles thousands of unions' matters every year by firing its head and nominating corporate-friendly figures to steer its operations away from supporting workers.

Organized labor, for all its talk about solidarity, remains deeply divided on how best to approach organizing, politics and Mr. Trump. Certain labor leaders, particularly Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, have embraced Mr. Trump and his brand of Republicans, particularly around immigration restrictions. Other unions with memberships that are heavily white, and male also lean toward Republicans. But they still represent a minority of union members.

In 2024, union workers were among the only demographic groups where Democrats improved (https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2024/general-results/voter-analysis) their standing compared with 2020. Perhaps that reflects efforts by Joe Biden to be, as he put it (https://theconversation.com/bidens-labor-report-card-historian-gives-union-joe-a-higher-grade-than-any-president-since-fdr-228771), “the most pro-union president in American history.”

Unions have the internal support, structure and organizing capacity to support the fight against Mr. Trump. Yet no one in the labor movement has taken the public role of countering Mr. O’Brien and making it clear to the American public that most unions are strongly opposed to Mr. Trump…

 

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Scammers

 

(NEXSTAR) – A multi-phase scam credited with emptying the financial accounts of numerous Americans – many of whom were nearing the age of retirement – is again making headlines after the FBI recently issued a warning.

Unlike many scams, “Phantom Hacker” attacks often come in three distinct phases, each building on the last to thoroughly convince the victim to allow access to their funds. “Victims often suffer the loss of entire banking, savings, retirement, or investment accounts under the guise of ‘protecting’ their assets,” the FBI said in a news release.

Aaron Rose, security architect manager at cybersecurity firm Check Point Software, told Nexstar in an email that the crooks often use victims’ personal interests against them. Fans of vintage cars, antique watches or other items might post publicly on social media, making them vulnerable to bad actors.

“Criminals use personal interests to make their criminal actions appear authentic which decreases the chances of being caught,” Rose said, adding, “AI technology can analyze social media content to detect personal interests and life milestones which allows it to generate messages that seem personalized.”

Since 2024, the scam has reportedly been used to steal over $1 billion in funds, with the majority of victims being at least 60 years old, according to FBI data. “These attacks are not just simple phone calls or phishing emails—they’re complex operations that involve multiple impersonators, spoofed phone numbers, and coordinated follow-ups,” Scott Davis, chairman of the Cybersecurity Association of Pennsylvania, said in a recent interview. “Seniors are being tricked into believing they’re protecting their money, when in reality they’re handing it straight to criminals.”

‘Tech support’ and the first phase

While pretending to work in tech support for a legitimate company, the scammer will use a phone call, text, email or pop-up window to contact the victim. Once the victim calls for tech support help, the scammer instructs them to download a program giving access to the victim’s computer. After pretending to check the device for viruses, the scammer will then suggest the victim open financial accounts to look for unauthorized charges. After choosing an account to target, the scammer tells the victim to wait for a call from the “fraud department” of the bank or institution holding the funds.

A call from the ‘financial institution’

The next phase begins when a scammer, posing as an employee of a well-known financial institution, calls the victim to inform them that their account has been hacked by someone overseas. The only way to keep the money safe, the scammer says, is to move it to a third-party such as the Federal Reserve or a U.S. government agency, according to the FBI. The scammer helps organize the transfer, which is often broken into several transactions and may happen by wire, cash or crypto.

The ‘government’ representative

In an effort to legitimize the prior two phases, a scammer may impersonate an employee of the Federal Reserve or another agency. If the victim starts to get suspicious, the scammer may send a follow-up letter using what appears to be official government letterhead, with the goal of convincing the victim that their funds continue to be “unsafe” and must be moved.

How to protect yourself – and others

Experts say there are a number of steps to take to safeguard yourself against the Phantom Hacker scam, tips that you should also share with family members and other loved ones who might be at risk. “The simplest advice is the most important: never give remote access to your computer if someone calls you unexpectedly,” Rose said. “Do not move your money just because a caller says they are from your bank or the government. Hang up, call the number printed on your bank statement, and verify the situation for yourself.”

