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      Trump Squeezes His Party on Domestic Policy Bill

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      The president visited the weekly meeting of House Republicans to make the case for the legislation and pressure members of his party to fall into line.President Trump on Tuesday huddled with House Republicans on Capitol Hill to urge them to unify around a wide-ranging bill to deliver his domestic agenda, ratcheting up the pressure for the party to overcome divisions that could sink the package.Joining Republicans at their weekly closed-door meeting, Mr. Trump praised Speaker Mike Johnson, who has been toiling to cobble together the votes to pass what the party has dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which they hope to bring to a vote by the end of the week.“I’m his biggest fan — I love this guy,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Johnson before the meeting. The speaker can afford to lose no more than three votes on the bill if all Democrats oppose it, as expected, and every lawmaker is present and voting.The president made it clear that he saw passage of the measure as a test of loyalty to him, saying he had been a “cheerleader” for the party, and warning that any holdouts “wouldn’t be a Republican much longer.”But he minimized the very real rifts within his party that could derail the measure, saying there were “one or two grandstanders” holding it up.That is not the case. Several Republican factions have expressed concern about the details of the sprawling bill, which would extend the 2017 tax cuts and eliminate taxes on tips and overtime pay; raise spending on the military and immigration enforcement; and cut Medicaid, food stamps, education and subsidies for clean energy to pay for some of it.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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      in US Politics

      US House Republicans propose fees on immigrants to fund Trump’s crackdown

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      Congressional Republicans are proposing an array of new fees on immigrants seeking to remain in the United States in a move that advocates warn will create insurmountable financial barriers.Legislation moving through the GOP-controlled House of Representatives could require immigrants to pay potentially hundreds or thousands of dollars to seek asylum, care for a minor in the government’s custody, or apply for humanitarian parole.Republican lawmakers have described the fees as necessary to offset the costs of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. But experts who work with immigrants say putting more economic pressure on people attempting to navigate US immigration laws could drain what little money they have, force them into exploitative work arrangements, or push them to leave the country altogether.“These are essentially a mask for targeted attacks towards some of the most vulnerable immigrants that we currently have going through our legal system right now: asylum seekers, children, survivors of crimes,” said Victoria Maqueda Feldman, director of legal programs at Ayuda, which assists low-income immigrants in Washington DC, Virginia and Maryland.Trump has made it a priority of his administration to not only rid the country of undocumented immigrants, but also to stop many new immigrants from entering the country. The GOP-controlled Congress is negotiating what he has dubbed “one big, beautiful bill”, a huge spending and taxation package that includes provisions to turn his hardline immigration proposals into reality.Republicans are limited in what they can accomplish in Congress due to the Senate’s filibuster, which the Democratic minority can use to block legislation it does not support. The GOP is seeking to enact Trump’s legislative agenda through the budget reconciliation procedure, under which bills can pass with simple majorities in both chambers but must affect only spending and revenues – like fees.“This system has left these agencies with funding shortfalls paid for by American taxpayers,” said Jim Jordan, the Republican chair of the House judiciary committee. “The fees included in this bill will … allow us to make the necessary investments in immigration enforcement in a fiscally responsible manner.”Heidi Altman, vice-president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, said the new fees appeared targeted at the sorts of immigrants that the Trump administration has prioritized keeping out, such as asylum seekers, who arrived in large numbers during Joe Biden’s term.“It’s part of the administration’s assault on humanitarian protections for immigrant communities,” Altman said. “This is an entire new way of thinking about fees as a penalty, essentially, for an immigrant status.”Under the bill, immigrants would have to pay $1,000 to apply for asylum, $100 to keep an application active each year as it makes it through the overburdened immigration system, and $550 for a work permit. People requesting humanitarian parole to enter the United States would have to pay $1,000, and abused or neglected children who qualify for a program called Special Immigrant Juvenile Status would have to pay $500. Immigration cases can take a long time to resolve in court, but if a defendant asks a judge for a continuance, they would have to pay $100 each time.These fees do not exist under current law, and the bill specifies they cannot be waived in almost all circumstances.The new fees are targeted at people, often relatives, who seek to sponsor children who crossed the border without a parent or guardian and wind up in the government’s care. In order to take custody of an unaccompanied minor, adults would have to pay $3,500 to partially pay back the government for the minor’s care, along with another $5,000 to ensure the child attends their court hearings, though that money can be reimbursed if they do.“In some cases, that would be placing $3,500 between a mother or a father being able to get their child out of government custody and back into their own home,” Altman said.The fees were proposed as the Trump administration looks for novel ways to push immigrants out, including by offering them cash to leave. The bill gives a preview of what more will come, should the president receive the tens of billions of dollars he has requested from Congress.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMore than $50bn is allocated in the legislation to construct a wall along the border with Mexico, as well as fortifications elsewhere. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) will receive $45bn for detention facilities, $14bn for its deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire 10,000 new agents by 2029.For the low-income clients Ayuda serves, Feldman predicted that the fees “could amount to a complete barrier to forms of relief”.Some might be able to pull together the money, but “through means that could put them in greater danger. So, having to work under the table, putting them at risk for labor trafficking. They might have to take out loans that have very high interest rates, putting them at risk for having to pay off something that is very expensive.”The bill is a top priority of congressional Republicans, but its pathway to enactment is unclear. On Friday, rightwing Republican lawmakers blocked its progress through a key House committee, arguing it did not cut government spending deeply enough.Last month, when the judiciary committee met to approve the portion of the bill that included the fee increases, GOP lawmakers approved it quickly, with little signs of dissent. More

