Saturday, March 28, 2026
‘No kings,’ Ossoff declares in weekend speech in Savannah - The Current
‘No kings,’ Ossoff declares in weekend speech in Savannah
"Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator steps up reelection campaign with criticism of the ‘big, beautiful bill’
Jon Ossoff came to Savannah over the weekend to deliver “a report from our nation’s capital.” And the news, he said, isn’t good.
“Donald Trump wants the whole country to fear,” the 38-year-old Democratic U.S. senator from Atlanta told hundreds of supporters gathered at the Kehoe Iron Works building on a sweltering, mid-summer afternoon.
“I’ve heard it from people at every level, including people with power, people with status, people with resources. They come to my office, and they tell me they’re afraid to say anything. They’re afraid of retribution, investigation, destruction, vengeance from their own government.”
Ossoff’s visit to Savannah comes as he steps up campaigning ahead of what is expected to be one of the most crucial — and most expensive — election races in the nation next year. At stake could be control of the U.S. Senate.
Ossoff has already raised over $15 million for his campaign this year, as he prepares to take on a spate of Republican challengers. During his visit to the coast, he also attended a fundraiser at a private home in the Hostess City.
Finding a message?
In his 26-minute speech, Ossoff lambasted the GOP’s recently passed tax-and spending bill, which is expected to balloon federal debt by at least $3 trillion. He decried provisions that will make cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), while lowering taxes for the wealthiest Americans — moves that Ossoff said contradict Republican claims to be the party of the working class.
Those remarks by Ossoff on Saturday suggest that he and other Democrats might have already found their main message for next year’s midterm elections.
Again and again on Saturday, he returned to what he said was the betrayal of working-class Americans by the president, as exemplified by what Trump and his supporters have dubbed the “big, beautiful bill.”
“Donald Trump said he was going to fight for working-class Americans. What he really meant was he was going to take away your health care to cut taxes for the rich,” Ossoff said.
Ossoff, who narrowly flipped his seat alongside Rev. Raphael Warnock in 2020, is viewed as the most vulnerable Democratic senator up for reelection in 2026. Although Democrats won Georgia in 2020, the Peach State returned to its Republican roots in 2024, and Ossoff’s GOP election challengers, including Coastal Georgia Congressman Earl “Buddy” Carter, see the state as too Republican to have two Democrats in Washington.
Promises kept, broken
But Ossoff appears to believe that healthcare is a winning issue for him and other Democrats.
He said Saturday that Republicans are “destroying” Medicaid, which in Georgia covers 40 percent of children, nearly 50 percent of all births and about 70 percent of nursing home residents. While on the subject of healthcare, Ossoff narrowed in on the high costs of ambulance rides and the lack of healthcare infrastructure in rural areas, problems that have been exacerbated since Trump took office, he said.
Following Trump’s signing of the mammoth tax-and-spending bill in a ceremony on the White House lawn on July 4, the White House led a chorus of Republicans in the slogan, “Promises made, promises kept.”
In his remarks, Ossoff sought to turn that boast on its head, listing off Trump’s “broken promises,” ranging from his vow to end wars in Ukraine and Gaza to his assurance that he’d release sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein’s “client list.”
“Did anyone really think the sexual predator president who used to party with Jeffrey Epstein was going to release the Epstein files?” Ossoff quipped.
That message resonated with Ossoff’s sympathetic audience on Saturday.
“Everything in the big new bill is just a crime, and I know Senator Ossoff opposed that big time,” Carol Young, who came to the rally from Pooler, said.
“Our federal government is gutting everything, like the Weather Service and FEMA and health care, and I’m terrified of just everything they’re going to do.”
As to why Trump and the GOP have backed a bill that eliminates what many Americans consider essential government services?
In a message that is likely to resound in campaigning for next year’s midterm elections, Ossoff said it was to give wealthy donors a tax break. Starting with Trump, the corruption driving American politics, he said, is the worst in the Western world.
“He’s a crook, and he wants to be a king,” he said. But, “Georgia will bow to no king.”
