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Tennessee strips Dems of every committee seat; Trump’s China state-visit-plus rewrites the playbook; Paul & Johnson torch the CIA’s covid cover-up; Fraud Czar revives Reagan’s welfare-queens; more.
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Good morning, C&C, it’s Thursday! I’m hotel blogging from the DC area this morning and preparing to start two days of pure politics, rubbing elbows with some of the smartest and most energized conservatives in the country. Today’s roundup includes: Tennessee strips its Democrats of every committee seat; Trump brings the Fortune 30 to China and the corporate media to complete narrative collapse; Senators Paul and Johnson torch the CIA’s covid cover-up; the new Fraud Czar revives Reagan’s welfare-queen playbook with 500 fictional Los Angeles hospices; and Marty Makary exits the FDA as a textbook restructuring CEO.
🌍🇺🇸 ESSENTIAL NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🇺🇸🌍
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Yesterday, Reuters reported “Tennessee Democrats stripped of House committee seats over redistricting protests.”
Last Thursday, as legislators voted to redraw Tennessee’s congressional district maps, Democrats reacted coolly, and deployed keen strategic purpose by throwing a gigantic temper tantrum. It was hard to hear anything over the raucous protests by cherry-picked activists, who were yelling from the balcony of the visitors’ gallery, chanting slogans against the new map, and sounding air horns. Meanwhile, black lawmakers stood at the front of the chamber blocking access to the dais with linked arms “in prayer.”
Two business days later on Monday, Republican House Speaker, Cameron Sexton, dispatched a stinker of a letter to House Democratic leader Karen Camper. (That’s right. Her first name is Karen.) Anyway, the letter informed Ms. Camper that House Democrats were being stripped from all standing committees and subcommittees as discipline, for “instigating and encouraging disorder on the House floor” during Thursday’s vote.
Mr. Sexton chided Democrat lawmakers for “interlocking arms in the well of the House,” “blocking aisles on the House floor,” and for using “prohibited props and noisemakers.”
The Republican supermajority (75 of 99 seats) can already pass whatever it wants, but stripping Democrats off committees means they lose all internal leverage where most real lawmaking happens. In most cases, committees write, amend, and often quietly kill bills before they ever reach the floor.
Also, and maybe more importantly, committee assignments are a prestige lever.
Democrats are hysterically calling it fascism and every other kind of -ism. But a representative assembly cannot function if any group of lawmakers can exercise a heckler’s veto whenever they feel sufficiently aggrieved. A rule permitting what happened last week would end “democracy” as we know it— which is ironic, because Democrats are usually the ones complaining about “threats to democracy.”
Tennessee is drawing a bright and appropriate line. Members can use every procedural and rhetorical tool, but may not obstruct the chamber physically or drown it out; crossing that line should trigger serious, escalating sanctions. Otherwise, we accept that “peaceful” but obstructive disruption is a valid legislative tactic, in which case we must be prepared for it to be used by everyone, in every high‑stakes fight, indefinitely.
Oh, how California Democrats would howl if Republicans there tried to shut down the legislature when it was trying to pass an abortion or gun-control bill.
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After giving it much thought, I concluded that corporate media must have been taken completely by surprise by the nature of Trump’s trip to China. The result has been a complete collapse of a coherent narrative, with no common theme, and a patchwork of feeble criticisms, since they still don’t know exactly what is going on. Yesterday, the New York Times reported, “China Restores Beef Trade With U.S. as Goodwill Gesture for Trump Visit.”
We knew Trump was going to China, that the meeting had been pushed back a couple of times (because of Iran?). That’s pretty much it. This is another one of these times where the Administration kept its secrets, and kept reporters out in the dark. Two days in, and what we can see, Trump is making history again.
First, the basics. This trip marks Trump’s first state visit of his second term. It is the first U.S. presidential visit to China in almost nine years. So even in the short term, it’s a reboot of a decade-long deterioration in relations. I’ll pause to remind you how, under Cabbage J. Autopen, we were constantly this close to war, with admirals bragging to breathless reporters about how quickly we’d turn the Taiwan Strait into a “hellscape.”
