Conservatives

South Asians have played a prominent role in President Trump’s universe, especially in his second term.

Second Lady Usha Vance is the daughter of Indian immigrants who came to California to study and never went back. Harmeet Dhillon, born in India and a devout Sikh, is currently his U.S. assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. And the head of the FBI, Kash Patel, is (like potential New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani,) of Indian descent by way of Uganda.

Some Republicans have taken pride in this kind of diversity, citing it for the gains Trump made in 2024 with Black and Latino voters.

But these days, the MAGA big tent seems to be collapsing fast.

Last week, MAGA had a total anti-Indian meltdown on social media, revealing a deep, ugly racism toward South Asians.

It comes amid the first real rebellion about rampant and increasingly open antisemitism within the MAGAverse, creating a massive rift between traditional conservatives and a younger, rabidly anti-Jewish contingent called groypers whose leader, Nick Fuentes, recently posted that he is “team Hitler.”

Turns out, when you cultivate a political movement based on hate, at some point the hate is uncontrollable. In fact, that hate needs to be fed to maintain power — even if it means feasting on its own.

This monster of white-might ugliness is going to dominate policy and politics for the next election, and these now-public fights within the Republican party represent a new dynamic that will either force it to do some sort of soul searching, or purge it of anything but white Christian nationalism. My bet is on the latter. But if conservatives ever truly believed in their inclusive talk, then it’s time for Republicans to stand up and demand the big Trump tent they were hailing just a few months ago.

Ultra-conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who opposes much of Fuentes’ worldview, summed up this Republican split succinctly.

Fuentes’ followers “are white supremacists, hate women, Jews, Hindus, many types of Christians, brown people of a wide variety of backgrounds, Blacks, America’s foreign policy and America’s constitution,” Shapiro explained. “They admire Hitler and Stalin and that splinter faction is now being facilitated and normalized within the mainstream Republican Party.”

MAGA’s anti-Indian sentiment had an explosive moment a few days ago when a South Asian woman asked Vice President JD Vance a series of questions during a Turning Point USA event in Mississippi. The young immigrant wanted to know how Vance could preach for the removal of nearly 18 million immigrants? And how could he claim that the United States was a Christian nation, rather than one that valued pluralism?

“How can you stop us and tell us we don’t belong here anymore?” the woman asked. “Why do I have to be a Christian?”

Vance’s answer went viral, in part because he claimed his wife, although from a Hindu family, was “agnostic or atheist,” and that he hoped she would convert to Christianity.

“Do I hope eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved in by church? Yeah, I honestly do wish that,” he said.

Vance later tried to do some damage control on social media, calling Usha Vance a “blessing” and promising to continue to “support her and talk to her about faith and life and everything else, because she’s my wife.”

But many South Asians felt Vance was dissing his wife’s heritage and attempting to downplay her non-whiteness. They vented on social media, and got a lot of MAGA feelings back.

“How can you pretend to be a white nativist politician who will ‘bring america back to it’s golden age’ … when your wife is an indian immigrant?” wrote one poster.

Dhillon received similar feedback recently for urging calm and fairness after a Sikh truck driver allegedly caused a fatal crash.

“[N]o ma’am, it is CRYSTAL CLEAR that sihks and hindus need to get the hell out of my country,” one reply stated. “You and your kind are no longer welcome here. Go the [expletive] home.”

Patel too, got it, after posting a message on Diwali, a religious holiday that celebrates the victory of light over darkness. He was dubbed a demon worshipper, a favorite anti-Indian trope.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “Duh, of course MAGA is racist.” But here’s the thing. The military has been scrubbed of many Black officers. The federal workforce, long a bastion for middle-class people of color, has been decimated. Minority cabinet members or top officials are few. Aside from another South Asian, Tulsi Gabbard, there’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez‑DeRemer and HUD head Scott Turner.

South Asians are largely the last visible sign of pluralism in Republican power, an erstwhile proof that the charges of racism from the left are unfair. But now, like Latinos, they are increasingly targets of the base.

At the same time anti-Indian hate was surfacing last week, a whole load of MAGA antisemitism hit the fan. It started when Tucker Carlson, who in his post-network life has re-created himself as a hugely popular podcaster with more than 16 million followers on X, invited Fuentes on his show.

In addition to calling for the death of American Jews, Fuentes has also said women want him to rape them and should be burned alive, Black people belong in prison and LGBTQ+ people are an abomination.

Anyone who is not his kind of Christian “must be absolutely annihilated when we take power,” he said.

Turns out far-right Charlie Kirk was a bulwark against this straight-up American Nazi. Kirk’s popularity kept Fuentes — who often trolled Kirk — from achieving dominance as the spirit guide of young MAGA. Now, with Kirk slain, nothing appears to be stopping Fuentes from taking up that mantle.

After the Fuentes interview, sane conservatives (there are some left) were apoplectic that Carlson would support someone who so openly admits to being anti-Israel and seemingly pro-Nazi. They demanded the Heritage Foundation, historical backbone of the conservative movement, creators of Project 2025 and close allies of Tucker, do something. The head of Heritage, Kevin Roberts, offered what many considered a sorry-not-sorry. He condemned Fuentes, saying he was “fomenting Jew hatred, and his incitements are not only immoral and un-Christian, they risk violence.”

But also counseled that Fuentes shouldn’t be banished from the party.

“Join us — not to cancel — but to guide, challenge, and strengthen the conversation,” Roberts said.

Are Nazis really all bad? Discuss!

The response from ethical conservatives — Jewish and non-Jewish alike — has been that you don’t politely hear Nazis out, and if the Republican Party can’t clearly say that Nazis aren’t welcome, it’s got a problem.

Yes, the Republican Party has a problem.

The right rode to power by attacking what it denigrates at “wokeism” on the left. MAGA declared that to confront fascism or racism or misogyny — to tell its purveyors to sit down and shut up — was wrong. That “canceling,” or banishment from common discourse for spewing hate, was somehow an infringement on 1st Amendment rights or even terrorism.

They screamed loud and clear that speaking out against intolerance was the worst, most unacceptable form of intolerance itself — and would not be tolerated.

You know who heard them loud and clear? Fuentes. He has checkmated establishment Republicans with their own cowardice and hypocrisy.

So now his young Christian white supremacists are empowered, and intent on taking over as the leaders of the party. Fuentes is saying what old guard Republicans don’t want to hear, but secretly fear: He already is dangerously close to being the mainstream; just read the comments.

Roberts, the Heritage president, said it himself: “Diversity will never be our strength. Unity is our strength, and a lack of unity is a sign of weakness.”

