Evelyn Reynolds

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    ‘It’s harsh. It’s mean, brutal’: Trump bill to cause most harm to America’s poorest

    Last November, Donald Trump made a solemn vow to all Americans: “Every citizen, I will fight for you, your family and your future every single day.” Eight months later, Trump is vigorously backing many policies that will mean pain for millions.Trump has pushed to enact the Republican budget bill, which would make significant cuts to Medicaid, Obamacare, and food assistance, and would do the greatest damage to those Americans struggling hardest to make ends meet – the 30% of the US population that lives in households earning under $50,000 a year.Even as Trump and Republican lawmakers are rushing to cut over $1.4tn in health and food assistance for non-affluent Americans, Trump continues to pressure Congress to extend over $3tn in tax cuts that disproportionately help the wealthy and corporations.Trump has embraced these Robin-Hood-in-reverse policies, even though it was voters earning less than $50,000 a year who delivered victory to him last November. They favored him over Kamala Harris by 50% to 48%, according to exit polls, while Trump and Harris tied among voters earning $50,000 or more a year.Several social policy experts said Trump has engaged in hypocrisy at best and betrayal at worst when it comes to the working-class and blue-collar Americans he promised to fight for. Speaking about the Republicans’ “big, beautiful” budget bill, Sharon Parrott, president of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said: “Who’s getting hit, who’s bearing the cost? It’s people with low and middle incomes, people that the president and many Republican policymakers promised to serve and support in the last election.”View image in fullscreenThe budget bill would mean a net financial loss for the bottom 30% of American households by income – after factoring in its tax provisions and cuts in benefits. The House bill would hit the lowest-earning 10% of Americans hardest: for them, it would mean a painful $1,600 cut in income on average (a 3.9% drop), according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). At the same time, the Trump-backed bill would be a boon to wealthy households – it would mean a $12,000 increase in net income, on average, for households in the top 10%, those earning above $692,000 a year. According to the Yale Budget Lab, the top 0.1% – those with income over $3.3m – would receive tax cuts of $103,500 on average.The CBO says the income of the bottom 10% tops off at $22,868 (before factoring in government transfers). The second lowest decile earns from $22,868 to $43,137; the third decile earns up to $55,628; and the fourth up to $68,601.The Yale Budget Lab found that the bottom 20% of US households would see their incomes drop by 2.9% on average over the next decade, and the second lowest quintile – moderate-income households – would suffer a 0.4% loss of income on average. But the richest 20% would see their incomes rise by 2.3%. Those in the top 1% would see their incomes climb by $29,585 on average.Trump is demanding these big tax cuts for the rich even though the CBO says the budget bill will increase the federal debt by $3.3tn – a move that will push up interest rates and make mortgages and home-buying more expensive.According to the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning thinktank, the $121bn tax cuts that would go just to the richest 1% next year are significantly more than all the tax cuts that would go to the bottom 60% of Americans in terms of income.The poorest 20% of Americans would receive just 1% of the bill’s tax cuts next year, while the highest earning 5% would receive 44% of the cuts.Last week, Trump urged lawmakers to enact the bill, saying: “There are hundreds of things in there. It is so good.” At a news conference, the president said the more than $1tn in Medicaid and food assistance cuts wouldn’t hurt anyone.“It won’t affect anybody,” he said. “It is just fraud, waste and abuse.”But Parrott took a sharply different view: “The bill stands alone historically for its unique upside-down mix of large tax cuts for the top, deep cuts that affect low- and middle-income people, and massive increases in deficits and debt.”John Ricco, the Yale Budget Lab’s associate director of policy analysis, said: “It’s unambiguous that low- and moderate-income Americans will be worse off on average under the budget bill, and that’s principally because the cuts in Medicaid and Snap [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] would by definition fall most heavily on these groups,” Ricco said.Jeanne Lambrew, the Century Foundation’s director of health policy reform, estimates that at least 16 million Americans will lose health coverage because of the budget bill – refuting White House claims that “no one will lose coverage”. Lambrew said the bill would cause a more than 50% increase in the number of uninsured nationwide, to nearly 45 million people.What’s more, the Trump-backed plan sharply reduces Affordable Care Act subsidies, and that will force millions of Americans to either drop coverage or pay far more for coverage. Millions of Americans will find it harder to obtain healthcare, with many forced to take on far more medical debt.While Trump and many Republicans say the Medicaid cuts are all about reducing “waste, fraud and abuse”, Lambrew calculates that a mere 3.5% of the $1tn in healthcare cuts come from cutting waste and abuse. “What Trump has been saying is, ‘We’re not cutting Medicaid. We’re just cutting fraud.’ That’s gaslighting.” Lambrew said.Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent the Senate a letter that harshly criticized the budget bill. “As Pope Leo XIV recently stated, it is the responsibility of politicians to promote and protect the common good, including by working to overcome great wealth inequality,” he wrote. “This bill does not answer this call. It takes from the poor to give to the wealthy.”According to a Quinnipiac University poll, only 27% of registered voters support the GOP budget bill, while 53% oppose it. A Fox News poll found that 38% support the bill, while 59% oppose it.The House bill’s deep cuts in food benefits will cause 7 million people, including over 2 million children, to lose food aid or have their food aid cut significantly. The Trump-supported bill also makes sharp cuts in Pell grant awards. The Center for American Progress says this means 4.4 million students from low- and moderate-income families could lose some or all of their federal grant aid.In another blow to Americans earning under $50,000, Trump pushed to have the budget bill eliminate the “Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program”, which, as one website put it, “keeps poor people from freezing to death at home”. Killing the program would end heating subsidies for 6 million Americans, but so far congressional Republicans have spared the program and not bowed to Trump on this.View image in fullscreenIn another blow to blue-collar Americans, the bill would undo much of Joe Biden’s efforts to speed the creation of clean-energy industries, and that could put hundreds of thousands of potential jobs at risk, many of them factory jobs.“In this bill, folks in Congress went out of their way not to give anything to low-income people,” said Chuck Marr, vice-president for federal tax policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. He noted that in previous tax cut bills that favored the rich, GOP lawmakers made sure to include some sweeteners for low- and moderate-income Americans.“But in this bill,” Marr said, “folks in Congress said: no, we’re going to go after these people. They’re going after healthcare and food, and these are the people who are also going to get hammered by Trump’s tariffs.” Lower-income people spend a higher percentage of their income on goods.“This bill is a major shift,” Marr added. “They’re taking away from poor people and working-class people and channeling it to very high-income people. I think it’s punitive. It’s harsh. It’s mean, brutal.”Trump’s tariffs would also hit less affluent Americans hardest. One study found that Trump’s planned tariffs would cause the bottom 20% of households to pay up to 5.5% of their income toward tariff-caused higher prices. That’s more than two and a half times the percentage that those in the top 20% would pay (2.1% of income).Trump has repeatedly boasted that the bill contains several provisions he championed to help working-class Americans. At a White House event to promote the bill, he pointed to a DoorDash driver from Wisconsin who was on hand to help make his case that the “no tax on tips” provision would help workers.But tax experts say that provision will help only a tiny fraction of those earning under $50,000. Only 4% of workers in the bottom half by income are in tipped jobs. Moreover, nearly two-fifths of tipped workers are already earning so little that they don’t pay federal income taxes.“Given how the current income tax system works, this provision will provide little or no benefit to those workers,” said Ricco. “Those workers tend to have low incomes, and the US system doesn’t basically tax their incomes, and this won’t offer them any additional tax reduction.” In other words, the server making $100,000 a year at a high-end restaurant will benefit substantially from no tax on tips, while the hotel housekeeper or 20-hour-a-week waiter at a diner making $25,000 a year will be helped little or not at all.As for Trump’s much-ballyhooed “no tax on overtime” provision, that, too, will do little for those earning under $50,000, Ricco said. “That provision is really geared to middle- and upper-middle groups,” he said. “People in the bottom 50% aren’t paying much income tax, and so no tax on overtime wouldn’t benefit them much. People in the bottom 40%, they’re often in a precarious employment situation. They’re generally not working 45 or 50 hours a week.”Ricco estimated that for Americans in the bottom 40% by income, the no tax on overtime provision will mean “less than a $10 tax cut per year”. “It’s essentially a rounding error,” he said.Republicans boast that increasing the child-tax credit will help millions of struggling families – the House bill would increase that credit, now $2,000, to $2,500, while the Senate raises it to $2,200. Under current law, one in four children – about 17 million – are ineligible to qualify for the full $2,000 credit because their family’s income is too low to qualify for the full credit. A two-parent family with two children needs to earn over $48,000 to obtain the full credit.Under the House bill, a single parent with two children who earns $16,000 a year would get no additional tax credit, while a married couple with two kids and a $400,000 income would see their tax credit jump by $1,000.With their eagerness to cut the social safety net, Republicans seem to be treating millions of Americans who earn less than $50,000 as undeserving takers. “People earning under $50,000 are major targets of the Republican agenda. Their health coverage is targeted. Their food security is targeted,” said Marr. “They are left out of key provisions expanding tax cuts, like the child tax credit. They are most at risk from the Republican tariffs. They’ll be hurt across the board.”Marr said the budget bill treats “these people very harshly”.“It’s the harshest bill we’ve ever seen since budget deficits became an issue 40 years ago,” he said. “This is the first bill that simultaneously targets programs for poor people and working-class people to pay for it, and then takes that money to pay for tax cuts for very wealthy people. It makes poor and working-class people worse off. That’s not been done before.” More