But the nature of the trip captured its entry in the presidential history books. Trump told pool reporters that he’d invited “the most prominent entrepreneurs” and “the top 30 in the world”— and “every single one agreed to attend.” He told President Xi they were there “to honor you and China” (and, of course, to pursue reciprocal trade). The elite group of businessmen included CEO’s from Tesla, Apple, Nvidia, Wall Street, AI, aerospace, and many more.
As with his Trump 1.0 trip, China officially designated Trump’s appearance as “state-visit-plus,” a maximalist honorific they created in 2017 just for him. This is only the second time they’ve used it, once again, for Trump. It resulted in corps of cheering students welcoming his plane, visits with Xi to key Chinese sites like the Temple of Heaven and the Great Hall, and major state gifts, such as the easing of the beef restrictions mentioned in the Times article.
First, one struggles to find any common examples of such a collection of influential men gathered in one place for a common America First purpose. Who but Donald Trump could have possibly made a meeting like this happen? And you can’t ask men like these for a week of time without delivering something of value.
It’s equally historic in what it could suggest for world stability and peace. Whether it “works” or not remains to be seen, but Trump is inarguably reaching for the biggest, most difficult wins he can. One LinkedIn business columnist called it “biggerthan politics.” CNN called it a “historic opportunity” watched by a “war‑weary globe” as the world’s two largest economies try reframing their rivalry into a stable, cooperative economic model instead of a fabulously expensive and endless game of Risk, subterfuge, and sabotage.
They said “only Nixon could go to China.” (Don’t worry, nobody knows what that means. Everybody keeps saying it, though.) In this case, only Trump could have put thistrip together. They aren’t telling us the plan (nor should they), but it is tantalizing.
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When I talk about covid these days, I often reassure folks that “this isn’t over.” I am not the only one who feels that way. Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Ashley Moody (R-FL), Bernie Moreno (R-OH), and Rand Paul (R-KY) are also clearly not letting it go until the pandemic architects are fairly tried, executed, and buried in unmarked graves. Yesterday, Esquire ran a story headlined, “It’s Way Past Due That Rand Paul Quit His COVID-19 Crusade.” No, Esquire, it’s not.
Democrats boycotted the Senate Homeland Security hearing. Not one attended. Corporate media embargoed it (except to run sneering hit pieces like Esquire’s, and even though one day before, it covered the Kash Patel hearing where nothinghappened). The CIA issued a rare public rebuke, complaining about the Committee’s subpoena of ‘whistleblower’ agent James Erdman III, as though Congressional oversight of the intelligence agencies was more of a fuzzy suggestion than a constitutional requirement.
Agent Erdman testified that Anthony Fauci got personally involved in CIA’s review of covid origins and —literally in the middle of the night— steered the investigation away from the gain-of-function project he’d illegally funded in Wuhan, while intelligence community actors enthusiastically complied.
For his part, Senator Johnson delivered a short but passionate speech about jab injuries and how the FDA ignored safety signals, in the same way that a Doberman ignores its chew toy by burying it in the backyard.
CLIP: Senator Johnson explains exactly how Biden’s FDA concealed covid shot safety signals (3:20).
To summarize, Senator Paul made these very important points:
- Scientists are conflicted when they are both actively competing for government grants and advising on policy.
- Bureaucrats misuse grant awards to steer scientific opinions toward policy preferences.
- Intelligence agencies are overly concerned with politics.
- Scientists, bureaucrats, and spooks keep playing word games over what “gain-of-function” means. That has got to stop.
- We cannot prepare for the next pandemic until we agree on what worked and what failed in 2020.
For instance, the Senator made the terrific point that “monoclonal antibodies worked,” but “Masks didn’t work. Six feet of distancing — there was no science. They say ‘follow the science,’ and yet it looks like everything that happened at the CIA was the politicians overruling the scientists.”
Yet, if you ask a dozen random, everyday Democrats, they will argue till doomsday that masks did protect people from infection, six-foot distancing was scientifically sound, the virus absolutely came from a wet market (and it doesn’t matter anyway), and that the jabs still have a spotless safety record.
Paul is right. How can we possibly “be prepared for the next pandemic” if we don’t even agree yet on what happened last time, or what the words “gain of function” mean? We aren’t even close to having adequate sunlight and transparency yet— and thank goodness so many Republican Senators are relentlessly pursuing it.