Trying to shut Fuentes up or kick him out will likely anger that vocal and powerful part of the base that enjoys the freedom to be openly hateful, and really wouldn’t mind a male-dominated white Christian autocracy.

The far right has free-speeched their way into fascism, and Fuentes is loving every minute of it.

So now this remaining vestige of traditional conservatives — including senators such as Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell — is faced with a painful reckoning. Many mainstream Republicans for years ignored the racism and antisemitism creeping into the party. They can’t anymore. It has grown into a beast ready to consume its maker.

Will they let this takeover happen, call for conversation over condemnation to the glee of Fuentes and his followers?

Or will they find the courage to be not just true Republicans, but true Americans, and declare non-negotiable for their party that most basic of American ideals: We do not tolerate hate?

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court’s conservatives face a test of their own making this week as they decide whether President Trump had the legal authority to impose tariffs on imports from nations across the globe.

At issue are import taxes that are paid by American businesses and consumers.

Small-business owners had sued, including a maker of “learning toys” in Illinois and a New York importer of wines and spirits. They said Trump’s ever-changing tariffs had severely disrupted their businesses, and they won rulings declaring the president had exceeded his authority.

On Wednesday, the justices will hear their first major challenge to Trump’s claims of unilateral executive power. And the outcome is likely to turn on three doctrines that have been championed by the court’s conservatives.

First, they say the Constitution should be interpreted based on its original meaning. Its opening words say: “All legislative powers … shall be vested” in Congress, and the elected representatives “shall have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposes and excises.”

Second, they believe the laws passed by Congress should be interpreted based on their words. They call this “textualism,” which rejects a more liberal and open-ended approach that included the general purpose of the law.

Trump and his lawyers say his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs were authorized by the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA.

That 1977 law says the president may declare a national emergency to “deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat” involving national security, foreign policy or the economy of the United States. Faced with such an emergency, he may “investigate, block … or regulate” the “importation or exportation” of any property.

Trump said the nation’s “persistent” balance of payments deficit over five decades was such an “unusual and extraordinary threat.”

In the past, the law has been used to impose sanctions or freeze the assets of Iran, Syria and North Korea or groups of terrorists. It does not use the words “tariffs” or “duties,” and it had not been used for tariffs prior to this year.

The third doctrine arose with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and is called the “major questions” doctrine.

He and the five other conservatives said they were skeptical of far-reaching and costly regulations issued by the Obama and Biden administrations involving matters such as climate change, student loan forgiveness or mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for 84 million Americans.

Congress makes the laws, not federal regulators, they said in West Virginia vs. Environmental Protection Agency in 2022.

And unless there is a “clear congressional authorization,” Roberts said the court will not uphold assertions of “extravagant statutory power over the national economy.”

Now all three doctrines are before the justices, since the lower courts relied on them in ruling against Trump.

No one disputes that the president could impose sweeping worldwide tariffs if he had sought and won approval from the Republican-controlled Congress. However, he insisted the power was his alone.

In a social media post, Trump called the case on tariffs “one of the most important in the History of the Country. If a President is not allowed to use Tariffs, we will be at a major disadvantage against all other Countries throughout the World, especially the ‘Majors.’ In a true sense, we would be defenseless! Tariffs have brought us Great Wealth and National Security in the nine months that I have had the Honor to serve as President.”

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer, his top courtroom attorney, argues that tariffs involve foreign affairs and national security. And if so, the court should defer to the president.

“IEEPA authorizes the imposition of regulatory tariffs on foreign imports to deal with foreign threats — which crucially differ from domestic taxation,” he wrote last month.

For the same reason, “the major questions doctrine … does not apply here,” he said. It is limited to domestic matters, not foreign affairs, he argued.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh has sounded the same note in the past.

Sauer will also seek to persuade the court that the word “regulate” imports includes imposing tariffs.

The challengers are supported by prominent conservatives, including Stanford law professor Michael McConnell.

In 2001, he and John Roberts were nominated for a federal appeals court at the same time by President George W. Bush, and he later served with now-Justice Neil M. Gorsuch on the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver.

He is the lead counsel for one group of small-business owners.

“This case is what the American Revolution was all about. A tax wasn’t legitimate unless it was imposed by the people’s representatives,” McConnell said. “The president has no power to impose taxes on American citizens without Congress.”

His brief argues that Trump is claiming a power unlike any in American history.

“Until the 1900s, Congress exercised its tariff power directly, and every delegation since has been explicit and strictly limited,” he wrote in Trump vs. V.O.S. Selections. “Here, the government contends that the President may impose tariffs on the American people whenever he wants, at any rate he wants, for any countries and products he wants, for as long as he wants — simply by declaring longstanding U.S. trade deficits a national ‘emergency’ and an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat,’ declarations the government tells us are unreviewable. The president can even change his mind tomorrow and back again the day after that.”

He said the “major questions” doctrine fully applies here.

Two years ago, he noted the court called Biden’s proposed student loan forgiveness “staggering by any measure” because it could cost more than $430 billion. By comparison, he said, the Tax Foundation estimated that Trump’s tariffs will impose $1.7 trillion in new taxes on Americans by 2035.

The case figures to be a major test of whether the Roberts court will put any legal limits on Trump’s powers as president.

But the outcome will not be the final word on tariffs. Administration officials have said that if they lose, they will seek to impose them under other federal laws that involve national security.

Still pending before the court is an emergency appeal testing the president’s power to send National Guard troops to American cities over the objection of the governor and local officials.

Last week, the court asked for further briefs on the Militia Act of 1908, which says the president may call up the National Guard if he cannot “with the regular forces … execute the laws of the United States.”

The government had assumed the regular forces were the police and federal agents, but a law professor said the regular forces in the original law referred to the military.

The justices asked for a clarification from both sides by Nov. 17.

Reporting from Washington — With the campaign in its final week, well-funded conservative groups have shifted their focus from the airwaves to voters’ phone lines, front doors and mailboxes — part of a get-out-the-vote effort that could tip the scales in tight races across the country.

But the push to get the nation’s conservative voters to the polls is fractured and untested, with some “tea party” activists refusing to cooperate with more mainstream Republicans, in contrast to the unified and well-organized parallel effort by unions and Democrats, according to key players on both sides.

Up to now, the emphasis on the right has been on television ads, and conservative groups — including American Crossroads, founded in part by GOP strategist Karl Rove — have dominated with the help of undisclosed donors willing to pour millions of dollars into key races.

