Reading archive 2025-05-15

D.C. may have dodged deepest Medicaid cut. Officials are still worried.: D.C. officials are cautiously optimistic after a lobbying and public pressure campaign, but they say other Medicaid changes still pose a threat. - "The bill would require states to recertify beneficiaries’ eligibility every six months, causing some D.C. residents to lose their coverage or have gaps in coverage, and would impose work requirements with few details on how tracking and enforcement would work, she said."

After ICE visits, D.C. restaurants fear labor shortage: Last week’s sweep leads to immigrant workers quitting, no-showing or taking time off, restaurant owners say. - "If the White House is genuinely interested in bolstering American businesses, [Geoff] Tracy said, the administration 'could simply implement an E-Verify requirement for all U.S. employers — which would save them from having to do time-intensive I-9 audits.'" [ed. note: Chief Geoff!]

Are seed oils bad for you? Here’s what the evidence actually tells us.: RFK Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” supporters argue that they’re toxic, but most studies indicate otherwise. - "But if we take a bird’s-eye view of the body of evidence, it leads to a clear conclusion: Seed oils are more likely to be beneficial than harmful, but the effects are small enough that it probably doesn’t matter very much if you use them or you don’t.

...

"I’m on record blaming obesity and disease on processed foods, but trying to find specific ingredients that are harmful is a fool’s errand. It’s the food in total — nutrition-challenged, calorie-dense, ubiquitous, designed to be overeaten — that’s the problem. So, if you’re sautéing your vegetables in canola oil every day, you’re fine. If you’re eating Nacho Cheese Doritos (second ingredient: seed oil) every day, you might not be fine, but the oil isn’t to blame."

Walmart warns it will raise prices within weeks because of tariffs: The retail giant’s operating income increased in its first quarter since the Trump administration started a trade war.

U.S. preparing to relax big-bank capital rules: Current requirements punish holdings of safe assets such as Treasurys, banks say. Regulators will soon propose easing requirements.

Don’t be fooled. This is the calm before the AI storm.: The lull in the artificial intelligence revolution, thanks to cultural lag, is just temporary.

GOP tax bill on track to add more than $2.5 trillion to U.S. deficit: The figure is expected to intensify a national debate over spending and tax levels as President Donald Trump tries to push the legislation through Congress.

A Commanders stadium at RFK will actually cost taxpayers $6 billion

Commanders stadium plan is somehow even worse for DC taxpayers than we thought - "Whatever the final tally, the main takeaway is: Josh Harris gets to pay only $1 a year in rent for a huge tax-free swath of public land, while keeping all revenues from the stadium and other development he builds there, even as the district pays to build everything from parking garages to the stadium’s foundation. And the council — where Ward 3 representative Matthew Frumin has now declared himself “could be for it, could be against it,” leaving the overall body leaning slightly no but with several potential swing votes — only has until July 15 to vote it up or down in one indigestible lump, as the term sheet includes a clause declaring that if the council “materially changes” the terms, then the whole agreement is null and void. Mayor Bowser clearly wants to railroad this thing through before anyone takes a closer look — which makes sense, because on closer look this thing is a dumpster fire."

Silicon Valley Braces for Chaos: The center of the tech universe seems to believe that Trump’s tariff whiplash is nothing compared with what they see coming from AI. - "The tech industry admittedly doesn't 'think very hard about how bad things could get,' Conrad told me. 'Our job is to raise this,' he said, pointing upward to raise the ceiling on how prosperous and enjoyable society can be. 'Your job' - media, banks, elected officials, the East Coast - 'is to protect the floor.'"

Trump’s Real Secretary of State: How the president’s friend and golfing partner Steve Witkoff got one of the hardest jobs on the planet - "Witkoff has faced a precipitous learning curve, though he seems largely unbothered by the long history of American diplomatic failure in the Middle East, in particular. Like Trump, he is very much the transactionalist, and sees Ayatollah Khamenei and Vladimir Putin, among others, not as cruelly Machiavellian authoritarians captured by deeply felt and deeply antagonistic ideologies, but as clever negotiators, like so many real-estate lawyers he once faced in business, looking for the best possible deal. He appeared to interpret Putin's desire to meet with him not as a display of dominance but as a sign of the Russian leader's sincere interest in peace."

The Cynical Republican Plan to Cut Medicaid: Work requirements set up a thicket of paperwork that leads eligible Medicaid recipients to lose their insurance. That’s the point. - "We know how Medicaid work requirements play out because the policy has been tried at the state level. Arkansas, for example, implemented work requirements in 2018. Researchers found that they utterly failed to encourage more employment among the Medicaid population. The work requirements instead forced Medicaid recipients to navigate endless, complex paperwork demands that many of them couldn't understand or keep track of, causing them to lose their Medicaid eligibility. The bulk of the savings came from denying coverage to eligible Americans, not able-bodied adults who don't want to work."