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    America is over neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Trump is not | Samuel Moyn

    The convergence of the US Senate’s passage of Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” in domestic policy with his strike on Iran in foreign policy has finally resolved the meaning of his presidency. His place in history is now clear. His rise, like that of a reawakened left, indicated that America was ready to move on from its long era of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. In office, Trump has blocked the exits by doubling down on both.The first of those slurs, neoliberalism, refers to the commitment across the political spectrum to use government to protect markets and their hierarchies, rather than to moderate or undo them. The second, neoconservatism, is epitomized by a belligerent and militaristic foreign policy. The domestic policy bill now making its way through Congress, with its payoff to the rich and punishment of the poor, is a monument to neoliberalism; the Iran strike a revival of neoconservatism.Up to now, uncertainty about Trump’s place in history has prevailed, in part because he has done little and dithered so much. From before he took office, apocalyptic premonition of the doom he might bring reigned supreme. Everyone assumed that the Trump era was going to be different, disagreeing only about the exact shape of the horror. On the right, some projected their hopes for transformation on the president, anticipating a different future, wishcasting without knowing whether (or when) their leader would side with them.Now, with his bill and his bombing, Trump has confirmed beyond any doubt that he is a man of a familiar past instead. Though the damage that neoliberalism and neoconservatism wrought helped make Trump’s charlatanry a credible choice for millions, the man himself stands for the eternal return of those very same policies. Trump’s appeal to the working class and more measured rhetoric about war from the start of his political career suggested that he might renege on these two dominant creeds from the beltway “swamp”. He renewed them both instead.This is where Trump’s ultimate significance so clearly lies: in continuity, not change. He busted a lot of norms from the first in 2017. Cries of abnormalcy and authoritarianism arose before there was evidence to back them – and evidence has accumulated through both terms. Charlottesville and January 6 in the first – intimations of deeper reservoirs of hate that could come out of American woodwork, with Trump coyly pandering to the mobs – were preludes to both mass and targeted immigration roundups in this term, reminiscent of classical fascism.Yet climactically, and when it mattered most, Trump has chosen to walk in lockstep with the dead consensus in domestic and foreign policy of the past half-century – not merely among conservatives, but among many liberals. Americans do best when the rich do best of all, with the poor punished for crime and sloth: that has long been our outlook. And the country must go it alone with military force, in order to back our interests or principles or both, Americans have long presumed.Neoliberalism and neoconservatism each has more complexity than this – but, leaning into both, Trump has shown in recent weeks they are not much more complicated either. And if so, Trump is far more a politician of American continuity with the past 50 years than many originally feared (or hoped).The “beautiful” domestic policy bill is one of the morally ugliest in American history. Making Trump’s signature tax cuts from his first term permanent requires both draconian cuts to programs (Medicaid for the poor, worst of all) and piling up even more debt for future generations to figure out. It turns out that Ronald Reagan and the Democrats who followed him in lowering taxation and “reforming” welfare (including by imposing work requirements, as this bill does) were not in another world from Trump. He is in theirs. Revealingly, the main trouble that Trump faced in getting the obscenity of a bill passed – and that he still faces in the House – is convincing Republicans who claim to hate deficit spending so much to rationalize even greater cuts to welfare.On the world stage, Trump has longed for the recognition of a Nobel peace prize. But the deals he thinks will deserve it have proved elusive. In Israel/Palestine, the ceasefire he helped force has broken down and the civilian toll has worsened. In Ukraine, the considerable distance between the warring parties has meant that Trump has not managed to either antagonize or lure either to come to terms. Unlike during his first four years, his Iran intervention means that, rather than bringing peace, exacerbating war is his foreign policy legacy for now.Squandering the inclinations of his base and outraging many more lukewarm supporters sick of foreign entanglements, it was a surprise that he acted with the reckless militarism that was once American common sense. He is no doubt open to any deals that come his way – apparently thinking that Canada or Greenland should clamor to be annexed. But it was foolish in response to the early rhetoric of his second term to expect Trump to revert to expansionist war by sending troops. But in sending B-2 bombers on so escalatory a mission to Iran, he clarified his support for war – incurring risks like no other presidents have taken. If the peace he wants to brag about doesn’t materialize, he is not above a dose of coercive violence.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIronically, Trump’s warlike turn meant that a long list of his neoconservative “never Trump” scourges became “sometimes Trump” supporters overnight. Where populist Republicans have had to grit their teeth and support a neoliberal bill – so much for the working-class party they promised – it was even more spectacular that neoconservatives overcame the hatred for Trump that had helped them launder their former reputations for catastrophic warmongering.With neocon scion Bill Kristol in the lead, after the Iran strike they fawned over the man whom they had spent years castigating as irresponsible, or malignant, or both. No wonder: Trump, far from acting as an isolationist or realist, was executing one of the longest-held and longest-denied neoconservative fantasies: that bombing Iran’s nuclear program off the map would work, and might have the fringe benefit of causing the regime to fall. It remains a fantasy. But Trump’s place in history is now defined by that fantasy more than by any other foreign policy choice he has made so far.Like in his first term, when he ordered the assassination in Iraq of Iranian general and terror master Qassem Suleimani in 2020, Trump’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities was illegal. But as the saying goes, Trump’s escalatory and risky use of bunker-busting munitions to wipe Fordow and other sites off the map was worse than a crime; it was a mistake. At best, it elicited a face-saving attack from Iran so that it could come to the negotiating table with a nuclear program to continue in the future; at worst, it will prompt Iran to intensify its efforts to achieve the weapon. And while Israel has certainly set back Iran’s regional designs and capacity for sponsoring terror, there are no signs the regime will relent in its policies.With hopes that he might stand for restraint shredded, it is likelier that a lackey will find a place on Mount Rushmore than that Trump will get the call from Oslo he badly wants. But like the politicians whose faces are already carved in the granite of South Dakota, Trump is a man of the past – and never more clearly than in recent weeks, as America continues to look for someone to liberate it from the zombie neoliberalism and neoconservatism that still define their disastrous present and president.