For the final stretch, Crossroads is dedicating $10 million to the “ground game.” The conservative Americans for Prosperity expects to spend $17 million, opening field offices in 12 states. Tea party organizers, state parties, antiabortion groups and business associations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have also begun their own get-out-the-vote efforts.

The state parties in Illinois and California, in particular, are well funded and sophisticated, and may surpass voter outreach those states have seen in the past.

With money and momentum on their side, Republicans are considered competitive in dozens of districts once thought to be out of reach. But races are tightening, and the voter mobilization program could determine whether the election provides better than average midterm gains for the GOP.

“There is a sense now that Republicans may not be able to capitalize on the backlash against [President] Obama and the Democrats because they lack the well-organized voter ID and get-out-the-vote effort that they have had in the past,” said Lawrence Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political scientist who has been comparing the ground game of both parties. There is enormous variation now state to state, he said.

Democrats and allied groups are spending most of their $200-million political budgets in the largely invisible effort to turn out sympathetic voters.

The party was shocked to lose control of the House in 1994 in the so-called Gingrich Revolution. Since then, Democrats and labor have emphasized personal voter contact to win close races. In Pennsylvania last week, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said his organization planned to “touch” every union member in the state 25 times with mail, phone calls and personal visits in the campaign’s final weeks.

For the GOP, this year’s patchwork approach is a dramatic departure from the last decade, when a single well-organized entity — the Republican National Committee — ran sophisticated voter mobilization programs that were years in the making. But the RNC has faltered in funding and organization recently, and outside groups have stepped up efforts, many of them starting only recently.

“I think the biggest difference in this year is generally this is not a party-driven year, this is not a personality-driven year,” said Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips, whose group has launched its first voter mobilization effort. Phillips said the effort reflected a shift to movement politics organized around issues, not politicians.

American Crossroads, a tax-exempt group receiving contributions from corporations and wealthy individuals, is putting its ground-game resources to use in nine battleground states. It plans to send more than 100 volunteers to Colorado and Nevada, said Steven Law, the organization’s president.

Crossroads will generate 9 million phone calls and 5 million pieces of mail before election day, Law said.

More important, Crossroads has encouraged other conservative groups to share voter contact lists, polling information and geographic priorities, as Democrats have in recent years.

“We wanted to be a resource for exchanging lists of names and voter targeting information,” Law said.

Although some conservative groups — such as the Republican Governors Assn. and Americans for Tax Reform — have cooperated with Crossroads, others resist being too closely associated with establishment figures.

FreedomWorks, a Washington-based group that has supported tea party activists across the country, expects to spend $500,000 on its own program that taps into the network of tea party supporters.

Brendan Steinhauser, director of state and federal campaigns at FreedomWorks, said the distance from the party was an advantage in recruiting new activists.

“A lot of people don’t want to work with the Republican Party, for the most part,” he said. “They like the candidate, but they don’t want to go to GOP headquarters. They’ll work with us.”

In addition to getting out the vote, many conservative organizations continue to buy advertising even though little air time is available. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it would spend $1 million on Washington’s Senate race in the final week, using much of it for Web-based advertising on behalf of Dino Rossi, the Republican hoping to unseat Sen. Patty Murray.

The chamber is also sending funds to newly competitive House races in Washington, Wisconsin, Arizona, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Pennsylvania. All told, the chamber expects to be active in 50 House races and 12 Senate campaigns this cycle, said Political Director Bill Miller.

For tea party groups, the final days of the campaign represent the culmination of months of training and organizing political newcomers.

In West Virginia, where the Senate race is close, a handful of groups are coordinating efforts on weekly phone calls. As they canvass neighborhoods, FreedomWorks arms them with maps pinpointing independent, unreliable voters who are likely to lean conservative.

FreedomWorks, led by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, says it aims to reach 50,000 voters in West Virginia with both a knock on the door and a phone call.

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Oct. 18 (UPI) — Bolivia’s presidential runoff election on Sunday is the nation’s first and excludes a socialist candidate after voters narrowed the field to two conservative candidates on Friday.

Christian Democratic Party candidate Sen. Rodrigo Paz Pereira secured 32% of the popular vote to lead all candidates, while former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga secured the second-most with 27% of votes to set up Sunday’s runoff, according to Americas Quarterly.

Paz is a centrist candidate and the son of former Bolivian President Jaime Paz Zamora, who led the nation from 1989 to 1993.

Quiroga, 67, was serving as Bolivia’s vice president when he ascended to the presidency for one year, from Aug. 7, 2001, to Aug. 6, 2002, following the resignation of President Hugo Banzer due to a cancer diagnosis.

He was elected vice president in 1997 at age 37, which made him the nation’s youngest person to hold that office.

Quiroga was defeated in three prior campaigns to be elected president, but many now view him as the favorite.

His platform includes establishing a free market economic system rooted in capitalism and that supports private property rights for citizens.

He also wants to transfer government ownership of the nation’s ample natural resources, especially natural gas, iron and lithium, to private citizens and entities.

Paz, 58, also wants to establish a market-based economy and made “Capitalism for All” his campaign’s motto.

The lack of a socialist candidate in the presidential runoff is viewed as a public rebuke of the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement Towards Socialism) Party, which has controlled Bolivia’s politics over the past two decades.

Bolivia has been one of South America’s leading socialist states over the past 20 years, but the nation is mired in an economic collapse that many attribute to government mismanagement of natural resources, according to The Telegraph.

MAS presidential candidate Eduardo del Castillo received only 3% of the vote during the first round of voting.

The MAS party also is about to lose its majorities in both houses of the Bolivian Legislature amid recent controversies.

They include an arrest warrant for former MAS Party member and former President Evo Morales being issued due to an alleged statutory rape.

BASKING RIDGE, N.J.  — After years of complaints from the right about “cancel culture” from the left, some conservatives are seeking to upend the lives and careers of those who they believe disparaged Charlie Kirk after his death. They’re going after companies, educators, news outlets, political rivals and others they judge as promoting hate speech.

Just days after the conservative activist’s death, a campaign by public officials and others on the right has led to the firing or other punishment of teachers, an Office Depot employee, government workers, a TV pundit and the expectation of more dismissals coming. A Florida reporter was suspended for a question posed to a Republican congressman.

This past weekend, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted that American Airlines had grounded pilots who he said were celebrating Kirk’s death.

“This behavior is disgusting and they should be fired,” Duffy said on the social media site X.

As elected officials and conservative influencers lionize Kirk as a warrior for free expression who championed provocative opinions, they’re also weaponizing the tactics they saw being used to malign their movement — the calls for firings, the ostracism, the pressure to watch what you say.

