Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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June 24

The Washington Post on the Big Beautiful Bill and Obamacare

Republicans in Congress have dropped the mantra to “repeal and replace” Obamacare that they repeated so often during President Donald Trump’s first term. This time, their “big beautiful bill” would instead undermine the Affordable Care Act in subtle ways.

The legislation would erect multiple barriers to receiving the subsidized ACA coverage at the law’s core. It would shorten enrollment periods, restrict access for many immigrants living legally in the country and add burdensome paperwork that would make it hard for people to remain on the plans they already have.

Take, for example, the bill’s provision to end automatic re-enrollment in ACA insurance plans. In 2025, nearly 11 million people who bought policies on the state exchanges — about half of all enrollees — were automatically re-enrolled, a practice that is typical across the health insurance industry. The Congressional Budget Office projects that eliminating this for the ACA would result in 700,000 people becoming uninsured by 2034.

The bill also would add a stricter eligibility verification process, requiring beneficiaries to gather documents every year to prove that they remain eligible, based on their income, immigration status and more. Altogether, the CBO estimates, this new red tape would cause more than 3 million people to lose their health insurance.

This is in addition to the 4 million who are expected to lose coverage due to the expiration of enhanced ACA subsidies that Republicans appear likely to allow to lapse. Add in the Medicaid cuts also in the legislation, and the total number of uninsured Americans stands to rise by 16 million. This would wipe out most of the gains in health coverage that the United States has achieved since the ACA was put in place.

And this calculus leaves aside what the bill’s ACA policies might doto people’s health insurance premiums down the line. Sick people, who have the greatest need for health care coverage, will be the ones most likely to go to the trouble to navigate the bureaucracy, while healthy people might be more inclined to give up. Then, with fewer healthy people in the risk pools, premiums would rise for everyone.

If the bill’s proposed ACA requirements were designed to fix some major problem, perhaps some decline in coverage could be justified. But they aren’t. Unlike Medicaid, ACA subsidies are not given to people who are not working; to be eligible, beneficiaries must verify that they have an income — for example, by providing a tax return.

And while it is true that the federal ACA marketplace has seen fraudulent enrollments, this is due largely to some health insurance brokers’ gaming the system to enroll people in plans without their permission. But officials who run state marketplaces say they don’t have this problem, and they insist that it is possible to combat such fraud without hassling people who are trying to keep their health plans. Federal officials, too, have begun making administrative changes to address the problem.

This is not to say that America’s health care system is already perfect. It covers too few people, it costs too much, and it’s complicated and confusing for people. But the solution is not to make it even more complex so that more people have no insurance at all. What’s needed is the opposite: an effort to consolidate public health care programs, to make them easier to understand and more efficient, while acting to lower the cost of health care.

If the legislation were designed to save money this way, it would be worth supporting. But the Obamacare revisions embedded in the Republicans’ bill provides no benefits to offset the damage it would do.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/24/obamacare-aca-reconciliation-bill-uninsured/

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June 20

The New York Times on the normalization of political violence

The surge in political violence during the Trump years has imperiled not only American lives but also our country’s collective memory. The details of a new atrocity overwrite the old. Even the names of the fallen evade our best efforts to retain them.

Before the next act of political violence seizes our attention, let us pause and preserve in memory Melissa Hortman, a member of the Minnesota State Legislature, and her husband, Mark. The couple became the latest casualties of our nihilistic politics on Saturday after a gunman killed them in their home, authorities say. Let us also keep in mind John Hoffman, a state senator, and his wife, Yvette, who were wounded in the same series of attacks. Prosecutors say that the gunman, who carried a target list of other Democratic politicians, wanted to inflict fear.

The Minnesota attacks join a grim catalog of political violence in recent years. In 2017 a gunman shot four people, badly wounding Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, at a Republican practice before the annual congressional baseball game. On Jan. 6, 2021, hundreds of rioters attacked Congress as it was meeting to certify the presidential election result. In 2022 an attacker broke into Nancy Pelosi’s home and fractured the skull of her husband, Paul, with a hammer. Last year two would-be assassins separately tried to kill Donald Trump. In April a man set fire to the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro while he and his family slept inside.

