-- Supreme Court Justice Jackson, dissenting in Trump v CASA, in which the majority ruled that federal district courts cannot be allowed to enter nation-wide injunctions (27 June 2025)
TRVTH
Daily observations of TRVTH in the real world.
Wednesday, July 02, 2025
Uncontainable
Tuesday, July 01, 2025
USAID
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is the largest funding agency for humanitarian and development aid worldwide. The aim of this study is to comprehensively evaluate the effect of all USAID funding on adult and child mortality over the past two decades and forecast the future effect of its defunding.
Higher levels of USAID funding -- primarily directed toward low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly African countries -- were associated with a 15% reduction in age-standardised all-cause mortality and a 32% reduction in under-five mortality. This finding indicates that 91 839 663 all-age deaths, including 30 391 980 in children younger than 5 years, were prevented by USAID funding over the 21-year study period. USAID funding was associated with a 65% reduction in mortality from HIV/AIDS (representing 25·5 million deaths), 51% from malaria (8·0 million deaths), and 50% from neglected tropical diseases (8·9 million deaths). Significant decreases were also observed in mortality from tuberculosis, nutritional deficiencies, diarrhoeal diseases, lower respiratory infections, and maternal and perinatal conditions. Forecasting models predicted that the current steep funding cuts could result in more than 14 051 750 additional all-age deaths, including 4 537 157 in children younger than age 5 years, by 2030.
Interpretation
USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the abrupt funding cuts announced and implemented in the first half of 2025 are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths could occur by 2030.
-- Daniella Medeiros Cavalcanti, PhD et al, The Lancet "Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis" (30 June 2025)
Monday, June 30, 2025
Eligible And Qualified
I think people in the White House, the amateurs advising the President, are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise. ...
It is inescapable that this bill, in its current form, will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office or in the Cabinet room when I was there with Finance, where he said: We can go after waste, fraud, and abuse on any programs. ...
I am telling the President that you have been misinformed. Your supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.
-- Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), speaking on the Senate floor during debate on the "Big Beautiful Bill", quoted from the Congressional Record, p. S3646 (28 June 2025)
Friday, June 27, 2025
What Everything Else Isn't
-- Theodore Huebner Roethke (1908 - 1963), American poet, awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954, Poetry and Craft (1965)
Thursday, June 26, 2025
Narrow Escapes
-- Bill Moyers (5 June 1934 - 26 June 2025), American journalist and political commentator, We Hold This Truth to Be Self-Evident: It’s Happening Before Our Very Eyes (5 June 2020)
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Air Quotes
-- Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) in an interview with the Washington Post (24 June 2025)
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Rewarding Lawlessness
Rather than allowing our lower court colleagues to manage this high-stakes litigation with the care and attention it plainly requires, this Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied. I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion. ...
The Due Process Clause represents “the principle that ours is a government of laws, not of men, and that we submit ourselves to rulers only if under rules.” By rewarding lawlessness, the Court once again undermines that foundational principle. Apparently, the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in farflung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled. That use of discretion is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable. Respectfully, but regretfully, I dissent.
-- Justice Sotomayor, with whom Justice Kagan and Justice Jackson join, dissenting, in Department of Homeland Security, et al. v D.V.D., et al., on application for stay (23 June 2025)