Such tactics raise a fundamental challenge for a nation that by many accounts appears to be dangerously splintered by politics and a sense of moral outrage that social media helps to fuel.

The aftermath of Kirk’s death has increasingly become a test of the public tolerance over political differences. Republicans are pushing not only to punish the alleged killer but those whose words they believe contributed to the death or dishonored it. At the same time, some liberals on social media have criticized those, such as actor Kristin Chenoweth, who expressed sympathy online over Kirk’s death.

“This pattern that we’ve seen for decades seems to be happening much more now and at this moment than it ever has before,” said Adam Goldstein of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He dates the urge to persecute people for their private views on tragedies at least to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “If there was ever time to support the better angels of our nature, it’s now.”

Goldstein noted that it’s unpopular speech, such as people applauding Kirk’s shooting, that stands as the greatest test of acceptance of the 1st Amendment — especially when government officials get involved. “The only time you’re really supporting free speech is when it’s unpopular,” Goldstein said. “There’s no one out there trying to stop people from loving puppies and bunnies.”

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, has cautioned that the motive for the slaying has not been confirmed. He said the suspect in custody clearly identifies with the political left and had expressed dislike of Kirk before the shooting. But he and other authorities also say the suspect was not known to have been politically engaged.

Kirk was seen as an architect of President Trump’s 2024 election win, helping to expand the Republican outreach to younger voters. That means many conservatives see the remarks by liberals as fomenting violence rather than acts of political expression.

“I think President Trump sees this as an attack on his political movement,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on NBC as he noted the two assassination attempts against Trump as well as Kirk’s killing. “This is unique and different. This is an attack on a movement by using violence. And that’s the way most Republicans see this.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who is running for governor, called on social media for the firings of an assistant dean at Middle Tennessee State University and professors at Austin Peay State University and Cumberland University.

All three lost their jobs for comments deemed inappropriate for expressing a lack of sympathy, or even for expressing pleasure, in the shooting of Kirk. One said that Kirk “spoke his fate into existence,” an apparent reference to the activist’s comments that some view as having fueled America’s current environment of political fury.

Because conservatives previously said they felt “canceled” by liberals for their views, Trump on his first day back in office signed an executive order prohibiting everyone in the federal government from engaging in conduct that would “unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.”

In February at the Munich Security Conference, Vice President JD Vance criticized the preceding Biden administration for encouraging “private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth” regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. He assailed European countries as censoring political speech.

“Under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree,” Vance said at the time.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has cracked down on immigrants and academics for their speech.

Goldstein noted that Trump’s State Department in the minutes after Kirk’s death warned it would revoke the visas of any foreigners who celebrated Kirk’s killing. “I can’t think of another moment where the United States has come out to warn people of their impending cancellation,” Goldstein said.

The glimmer of bipartisan agreement in the aftermath of Kirk’s shooting was in a sense that social media was fueling the violence and misinformation in dangerous ways.

“I can’t emphasize enough the damage that social media and the internet is doing to all of us,” Cox, the Utah governor, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He added: “The most powerful companies in the history of the world have figured out how to hack our brains [to] get us addicted to outrage.”

But many Republican lawmakers have also targeted traditional news media that criticized Trump for contributing to a toxic political climate for his consistent rhetoric painting anyone against him as an enemy.

On Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) blamed news outlets for having guests on who called Trump a fascist or compared him to Hitler.

Such statements have been born out of Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss, his pardoning of Jan. 6 rioters and a range of other actions, including deportations, deployment of the National Guard in American cities, mass firings of federal employees and his scorn for the historical limits on the power of the presidency.

But for Britt, those expressions were unfair, inaccurate and triggered violence.

“There must be consequences with regards to people spewing that type of hate and celebration in the face of this,” Britt said. “And I believe that there will be.”

Boak and Riccardi write for the Associated Press and reported from Basking Ridge and Denver, respectively. AP writer Jonathan Mattise in Nashville contributed to this report.

MIAMI — When Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno visits Colombia this week as part of a three-nation tour of Latin America, it will be something of a homecoming.

The Ohio senator, who defeated an incumbent last year with the help of Donald Trump’s endorsement and the highest political ad spending in U.S. Senate race history, was born in Bogota and has brothers who are heavyweights in politics and business there.

Moreno has emerged as an interlocutor for conservatives in Latin America seeking to connect with the Trump administration.

In an interview with the Associated Press ahead of the trip, he expressed deep concern about Colombia’s direction under left-wing President Gustavo Petro and suggested that U.S. sanctions, higher tariffs or other retaliatory action might be needed to steer it straight.

The recent criminal conviction of former President Alvaro Uribe, a conservative icon, was an attempt to “silence” the man who saved Colombia from guerrilla violence, Moreno said. Meanwhile, record cocaine production has left the United States less secure — and Colombia vulnerable to being decertified by the White House for failing to cooperate in the war on drugs.

“The purpose of the trip is to understand all the dynamics before any decision is made,” said Moreno, who will meet with both Petro and Uribe, as well as business leaders and local officials. “But there’s nothing that’s taken off the table at this point and there’s nothing that’s directly being contemplated.”

Elected with Trump’s support

Moreno, a luxury car dealer from Cleveland, defeated incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown last year and became Ohio’s senior senator on practically his first day in office after his close friend JD Vance resigned the Senate to become vice president.

In Congress, Moreno has mimicked Trump’s rhetoric to attack top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer as a “miserable old man out of a Dickens novel,” called on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and threatened to subpoena California officials over their response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles.

On Latin America, he’s been similarly outspoken, slamming Petro on social media as a “socialist dictator” and accusing Mexico of being on the path to becoming a “narco state.”

Such comments barely register in blue-collar Ohio, but they’ve garnered attention in Latin America. That despite the fact Moreno hasn’t lived in the region for decades, speaks Spanish with a U.S. accent and doesn’t sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“He’s somebody to watch,” said Michael Shifter, the former president of the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. “He’s one of the most loyal Trump supporters in the senate and given his background in Latin America he could be influential on policy.”

Moreno, 58, starts his first congressional delegation to Latin America on Monday for two days of meetings in Mexico City with officials including President Claudia Sheinbaum. He’ll be accompanied by Terrance Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who is making his first overseas trip since being confirmed by the Senate last month to head the premier federal narcotics agency.

Seeking cooperation with Mexico on fentanyl

Moreno, in the pre-trip interview, said that Sheinbaum has done more to combat the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. than her predecessor and mentor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who he described as a “total disaster.” But he said more cooperation is needed, and he’d like to see Mexico allow the DEA to participate in judicial wiretaps like it has for decades in Colombia and allow it to bring back a plane used in bilateral investigations that López Obrador grounded.

