Budgets, Accidental Bombs, Bad Politics, & A Bumpy Moon Landing

March 7, 2025

Hello, readers – happy Friday! Today, we’ll be talking about Medicare and Medicaid cuts, Russia & Ukraine (& everyone else), Hamas, a bombing in South Korea, Gavin Newsom’s retreat to the right, Trump’s tariffs, and a lunar lander.

Here’s some good news: Alex Ovechkin is close to breaking Wayne Gretzky’s all-time NHL scoring record. In honor of that, he has partnered with Hockey Fights Cancer and the V Foundation for Cancer Research to launch “THE GR8 CHASE for Victory Over Cancer” – every goal Ovechkin scores for the rest of his career will raise funds toward pediatric cancer research. Also, Steve Carell was recruited to announce in a video posted on YouTube that the charity Alice’s Kids will cover the costs of prom tickets for hundreds of high school seniors in Altadena, which was devastated by wildfires in January. Definitely better than the “Scott’s Tots” episode of “The Office.”

“Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.” – Epictetus

They Literally Can’t Cut It

(Capitol by Michael Duva via Getty Images)

Republicans want to cut federal spending by $1.5 trillion over the next decade to fund Donald Trump’s plans for sweeping tax cuts and immigration crackdowns. But because he doesn’t want to upset large swathes of America’s voting population, Trump has promised that the cuts won’t affect Medicare, Medicaid, or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

To get the fiscal tightening started, House Republicans passed a measure last week ordering the energy and commerce committee to slash its budget by $880 billion without touching those safety net programs. But according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the GOP’s proposed budget cuts won’t be possible unless the government starts slashing spending on Medicare and Medicaid. If you leave those programs out, the energy and commerce committee (which oversees healthcare spending) controls a budget of just $381 billion. That means, even if the committee completely kills all its spending next year, it will still have to cut healthcare spending by almost $500 billion. The math just ain’t mathing.

“This letter from CBO confirms what we’ve been saying all along: the math doesn’t work without devastating Medicaid cuts,” said House Democrat Frank Pallone. “Republicans know their spin is a lie, and the truth is they have no problem taking healthcare away from millions of Americans so that the rich can get richer and pay less in taxes than they already do.”

More Cuts For Kyiv

After screaming at the country’s president on live television last week, the Trump administration is continuing its crusade against Ukraine by cutting off Kyiv from receiving critical U.S. intelligence. Framing the cutoff as a “pause,” CIA Director John Ratcliffe said that Kyiv will no longer be able to access U.S. information on Russian troop movements and potential missile targets, but top Trump officials have indicated that the data should resume flowing sometime soon as Washington-Kyiv talks become more productive.

While the White House has cut off Ukraine, Europe has moved to fill the America-sized gap. Yesterday, leaders from across the E.U. announced their support for a massive €800 billion ($863 billion) initiative to increase defense spending across the continent, and France promised to keep providing its own intelligence to Kyiv. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen described yesterday as a “watershed moment for Europe,” and said that a peaceful end to the conflict – which Trump says he wants – will only come with support from the E.U.

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Waving Off The White House

(Gaza Strip by Bashar Taleb via Getty Images)

On Wednesday, Donald Trump tried to dramatically shift the terms of the current Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal by ordering Hamas to turn over all of its remaining Israeli hostages, calling his demands a “last warning” for the militant group. Yesterday, Hamas dismissed that threat, responding that it will only hand over its remaining hostages if both sides agree to a second stage in the ceasefire – a development which Israel agreed to in peace talks just two months ago.
All three sides in the war appear to be angling for different outcomes recently, as peace talks have stalled. Trump apparently believes he can both eradicate Hamas and somehow recover the remaining 24 Israeli hostages; Israel says it wants half of the hostages now and half when a lasting peace is agreed upon; and Hamas says it will only begin freeing hostages once a peace plan is secured. In the meantime, Israel is continuing its blockade of Gaza in an attempt to starve Hamas out, with no food or other humanitarian aid currently being allowed into the enclave.

Just Plane Embarrassing

Yesterday, a pair of South Korean fighter jets dropped multiple bombs on a civilian area… in South Korea. Yes, you read that right, and no, the bombs are not some sort of metaphor. Eight people in the city of Pocheon were injured by the explosion, which was caused by MK-82 bombs dropped by KF-16 fighter jets participating in live-fire drills between the South Korean and U.S. air forces.
How does a country end up bombing its own people when it hasn’t been at war for over 70 years? According to one anonymous source from the South Korean air force, one of the pilots involved managed to enter the wrong coordinates for a bombing site into their plane, leading them to drop the bombs on the civilian area.
A second plane – presumably with the correct coordinates on record – blindly decided to follow that first plane’s example, dropping a follow-up payload on the same area. Three houses, a church, and a greenhouse were damaged in the explosions, and four of the eight injured people were sent to the hospital in serious condition.

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Gavin Goes For The GOP

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has joined the “straight white guys with a podcast” group, and on the most recent episode of “This Is Gavin Newsom,” the governor hosted right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk. Kirk seemed to sway the typically progressive governor on quite a few issues.
Newsom said that transgender athletes competing in girls’ and women’s sports was “deeply unfair” and said nobody in his office has ever used the term “Latinx.” Newsom also said there were “issues” with leadership of the Black Lives Matter organization and said campaigns to defund the police were “lunacy.”

Trimming Those Tariffs

Early this week, President Trump went scorched earth on some of America’s top trade partners, imposing 25% duties on all goods from Mexico, 25% duties on most goods from Canada (10% on Canadian energy products), and a 20% tariff on Chinese exports. On Wednesday, Trump said there’d be a one-month reprieve for automakers, and yesterday, he expanded that reprieve to even more goods.
Trump declared that “Mexico will not be required to pay Tariffs on anything” that falls under an existing trade deal between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada known as USMCA. Hours later, Trump signed an amendment extending the same courtesy to Canada. Trump said the reversal has “nothing to do” with the stock market’s tumble, saying, “I’m not even looking at the market” – that’s comforting.

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Moving Fast And Breaking Things… On The Moon

Last week, we wrote about Athena, a lunar lander built and operated by Texas-based space firm Intuitive Machines. That lander made its way to the moon on the back of a SpaceX rocket last week before touching down on the lunar surface yesterday. Sounds like a success, right? It was – for a few moments.
Soon after Athena made contact with the moon, it became clear that something was wrong. While mission control knew that the lander was, indeed, touching the moon, the company wasn’t sure how its craft was oriented. “We’re on the surface,” reported mission director and Intuitive Machines co-founder Tim Crain. A few minutes later, he added, “It looks like we’re down … We are working to evaluate exactly what our orientation is on the surface.”
The lander is playing host to a whole ecosystem of robots and sensors from other companies and organizations, including a NASA ice drill, two rovers owned by private firms, and Intuitive’s own rocket-powered drone. The company currently doesn’t know which of those will be operable with its lander on its side, but the story doesn’t end there. Two other spacecraft that hitched a ride on the SpaceX rocket are also in jeopardy: a NASA craft supposed to monitor the moon quickly flew out of the lunar orbit earlier this week, and an asteroid-prospecting drone has gone radio silent. Looks like privatizing space is working, guys, keep it up!

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