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      in Elections

      Republican Revolt Reflects a Core Party Divide Over Spending and Debt

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      Whether the ultraconservatives dig in and force big changes to the megabill carrying President Trump’s agenda or capitulate, as they have in the past, will determine the fate of their party’s signature legislation.To a small but crucial group of hard-right House Republicans, the tax and spending cut package produced by their colleagues to deliver what President Trump calls the “big, beautiful bill” was nothing more than a homely cop-out.The handful of lawmakers who blocked their own party’s sprawling domestic policy measure from advancing out of a key committee on Friday acted out of a fundamentally different view of federal spending and debt than the rest of the G.O.P. They are single-mindedly focused on slashing deficits by restructuring the government to dramatically scale back social programs, whatever the political consequences.With their party in control of the House, Senate and White House, they view their fellow Republicans as timid, squandering a golden opportunity to turn the government’s finances around in a long overdue course correction. Instead, they see Republican leaders, catering to swing district members worried about their re-election, delivering a half-measure that, as far as the hard-liners are concerned, falls woefully short on cuts — and the ones it did make were gimmicky.“I’m not going to sit here and say that everything is hunky-dory,” Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas and one of the leading evangelists of deep spending cuts, said on Friday as he tore into his own party’s legislation. “This is the Budget Committee. We are supposed to do something to actually result in balanced budgets, but we’re not doing it.”It remains to be seen whether the anti-deficit fundamentalists are really dug in against the legislation or shopping for concessions that could allow them to claim a partial victory against deficit spending and still ultimately fall in line behind Mr. Trump. They have earned a reputation both for revolting against their own party at crucial moments and for backing down before their intransigence actually kills a top Republican priority — often without achieving what they initially demanded.But for a few days at least, the recalcitrance of Mr. Roy and his fellow deficit hawks, and their willingness to challenge a majority of their own party, has tied down the entire Republican legislative agenda.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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      in US Politics

      House Republicans block Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ in major setback