Lily Belle Poling is a rising junior at Yale. She is a summer 2025 intern at The Current GA with support from the Ida B. Wells Society in collaboration with the Nonprofit Newsroom Internship Program created by The Scripps Howard Fund and the Institute for Nonprofit News."
Lebanon condemns ‘blatant war crime’ after Israel kills three journalists | Lebanon | The Guardian
Lebanon condemns ‘blatant war crime’ after Israel kills three journalists
"Israeli military says primary target, killed in a missile strike far from the frontlines, was a Hezbollah ‘terrorist’
Israel killed three journalists in south Lebanon on Saturday, their TV channels and authorities said, prompting condemnation from the Lebanese government who called the killings a “blatant war crime”.
Ali Shoeib, from the Hezbollah-owned al-Manar television station, Fatima Ftouni and her brother and cameraman Mohammed Ftouni from the pro-Hezbollah outlet al-Mayadeen, were killed in the strike targeting their car.
Israel claimed the attack shortly afterwards, saying the target was Shoeib, whom it accused of being a Hezbollah “terrorist” in an intelligence unit who had reported on the locations of Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military provided no further evidence to support the claim and made no comment on the killing of the other journalists.
Shoeib was a well known war correspondent in Lebanon, where he reported for al-Manar for nearly three decades. His death was met with a wave of condolences from audiences and journalists in Lebanon, many of whom said he was considered a mentor figure in Lebanese journalism.
Ftouni had also been reporting from the frontlines of the Israel-Hezbollah war in recent days, filming in front of battles in the town of Taybeh, south Lebanon. Her own family had been killed in Israeli strikes weeks earlier.
Eighteen months earlier, her and her colleagues were struck by an Israeli bomb while they were sleeping in a hotel in south Lebanon; Ftouni survived but two of her colleagues did not. Commenting on the deaths of her colleagues at the time, Ftouni said that “it is the silence of the international community that let this happen”.
The three journalists were struck as they were driving in Jezzine, a district in south Lebanon far from the frontlines. Local television showed at least four missiles were shot at the car and footage appeared to show a missile being fired between the journalists’ car and bystanders as the latter tried to approach and help. Video of the aftermath showed singed press jackets and helmets, as well as tripods and microphones that had been pulled from the car.
The Israeli military said the strike was aimed at Shoeib, who it claimed was a member of Hezbollah’s Radwan force: the most elite unit of the pro-Iran armed group which specialises in cross-border raids. It said that Shoeib’s contact with senior members of Hezbollah, and his work documenting the location of Israeli forces, was evidence he was a military member of the group.
International law says that regardless of political affiliation, journalists are considered civilians and targeting them is a war crime. Eight out of the nine journalists killed by Israel in Lebanon since 13 October 2023 worked for Hezbollah-affiliated outlets, and analysts have suggested the killings come as a part of Israel’s strategy of attacking the civilian wings of the group.
Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, described the journalists as “civilians doing their professional duty”. Writing on X, he said: “It is a brazen crime that violates all treaties and norms through which journalists enjoy international protection in war.”
The Israeli military has made similar claims about several journalists it killed in Gaza, whom it said also worked as Hamas operatives, including Anas al-Sharif, a correspondent for Al Jazeera. Israel has killed more than 220 journalists since 2023, according to Reporters Without Borders.
Lebanon’s minister of information, Paul Morcos, said that the killing of the three journalists on Saturday “constitutes a deliberate and blatant war crime against the media and the mission of journalism”. He also said that the Lebanese government had compiled a list of Israeli attacks against healthcare workers and media personnel, which it will submit to the UN and the EU.
The fighting in Lebanon started when Hezbollah launched missiles at Israel on 2 Marchafter the US-Israeli assault on Iran, triggering an Israeli aerial campaign and invasion. Israeli attacks have killed 1,189 people and wounded 3,427 in Lebanon, including 48 healthcare workers, according to the Lebanese ministry of health. Three Israeli soldiers in South Lebanon and one person in northern Israel have been killed by Hezbollah fire."
