Nov
25
2025

"I've got a fever, and the only prescription is …"

Yup:

Unfortunately, as Jim Geraghty points out this morn: Somehow, the Government Shutdown May Become Even More Pointless.

We just lived through the longest, dumbest, and most pointless government shutdown in U.S. history. If you’re on the right side of the aisle, the only silver lining is that Democrats were convinced they were winning, then believe eight senators surrendered out of a lack of nerve, and are now even more apoplectically furious at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer than they were before. We could almost hope that the Democrats’ shutdown strategy blew up in their faces so spectacularly, they would be disinclined to try to run the same maneuver again anytime soon.

And now, along comes President Trump to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, by reportedly contemplating giving Democrats a significant chunk of what they wanted in the first place.

The White House is circulating a proposal that would extend subsidies to help consumers pay for coverage under the Affordable Care Act for two more years, as millions of Americans face spiking health care costs when the current tax credits are set to expire at the end of the year.

The draft plan suggests that President Donald Trump is open to extending a provision of Obamacare as his administration and congressional Republicans search for a broader policy solution to a fight that has long flummoxed the party. The White House stresses that no plan is final until Trump announces it.

…Eligibility for the Obamacare subsidies, which were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic to help people afford health care coverage, would be capped at 700 percent of the federal poverty level, according to two people with knowledge of the proposal.

Repeated lesson from this President: he has no principles, just occasional whims.

Also of note:

  • Need something to be thankful for? Steven Pinker and Marian L. Tupy have a biggie: The Golden Age of Humanity? We’re Living in It.

    Would we be better off living in the Middle Ages?

    Astonishingly, influential voices on the American intellectual right now seem to think so. Rather than affirming the Enlightenment ideals that inspired this country’s founding—reason, rights, markets, liberal democracy, and church-state separation—they are longing for, of all things, rule from the throne and altar.

    Last month at Yale, the influential political blogger Curtis Yarvin, in a debate against Free Press contributor Jed Rubenfeld, argued that America ought to “end the democratic experiment”—and establish a monarchy. Yarvin has noted that Donald Trump is “biologically suited” to be America’s monarch. The ideas may sound extreme, but they have been influential. J.D. Vance describes Yarvin as “a friend,” and has cited his work. And Yarvin is part of a family of movements, known as the Dark Enlightenment, Techno-authoritarianism, and Neo-Reaction (NRx)—that reject the entire family of enlightenment values.

    It doesn't sound as if Yarvin means the nice kind of monarchy, like a mostly powerless, largely ceremonial, figurehead fond of Corgis.

  • They don't care if they get it right. There was a whole lotta twitter-freakout yesterday, caps-lock style. Example:

    Don't be taken in. Preston Cooper describes: What the Outrage over Nursing Loan Limits Gets Wrong.

    Student debt often provokes outrage. But the usual complaint is that student debt is too high. Now, nursing associations are angry that nurses’ student debt will be too low.

    The American Association of Colleges of Nursing decried the “devastating” decision by the Education Department to not classify nursing programs as “professional” for the purposes of student loan limits, arguing that it “disregards decades of progress toward parity across the health professions.” Online, many nurses have interpreted it as a “spit in the face.” Nothing could be further from the truth.

    Here’s what actually happened. Earlier this year, Congress passed a law imposing caps on federal lending to graduate students (which was previously unlimited). The law creates two categories of loan limits: standard and professional. Graduate students in standard degree programs may borrow up to $100,000, while those in professional degree programs may borrow up to $200,000. However, Congress legislated only broad guidelines as to how graduate programs should be classified. While degrees like medicine, dentistry, and law explicitly qualify for professional loan limits, the exact line between standard and professional programs was left to the Education Department to draw.

    Of course, the "American Association of Colleges of Nursing" is trying to get their students on the hook for those higher loan limits, which fuel higher tuition fees.

  • Geraghty, again. It doesn't seem we would need reminding about this, but: Remember, Vladimir Putin’s Promises Are Worthless.

    My distinguished colleagues Noah Rothman, Andy McCarthy, and Mark Wright — writing from Kyiv! — and The Editors have weighed in on the nebulous, 28-point “peace plan” for the war in Ukraine put together by U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and his Russian counterpart Kirill Dmitriev. Secretary of State Marco Rubio insists it was not written by the Russians, and that the text of the proposal is apparently changing day by day. “I’m not going to speculate or go into the details of any of the specific items in the latest version of the proposal because, frankly, by tomorrow or the next day, that may have evolved and changed further,” Rubio said.

    My take is simple: Negotiations with the Russian government are moot, because the Russian government breaks its treaties on a regular basis. It doesn’t matter what Vladimir Putin promises, because he’s either never going to keep that promise or he will break that promise at the first moment of convenience.

    Examples, if you need them, abound at the link.

  • On Side B: A Requiem for Rationality. Christian Britschgi sings A Dirge for DOGE.

    Few would disagree with the notion that President Donald Trump is rather malleable on issues of policy and political alliances. Friends and enemies swap places with surprising regularity. Must-pass initiatives become rejected agendas just as quickly.

    As visual evidence of this, consider two scenes.

    Back in February 2025, the president hosted a chummy joint press conference in the Oval Office with the world's richest man, Elon Musk, who outlined his plans to slash the federal government to the bone via his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

    Then, just last week, Trump hosted another amicable joint press conference where his guest was the self-described socialist mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, who plans on making New York City great again with tax hikes on billionaires like Musk to fund billions in new social spending.

    Later: "The DOGE effort to dismantle, reform, and streamline the entire federal government started with such a bang. It's now sunsetting with barely a whimper."

    With entitlements off the table, there was only so much DOGE could do. Still… alas, we hardly knew ye.

    [UPDATE 2025-11-26: Note that DOGE is claiming that, in fact, it is not dead. It's just pinin' for the fjords.]


Last Modified 2025-11-26 9:50 AM EST