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    A Road Map for Undoing the Damage of the Big, Awful Bill

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    In the 30 years I have been a part of fiscal policymaking I don’t think I have ever seen a legislative push as impressive as the passage of President Trump’s big, dubious tax and policy bill.Don’t get me wrong: The consequences for health insurance, poverty, climate change and macroeconomic stability, in roughly that order of importance, will be horrendous. The Medicaid and other health care changes would undo about three-quarters of the coverage expansion from President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion. The law repeals much of what Joe Biden did for climate change in the Inflation Reduction Act. The tax provisions sustain most of the cuts from Mr. Trump’s first term and add in several others for good measure.But before Democrats — and hopefully some Republicans — even try to fix the damage, they should learn the lessons of how the Republicans got all this done, working against tremendous odds on a much faster timetable than the major legislative accomplishments from Mr. Trump’s three predecessors.The first lesson is that ideas really do matter. This legislation did not happen because the public or lobbyists were clamoring for it. Instead Donald Trump and congressional Republicans wanted it and were willing to overcome public disfavor and opposition from vested interests.Sure, special interests were at play in ways big (preserving workarounds to limits on state and local tax deductions) and small (getting new tax breaks for Alaskan whaling captains). But no major lobbying groups were asking for the broad contours of this legislation. The health care industry, which is expected to lose about half a trillion dollars, and the energy industry, which is losing huge tax breaks and subsidies, put up a fight. Their opposition, like that of other industries, went nowhere. And neither did Elon Musk’s — further evidence that oligarchy is the wrong lens through which to view this political moment.The second lesson is that while ideas matter, expert ideas do not necessarily matter. Past fiscal debates have divided economists and policy wonks. In President Trump’s first term, some economists would write opinion articles or go on TV news programs defending his tax cuts as adding to growth while other economists (including me) would write rebuttals.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mamdani’s Win Has Put Buses in the Spotlight. Should They Be Free?

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      The lowly New York City bus is getting new attention thanks to Zohran Mamdani’s vow to make the service free for all. But can free also mean fast?New York City buses are slow, often crowded and overshadowed by the subway. But thanks to a surprise role in the mayoral election campaign, the humble bus is suddenly in the spotlight.Zohran Mamdani, the Queens assemblyman who in the Democratic primary last week roundly defeated a crowded field that included former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, has vowed to make the city’s bus service — a network of 348 routes that carries 1.4 million passengers a day — free for all.The promise marks an unlikely star turn for a branch of the transit system that generally serves passengers who are older and poorer than those riding the subway. At Mr. Mamdani’s rallies about the high cost of rent and child care, the bus fare has become a symbol of the city’s affordability crisis, especially for residents of neighborhoods with limited access to trains.Nearly one in five New Yorkers said they struggled to pay for subway and bus fare in 2023, according to a report by Community Service Society of New York, an anti-poverty group. And the fare, currently $2.90 for both buses and subways, is expected to increase to around $3 early next year.Mr. Mamdani is now among the most high-profile supporters of the idea, popular among some left-leaning transit advocates, that the bus system should be treated as a tax-funded service like public schools and law enforcement.But the plan has split transit supporters who disagree on whether subsidizing the bus system is worth forgoing more than $800 million a year in fare revenue from bus riders, at a time when federal funds for New York State could prove unreliable. And for passengers who have stood in a packed bus, the concern is simpler still: Can free also mean fast?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Budget Eliminates Funding for Crucial Global Vaccination Programs

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      The spending proposal terminates support of health programs that, according to the proposal, “do not make Americans safer.”The Trump administration’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year eliminates funding for programs that provide lifesaving vaccines around the world, including immunizations for polio.The budget, submitted to Congress last week, proposes to eliminate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s global health unit, effectively shutting down its $230 million immunization program: $180 million for polio eradication and the rest for measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. The budget plan also withdraws financial support for Gavi, the international vaccine alliance that purchases vaccines for children in developing countries.Overall, the budget request explicitly follows President Trump’s America First policy, slashing funds for global health programs that fight H.I.V. and malaria, and cutting support altogether to fight diseases that affect only poorer countries.“The request eliminates funding for programs that do not make Americans safer, such as family planning and reproductive health, neglected tropical diseases, and nonemergency nutrition,” the proposal said.Many public health experts said that such thinking is flawed because infectious diseases routinely breach borders. The United States is battling multiple measles outbreaks, prompting the C.D.C. last week to warn travelers about the risks of contracting measles. Each of those outbreaks began with a case of measles contracted by an international traveler.“Every single measles case this year is related to actual importations of the virus into the United States,” said Dr. Walter Orenstein, associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center and a former director of the United States’ Immunization Program.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Asks Congress to Claw Back $9 Billion for Foreign Aid, NPR and PBS