Opinion | Trump Does Anything He Wants — and More - The New York Times
Trump Does Anything He Wants — and More
"Donald Trump used to brag about grabbing women by the crotch. Now he’s grabbing the world by its axis.
He still believes he has the right to swoop in with a transgressive attack. He has simply expanded his targets.
“When you’re a star,” he once said, “they let you do it. You can do anything.”
His approach in his second term can best be described as manhandling, abetted by his cabinet of lackeys and congressional Republican bootlickers. Mike Johnson pathetically conjured an “America First Award” for Trump out of thin air. The House speaker called the “beautiful golden statue” of an eagle appropriate to “the new golden era in America.”
Trump thinks more than ever that he can have his way with whatever he wants in whatever way he wants. Whether it’s a country, a skyline, the White House. He accosted the People’s House, bulldozing the East Wing and a Jackie Kennedy garden, before anyone could even look at the plans. He blows up suspected drug boats, snatched Nicolás Maduro out of his bedroom and salivates at the thought of pillaging Greenland and assailing Cuba.
“I do believe I’ll be having the honor of taking Cuba,” he said. “That’s a big honor. Taking Cuba in some form. Whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, you want to know the truth.”
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You can do anything.
At a cabinet meeting on Thursday, an amused Trump mused: “I think I may go to Venezuela and run for president against Delcy,” referring to Delcy RodrÃguez, Maduro’s vice president who ascended with Trump’s approval.
On Monday, Trump said that if Iran did not submit to him, “we’ll just keep bombing our little hearts out.” He was steaming that NATO was not bending to his will, and he was vowing that it would rue the day. “This was a test for NATO,” he said during the cabinet meeting, adding: “If you don’t do that, we’re going to remember. Just remember. Remember this in a number of months from now. Remember my statements. They have an expression, a great expression, ‘Never forget.’ We can never forget.”
It’s odd that Trump co-opted the bracing slogan about 9/11 given that on that day he observed that, with the twin towers coming down, one of his buildings, 40 Wall Street, became the tallest in Lower Manhattan.
Once, Trump thought war was a waste of time and lives and money; he dreamed of building hotels on the beaches of North Korea and Gaza. After he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, he gave a speech outlining his military policy. “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with,” he said. Now he lusts for regime change.
Cadet Bone Spurs has developed a taste for flaunting our unparalleled military, and there’s no one at the Pentagon to curb this new appetite for global violence — certainly not the aggro Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth showed again why he is such an unnerving choice to run our military when he blocked the promotion of two Black officers and two women to be one-star Army generals. As The Times scooped, that left a gaggle largely of white men, Hegseth’s favorite breed, on the promotion list.
When Trump was a celebrity developer, people laughed at his megalomania in plastering his name everywhere. He grabbed buildings by the crotch. But now that he is president, it’s not funny. It’s foul.
He forced his name onto the Kennedy Center. He scratched the “U.S.” out of the U.S. Institute of Peace and made it the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. He is branding his name on a class of battleships. A multistory banner of his glaring face hangs from the Department of Justice. He tried to have Washington Dulles Airport and New York’s Penn Station renamed after him, and is plotting a Trump-style arch across from the Lincoln Memorial so tall it could interfere with Reagan National Airport flight paths.
Trump’s handpicked arts commission approved the creation of a commemorative 24-karat gold coin with a scowling picture of the president leaning over a desk with his fists clenched. And King Midas is impelling the Treasury Department to mint a one-dollar gold coin with his visage.
Now, in his frenzied quest for ubiquity, he will deface U.S. currency. The Treasury Department announced on Thursday that Trump would become the first sitting president to have his signature on paper money. Thrusting himself onto legal tender is anything but tender — he’s shoving the U.S. treasurer’s signature off the bills. Naturally, Trump put a sycophantic man in that job — ending a 76-year stretch of women holding it.
