WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Monday proposed deeper Medicaid cuts, including new work requirements for parents of teens, as a way to offset the costs of making President Trump’s tax breaks more permanent in draft legislation unveiled for his “Big Beautiful Bill.”
The proposals from Republicans keep in place the current $10,000 deduction of state and local taxes, called SALT, drawing quick blowback from GOP lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states, who fought for a $40,000 cap in the House-passed bill. Senators insisted negotiations continue.
The Senate draft also enhances Trump’s proposed new tax break for seniors, with a bigger $6,000 deduction for low- to moderate-income senior households earning no more than $75,000 a year for singles, $150,000 for couples.
All told, the text unveiled by the Senate Finance Committee’s Republicans provides the most comprehensive look yet at changes the GOP senators want to make to the 1,000-page package approved by House Republicans last month. GOP leaders are pushing to fast-track the bill for a vote by Trump’s Fourth of July deadline.
Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the chairman, said the proposal would prevent a tax hike and achieve “significant savings” by slashing green energy funds “and targeting waste, fraud and abuse.”
It comes as Americans broadly support levels of funding for popular safety net programs, according to the poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Many Americans see Medicaid and food assistance programs as underfunded.
What’s in the “Big Beautiful Bill” so far
Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is the centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda, a hodgepodge of GOP priorities that Republicans are trying to swiftly pass over unified opposition from Democrats — a tall order for the slow-moving Senate.
Fundamental to the package is the extension of some $4.5 trillion in tax breaks approved during his first term, in 2017, that are expiring this year if Congress fails to act. There are also new ones, including no taxes on tips, as well as more than $1 trillion in program cuts.
After the House passed its version, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill would add $2.4 trillion to the nation’s deficits over the decade, and leave 10.9 million more people without health insurance, due largely to the proposed new work requirements and other changes.
The biggest tax breaks, some $12,000 a year, would go to the wealthiest households, CBO said, while the poorest would see a tax hike of roughly $1,600. Middle-income households would see tax breaks of $500 to $1,000 a year, CBO said.
Both the House and Senate packages are eyeing a massive $350-billion buildup of Homeland Security and Pentagon funds, including some $175 billion for Trump’s mass deportation efforts, such as the hiring of 10,000 more officers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
This comes as protests over deporting migrants have erupted nationwide — including the stunning handcuffing of Sen. Alex Padilla last week in Los Angeles — and as deficit hawks such as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul are questioning the vast spending on Homeland Security.
Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer warned that the Senate GOP’s draft “cuts to Medicaid are deeper and more devastating than even the Republican House’s disaster of a bill.”
Trade-offs in bill risk GOP support
As the package now moves to the Senate, the changes to Medicaid, SALT and green energy programs are part of a series of trade-offs GOP leaders are making as they try to push the package to passage with their slim majorities, with almost no votes to spare.
But criticism of the Senate’s version came quickly after House Speaker Mike Johnson warned senators of making substantial changes.
“We have been crystal clear that the SALT deal we negotiated in good faith with the Speaker and the White House must remain in the final bill,” the co-chairs of the House SALT caucus, Reps. Young Kim (R-Calif.) and Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), said in a joint statement Monday.
Republican Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York posted on X that the $10,000 cap in the Senate bill was not only insulting, but a “slap in the face to the Republican districts that delivered our majority and trifecta” with the White House.
Medicaid and green energy cuts
Some of the largest cost savings in the package come from the GOP plan to impose new work requirements on able-bodied single adults, ages 18 to 64 and without dependents, who receive Medicaid, the health care program used by 80 million Americans.
While the House first proposed the new Medicaid work requirement, it exempted parents with dependents. The Senate’s version broadens the requirement to include parents of children older than 14, as part of their effort to combat waste in the program and push personal responsibility.
Already, the Republicans had proposed expanding work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, to include older Americans up to age 64 and parents of school-age children older than 10. The House had imposed the requirement on parents of children older than 7.
People would need to work 80 hours a month or be engaged in a community service program to qualify.
One Republican, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, has joined a few others pushing to save Medicaid from steep cuts — including to the so-called provider tax that almost all states levy on hospitals as a way to help fund their programs.
The Senate plan proposes phasing down that provider tax, which is now up to 6%. Starting in 2027, the Senate looks to gradually lower that threshold until it reaches 3.5% in 2031, with exceptions for nursing homes and intermediate care facilities.
Hawley slammed the Senate bill’s changes on the provider tax. “This needs a lot of work. It’s really concerning and I’m really surprised by it,” he said. “Rural hospitals are going to be in bad shape.”
The Senate also keeps in place the House’s proposed new $35-per-service co-pay imposed on some Medicaid patients who earn more than the poverty line, which is about $32,000 a year for a family of four, with exceptions for some primary, prenatal, pediatric and emergency room care.
And Senate Republicans are seeking a slower phaseout of some Biden-era green energy tax breaks to allow continued develop of wind, solar and other projects that the most conservative Republicans in Congress want to end more quickly. Tax breaks for electric vehicles would be immediately eliminated.
Conservative Republicans say the cuts overall don’t go far enough, and they oppose the bill’s provision to raise the national debt limit by $5 trillion to allow more borrowing to pay the bills.
“We’ve got a ways to go on this one,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
Mascaro and Freking write for the Associated Press. AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Matthew Daly contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is looking to cancel $9.4 billion in spending already approved by Congress. That’s just a sliver of the $1.7 trillion that lawmakers OK’d for the budget year ending Sept. 30.
The package of 21 budget rescissions will have to be approved by both chambers of Congress for the cuts to take place, beginning with a House vote expected Thursday. Otherwise, the spending remains in place.
The White House is betting that cutting federal investments in public media and some foreign aid programs will prove politically popular. Republicans say if this first effort is successful, they hope more rescission packages will follow as they look to continue work by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency once run by billionaire Elon Musk.
Democrats describe the cuts as inhumane and say they would rip life-saving support from hungry and sick people across the globe. Republicans are describing the cuts as “modest” and say the U.S. will continue to play a critical role in helping the world’s most vulnerable people.
Here’s a look at some of the spending the White House is trying to claw back:
The Republican president has asked lawmakers to rescind nearly $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which represents the full amount it’s slated to receive during the next two budget years. Congress has traditionally provided public media with advanced funds to reduce political pressures.
The corporation distributes the money mostly to public television and radio stations around the country, with some assigned to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System to support national programming.
The White House says the public media system is politically biased and an unnecessary expense.
Much of the conservatives’ ire is focused on NPR and PBS. “We believe that you all can hate us on your own dime,” said Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, during a hearing in March.
But about two-thirds of the money goes to more than 1,500 locally owned public radio and television stations. Nearly half of those stations serve rural areas of the country.
“They want to punish the national guys, that’s fine,” said Rep. Mark Amodei, a Republican who said he was undecided going into this week’s vote. “But I’m trying to get a handle on what it means for my stations in Nevada, because the ability to fundraise at the national level ain’t the same as the ability to fundraise in Reno.”
The association representing local public television stations warns that many of them would be forced to close if the GOP bill passes. Those stations provide emergency alerts, free educational programming and high school sports coverage and highlight hometown heroes.
Meanwhile, local radio stations say their share of the allocation provides funding for 386 stations employing nearly 10,000 people. Dozens of stations rely on the public grants for more than half of their budget. Many others for nearly half.
Some Republicans say they worry about what the cuts would mean for local public stations but tough decisions are necessary.
Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., said South Dakota Public Broadcasting does a “really good job of covering the state Legislature” and other public affairs.
“So these rescissions are not going to be comfortable for South Dakota to deal with,” Johnson said. “That being said, we’re $37 trillion in debt.”
Funding to combat diseases
Trump’s administration is looking to claw back about $900 million from $10 billion that Congress has approved for global health programs.
That includes canceling $500 million for activities related to infectious diseases and child and maternal health and another $400 million to address the global HIV epidemic.
The administration says the $500 million rescission for infectious diseases would not reduce treatment but would “eliminate programs that are antithetical to American interests and worsen the lives of women and children, like ‘family planning’ and ‘reproductive health,’ LGBTQI+ activities, and equity programs.” It makes a similar assurance on the HIV funding, saying it would eliminate “only those programs that neither provide life-saving treatment nor support American interests.”
Scores of humanitarian aid groups have asked lawmakers to oppose the proposed cuts. Catholic Relief Services called on donors to contact their members of Congress to urge them to vote against the bill. Without the U.S. assistance, “countless lives are at risk, and the needs will continue to rise,” said the plea to supporters.
The importance of the United States’ contribution to the global HIV response cannot be overstated, according to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS. It says the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, has saved more than 26 million lives and averted almost 5 million new HIV infections since it was launched in 2003 under President George W. Bush, a Republican.
“Instead of facing a death sentence, people supported by PEPFAR are raising families, building their communities, and helping their communities grow and develop,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.
Refugee assistance
The Trump administration is looking to cancel $800 million, or a quarter of the amount Congress approved, for a program that provides emergency shelter, water and sanitation, and family reunification for those forced to flee their own country. The program also helps vetted refugees who come to the U.S. get started in their new country.
The White House says “these funds support activities that could be more fairly shared with non-U.S. Government donors, providing savings to the U.S. taxpayer.”
Refugees International urged Congress to reject what it described as a reckless proposal.
About 45% of the savings sought by the White House would come from two programs designed to boost the economies, democratic institutions and civil societies in developing countries.
The administration wants to claw back $2.5 billion of the $3.9 billion approved for the Development Assistance program at the U.S. Agency for International Development and about $1.7 billion, or nearly half of the funds, dedicated to the State Department’s Economic Support Fund.
The administration says in its request to Congress that the Development Assistance account is supposed to fund programs that work to end extreme poverty and promote resilient democratic societies, but in practice many of the programs “conflict with American values” and bankroll corrupt leaders’ evasion of responsibilities to their citizens while providing “no clear benefit to Americans.”
U.S. leaders have often argued over the years that helping to eradicate conditions that lead to political upheaval abroad is not just the right thing to do but also the smart thing.
“By helping stem pandemics and war and helping countries become healthy, free-market democracies, we are actually helping our own country,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
Republicans are rejecting the dire warnings. Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., said “ waste, fraud and abuse is what this is all about.”
To hear Republicans tell it, California is a failed state and Donald Trump won the presidency in a landslide that gives him a mandate to do as he pleases. No surprise there.
But more and more, Democrats are echoing those talking points. Ever since Kamala Harris lost the election, the Democratic Party has been on a nationwide self-flagellation tour. One after another, its leaders have stuck their heads deep into their navels, hoping to find out why so many Americans — especially young people, Black voters and Latinos — shunned the former vice president.
Even in California, a reliably blue state, the soul-searching has been extreme, as seen at last weekend’s state Democratic Party convention, where a parade of speakers — including Harris’ 2024 running mate, Tim Walz — wailed and moaned and did the woe-is-us-thing.
Is it long-overdue introspection, or just annoying self-pity? Our columnists Anita Chabria and Mark Z. Barabak hash it out.