    Samuel Moyn is the Kent professor of law and history at Yale University, where he also serves as head of Grace Hopper College More

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    After 47 years in the US, Ice took this Iranian mother from her yard. Her family just wants her home

    Kaitlynn Milne says her mother is usually always up first thing in the morning, hours before the rest of the family. She enjoys being productive in the quiet hours around sunrise. It’s an especially optimal time to do yard work, when the rest of her New Orleans neighborhood still sleeps and she can count on peacefully completing chores.Gardening and rearranging the shed is how an average morning would go for Mandonna “Donna” Kashanian, a 64-year-old Iranian mother, wife, home cook, parent-teacher association (PTA) member and lifelong community service volunteer.“She always says: ‘I’ve already done most of my day before y’all even wake up,’ complaining at us,” said Kaitlynn, 32. It was always done with love, she says, as her mother adores taking care of others and would wake up every morning excited to do just that.But the morning of Sunday, 22 June, didn’t go like every other morning. In the early hours, while her husband, Russell Milne, slept inside the house, Kashanian was approached in her yard by plainclothes men who identified themselves as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents.She was quickly arrested without her family being told anything. They only found out after a neighbor who happened to be awake witnessed the arrest and notified them.According to the neighbor, Kashanian was handcuffed before being taken away by multiple agents, details Kashanian herself was later able to confirm to her family. Her arrest involved three unmarked cars, including one that appeared to be a lookout, which her neighbor and family believe had been watching for a moment when Kashanian was outside and alone.“Had the neighbors not walked out at the same time they were pushing her into the car, we would not have known she was taken,” said Russell.Kashanian was able to call her family about an hour later, when she relayed to them what had happened and where she was. Ice officers told her that she was being taken to a holding center in Mississippi, before eventually being transferred back to a detention center in Louisiana. After that Sunday morning call, her husband and daughter didn’t hear from her again until Tuesday.She remains in Ice custody in Basile, Louisiana, despite having no criminal record.The timing of Kashanian’s detention was just hours after US airstrikes in Iran, a move that has coincided with the ramping-up of deportations of Iranians by the Trump administration. It also comes amid a nationwide crackdown by Ice, which has seen tens of thousands of immigrants detained, often by masked agents, plunged many communities into fear and outraged civil liberties advocates.View image in fullscreenKashanian arrived in the US in 1978 on a student visa and has lived in the country ever since. She later applied for asylum, citing fears of persecution due to her father’s ties to the US-backed Shah of Iran.Her asylum request was ultimately denied, but she was granted a stay of removal on the condition she comply with immigration requirements, a condition her family says she always met. Kashanian was so careful about regularly attending her meetings with immigration officials that she once checked in from South Carolina during Hurricane Katrina.Despite having to juggle constant immigration checks, Kashanian remained devoted to community service work. She volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, helping rebuild homes after Katrina. She worked with Nola Tree Project, a local non-profit that replants trees after disasters. She served on a PTA, volunteering at her daughter’s elementary school, middle school and high school.“She was constantly around,” said Kaitlynn. “She was constantly helping with upkeep of the schools. She was always there, always helping the teachers and custodial staff, anything to be supportive. Everyone knew Kaitlynn’s mom.”She also found the time to become a skilled home cook. Her YouTube channel, titled Mandonna in the Kitchen, is dedicated to sharing her favorite Persian recipes with aspiring cooks.According to her daughter and husband, Kashanian is an optimist who is almost impossible to upset. But there is one thing that never fails to unsettle her, and that’s improperly cooked rice.Now that she has been moved to a facility in Louisiana, her family has been able to set up a line of communication, speaking to her once a day. But she is given a limited amount of time to call or message, so communication is restricted. She says she has still not been assigned a case worker.“She’s in pretty good spirits,” said Russell. “She’s more worried about us, and about the lack of communication she’s getting about her situation. They’re not really giving her any information, and that’s what’s scary.”Russell and Kaitlynn have been working tirelessly to find legal help, but it has been challenging due in part to the complexity of Donna’s case, with some of her documents seeming to have been lost over decades of changing hands in the immigration offices.View image in fullscreenBut the other big challenge is the limited availability of immigration lawyers. As the Trump administration has escalated the number of Ice arrests, there is a shortage of legal counsel for immigrants and their families to go to for help.“We have been on the phone nonstop from 8am to 10pm almost every day the last week trying to find help, and it’s proving difficult because all the immigration lawyers are all dealing with everyone else’s crises as well,” said Kaitlynn. “So far, we haven’t gotten a lot of optimistic responses.”Like her mother, Kaitlynn remains in good spirits despite the constant obstacles, staying focused on helping someone else who currently needs it. But there is one moment in her show of resilience when her voice falters, as she recalls a memory from her childhood when her mother created a French book section in her New Orleans elementary school library.“I had forgotten that until just now,” Kaitlynn said, through tears. “Because there were no French books in the library. She organized that and got it together and painted this little tiny nook.”Russell says the focus currently is just to get his wife out of detention. “We’re working on a grassroots campaign and a letter-writing campaign on her behalf, that will hopefully be able to at least gain her release from the detention center,” he said.“After that, we can move forward with next steps through the immigration offices,” he added. “But right now, just getting her home is the challenge.” More