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      Rightwing lawmakers derailed Donald Trump’s signature legislation in the House of Representatives on Friday, preventing its passage through a key committee and throwing into question whether Republicans can coalesce around the massive bill.The party has spent weeks negotiating a measure dubbed the “one big, beautiful bill” that would extend tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first term, fund mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, and temporarily make good on his campaign promise to end the taxation of tips and overtime. To offset its costs, Republicans have proposed cuts to the federal safety net, including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.At a House budget committee hearing on Friday intended to advance the measure one step closer to a floor vote, four Republican members of the far-right Freedom Caucus joined with the Democratic minority to block it from proceeding, arguing the legislation does not make deep enough cuts to federal spending and to programs they dislike.“This bill falls profoundly short. It does not do what we say it does, with respect to deficits,” said Chip Roy, a Texas representative who opposed the bill alongside fellow Freedom Caucus members Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma and Ralph Norman of South Carolina. Pennsylvania’s Lloyd Smucker initially voted to advance the bill, then changed his vote to no at the last minute, which he said was a procedural maneuver to allow the bill to be reconsidered in the future.The setback raises the stakes for the House speaker, Mike Johnson, who had set a goal of Memorial Day to get the legislation passed through the House and on to the Senate. Trump has said he would like to have the bill on his desk by the 4 July Independence Day holiday, and earlier on Friday attempted to pressure conservative holdouts.“Republicans MUST UNITE behind, ‘THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL!’” the president wrote on Truth Social. “We don’t need ‘GRANDSTANDERS’ in the Republican Party. STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!”Later on Friday, the budget committee announced it would reconvene on Sunday night to consider the bill, giving Johnson another couple of days to find agreement with the hardliners.Republicans are crafting the bill using the budget reconciliation procedure, which Senate Democrats cannot block with the filibuster. But the GOP is split over what to include and what to cut in the expensive legislation, which Congress’s non-partisan joint committee on taxation estimates will cost $3.7tn through 2034.Rightwing lawmakers want to see big reductions in government spending, which has climbed in recent years as Trump and Joe Biden responded to the Covid-19 pandemic and pursued their own economic policies.“We’re … committed to ensuring the final package is fiscally responsible, rightsizing government and putting our fiscal future back on track. Unfortunately, the current version falls short of these goals and fails to deliver the transformative change that Americans were promised,” Clyde said at the budget committee.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe called for deeper cuts to Medicaid, but many Republicans in the House and Senate have signaled nervousness with dramatic funding reductions to the program that provides healthcare to lower-income and disabled Americans. Others in the GOP dislike parts of the bill that would cut green tax credits created by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.And a small group of Republicans representing districts in blue states such as New York and New Jersey are demanding an increase in the deduction for state and local taxes, saying it will provide needed relief to their constituents. But including that would drive the cost of the bill even higher, risking the ire of fiscal conservatives.Johnson has little choice but to listen to all of these groups. The GOP can afford to lose no more than three votes in the chamber, a historically small margin that has made passing legislation a tightrope walk. More

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      in US Politics

      Republican push to cut green tax credits would raise utility bills, new data shows

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      As House Republicans propose taking a sledgehammer to the green tax credits in Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, new data shows the loss of those incentives could lower some Americans’ household income by more than $1,000 a year due to increased utility bills and job losses.Though Donald Trump has called climate spending a “waste” of money, the data – published by the industry group Clean Energy Buyers Association (Ceba) on Thursday – provides evidence that rescinding them would actually increase expenses for ordinary Americans in red and blue districts alike.The rollback would increase the price of electricity and gas, the report found. And it would lead to job losses and “economic slowdown”, it says.“Americans voted to combat the cost-of-living crisis in the 2024 election,” said Rich Powell, CEO of Ceba. “Now is the time for Congress to incentivize private investment in more sources of low-cost, reliable energy that fuels economic growth and jobs, helps the United States secure energy dominance and independence, and decreases energy costs nationwide.”The new figures, crunched for Ceba by the National Economic Research Associates consulting firm, focus specifically on credits 48E and 45Y, for clean energy investment and production respectively. In a reconciliation package draft this week, the House ways and means committee proposed phasing out these incentives after 2031, and placing many new restrictions on them in the meantime.If the rollbacks proceed as proposed, the new study found, at least 19 states would see the cost of energy increase for both consumers and industry between 2026 to 2032. (More states would probably see similar impacts, but the authors did not examine all 50 “because of the turnaround time for research”, Ceba said).New Jersey is the state expected to see the biggest economic losses if the clean energy investment and production credits are repealed, the authors found. There, the authors found the rollback could increase household gas and utility bills by 2.9% and 13.3% respectively. The repeal would also trigger the loss of 22,180 jobs, they found.All told, households across the state would see a stunning $1,040 average loss in annual household income and a $3.24bn decrease in state GDP, the authors wrote.“As commercial and industrial activity declines, demand for labor and capital falls, leading to wage losses, declining household income, and shrinking investment,” the research says.The authors’ outlook for state-level electricity markets assumes an incremental growth in electricity demand due to the growth of data centers. Some of Ceba’s members are tech giants – including Amazon, Google and Meta – who are bringing more data centers online.An earlier Ceba report, published in February, forecast the effect on electricity prices alone across all 50 states. If the clean energy investment and production credits are repealed, the average American household would see their annual household utility bills increase by $110 by 2026, it found.Wyoming would see the largest rise of 29.5% on average for households across the state, the earlier report found. More

