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Biden proposes Medicare and Medicaid cover weight-loss drugs for 7.4m people
The Biden administration is proposing to make “miracle” weight loss drugs free for low-income people and retirees, in a move aimed at tackling America’s chronic obesity problem but which throws down a gauntlet to the incoming president, Donald Trump.The proposal, unveiled on Tuesday, would see expensive drugs such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound covered by Medicaid and Medicare, the federal government programs for the poor and the elderly.It would come at a hefty cost to the public purse. The drugs would be covered for anyone qualifying as obese, a definition that currently fits 40% of the US population. Currently, coverage is only given when patients have other conditions that is caused by obesity, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.Xavier Becerra, the US health and human services secretary, called the move a “game changer”.“It helps us recognize that obesity is with us,” he told the Washington Post. “It’s severe. It’s damaging our country’s health. It’s damaging our economy.”But the proposed reform amounted to a challenge to Trump’s incoming administration, which would have to decide whether to implement the change a few days after taking office in January. Trump has sworn to slash the federal budget.It also paved the way for a likely conflict between two of Trump’s health sector nominees: Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has been proposed as the health and human services secretary, and Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician who has been nominated to run Medicare and Medicaid.Kennedy has vowed to promote healthy eating and improve fitness in the battle against obesity, and has fiercely criticised weight loss drugs, blaming them for obscuring the causes of ill health.He recently claimed to Fox News that covering a drug like Ozempic for every overweight American would cost $3tn a year.“If we spend about one-fifth of that, giving good food, three meals a day, to every man, woman and child in our country, we could solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic overnight for a tiny fraction of the cost,” he said.“There’s a huge push to sell this to the American public. They’re counting on selling to Americans because we’re so stupid and so addicted to drugs.”Oz has taken a different tack, praising Ozempic on social media last year. “[F]or those who want to lose a few pounds, Ozempic and other semaglutide medications can be a big help,” he wrote. “We need to make it as easy as possible for people to meet their health goals, period.”Beccera estimated that 3.4 million people on Medicare and 4 million on Medicaid would become eligible for the drugs under the new rule.But other research suggests that far more people may qualify. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency Oz has been nominated to head, has estimated that 28 million recipients suffer from obesity.A recent Congressional Budget Office analysis estimated that federal spending would rise by $35bn between 2026 and 2034 by allowing Medicare alone to cover weight-loss medications.People can lose between 15% and 25% of their body weight thanks to the drugs, which imitate the hormones that regulate appetites. A month’s supply can cost around $1,000. More
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Trump’s cabinet isn’t as anti-Wall Street as voters might want to believe | Robert Reich
Will anything stop Trump?He’s got control over both chambers of Congress, a tractable supreme court, a political base of fiercely loyal Magas, a media ecosystem that amplifies his lies (now including Musk’s horrific X as well as Rupert Murdoch’s reliably mendacious Fox News) and a thin majority of voters in the 2024 election.He doesn’t worry about another election because he won’t be eligible to run again (or he’ll ignore the constitution and stay on).Of course, there are the midterm elections of 2026. But even if Democrats take back both chambers, Trump and his incipient administration are aiming to wreak so much damage on America in the meantime that Democrats can’t remedy it.The Republican-controlled Senate starting 3 January won’t restrain Trump. Yes, Trump overreached with his pick of Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Apparently even Senate Republicans can’t abide alleged sex trafficking of girls for drug-infested sex parties, but this is a very low bar. (Gaetz denies any wrongdoing.)So, as a practical matter, is anything stopping Trump?Yes, and here’s a hint of what it is: on Friday, Trump picked Scott Bessent to serve as US secretary of the treasury.Bessent is the man Elon Musk derided only a week ago as the “business-as-usual choice” for treasury secretary, in contrast to Howard Lutnick, whom Musk said would “actually enact change”.Musk’s view of “change” is to blow a place up, which was what Musk did when he bought Twitter.Over the last two weeks, Musk has convinced Trump to appoint bomb-throwers Robert F Kennedy Jr to health and human services and Pete Hegseth to defense and to put Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of cutting $2tn from the federal budget.But Bessent is the opposite of a bomb-thrower. He’s a billionaire hedge fund manager, founder of the investment firm Key Square Capital Management, and a protege of the Maga arch-villain George Soros. (He’s also gay, which the Maga base may not like, either.)Why did Trump appoint the “business-as-usual” Bessent to be treasury secretary? Because the treasury secretary is the most important economic job in the US government.Trump has never understood much about economics, but he knows two things: that high interest rates can throttle an economy (and bring down a president’s party) and that high stock prices are good (at least for Trump and his investor class).Trump doesn’t want to do anything that will cause bond traders to raise long-term interest rates out of fear of future inflation and he wants stock traders to be so optimistic about corporate profits they raise share prices.So he has appointed a treasury secretary who will reassure the bond and stock markets.Stock and bond markets constitute the only real constraint on Trump – the only things whose power he’s afraid of.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut wait. What about Trump’s plan to raise tariffs? He has floated a blanket tariff of 10% to 20% on nearly all imports, 25% on imports from Mexico, and 60% or more on Chinese goods.Tariffs of this size would increase consumer prices and fuel inflation – driving interest rates upward. (The cost of tariffs are borne by American businesses and households, rather than foreign companies.)Tariffs could also invite retaliation from foreign governments and thereby dry up export markets for American-based corporations – in which case the stock market would tank. (The last time America raised tariffs on all imports – Herbert Hoover’s and congressmen Smoot and Hawley’s Tariff Act of 1930 – the Great Depression worsened.)In short, tariffs will rattle stock and bond markets, doing the exact opposite of what Trump wants.So Trump has appointed a treasury secretary who will soothe Wall Street’s nerves – not just because Bessent is a Wall Street billionaire who speaks its language but also because Wall Street doesn’t really believe Bessent wants higher tariffs.Bessent has described Trump’s plan for blanket tariffs as a “maximalist” negotiating strategy – suggesting Trump’s whole tariff proposal is a strategic bluff. Wall Street apparently thinks tariffs won’t rise much when other countries respond to the bluff with what Trump sees as concessions.Instead, Wall Street expects Bessent to be spending his energies seeking lower taxes, especially for big corporations and wealthy Americans, and helping Musk and Ramaswamy cut spending and roll back regulations.It’s a sad commentary on the state of American democracy when the main constraint on the madman soon to occupy the Oval Office is Wall Street.I suppose we should be grateful there’s any constraint at all.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More
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Trump camp rivalries come to fore over efforts to oust top adviser
Internal rivalries spilled into public view on Monday as Boris Epshteyn, a top adviser to Donald Trump, found himself at the center of an ouster effort over accusations he asked potential administration nominees to pay monthly consulting fees in exchange for lobbying for them to the president-elect.The maelstrom engulfing Epshteyn suggested that barely 20 days since Trump won the election, the knife-fight culture of the first Trump presidency, where bitter aides took any opportunity to remove rivals, had returned.Over the weekend, David Warrington, the Trump 2024 campaign’s general counsel, finalized the main conclusions of a review into Epshteyn that found he had unsuccessfully solicited tens of thousands of dollars from potential nominees including Scott Bessent, who has been tapped to be Treasury secretary.According to the review, one day after Trump met with Bessent for the first time in February, Epshteyn invited him to lunch at a hotel in Palm Beach, where he asked for a monthly retainer of at least $30,000 to promote his name at Mar-a-Lago in case Trump won the election.Bessent declined and complained to an aide that Epshteyn tried to shake him down. Later, when Epshteyn asked Bessent to invest $10m in a three-by-three basketball league, he declined but told associates Epshteyn would probably give him better access if he had taken up the offer.The review into Epshteyn, a longtime Trump adviser who has wielded outsized influence with Trump over cabinet picks and positions in key departments, also concluded Epshteyn’s employment and access to Trump should be terminated, according to two people briefed on the findings.But Epshteyn remained part of Trump’s inner circle as of Monday evening, with Trump riding high on the news that special counsel prosecutors had moved to dismiss the two federal criminal cases against him – a victory he credited to Ephsteyn.The first person that Trump called when prosecutors withdrew the cases against him was Epshteyn, according to two