Voters, including Trump voters, are going to be very surprised at the “mandate” they allegedly gave Trump. This is the first headline I saw today, from the New York Times, for example:

Yep, the New York Times reports that RFK the Lesser’s lawyer, a man actively involved in hiring for the new Regime, has been trying to get the polio vaccine banned. And other vaccines as well, including hepatitis B, tetanus, Covid-19, and diphtheria.

The lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine, which for decades has protected millions of people from a virus that can cause paralysis or death.

That campaign is just one front in the war that the lawyer, Aaron Siri, is waging against vaccines of all kinds.

Mr. Siri has also filed a petition seeking to pause the distribution of 13 other vaccines; challenged, and in some cases quashed, Covid vaccine mandates around the country; sued federal agencies for the disclosure of records related to vaccine approvals; and subjected prominent vaccine scientists to grueling videotaped depositions.

Of course, RFK the Lesser hasn’t yet been confirmed as the head of Health and Human Services, so there’s a faint home the new Regime won’t run something like the Spanish Inquisition aimed at scientists. But I don’t think most voters had any idea banning vaccines was a possibility. It is. This is from an interview with Trump in Time magazine:

One of them who is controversial, who I just want to ask you a quick question about, is RFK Jr, who is a noted vaccine skeptic. If he moves to end childhood vaccination programs, would you sign off on that?

We’re going to have a big discussion. The autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible. If you look at things that are happening, there’s something causing it.

Do you think it’s linked to vaccines? 

No, I’m going to be listening to Bobby, who I’ve really gotten along with great and I have a lot of respect for having to do with food, having to do with vaccinations. He does not disagree with vaccinations, all vaccinations. He disagrees probably with some. But we’ll have it. We’re going to do what’s good for the country. 

So that could include getting rid of some vaccinations? 

It could if I think it’s dangerous, if I think they are not beneficial, but I don’t think it’s going to be very controversial in the end. 

Do you agree with him about the connection between vaccines and autism? 

I want to see the numbers. It’s going to be the numbers. We will be able to do—I think you’re going to feel very good about it at the end. We’re going to be able to do very serious testing, and we’ll see the numbers. A lot of people think a lot of different things. And at the end of the studies that we’re doing, and we’re going all out, we’re going to know what’s good and what’s not good. We will know for sure what’s good and what’s not good. 

The alleged connection between vaccines and autism was first proposed more than 25 years ago and has been debunked up the wazoo. The original claim was based on bogus data. This has been verified beyond question. Yet we’re going to waste taxpayer dollars “studying” it some more.

Yes, a lot of people think a lot of different things, and a lot of those people are stupid.

Here’s another headline for you:

Yep, they want to drastically deregulate the financial sector. Has all memory of the 2008 financial crisis melted away, somehow? Note that the Heritage Foundation is on record as wanting to abolish the FDIC and replace it with private insurance going back about forty years. And I’m sure the Trump Family Grifters are already cooking up a way for them to use deregulation to make a fast killing off the rubes.

This is quote from the Wall Street Journal that I got from Talking Points Memo:

The Trump transition team has started to explore pathways to dramatically shrink, consolidate or even eliminate the top bank watchdogs in Washington. 

In recent interviews with potential nominees to lead bank regulatory agencies, President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers and officials from his newfound Department of Government Efficiency have, for example, asked whether he could abolish the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., people familiar with the matter said.

There are no words. This is stupid beyond all known parameters of stupid.

On to other stuff — Ronald Brownstein writes in the Atlantic —

Donald Trump’s support in rural America appears to have virtually no ceiling. In last month’s election, Trump won country communities by even larger margins than he did in his 2020 and 2016 presidential runs. But several core second-term policies that Trump and the Republican Congress have championed could disproportionately harm those places.

Agricultural producers could face worse losses than any other economic sector from Trump’s plans to impose sweeping tariffs on imports and to undertake what he frequently has called “the largest domestic deportation operation” of undocumented immigrants “in American history.” Hospitals and other health providers in rural areas could face the greatest strain from proposals Trump has embraced to slash spending on Medicaid, which provides coverage to a greater share of adults in smaller communities than in large metropolitan areas. And small-town public schools would likely be destabilized even more than urban school districts if Trump succeeds in his pledge to expand “school choice” by providing parents with vouchers to send their kids to private schools.

I’ve written about some of this before. For example, to me, “school choice” is an urban/elitist argument that ignores the realities of small town and rural communities. See, for example, The Republican War Against Public Schools Is a War Against the “Heartland” from 2020.

And I’ve written before about how rural hospitals are closing, especially in states that go cheap on Medicaid. See, from 2018, The Fruits of GOP Health Care in Missouri. Hospitals in low-population areas really need Medicaid dollars to stay open. And as of July 2024, Medicaid is the primary payer for 63 percent of U.S. nursing home residents. If they kill Medicaid, where will those people go?

The “government efficiency” guys don’t seem to understand that if you cut government cost, those costs don’t go away. And they aren’t painlessly absorbed by the private sector. In the end the economic and other devastation that will be visited on Americans will end up costing more in the long run.