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    Kilmar Ábrego García was tortured in Salvadorian prison, court filing alleges

    Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador and detained in one of that country’s most notorious prisons, was physically and psychologically tortured during the three months he spent in Salvadorian custody, according to new court documents filed Wednesday.While being held at the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in El Salvador, Ábrego García and 20 other men “were forced to kneel from approximately 9:00 PM to 6:00 AM”, according to the court papers filed by his lawyers in the federal district court in Maryland.Guards struck anyone who fell from exhaustion while kneeling, and during that time, “Ábrego García was denied bathroom access and soiled himself”, according to the filing.Detainees were held in an overcrowded cell with no windows, and bright lights on 24 hours a day. They were confined to metal bunk beds with no mattresses.Ábrego García’s testimony is one of the first detailed insights the world has into the conditions inside Cecot, a megaprison that human rights groups say is designed to disappear people.His lawyers say he lost 31 pounds during his first two weeks of confinement. Later, they write, he and four others were transferred to a different part of the prison “where they were photographed with mattresses and better food–photos that appeared to be staged to document improved conditions”.The filings also note that officials within the prison acknowledged that Ábrego García was not a gang member, and that his tattoos did not indicate a gang affiliation. “Prison officials explicitly acknowledged that plaintiff Ábrego García’s tattoos were not gang-related, telling him ‘your tattoos are fine,’” per the filing, and they kept him in a cell separate from those accused of gang membership.The prison officials, however, threatened to move Ábrego García into a cell with gang members whom officials said “would ‘tear’ him apart”.Ábrego García is currently in federal custody in Nashville. The Trump administration brought him back from El Salvador after initially claiming it was powerless to do so. The US justice department wants him to stand trial on human-smuggling charges. The administration has also accused him of being a member of the street gang MS-13, and Donald Trump has claimed that Ábrego García’s tattoos indicate that he belonged to the gang.Ábrego García has pleaded not guilty to the smuggling charges, which his attorneys have characterized as an attempt to justify the administration’s mistake in deporting him after the fact.On Sunday , a Tennessee judge ordered his release while his criminal case plays out, but prosecutors said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) would take Ábrego García into custody if that were to happen and he would be deported before he was given the chance to stand trial.A justice department lawyer, Jonathan Guynn, also told a federal judge in Maryland that the administration would deport Ábrego García not to El Salvador but to another, third country – contradicting statements from attorney general Pam Bondi that he would be sent to El Salvador.Amid the confusion, Ábrego García’s lawyers requested that their client remain in criminal custody, fearing that if he were released, he would be deported. Upcoming hearings in both Maryland and Tennessee will help decide whether Ábrego García will be able to remain in the US and be released from jail. More