If you find yourself unsure of what to do, end the call and talk to someone you trust before taking any action, Rose said. “Scammers rely on secrecy and pressure,” according to Rose. “Breaking that pattern by taking a step back and checking with someone else – a friend, family member, or official from your bank or local law enforcement agency – is often the best defense.”

The FBI encourages anyone who is the victim of a crime to contact the local field office or file a report at tips.fbi.gov. If the crime is internet-based, file a report with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

-NewsBreak

"The allegations suggest that the American presidency is compromised at its core"

 

On August 12th, 2025, Alnur Mussayev, the former head of Kazakhstan’s National Security Committee, alleged that Russian President Vladimir Putin possesses a comprehensive kompromat file on Donald J. Trump. He didn’t suggest it. He stated it. The file, he said, is extensive, meticulously documented, and designed not to destroy Trump—but to control him.

According to Mussayev, the kompromat includes financial records showing illicit transactions connected to accounts either owned by Trump or clearly affiliated with his name. It also contains statements from operatives who were directly involved in kompromat operations—individuals who could, if necessary, provide witness testimony confirming the authenticity and intent behind the material. Most damning of all, he claims, are the recordings: audio and video documentation of sexual crimes against minors and acts of violence against women.

Mussayev states that this material has been in the Kremlin’s hands for years. He claims that the Russian FSB has deliberately leaked fragments of this kompromat, not to expose Trump publicly, but to exert pressure on him. The goal, according to Mussayev, is strategic: ensure Trump remains aligned with Russian geopolitical interests. That includes undermining NATO, destabilizing the European Union, and pressuring Ukraine into surrender.

The kompromat doesn’t exist to embarrass Trump—it exists to guide him. Mussayev describes it as a calibrated pressure system. When Trump hesitates or veers from Russia’s interests, the FSB lets just enough out to remind him who’s holding the leash. It’s not chaos. It’s design. And the person benefiting from that design is Vladimir Putin.

Mussayev also asserts that Trump has worked systematically to prevent any U.S. investigation into his criminal exposure. He claims Trump has turned American institutions—Congress, the DOJ, the FBI, intelligence agencies, even immigration enforcement—into instruments of personal protection. In Mussayev’s view, these institutions now answer to a single man, and that man answers to Moscow.

He makes clear that Trump cannot negotiate with the FSB. He cannot buy them off. He cannot order them to bury the kompromat. The operation was never about money—it was about leverage. Trump may hold the presidency, but Putin holds the file.

Mussayev’s allegations do not come in the form of speculation. He does not hedge his words or offer qualifiers. He names names. He explains the mechanisms. He draws a straight line from Soviet intelligence practices to modern blackmail operations and directly implicates Donald Trump as a long-term target who was successfully recruited, compromised, and used.

These aren’t historical footnotes. Mussayev is not recounting a Cold War anecdote. He is describing an active security breach—one that, according to him, still defines the behavior of the most powerful man in the United States. Mussayev claims that Trump’s current refusal to investigate his own crimes, his loyalty to Kremlin-aligned figures, and his policy sabotage of Western alliances all stem from the kompromat Putin is holding.

The allegations suggest that the American presidency is compromised at its core. Not just politically. Operationally. That the person issuing executive orders, appointing judges, and influencing global conflict zones may be doing so under foreign pressure. Mussayev is not coy about this. He says the evidence exists. He says the recordings are real. And he says the only reason Trump hasn’t been exposed is because Putin doesn’t want him exposed. He wants him useful.

This is not about guilt or innocence. It is about leverage. It is about a foreign adversary exercising influence over a U.S. president through a system designed to operate in silence. The kompromat doesn’t need to be revealed to work. It just needs to be feared.

If what Mussayev says is true, the implications are not hypothetical. They are immediate. And they reach the highest level of global power. More is coming. This is just the first breach.

-by Fear and Loathing, Closer to the Edge

                                                       Alnur Mussayev