“The president’s mark on history as the architect of America’s golden age economic revival is undeniable,” said Brandon Beach, the treasurer, in a statement. “Printing his signature on the American currency is not only appropriate but well deserved.” (It’s alarming that the U.S. treasurer does not seem to know that the “operation” in Iran is raising prices and cratering stocks.)
As everyone tries to make sense of this more belligerent Trump, just remember: He’s still “Access Hollywood” Trump. He continues his amoral, pseudo-macho posturing — just with a bigger stage and the biggest weapons.
You can do anything.
Maureen Dowd is an Opinion columnist for The Times. She won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary. She is the author, most recently, of “Notorious.” @MaureenDowd • Facebook"
Many People Will Need Long-Term Care, but Most Don’t Have Insurance to Cover It - The New York Times
Many People Will Need Long-Term Care, but Most Don’t Have Insurance to Cover It
"Care for people who can’t take care of themselves is expensive, and regular health insurance doesn’t cover the cost.
Most older adults don’t have long-term care insurance, and a big reason — in addition to the cost — may be that they don’t understand the limits of their regular health coverage.
Long-term care refers to personal services for people who can’t take care of themselves because of physical or cognitive decline. Typically, people need such help when they can’t manage basic activities — like dressing, eating and bathing — on their own. Such care can be provided at home, by family or paid providers, or in an assisted-living community or nursing home.
A relatively small share of older adults view long-term care affordability as a top concern, researchers at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found, even though a significant number may need it at some point. And long-term care is expensive. The typical annual cost in 2025 was about $80,000 for nonmedical care provided at home, just over $74,000 for assisted living and about $130,000 for a private room in a nursing home.
Does insurance pay for long-term care?
The lack of concern may stem from confusion about whether health insurance covers long-term care. Mostly, it doesn’t. Medicare, the federal health plan for older people, doesn’t cover long-term care except in limited circumstances. Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor, does cover it, but qualifying for the program is difficult except for those with very low incomes. People must typically exhaust their own financial resources before becoming eligible for Medicaid coverage.
Special long-term care insurance, whether traditional policies or hybrids combining long-term care coverage with life insurance or an annuity, can help with costs — but it’s also pricey. Just 15 percent of people 65 and older have long-term care coverage, according to the retirement research center.
How can I tell how much I may have to pay?
An index introduced this year by Milliman, a consulting and actuarial firm that advises insurers and governments, aims to help people plan for the cost of care. The firm estimates that a 65-year-old would need $135,000 today to cover the average expected future lifetime costs of long-term care.
The cost, however, varies by factors like sex, geography and length of care. “There are a wide range of outcomes,” said Chris Giese, a principal at Milliman and a co-author of the index. The average amount needed now for someone who requires less than a year of long-term care is just $30,000, but it rises to $665,000 should that person need five years or more of care.
More than four million Americans will turn 65 this year and next year as well, the firm says. The index is based on an analysis of long-term insurance claims data, adjusted to reflect the general population.
About half of men and 60 percent of women will use some sort of formal, paid long-term care services after age 65, Milliman found. Milliman expects to update the index annually and to eventually offer online tools to help people customize their cost based on where they live, Mr. Giese said.
The projection on costs assumes that the money is invested at a rate of return of 4.35 percent, and that services are paid for out of pocket at commercial market rates. (The estimate doesn’t account for unpaid care provided by family members.)
Harry Margolis, a lawyer in Massachusetts specializing in elder law and estate planning, said the $135,000 benchmark was a good place to start. You can add or subtract an amount based on where you live, your health status and family history, and whether you have family who can help provide some care.
What if I’m not average?
Waterlily, a financial technology start-up, aims to make long-term care planning more personalized. Founded by two young entrepreneurs, the firm says it uses analytics and artificial intelligence to predict an individual’s likelihood of needing long-term care, the age at which the person is likely to first need it and for how long. The tool, aimed at people over age 40, analyzes data from government sources as well as from a private database with information on about 50,000 families.
Lily Vittayarukskul, 30, a co-founder of the firm and its chief executive, said she had started Waterlily because of her family’s experience with a serious illness. When a beloved aunt was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer, she said, relatives stepped away from work and school to arrange for her care. “It tore our family apart,” she said.