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    Trump news at a glance: megabill hangs in balance as House Republicans struggle to convince holdouts

    The House of Representatives was at a standstill on Wednesday as Republican leaders continued to try to rally holdouts against Donald Trump’s megabill, with speaker Mike Johnson saying “very positive” progress had been made toward passing it.The House stalled for hours on a procedural vote while Johnson and the White House worked to pressure a handful of Republicans to ensure they would vote to approve the sweeping tax-and-spending bill amid a razor-thin Republican majority and get it to Trump to sign in time for his self-imposed 4 July deadline.CBS parent company Paramount, meanwhile, agreed to pay $16m to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump over a broadcast interview, in what is likely to be seen as a further example of capitulation by media companies hoping to smooth relations with the president.Here are the day’s key US politics stories at a glance:House to vote on Trump’s big policy billDonald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill was hanging in the balance as Republicans struggled to muster sufficient votes in the US House of Representatives. A five-minute procedural vote remained open and tied on Wednesday, as Republican leaders told members they could leave the floor, suggesting they still did not have the numbers they needed.If passed, the bill would vastly expand the federal government’s immigration enforcement machinery and supercharge the president’s plan to carry out what he has vowed will be the largest deportation campaign in US history.Trump, vice-president JD Vance and speaker Mike Johnson spent much of the day trying to pressure conservatives to support the bill in the face of changes made by the Senate.Read the full storyParamount settles with Trump for $16m CBS parent company Paramount settled a lawsuit filed by Trump over a pre-election interview with Kamala Harris last October, in the latest concession by a media company to the US president, who has targeted outlets over what he describes as false or misleading coverage. Paramount said it would pay $16m to settle the suit, with the money allocated to Trump’s future presidential library and not paid to Trump “directly or indirectly”.Read the full storyChina transfixed as Musk turns against TrumpThe ill-fated bromance between the US president and the world’s richest man, which once raised questions about American oligarchy, is now being pored over by social media users in China, many of whom are Team Elon Musk.On Wednesday, the hashtag #MuskWantsToBuildAnAmericaParty went viral on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform similar to Musk’s X, receiving more than 37m views.Read the full storyUS tries to deport stateless Palestinian woman again despite judge’s orderThe US government has tried for the second time to deport a stateless Palestinian woman – according to court documents – despite a judge’s order barring her removal.Ward Sakeik, a 22-year-old newlywed, was detained in February on her way home from her honeymoon in the US Virgin Islands. Last month, the government attempted to deport her without informing her where she was being sent, according to her husband, Taahir Shaikh. An officer eventually told her she would be sent to the Israel border – just hours before Israel launched airstrikes on Iran.Read the full storyPentagon says US strikes set back Iran nuclear program ‘one to two years’The Pentagon has collected intelligence material that suggests Iran’s nuclear program was set back roughly one to two years as a result of the US strikes on three key facilities last month, the chief spokesperson at the defence department said at a news conference on Wednesday.Read the full storyPlanned Parenthood warns budget bill could slash abortion access in blue statesPlanned Parenthood stands to lose roughly $700m in federal funding if the US House passes the Republicans’ massive spending-and-tax bill, the organisation’s CEO said on Wednesday, amounting to what abortion rights supporters and opponents alike have called a “backdoor abortion ban”.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    New Trump administration rules that give millions of people a shorter timeframe to sign up for the Affordable Care Act’s healthcare coverage are facing a legal challenge from Democratic mayors around the country.

    The US and Vietnam struck a trade agreement that sets 20% tariffs on many of the south-east Asian country’s exports after last-minute negotiations, Trump and Vietnamese state media said on Wednesday.
    Catching up? Here’s what happened on 1 July 2025. More

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    Pentagon says US strikes set back Iran nuclear program ‘one to two years’