“The corruption becomes so pervasive, that if it’s left unchecked, it’s kind of like treating cancer,” said Moreno. “Mexico has to just come to the realization that it does not have the resources to completely wipe out the drug cartels. And it’s only going to be by asking the U.S. for help that we can actually accomplish that.”

Plans to tour the Panama Canal

From Mexico, Moreno heads to Panama, where he’ll tour the Panama Canal with Trump’s new ambassador to the country, Kevin Marino Cabrera.

In March, a Hong Kong-based conglomerate struck a deal that would’ve handed control of two ports on either end of the U.S.-built canal to American investment firm BlackRock Inc. The deal was heralded by Trump, who had threatened to take back the canal to curb Chinese influence.

However, the deal has since drawn scrutiny from antitrust authorities in Beijing and last month the seller said it was seeking to add a strategic partner from mainland China — reportedly state-owned shipping company Cosco — to the deal.

“Cosco you might as well say is the actual communist party,” said Moreno. “There’s no scenario in which Cosco can be part of the Panamanian ports.”

‘We want Colombia to be strong’

On the final leg of the tour in Colombia, Moreno will be joined by another Colombian American senator: Ruben Gallego, Democrat of Arizona. In contrast to Moreno, who was born into privilege and counts among his siblings a former ambassador to the U.S., Gallego and his three sisters were raised by an immigrant single mother on a secretary’s paycheck.

Despite their different upbringings, the two have made common cause in seeking to uphold the tradition of bilateral U.S. support for Colombia, for decades Washington’s staunchest ally in the region. It’s a task made harder by deepening polarization in both countries.

The recent sentencing of Uribe to 12 years of house arrest in a long-running witness tampering case has jolted the nation’s politics with nine months to go before decisive presidential elections. The former president is barred from running but remains a powerful leader, and Moreno said his absence from the campaign trail could alter the playing field.

He also worries that surging cocaine production could once again lead to a “narcotization” of a bilateral relationship that should be about trade, investment and mutual prosperity.

“We want Colombia to be strong, we want Colombia to be healthy, we want Colombia to be prosperous and secure, and I think the people of Colombia want the exact same thing,” he added. “So, the question is, how do we get there?”

Goodman and Smyth write for the Associated Press. Smyth reported from Columbus, Ohio.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court signaled again this week that it believes the president has the full power to control federal agencies, including by sharply cutting their staffs and their spending.

It’s the latest example of the court’s conservative majority intervening to rule for President Trump and against federal district judges. They have done so in brief orders with no explanation, prompting further criticism from Democrats and progressives.

But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and his conservative colleagues have made clear over many years that they believe the president’s “executive power” includes controlling agencies and firing officials, even those who were deemed “independent” by Congress.

On Monday, the court issued a one-line order setting aside the decision of a federal judge in Boston who said the Education Department must rehire about 1,400 staffers who had been laid off.

Trump’s attorneys had appealed in early June, arguing the administration was “streamlining” the department while “acknowledging that only Congress can eliminate” it.

Democratic state attorneys had sued to stop the layoffs, arguing Trump was effectively “dismantling” the department, and the judge agreed the layoffs were illegal.

The week before, the conservative majority set aside the decision of a federal judge in San Francisco who blocked Trump’s plans for laying off tens of thousands of employees at more than 20 departments and agencies.

Democrats and progressives condemned the decisions and the majority’s refusal to explain its reasons.

Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center, said the justices “have let Trump amass vast new power, and they have done so without putting their names on it. They are proving willing accomplices to a constitutional coup, all without leaving a trace.”

In May, Roberts and the court upheld Trump’s dismissal of Democratic appointees to the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board, both of whom had fixed terms set by Congress.

“Because the Constitution vests the executive power in the President, he may remove without cause executive officers who exercise that power on his behalf,” the court said. “Both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power.”

The three liberals dissented.

Peter M. Shane, a New York University law professor, has written extensively on the so-called “unitary executive theory” and said it explains why Trump has been winning since he returned to the White House.

“Trump’s use of executive power is not a distortion of the Roberts court’s theory of the presidency,” he said. “It is the court’s theory of the presidency come to life.”

Still pending before the court this week is an appeal from Trump’s lawyers that seeks the firing of three Democratic appointees to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The commissioners have seven-year terms, but in May, the Trump White House told the three Democratic appointees they had been “terminated.”

They sued and won a reinstatement order from a federal judge in Baltimore.

The recent rulings from the court have come on emergency appeals at the early stage of a lawsuit. The court’s majority said Trump’s initiatives may go into effect while the litigation continues. But at some point, the justices will have to hear arguments and issue a written ruling on the underlying legal issue.

In ruling for the three officials the CPSC, the judge in Baltimore pointed to the Supreme Court’s 1935 decision which protected the constitutionality of “traditional multi-member independent agencies.”

The court’s opinion in the case of Humphrey’s Executor vs. United States drew a distinction between “purely executive officers” who were under the president’s control and those who served on a board “with quasi-judicial or quasi-legislative functions.”

But that precedent has been endangered in recent years.

Five years ago, Roberts spoke for the court and ruled the director of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau can be fired by the president, even though Congress had said otherwise.

But since that case did not involve a multi-member board or commission, it did not overrule the 1935 precedent.

SACRAMENTO — Few Californians have played a bigger role in turning the state Legislature to the right than two Orange County millionaires–conservative Christian Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. and his ally in politics, Senate Republican Leader Rob Hurtt.

Democrats denounce their millions in campaign donations. Advocates of campaign spending limits decry the sway their money has on elections.

But far more quietly, away from the headlines that large political contributions attract, the two millionaires have taken a parallel track, spreading their influence still further by spending millions on conservative think tanks and tax-exempt lobby groups that advance their goals.

Increasingly, these organizations incubate and shape Republican thought in Sacramento and frame public debate on issues from taxes and environmental law to gay rights, abortion, school vouchers and affirmative action.

Republican lawmakers, many of whom won office with help from Hurtt’s and Ahmanson’s money, often look to these groups for recommendations about positions to take, even what legislation to carry. Lawmakers tap the groups for staff and advisors, and, in revolving door fashion, the think tanks provide jobs for former legislative staffers and out-of-work politicians.

“They’re developing the ideas, and we’re trying to put bills through [the Legislature] based on those ideas,” Hurtt, of Garden Grove, said in an interview.

In the 1990s, Hurtt and Ahmanson have spent a combined $7.1 million on state campaigns, making them among the largest donors in state politics. Their money has helped elect 26 of 41 Assembly Republicans and seven of 16 Senate Republicans.