Waterlily, which has attracted investments from venture capital firms and large insurers, markets its tool to financial advisers and insurance agents, who use it with their clients. Firms pay monthly or annual fees to use the service.
The tool isn’t widely available to individuals, but Ms. Vittayarukskul, a licensed insurance agent, offers limited online demonstrations free to the public each week, by appointment.
How does Waterlily’s tool work?
Waterlily quickly shows clients an estimated age at which care is likely to begin, based on information they provide in an electronic health questionnaire. It offers a timeline of how care will progress, including any care provided by family members. Clients can then explore options to cover all or part of the costs, whether by purchasing insurance or self-funding.
Mr. Margolis said that he had recently tried the Waterlily demonstration and that the tool had predicted he would need long-term care for three years starting at age 86, at a cost of $350,000 in today’s dollars.
“I think that the idea of an algorithm to give people some idea of their potential long-term care costs makes a lot of sense,” he said.
Chris Chen, a certified financial planner in Newton, Mass., said he had been using Waterlily with clients for more than two years. The information, he said, can help clients face their potential need for long-term care and account for it in their financial plans.
“Most people try to avoid it,” he said.
The tool is also able to sell insurance. Waterlily says almost half of its users report that they plan to buy long-term care coverage. (The company typically doesn’t make commissions when clients sell policies, although insurance agents and advisers using the tool may.)
Mr. Chen said he considered Waterlily’s results to be something of a guess, albeit a “much more educated guess” than what was previously available.
Waterlily notes that “stakeholders should view its insights as a well-informed guide, not an absolute prediction of the future.”
Are there any government efforts on long-term care funding?
Some states are starting to address the need for long-term care funding. Washington established a program, funded with a payroll tax beginning in 2023, to provide state residents a benefit of up to $36,500, adjusted for inflation. While the amount is relatively modest, it can cover the needs of some people, the program’s website says, and can give other families time to plan. The first benefits under the program, WA Cares, are scheduled to become available later this year. Other states, including California, Massachusetts and New York, are exploring similar efforts.
Part of the Affordable Care Act would have created a federal program to help older adults and disabled people needing long-term care. The effort, however, known as the Class Act, was abandoned in 2011 as financially unworkable and repealed in 2013."
House Vote Sets Up Clash With the Senate on D.H.S. Funding, Prolonging Shutdown - The New York Times
House Vote Sets Up Clash With the Senate on D.H.S. Funding, Prolonging Shutdown
"Republicans revolted over a Senate measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security and passed a rival bill, dimming the chances of a quick end to the crisis crippling airports.
House Republicans angrily rejected a bipartisan deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security and pushed through their own plan late Friday, putting themselves on a collision course with the Senate and extending the agency shutdown that has crippled U.S. airports.
Revolting over an agreement their own party struck with Senate Democrats to end the crisis, which had passed the Senate before dawn on Friday, House Republican leaders — with President Trump’s backing — refused to take it up. They derided the Senate plan for hewing too closely to Democrats’ position by omitting money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, the two agencies responsible for carrying out Mr. Trump’s deportation crackdown, which are operating under previously approved funds.
“House Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” Speaker Mike Johnson said at a news conference on Friday afternoon. “This gambit that was done last night is a joke.”
Mr. Johnson called the Senate-passed deal engineered by Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, “ridiculousness,” and instead teed up a stopgap measure to fund the entire department until May 22.
The House passed that measure on a 213 to 203 vote late Friday night, before leaving Washington for a scheduled two-week break.
The vote left funding for the Department of Homeland Security up in the air, with competing bills pending in each chamber — both controlled by Republicans — and neither apparently willing to approve the other’s proposal.
House Democrats had been ready to join with Republicans and back the Senate-passed measure, clearing it for Mr. Trump to sign it into law and end the shutdown. But the House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate, where Democrats have been rejecting similar proposals for more than a month. It was unclear late on Friday whether senators, who have now scattered to their states for the two-week recess, would return to Washington and vote again.