This isn’t over. Not by a long shot.
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Yesterday, on behalf of the new White House Fraud Task Force, Vice President JD Vance gave an electrifying update and press conference. The New York Times reported, “Trump Administration Will Withhold $1.3 Billion in Medicaid Payments to California.” That was only part of the terrific announcement.
Vance called his new role “Fraud Czar.” This is an excellent title. It combines hints of Russian royalty with classic Democrat grifting-by-virtue-signal techniques.
First of all, he’s turning off the money spigots one by one. The Vice President announced an immediate freeze on all new Medicare enrollments for hospice and home health services, and is halting over a billion dollars in California’s Medicaid payments. He specifically called out California and Minnesota as bad examples, and warned other blue states to either actively investigate Medicaid fraud or risk losing federal funding like the not-so-Golden State.
“We are not going to keep wiring billions of dollars into systems where everybody in Sacramento knows there is fraud and nobody does anything about it,” Vance explained.
CMS Director Dr. Mehmet Oz took the podium and announced that CMS believes roughly half of all Los Angeles hospices are essentially fraudulent operations— billing the federal government for patients who are not dying, don’t even know they are in hospice, or in some cases do not even exist in this multiverse. This is a remarkable finding. Los Angeles is a city famous for many things: the entertainment industry, the traffic, the weather, and apparently a robust cottage industry of fake death facilities. It is, when you think about it, the most Hollywood thing imaginable. Even the hospices are amateur actors.
He cited healthy people enrolled in hospice, beneficiaries prescribed powerful (and expensive) meds they don’t need, and sham agencies changing ownership repeatedly in order to stay just beyond the reach of CMS audits.
The good news, for caring Somalians who want to get into the hospice or home-healthcare businesses: the barrier to entry appears to be extremely low. You just need a name (any name will do), an address, a Medicare billing number, and the creative ability to come up with new ones every 18 months. Prior experience with actual patients is optional.
But it might be too late. “The days of pay-and-chase are over,” VP Vance explained in a tweet after the presser. “It’s time to PREVENT and PROSECUTE.” If you’re not familiar, “pay-and-chase” is the federal government’s longtime Medicaid fraud strategy. In it, the government first sends billions of dollars to whoever submits a completed form, and then several years later sends a strongly worded letter to an address that no longer exists, asking whether some of that money could please be repaid.
It has been, by all accounts, a tremendously lucrative strategy for those paid to do the chasing, and an even more lucrative strategy for those being chased.
Not so lucrative for law-abiding taxpayers, though.
🔥 Hinting at the potentially explosive 2026 midterm narrative, Vance repeatedly described the crackdown as protecting working‑ and middle‑class taxpayers from “grifters” and “bureaucrats.” Just imagine the ammunition the agencies hold in the run-up to November. For instance, in remarks following the presser, Dr. Oz explained how Russia (in LA), China (New York), and Cuba (Florida) are getting in on the grift and running Medicaid fraud networks across America— looting billions from U.S. taxpayers.
Especially now that they are cooperating and comparing databases. Alert readers will recall how last month, Kelly Loeffler announced finding 14,000 food stamp recipients registered as also owning Maseratis, Porsches, and other high-end luxury cars in which their welfare-funded food can be more pleasantly transported.
🔥 The Trump Administration is replaying a classic political strategy proven to work. In fact, it might have been the most significant political play in Republican history.
At a campaign rally in 1976, Ronald Reagan introduced ‘welfare queen’ Linda Taylor to the public discourse. “She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare,” Reagan explained. “Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.” That was in 1976 dollars, back when you could buy a reliable used car for $500.
Reagan rode the welfare queen story to a landslide presidential victory and forty years of Republican political dominance. The anti-fraud narrative was so powerful it became a durable GOP frame continuing through the 1980s, and ultimately forced Democrats under Bill Clinton to stop the political bleeding by passing major welfare reform in 1996.
The Trump administration is now sitting on documented evidence of 14,000 food stamp recipients registered to luxury vehicles, half of Los Angeles’s hospice industry apparently fictional, and over $1 billion in fraudulent Medicaid payments in California alone. Just for starters.