Chabria: Mark, you were at the convention in Anaheim. Thoughts?
Barabak: I’ll start by noting this is the first convention I’ve attended — and I’ve been to dozens — rated “R” for adult language. Apparently, Democrats think by dropping a lot of f-bombs they can demonstrate to voters their authenticity and passion. But it seemed kind of stagy and, after a while, grew tiresome.
I’ve covered Nancy Pelosi for more than three decades and never once heard her utter a curse word, in public or private. I don’t recall Martin Luther King Jr., saying, “I have a [expletive deleted] dream.” Both were pretty darned effective leaders.
Democrats have a lot of work to do. But cursing a blue streak isn’t going to win them back the White House or control of Congress.
It seems like across the country, the one thing Democrats can agree on is that they are lame. Or at least, they see themselves as lame. I’m not sure the average person finds Democratic ideals such as equality or due process quite so off-putting, especially as Trump and his MAGA brigade move forward on the many campaign promises — deportations, rollbacks of civil rights, stripping the names of civil rights icons off ships — that at least some voters believed were more talk than substance.
I always tell my kids to be their own hero, and I’m starting to think the Democrats need to hear that. Pick yourself up. Dust yourself off. Move on. Do you think all this self-reproach is useful, Mark? Does Harris’ loss really mean the party is bereft of value or values?
Barabak: I think self-reflection is good for the party, to a point. Democrats suffered a soul-crushing loss in November — at the presidential level and in the Senate, where the GOP seized control — and they did so in part because many of their traditional voters stayed home. It would be political malpractice not to figure out why.
That said, there is a tendency to go overboard and over-interpret the long-term significance of any one election.
This is not the end of the Democratic Party. It’s not even the first time one of the two major parties has been cast into the political wilderness.
Democrats went through similar soul-searching after presidential losses in 1984 and 1988. In 1991, a book was published explaining how Democrats were again destined to lose the White House and suggesting they would do so for the foreseeable future. In November 1992, Bill Clinton was elected president. Four years later, he romped to reelection.
In 2013, after two straight losing presidential campaigns, Republicans commissioned a political autopsy that, among other recommendations, urged the party to increase its outreach to gay and Latino voters. In 2016, Donald Trump — not exactly a model of inclusion — was elected.
Here, by the way, is how The Times wrote up that postmortem: “A smug, uncaring, ideologically rigid national Republican Party is turning off the majority of American voters, with stale policies that have changed little in 30 years and an image that alienates minorities and the young, according to an internal GOP study.”
Sound familar?
So, sure, look inward. But spare us the existential freakout.
Chabria: I would also argue that this moment is about more than the next election. I do think there are questions about if democracy will make it that long, and if so, if the next round at the polls will be a free and fair one.
They want to know Democrats are fighting to protect these things, not fighting each other. I agree with you that any loss should be followed by introspection. But also, there’s a hunger for leadership in opposition to this administration, and the Democrats are losing an opportunity to be those leaders with their endless self-immolation.
Did Harris really lose that bad? Did Trump really receive a mandate to end America as we know it?
But Trump’s margin over Harris in the popular vote was just 1.5% — which is far from landslide territory — and he didn’t even win a majority of support, falling just shy of 50%.
As for a supposed mandate, the most pithy and perceptive post-election analysis I read came from the American Enterprise Institute’s Yuval Levin, who noted Trump’s victory marked the third presidential campaign in a row in which the incumbent party lost — something not seen since the 19th century.
Challengers “win elections because their opponents were unpopular,” Levin wrote, “and then — imagining the public has endorsed their party activists’ agenda — they use the power of their office to make themselves unpopular.”
It’s a long way to 2026, and an even longer way to 2028.
But Levin is sure looking smart.
Chabria: I know Kamala-bashing is popular right now, but I’d argue that Harris wasn’t resoundingly unpopular — just unpopular enough, with some.
Harris had 107 days to campaign. Many candidates spend years running for the White House, and much longer if you count the coy “maybe” period. She was unknown to most Americans, faced double discrimination from race and gender, and (to be fair) has never been considered wildly charismatic. So to nearly split the popular vote with all that baggage is notable.
But maybe Elon Musk said it best. As part of his messy breakup with Trump, the billionaire tweeted, “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”
Sometimes there’s truth in anger. Musk’s money influenced this election, and probably tipped it to Trump in at least one battleground state. Any postmortem needs to examine not just the message, but also the medium. Is it what Democrats are saying that isn’t resonating, or is it that right-wing oligarchs are dominating communication?
Barabak:
Chabria: Mark?
Barabak: Sorry.
I was so caught up in the spectacle of the world’s richest man going all neener-neener with the world’s most powerful man I lost track of where we were.
With all due respect to Marshall McLuhan, I think Democrats need first off to figure out a message to carry them through the 2026 midterms. They were quite successful in 2018 pushing back on GOP efforts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, if you prefer. It’s not hard to see them resurrecting that playbook if Republicans take a meat-ax to Medicare and millions of Americans lose their healthcare coverage.
Then, come 2028, they’ll pick a presidential nominee and have their messenger, who can then focus on the medium — TV, radio, podcasts, TikTok, Bluesky or whatever else is in political fashion at the moment.
Now, excuse me while I return my sights to the sandbox.
WASHINGTON — When he first ran for office, Donald Trump appeared to be a new kind of Republican when it came to gay rights.
Years earlier, he overturned the rules of his own Miss Universe pageant to allow a transgender contestant to compete. He said Caitlyn Jenner could use any bathroom at Trump Tower that she wanted. And he was the first president to name an openly gay person to a Cabinet-level position.
But since returning to office this year, Trump has engaged in what activists say is an unprecedented assault on the LGBTQ+ community. The threat from the White House contrasts with World Pride celebrations taking place just blocks away in Washington, including a parade and rally this weekend.
“We are in the darkest period right now since the height of the AIDS crisis,” said Kevin Jennings, who leads Lambda Legal, a longtime advocacy organization. “I am deeply concerned that we’re going to see it all be taken away in the next four years.”
Trump’s defenders insist the president has not acted in a discriminatory way, and they point to public polling that shows widespread support for policies like restrictions on transgender athletes.
“He’s working to establish common sense once again,” said Ed Williams, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, which represents LGBT conservatives.
Harrison Fields, the principal deputy press secretary at the White House, said, “the overall MAGA movement is a big tent welcome for all and home to a large swath of the American people.”
“The president continues to foster a national pride that should be celebrated daily, and he is honored to serve all Americans,” Fields said.
Presidential actions were widely expected
Trump made anti-transgender attacks a central plank of his campaign reelection message as he called on Congress to pass a bill stating there are “only two genders” and pledged to ban hormonal and surgical intervention for transgender minors. He signed an executive order doing so in January.
His rally speeches featured a spoof video mocking transgender people and their place in the U.S. military. Trump has since banned them outright from serving. And although June is recognized nationally as Pride month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters this week that Trump has “no plans for a proclamation.”
“I can tell you this president is very proud to be a president for all Americans, regardless of race, religion or creed,” she added, making no mention of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Williams described Pride activities as a progressive catch-all rather than a civil rights campaign. “If you’re not in the mood to protest or resist the Trump administration,” he said, “Pride is not for you.”
Trump declined to issue Pride Month proclamations in his first term, but did recognize the celebration in 2019 as he publicized a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality headed by Richard Grenell, then the U.S. Ambassador to Germany and the highest-profile openly gay person in the administration. (Grenell now serves as envoy for special missions.)
“As we celebrate LGBT Pride Month and recognize the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made to our great Nation, let us also stand in solidarity with the many LGBT people who live in dozens of countries worldwide that punish, imprison, or even execute individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation,” Trump posted on social media.
Times have changed where Trump is concerned
This time, there is no celebrating.
The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Trump named himself chairman of after firing members of the board of trustees, canceled a week’s worth of events celebrating LGBTQ+ rights for this summer’s World Pride festival in Washington, D.C., at one of the nation’s premier cultural institutions.
Trump, who indicated when he took up the position that he would be dictating programming, had specifically said he would end events featuring performers in drag. The exterior lights that once lit the venue on the Potomac River in the colors of the rainbow were quickly replaced with red, white and blue.
Multiple artists and producers involved in the center’s Tapestry of Pride schedule, which had been planned for June 5 to 8, told The Associated Press that their events had been quietly canceled or moved to other venues.
Inside the White House, there’s little second-guessing about the president’s stances. Trump aides have pointed to their decision to seize on culture wars surrounding transgender rights during the 2024 campaign as key to their win. They poured money into ads aimed at young men — especially young Hispanic men — attacking Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for supporting “taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners,” including one spot aired during football games.
“Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” the narrator said.
Jennings flatly rejected assertions that the administration hasn’t been discriminatory. “Are you kidding me? You’re throwing trans people out of the military. That’s example No. 1.”
He points to the cancellation of scientific grants and funding for HIV/AIDS organizations, along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “petty and mean” order to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, which commemorates the gay rights activist and Navy veteran.
Jennings also said it doesn’t help that Trump has appointed openly gay men like Grenell and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to high-profile positions: “I would call it window dressing.”
Less tolerance for the issues as time passes
Craig Konnoth, a University of Virginia professor of civil rights, compared the U.S.’ trajectory to that of Russia, which has seen a crackdown on gay and lesbian rights after a long stretch of more progressive policies. In 2023, Russia’s Supreme Court effectively outlawed LGBTQ+ activism.
Williams said Trump has made the Republican Party more accepting of gay people. First lady Melania Trump, he noted, has hosted fundraisers for his organization.
“On the whole, we think he’s the best president ever for our community. He’s managed to support us in ways that we have never been supported by any administration,” Williams said. “We are vastly accepted within our party now.”
Trump’s approach to LGBTQ+ rights comes amid a broader shift among Republicans, who have grown less tolerant in recent years.
While overall support for same-sex marriage has been stable, according to Gallup, the percentage of Republicans who think marriages between same-sex couples should be recognized as valid with the same rights as traditional marriage dropped to 41% this year. That’s the lowest point since 2016, a year after the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, and a substantial decline from a high of 55% in 2021.
There’s been a similar drop in the share of Republicans who say that gay and lesbian relations are morally acceptable, which has dropped from 56% in 2022 to 38% this year. Democrats, meanwhile, continue to overwhelmingly support same-sex marriage and say that same-sex relations are morally acceptable.
An AP-NORC poll from May also found that Trump’s approach to handling transgender issues has been a point of relative strength for the president. About half (52%) of U.S. adults said they approve of how he’s handling transgender issues — a figure higher than his overall job approval (41%).
Douglas Page, who studies politics and gender at Gettysburg College, said that “trans rights are less popular than gay rights, with a minority of Republicans in favor of trans rights. This provides incentives for Republicans to speak to the conservative side of that issue.”
“Gay people are less controversial to Republicans compared to trans people,” he said in an email, “so gay appointees like Secretary Bessent probably won’t ruffle many feathers.”
