FreezerFullofMochi

🍊💩 Turd Reich

[Judd Legum @JuddLegum]

Consumer brands bankrolling the biggest ICE supporters in Congress (2025-2026):

@SpaceX — $589,000
@HomeDepot — $536,500
@GetSpectrum — $407,000
@UPS — $353,500
@Chevron — $352,500
@Walmart — $308,000
@ValeroEnergy — $297,500
@NewYorkLife — $295,500
@AltriaNews — $279,000
@Aflac — $278,000
@Toyota — $262,500
@RegionsBank — $260,500
@Verizon — $258,500
@Google — $257,500
@CapitalOne — $253,500
@Phillips66Co — $245,000
@ATT — $238,500
@amazon — $236,000
@comcast — $232,500
@CoxComm — $229,000
@Delta — $225,500
@Dell — $219,500
@FedEx — $218,000
@Enterprise — $213,000
@Microsoft — $200,500

[Dittie @DittiePE]

Thirty corporations under federal investigation gave Trump’s inauguration fund $29.5 million combined.

Then, one by one, their cases started disappearing.

This isn’t a policy shift. It’s a pattern — and it has a body count.

What does “law and order” actually means to this DOJ?

A #SheShed 🧵

https://t.co/8FSWaCY3Dg

[PBS News @NewsHour]

Veterinary care is becoming increasingly expensive for American pet owners. As prices rise, attention is turning to a major shift in the industry: private equity firms and large corporations buying up veterinary practices across the country. https://t.co/Y6UL12j5Ak

[Grant Stoll @grantonsoil]

People are getting sick, but at least the outbreak is finally exposing the system:

[Robin Boardman @RobinBoardmanUK]

Ten days of water. That is what is left in northern Italy. Salt from the Adriatic pushing upstream into soil that fed generations.

Emergency meetings next week. Crops already turning.

We bear witness to a land dying on a timeline measured in days, not decades.
https://t.co/MSjq6YjZMh

[Mark Cuban @mcuban]

Then I asked for a simplified version of the above :

Here it is in plain English. Denver hired UnitedHealthcare to run its employee health plan. Denver pays the actual medical and drug bills itself — United just processes them. That’s what “self-funded” means. The problem is that Denver can’t see what it’s actually paying for drugs.

1. United buys the drug for one price and charges Denver a different price. It keeps the difference. Say the pharmacy gets paid $40 for a prescription. United bills Denver $100. United keeps $60. Denver never sees the $40. The contract says this out loud in three different places — it’s not hidden, it’s just written in language nobody reads. There’s no cap on how big that gap can be.

2. Drug companies pay rebates. United keeps all of them and hands Denver a flat number instead. United collects rebate checks from drug manufacturers. Instead of passing those through, it promises Denver a fixed amount per brand prescription (about $740 in 2023). If the actual rebate was $1,500, United keeps the extra $760. The contract literally says any rebates above the fixed amount belong to United. Denver has no right to know what the real number was.

3. United decides which drugs are “specialty” — and specialty drugs are where the money is. The contract defines a specialty drug as, essentially, “whatever United’s own specialty pharmacy sells.” United also reserves the right to reclassify drugs whenever it wants. Once a drug is labeled specialty and filled at United’s own pharmacy, it drops out of the normal price guarantees entirely. So the most expensive drugs are the least protected.

4. The most expensive drugs of all — the ones given in a doctor’s office or infusion center — have no price guarantee at all. The contract flatly excludes them. Cancer drugs, infusions, injections administered by a provider. Zero pricing protection.

5. Denver can’t shop around, and it can’t leave without a penalty. Denver isn’t allowed to negotiate directly with any drug manufacturer. It must use United’s mail-order pharmacy exclusively. And if Denver hires an outside vendor that steers employees to cheaper drugs or cheaper pharmacies, United can cancel all the pricing guarantees. If Denver ends the drug program early, United keeps every rebate it owes.

6. Denver can’t audit its way out of this. Denver is allowed one audit a year, capped at 300 prescriptions, using a random sample United has to approve. No auditors paid on commission. No computer-based searches for errors. You cannot find a pricing problem across hundreds of thousands of claims by randomly checking 300 of them. The audit rules exist to make sure nothing gets found.

Is any of it illegal? Almost none of it. It’s a legal contract that Denver signed. The one thing that might cross a line: federal law since 2021 bans “gag clauses” — contract terms that stop an employer from seeing its own cost and claims data. This contract says United may let Denver see its pricing information, at United’s discretion. Federal regulators have said that “only if the vendor allows it” language is exactly what the gag-clause ban prohibits. And Denver has to certify to the government every year that it has no gag clauses in its contracts.

The one thing Denver could actually do about it: Colorado banned this drug markup practice, effective January 2025, and self-funded employers like Denver can opt in. It’s an election, not a lawsuit. Somebody should check whether Denver ever filed it.

The bottom line for an HR person: the drug program looks free. There’s no fee for it anywhere in the contract. That’s the tell. United isn’t working for free — it’s getting paid out of the drug prices, and the contract is built so Denver can’t measure how much.

