#obbba

[moodboardmix]

Architecture no longer considered a "professional degree" in US !

Under the terms of the OBBBA, the provision of student loans in the USA will be overhauled starting 1 July, 2026, with borrowing amounts set to be determined by whether a degree is considered professional or not.

Architects, along with several careers including other nursing and accounting, will not be considered as "professional degrees", a move that was criticised by the American Institute of Architects (AIA).

"The American Institute of Architects strongly opposes any proposal or policy that fails to recognize architects as professionals, particularly when designating which degrees qualify for student loan caps," said the AIA in a statement.

"The title of 'architect' is earned through years of rigorous education, extensive professional examinations, and a demanding licensing process," "To classify otherwise dismisses the expertise, professional standards, and dedication that define the profession."

The Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP), which will replace all previous loan programs, will see borrowing capped at $20,500 for "graduate students" and $50,000 for "professional students".

"Lowering the loan cap will reduce the number of architects who can afford to pursue this professional degree and harm American leadership in this field," said the AIA.

"AIA will be actively engaged with policymakers to ensure that the essential role and professional standing of architects are properly recognized in federal policy. We remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting the integrity and value of the architectural profession."

The United States Senate has reintroduced the Democracy in Design Act to its chamber. The bill, introduced on September 19 by Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), seeks to ensure communities have a voice in shaping federal buildings and that no single architectural style is imposed nationwide.

The move comes weeks after 'David Dennison' aka 'The notorious P.I.G.' introduced a new executive order making classical architecture the ‘preferred and default’ style for Federal public buildings.

Keep em poor, keep em sick, keep em stupid. Motto of the GOP.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

The Big Beautiful Bill has a SNAP Poison Pill

How states will get the blame for massive cuts to food stamps

Pamela Herd at Can We Still Govern?:

There’s a poison pill in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill”, which will leave millions of Americans hungry. Changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), colloquially known as food stamps, are projected to cause 4 million people to lose benefits—with 19 million more facing benefit cuts. On average, SNAP comprises about one-quarter of beneficiaries’ household income–with 1 in every 2 children receiving these benefits before their 18th birthday—these cuts will hit hard. And ominously, the Trump Administration just eliminated a survey of SNAP beneficiaries that would tell us the impact on these families’ access to food.

Why will so many vulnerable Americans lose their benefits? In short, both beneficiaries and states will be overwhelmed with new administrative burdens. In addition to cuts in the value of SNAP benefits, many beneficiaries will lose coverage because of added work requirements—which have been repeatedly shown to push eligible people off the program, but not improve labor force participation. Others, however, will lose benefits because *state administrators* are facing new administrative burdens, which will push them to reduce their SNAP caseloads. The bill, by design, is forcing state governments to take the blame for millions of Americans going hungry.

What is the poison pill? Weaponizing an obscure administrative metric: error rates.

States will lose billions of dollars for making mistakes processing SNAP applications. Why? John Boozman (R-AR) and U.S. House Committee on Agriculture Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-PA) argue that states lack “accountability measures hardworking taxpayers deserve” and these changes ensure states “have a real incentive to improve oversight and stop improper payments before they happen.” It’s one example of the drumbeat of fraud that Republicans have been building to rip holes in the safety net. In fact, Congress is punishing states for a problem it caused. Error rates are inevitable because Congress designed a policy that’s impossible to administer perfectly. Nevertheless, states will now pay between 5-15% of the costs of their SNAP budget if their error rates go above 6%. This will be enough to sink SNAP as a program in some states.

Eligibility guidelines are complicated—and especially so now with new work requirements. Beneficiaries’ incomes and work patterns are also complicated—their employment is unstable and often intermittent given how low-wage labor markets function. Moreover, their expenses, like childcare costs, are highly variable, but also critical to determining eligibility and benefit levels. The interaction, inevitably, leads to mistakes. Importantly, error rates also include procedural mistakes—like a missing form—even if the benefit is correct. If Congress were serious about reducing errors it would help states manage the administrative costs required to reduce them. It also wouldn’t punish them for procedural mistakes that don’t impact actual outcomes. Instead, Congress is cutting states administrative budgets by 30% even as it made the program more complicated to administer. This is on top of the enormous administrative costs states are facing with Medicaid work requirements—and federal funding cuts—looming in the background. State officials are being asked to do more with less, with catastrophic punishments if they fail. And many feel that they are being set up to fail.