Fear has become a fact of life for politicians. Mark Rozzi, a former speaker of the Pennsylvania House, wore a bulletproof vest for several months because of harassment he had received. Some unelected public servants live with similar anxieties. Many federal judges have taken new precautions in recent months because of the threats against them.

Why are attacks on public officials any more worthy of space in our national memory than other acts of violence? The Hortmans and Hoffmans were hunted because of their distinct role in American life. They were parts of a government by the people.

In a different era, the country might have taken time to express its collective grief about the horrors in Minnesota. One can imagine the president and a bipartisan group of congressional leaders visiting and making a unified statement that political differences do not excuse violence.

Such solidarity is important, given that the recent attacks span ideological boundaries. Democrats and Republicans alike have been the victims. People on both the right and the left engage in making demonizing comments that attackers have used to justify their violence.

Although Mr. Trump has personally been a victim of this violence, he also deserves particular responsibility for our angry culture. He uses threatening language in ways that no other modern president has. He praises people who commit violence in his name, such as the Jan. 6 rioters, many of whom he has pardoned, despite their attacks on police officers and others. He sometimes seems incapable of extending basic decency to Democrats. Instead of calling Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota to express condolences about the killings of two of his friends, Mr. Trump insulted Mr. Walz. It is no coincidence that hate crimes have surged, according to the F.B.I., during Mr. Trump’s decade as a dominant political figure.

Some of Mr. Trump’s Republican allies also talk about violence in ways that prominent Democrats rarely if ever do. This week, Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, posted a bizarre message to social media that blamed leftists for the Minnesota attacks. “This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way,” he wrote. He went on to describe the attacks as “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” presumably a snide reference to Mr. Walz, who was the Democratic vice-presidential nominee last year. Mr. Lee was once a principled libertarian. The old version of himself would be ashamed of his behavior this week.

The new culture of political violence is being reinforced. When we move on too quickly from an attack against our society’s organizing ideas, we normalize it. The next shooter, the next extremist, sees a society that accepts violence. Forgetting is dangerous. It encourages repetition.

The opposite is true as well, however. When we take time to remember Melissa and Mark Hortman, we honor their sacrifice for our country. We give meaning to what is otherwise senseless.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/opinion/political-violence-hortman-minnesota.html

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June 22

The Wall Street Journal says Trump “meets the moment” on Iran

President Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s three most significant nuclear sites on Saturday helped rid the world of a grave nuclear threat and was a large step toward restoring U.S. deterrence. It also creates an opportunity for a more peaceful Middle East, if the nations of the region will seize it.

“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” Mr. Trump said Saturday night. He made clear Iran brought this on itself. “For 40 years, Iran has been saying ‘death to America,’ ‘death to Israel.’ They’ve been killing our people,” he said, citing 1,000 Americans killed by Iran-supplied roadside bombs and other means. A nuclear Iran was a perilous threat to Israel, the nearby Arab states, and America.

Mr. Trump gave Iran every chance to resolve this peacefully. The regime flouted his 60-day deadline to make a deal. Then Israel attacked, destroying much of the nuclear program and achieving air supremacy, and still the President gave Iran another chance to come to terms. The regime wouldn’t even abandon domestic uranium enrichment. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wanted a bomb more than peace.

The Pentagon on Sunday disclosed more details of the mission, which included effective deception and B-2 bombers and deep-penetrating bombs only the U.S. can deploy. A full damage assessment will take time, and some nuclear material or enrichment capability may have survived. But the Israelis believe the site at Natanz, where enriched uranium was stored, has been completely destroyed, and the Fordow site severely damaged. At the very least Iran’s nuclear program has been set back by years.

Military conflict is unpredictable and Iran may retaliate, no matter how self-destructive that would be. Iran and its Iraqi proxies have threatened U.S. regional bases with missile fire, but Mr. Trump warned that “future attacks will be far greater” if Iran goes down that road. It now knows Mr. Trump isn’t bluffing. If the regime values self-preservation, it will give up its nuclear ambitions and stand down.

Much of the press has fixated on the idea that Mr. Trump has now joined or even started a conflict. But Iran has been waging regional and terrorist war for decades. It’s as likely that he has helped end it. Leaving Iran with a hardened nuclear enrichment facility after an Israeli military campaign would have been a recipe for maximum danger, all but asking Iran to sprint to a bomb.