Megerian and Colvin write for the Associated Press. Colvin reported from New York. Linley Sanders and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — President Trump wants his “big, beautiful” bill of tax breaks and spending cuts on his desk to be signed into law by the Fourth of July, and he’s pushing the slow-rolling Senate to make it happen sooner rather than later.
Trump met with Senate Majority Leader John Thune at the White House early this week and has been dialing senators for one-on-one chats, using both the carrot and stick to nudge, badger and encourage them to act. But it’s still a long road ahead for the 1,000-page-plus package.
“His question to me was, How do you think the bill’s going to go in the Senate?” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said about his call with Trump. “Do you think there’s going to be problems?”
It’s a potentially tumultuous three-week sprint for senators preparing to put their own imprint on the massive Republican package that cleared the House late last month by a single vote. The senators have been meeting for weeks behind closed doors, including as they returned to Washington late Monday, to revise the package ahead of what is expected to be a similarly narrow vote in the Senate.
“Passing THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL is a Historic Opportunity to turn our Country around,” Trump posted on social media. He urged them Monday “to work as fast as they can to get this Bill to MY DESK before the Fourth of JULY.”
Thune, like House Speaker Mike Johnson, has few votes to spare from the Senate’s slim, 53-seat GOP majority. Democrats are waging an all-out political assault on GOP proposals to cut Medicaid, food stamps and green energy investments to help pay for more than $4.5 trillion in tax cuts — with many lawmakers being hammered at boisterous town halls back home.
“It’d be nice if we could have everybody on board to do it, but, you know, individual members are going to stake out their positions,” Thune said Tuesday.
“But in the end, we have to succeed. Failure’s not an option. We’ve got to get to 51. So we’ll figure out the path forward to do that over the next couple of weeks.”
At its core, the package seeks to extend the tax cuts approved in 2017, during Trump’s first term at the White House, and add new ones the president campaigned on, including no taxes on tips and others. It also includes a massive build-up of $350 billion for border security, deportations and national security.
To defray the lost tax revenue to the government and avoid piling onto the nation’s $36-trillion debt load, Republicans want to reduce federal spending by imposing work requirements for some Americans who rely on government safety net services. Estimates are 8.6 million people would no longer have healthcare and nearly 4 million would lose Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program benefits.
The package also would raise the nation’s debt limit by $4 trillion to allow more borrowing to pay the bills.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump’s bill “is ugly to its very core.”
Schumer said Tuesday it’s a “lie” that the cuts won’t hurt Americans. “Behind the smoke and mirrors lies a cruel and draconian truth: tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy paid for by gutting healthcare for millions of Americans,” said the New York senator.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to soon provide an overall analysis of the package’s impacts on the government balance sheets, particular its rising annual deficits. But Republicans are ready to blast those findings from the congressional scorekeeper as flawed.
Trump on Tuesday switched to tougher tactics, deriding the holdout Republican senators to get on board.
The president laid into Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning deficit hawk who has made a career of arguing against government spending. Paul wants the package’s $4-trillion increase to the debt ceiling out of the bill.
“Rand votes NO on everything, but never has any practical or constructive ideas. His ideas are actually crazy (losers!).” Trump posted.
The July 4 deadline is not only aspirational for the president, it’s all but mandatory for his Treasury Department. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned Congress that the nation will run out of money to pay its bills if the debt ceiling, now at $36 trillion, is not lifted by mid-July or early August to allow more borrowing. Bessent has also been meeting behind closed doors with senators and GOP leadership.
Thune acknowledged Tuesday that lifting the debt ceiling is not up for debate.
“It’s got to be done,” the South Dakota senator said.
The road ahead is also a test for Thune, who, like Johnson, is a newer leader in Congress and among the many Republicans adjusting their own priorities with Trump’s return to the White House.
While Johnson has warned against massive changes to the package, Thune faces demands from his senators for adjustments.
To make most of the tax cuts permanent — particularly the business tax breaks that are the Senate priorities — senators may shave some of Trump’s proposed new tax breaks on automobile loans or overtime pay, which are policies less prized by some senators.
There are also discussions about altering the $40,000 cap that the House proposed for state and local deductions, known as SALT, which are important to lawmakers in high-tax New York, California and other states, but less so among GOP senators.
“We’re having all those discussions,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another key voice in the debate.
Hawley is among a group of senators, including Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, who have raised concerns about the Medicaid changes that could boot people from health insurance.
A potential copay of up to $35 for Medicaid services that was part of the House package, as well as a termination of a provider tax that many states rely on to help fund rural hospitals, have also raised concerns.
“The best way to not be accused of cutting Medicaid is to not cut Medicaid,” Hawley said.
Collins said she is reviewing the details.
There’s also a House provision that would allow the auction of spectrum bandwidth that some senators oppose.
Mascaro and Jalonick write for the Associated Press. AP writer Matt Brown contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — The widening and increasingly bitter divide between Republicans and Democrats defines American politics, but in recent weeks, it’s the divisions inside each of the two parties that have dominated headlines.
Republicans have denounced 13 of their House colleagues who sided with Democrats earlier this month to pass Biden’s $1.2-trillion infrastructure bill. After conservative Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) posted their phone numbers on social media, some of the 13 reported getting death threats.
What issues create the deep fissures within the two parties, and which Americans make up the conflicting factions?
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Pew released its latest typology on Tuesday, the eighth in the series. The results are key to understanding why American politics works the way it does.
Parties driven by their extremes
For this latest effort, Pew surveyed 10,221 American adults, asking each of them a series of questions about their political attitudes, values and views of American society. Researchers took the results and put them through what’s called a cluster analysis to define groups that make up U.S. society.
The new typology divides Americans into nine such groups — four on the left, which make up the Democratic coalition, four on the right, making up the Republican coalition, and one in between whose members are largely defined by a lack of interest in politics and public affairs.
Nearly all the Democrats agree on wanting a larger government that provides more services; nearly all the Republicans want the opposite.
And nearly all Democrats believe that race and gender discrimination remain serious problems in American society that require further efforts to resolve. On the Republican side, the belief that little — if anything — remains to be done to achieve equality has become a defining principle.
On other issues, however, the parties have deep internal splits. In each, the most energized group — the people who most regularly turn out to vote, post on social media and contribute to campaigns — stands at the edges.
On the right, that would be an extremely conservative, religiously oriented, nationalistic group which Pew calls the Faith and Flag conservatives. At the other end of the scale stands a socialist-friendly, largely secular group it calls the Progressive Left.
On several major issues, those two groups have views that are “far from the rest of their coalitions,” yet they’re “the most politically engaged groups, and they’re driving the conversation,” said Carroll Doherty, Pew’s director of political research.
The Faith and Flag conservatives, who make up about 10% of American adults and almost 25% of Republicans, have shaped the party’s policies on some social issues such as abortion, but have even more strongly affected its overall approach to politics. A majority (53%) of the group, for example, says that “compromise in politics is really just selling out.”
That has strongly shaped the GOP’s approach to legislation and helps explain the bitter, angry response to the Republicans who voted for Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure compromise.
The group is overwhelmingly white (85%), relatively old (two-thirds are 50 or older) mostly Christian (4 in 10 are white, evangelical Protestants) and heavily rural.
Their mirror image, the Progressive Left, is a significantly smaller group, only about 6% of Americans and 12% of Democrats. Despite their smaller size, however, they have had a strong impact, moving their party to the left, especially on expanding government and combating climate change.
That group is in several ways the opposite of the Faith and Flag conservatives: urban, secular and significantly more college-educated than the rest of the country.
Like the Faith and Flag group, however, the Progressives are mostly white (68%) — the only Democratic faction with a white majority.
The groups have one other trait in common — each has a deep, visceral dislike of the other party.
While those two set the parameters of a lot of American political debate, it’s the other groups in each party’s coalition that explain why the Democratic and Republican approaches to government have diverged so widely.
On the Democratic side, the two biggest blocs, which make up just over half of Democratic voters, fit comfortably into the party establishment.
The Establishment Liberals (think Vice President Kamala Harris or Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg) are a racially diverse, highly educated (one-quarter have post-graduate degrees), fairly affluent group that is optimistic in its outlook, liberal in its politics and strong believers that “compromise is how things get done” in politics.
The Democratic Mainstays (think House Democratic Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina or President Biden) are more likely to define themselves as political moderates and are significantly more likely than other Democrats to say that religion plays a major role in their lives. Roughly 40% of Black Democrats fit into this group.
The Mainstays are more likely than other Democrats to favor increasing funds for police in their neighborhoods and somewhat less likely to favor increased immigration, but are extremely loyal to the Democratic Party.
Together, those two groups give Democrats a strong orientation toward cutting deals, making incremental progress and getting the work of government done.
Virtually the opposite is true of Republicans, whose two largest groups, the Faith and Flag conservatives and what Pew calls the Populist Right, dislike compromise and harbor deep suspicions of American institutions. Together, those groups, which make up nearly half the GOP’s voters, have produced a party that revels in opposition but has often found itself stymied when trying to govern.
The Populists group, the one most closely identified with former President Trump‘s style of politics, has a negative view of huge swaths of American society — big corporations, but also the entertainment industry, tech companies, labor unions, colleges and universities, and K-12 schools.
Nearly 9 in 10 of them believe the U.S. economic system unfairly favors the powerful, and a majority support raising taxes on big companies and the wealthy. Both of those views put them at odds with the rest of the GOP, helping explain why the party struggles to come up with economic proposals beyond opposition to Democratic plans.
The Populist Right also overwhelmingly says that immigrants coming to the U.S. make the country worse off. That puts them in conflict with the party’s smaller but still influential business-oriented establishment.
About half the Populist group say that white people declining as a share of the U.S. population is a bad thing, more than in any other group.
The Republican establishment faction (think Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky or Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah) is what Pew calls the Committed Conservatives, pro-business, generally favorable to immigration and more moderate on racial issues.
A lot of Republican elected officials fall into that group, but unlike the very large establishment blocs on the Democratic side, relatively fewer voters do — 7% of Americans and 15% of the GOP. That creates a pervasive tension between GOP elected officials and many of their constituents.
Unlike the two larger conservative blocs, in which majorities want to see Trump run again, most Republicans in this group would prefer him to take a back seat.
Each of the coalitions also has a group that is alienated from its party.
A significant number in the Ambivalent Right, a younger, socially liberal, largely anti-Trump group within the GOP, voted for Biden in 2020.
On the Democratic side, the mostly young people in the Outsider Left are very liberal, but frustrated with the Democrats and not always motivated to vote. When Democratic political figures talk about the need to boost voter turnout, those are the potential voters many of them picture.
By the way, there’s a long connection between the Los Angeles Times and the political typology project. The first version of the political typology dates back to 1987 and was developed by the long-ago Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, a research organization founded by the company that owned The Times.
To allow readers to see how they compared to the political types in that era, The Times published the typology quiz as a full-page in print, inviting people to fill it out, mail it in and get a letter back telling them what group they belonged to. Today, you can do it all online.
