https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/03/28/insurance-health-care-medicare-seniors/

Archive: https://archive.ph/jz0Dt

The privatized version of Medicare — Medicare Advantage — grew rapidly with perks like vision and dental care. In some regions options are dwindling.

At 70, landscape artist Anthony J. Petchkis lives with a host of health problems. There was the heart attack that sent him on an ambulance ride from his home in the mountains of New Hampshire to Portland, Maine, for an arterial stent. His cholesterol is stubbornly high. He has diabetes, gout and rheumatoid arthritis. He takes eight medications a day.

Until this year, he at least felt confident insurance would fully cover his medical bills, which he estimates run to several thousands of dollars a year. Then his Medicare Advantage plan dropped him.

“How am I going to pay all these things going into the future?” said Petchkis, who lives on about $24,000 a year from Social Security and the sale of the White Mountain landscapes he paints in his Conway studio. “Now I seem okay, but six months or a year from now, something really catastrophic could happen.”

Petchkis and thousands of other elderly people in New Hampshire lost their insurance and were forced to scramble for alternatives this year, part of a broader phenomenon as Medicare Advantage companies abandoned communities where their plans threatened profits or lost money. Hardest hit were a half-dozen rural states from New England to Idaho.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jazmintolliver/charlamagne-tha-god-slams-trump-celebrate-robert-mueller

Charlamagne Tha God torched President Donald Trump for cheering over the death of former FBI Director Robert Mueller.



Just moments after reports of Mueller’s death surfaced, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday he was “glad” that Mueller, who oversaw the investigation into ties between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, died.

His reasoning? Because he “can no longer hurt innocent people.”

Mueller’s family announced his death on March 13. He was 81 years old. The former FBI director was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2021.

The president’s insensitive, celebratory remarks were widely condemned.

On Monday’s episode of The Breakfast Club, Charlamagne Tha God called out Trump for praising Mueller’s death while also condemning critics who celebrated the death of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Crowning Trump “donkey of the day,” the radio host directly told Trump he has “already ruined” his legacy, and will “go down as the worst president of all time” for not giving “a damn about democracy” and “wiping his ass with the Constitution.”

Decrying the president is “on pace to lead this country into the worst financial crisis of all time,” Charlamagne continued, “You are also putting yourself into a position that when you pass, people are going to treat it like Mardi Gras in New Orleans.”

“The celebrations folks are going to have, the things people are going to say about you when you pass, Mr. President– I don’t care about how many buildings you put your name on, bridges, tunnels, they can create holidays. None of that will matter because you have hurt way too many people,” he said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/03/21/trump-threatens-deploy-ice-airports-tsa-shortages-drive-delays/
Archive link: https://archive.ph/vwCUh

Spring break travel is set to strain airports as rising callouts and resignations among unpaid TSA officers stretch security more than a month into the funding standoff.



President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to send U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports unless congressional Democrats agree to a GOP-backed funding deal, escalating a standoff that has already slowed security lines at airports nationwide.

In a post to Truth Social, Trump said the ICE agents would “do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia.”

Deploying agents to checkpoints nationwide would mark an unprecedented expansion of immigration enforcement even as Democrats push for tighter limits on how those agents operate, citing concerns the administration has fast-tracked training to expand ICE ranks.

“This is again an example, it seems to me, of the president seeking to utilize ICE in a way that achieves political goals, almost as a punishment,” said John Sandweg, a former acting director at ICE during the Obama administration. “The operations, to me, don’t seem to be designed to focus on public safety.”