Unlike campaign spending, which by law must be publicly disclosed, there is no requirement that donations to private groups be reported. That’s why Ahmanson’s and Hurtt’s spending on policy institutes has gone largely unnoticed.

But since entering the political arena less than a decade ago, Ahmanson has spent more than $3.1 million and Hurtt at least $1.3 million on think tanks and conservative lobbying groups, interviews and tax records of the groups show.

“Hurtt’s money and Ahmanson’s play an agenda-setting role,” said author Sara Diamond, a Berkeley sociologist who writes extensively about conservative Christians. “This is really the genius of the New Right. You don’t wait for an election to come around. A better way to influence policy is to finance think tanks. They create interest and a demand” in issues.

*

Some think tanks that receive money from Ahmanson and, to a lesser extent, Hurtt, have a libertarian bent and advocate free-market prescriptions for society’s ills. Others are Bible-based and battle for “traditional family values.” For the most part, they produce writings light on statistical proof and heavy on opinion, which makes some people question the legitimacy of their credentials as researchers.

“Many of these organizations are adversarial in nature, explicitly so,” said Jess Cook of the research-oriented Rand Corp. of Santa Monica, which receives no money from Ahmanson or Hurtt. “That’s the growth sector in the think tank industry in recent years. They’re not doing fact-based research. They’re advocating a certain point of view.”

One of the biggest beneficiaries of Hurtt’s and Ahmanson’s largess is the Christian-based Capitol Resource Institute, which they founded in 1987 to organize abortion foes in Sacramento. Some of its newest goals: pushing a measure to deny recognition of same-sex marriage and junking the state’s no-fault divorce law, making it harder to dissolve a marriage.

These policy institutes try to be at the fore of the hottest issues in state politics–attacking welfare, affirmative action, public schools, public employee unions, taxes, environmental law. Opposition to abortion and gay rights are recurrent themes.

“I would not propose we have policemen battering down people’s doors to see what they’re doing in the bedroom,” said Larry Arnn, president of the Claremont Institute, which received $185,000 from Ahmanson last year and lesser sums from Hurtt. “But I wouldn’t have [gay] rights recognized, because I don’t think they are rights. They fit into a different class than protections for blacks and women. We think it’s wrong. It’s a violation of natural law.”

The groups funded by Hurtt and Ahmanson are nonprofit and exempt from income taxes. In exchange for tax breaks, they must limit their lobbying. But through their position papers, guest columns in newspapers, radio broadcasts and newsletters, their reach extends from the grass-roots to the governor’s office.

“We have to make the constituency aware of what’s going on on a timely basis. The key there is timely,” Hurtt said. “It’s a total education. If people want to get involved, they let them know, ‘Here’s how you can do it.’ ”

One of the Legislature’s biggest boosters of think tanks is state Sen. Ray Haynes (R-Riverside). A leading abortion opponent, Haynes won an Assembly seat in 1992 and a Senate seat in 1994 with $512,000 from Hurtt and a political action committee Hurtt and Ahmanson helped found. As a legislator, Haynes has carried bills sponsored by think tanks, and hired an aide from Capitol Resource.

“You know what your principles are. You know which way you want to go. But sometimes you get lost. These think tanks keep your compass straight,” Haynes said.

Haynes sits on the board of directors of the American Legislative Exchange Council. Funded by conservative foundations, pro-gun groups and corporations, including pharmaceutical manufacturers and tobacco companies, the council distributes volumes of “model” legislation to lawmakers around the country.

In California last year, legislators introduced 40 of the group’s bills. Topics ranged from limits on gun control and litigation to restrictions on unions, welfare and obscenity. Some bills cleared the Assembly, where the GOP has a majority. One, a bill to increase prison terms, cleared the Democrat-controlled Senate and was signed into law.

When he became active in the council, Haynes concluded that its education and welfare proposals were outdated. So earlier this year, he asked Ahmanson to fund research in the areas. Ahmanson responded by giving the group $80,000.

Hurtt, Ahmanson and Ahmanson’s wife, Roberta Green Ahmanson, have said in past public statements that their political involvement is driven by their moral concerns. Ahmanson is a Calvinist, following the teachings and stern moral code of the 16th Century theologian John Calvin. He funds his philanthropy from the fortune left him by his father, Howard F. Ahmanson Sr., founder of Home Savings & Loan. Hurtt, an evangelical Christian, has accumulated his wealth since taking over his family’s Garden Grove manufacturing plant, Container Supply Co.

The Ahmansons refused to be interviewed about their political activities. But they did write to The Times to say their political involvement constitutes a “very small part of the total that we do, and it exists only to protect our private charitable efforts.”

The Ahmansons fund many nonpolitical causes, from a USC professor’s research into oppression of Armenians to international efforts to protect Christians from religious persecution. Ahmanson has given the Orange County Rescue Mission more than $1 million.

“Our primary motive is to serve God by doing what we can to make life better for as many as we can,” the Ahmansons wrote.

*

Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) contends that when Democrats controlled the Assembly, lower-house staff researchers amounted to a Democratic think tank. As a result, Pringle says, conservatives turned to outside groups for policy ideas.

Since becoming speaker in January, Pringle has tapped three groups that receive Ahmanson’s money–Reason Foundation of Santa Monica, Pacific Research Institute of San Francisco and Claremont Institute–for appointees to state advisory commissions on transportation, education and the California Constitution.

Claremont is among the most influential California think tanks. Its staff includes former television commentator Bruce Herschensohn, hired after his failed run for U.S. Senate in 1992. Its major donors include Los Angeles industrialist Henry Salvatori, who was part of President Reagan’s kitchen cabinet, conservative foundations and corporations such as Philip Morris and Union Petroleum.

Ahmanson became one of the largest donors to Claremont in the 1990s, giving $721,000. He and his wife are on Claremont’s board, along with others, including Orange County GOP Chairman Thomas A. Fuentes; Tom Silver, chief of staff to Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich; and television personality Pat Sajak.

Ahmanson’s money helps pay for Claremont’s Sacramento office. Located across from the Capitol, Claremont’s Golden State Center’s staff includes former Assembly Republican Tom McClintock. He joined Claremont after he lost his 1994 run for controller; he currently is running for a San Fernando Valley Assembly seat, and has received campaign money from Ahmanson’s political action committee.

McClintock envisions Claremont one day having as much influence in Sacramento as the Heritage Foundation has in Washington. It’s already a player. Republican lawmakers cite McClintock’s papers calling for dramatic cuts in the state budget. Claremont helped organize parts of Gov. Pete Wilson’s recent conference on welfare and the importance of fathers.