Where do you fit?
From the hard-right Faith and Flag Conservatives to the socialist-friendly Progressive Left, with seven stops in between, Pew’s political typology describes nine groups into which Americans can be divided. The typology comes along with a quiz that allows you to see which group most closely matches your views on major issues.
The vice president abroad
On a trip this week to France, Harris is introducing herself to the world in personal terms, Noah Bierman wrote. The trip, he said, has given Harris a chance “to reveal herself on the world stage — highlighting her status as the first woman and the first woman of color to serve in such high office — after 10 months of focusing on responding to the COVD-19 pandemic and other crises,” which have taken a political toll.
Part of Harris’ goal in the trip is to further mend relations with France, which were strained when the administration struck a deal with Australia to help build nuclear submarines, which wiped out a major French contract to build boats for the Australian navy. In her speeches, however, Harris has also tried to make the case that the U.S. has moved past the Trump era and once again can be relied upon as an ally, Bierman wrote. That’s met with some skepticism from Europeans, who wonder what will happen in the next election.
Meantime, Mark Barabak looked at how Harris has adopted a much lower public profile of late. As past occupants of the office, including George H.W. Bush and Al Gore have found, the number-two job is an “inherently diminishing one,” he wrote.
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Their investigation, based on thousands of documents and Transportation Department data, shows that more than 200,000 people have lost their homes nationwide to federal road projects over the last three decades. In many cases, predominantly Black or Latino communities that were torn apart by freeway construction a generation or more ago have been dislocated once more by new projects.
Inflation has seriously damaged several presidencies in the last half century; now, rising prices threaten Biden, Chris Megerian and Erin Logan wrote.
At the international climate conference in Glasgow, the U.S., Britain and 17 other countries agreed to reduce emissions from the shipping industry, which is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases, Anna Phillips reported. Large container ships use fuel that is dirtier by far than the diesel that powers cars. Ships can also be a major source of air pollution in port cities, including Los Angeles.
As Democrats continue to haggle over the details of their big social spending proposal, Jennifer Haberkorn took a look at one of the plan’s largest elements — a major increase in money for early childhood education. The bill would devote about $390 billion over the next 10 years to providing preschool access to all 3- and 4-year-olds. That would mark the largest expansion of free education since high school was added about 100 years ago.
The latest from California
The state’s independent Citizens Redistricting Commission has come up with a draft map of new congressional and legislative districts, and it’s already causing heartburn for a number of incumbent lawmakers, Seema Mehta and John Myers reported.
The new maps may strengthen Latino political clout in California overall, but the most heavily Latino district in the state would be eliminated. The 40th District, represented by Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, covers parts of East and South L.A. and would be parceled out among neighboring districts, Mehta reported. Roybal-Allard, 80, has raised very little money amid speculation that she has plans to retire next year. The state is losing one congressional district after last year’s census, and the loss was widely expected to come in the Los Angeles area, which has grown more slowly than other parts of the state.
The redrawn boundaries may force some incumbents to run against each other or run in districts that have suddenly become less politically secure. The Central Valley districts of GOP Rep. Devin Nunes of Tulare and Democratic Rep. Josh Harder of Turlock would both be significantly altered, according to redistricting analysts in both parties. Reps. MikeGarcia of Santa Clarita, Michelle Steel of Seal Beach and Darrell Issa of Bonsall would all find their districts becoming less secure.
But there’s a good chance the maps will change again after a two-week public comment period, which began with the commission’s approval of the maps on Wednesday night.
The Biden administration will extend a major homelessness initiative that has allowed Los Angeles and other cities to rent hotel rooms as temporary housing for thousands of people. As Ben Oreskes reported, the administration will extend the program through March. It was slated to expire at the end of the year.
In another development related to homelessness, a group looking to oust Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Bonin says it has submitted more than 39,000 signatures on recall petitions. If the signatures hold up to scrutiny, that would qualify the measure for the ballot. Bonin’s opponents have accused him of failing to take seriously the impact of crime that they say is connected to homeless encampments.
WASHINGTON — Elon Musk is criticizing the centerpiece of President Trump’s legislative agenda, a significant fracture in a partnership that was forged during last year’s campaign and was poised to reshape American politics and the federal government.
The billionaire entrepreneur, who supported Trump’s candidacy with at least $250 million and has worked for his administration as a senior advisor, said he was “disappointed” by what the president calls his “big, beautiful bill.”
The legislation includes a mix of tax cuts and enhanced immigration enforcement. While speaking to CBS, Musk described it as a “massive spending bill” that increases the federal deficit and “undermines the work” of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a government agency.
“I think a bill can be big or it could be beautiful,” Musk said. “But I don’t know if it could be both.”
His CBS interview came out Tuesday night. Trump, speaking in the Oval Office on Wednesday, defended his agenda by talking about the delicate politics involved with negotiating the legislation.
“I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it,” he said.
Trump also suggested that more changes could be made.
“We’re going to see what happens,” he said. “It’s got a way to go.”
Musk’s comments come as he steps back from his government work, rededicating himself to his electric automaker Tesla and rocket manufacturer SpaceX. He’s also said he’ll reduce his political spending, because “I think I’ve done enough.”
At times, he’s seemed chastened by his experience working in government. Although he hoped that DOGE would generate $1 trillion in spending cuts, he’s fallen far short of that target.
“The federal bureaucracy situation is much worse than I realized,” he told the Washington Post. “I thought there were problems, but it sure is an uphill battle trying to improve things in D.C., to say the least.”
The White House is set to send proposed rescissions, a mechanism used to cancel previously authorized spending, to Capitol Hill to solidify some of DOGE’s cuts.
A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget said the package will include $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS, and $8.3 billion in foreign assistance.
Musk had previously been energized by the opportunity to reshape Washington. He wore campaign hats in the White House, held campaign rallies and talked about excessive spending as an existential crisis.
He often tended to be effusive in his praise of Trump.
“The more I’ve gotten to know President Trump, the more I like the guy,” Musk said in February. “Frankly, I love him.”
Trump repaid the favor, describing Musk as “a truly great American.” When Tesla faced declining sales, he turned the White House driveway into a makeshift showroom to illustrate his support.
It’s unclear if Musk’s comments about the bill will affect the legislative debate. During the transition period, he helped whip up opposition to a spending measure as the country stood on the brink of a federal government shutdown.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has asked senators to make as few changes to the legislation as possible, saying that House Republicans reached a “very delicate balance” that could be upended with major changes. The narrowly divided House will have to vote again on final passage once the Senate alters the bill.
However, Musk’s criticism could embolden Republicans who want bigger spending cuts. Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee reposted a Fox News story about Musk’s interview while adding his own take on the measure, saying there was “still time to fix it.”
“The Senate version will be more aggressive,” Lee said. “It can, it must, and it will be. Or it won’t pass.”
Only two Republicans — Reps. Warren Davidson of Ohio and Thomas Massie of Kentucky — voted against the bill when the House took up the measure last week.
Davidson took note of Musk’s comments on social media.
“Hopefully, the Senate will succeed with the Big Beautiful Bill where the House missed the moment,” he wrote. “Don’t hope someone else will cut deficits someday, know it has been done this Congress.”
The Congressional Budget Office, in a preliminary estimate, said the tax provisions would increase federal deficits by $3.8 trillion over the decade, while the changes to Medicaid, food stamps and other services would reduce spending by slightly more than $1 trillion over the same period.
House Republican leaders say increased economic growth would allow the bill to be deficit neutral or reducing, but outside watchdogs are skeptical. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the bill would add $3 trillion to the debt, including interest, over the next decade.
Megerian and Freking write for the Associated Press. AP writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
PAINTSVILLE, Ky. — Janet Lynn Stumbo leaned on her cane and surveyed the two dozen or so voters who had convened in a small Appalachian town to meet with the chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party.
A former Kentucky Supreme Court justice, the 70-year-old Stumbo said the event was “the biggest Democratic gathering I have ever seen in Johnson County,” an enclave where Republican Donald Trump got 85% of the presidential vote in November.
Paintsville, the county seat, was the latest stop on the state party’s “Rural Listening Tour,” a periodic effort to visit overwhelmingly white, culturally conservative towns of the kind where Democrats once competed and Republicans now dominate nationally.
Democrats’ path back to power may start in places like Paintsville, one small meeting at a time, because it may be difficult for the party to regain control of Congress or the White House without faring better among rural and small-town voters across the country.
The party recently lost U.S. senators from states with significant rural populations: Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Also, Democratic-led states are losing population to Sun Belt states led by Republicans, with some projections suggesting changes after the 2030 census could cost Democrats 12 electoral college votes.
“The gut check is we’d stopped having these conversations” in white rural America, said Colmon Elridge, the Kentucky Democratic chair. “Folks didn’t give up on the Democratic Party. We stopped doing the things that we knew we needed to do.”
It’s not that Democrats must carry most white rural precincts to win more elections. It’s more a matter of consistently chipping away at Republican margins in the way Trump narrowed Democrats’ usual advantages among Black and Latino men in 2024, and not unlike what Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, did in two statewide victories.
Nationally, Trump won 60% of small-town and rural voters when he lost reelection in 2020 — and 63% in his 2024 victory, according to AP VoteCast data. That’s a far cry from a generation ago, when Democrat Bill Clinton won pluralities in Johnson County on his way to capturing Kentucky’s electoral votes in the 1992 and 1996 White House races.
“We have to be intentional about how we build something sustainable,” Elridge said. “It’s not like we haven’t won here before.”
Combating the ‘caricature’ of Democrats
For two hours in downtown Paintsville, Elridge listened as Stumbo and others took umbrage at conservatives’ policy agenda, expressed frustration over President Trump’s standing in eastern Kentucky and said they were determined to sell their neighbors an alternative. Many brought their personal experiences to bear.
The event was part town hall, part catharsis, part pep talk. In some ways, the complaints in Paintsville mirrored how Democrats nationally are angry, often for very different reasons.
Sandra Music, a retired teacher who called herself “a new Democrat,” converted because of Trump. She bemoaned conservatives’ success in advancing private school tuition voucher programs and said they were threatening a public education system “meant to ensure we educate everybody.”
Music criticized Republicans for making a “caricature” of Democrats. “They want to pull out keywords: ‘abortion,’ ‘transgender,’ ‘boys in girls’ sports’” and distract from the rest of the Republican agenda, she said.
Stumbo, the former justice, lamented what she called the rightward lurch of the state and federal courts. “We are going to suffer irreparable damage,” she said, “if we don’t stop these conservative idiots.”
Michael Halfhill, who works in healthcare information technology, was incredulous that the billionaire president has taken hold of voters in Appalachia, historically one of the country’s poorest regions.
“It’s not left versus right. It’s rich versus poor,” he said, shaking his head at working-class white voters — Johnson County is 97.5% white — “voting against themselves.”