    The Pentagon has collected intelligence material that suggests Iran’s nuclear program was set back roughly one to two years as a result of the US strikes on three key facilities last month, the chief spokesperson at the defense department said at a news conference on Wednesday.The spokesperson, Sean Parnell, repeated Donald Trump’s claim that Iran’s key nuclear sites had been completely destroyed, although he did not offer further details on the origin of the assessments beyond saying it came from inside the defense department.“We have degraded their program by one to two years,” Parnell said at a news conference held at the Pentagon. “At least, intel assessments inside the department assess that.”Parnell’s description of the strikes marked a more measured estimate than Trump’s assertions about the level of destruction. A low-confidence Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report based on early assessments said Iran’s program was set back several months.The evolving picture of the severity of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program comes as US intelligence agencies have continued to push out new assessments, using materials that suggested the centrifuges at the key Fordow enrichment site were destroyed even if it was unclear whether the facility itself had caved in.Trump advisers have used that material, which include the use of video taken from B-2 bombers to confirm simulation models of shock waves destroying centrifuges and other Israeli intel from outside Fordow, to defend Trump’s assertions, two people familiar with the matter said.The extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear program and the fate of the country’s stockpile of enriched uranium – which could quickly be turned into a crude nuclear weapon – is important because it could dictate how long the program has been set back.The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said on Sunday that Iran could be producing enriched uranium in a few months.“They can have in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium,” Rafael Grossi the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said, adding “Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology … You cannot undo the knowledge that you have or the capacities that you have.”The Pentagon’s preliminary DIA assessment, which was based on information from little more than 24 hours after the strikes, the Guardian previously reported, found the damage could range from Iran being able to restart the facility with new centrifuges to having to abandon it for future use.The DIA report assessed the program had been pushed back by several months, although that finding was made at the so-called “low-confidence” level, reflecting the early nature of the assessment and the uncertainty intelligence agencies have with initial conclusions.Trump advisers have pushed back on the DIA report and said privately the destruction of the centrifuges alone meant they had taken out a key component of Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons and meant it delayed the nuclear program by years.Battles over the conclusions of intelligence agencies have been at the center of American foreign policy determinations for decades, from warnings about Iraq’s weapons programs that the Bush administration used to justify the 2003 invasion that were later found to be false, to claims that a Chinese lab leak was responsible for Covid.Still, much of the controversy about the US strikes has been generated by Trump’s claiming that they “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear sites, which no intelligence agency has directly repeated because it is not a characterization used in intelligence assessments.Verifying the extent of the damage was made more difficult on Wednesday, after Iran put into effect a new law to suspend cooperation with the IAEA. Iran has accused the nuclear watchdog of siding with western countries and providing a justification for Israel’s airstrikes.A state department spokesperson called the move “unacceptable” and said Iran must fully comply with its nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations, including by providing the IAEA with information on undeclared nuclear material and providing unrestricted access to any newly announced enrichment facility. More

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    Judge blocks Trump’s attempt to bar asylum access at US-Mexico border

    A federal court has ruled that Donald Trump’s proclamation of an “invasion” at the US-Mexico border is unlawful, saying that the president had exceeded his authority in suspending the right to apply for asylum at the southern border.As part of his crackdown on immigration, Trump abruptly closed the southern border to tens of thousands of people who had been waiting to cross into the US legally and apply for asylum, signing a proclamation on the day of his inauguration that directed officials to take action to “repel, repatriate, or remove any alien engaged in the invasion across the southern border of the United States”.In a ruling on Wednesday, US district judge Randolph Moss ruled in favor of 13 people seeking asylum in the US and three immigrants’ rights groups who argued that it was unlawful to declare an invasion and unilaterally ban the right to claim asylum.Moss ruled that nothing in the Immigration and Nationality Act or the US constitution “grants the president or his delegees the sweeping authority asserted in the proclamation and implementing guidance”.He also asserted the constitution did not give the president the authority to “adopt an alternative immigration system, which supplants the statutes that Congress has enacted and the regulations that the responsible agencies have promulgated”.The ruling will not take effect immediately; rather Moss has given the Trump administration 14 days to seek emergency relief from the federal appeals court. But if Moss’s ruling holds up, the Trump administration would have to renew processing asylum claims at the border.People fleeing persecution and danger in their home countries would still be subject to a slew of other measures that have restricted access to legal immigration pathways. But the ruling would require the homeland security department to offer people at the southern border at least some way to seek refuge in the US.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionFor now, crossings at the US-Mexico border have dropped sharply since the administration cut off legal pathways to enter and ramped up the active military presence in the region.But many who had journeyed to the border – fleeing extreme violence, authoritarianism and poverty in Central and South America, as well as Africa and Asia – remained stranded on the Mexican side, holding out hope in shelters for migrants. Others have dispersed into Mexico, seeking work or residency there.Advocates have warned that many of the migrants left in the lurch by Trump’s abrupt asylum ban have been put in vulnerable and dangerous situations. The plaintiffs in the case challenging Trump’s ban had fled persecution in Afghanistan, Ecuador, Cuba, Egypt, Brazil, Turkey and Peru. Some have already been removed from the US.The district court ruling comes after a landmark supreme court decision last week in a case challenging Trump’s attempt to unilaterally end the country’s longstanding tradition of birthright citizenship. On Friday, the country’s highest court ruled to curb the power of federal judges to impose nationwide rulings impeding the president’s policies.But because the case challenging Trump’s asylum ban was filed as a class-action lawsuit, it is not affected by higher court’s restriction. More

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    Planned Parenthood CEO warns Trump bill will lead to $700m loss and ‘backdoor abortion ban’