In his first appointments after becoming speaker, Pringle named Claremont’s Arnn and a second Claremont fellow to the California Constitutional Revision Commission, which is drafting changes to the state Constitution.

In making the appointment, Pringle cited Arnn’s academic background, which includes a focus on the founding principles of the United States. Arnn also makes forays into politics. With funding from Ahmanson, Hurtt and their allies, Arnn ran for Congress in 1992, but lost the primary to Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Riverside). Currently, Arnn is a co-chairman of the November initiative to end affirmative action in government.

Through position papers and books, Claremont advocates applying the nation’s founding principles to current problems. Claremont papers conclude the state would be better off with free-market economics, fewer government restrictions on business and lower taxes. Its tracts also oppose gay rights, pornography and abortion.

Hurtt, who gives Claremont $1,000 a month and hired a Claremont researcher to be one of his state budget analysts, predicts that if the GOP gains control of the Senate, as it has in the Assembly, Claremont’s many writings “will give us the ammo” for legislation.

While corporations fund free-market think tanks, they rarely give to Bible-based groups. Not so Hurtt and Ahmanson. They have helped several Christian groups. One is Capitol Resource Institute. Ahmanson has given $490,000, though he no longer is a donor. Hurtt has given the group $920,000 and hired his chief of staff and press secretary from the group.

These days, some Capitol Resource projects are about as controversial as apple pie, such as 30-second public service television spots airing statewide that champion the role of fathers. But it also is behind one of the most emotional bills of the year, a measure to deny recognition of same-sex marriages sanctioned by other states.

Capitol Resource Director Michael Bowman, a former aide to Sen. Haynes, said he believes gay advocates’ efforts to win approval of same-sex marriage is “a way for homosexuals to attack the church.”

Next year, the group hopes to start what Bowman calls “a cultural debate on divorce” by sponsoring legislation to make divorce harder to obtain and ending the “no-fault” divorce system.

*

On his own, Ahmanson is the major financial backer of one of the Christian right’s most controversial theologians, Rousas John Rushdoony, giving Rushdoony’s think tank, Chalcedon, $733,000 in the past decade.

Rushdoony is an 80-year-old Calvinist who has a small parish and Christian school outside Angel’s Camp in the Sierra foothills. For several years, Ahmanson was a trustee of Chalcedon. From 1975 to 1983, Ahmanson frequently visited Rushdoony and leased a home nearby, Rushdoony said.

“He was essentially relying on me [spiritually],” Rushdoony said.

A prolific author, Rushdoony contends Christianity should apply to all aspects of life and that government’s role should be minor. Individuals, charities and churches should take over most–if not all–responsibility for welfare, for example, and Rushdoony long has been a proponent of home- and church-schooling.

Rushdoony is a soft-spoken man whose living room is filled with stacks of religious, political and popular books. Many of his views seem extreme.

In Rushdoony’s magnum opus, “The Institutes of Biblical Law,” he contends the Holocaust death toll of 6 million Jews is vastly inflated and that experts who cite that figure commit the biblical sin of bearing false witness.

“The evils [of the Nazis] were all too real: Even greater is the evil of bearing false witness concerning them, because that false witness will produce an even more vicious reality in the next upheaval,” Rushdoony writes. The Anti-Defamation League called Rushdoony’s comments “a striking addition to the canons of Nazi apology.”

In his tome, Rushdoony also contends that God, through the Bible, authorizes the death penalty for 18 sins. On the list is murder, rape of a betrothed virgin, adultery, promiscuity by unwed women, homosexuality, sodomy, striking or cursing a parent, habitual criminality, blasphemy and bearing false witness.

“The hostility to the death penalty is humanism’s hostility to God’s law,” Rushdoony writes. “But God’s government prevails, and His alternatives are clear-cut: either men and nations obey His laws, or God invokes the death penalty against them.”

Rushdoony says he does not seek to impose biblical law, at least not until the majority of people adhere to biblical law. Rather, he is a commentator on what the Bible requires, and a “Christian libertarian.”

“It’s my duty to set forth God’s requirements,” Rushdoony said. “Then each man is going to bear the responsibility for the stand he takes.”

Rushdoony has gotten involved in secular pursuits, helping, for example, political consultant Wayne Johnson get his start in the early 1980s by recommending that a friend, then-state Sen. H.L. Richardson (R-Arcadia), hire Johnson. Johnson, a Chalcedon trustee, has run campaigns for several Republicans in Congress and the Legislature, including ones funded by Ahmanson and Hurtt.

Despite his profession, Johnson, like Rushdoony, has little faith that politicians can change society. Rather, he seeks to assist candidates who “won’t padlock the churches.” Said Johnson: “The state should get out of the way and let the church do its work.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Influence and the Issues

Since 1987, Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. has contributed at least $3.1 million to various conservative think tanks and tax-exempt lobby groups. Senate Republican Leader Rob Hurtt of Garden Grove has given $1.3 million. Here are some of the groups:

FREE MARKET ADVOCATES

* Reason Foundation, Santa Monica, and Pacific Research Institute, San Francisco: Ahmanson agrees with these groups that public schools are failing. He donated $400,000 to promote passage of the 1993 school voucher initiative and was attracted to these groups because they advocate tax-funded vouchers for private school tuition. Most recently, Ahmanson gave $97,000 to the Reason Foundation to fund reports that were critical of teachers unions and that contended private schools can do a better job of educating children with physical and emotional problems. Gov. Pete Wilson has used the groups’ research for his proposals to turn some government functions over to private enterprise. He and Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove) have appointed researchers from both groups to advisory commissions. Ahmanson has donated $138,000 to Reason and $30,000 to Pacific Research.

BIBLE-BASED GROUPS

* Focus on the Family, Colorado Springs, Colo.: A leader in the traditional family values movement. Hurtt says Focus’ founder, psychologist James C. Dobson, inspired him to get involved in politics. In the late 1980s, Ahmanson gave Focus $279,212 and Hurtt gave $250,305. Hurtt says he continues to give.

* Capitol Resource Institute, Sacramento: One of 32 “family policy councils” affiliated with Focus on the Family; founded by Hurtt and Ahmanson in 1987 as a gathering place for antiabortion forces. Ahmanson has donated $490,000, though he no longer contributes. Hurtt, who has given more than $920,000, says he is scaling back contributions to $5,500 per month.