Mr. Thune did not weigh in on the backlash to the agreement he negotiated, and Mr. Johnson tried to shift the blame to Senate Democrats. But Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the senior Democrat on the Rules Committee, said the House Republican opposition left no question which party was responsible for the lapse in agency funding.
“If you woke up this morning not knowing who to blame for this shutdown, you will go to bed tonight with no doubt on who to blame,” Mr. McGovern said. “It’s House Republicans and Speaker Johnson.”
Mr. Trump, who had waffled all week about whether he would support a deal to end the shutdown, also removed any doubt about where he stood, telling Fox News in an interview that the Senate-passed bill “wasn’t appropriate.” He urged Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster, a move he has long demanded, and force through a funding measure over Democratic opposition.
Senate Democrats have insisted for weeks that they would not support new funding for the Department of Homeland Security unless the Trump administration agreed to significant restrictions on ICE tactics and officer conduct after federal immigration agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.
Despite Mr. Trump’s initial commitment to negotiate over such limits, the White House and Republicans in Congress resisted major changes such as a ban on officers wearing masks and new warrant requirements. The prolonged stalemate has in recent days led to long lines and chaos at some airport screening points on the eve of spring break as Transportation Security Administration officers went unpaid and began calling out in significant numbers.
After last-ditch talks again proved fruitless on Thursday, Mr. Trump announced he would go around Congress to pay T.S.A. workers, which administration officials said would be possible using a pot of agency money that was approved last year as part of the tax cut and domestic policy law. Hours later, senators announced bipartisan legislation that would fund most of the agency, excepting immigration enforcement operations, through Sept. 30. That measure was approved by unanimous agreement without a recorded vote before dawn on Friday and sent to the House.
But the agreement — and the way senators lobbed it to the House overnight before departing for their recess — infuriated hard-right House Republicans. Adding to the anger on the right, the Senate also departed without action on an election identification and registration bill that is a top priority of Mr. Trump and is also being blocked by a Democratic filibuster.
“It is absolutely offensive to the people that we represent that the Senate would send over a bill that doesn’t fund Border Patrol and the core components of ICE,” said Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas. “Could the Senate be any more lazy than to send to us a bill that doesn’t do the job and then leave town? We are going to stand up and say no to that.”
But the stopgap measure the House passed instead has no chance of winning the 60 votes necessary to advance in the Senate, and senators are already scattered and would have to be called back to approve the alternative the House passed.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said Democrats would oppose the temporary spending bill, known as a continuing resolution or C.R.
“A 60-day C.R. that locks in status quo is dead on arrival in the Senate, and Republicans know it,” he said.
In the House, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said his party had been ready to back the Senate measure and end the partial shutdown.
“This should end, and could end today,” he said.
The stalemate between the Senate and the House left unclear the path forward for the legislation after it seemed for a few hours that the longest partial government shutdownmight finally be settled. It also resulted in the exact situation senators had been hoping to avoid: leaving the agency responsible for airport and other security unfunded while lawmakers were off for their Easter break.
On Friday afternoon, the White House released Mr. Trump’s memorandum directing that T.S.A. employees be paid, though it was unclear how quickly that would occur or how swiftly agents might return to their jobs after weeks without compensation.
As they assembled their legislation, Republican senators had portrayed it as the quickest way to resolve the spending impasse and they promised to substantially beef up immigration enforcement funding in a future party-line bill that could skirt a Democratic filibuster. They were also exploring adding elements of the election bill to that measure, though whether they could do so was an open question.
But even though the administration has a large slush fund it is using to pay for immigration enforcement during the shutdown, House Republicans said they could not accept a homeland security funding bill that lacked money for ICE and Border Patrol.
“House Republicans will not fund a half-baked idea that leaves our borders open and our communities at risk,” Representative Michelle Fischbach of Minnesota said on the floor.
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
Robert Jimison covers Congress for The Times, with a focus on defense issues and foreign policy."