    Planned Parenthood stands to lose roughly $700m in federal funding if the US House passes Republicans’ massive spending-and-tax bill, the organization’s CEO said on Wednesday, amounting to what abortion rights supporters and opponents alike have called a “backdoor abortion ban”.“We are facing down the reality that nearly 200 health centers are at risk of closure. We’re facing a reality of the impact on shutting down almost half of abortion-providing health centers,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of Americas’s CEO, said in an interview Wednesday morning. “It does feel existential. Not just for Planned Parenthood, but for communities that are relying on access to this care.”Anti-abortion activists have longed to “defund” Planned Parenthood for decades. They are closer than ever to achieving their goal.That $700m figure represents the loss that Planned Parenthood would face from a provision in the spending bill that would impose a one-year Medicaid ban on healthcare non-profits that offer abortions and that received more than $800,000 in federal funding in 2023, as well as the funding that Planned Parenthood could lose from Title X, the nation’s largest family-planning program. In late March, the Trump administration froze tens of millions of dollars of Title X funding that had been set aside for some Planned Parenthood and other family-planning clinics.“Essentially what you are seeing is a gutting of a safety net,” said McGill Johnson, who characterized the bill as a “backdoor abortion ban” in a statement.Medicaid is the US government’s insurance program for low-income people, and about 80 million people use it. If the latest version of the spending-and-tax bill passes, nearly 12 million people are expected to lose their Medicaid coverage.Donald Trump has said that he would like the bill to be on his desk, ready for a signature, by 4 July.The provision attacking Planned Parenthood would primarily target clinics in blue states that have protected abortion rights since the overturning of Roe v Wade three years ago, because those blue states have larger numbers of people on Medicaid. Although not all Planned Parenthood clinics perform abortions, the reproductive healthcare giant provides 38% of US abortions, according to the latest data from Abortion Care Network, a membership group for independent abortion clinics.Among the clinics at risk of closure, Planned Parenthood estimated, more than 90% are in states that permit abortion. Sixty percent are located in areas that have been deemed “medically underserved”.In total, more than 1.1 million Planned Parenthood patients could lose access to care.“There’s nowhere else for folks” to go, McGill Johnson said. “The community health centers have said they cannot absorb the patients that Planned Parenthood sees. So I think that we do need to just call it a targeted attack because that’s exactly how it is.”Nationally, 11% of female Medicaid beneficiaries between the ages of 15 and 49 and who receive family-planning services go to Planned Parenthood for a range of services, according to an analysis by the non-profit KFF, which tracks healthcare policy. Those numbers rise in blue states like Washington, Oregon and Connecticut.In California, that number soars to 29%. The impact on the state would be so devastating that Nichole Ramirez, senior vice-president of communication and donor relations at Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties, called the tax-and-spending package’s provision “a direct attack on us, really”.“They haven’t been able to figure out how to ban abortion nationwide and they haven’t been able to figure out how to ban abortion in California specifically,” said Ramirez, who estimated that Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties stands to lose between $40m and $60m. Ramirez continued: “This is their way to go about banning abortion. That is the entire goal here.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a post on X, the prominent anti-abortion group Live Action reposted an image of a Planned Parenthood graphic calling the provision “backdoor abortion ban”. “They might be onto us,” Live Action wrote.The Planned Parenthood network is overseen by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, but it also consists of dozens of independent regional affiliates that operate nearly 600 clinics across the country. In June, as the spending-and-tax bill moved through Congress, Autonomy News, an outlet that focuses on threats to bodily autonomy, reported that Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s accreditation board had sent waivers out to affiliates to apply for approval to cease providing abortions in order to preserve access to Medicaid funding. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that a memo sent to the leadership of one California affiliate suggests that leaders there had considered ending abortion services.McGill Johnson said that there have been discussions within Planned Parenthood’s network about what it would mean to stop offering abortions. But no affiliates, to her knowledge, are moving forward with plans to stop performing the procedure.“Educating our volunteers and teams around hard decisions to stand and understand the impact of that is different than weighing and considering a stoppage of abortion,” McGill Johnson said.The budget bill and Title X funding freeze aren’t the only sources of pressure on the group. The US supreme court last week ruled in favor of South Carolina in a case involving the state’s attempt to kick Planned Parenthood out of its state Medicaid reimbursement program – a ruling that will likely give a green light to other states that also want to defund Planned Parenthood.At least one other organization that provides abortion and family-planning services, Maine Family Planning, will be affected by the provision, according to the organization’s CEO, George Hill. Maine Family Planning directly operates 18 clinics, including several that provide primary care or are in rural, medically underserved areas. If the provision takes effect, Hill estimates, the organization would lose 20% of its operating budget.“It’s dressed up as a budget provision, but it’s not,” Hill said. “They’re basically taking the rug out from under our feet.” More