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They can’t be serious. That’s the reaction that many people have had to the massive and poorly thought out cuts that President Trump and Elon Musk have been inflicting of late on an array of vital public services.

Surely, went the thinking, they wouldn’t put things like public health and safety at risk, and quite literally, condemn thousands of people to premature deaths in order to extract a new round of tax cuts for the wealthy.

But you know what? They were and are serious.

And there’s no more frightening example of this kind of unreasoning cruelty than the plan Trump and Musk’s allies in Congress are implementing to slash the federal Medicaid health insurance program.

Last week, all ten North Carolina House Republicans voted for massive funding cuts which would virtually assure that hundreds of thousands of their neighbors — including children, new moms, seniors, and people with disabilities — become uninsured.

The bottom line: Reems of health data make clear that when people lack health insurance: they die sooner. That lawmakers would willfully ignore this grim truth is simply unbelievable.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.