https://thefuckingnews.substack.com/p/the-handmaids-rail
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Your Department of Transportation (DOT) is now accepting public comment on a new proposal to tie billions of dollars in taxpayer funding for rail and buses to birth and marriage rates.
“If you want federal funding, your project needs to align with where communities and families are actually growing,” the DOT said in a statement with nostalgic echoes of the Revolutionary War slogan, “No taxation without reproduction.”
Almost as soon as his nomination as DOT secretary had gestated, former/current reality TV star average person Sean Duffy announced his desire to push women to push out more babies. He and his wife have nine children that we know of.
The role of government, it’s worth noting, is to make all options easier, not to incentivize one and punish the other even though as a parent myself I sympathize with wanting to punish those humans without children who get to live fully realized lives as adults.
Duffy’s “plan” was rolled out on Oct. 1 prematurely, without being fully developed, and with the squishiest fontanelle you’ve ever poked. Specifically, it calls for increasing federal funding for local transportation projects by as much as 10% if the birth and marriage rates are at least close to the national average.
Of course, I went and read the actual proposal, like a dick, because I was pretty sure the plan’s specifics would include charts and formulas. Because Nazis love charts and formulas. So, did I find them?
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So, here ya go. Here’s the DOT chart of its formula — based on how well you and your neighbors in your transit corridor perpetuate the master race — for funding your daily race to work to serve your corporate master:
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Silly me, I always thought a birth corridor was something else entirely. Of course, there’s a much easier way to replenish the population: Immigration, which Trump is unplenishing.
Of also course, this all violates the constitutional protections of the 14th Amendment — the post-Civil War amendment aimed at re-Civil War traitors — which guarantees equal protection under the law no matter how many kids the First Lady knows you have and no matter whether you’re married to someone or, if you’re in Kash Patel’s FBI, to some mammal or large fish.
Duffy’s plan does, however, meet Trump administration stupidity requirements.
As transportation consultant Peter Rogoff asked Politico, “Does anyone really believe that there are couples out there saying, ‘Hey, sweetheart, you and I should get married and raise a passel of kids because a dozen years from now, maybe they’ll build light rail out to our neighborhood?’”
Or add a bus lane!
Also, the national fertility rate last year hit 53.1 births per 1,000 child-spurters of child-spurting age. That’s a record low. How come?
Because we used to have a society in which one parent could afford to stay home with the kids while the other could earn enough with just a high-school degree to afford said kids, a home to put them in, a pool to keep them out of, vacations, school, and even retirement until we gave that all up when rich people realized they could get all that money by convincing some voters not to let Black people in on the deal.
Duffy’s unwittingly admitting the Trump administration’s affordability failure, too. Wouldn’t parents need less public transportation now, if the Trump administration made it affordable for one parent to stay home with the nine kids?
In reality, having nine kids requires tons of money and a massive time investment, in Duffy’s case at least 18 minutes.
It’s not just me hating on this “plan.” Public comments just started and you can bet Duffy’s unwitting naked ass I perused them.
Here’s Candace Palmer, allegedly, who apparently had the time to comment after escaping from the breeding stalls and presumably is a veteran Newsfucker based on her linguistic stylings:
“…this is anti-intellectual, knuckle-dragging, tinpot dictator nonsense that the average morbidly obese syphilitic 18th century king would have been able to identify as stupid.”
TALKING ACTION So far there are only 14 comments, which you can read here. Which means you Newsfuckers in your thousands can absolutely create a newsfucking traffic jam in the comments.
You can post your own comment here and if you mention The Fucking News, please share the link to your post in the comments for today’s TFN and I’ll try to share the best in a future TFN, if the Children of Duffy give us a future.
Private Utilities Winning the Water Wars
The water wars are already here. And it turns out we surrendered decades ago.
Once upon a time, water came from public utilities, which we then largely privatized because rich people wanted us to pay more money for our water and more of it to them. Well, mission accomplished!
According to a landmark Food & Water Watch study, household water costs increased 62% from 2015 to 2025, even though water comes for free from the sky. That’s more than prices have risen for food or gas or paying immigrants to vote for Democrats.
Most corporate news coverage, what there is of it, is focusing on the price jump, but as a dick I zeroed in on the part of the report titled, “Corporate Control Raises Water Bills.”
Among America’s 500 biggest water systems, “for-profit, corporate-owned systems charged on average 67% more than public systems.”
That’s enough to render the Invisible Hand visible when it’s forced into chart form. Here’s your water on capitalism, Newsfuckers:
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What do the suckers who privatized their water get for that extra $328.95 they’re paying? Well, private water isn’t just made from genuine, ethically harvested dihydrogen monoxide, it’s also low in calories!
Support Stalls for Trump’s Diesel Prices Plan
Pres. Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order dropping federal taxes on diesel fuel. Untaxed diesel typically is reserved for farmers and other off-road use, dyed red so it can be distinguished from the taxed diesel that truckers use.
Less than 24 hours after Trump delivered his untaxed dyed diesel, America’s trucking companies delivered their verdict.
Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association President and CEO Todd Spencer slammed into Trump’s plan, saying it “will provide minimal relief,” which is Trump’s specialty.
American Trucking Associations Chief Advocacy and Public Affairs Officer Henry Hanscom said Trump’s order “does not create additional fuel or address the underlying supply crunch that is driving prices higher.”
