Get Smarter Today About: House Republicans push budget bill in the dead of night while new CBO numbers show more trouble ahead — this time for MEDICARE; and more tornadoes + fewer weather service personnel = big trouble.
Warm Up Those Brains…
►Congressman Joe Neguse (D-Boulderish) is understandably furious with House Republicans for trying to rush through their 1,100+ page budget bill in (literally) the dead of night. Here’s Neguse speaking during a House Rules Committee hearing that convened at 1:00 am EST:
NEGUSE: “…Obviously, this isn’t reasonable. It does not make sense. This isn’t transparent to hold hearings at 3 a.m. on a bill of this size and this scope and this scale. That’s not in the best interest of the country. You could just as easily delayed it for five hours. Let the American public have an opportunity to listen to this debate and then vote on the bill on Thursday.
“I think the American people are smarter than the House Republican Caucus are giving them credit for. They know what this is about. And when they wake up, invariably, later this morning and they find that this bill was reported out of this committee in the dead of night, I think they’ll reach their own conclusions about House Republicans’ commitment, or lack thereof, to transparency.”
►Colorado Community Media reports on more local concerns about House Republican plans to gut both Medicaid and SNAP benefits in their budget bill. As Suzie Glassman writes:
“If Medicaid was taken away, I would lose half my family before the year was out.”
That’s the warning Kat, a Jefferson County mother of five, gave U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen during a roundtable just before Mother’s Day, describing how she relies on Medicaid to care for a child with autism, a son with speech issues and her aging mother.
The May 9 meeting in Edgewater, hosted by Pettersen, focused on how proposed federal budget cuts could affect Colorado families. At the time, participants feared what might happen.
Now, many of those same cuts are included in a sweeping spending and tax bill that House Republicans are expected to vote on this week.
The proposal, packed with GOP priorities, would make wide-reaching changes to Medicaid, SNAP food assistance and income taxes. It would also impose new restrictions on states, increase defense and immigration spending and make several Trump-era tax cuts permanent.
The legislation could result in more than 7.6 million Americans losing Medicaid coverage over the next 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The bill also targets SNAP, or food stamps, which supports more than 42 million Americans nationwide.
The bill also includes a terrifying proposal to emasculate the judicial branch altogether so that the Trump administration can continue running roughshod over the Constitution.
In related news, POLITICO reports that — SURPRISE! — rich people will benefit from the GOP budget bill at the expense of everyone else.
► As Caitlyn Kim reports for Colorado Public Radio, Republicans in Colorado’s congressional delegation are lined up in support of the budget bill after President Trump made a trip to the Capitol to twist arms:
Many Republicans came out of the meeting saying Trump did a good job in trying to close the deal with the two main differing factions.
Colorado Springs Rep. Jeff Crank said Trump’s message was one of unity, “talking about how we got to get this done.”“President Trump is very firm on this bill passing and it being a good product,” said Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert as she left the meeting…
…“President Trump is very firm on this bill passing and it being a good product,” said Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert as she left the meeting.
► The Washington Post has more on the economic devastation that would come from the House Republican budget plan:
President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans’ mammoth tax and immigration bill would add so much to the national debt that it could force nearly $500 billion in cuts to Medicare beginning in 2026, Congress’s nonpartisan bookkeeper reported late Tuesday. [Pols emphasis]
Trump and the GOP’s budget reconciliation package — officially titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — would add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office projected, forcing budget officials to mandate across-the-board spending cuts over that window that would hit the federal health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities.
When legislation significantly adds to the national debt, which already exceeds $36.2 trillion, it triggers “sequestration,” or compulsory budgetary reductions. In that scenario, Medicare cuts would be capped at 4 percent annually, or $490 billion over 10 years, the CBO reported in response to a request from Rep. Brendan Boyle (Pennsylvania), the top Democrat on the Budget Committee.