[...]

SNAP error rates capture administrative mistakes, not just payment errors

You might be wondering: are errors a big problem? What do they really mean? The federal government has a rigorous system to ensure SNAP payment integrity. It calculates an ‘error rate’ for each state, which also captures administrative errors.

How does this work? Each state draws a random sample of its SNAP beneficiaries, and then reevaluates their eligibility documentation. The federal government then reviews 50% of those cases. In part, the error rate captures how frequently, based on these reevaluations, states had made erroneous SNAP payments—too much or too little, including payments to people who didn’t qualify for benefits. Importantly, the error rate also captures procedural errors—meaning it includes cases where the benefit was, in fact, correct, but where other mistakes were present, such as a missing signature or form. Starting in 2022, cases where beneficiaries were in fact deemed still eligible or were paid the correct benefit, were nonetheless deemed an ‘error’ if any of the paperwork was incomplete or included mistakes. Even if the state gets the outcome right, it can still be penalized for imperfect processes.

Pamela Herd, writing for Don Moynihan’s Can We Still Govern? Substack, lays out the harms of the OBBBA on SNAP.

[unnameablethings]

Trump's stupid ass new budget bill

alright, just finished reading through the 28 page summary created by the CRS (shoutout to the Congressional Research Service) of the 870 page One Big Beautiful Bill Act which Congress just passed to update the budget. took a while because I kept pausing to look things up. You can ALSO read the CRS summary at this link, OR the full 870 pages if you have the time:

H.R.1 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): One Big Beautiful Bill Act

Summary of H.R.1 - 119th Congress (2025-2026): One Big Beautiful Bill Act

Here's what jumped out to me in vaguely chronological order as they come up in the bill:

-Much more stringent work requirements for SNAP and Medicaid - the expectation will be 80 hours of work or volunteering a month to qualify unless you are severely disabled or have a child under 14

-Even more stringent enforcement of SNAP and Medicaid needs documentation, including a requirement for address verification

-very bizarrely, people who make $1 million or more in a year are prohibited from claiming unemployment in following years. This is apparently the pet project of a weirdo Republican Senator. who's out here as a millionaire claiming unemployment.

-Overtime pay is now tax-exempt. This is true specifically for the 0.5x overtime premium not for the base rate, and it's on up to $12,500 in income. If you work a lot of overtime you may get a bigger tax refund this year as a result.

-Similarly, the first $25,000 you earn each year in tip income is now tax-exempt for people in traditionally tipped professions. (The IRS will be defining these professions and providing guidance within the next 90 days, but "server" is a pretty safe bet.)

-You can deduct up to $10,000 in interest paid on a car loan for a personal vehicle from your taxes if you meet certain conditions - the car loan must have a start date after 12/31/2024 and final assembly must take place in the United States.

-Federal unsubsidized loans for grad students and parents are now capped.

-SAVE is gone, so are all income-based student loan repayment plans except for the Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP.) RAP is based on gross income, not discretionary income, and does not take into account household size. It has a 30 year repayment period before qualifying for forgiveness.

-There's a new kind of retirement account - it's called a Trump Account and works like a traditional IRA. You open it for a kid and can contribute up to $5,000 per year until the kid is 18, at which point it converts into a regular IRA. The government will give a $1000 boost to any baby born between 2025 and 2028. Remains to be seen how this will work logistically.

-the EPA has had massive amounts of its funding stripped

-there's now financial incentives for companies to invest in oil and gas drilling

-financial incentives for green energy have pretty much all been repealed

-Colleges will have federal funding revoked for any degree program where the average graduate of the program makes less than a comparable cohort of high school graduates (one of those things which sounds good on paper but ends up in sort of a dire situation for any degrees which aren't primarily profit-focused).

-various tax cuts for rich people, particularly around not having to pay taxes on investments

-increased tax incentives for employers to cover dependent/childcare and higher limits for how much they're allowed to help employees with (positive!)

-HUGE budget additions to Department of Homeland Security and the military. yikes.

overall it's a trainwreck and it sucks! with some weird shit in there as a bonus.

[just-keep-fighting]

US Department of Homeland Security to go into shutdown due to funding lapse

Impasse comes as Trump's Democratic rivals demand reforms to immigration operations after deadly shootings in Minnesota.