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      in US Politics

      New bill aims to allow research to catch up with US’s increasing cannabis consumption

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      A recently introduced bill, if it passes, would allow research on cannabis despite its schedule I status, which some experts say could help policymakers “craft effective” legislation in the future and potentially allow more clinical research on medical cannabis.Representatives Dina Titus and Ilhan Omar introduced the Evidence-Based Drug Policy Act of 2025 (EBDPA) last week, which would radically ease research restrictions on cannabis and other schedule I substances.Omar said in a statement that the law would allow research to catch up with the US’s increasing cannabis consumption: “We need drug policy to follow the science and reflect the reality on the ground in states across the country.”Schedule I substances, including cannabis, heroin and MDMA, are legally defined as having “no accepted medical use” and a “high potential for abuse”. Medical cannabis proponents point out that cannabis’s federal schedule I status is contradictory, given that patients throughout the US already use cannabis for medical purposes.The Biden administration pushed for cannabis to be reclassified as a schedule III substance, which would alter its legal status and make cannabis-based medicines eligible for FDA approval.But the rescheduling process has continued to stall since Donald Trump reentered the oval office.Unlike rescheduling, the EBDPA would be simple to enact. In its current form, it repeals sections of the Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 1998 that forbid federal funds from going towards research of schedule I substances, and that require the ONDCP to oppose any attempts to legalize schedule I substances.Still, there are questions as to whether this bill has the ability to pass.Katharine Neill Harris, a drug policy fellow at Rice University, says that the bill is a “modest proposal” and “it might be possible for it to gain the bipartisan support it needs to pass”.Cat Packer, director of Drug Markets and Legal Regulation at Drug Policy Alliance, notes that the bill “has the potential to attract bipartisan support as a modest but meaningful step forward” due to it prioritizing “evidence over ideology”.Though more comprehensive federal cannabis reform might be in the distant future, “the EBDPA should be seen as a neutral step that would enable policymakers to study what works – and be better prepared to craft effective, informed legislation in the future,” Packer added.On the other hand, Aaron Smith, CEO of the National Cannabis Industry Association, doesn’t feel as hopeful and that because of “the hyper-partisan times we live in, getting this bill, or any legislation, frankly, passed isn’t likely in the near term”.Packer hopes that policymakers will see that the bill is vital for shaping smart cannabis policy.“The federal government cannot meaningfully learn from the experiences of the 24-plus states that have legalized cannabis,” Packer says of the current state of affairs.There aren’t ways at the moment for the federal government to scientifically measure cannabis’ impact on youth consumption and health outcomes, arrest and incarceration rates, and who benefits economically from legal cannabis policies, versus who is left out.Existing policy is not only outdated, but there’s “an institutional blindfold that prevents the federal government from adapting to real-world conditions and designing effective, responsive policies”, Packer said.Ideally, Harris says the law would lead to “an increase in rigorous research to inform medical use practice”, noting that there are many questions when it comes to how cannabis functions as a medicine, about ideal doses, long term-impacts of different consumption methods, and whether certain strains work better for some conditions than others.While Omar and Titius have emphasized cannabis when promoting the bill, it would allow federal funding to go toward research on other schedule I substances as well.Smith said that “drug policy should be rooted in scientific fact” and that any step in that direction should be applauded. Harris echoed that sentiment, noting that research on other schedule I substances is “much needed,” given that “several substances in schedule I – psilocybin and MDMA in particular, seem to have therapeutic effects for some people with difficult-to-treat conditions”. Federally funded medical research on the efficacy of these drugs could advance medicine in the US.“If there is evidence to support FDA approval for a schedule I drug for therapeutic applications, this bill would mean that the Office of National Drug Control Policy would not have to reflexively oppose it,” Harris said.Should the bill pass, Harris is skeptical of how much federal funding will actually go to schedule I research as “the Trump administration, so far, has seemed opposed to federal research funding more broadly”.Still, she says: “This bill is an important and reasonable effort to improve the sensibility of federal drug policies, but the current climate could dampen its short-term effects.” More