[The Tennessee Holler @TheTNHoller]

CNBC on Elon’s xAI data centers poisoning Memphis👇🏽 — “Like a form of torture”

This is what @MarshaBlackburn & Trump & @GovBillLee support

[Whiskers 'N' Wishes Sanctuary @WishesRescue]

We've put out a plea for SHASTA before, but this guy needs a home. An oversized senior gentleman, Shasta loves children. This 8yo lost his bonded brother and home at the same time and he hasn't really recovered. Someone please love him! #Tucson (23/45)

[Volcaholic 🌋 @volcaholic1]

Let me explain wildfires and climate change for the slow learners in the back.

More heat means thirstier air.

♦ Carbon emissions trap heat globally.
♦ Hotter air acts like a sponge.
♦ It sucks moisture out of plants.
♦ It sucks moisture out of soil.
♦ Dry plants turn into perfect tinder

Fire seasons are now longer.

♦ Snow melts much earlier in spring.
♦ Autumn rains arrive much later now.
♦ The dry period lasts weeks longer.
♦ Longer dry periods mean more fires.

Bugs are making it worse.

♦ Warmer winters fail to kill pests.
♦ Pine beetles are multiplying rapidly now.
♦ Pests kill millions of forest trees.
♦ Dead trees create massive fuel piles.

Extreme weather creates spark triggers.

♦ Climate change shifts atmospheric jet streams.
♦ This causes more frequent dry lightning.
♦ It also creates much stronger winds.
♦ Winds fan tiny sparks into infernos.

Climate change is the amplifier.

♦ Campfires and arson still start fires.
♦ Human carelessness triggers the initial spark.
♦ But climate change prepares the fuel.
♦ It turns small fires into monsters.

You're welcome.

[Hoodlum 🇺🇸 @NotHoodlum]

Feds are removing bike lanes, removing lower speed limits, and rolling back pedestrian protections, calling them “social initiatives” that increase congestion. Sean Duffy calls them “DEI bike lanes” and claims he’s “putting safety first.”
https://t.co/2I5kUAULwI

[Barb McQuade @BarbMcQuade]

Climate deniers take note—this smoke is the result of your indifference. Gift link:
https://t.co/4UazAMX9eG

[Mike Young @micyoung75]

The State Department swore to a federal court in September that Rubio does not use disappearing messages. Seven weeks later he turned them on in a chat with Hegseth and Caine, set to auto delete every eight hours. By April the department quietly dropped the claim rather than repeat it.

That is not a clerical inconsistency. That is a sworn statement to a judge that stopped being operative almost immediately, followed by an agency that let it die quietly instead of correcting the record.

LeapXpert software captures the messages regardless of the setting, so the records likely exist somewhere. But the entire episode confirms what the Foreign Affairs Manual already prohibits and what the Secretary of State did anyway, in a chat about matters that qualify as federal business, while under a preservation order.

[Kyle Clark @KyleClark]

NEW: Aurora Police say an ICE detention center employee shot a protester last night. She is expected to survive.

42-year-old Brandon Booth, who works for the ICE contractor GEO Group, is being held on suspicion of attempted second degree murder and other charges.

[Sam Stein @samstein]

This is really incredible. Docs released by Trump tonight confirm RUSSIA tried to spread claims Biden was engaged in criminal activity vis-a-vis Burisma and that it advanced those narratives "with US officials" and planed a "high-profile corruption scandal... at the peak of the 2020 US presidential campaign."

[Marc E. Elias @marceelias]

🚨BREAKING: The Republican-led North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) approved a plan Thursday to make it significantly easier for county election officials to throw out votes. https://t.co/4Dw3BTu68i

[Dittie @DittiePE]

RFK Jr. spent June personally calling Libertarian candidates in Iowa, asking them to drop out so Republicans could keep two competitive House seats. There’s audio. Sen. Ron Wyden just filed a Hatch Act complaint over it.

June 11: Kennedy calls Rick Stewart (L, IA-02), tells him he’s acting as a “liaison” with the White House, offers to be his “advocate” if he exits the race. Recording obtained by WaPo.

Kennedy, on tape, dodging specifics: “I can’t go into specifics because there’s legal prohibitions about that.” Stewart’s read: careful wording, same implication — help us, we’ll help you.

https://t.co/IusyGn7WNo

[Ben Pershing @benpershing]

Truth Social will sell Wall Street firms quicker access to market-moving posts from President Donald Trump, the company said on Thursday.

https://t.co/KypBxbT9XI

[Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1]

ProPublica: Trump's FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and fellow Republican commissioner Olivia Trusty received pricey gifts valued at tens of thousands of dollars from Paramount while the company had deals pending before the commission.

Among them, Carr and his wife sat in a private skybox at the Kennedy Center with David Ellison and other Paramount and CBS executives that are typically sold for $125,000 a ticket.
https://t.co/7cXo9dTQNw

[Sam Stein @samstein]

incredible

“In certain instances, investigators uncovered times when Perez would back out of certain bets mid-speech when Trump skipped over a portion of the speech that included a word he had previously bet would be mentioned, the sources said.”

https://t.co/r1EgM2VcGk

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

German chancellor Friedrich Merz has warned Trump and his authoritarian regime to stay the fuck out of their elections and stop interfering after the US state department announced a scheme to fund fascist far-right MAGA-aligned causes in Europe.

"For ‌our ‌part, we do ‌not interfere in American elections," he told a press conference on Wednesday. "Conversely, I do not ‌want the American government or institutions close to the government to interfere in German ⁠elections."