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      The request seeks to codify spending cuts advanced by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.The White House formally asked Congress on Tuesday to claw back more than $9 billion in federal funds that lawmakers had already approved for foreign aid and public broadcasting, seeking to codify spending cuts put forward by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. In a package compiled by the Office of Management and Budget, officials outlined 22 programs targeted by President Trump in executive orders and by DOGE. The bulk of the rollbacks — $8.3 billion — are aimed at foreign aid spending. The rest — $1.1 billion — would rescind funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS. The proposal comes as the White House has aggressively challenged Congress’s power of the purse and made clear it is willing to steer around the legislative branch to unilaterally control federal spending.In this case, though, the administration is going through normal channels and asking Congress to go along with its efforts to redirect federal money. Lawmakers can approve such a measure by a simple majority vote in both chambers. Republican lawmakers have argued that it is important for Congress to codify spending cuts that were already enacted by the Trump administration by executive order. “This rescissions package reflects many of DOGE’s findings and is one of the many legislative tools Republicans are using to restore fiscal sanity,” Speaker Mike Johnson said on Tuesday. “Congress will continue working closely with the White House to codify these recommendations, and the House will bring the package to the floor as quickly as possible.”The last time the Trump administration asked lawmakers to pull back federal funds they had already approved, during Mr. Trump’s first term, the effort failed after two Republican senators joined Democrats to defeat what had been a largely symbolic effort.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      House Republicans Will Vote Again on President Trump’s Legislative Agenda

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      A group of fiscal hard-liners on the Budget Committee blocked the bill Friday morning. The group will try again to pass the president’s megabill out of committee Sunday night.The House Budget Committee will meet late Sunday night to try once again to advance President Trump’s domestic policy bill toward a floor vote after a handful of fiscally conservative Republicans blocked the measure on Friday over concerns about the ballooning national deficit.The remarkable revolt among hard-right lawmakers has threatened to upend Republicans’ goal of approving the legislation before the Memorial Day recess. G.O.P. leaders have been searching for a way to pacify the holdouts.Five Republican representatives — Chip Roy of Texas, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, and Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania — joined Democrats to block the legislation on Friday. The vote was 16 to 21 on a motion to advance the bill.“This bill falls profoundly short,” Mr. Roy said.Mr. Smucker, who changed his “yes” vote to a “no” at the last minute, said he did so for procedural reasons. Because he voted against the bill, he will be able to ask to call the legislation back up for consideration.But it was unclear what changes Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team could come up with to win enough votes.Without the support of Republican hard-liners, the bill cannot advance. Any changes to win their backing could alienate the more moderate Republicans whose votes will also be needed to pass the measure on the House floor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Budget Cuts Hobble Antismoking Programs

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      Students at Wyoming East High School in West Virginia’s coal country had different reasons for joining Raze, a state program meant to raise awareness about the health risks of tobacco and e-cigarettes.Cayden Oliver, 17, grew up around generations of people who smoked and vaped, and he wanted to make his own choice. Nathiah Brown, 18, was struggling to quit e-cigarettes and showed up for moral support. Kimberly Mills, 18, wanted to prove that even though she had been a foster child, she would defy the odds.This high school’s program cost West Virginia less than $3,000 a year and was meant to protect teenagers in the state that has the highest vaping rate in their age group. It fell prey to U.S. government health budget cuts that included hundreds of millions of dollars in tobacco control funds that reached far beyond Washington, D.C.At the high school, students pack into stalls in the school restrooms, sneaking puffs between classes. “It’s bad now,” said Logan Stacy, 18, a member of the Raze group. “Imagine what it will be like in two years.”Experts on tobacco control said the Trump administration’s funding cuts would set back a quarter-century of public health efforts that have driven the smoking rate to a record low and saved lives and billions of dollars in health care spending. Still, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 29 million people in the United States continue to smoke.The decimation of antismoking work follows a year of lavish campaign donations by tobacco and e-cigarette companies to President Trump and congressional Republicans.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Citing N.I.H. Cuts, a Top Science Journal Stops Accepting Submissions