people with Trump at the time, which occurred just as CNN first reported the existence of the review into Epshteyn’s consultancy scheme.For the remainder of the day, Epshteyn was on the offensive as his allies dismissed the review as an attempt by Warrington to decapitate Epshteyn after he successfully pushed for Bill McGinley to be the White House counsel, rather than Warrington, who had also been in contention for the role.Epshteyn’s allies later portrayed the review as a political hit job capitalizing on Epshteyn’s role in pushing for the former congressman Matt Gaetz to get the nomination for attorney general before it sank under the weight of sexual misconduct allegations.Epshteyn denied the allegations. “I am honored to work for President Trump and with his team,” he said in a statement. “These fake claims are false and defamatory and will not distract us from making America great again.”If the failure of the Gaetz nomination was seen as an opportunity to oust Epshteyn, even in part, it may have been a miscalculation since the original idea to have Gaetz lead the justice department came from Trump himself, according to a person with direct knowledge of that conversation.One Trump adviser who does not care for Epshteyn speculated on Monday night that his influence was weakened by the allegations. But another Trump adviser suggested Epshteyn may have emerged stronger. “Trump isn’t impressed by a pile-on because that’s what all those prosecutors did to him,” the adviser said.Epshteyn’s staying power with Trump has remained constant over the years and surprised newcomers to Trump’s orbit. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson have both remarked to associates that they did not understand why Trump placed so much trust in Epshteyn.The principal reason for that trust in the last two years, according to multiple aides and associates, has been because Trump has regarded him as a major reason for how he sidestepped legal peril during the 2024 campaign.Epshteyn assembled and oversaw the Trump legal team during the criminal investigations and in the multiple criminal cases, including when Trump found it nearly impossible to find capable lawyers to represent him. “Boris was always right,” Trump is said to have remarked about Epshteyn’s legal strategy.That endeared him to Trump, who has taken Epshteyn seriously on policy and personnel suggestions, even if they were derided by others on the Trump team. When Trump named his top picks for the leadership of the justice department, they were Trump’s personal lawyers who had all been recruited by Epshteyn. More
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Biden will attend Trump’s inauguration in January, says White House
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, a White House spokesperson said on Monday.“The president promised that he would attend the inauguration of whomever won the election,” said Andrew Bates, senior deputy press secretary at the White House, Reuters reported.“He and the First Lady are going to honor that promise and attend the inauguration.”The president-elect did not attend Biden’s inauguration in January 2021, which came days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.Earlier this month, the US president welcomed Trump back to the White House – another tradition Trump eschewed after losing the 2020 election- with Biden promising a transfer of power that is “as smooth as it can get”.“We’re looking forward to having, like we said, a smooth transition. We’ll do everything we can to make sure you’re accommodated, what you need, and we’re going to get a chance to talk about some of that today,” Biden said earlier this month. “Welcome back.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump’s decision to skip Biden’s inauguration was not without precedent, but he was the first president to skip his successor’s inauguration in more than 150 years and his then outgoing administration was represented by then outgoing vice-president Mike Pence. More
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Donald Trump slams federal cases against him after special counsel moves to drop them – live
Trump has broken his silence on the decisions by prosecutors to drop the election interference charges and the classified documents case against him.In a post on Truth Social, the president-elect said: “These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought.”He continued:
Over $100m Dollars of taxpayer Dollars has been wasted in the Democrat Party’s fight against their Political Opponent, ME. Nothing like this has ever happened in our Country before. They have also used State Prosecutors and
District Attorneys, such as Fani Willis and her lover, Nathan Wade (who had absolutely zero experience in cases such as this, but was paid MILLIONS, enough for them to take numerous trips and cruises around the globe!), Letitia James, who inappropriately, unethically, and probably illegally, campaigned on “GETTING TRUMP” in order to win Political Office, and Alvin Bragg, who himself never wanted to bring this case against me, but was forced to do so by the Justice Department and the Democrat Party.