Ned Pillersdorf, who is married to Stumbo, went after Republicans for their proposed federal tax and spending plans, especially potential cuts to Medicaid. He said Paintsville still has a rural hospital, which is among the largest employers in the region, in no small part because Kentucky is among the GOP-leaning states where a Democratic governor expanded Medicaid under the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
Elridge, the first Black chair of a major party in Kentucky, mentioned Trump’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and related civil rights laws and regulations.
“This is where Trump and MAGA excel — if somebody who looks like me is your enemy, then you don’t care if the guy in the White House is peeing on your leg and telling you it’s rain,” he said, referring to Trump’s “Make American Great Again” movement.
Republican response
By definition, a “listening tour” is not meant to produce concrete action. Elridge and Nicholas Hazelett, the Johnson County Democratic chair who is a college student and a Paintsville City Council member, acknowledged that the small crowd was Democrat-friendly. Despite a few recent converts, no one was there waiting to be convinced.
Across the street, antiques shop owner Michelle Hackworth said she did not even know Democrats were holding a meeting. Calling herself a “hard-core Republican,” she smiled when asked if she would consider attending.
“They wouldn’t convince me of anything,” she said.
Bill Mike Runyon, a self-described conservative Republican who is Paintsville’s mayor and loves Trump, went immediately to social and cultural commentary when asked in an interview to explain Johnson County politics.
Democrats, he said, “have to get away from the far-left radical — look at the transgender message.” Further, Runyon said, “everything got kind of racial. It’s not like that here in Paintsville and in Johnson County, but I can see it as a country. … It’s making people more racist against one another.”
Asked specifically who he was talking about, he alluded to progressive U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Latina from New York City, and Jasmine Crockett, a Black woman from Texas.
“It’s the ones you always see on TV,” the mayor said.
Governor’s bipartisan appeal
Beshear seems to be the one Democrat who commands wide respect in and around Paintsville.
Democrats hailed the 47-year-old governor for supporting abortion and LGBTQ+ rights while still attracting support beyond the Democratic strongholds of Louisville, Lexington and Frankfort. Beshear did not win Johnson County but got 37% of the vote in his 2023 reelection. He carried several nearby counties.
Many Republicans, including the mayor, complimented Beshear for his handling of floods and other disasters in the region.
“He’s been here,” Runyon said. “I absolutely can get to him if I need him.”
In 2024, Beshear landed on the list of potential vice presidential running mates for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. He also remains Senate Democrats’ top pick for a 2026 campaign for the seat coming open with Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell’s retirement.
Beshear, whose father once lost to McConnell after having won two governor’s races, has said he will not run for Senate. But he has stepped up his cable TV interviews and launched his own podcast, fueling speculation that his next campaign will be for the 2028 presidential nomination.
“Andy is not like those national Democrats,” Runyon said. Harking back to the 1990s, he added, “Bill Clinton wasn’t like these Democrats today.”
Hackworth, the shop owner, noted that she voted against the younger Beshear twice. But over the course of an extended interview, she, too, commended the governor’s disaster management. She also questioned some moves by Trump, including the idea of getting Washington completely out of the disaster aid business.
She blamed Trump’s predecessor, former President Biden, for a “tough time at my store,” but acknowledged that federal aid had helped many businesses and households stay afloat through the COVID-19 pandemic emergency.
Hackworth said she was not familiar with details of Medicaid expansion, but she identified the nearby hospital as among the area’s largest employers. The others, she said, are the public school system and Walmart, which a day earlier had announced it was increasing prices because of Trump’s tariffs.
While supporting Trump’s “America first” agenda, Hackworth said widespread tariffs would upset many consumers. “You can walk through my store and see where the new stuff is made,” she said. “I try to buy American, but so much of it is China, China, China.”
Asked again whether any of that should give Democrats an opening in places like Paintsville, she said, “Well, there’s always an opening if you show up.”
WASHINGTON — Landmark legislation that would rewrite the tax code and levy steep cuts to programs providing healthcare and food stamps to the poor passed the House early Thursday, a development that was celebrated by President Trump despite the bill facing an uncertain future among Senate Republicans.
The measure, titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” would boost funding for border security and the Defense Department, eliminate taxes on tips and overtime, provide a new tax deduction to seniors and renew the 2017 tax cuts passed during the first Trump administration. To pay for those new funding commitments, the bill proposes eliminating green energy tax benefits passed under President Biden, as well as an estimated $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Even still, the bill would add so much money to the debt that Congress may be forced to execute cuts across the board, including hundreds of billions to Medicare, in a process known as sequestration, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
The House vote fell along party lines. By opposing the bill, the Trump administration said that Democrats were supporting the largest tax increase on middle-class Americans in decades, a reference to the upcoming expiration of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts at the end of the year.
Democrats, on the other hand, have accused Republicans of voting for the deepest cuts to healthcare in modern times. By creating new barriers to Medicaid coverage through the introduction of work hour requirements, as well as increasing premiums under the Affordable Care Act, the CBO and other nonpartisan organizations estimate up to 14 million Americans could lose their insurance coverage.
Those drastic changes to the healthcare landscape have given pause to several Republican senators.
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has said she is “very wary of cutting Medicaid.” Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said he “can’t support” substantial cuts to Medicaid benefits. And after the vote on Thursday, Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas said that material changes should be expected to the House bill.
“We need to go back through that bill with a fine tooth comb and make it better,” Marshall said in an interview with Newsmax. “I think there’s opportunities in Medicaid to make that bill better, to make sure that we strengthen it, that we preserve it for those who need it most.”
Any Senate rollback of cuts to the Medicaid program could face resistance from the House Freedom Caucus during the reconciliation process. Members of that group, which proclaims a commitment to fiscal conservatism, have called for even deeper cuts to the Medicaid program.
Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, chair of the House Freedom Caucus, voted “present” early Thursday morning, preserving negotiating leverage as the bill makes its way across Capitol Hill.
“I voted to move the bill along in the process for the president,” Harris wrote on social media. “There is still a lot of work to be done in deficit reduction and ending waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicaid program.”
The vote came hours after Trump met with GOP holdouts at the White House. As late as Wednesday afternoon, before meeting with the president, several of those lawmakers were casting doubt on the prospects of the bill’s passage this week, ahead of a Memorial Day deadline set by House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was dismissive of the Freedom Caucus on Thursday, telling CNN that the cuts they are pushing for would barely make a dent in the national debt.
“You had your chance,” Graham said to the caucus. “Some of these cuts are not real. We’re talking about over a decade — you know, if you do $1.5 trillion, that’s like a percent and a half. So let’s don’t get high on our horse here that we’ve somehow made some major advancement of reducing spending, because we didn’t.”
Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota also mocked the caucus, calling it “rich” for its members to lecture Senate Republicans on fiscal conservatism, “and end up with not that conservative a bill.” The CBO estimates the House legislation would result in a $3.8-trillion increase to the deficit.
If passed, the new work requirements to Medicaid would kick in at the end of 2026, right after the midterm elections. Green energy tax credits would phase out for any project that is not already under construction 60 days after the law comes into force.
The cap on the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, will increase to $40,000 from $10,000, phasing out for individuals and households making more than $500,000. And while the president campaigned on a promise to eliminate taxes on Social Security, a parliamentary rule precluded Republicans from including a full cut. Instead, the bill proposes an enhanced tax deduction for senior citizens of up to $4,000.
On Truth Social, the president’s social media platform, Trump wrote that the bill is “arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!”
“There is no time to waste,” he added. Johnson, the speaker, has set a goal of sending the bill to the president’s desk by Independence Day.
Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the president’s team was “suiting up” for negotiations with the Senate now that the bill has passed the House. “We will see how it goes,” she said.
“The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ is named the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ for a reason, because it is a one big beautiful bill that encompasses just about everything this president could want for the American public. It delivers on so many of his core campaign promises. So surely we want to see those campaign promises signed into law,” Leavitt said. “He’s expecting them to get busy on this bill and send it to his desk as soon as possible.”
The two House Republicans who voted against the bill, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, should face primary challenges for their defiance of the president’s directive, Leavitt added.
“What’s the alternative, I would ask those members of Congress. Did they want to see a tax hike? Did they want to see our country go bankrupt? That’s the alternative by them trying to vote no,” she said. “The president believes that the Republican Party needs to be unified.”
The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate defied congressional norms and voted Wednesday to revoke California’s progressive vehicle emission standards that would’ve effectively banned the sale of new gasoline-only cars by 2035.
In a 51-44 vote, the Senate overturned a Biden-era waiver that enabled California and a contingent of Democratic-led states to enforce zero-emission requirements for the sale of new passenger vehicles. After several hours of debate and testimony, legislators struck down a landmark regulation that aimed to drastically accelerate electric vehicle sales in California and nearly a dozen other states that chose to follow its lead, substantially reducing air pollution and planet-warming carbon emissions from tailpipes.
The Advanced Clean Cars II rule, enacted in 2022 by the California Air Resources Board and granted a federal waiver by the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency in December 2024, required car manufacturers to sell an increasing percentage of zero-emission or plug-in hybrid vehicles to California dealerships over the next decade. Starting next year, the rule would have mandated that 35% of all new vehicles supplied to California dealerships be zero-emission vehicles or plug-in hybrids. By 2035, it would’ve prohibited the sale of new, gas-only cars statewide.
By invalidating the rule, Republican senators stamped out one of California’s most ambitious environmental policies and, more broadly, challenged the state’s authority to enact vehicle standards to combat its notoriously unhealthy air quality. If the measure is signed into law by President Trump and survives impending legal challenges, the vote would serve as a coup de grace to the state’s decades-long efforts to comply with federal smog standards in Southern California and meet California’s own ambitious climate goals.
The zero-emission requirements were expected to eliminate nearly 70,000 tons of smog-forming emissions and 4,500 tons of soot statewide by 2040, preventing more than 1,200 premature deaths and providing $13 billion in public health benefits, according to the California Air Resources Board. It also was expected to prevent the release of 395 million metric tons of carbon emissions — roughly the amount released by 100 coal plants in a year.
Ahead of the vote, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) warned that nullifying this rule and stripping California’s regulatory power would have serious health effects across the state.
“We are sowing poison seeds for the future,” Schiff said. “Seeds that will grow to be more asthma and more sickness and more hospitalization and more death. That is the bleak but blatant reality of what we are debating here today.”
Republicans, however, argued that California’s zero-emission requirements threatened to cripple the American auto industry and significantly limit the options for car buyers. In the coming days, Republicans plan to undo additional California clean-air rules that require the state’s heavy-duty truck fleet to adopt cleaner engines and a growing percentage of zero-emission vehicles.
“Democrats have this delusional dream of eliminating gas-powered vehicles in America,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Tuesday from a lectern on the floor of the U.S. Capitol. “They want to force-feed electric vehicles to every man and woman who drives in this country. Well, Republicans are ready to use the Congressional Review Act to end this Democrat electric vehicle fantasy.”