At the same time, the Israeli campaign yielded an unrivaled strategic opportunity. Suddenly, Iran’s airspace was uncontested. Its substantial ballistic-missile program was degraded. Several of its proxies had been bludgeoned into silence. Its nuclear program had been reduced to a few key sites.

The opportunity to act and the danger of standing pat may have proved decisive. We would say that they left Mr. Trump little choice, except U.S. Presidents always have a choice, and they have been known to kick the can down the road. To his credit, Mr. Trump didn’t. This shows the President wanted to leave no doubt about Iran’s nuclear program and take it all down.

Credit goes to him for meeting the moment, despite the doubts from part of his political base. The isolationists were wrong at every step leading up to Saturday, and now they are again predicting another Iraq, if not a road to World War III. But Mr. Trump had to act to stop the threat in front of him to protect America, which is his first obligation as President.

“History will record that President Trump acted to deny the world’s most dangerous regime the world’s most dangerous weapons,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday night. Mr. Trump thanked him and said “we worked as a team.” The Israelis, who proved their strategic value as an ally, would like to complete the mission by destroying what remains of Iran’s missile infrastructure. They deserve a green light, especially as those missiles are threatening U.S. bases.

The removal of Iran’s nuclear threat and degradation of its military will create new possibilities in the Middle East. Iran’s proxies will be less able to make trouble in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Gaza. The Sunni Arab states want a new era of economic development, and Iran could join them if it chooses. Perhaps the Iranian people will get a say.

The chatter about TACO—“Trump always chickens out”—will now quiet down, but the more significant reassessment has to do with U.S. foreign policy. The Obamaites of the left, and lately of the right, counseled that the world had to bow to Iranian intimidation. The best we could hope for was a flimsy deal that bribed Iran with billions of dollars and left open its path to a bomb. They were wrong, and the world is safer for it.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trump-meets-the-moment-on-iran-1794ade3?mod=editorials_article_pos5

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June 24

The Guardian says an Iran ceasefire is welcome, but the danger isn't over

Donald Trump declared a ceasefire that would last “for ever”. Or perhaps not. Within hours, he had attacked both Israel and Iran for breaking the deal he took credit for, though there seemed to be a precarious peace. But the volatility of events owes much to the unpredictability of Mr Trump’s own rhetoric and actions. The Middle East crisis will continue to overshadow the Nato summit in The Hague, intended to shore up support for Ukraine.

It is just over two weeks since Mr Trump told Israel’s prime minister not to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, hoping for a deal with Tehran. Benjamin Netanyahu ignored him – and within hours, as Fox News celebrated the Israeli offensive, the president sought to associate himself with it. He demanded Iran’s unconditional surrender and threatened its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; then, last Thursday, said he would take two weeks to decide whether to strike.

That appears to have been deliberate misdirection: the US military bombed nuclear facilities only days later. But even among administration officials, allies and Pentagon staff, there was reportedly confusion over what he envisaged. Senior administration figures suggested that the US was solely targeting the nuclear programme, hours before Mr Trump again mooted regime change. Then, on Monday, he announced a “complete and total ceasefire”. That its terms remain mysterious does not inspire confidence in its durability. Within hours, a visibly angry president was lashing out at both Israel and Iran for breaking the truce, telling reporters: “They don’t know what the fuck they are doing.”

Pot, meet kettle. Mr Trump is a creature of impulse, eager for quick results and lavish praise, reacting to the latest talking head and the last person to speak to him – among them, on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin, though the US president said he had declined Moscow’s help with Iran. He also posted that it was his “great honour” to make it possible for China to still buy oil from Iran. His focus on Moscow and Beijing is one constant in what one might generously describe as his foreign policy. But even the knowns – support for Israel, a desire to keep inflation down and avoid foreign quagmires, the longing for a Nobel peace prize – are buffeted by events and the president’s magnetic attraction to whatever looks like it might bring glory.

Mr Netanyahu shares Mr Trump’s focus on how decisions affect personal political interests; there are reports he may call a snap election while riding high from the offensive against Iran. He has been consistent in his enmity towards Tehran and in maintaining that it cannot be dealt with through negotiation. He is keen to keep international attention away from Gaza, where the carnage continues, and may seek to tempt Mr Trump into further action. The whereabouts of Iran’s enriched uranium is unknown, and it surely has greater reason to desire a nuclear deterrent.