And I wasn’t the only one confused by Trump’s order saying federal taxes on dyed diesel will be deferred. Forever? Til when? The Rapture? Whose?
The analysts at ClearView Energy Partners — who help rich people get richer gambling on your energy bills — said Tuesday that Trump’s order relies on retailers being willing to sell dyed diesel to non-farmers without even knowing whether taxes will be collected on it later, like, after The Rapture or the midterm elections.
And GasBuddy petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan said that most trucking companies probably won’t even buy the cheaper dyed diesel because they cross state lines and could be exposed to state rules.
“[C]rossing five or six states in a day faces enormous risk with a patchwork of rules, legal in one state, and subject to fines in the next,” De Haan said, explaining why Trump is dumb.
Two things I haven’t seen anyone else point out:
Trump’s order provides zero relief for farmers, who already get to use the dyed diesel.
Trump could simply reduce gas prices based on how many kids you have in the back of the truck.
As you Newsfuckers are bored of hearing by now, gas prices are being driven not by supply and demand, but Wall Street gambling.
Republicans Reject GOP Ad’s Lack of Racism
Right-wing commentators are pushing back against a new Republican political ad that displays a shocking lack of racism.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) is running on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBuBBA). In her ad, she crows about stripping fictional residents of her state of Medicaid. But her fictional slacker, Brad, is offensive.
Now Sanders is eating crow because right-wing critics are savaging the ad. Not because an estimated 25,000 Arkansas will no longer get food benefits to eat crow. Not because an estimated 131,000 Arkansans will lose health coverage.
It’s because Brad was white. Now, that doesn’t automatically mean that these right-wing critics say that all Medicaid recipients should be depicted as Black, it just happens that they totally say that.
One referred to “the audacity to dishonestly mock young white men as welfare queens.”
“Republicans don’t have the balls to do this ad with ‘Shaniqua’ as the villain,” said another offended by the name Brad, “even though that would actually be an accurate portrayal of the problem at hand.”
Wait’ll they see the state’s video with an interracial couple. Shaniqua + Brad 4Eva!
In “fact,” about 60% of Arkansas’s Medicaid recipients are white. And racial disparities obviously stem from the fact that America has disproportionately impoverished Black people.
A fact that the right turns against the very people already victimized. These people we’re fucking are daring to need more help!
The right wing could have piled on Sanders for her false claim about the state’s workforce. Like most states, Arkansas is growing. So of course more Arkansas than ever are working, as she says.
But the percentage of working Arkansans is not higher than ever before:
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Ironically and poetically, the NAACP also put out a statement taking offense at the ad. Because of its implicit bias against the poor.
“The issue is … how we view and treat low-income individuals and families who depend on public programs.” In other words, the ad is discriminatory toward poor people, who include every kind of people.
The last time Arkansas imposed work requirements, 18,000 people lost their insurance. The workforce did not grow.
Media Watch
ABC has let its editorial judgment be influenced by threats from un-American terrorists like Pres. Donald Trump and his band of thugs and fascists, according to, um, ABC.
In court on Tuesday, ABC lawyer Beth Wilkinson said the network is suing to end Federal Communications Commission (FCC) persecution and punishment of free speech and hiring decisions related to diversity. Because, she said, that persecution is working.
That’s right, according to ABC itself, ABC’s already choosing to compromise itself out of fear. Here’s Wilkinson in court Tuesday:
“That chilling effect has been happening and will happen every day.”
“Our editorial decisions are being affected right now.”
“We have already altered our conduct because of the fear of retaliation.”
Which is weird, because, um, I haven’t!
Among the examples we know of, ABC decided not to air Jimmy Kimmel’s interview of state Rep. James Talarico (D-TX), who’s running for Senate. ABC posted the interview on YouTube instead, Wilkinson said, “because the FCC has no control over YouTube.”
Yet.
ABC stopped booking politicians on The View for fear of drawing Trump’s wrath down upon Whoopi Goldberg or Joy Behar.
ABC streamed a Trump speech in July on its streaming platform both to avoid angering him and to avoid having anyone see it.
One distinction I haven’t seen anyone else note is that ABC’s editorial concessions that we know of have all been on the entertainment side. Not news. When I worked at ABC News a million years ago, there was a strong-ish firewall between the two.
Either way: Being big doesn’t protect you. Being big means rich people have a lot of money to lose. Being big makes you a target, like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s yoinking B-1 bombers from the U.K.
On the other hand, when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. Being small makes you The Fucking News.
Christa Is Risen
Just as foretold in prophecy, Christa Pike has risen from the dead. Or dead-ish. Or supposed-to-be dead.
Pike is the first person in American history to survive a full, completed, government execution attempt. And on Tuesday, she rose from unconsciousness and started speaking, her lawyers said.
Pike is also the first person to fulfill messianic prophecy since Jesus. I mean, her name is literally “Christ [on] a Pike”. She disappeared from the cave of prison (in an ambulance). She rose from the dead three days after a governor tried to kill her. Okay, about three days.
Still: Very messiah-ish!
Okay, sure, she’s a murderer. But so was Moses! There’s precedent!
Anyway, we’ve started cults for less, so let’s get on it.
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