Republicans moved ahead with the vote despite the warnings from the Government Accountability Office and the Senate Parliamentarian that the waivers could not be overturned with the Congressional Review Act — a law that was meant to allow legislators to inspect and potentially block federal rules adopted in the waning days of a previous presidential administration.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, said the vote was a flagrant abuse of the Congressional Review Act. He threatened to block or delay the confirmation process for four Trump nominees to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency if Senate Republicans voted to overturn California’s vehicle emission standards.
“It appears that Republicans want to overturn half a century of precedent in order to undermine California’s ability to protect the health of our residents by using the Congressional Review Act to revoke California’s waivers that allow us to set our own vehicle emission standards,” Padilla said. “Republicans seem to be putting the wealth of the big oil industry over the health of our constituents.”
Environmental advocates, many of whom had spent years supporting California’s emissions standards, expressed their disappointment in the vote.
“This is a major blow to the decades-long public health protections delivered under the Clean Air Act,” said Will Barrett, senior director of nationwide clean air advocacy for the American Lung Assn. “It is more important than ever that California and all other states that rely on Clean Air Act waivers continue to cut tailpipe pollution through homegrown, health-protective policies.”
Because of its historically poor air quality, California has been an innovator in clean car policy, enacting the nation’s first tailpipe emissions standards in 1966. California was later granted the special authority to adopt vehicle emission standards that are more strict than the federal government’s under the Clean Air Act. But the state must seek a federal waiver from the U.S. EPA for any specific rule to be enforceable.
In the five decades since then, the state has enacted dozens of rules to reduce air pollution and planet-warming greenhouse gases. Padilla stressed that these rules were largely meant to alleviate lung-aggravating smog, which was a persistent threat where he grew up in Los Angeles.
“On a pretty regular basis, we would be sent home from grade school because of the intensity and dangers of smog that settled over the San Fernando Valley,” Padilla said. “That’s the case for far too many Californians, still to this day. But it’s the reason why, decades ago, Congress recognized both California’s unique air quality challenges and its technical ingenuity, and granted California special authority to do something about it.”
Due to its enormous economy and population, automakers have conformed to California’s rules. In addition, many Democrat-led states have chosen to adhere to California’s auto emissions rules, applying more pressure on car companies first to make cleaner engines and later to manufacture more electric vehicles.
California leads the nation in zero-emission vehicle sales. In 2023 and 2024, about 25% of new cars sold in California were zero-emission or plug-in hybrids, according to the California Energy Commission. This year, the share of zero-emission vehicle sales has slightly slumped, making up only 23% of light-duty vehicle sales.
But the Advanced Clean Cars II rule would require a jump in zero-emission sales next year, with at least 35% of vehicles supplied to car dealer lots to be zero-emission or plug-in hybrids.
Mike Stanton, president of the National Automobile Dealers Assn., contended that consumer demand for electric vehicles falls far below California’s requirements, in part, because of unreliable charging infrastructure.
“Banning gas and hybrid cars is a national issue that should be decided by Congress, not an unelected state agency,” Stanton wrote in a letter to senators, referring to the California Air Resources Board.
In February, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin brought the Biden-era waivers to Congress, suggesting that they were federal rules that had not been reviewed. However, none of California’s waivers for the state’s vehicle emission standards had been brought before Congress for review, because they were largely regarded as administrative orders.
The House of Representatives voted this month to advance the resolution to the Senate. Thirty-five Democratic lawmakers, including California Reps. George Whitesides (D-Agua Dulce) and Lou Correa (D-Santa Ana), joined with the Republican majority.
In the Senate, the 51-44 vote was split along party lines.
Experts say the Senate vote could have lasting implications for congressional procedures.
To topple California auto emission standards, Senate Republicans controversially invoked the Congressional Review Act, a 1996 law that allows an incoming Congress to rescind major federal rules approved near the end of a previous presidential administration. This process notably allows federal legislators to bypass a filibuster and requires only a simple majority to repeal federal rules rather than the typical 60 votes.
However, the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan government watchdog, said federal waivers for California emission standards were not subject to the Congressional Review Act, because the federal waiver is technically not a rule; it’s an order. The Senate Parliamentarian, a non-partisan advisor to the congressional body, upheld that interpretation, ruling that the Senate couldn’t use the Congressional Review Act to repeal California’s waivers.
The Senate vote proceeded in defiance of the parliamentarian’s ruling, marking a stunning rebuke of congressional norms.
The decision by Republican senators amounted to a “nuclear option” that would set a dangerous precedent, Padilla said.
“The old adage says, ‘What goes around comes around,’” he said. “It won’t be long before Democrats are once again in the driver’s seat, in the majority once again. And when that happens, all bets would be off.”
The “One Big Beautiful Bill” is one big, ugly mess.
We’ve seen false advertising in naming laws before — the Democrats’ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act jumps to mind. Yet no legislation has been as misbranded as the Republican tax and spending cuts that President Trump, the branding aficionado himself, is pushing along a tortuous path in Congress.
Trump’s appeal to many Americans has always been his purported penchant for “telling itlike it is.” But he’s doing the opposite by labeling as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” a behemoth that encompasses just about everything he can’t even try to do by unilateral executive orders — deeper tax cuts, more spending on the military and on his immigration crackdown and, yes, Medicaid cuts. His so-called beauty is a beast so frightening that ratings firm Moody’s saw the details last week, calculated the resulting debt and on Friday downgraded the United States’ sterling credit rating for the first time in more than 100 years. That likely means higher interest costs for the nation’s increased borrowing ahead.
And yet, in another example of the gaslighting at which Trump and his party are so adept, the White House and House Republican leaders dismissed the rebuke of their bill. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said it would spur economic growth — the old, discredited “tax cuts will pay for themselves” argument. Speaker Mike Johnson said the Moody’s downgrade just proved the urgent need to pass the big, beautiful bill with its “historic spending cuts.” Which only proved that Johnson didn’t read Moody’s rationale, explaining that spending cuts would be far exceeded by tax cuts, thereby reducing the government’s revenues and piling up more debt.
The Republican Party, which postures as the fiscally conservative of the two parties despite decades of evidence to the contrary, would add about $4 trillion in debt over the next 10 years if its bill becomes law, according to Moody’s. Other nonpartisan analyses — including from the Congressional Budget Office, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget and the Penn Wharton Budget Model of the University of Pennsylvania, similarly project additional debt in the $3-trillion-plus to $5-trillion range, more if the tax cuts are made permanent as Trump and Republicans want.
No surprise: Trump, after all, set a record for the most debt in a single presidential term: $8.4 trillion during Trump 1.0, nearly twice what accrued under his successor, President Biden. Most of Trump’s first-term red ink stemmed from his 2017 tax cuts and spending, which predated the COVID-19 pandemic and the government’s costly response.
“This bill does not add to the deficit,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted to reporters on Monday, showing yet again why such a facile dissembler was chosen to speak for the habitually prevaricating president.
“That’s a joke,” Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky responded.
Worse, it’s a lie.
And no surprise here, either, but Trump’s tariffs — another economic monstrosity that he’s declared “beautiful” — aren’t paying for this bill despite his claims. Yet the president repeated that falsehood on Tuesday (along with others), when he visited the Capitol to strong-arm Republican dissidents, including Massie, into supporting the measure ahead of a House vote. (Inside a closed caucus with House Republicans, the president reportedly called for Massie to be unseated; the Kentuckian remains opposed.)
“The economy is doing great, the stock market is higher now than when I came to office. And we’ve taken in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff money,” Trump told reporters at the Capitol. Every point a lie.
(This week provided yet more evidence that he’s utterly wrong to keep insisting that foreign countries pay his tariffs, not American consumers. After Walmart, the largest U.S. retailer, said late last week that it would have to raise prices, Trump posted that it should “ ‘EAT THE TARIFFS.’ ” He added: “I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!” This after a Walmart exec said that “the magnitude of these increases is more than any retailer can absorb.”)
While details of the budget bill shift as Republican leaders dicker with their dissidents, here’s the ugly general outline, according to Penn Wharton:
Extending and expanding Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which otherwise expire this year, would cost nearly $4.5 trillion over 10 years, $5.8 trillion if the cuts are permanent. (Mandating that tax cuts expire after a time, as Trump did in 2017, is an old budget gimmick to understate a bill’s cost. The politicians know they’ll just extend the tax breaks, as we’re seeing now.) The bill’s proposed spending increases for the military, immigration enforcement and deportations would cost about $600 billion more.
Spending cuts over 10 years, mostly to Medicaid as well as to Obamacare, food stamps and clean-energy programs, would save about $1.6 trillion. That offsets as little as one-quarter of the cost of Trump’s tax cuts and added spending.
Also, the bill is inequitable. The tax cuts would disproportionately favor corporations and wealthy Americans. Its spending cuts, however, would mostly cost lower- and some middle-income people who benefit from federal health and nutrition programs. Changes to Medicaid, including a work requirement (92% of recipients under 65 already work full or part-time, according to the health research organization KFF), and to Obamacare would leave up to 14 million people without health insurance.
Penn Wharton found that people with household income less than $51,000, for example, would see their after-tax income reduced if the bill becomes law, and the top 0.1% of income-earners would get hundreds of thousands of dollars more over the next 10 years. Beyond that time, Penn Wharton projected, “all future households are worse off” given the long-term impact of spiraling debt and a tattered safety net.
“Don’t f— around with Medicaid,” Trump told Republicans at the Capitol, according to numerous reports. How cynical, given that he was pressuring them to vote for a bill that would do just that.
All of which recalls an acronym that’s popular these days: FAFO.
WASHINGTON — President Trump implored House Republicans at the Capitol to drop their fights over his big tax-cut bill and get it done, using encouraging words but also the hardened language of politics over the multitrillion-dollar package that is at risk of collapsing before planned votes this week.
During the more than hourlong session Tuesday, Trump warned Republicans to not touch Medicaid with cuts, and he told New York lawmakers to end their fight for a bigger local tax deduction, reversing his own campaign promise. The president, heading into the meeting, called himself a “cheerleader” for the Republican Party and praised Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). But he also criticized at least one of the GOP holdouts as a “grandstander” and warned that anyone who doesn’t support the bill would be a “fool.”
“We have unbelievable unity,” Trump said as he exited. “I think we’re going to get everything we want.”
The president arrived at a pivotal moment. Negotiations are slogging along and it’s not at all clear the package, with its sweeping tax breaks and cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and green energy programs, has the support needed from the House’s slim Republican majority. Lawmakers are also being asked to add some $350 billion to Trump’s border security, deportation and defense agenda.
Inside, he spoke privately in what one lawmaker called the president’s “weaving” style, and took questions.
The president also made it clear he’s losing patience with the various holdout factions of the House Republicans, according to a senior White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.
But Trump disputed that notion as well as reports that he used an expletive in warning against cutting Medicaid. Instead, he said afterward, “That was a meeting of love.” He received several standing ovations, Republicans said.
Yet it was not at all clear that Trump, who was brought in to seal the deal, changed minds.
“We’re still a long ways away,” said Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), the chair of the House Freedom Caucus.