► The “no compromise” gun rights group Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (RMGO) proves once again that there is nothing Colorado Republicans like better than attacking Colorado Republicans.
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► The bad news continues surrounding ongoing federal budget cuts, as Angeline McCall reports for 9News:
Proposed federal budget cuts moving through Congress could have significant consequences for approximately 130,000 Coloradans who rely on rental assistance programs, according to housing advocates.
The budget proposal would reduce federal funding for rental assistance by around 40% and consolidate various housing programs into a single block grant, as advocates fear it could potentially trigger a wave of evictions across the state.
“The budget in front of us as it’s moving through Congress looks to be devastating for renters in Colorado,” said Sam Gilman, co-founder and president of the Community Economic Defense Project.
The proposed cuts would affect approximately 70,000 Colorado households currently utilizing federal rental assistance programs, including Section 8 housing vouchers.
“These are typically long-term housing subsidies for low-income people. They serve families with children. They serve folks who are disabled. They serve seniors,” Gilman explained.
These cuts come at a particularly bad time; eviction rates in 2024 in Colorado were at an all-time high.
► Lauren Penington of The Denver Post has the latest on efforts to hold a home-rule election in Douglas County:
A district judge struck down a request Tuesday to halt Douglas County’s pending home-rule election amid a lawsuit accusing county officials of violating Colorado’s open meetings law to get the measure on the ballot.
Colorado state Rep. Bob Marshall, former Douglas County Commissioner Lora Thomas and county resident Julie Gooden filed the lawsuit against the current Board of Commissioners in April, alleging the board met more than a dozen times without issuing proper notification to the public.
They alleged the commissioners made the decision to move forward with the home-rule election in those meetings between January and March before holding an official, law-abiding meeting to “rubber stamp” the home-rule resolutions on March 25.
Under Colorado’s open meetings law, “meetings that are convened for the purpose of policy-making” — including when resolutions are adopted — “are declared to be public meetings open to the public” and “shall be held only after full and timely notice.”
However, Douglas County District Judge Robert Raymond Lung said he didn’t see evidence that the board violated open meetings law and ruled that issuing a preliminary injunction to stop the election would “sacrifice the public’s right to vote,” according to court documents released by county officials.
Douglas County residents will get their first chance to vote on a home-rule change on June 24.
► What happens when you have more tornadoes and fewer weather service employees? As The Associated Press reports…it’s bad news:
As nasty tornadoes popped up from Kansas to Kentucky, a depleted National Weather Service was in scramble mode.
The agency’s office in Jackson, Kentucky, had begun closing nightly as deep cuts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency began hitting. But the weather service kept staffers on overtime Friday night to stay on top of the deadly storms, which killed nearly 20 people in the Jackson office’s forecast area.
It’s a scenario likely to be repeated as the U.S. is on track to see more tornadoes this year than in 2024, which was the second-busiest tornado year on record. Forecasters said there was at least a 10% risk of tornadoes Tuesday for 10.6 million people in parts of Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. Weather service veterans expressed concern about the agency’s ability to keep up in the face of the cuts…
…Many former weather service employees, especially those fired by the Trump administration, remain connected to the agency’s inner workings. They describe an agency that’s somehow getting forecasts and warnings out in time, but is also near the breaking point.
“They’ll continue to answer the bell as long as they can, but you can only ask people to work 80 hours or 120 hours a week, you know for so long,” said Elbert “Joe” Friday, a former weather service director. “They may be so bleary-eyed, they can’t identify what’s going on on the radar.” [Pols emphasis]
► Congressman Gabe Evans (R-Ft. Lupton) won’t talk to local news stations, but he’s happy to give interviews to foreign news outlets associated with the nonsense Epoch Times.
► Governor Jared Polissigned legislation prohibiting repeat auto thieves from owning a gun.