It was a political hijacking, and a low point in the History of our Country that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, a White House spokesman told Reuters.“The president promised that he would attend the inauguration of whomever won the election,” said Andrew Bates, senior deputy press secretary at the White House. “He and the First Lady are going to honor that promise and attend the inauguration.”Just hours after Joe Biden pardoned two turkeys in an event marking the official start of the holiday season in Washington, First Lady Jill Biden received the White House Christmas tree. The Frasier fir was delivered to the White House from the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, a region recently impacted by Hurricane Helene.Jack Smith is planning to release a final report into his investigations into Donald Trump’s classified documents and election interference cases, CNN reports.Attorney general Merrick Garland will publicly release the report, as he has past special counsel reports, a source familiar with the matter tells CNN. However, it remains unclear how much information will be included in the reports.Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has dropped his office’s lawsuit against Elon Musk and his America Pac. Krasner had sued Musk over his super Pac’s $1m-a-day lottery, where swing state voters were entered into a drawing every day before the presidential election in exchange for signing a petition.Teddy Schleifer of Puck News first posted a screen capture of the court case today, marking it “Discontinued and Ended”.A Philadelphia judge had rejected Krasner’s request for an injunction, on the basis that Musk’s lottery violated state election laws, on 4 November.Donald Trump has declined to sign presidential transition paperwork that requires disclosure of private donors. The memorandum of understanding, which requires an incoming president to disclose the names of private donors and caps their donations at $5,000, would give Trump access to up to $7.2m in federal funding.Here’s Robert Tait with more:Sidestepping it means Trump can raise unlimited amounts of cash from rich backers to finance his return to the White House while concealing what they are being promised in return.He is the first incoming president not to sign the federal transition funding agreement, which is dictated by the Presidential Transition Act.Transition funds are typically raised to pay for staff, office space and travel needed to put together an administration.Trump’s decision to avoid the standard procedure has alarmed ethics experts, who warn that it enables wealthy individuals to influence the makeup of a new administration without their names or potential conflicts of interest being disclosed.It also means the president-elect can accept unlimited donations from foreign donors, who – in contrast to rules prohibiting foreigners from contributing to election campaigns – are legally allowed to donate to transitions.Chuck Schumer, Senate majority leader, has scheduled Senate Democrats’ leadership elections for 3 December, according to reports.According to CNN, the leadership elections will start at 9:30am, per a Democratic leadership aide.Meanwhile, the Democratic national committee announced earlier today that it will select its next chair during a 1 February vote. The committee also plans to hold four forums for candidates in January.Trump has broken his silence on the decisions by prosecutors to drop the election interference charges and the classified documents case against him.In a post on Truth Social, the president-elect said: “These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought.”He continued:
Over $100m Dollars of taxpayer Dollars has been wasted in the Democrat Party’s fight against their Political Opponent, ME. Nothing like this has ever happened in our Country before. They have also used State Prosecutors and
District Attorneys, such as Fani Willis and her lover, Nathan Wade (who had absolutely zero experience in cases such as this, but was paid MILLIONS, enough for them to take numerous trips and cruises around the globe!), Letitia James, who inappropriately, unethically, and probably illegally, campaigned on “GETTING TRUMP” in order to win Political Office, and Alvin Bragg, who himself never wanted to bring this case against me, but was forced to do so by the Justice Department and the Democrat Party.