Conservatives are insisting on quicker, steeper cuts to federal programs to offset the costs of the trillions of dollars in lost tax revenue. At the same time, a core group of lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states wants bigger tax breaks for their voters back home. Worries about piling onto the nation’s $36-trillion debt are stark.
With House Democrats lined up against the package, calling it a giveaway to the wealthy at the expense of safety net programs, GOP leaders have almost no votes to spare. A key committee hearing is set for the middle of the night Tuesday in hopes of a House floor vote by Wednesday afternoon.
“They literally are trying to take healthcare away from millions of Americans at this very moment in the dead of night,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
Trump has been pushing hard for Republicans to unite behind the bill, the president’s signature domestic policy initiative in Congress.
Asked about one of the conservative Republicans, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Trump lashed out.
“I think he is a grandstander, frankly,” the president continued. “I think he should be voted out of office.”
But Massie, a renegade who wears a clock lapel pin that tallies the nation’s debt load, said afterward he’s still a no vote.
Also unmoved was Rep. Mike Lawler, one of the New York Republicans leading the fight for a bigger state and local tax deduction, known as SALT: “As it stands right now, I do not support the bill. Period.”
The sprawling 1,116-page package carries Trump’s title, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” as well as his campaign promises to extend the tax breaks approved during his first term while adding new ones, including no taxes on tips, automobile loan interest and Social Security.
Yet, the price tag is rising and lawmakers are wary of the votes ahead, particularly as the economy teeters with uncertainty.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group, estimates that the House bill is shaping up to add roughly $3.3 trillion to the debt over the next decade.
Republicans criticizing the measure argued that the bill’s new spending and tax cuts are front-loaded, while the measures to offset the cost are back-loaded.
In particular, the conservative Republicans are looking to speed up the new work requirements that Republicans want to enact for able-bodied participants in Medicaid. They had been proposed to start Jan. 1, 2029, but Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said on CNBC that work requirements for some Medicaid beneficiaries would begin in early 2027.
At least 7.6 million fewer people are expected to have health insurance under the initial Medicaid changes, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last week.
Republican holdouts are also looking to more quickly halt green energy tax breaks, which had been approved as part of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, and are now being used for renewable energy projects across the nation.
But for every change Johnson considers to appease the hard-right conservatives, he risks losing support from more traditional and centrist Republicans. Many have signed letters protesting deep cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs and the rolling back of clean energy tax credits.
At its core, the sprawling legislative package permanently extends the existing income tax cuts and bolsters the standard deduction, increasing it to $32,000 for joint filers, and the child tax credit to $2,500.
The New Yorkers are fighting for a larger state and local tax deduction beyond the bill’s proposal. As it stands, the bill would triple 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. They have proposed a deduction of $62,000 for single filers and $124,000 for joint filers.
Trump, who had campaigned on fully reinstating the unlimited SALT deduction, now appears to be satisfied with the proposed compromise, arguing it only benefits “all the Democratic” states.
If the bill passes the House this week, it would move to the Senate, where Republicans are also eyeing changes.
Mascaro, Freking, Askarinam and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press. AP writers Darlene Superville and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — Republicans advanced their massive tax cut and border security package out of a key House committee during a rare Sunday night vote as conservatives who blocked the measure two days earlier reversed course after gaining commitments on the package’s spending cuts.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) met with Republican lawmakers shortly before the meeting, telling reporters that the changes agreed to were “just some minor modifications. Not a huge thing.”
Democrats on the panel pressed for more details about the changes that Republicans had agreed to in the private negotiations. But Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said he could not do so.
“Deliberations continue at this very moment,” Arrington said. “They will continue on into the week, and I suspect right up until the time we put this big, beautiful bill on the floor of the House.”
The first time Republicans tried advancing the bill out of the Budget Committee, hard-right Republicans joined with Democrats in voting against sending the measure to the full House. Five Republicans voted no, one on procedural grounds, the other four voicing concerns about the bill’s effect on federal budget deficits.
On Sunday evening, the four voicing concerns about the deficit voted present, and the measure passed by a vote of 17 to 16.
Johnson is looking to put the bill on the House floor before the end of the week.
“This is the vehicle through which we will deliver on the mandate that the American people gave us in the last election,” he said on “Fox News Sunday” in advance of the vote.
The Republicans who criticized the measure noted that the bill’s new spending and tax cuts are front-loaded in the bill, while the measures to offset the cost are back-loaded. For example, they are looking to speed up the new work requirements that Republicans want to enact for Medicaid recipients. Those requirements would not kick in until 2029 under the current bill.
“We are writing checks we cannot cash, and our children are going to pay the price,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a member of the committee. “Something needs to change, or you’re not going to get my support.”
Johnson said the start date for the work requirements was designed to give states time to “retool their systems” and to “make sure that all the new laws and all the new safeguards that we’re placing can actually be enforced.”
Roy was joined in voting no by Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma and Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia. Rep. Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania switched his vote to no in a procedural step so it could be reconsidered later.
The vote against advancing the bill had come after President Trump urged Republicans in a social media post to unite behind it.
At its core, the sprawling package permanently extends the existing income tax cuts that were approved during Trump’s first term, in 2017, and adds temporary new ones that the president campaigned on in 2024, including no taxes on tips, overtime pay and auto loan interest payments. The measure also proposes big spending increases for border security and defense.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group, estimates that the House bill is shaping up to add roughly $3.3 trillion to the debt over the next decade.
Democrats are overwhelmingly opposed to the measure, which Republicans have labeled “The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called it “one big, beautiful betrayal” in Friday’s hearing.
“This spending bill is terrible, and I think the American people know that,” Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union’’ on Sunday. “There is nothing wrong with us bringing the government in balance. But there is a problem when that balance comes on the back of working men and women. And that’s what is happening here.”
Johnson is not just having to address the concerns of those in his conference who raised concerns about the deficit. He’s also facing pressure from centrists who will be warily eyeing the proposed changes to Medicaid, food assistance programs and the rolling back of clean energy tax credits. Republican lawmakers from New York and elsewhere are also demanding a much large state and local tax deduction.
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 GOP lawmakers leading the effort to lift the cap, said they have proposed a deduction of $62,000 for single filers and $124,000 for joint filers.
If the bill passes the House this week, it would move to the Senate, where Republicans are seeking additional changes that could make final passage in the House more difficult.
Johnson said: “The package that we send over there will be one that was very carefully negotiated and delicately balanced, and we hope that they don’t make many modifications to it because that will ensure its passage quickly.”
Freking and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.
WASHINGTON — Democrats and Republicans alike raised concerns on Wednesday about deep staffing cuts, funding freezes and far-reaching policy changes overseen by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers questioned Kennedy’s approach to the job, some saying that he has jeopardized vaccine uptake, cancer research and dental health in just a few short months.
In combative and at times highly personal rejoinders, Kennedy defended the Trump administration’s dramatic effort to reshape the sprawling, $1.7-trillion-a-year agency, saying it would deliver a more efficient department focused on promoting healthier lifestyles among Americans.
“There’s so much chaos and disorganization in this department,” Kennedy said on Wednesday during the Senate hearing. “What we’re saying is let’s organize in a way that we can quickly adopt and deploy all these opportunities we have to really deliver high-quality healthcare to the American people.”
During tense exchanges, lawmakers — in back-to-back House and Senate hearings — sometimes questioned whether Kennedy was aware of his actions and the structure of his own department after he struggled to provide more details about staffing cuts.
“I have noted you’ve been unable, in most instances, to answer any specific questions related to your agency,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Maryland Democrat.
The secretary, in turn, pushed back — saying he had not had time to answer specific questions — and at points questioning lawmakers’ own grasp of health policy.
Kennedy testified to explain his downsizing of the department — from 82,000 to 62,000 staffers — and argue on behalf of the White House’s requested budget, which includes a $500-million boost for Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative to promote nutrition and healthier lifestyles while making deep cuts to infectious disease prevention, medical research and maternal health programs.
He revealed that he persuaded the White House to back down from one major cut: Head Start, a federally funded preschool program for low-income families across the country.
But lawmakers described how thousands of job losses at the health department and funding freezes have impacted their districts.
One Washington state mother, Natalie, has faced delays in treatment for Stage 4 cancer at the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center, said Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. The clinical center is the research-only hospital commonly known as the “House of Hope,” but when Murray asked Kennedy to explain how many jobs have been lost there, he could not answer. The president’s budget proposes a nearly $20-billion slash from the NIH.
“You are here to defend cutting the NIH by half,” Murray said. “Do you genuinely believe that won’t result in more stories like Natalie’s?” Kennedy disputed Murray’s account.
Democrat Rep. Bonnie Watson-Coleman of New Jersey asked “why, why, why?” Kennedy would lay off nearly all the staff who oversee the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides $4.1 billion in heating assistance to needy families. The program is slated to be eliminated from the agency’s budget.
Kennedy said that advocates warned him those cuts “will end up killing people,” but that President Trump believes his energy policy will lower costs. If that doesn’t work, Kennedy said, he would restore funding for the program.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican of Alaska, said those savings would be realized too late for people in her state.
“Right now, folks in Alaska still need those ugly generators to keep warm,” she said.
Murkowski was one of several Republicans who expressed concerns about Kennedy’s approach to the job throughout the hearings.
Like several Republicans, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee praised Kennedy for his work promoting healthy foods. But he raised concerns about whether the secretary has provided adequate evidence that artificial food dyes are bad for diets. Removing those food dyes would hurt the “many snack manufacturers” in his district, including the makers of M&M’s candy, he said.
Rep. Mike Simpson, a dentist from Idaho, said Kennedy’s plan to remove fluoride recommendations for drinking water alarms him. The department’s news release on Tuesday, which announced the Food and Drug Administration plans to remove fluoride supplements for children from the market, wrongly claimed that fluoride “kills bacteria from the teeth,” Simpson noted. He explained to Kennedy that fluoride doesn’t kill bacteria in the mouth but instead makes tooth enamel more resistant to decay.
“I will tell you that if you are successful in banning fluoride … we better put a lot more money into dental education because we’re going to need a lot more dentists,” Simpson added.
Kennedy was pressed repeatedly on the mixed message he’s delivered on vaccines, which public health experts have said are hampering efforts to contain a growing measles outbreak now in at least 11 states.
Responding to Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, Kennedy refused to recommend that parents follow the nation’s childhood vaccination schedule, which includes shots for measles, polio and whooping cough. He, instead, wrongly claimed that the vaccines have not been safety tested against a placebo.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican of Louisiana and chairman of the health committee, had extracted a number of guarantees from Kennedy that he would not alter existing vaccine guidance and work at the nation’s health department. Cassidy, correcting Kennedy, pointed out that rotavirus, measles and HPV vaccines recommended for children have all been tested in a placebo study.
As health secretary, Kennedy has called the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine — a shot given to children to provide immunity from all three diseases — “leaky,” although it offers lifetime protection from the measles for most people. He’s also said they cause deaths, although none has been documented among healthy people.