[ysabelmystic]

Getting real fucking tired of people telling us to leave the US when most of the people getting fucked over hardest can barely afford to go anywhere but work and the grocery store.

[harpieisthecarpie]

Hey, USAmericans! The "One, Big Beautiful Bill" (euagh) WILL hurt you

(Adding links, but I read newspapers on Pressreader [with my library card] so I'll indicate which are paywalled & aren't. If anyone has that way to make the paywalled articles visible to all it'd be mad helpful!)

Guys, in the "one big beautiful bill" act that's gone through the house (twice, so they could take out shit that'd insta-kill it on the senate floor) and Trump has commanded senate republicans to get through the senate by July 4th (all he knows is gimmick) they're adding a restriction to medicaid that is conservatively estimated to yank health coverage away from 10.9 million people.

Also the bill's gonna add a big beautiful $4 trillion to the gov't deficit.

If that bill passes, there's gonna be a work requirement for medicaid on a federal level. If you are a single "able-bodied" adult, aged 18 to 64, without dependents (kids) you'll be required to meet an 80-hour-per-month work requirement to obtain/maintain Medicaid coverage.

Even if you meet all those requirements, you're still gonna have to report your work hours. And it'll be one more thing to worry about if you lose employment or hours. Or if you're without work while in the process of seeking disability assistance/diagnoses. Not to mention the mess of adding more work onto the already straining backs of understaffed, low-morale gov't workers.

In addition, it's gonna cut Medicaid funding, increase eligibility checks, and inhibit states that use their own funding to provide coverage for undocumented migrants.

["Senate Republicans seek tougher Medicaid cuts and lower SALT deduction in Trump's 'big beautiful bill" - PBS News (no paywall)]

["What will Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' do to Medicaid and SNAP?" -ABC News (no paywall)]

Oh, the bill's also gonna push the cost of assistance programs onto states. For the (widely acknowledged) reason that the 1k+ page clusterfuck will be a financial wreck on the gov't. OBBBA will fuck you over and STILL be a $4 trillion burden

It's gonna

ALSO add eligibility restrictions and cut funding for SNAP

Massively complicate filing taxes for everyone while adding more obvious loopholes for the wealthy

Be a blitz on environmental protections and economic incentives for corps to care about the environment even a little

Portion big bucks out for ice "detention centers"

Give even more money to the military and homeland security (including like smth million for his stupid BORDER WALL?)

FUCK YOU OVER MASSIVELY

["Breaking Down the One Big Beautiful Bill" -Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (no paywall)]

["Breaking down Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' and its impact on the deficit and national debt" video with transcript -PBS News Hour (no paywall)]

["How the big, complicated bill could create headaches next tax season" -Boston Globe (paywalled)]

Of usamericans AWARE of anything in it at all, reports have found 2:1 are against it. INCLUDING REPUBLICANS. There are republican POLITICIANS who are finally speaking out bc it's so fucking heinous. Other countries hate it. We hate it. Even MUSK has spoken against it (though he's probably retracted that somewhere, loser)

["Poll suggests GOP budget bill faces nearly 2-to-1 opposition, with many unaware" -Boston Globe (paywalled)]

Do you know how fucking godawful something has to be for me, leftists, liberal democrats, independents, republicans, dumbass ceos, and nearly every journalist I've read to ALL AGREE it's bad?? Pretty bad!!!!!

And I know trying to get anything through your representatives seems nigh futile, but unlike trump a lot of those guys still gaf about reelection.

Republicans reps are going with their party bc (besides bigotry etc) they're aligning themselves with power. Same with democrats, they're flaccid bc (besides bigotry) they're minding their power. Y'know, donors. Backers. Those guys whose hobby is to lobby.

But they only have access to that power if they retain their influence, which is still in the hands of their constituents no matter how it seems otherwise. Give a shit. Make some noise.

[porterdavis]

Trump fairy tales

[jocie-questions-reality]

Guys it’s not looking good

The one big beautiful bill act (OBBBA) had passed the senate in a tied vote 50-50 broken by the vice president JD Vance voting in favor.

It still has to go back to the house so the amendments can be voted on, as a reminder it passed the house the first time in a mostly party line vote of 215–214–1.

There is still a chance, but if OBBBA is not stricken down people will lose healthcare coverage, people won’t get food, people will lose hormone access, billionaires will get richer. People will die

This bill will kill us at the enrichment of the 1%