* Traditional Values Coalition, Anaheim: Run by the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, a vocal opponent of abortion, gay rights and other issues in Sacramento and Washington. Hurtt and Ahmanson each started giving $10,000 to $20,000 per year in the mid-1980s. In 1990 and 1992, Ahmanson gave $35,000 to help mail voter guides to 8,000 churches statewide. But Hurtt and Ahmanson have not donated in recent years. Sheldon’s mailing list stands at roughly 100,000 potential donors and raises money with regular appeals.

THE LAW

* Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom, Sacramento: Formerly based in Capitol Resource Institute office; provided legal defense for Operation Rescue’s antiabortion protesters. Ahmanson gave $56,500. Hurtt gave $10,000 to fund a suit by former Los Angeles Assistant Police Chief Robert Vernon, who said he was a victim of discrimination by the city of Los Angeles because of his Christian beliefs. Founder David Llewellyn, dean of Simon Greenleaf School of Law in Anaheim, describes Ahmanson as a “substantial” donor. School’s brochure describes its goal as “building a new generation of Christian lawyers.”

NATIONAL GROUPS

* Free Congress Foundation, Virginia: To compete with liberal think tanks in Washington, conservative strategist Paul Weyrich in the 1970s helped found Heritage Foundation–one of the most influential think tanks in Washington–American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Free Congress Foundation, which he still operates. Ahmanson gives about $30,000 a year to Free Congress for Weyrich’s National Empowerment Television, a cable network offering conservative and religious perspectives on current events. “No one could possibly understand my politics without understanding my spiritual point of view,” Weyrich said. “Separation of church and state is artificial.”

* National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families, Cincinnati: Formerly known as the National Coalition Against Pornography, the group battles obscenity and child pornography, and helps lobby against adult businesses. It has received substantial funding from Focus on the Family. Ahmanson’s wife, Roberta Green Ahmanson, served on its board. Ahmanson has given $1.2 million; Hurtt, $22,500.

Sources: Tax records of the various groups, Times reports; researched by DAN MORAIN/Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — In a massive setback, House Republicans failed Friday to push their big package of tax breaks and spending cuts through the Budget Committee, as a handful of conservatives joined all Democrats in a stunning vote against it.

The hard-right lawmakers are insisting on steeper spending cuts to Medicaid and the Biden-era green energy tax breaks, among other changes, before they will give their support to President Trump’s “big beautiful bill.” They warn the tax cuts alone would pile onto the nation’s $36-trillion debt.

The failed vote, 16-21, stalls, for now, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s push to have the package approved next week. But the holdout lawmakers vowed to stay all weekend to negotiate changes as the president is returning to Washington from the Middle East.

“Something needs to change or you’re not going to get my support,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).

Tallying a whopping 1,116 pages, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, named with a nod to Trump, is teetering at a critical moment. Conservatives are holding out for steeper cuts to Medicaid and other programs to help offset the costs of the tax breaks. But at the same time, lawmakers from high-tax states including New York and California are demanding a deeper tax deduction, known as SALT, for their constituents.

Johnson has insisted Republicans are on track to pass the bill, which he believes will inject a dose of stability into a wavering economy.

Democrats slammed the package, but they will be powerless to stop it if Republicans are united. They emphasized that millions of people would lose their health coverage if the bill passes while the wealthiest Americans would reap enormous tax cuts. They also said it would increase future deficits.

“That is bad economics. It is unconscionable,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the top Democratic lawmaker on the panel.

The Budget panel is one of the final stops before the package is sent to the full House floor for a vote, which is expected as soon as next week. Typically, the job of the Budget Committee is more administrative as it compiles the work of 11 committees that drew up various parts of the big bill.

But Friday’s meeting proved momentous. Republicans hold a slim majority in the House and have just a few votes to spare to advance the measure, including on the Budget Committee.

Four Republican conservatives initially voted against the package — Roy and Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma and Andrew Clyde of Georgia. Then one, Rep. Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania, switched his vote to no.

The conservative holdouts from the Freedom Caucus are insisting on deeper cuts — particularly to Medicaid. They want new work requirements for aid recipients to start immediately, rather than on Jan. 1, 2029, as the package proposes.

Roy complained that the legislation front-loads new tax cuts and spending while back-loading the savings.

“We are writing checks we cannot cash, and our children are going to pay the price,” Roy said.

“Sadly,” added Norman, “I’m a hard no until we get this ironed out.”

At the same time, the New Yorkers have been unrelenting in their demand for a much larger SALT deduction than what is proposed in the bill, which could send the overall cost of the package skyrocketing.

As it stands, the bill proposes tripling what’s currently a $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction, increasing it to $30,000 for joint filers with incomes up to $400,000 a year.

Rep. Nick LaLota, one of the New York lawmakers leading the SALT effort, said they have proposed a deduction of $62,000 for single filers and $124,000 for joint filers.

The conservatives and the New Yorkers are at odds, each jockeying for their priorities as Johnson labors to keep the package on track to pass the House by Memorial Day and then onto the Senate.

“This is always what happens when you have a big bill like this,” said Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.). “There’s always final details to work out all the way up until the last minute. So we’re going to keep working. There’s a lot of work to be done.”

At its core, the sprawling package extends the existing income tax cuts that were approved during Trump’s first term, in 2017, and adds new ones that the president campaigned on in 2024, including no taxes on tips, overtime pay and some auto loans.

It increases some tax breaks for middle-income earners, including a bolstered standard deduction of $32,000 for joint filers and a temporary $500 boost to the child tax credit, bringing it to $2,500.

It also provides an infusion of $350 billion for Trump’s deportation agenda and to bolster the Pentagon.

To offset more than $5 million in lost revenue, the package proposes rolling back other tax breaks, namely the green energy tax credits approved as part of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Some conservatives want those to end immediately.

The package also seeks to cover the costs by slashing more than $1 trillion from healthcare and food assistance programs over the course of a decade, in part by imposing work requirements on able-bodied adults.

Certain Medicaid recipients would need to engage in 80 hours a month of work or other community options to receive healthcare. Older Americans receiving food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, would also see the program’s current work requirement for able-bodied participants without dependents extended to include those ages 55-64. States would also be required to shoulder a greater share of the program’s cost.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates at least 7.6 million fewer people with health insurance and about 3 million a month fewer SNAP recipients with the changes.

Mocking the name of the bill, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called it “one big, beautiful betrayal.”

“To pay for it,” Democratic Rep. Morgan McGarvey said, “kids in Kentucky will go hungry, nursing homes and hospitals will close, and millions of Americans will be kicked off their health insurance. It’s wrong.”

Mascaro and Freking write for the Associated Press. AP writer Leah Askarinam contributed to this report.