It was a political hijacking, and a low point in the History of our Country that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
While the case involving classified documents case will be dropped against Donald Trump, prosecutors say they will continue to pursue the case against two of his employees.According to CNN, special counsel Jack Smith said that while he is dropping the prosecution of Trump for allegedly mishandling classified documents, prosecutors will proceed with the case against two of his employees – Walt Nauta and Carlos de Oliveira – who are co-defendants in the case.Both individuals, who work for Trump, are accused of assisting the former president in obstructing the federal investigation into sensitive government documents.CNN noted that the case is now before the 11th US circuit court of appeals, which is reviewing a judge’s order dismissing all charges.Vice-president-elect JD Vance has responded to the news that prosecutors have dropped election interference charges and the classified documents case against Donald Trump.“If Donald J. Trump had lost an election, he may very well have spent the rest of his life in prison,” Vance wrote. “These prosecutions were always political.”He continued: “Now it’s time to ensure what happened to President Trump never happens in this country again.”In statement, Steven Cheung, the communications director for the president-elect, said: “Today’s decision by the DOJ ends the unconstitutional federal cases against President Trump, and is a major victory for the rule of law.“The American People and President Trump want an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to uniting our country,” he added.Federal prosecutors have also moved today to abandon the classified documents case against Donald Trump, similarly to the election interference case, in light of longstanding justice department policy that says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution – even though Trump has not yet been inaugurated.The announcement in an appeals court filing in Florida came shortly after the similar filing was made by prosecutors in Washington DC, where they asked to dismiss the case accusing Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, the Associated Press reports.The move amounts to a predictable but nonetheless stunning conclusion to a criminal case that just one year ago had been seen as the most perilous legal threat that he faced. It reflects the practical consequences of Trump’s electoral victory, ensuring he enters office free from scrutiny over his hoarding of top secret documents at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after leaving office in January 2021 – conduct that prosecutors said had jeopardized national scrutiny.The dismissal had been foreshadowed in recent weeks by the revelation that special counsel Jack Smith was evaluating how to wind down both that case and a separate pending prosecution he brought charging Trump with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.Justice department legal opinions dating back decades say sitting presidents cannot be indicted or prosecuted while in office and the government’s filings today indicate that, although unprecedented, they have decided this also applies to a president-elect who was charged while still a private citizen. More - in US Politics
Ex-official exits running for Trump team over Sebastian Gorka appointment
A frontrunner to be deputy national security adviser in Donald Trump’s administration reportedly withdrew from the running after learning that he would have to work with Sebastian Gorka, the president-elect’s choice as counter-terrorism adviser.Michael Anton, a conservative speech writer and national security official in Trump’s first presidency, removed his name from contention over Gorka’s appointment against a backdrop of acrimonious past relations between the pair, the Washington Post reported.His withdrawal graphically signifies the unease provoked by the prospective return to the White House of Gorka, a controversial figure who was forced out of Trump’s first administration, where he worked closely with Steve Bannon, within its first seven months.His departure is believed to have been engineered by John Kelly, who became White House chief of staff in July 2017 with the task of bringing order to the chaos that characterised Trump’s first months. Kelly, who later resigned, has since turned against Trump, saying he met “the general definition of a fascist” in interviews given shortly before this month’s presidential election.Gorka, who has worked at the National Defense University, has drawn multiple accusations of Islamophobia.Being considered anathema by Anton – who was believed to be under consideration to become deputy to the prospective national security advisor, Mike Waltz – is all the more striking given Anton’s own hardline views on Islam, which he has called “a militant faith”. He argued that “only an insane society” would accept Muslim immigrants following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.But his opinions have paled in comparison to those of Gorka, who has depicted the religion as a threat to western civilisation and has peddled fears about America falling under sharia law.He was a vocal supporter of the Muslim travel ban enacted against citizens of seven majority Muslim countries during Trump’s first administration. When he departed, he wrote a resignation letter lamenting the president’s failure to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism” in a speech on Afghanistan.The Washington Post cited a source in Trump’s national security transition team as saying there was widespread dismay at the prospect of Gorka’s return, which does not need to be confirmed by Senate hearings.