Donald Trump has been indicted, and for many users I'm seeing on Twitter, schadenfreude has never felt so good. Since yesterday, my entire Twitter timeline has been buzzing with memes about Trump's indictment, including this doctored photo of him being arrested by Beyoncé.
Personally, I'm living for it. However, as my colleague David Corn cautions, we probably shouldn't celebrate this news too much, considering the massive test to the legal system we're about to witness: "There's going to be a lot of information, misinformation, and maybe some disinformation out there in the tsunami of response and reaction," Corn says. "And I don't think people should be celebratory of this: It's a sad day if a presidential candidate...is accused of a crime."
In any case, I hope we can pause the revelry for a moment and talk about some other very important news. Starting tomorrow, states will begin terminating health care coverage for those who don't qualify for Medicaid, marking the end of a pandemic-era rule that automatically renewed coverage for Medicaid recipients even if they were no longer eligible.
An estimated 15 million Americans, a majority of whom are low-income, are expected to lose their health insurance before the end of the year.
The emergency policy was created at the start of the pandemic under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which prevented states from kicking off Medicaid recipients regardless of whether they had filled out the necessary paperwork to reenroll.
According to a Department of Health and Human Services analysis, the 15 million expected to lose coverage include an estimated 5 million children; Black and Latino households will be disproportionately affected. Others at risk of losing their insurance include individuals who have moved out of state during the pandemic, people with limited English proficiency, and those with disabilities.
When huge stories (like Trump's indictment) break, it's so easy for other stories to get buried in the news cycle. So while we all speculate about whether Trump will be perp-walked or mug-shotted, let's make sure we're still paying attention to the more consequential events happening around us.
—Arianna Coghill
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