RFK Jr. Can’t Bear The Pressure

1.29.25

Ally Sammarco Jan 30

Happy Wednesday evening to our readers. As confirmation hearings heat up in U.S. Senate committee rooms, Today’s American News is proud that we continue to be your best source for news and analysis on the circus that is American politics and entertainment.

Another brainworm? RFK Jr. botches confirmation hearing for HHS secretary… Does RFK Jr. want to be Trump’s secretary of health and human services? If he does, he showed very little evidence of it earlier today at his Senate confirmation hearing. Not only did the anti-vaxxer repeatedly misidentify Medicare as Medicaid and vice-versa–he also demonstrated that he is unaware of how these and other public health insurance programs are funded. Politico Nightly wrote that the hearing “didn’t exactly inspire confidence” in Kennedy’s nomination. Perhaps the brainworm has come back.

Trump admin tells country “just kidding” on that funding freeze… Chaos and haste are the White House’s modus operandi…and we’re only nine days into Trump’s second term. The Associate Press reports, “President Donald Trump’s budget office on Wednesday rescinded a memo freezing spending on federal loans and grants, less than two days after it sparked widespread confusion and legal challenges across the country. The memo, which was issued Monday by the Office of Management and Budget, had frightened states, schools and organizations that rely on trillions of dollars from Washington.”

Mark Zuckerberg is giving Trump $25 million… a settlement or a bribe??? Meta is paying Trump $25 million because Facebook made him sad by canceling his account after he incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. NPR reports, Meta has agreed to pay President Donald Trump $25 million to settle a 2021 federal lawsuit alleging First Amendment violations and other claims following the company suspending him from Facebook and Instagram in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The payout resolves the suit Trump filed against Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly engaging in "impermissible censorship" by removing the president from the social media platforms.

Trump announces plan to house migrants at Guantanamo Bay… The U.S. extrajudicial detention facility at Guantanamo has a storied past of the torture, abuse, and dehumanization of so-called “enemy combatants” by American national security personnel. The facility, which politicians have been promising to close for nearly 20 years, will be partially repurposed under a Trump plan to provide housing for 30,000 migrants. With televised fanfare, Trump directed the defense and homeland security departments to “expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”

Today’s Buzz

Meryl Streep’s badass wildfire evacuation revealed… "My aunt Meryl Streep received an order to evacuate on January 8, but when she tried to leave, she discovered that a large tree had fallen over in her driveway, blocking her only exit. she borrowed wire cutters from a neighbor, cut a car-size hole in the fence she shared with the neighbors on the other side, and drove through their yard to escape," nephew Abe Streep wrote yesterday for New York Magazine. OMG thank you for being you Meryl!

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