►As Michael Booth reports for The Colorado Sun, the Suncor refinery north of Denver is a polluting machine that has avoided massive fines by exploiting loopholes:
Suncor’s Commerce City refinery violated pollution emission limits for 900 hours in the three months it shut down after a fire in late 2022, but the company avoided fines because of loopholes in regulations, an environmental group’s study said Tuesday.
For 100 of those hours, Suncor reported emissions violations of certain controlled pollutants that were 30 times the levels allowed by their state air permits. The violations were more than 15 times limits in 300 of those hours, according to reviews of the company’s state-mandated reporting by the nonprofit 350 Colorado.
Releases that were exempt from fines included 32,000 pounds of hydrogen sulfide, and 600 pounds of volatile organic compounds, 350 Colorado said, into neighborhoods already environmentally disadvantaged by a host of polluting industries, highways and heavy trucking operations.
350 Colorado wants Colorado air pollution officials to consider removing existing exemptions in permits that waive disciplinary fines during periods of “start-up, shut-down and malfunction.”
► Researchers at Colorado State University are concerned about air toxins related to a Northern Colorado oil and gas leak.
► Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerry Connollydied on Wednesday at the age of 75. Connolly had been battling cancer; he announced in April that he would not seek re-election in 2026.
► The Associated Press has more on Elon Musk’s decision to step away from politics:
Wisconsin could go down as billionaire Elon Musk’s last big spend on a political campaign.
And it was a flop.
Musk, the richest person in the world, said Tuesday that he would be spending less on political campaigns. The announcement came as Musk is stepping back from his role in the Trump administration, saying he will spend more time focused on his businesses, and just seven weeks after the candidate he backed in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race lost by 10 percentage points.
Democrats in the swing state said Musk’s comments show that a party-led effort in this spring’s election, dubbed “ People vs. Musk, ” succeeded in making Musk and his money “toxic.”
“The people have won,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler. “The biggest funder in Republican politics is taking his toys and going home.”
Brandon Scholz, a retired longtime Republican strategist in the state, said that at least in Wisconsin, “after that court race he deserves to be labeled as toxic.”
► A Republican who ran health agencies in two different southern states is warning Congressional Republicans about the unforeseen consequences of their big budget axe. “You can’t just take a sledgehammer to [these programs],” warns Alan Levine.
Say What, Now?
If only freshman Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colorado Springs) worked as hard for his district as he does at kissing Republican asses:
► The Trump administration announced that annual COVID-19 vaccines for healthy younger adults and children will no longer be routinely approved by the Food and Drug Administration. If we just pretend that COVID doesn’t exist, we’ll be fine!
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it was charging Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) with “assaulting, impeding or interfering with law enforcement” following her appearance outside an ICE detention center in Newark. Needless to say, an administration seeking to arrest an elected member of the opposition party — not for fraud or campaign finance violations but for protest — is a major five-alarm fire for democracy.
McIver is being charged with assault after a skirmish with federal officers outside an immigration detention center, said New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, who also announced Monday that she was dropping a trespassing case against the Newark mayor whose arrest led to the disturbance.
Interim U.S. Attorney Alina Habba wrote on social media that McIver is facing a charge of assaulting, impeding or interfering with law enforcement, but court papers providing details were not immediately released or publicly available online.
The prosecution of McIver is a rare federal criminal case against a sitting member of Congress for allegations other than fraud or corruption. The case instantly taps into a much broader and more consequential power struggle between a Trump administration engaged in a sweeping overhaul of immigration policy and a Democratic party scrambling for ways to respond.
Within minutes of Habba’s announcement, McIver’s Democratic colleagues cast the prosecution as an infringement on lawmakers’ official duties to serve their constituents and an effort to silence their opposition to an immigration policy that helped propel the president back into power but now has emerged as divisive fault line in American political discourse.
► Don’t miss the latest episode of the Get More Smarter Podcast for an in-depth rundown of the 2025 Colorado legislative session with Denver Post Statehouse Reporter Seth Klamann:
May 21, 2025 10:24 AM UTC
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