“Almost universally, the entire team considers Gorka a clown,” the source said. “They are dreading working with him.”Anton has previously written about the animosity between Gorka and himself. He recounted how Gorka called him a “coward” and scolded him in a Fox News green room.Gorka, who first came to attention as a firebrand pundit working at the rightwing Breitbart News, declined comment, telling the Post: “I don’t comment to the fake failing news.”Anton’s reported withdrawal follows scathing comments on Gorka’s qualifications by John Bolton, who was national security in Trump’s first term before being fired.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSpeaking to CNN, he called Gorka “a conman” and said the FBI should investigate his credentials.“I wouldn’t have him in any U.S. government,” Bolton told the network’s Kaitlan Collins. “I don’t think it will bode well for counterterrorism efforts.”Gorka, a US-British citizen and the son of Hungarian immigrants to the UK, drew criticism when he appeared at Trump’s first inauguration ball wearing an honorary medal from the Hungarian nationalist organisation, Vitézi Rend. The World Jewish Congress has said some members of the outfit were complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust.His views on Islam have been distinguished by a rejection of interpretations attributing the root causes of Islamist terrorism to poverty, repression or US foreign policy mistakes.“This is what I completely jettison,” he told the Washington Post in 2017. “Anybody who downplays the role of religious ideology … they are deleting reality to fit their own world.”In a video filmed after Hamas’s murderous 7 October attack on Israel last year, he said he had watched unedited footage of the episode and offered advice to Israeli leaders on how to deal with the Palestinian militant group.“Kill every single one of them,” he said. “God bless Israel. God bless Judeo-Christian civilisation.” More
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Ireland prices corporation tax loss from Trump policies at €10bn
Ireland’s prime minister has said the country could lose €10bn (£8.35bn) in corporate tax if just three US multinationals were repatriated to America under a hostile Donald Trump administration.His remarks come just days after Trump nominated the Wall Street investor Howard Lutnick to lead the Department of Commerce with direct responsibility for trade.While Trump has already warned he would impose tariffs on EU imports, Lutnick has singled out Ireland for criticism saying “it is nonsense that Ireland of all places runs a trade surplus at our expense”.Simon Harris said if he was returned as taoiseach in Friday’s general election, he would immediately seek engagement with Trump. He has also proposed an early EU-US trade summit to avert damage in trade ties with the overall European trade bloc.“If three US companies left Ireland it could cost us €10bn [£8.5bn] in corporation tax,” Harris said on Monday while canvassing in Dundrum, Dublin.“I’m not pre-empting it, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, I’m not predicting it, but that is the level of risk that our economy is exposed to,” he said.Ten multinationals account for 60% of Ireland’s corporate tax receipts, with Microsoft, which books some global as well as EU revenues through Ireland, thought to be the single biggest contributor.Ireland’s goods trade surplus with the US is now a record €35bn with Irish goods exports up by 8% in the first eight months of 2024, boosted by the pharmaceutical and chemical sectors.Goods exported to the US totalled €45.5bn between January and August, according to the government’s Central Statistics Office, compared with imports of €11bn for the same period.Harris said he had no reason to believe that Trump was not “serious about pursuing the policies that he has campaigned on”, which includes repatriating jobs and profits that he believes should be homegrown.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe also referenced the Wall Street Journal article on what it said was the “US tax system blows a windfall into Ireland” fuelling savings into not just one but two sovereign wealth funds, including a €14bn windfall in back tax from Apple on the foot of a European court of justice ruling.“The Wall Street Journal front page gives an indication here” that Trump is intent on action, said Harris.However, he said Ireland would be prepared and would cope just as it did with “Brexit, Covid [and the] cost of living crisis”. More