“You have undermined the vital role vaccines play in preventing disease during the single, largest measles outbreak in 25 years,” independent Sen. Bernie Sanders said.
WASHINGTON — House Republicans proposed sweeping tax breaks Monday in President Trump’s big priority bill, tallying at least $4.9 trillion in costs so far, partly paid for with cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and green energy programs used by millions of Americans.
The House Ways and Means Committee named its package “THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL” in all capital letters, a nod to Trump himself. It seeks to extend the tax breaks approved during Trump’s first term — and boost the standard deduction, child tax credit and estate tax exemption — while adding new tax breaks on tipped wages, overtime pay, Social Security benefits and auto loans that Trump promised during his campaign for the White House.
There’s also a tripling of the state and local tax deduction, called SALT, from $10,000 up to $30,000 for couples, which certain high-tax state GOP lawmakers from New York and California already rejected as too meager. Private universities would be hit with a hefty new tax on their endowments, as much as 21%, as the Trump administration goes after the Ivy League and other campuses. And one unusual provision would terminate the tax-exempt status of groups the State Department says support “terrorists,” which civil society advocates warn is a way to potentially punish those at odds with the Trump administration.
Overall, the package is touching off the biggest political debate over taxes, spending and the nation’s priorities in nearly a decade. Not since 2017 has Congress wrestled with legislation as this, when Republicans approved the Trump tax cuts but also failed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. The cost assessments are only preliminary, and expected to soar.
“Republicans need to UNIFY,” Trump posted on social media before departing for a trip to the Middle East.
Trump said when he returns to Washington, “we will work together on any and all outstanding issues, but there shouldn’t be many — The Bill is GREAT. We have no alternative, WE MUST WIN!”
But one key Republican, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, implored his party not to impair Medicaid, arguing that cutting healthcare to pay for tax breaks is both “morally wrong and politically suicidal.”
“If Republicans want to be a working-class party — if we want to be a majority party — we must ignore calls to cut Medicaid and start delivering on America’s promise for America’s working people,” Hawley wrote in the New York Times.
Late Monday, the House Agriculture Committee released its proposals — cutting $290 billion from federal nutrition programs, in part by shifting costs to the states and requiring able-bodied adults without dependents to fulfill work requirements until they are 64 years old, rather than 54, to qualify for food aid.
Round-the-clock work ahead
As Republicans race toward House Speaker Mike Johnson’s Memorial Day deadline to pass Trump’s big bill, they are preparing to flood the zone with round-the-clock public hearings starting Tuesday and stitch the various sections together in what will become a massive package.
The politics ahead are uncertain. The bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation said Monday that tax breaks would reduce revenue by $4.9 trillion over the decade — and that was before Trump’s new tax breaks were included.
Texas Rep. Chip Roy, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, warned the price tag could climb to $20 trillion, piling onto the deficits and debt.
“I sure hope House & Senate leadership are coming up with a backup plan,” Roy posted on social media, “…. because I’m not here to rack up an additional $20 trillion in debt over 10 years.”
House Republicans have been huddling behind closed doors, working out final provisions in the 389-page tax portion of the package.
The legislation proposes to boost the standard deduction many Americans use by $2,000, to $32,000 per household, and increase the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,500 for four years. It adds a new requirement focused on preventing undocumented immigrants from benefiting from the credit even if the children are U.S. citizens, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, estimates would affect 4.5 million children who are U.S. citizens or lawful residents.
It would also increase the estate tax exemption, which is now $14 million, to $15 million and index future increases to inflation.
As for the president’s promises, the legislation includes Trump’s “no taxes on tips” pledge, providing a deduction for those workers in service industry and other jobs that have traditionally relied on tips. It directs the Treasury secretary to issue guidance to avoid businesses gaming the system.
The package also provides tax relief for automobile shoppers with a temporary deduction of up to $10,000 on car loan interest, applying the benefit only for those vehicles where the final assembly occurred in the United States. The tax break would expire at the end of Trump’s term.
For seniors, there would be a bolstered $4,000 deduction on Social Security wages for those with adjusted incomes no higher than $75,000 for individuals and $150,000 for couples.
But one hard-fought provision, the deduction for state and local taxes known as SALT, appears to be a work in progress. The legislation proposes lifting the cap to $15,000 for single filers and $30,000 for couples, but with a reduction at higher incomes — about $200,000 for singles and $400,000 for couples.
“Still a hell no,” wrote Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) on social media.
Battle over Medicaid, food aid
Meanwhile, dozens of House Republicans have told Johnson and GOP leaders they will not support cuts to Medicaid, which provides some 70 million Americans with healthcare, nor to green energy tax breaks that businesses back home have been relying on to invest in new wind, solar and renewable projects.
All told, 11 committees in the House have been compiling their sections of the package as Republicans seek at least $1.5 trillion in savings to help cover the cost of preserving the 2017 tax breaks, which are expiring at the end of the year.
The final section from the Agriculture Committee proposed cutting the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, known as SNAP, by expanding work requirements, limiting future expansions of the program and forcing states to shoulder more of the cost.
Along with new work requirements for older Americans, it would also require some parents of children older than 7 to work to qualify, down from 18 years old. Only areas with unemployment rates over 10% would be eligible for waivers.
Some Republicans have already balked at the increased costs to the states, which would be required to contribute at least 5% of the cost of SNAP allotments beginning in 2028.
At the same time, the legislation would invest $60 billion in new money for agriculture programs, sending aid to farmers.
On Sunday, House Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee unveiled the cost-saving centerpiece of the package, with at least $880 billion in cuts largely to Medicaid to help cover the cost of the tax breaks.
While Republicans insist they are simply rooting out “waste, fraud and abuse” to generate savings with new work and eligibility requirements, Democrats warn that millions of Americans will lose coverage. In the 15 years since Obamacare became law, Medicaid has only expanded as most states have tapped into federal funds.
A preliminary estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the proposals would reduce the number of people with healthcare by 8.6 million.
To be eligible for Medicaid, there would be new “community engagement requirements” of at least 80 hours per month of work, education or service for able-bodied adults without dependents. People would also have to verify their eligibility to be in the program twice a year, rather than just once.
There are substantial cuts proposed for green energy programs and tax breaks, rolling back climate-change strategies from the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act.
Mascaro and Freking write for the Associated Press. AP writers Amanda Seitz, Leah Askarinam and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
Good morning. I’m Gustavo Arellano, columnista, writing from Orange County and watching my tomato seedlings grow. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.
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Montebello’s ex-mayor turns to Orange County
Frank Gomez was born to be an L.A. County politician.
That’s why people were surprised in 2013 when Gomez — by then a Montebello council member who had served a year as mayor — announced he was leaving L.A. County altogether to marry his current wife.
“I had the choice between politics and love,” said the 61-year-old during a recent breakfast in Santa Ana. “It was an easy choice.”
Gomez couldn’t stay away from politics for long
Today, Gomez leads STEM initiatives for the Cal State system and is also the chair of the Central Orange County Democratic Club, which covers Orange, Tustin, parts of unincorporated Orange County “and a few voters in Villa Park,” Gomez told me with a chuckle.
He’s headed the Central O.C. Dems since last year, and has grown them from about 60 members to over 300. Soft-spoken but forceful, Gomez likes to apply his background as a chemistry professor — “We need to be strategic and analytical” — in helping to build a Democratic bench of elected officials in a region that was a long a GOP stronghold before becoming as purple as Barney the Dinosaur.
I knew Gomez’s name but didn’t realize his L.A. political background until we met last month. That makes him a rare one: someone who has dabbled in both L.A. and Orange county politics, two worlds that rarely collide because each considers the other a wasteland.
As someone who has covered O.C. politics for a quarter century but has only paid attention to L.A. politics in earnest since I started with The Times in 2019, I have my thoughts about each scene’s differences and similarities. But what about Gomez?
From one cutthroat political scene to another
“In L.A., it’s Democrats against Democrats,” he replied. “It’s not like I didn’t know” what to expect when moving to O.C., he said. “But it’s the difference between Fashion Island and the Citadel.”
He thought his days in politics were over until 2022, when his stepson — who had interned with longtime Irvine politico Larry Agran — urged him to run for a seat on the Tustin City Council.
Opponents sent out mailers with photos of garbage cans and graffiti and the message, “Do not bring L.A. to Tustin,” a political insult introduced to Orange County politics that year by Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer.
“Those gated communities still try to keep their unsaid redlining,” Gomez said. “It wasn’t like that in L.A. politics because there was no place for it.”
Racist L.A. City Hall audio leak notwithstanding, of course.
Trying to topple O.C.’s last remaining GOP congressmember
Gomez unsuccessfully ran last year for a seat on the Municipal Water District of Orange County. He now plans to focus his political energies on growing the Central O.C. Dems and figuring out how to topple Rep. Young Kim, O.C.’s last remaining GOP congressmember. In the meanwhile, he will continue his political salons at the Central O.C. Dems’ monthly meetings at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Tustin — I was on the hot seat in April, and upcoming guests include coastal O.C. Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, O.C. supervisorial candidate Connor Traut and former congressmember and current California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter.
“It’s like being in the classroom,” Gomez said as he packed up his leftovers. “All I do is ask the questions and keep it flowing.”
He smiled. “Johnny Carson on intellectual steroids.”
Today’s top stories
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrives for a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security oversight hearing on Thursday on Capitol Hill in Washington.
(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)
The Trump administration will investigate L.A. County
The administration announced Monday that it has launched an investigation into California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants.
The state program provides monthly cash benefits to elderly, blind and disabled noncitizens who are ineligible for Social Security benefits because of their immigration status.
Newsom urges cities to ban homeless camps
The governor’s plan asks localities to prohibit persistent camping and encampments that block sidewalks.
This is an escalation from last year, when Newsom ordered California agencies to clear homeless camps from state lands.
How to understand the recent trade deals
Inside the investigation into faulty evacuation alerts during the wildfires in January
On Jan. 9, residents across the region received a wireless emergency alert urging them to prepare to evacuate.
Meanwhile, western Altadena, where 17 people died, got its evacuation order many hours after the Eaton fire exploded.
What else is going on
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This morning’s must reads
Black nationalist leader Malcolm X, left, and Louis Farrakhan, chief minister of the Nation of Islam’s Boston mosque, right, attend a rally at Lennox Avenue and 115th Street in the Harlem section of New York in 1963.
How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected].
For your downtime
The Pasadena Playhouse
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Going out
Staying in
A question for you: What’s your favorite karaoke song?
Peg says: “David Bowie’s Life on Mars!” Paul says “My Way.” (We’re assuming he means by Frank Sinatra)
Keep the suggestions coming. Email us at [email protected], and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.
And finally … your photo of the day
Wet Magazine Issue 3 from October/November 1976
(Photography and design by Leonard Koren)
Today’s great photo is from the archives: Leonard Koren began documenting L.A. bathing culture back in 1976 with Wet magazine, which featured contributions from David Lynch, Debbie Harry and Ed Ruscha.
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Gustavo Arellano, California columnist Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