Richard Nixon’s “madman theory” was that adversaries might back down if they believed that the US president was truly crazy. International relations scholars disagree over the value of such stratagems. But Nixon’s play had at least been gamed out, was persistently pursued, and had clear goals. Mr Trump’s illegal attack on Iran was a reckless gamble, which history will judge. Monday’s ceasefire declaration was welcome. Diplomacy, not war, is needed. But the Trump approach remains chaotic. And as the president’s intentions and messages proliferate, the risks multiply.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/24/the-guardian-view-on-trumps-vacillating-approach-to-iran-a-ceasefire-is-welcome-but-the-danger-isnt-over

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June 24

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch says the current Trump Administration is hazardous to the health of Americans

America has been, for generations, the envy of the world in terms of its medical research breakthroughs. From the development of penicillin in the early 1940s, to Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine in the 1950s, to the measles and mumps vaccines of the 1960s, to America’s leading role in the lightning-fast creation of the first COVID vaccines during the pandemic, no nation in history has been remotely as successful as the U.S. at curing what ails humanity.

All of which makes the Trump administration’s determined deconstruction of America’s medical research legacy all the more baffling and alarming (not to mention ironic, given the first Trump administration’s success at spurring the COVID vaccine’s development in 2020). In addition to appointing an anti-vaccination zealot as the nation’s top health official, President Donald Trump’s aggressive, unilateral defunding of medical research at universities and elsewhere will inevitably cost American lives — if it hasn’t already.

This deliberate devastation against the research sector has been so reckless, widespread and opaque that it’s difficult for people outside that sector to even get their heads around it. Which makes one small example of that devastation, happening right here in St. Louis, a useful microcosm.

Fimbrion Therapeutics is a little biomedical research company with a big goal: to develop a key new drug in the continuing fight against tuberculosis. The deadly lung disease, once brought largely under control in the U.S., has seen an uptick in cases in the past few years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fimbrion, from its base in central St. Louis, has spent five years and almost $4 million in funding through the National Institutes of Health developing a new drug to combat tuberculosis. With the federal agency having already lauded the firm’s work, its final funding installment to allow completion of the drug appeared to be a foregone conclusion.

Until it wasn’t.

As the Post-Dispatch’s Michele Munz reported Sunday, the firm was informed in mid-May that further funding was being denied due to the outcome of what the NIH called a “foreign risk assessment.”

It made no sense, Fimbrion CEO Thomas Hannan told Munz, because the firm has no foreign ties at all. When they tried to get an explanation from the NIH, the agency responded with a terse refusal to discuss it further.

The firm has since laid off two of its three chemists, put the rest of its small staff on part-time schedules and is banking on getting separate grant funding to finish its work. If not, the company — and its pending weapon in the fight against tuberculosis — will be shuttered.

The episode has all the hallmarks of this administration’s approach to cutting government in other areas: sudden, unilateral funding withdrawals made for unexplained reasons, often with questionable legality and no clear purpose other than to display an abiding contempt for the role of government in promoting lifesaving medical research.

The story of Fimbrion is a footnote in the much larger story of this president’s determination to withdraw the federal government from its crucial role in American health care. That’s largely what the administration’s defunding of university research around the country is all about.

Meanwhile, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pseudoscience-spouting Health and Human Services secretary, recently fired every member of the highly respected federal board that formulates vaccination policy recommendations. He is replacing them with a group that includes multiple anti-vaccination activists or skeptics.

The real-world impact of this president’s normalization of anti-science quackery can be seen in the resurgence of measles in the U.S. recently, a trend due entirely to the fact that rejecting vaccination today has become socially acceptable on the political right.

Top it all off with Trump’s so-called Big, Beautiful Bill of pending tax cuts for the rich — to be funded in part by deep cuts to Medicaid, the government medical insurance system for the poor — and it becomes clear that the biggest threat to America’s health today isn’t tuberculosis, measles or any other disease. It’s this White House. And as long as Americans and their congressional representatives sit idly by and watch this willful sabotage of the nation’s medical legacy, it will only get worse.

House and Senate offices for individual members of Congress can be reached through the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121.

ONLINE: https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/article_e8faa1d8-22ba-4b42-8eaf-60bb2c38ba63.html

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