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      With federal support, Environmental Health Perspectives has long published peer-reviewed studies without fees to readers or scientists.Environmental Health Perspectives, widely considered the premier environmental health journal, has announced that it would pause acceptance of new studies for publication, as federal cuts have left its future uncertain.For more than 50 years, the journal has received funding from the National Institutes of Health to review studies on the health effects of environmental toxins — from “forever chemicals” to air pollution — and publish the research free of charge.The editors made the decision to halt acceptance of studies because of a “lack of confidence” that contracts for critical expenses like copy-editing and editorial software would be renewed after their impending expiration dates, said Joel Kaufman, the journal’s top editor.He declined to comment on the publication’s future prospects. “If the journal is indeed lost, it is a huge loss,” said Jonathan Levy, chair of the department of environmental health at Boston University. “It’s reducing the ability for people to have good information that can be used to make good decisions.”The news comes weeks after a federal prosecutor in Washington sent letters to several scientific journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, with questions that suggested that they were biased against certain views and influenced by external pressures.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.N. Orders Agencies to Find Budget Cuts, Including via Staff Moves From N.Y.

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      The instructions from the office of Secretary General António Guterres were reviewed by The New York Times and came after President Trump ordered a review of U.S. funding to the agency.The United Nations, anticipating that President Trump will slash U.S. contributions to the global body, has told its departments to draw up plans for budget cuts, including through staff relocations from New York and Geneva to less-expensive cities.The instructions — outlined in a two-page memo dated April 25 that was reviewed by The New York Times — were sent from Secretary General António Guterres’s office to the heads of all agencies that report directly to him. The memo set a May 15 deadline for all proposals so that they could be added to the 2026 budget.“Your objective is to identify as many functions as possible that could be relocated to existing lower-cost locations,” the memo reads, “or otherwise reduced or abolished if they are duplicative or no longer viable.”In February, President Trump signed an executive order calling for a review of the overall U.S. funding and ties to the U.N. He withdrew the United States from several U.N. organizations, including those dealing with human rights, women’s reproductive rights, climate change, Palestinian aid and global health. In his first term, he also reduced U.S. contributions to peacekeeping efforts.Three senior U.N. officials said on Tuesday that the drastic, cost-cutting measures laid out in the memo had caught the agency’s departments by surprise and went beyond what they had expected. The officials, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the directive was largely viewed as a way for the U.N. to brace for potential additional cuts by Mr. Trump and to proactively insulate it from the financial blow.But the U.N. officials said the budget cuts were ordered only partly in response to Mr. Trump’s moves. The directive comes as the U.N. is adjusting to a host of financial problems, they said, from the withdrawal and reduction in financial contributions by major donors like the United States and Europe to a cash-flow crisis caused by member states’ not paying their annual dues on time and in full.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Attorneys General Sue Over Access to $1 Billion in Federal School Aid

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      The Trump administration abruptly cut states’ access to Covid pandemic funding for school programs, saying they’d had enough time to spend it.Sixteen attorneys general and a Democratic governor sued the Trump administration on Thursday to restore access to over $1 billion in federal pandemic relief aid for schools that was recently halted, saying that the pullback could cause acute harm to students.The suit, led by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and filed in Manhattan federal court, is one of the latest efforts by states to fight President Trump’s clawback of funding allocated to programs he does not want the government to support. The funding was part of a windfall of more than $190 billion that the U.S. Department of Education distributed to schools at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.The government’s reversal “triggered chaos,” the suit says. New York was one of the states with the most unspent money: over $130 million. California had more than $205 million in unspent money, and Maryland had $245 million, the most among the states that sued.“Cutting school systems’ access to vital resources that our students and teachers rely on is outrageous and illegal,” Ms. James said in a news release.The coalition’s filing on Thursday comes nearly a month after 21 Democratic attorneys general sued the administration for firing about half of the Education Department’s staff. Linda McMahon, the education secretary, said the move would help the department deliver services more efficiently.The White House also suspended millions of dollars in teacher-training grants that it argued would promote diversity, equity and inclusion, which prompted yet another suit from New York and other states.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More