If Reagan could do what he did with a single greedy lady with four fake husbands, one’s imagination reels at what JD Vance could do with a team of AI-powered, agency-database-connected task force investigators and the legions of modern welfare scammers.
Americans hate cheaters and fraudsters. Keep an eye on the new Fraud Czar and his fraud task force.
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As the Year of Preparation recedes into the rearview mirror, and the Year of Action expands, another cabinet change has energized the corporate media, who smell a new chance to fracture MAHA again. The New York Times reported, “Marty Makary, Trump’s F.D.A. Commissioner, Resigns After Weeks of Pressure.” Pandemic hero Marty Makary is out.
Makary was a giant during the pandemic, being one of the few members of the credentialed class courageous enough to speak out against mandates and lockdowns. But he was equally stubborn over some issues where he disagreed with the Administration’s positions, and tensions arose.
- Dr. Makary supported the abortion pill. The article said, “abortion foes accused him of dragging out the timetable for a study of the safety of mifepristone, an abortion drug.”
- He reportedly refused to add a black box warning to covid shots (though this is mostly a rumor and not a confirmed fact.) On the other hand, he wrote a devastating letter about pediatric deaths from the jab.
The New York Times reported, without any apparent embarrassment, that FDA Commissioner Marty Makary —a man who spent the pandemic as one of the few credentialed voices brave enough to challenge lockdowns and mandates, who supervised the firing of four thousand FDA employees, and who wrote a devastating letter about pediatric deaths from the covid vaccine— ultimately resigned over the administration’s decision to authorize fruit-flavored e-cigarettes.
This is like reporting that General Patton resigned over a disagreement about the color of the mess hall napkins. The Timesoffered no evidence for this claim, which is consistent with their recent editorial standard of reporting anonymous anti-Trump gossip as gospel.
Much as the Times would love to find some smoke, there were zero signs of any realconflicts inside the Administration. As with Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi, President Trump praised Makary. “So much was accomplished under his leadership,” Trump tweeted. “He was a hard worker, who was respected by all, and will go on to have an outstanding career in Medicine.” Trump is not shy about dishing out criticism when he thinks it’s appropriate.
In the corporate world, a “restructuring CEO” is a specialist brought in specifically to do the things that no one else wants to do: fire large numbers of people, gut departments, and absorb the resulting fury of a demoralized workforce, before exiting gracefully so a warmer, friendlier successor can arrive and reassure everyone that the worst is over. It is, essentially, the management equivalent of hiring an actor to play the bad guy in a movie, except the bad guy gets a severance package and a glowing tweet from the President. (Dr. Makary presumably received both.)
FDA angst is real. The Wall Street Journal described the FDA staff as “dogged by the aftereffects of layoffs led by the Department of Government Efficiency.” Dr. Makary may not, on paper, have been the architect of the RIFs, but operationally and symbolically, he functioned as the commissioner presiding over, and defending or normalizing, a radically restructured FDA.
Because restructuring CEOs are intended to be temporary, they are “liberated” from the need to maintain productive relationships with underlings or long‑term staff goodwill; boards expect them to prioritize aggressive fixes over morale, expecting their successor to later re‑socialize the workforce and build a new culture from the wreckage.
Whatever his internal marching orders, Makary functioned less as a traditional FDA steward and more like a restructuring CEO: he presided over mass layoffs, institutional rewiring, and an aggressive overhaul of drug-reviewing procedures that left staff infuriated with him personally. Intentional or not, Dr. Makary has cleared the way for a future commissioner to arrive as the healer‑in‑chief to a workforce still smarting from being “rightsized.”
Taken together, the Makary and Bondi episodes look less like personnel flukes and more like a deliberate management strategy: install a restructuring CEO and then rotate them out once the ‘rightsizing’ phase is over. Then you get a Todd Blanche.
Dr. Makary was a terrific choice as a transitional leader. But Cabinet positions shouldn’t be rewards for loyalty or large donations. Members should remain in charge of their agencies as long as they are effective, and then get out of the way as soon as they’re not. That is the essential meaning of meritocracy. Plus, Trump lacks the luxury of two terms this round. There’s no time to waste.
Have a terrific Thursday! Coffee & Covid will return tomorrow morning, hotel-blog style, with an all new roundup of essential news and caffeinated commentary.
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Rose Rambles... 