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      Lawyer who prosecuted Trump hauled in front of House judiciary committee

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      The former special counsel prosecutor Jay Bratt is scheduled to appear before the Republican-led House judiciary committee next week as it attempts to find instances of politicization in the federal criminal cases brought against Donald Trump, according to three people familiar with the matter.The deposition of Bratt, who led the criminal case over Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents as a top deputy to the former special counsel Jack Smith, has been scheduled for 10am ET next Wednesday, according to a notice reviewed by the Guardian.Bratt’s appearance is the first known instance of a special counsel prosecutor being hauled before the judiciary committee since Trump took office vowing revenge and personally directing the firings of more than a dozen prosecutors who worked for Smith within days of his inauguration.It was not clear how long the deposition might last and whether Bratt planned to invoke any privileges to avoid testifying. A spokesperson for the judiciary committee did not immediately respond to questions about the deposition.Smith charged Trump in two cases: in Florida, for mishandling classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club and defying a subpoena commanding their return; and in Washington, for attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The classified documents case was dismissed before it went to trial by the US district judge Aileen Cannon, who ruled that Smith had been unlawfully appointed because he was acting with the powers of a “principal officer” at the justice department, which requires confirmation by the US Senate.The topics that House investigators have prepared for Bratt were also not clear. But the judiciary committee, led by Republican chair Jim Jordan, has long believed that the special counsel cases were the result of political animus against Trump at the justice department.In repeated letters to the former special counsel last year, House investigators demanded information from Smith about contacts between the Biden White House and the justice department about the criminal cases, including when Bratt once travelled to the White House.They also sought documents and communications about meetings between FBI and justice department officials before the decision was made to ask a magistrate judge for a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago. Bratt is widely understood to have encouraged FBI leaders to obtain a warrant.The warrant later proved to be the basis for the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice charges against Trump; the FBI retrieved 101 classified documents despite Trump’s lawyers having previously claimed that they had complied with an earlier subpoena to return all classified materials.The House judiciary committee has also taken a special interest in a fraught and disputed meeting between then-Trump legal team attorney Stanley Woodward and Bratt at justice department headquarters during the height of the classified documents case in November 2022.The Guardian previously reported on the complaint that Woodward filed in federal district court in Washington about the meeting, where he alleged Bratt discussed Woodward’s application to be a judge while trying to get the cooperation of Walt Nauta, Trump’s valet and Woodward’s client.In the filing, Woodward alleged that Bratt told him he did not think Woodward was a “Trump guy” and that “he would do the right thing” and get Nauta to testify against Trump in the classified documents case.The allegation was that Bratt had engaged in possible misconduct by suggesting Woodward’s judgeship application might be considered more favorably if he convinced his client to flip. The matter was referred to the justice department’s office of professional responsibility but it does not appear as though any action was taken.The extent of any potential impact on the case was unclear, since the meeting did not appear to have directly affected any testimony Nauta gave to prosecutors, and Bratt would not have had the ability to influence such an application, which is handled by the White House counsel’s office. More

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      Republican Agenda Hits Familiar Obstacle: State and Local Taxes

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      A small group of Republicans are threatening to torpedo President Trump’s agenda over the state and local tax deduction, long a headache for both parties.It was perhaps inevitable that the Republican effort to pass a vast fiscal package this year would, at some point, get caught up in the thicket of the state and local tax deduction.After all, the deduction, often called SALT, has long had the potential to cause a political standoff. Many G.O.P. lawmakers abhor it and, in 2017, imposed a $10,000 limit on the amount of state and local taxes Americans can write off on their federal returns. But to pass a tax bill this year, the party will need the support of a motivated clutch of Republicans who have made lifting that cap the animating promise of their political careers.Those lawmakers, who represent high-tax states like New York and New Jersey where the deduction is cherished, say they are willing to tank the package over the issue. Representative Nick LaLota, Republican of New York, can already visualize voting against the bill.“There’s a green ‘yes’ button and there’s a red ‘no’ button to press. Come time, if there’s not enough SALT in this bill, I’m pressing the red ‘no’ button,” he said. “It is a hill I am willing to stake my entire congressional career on.”Attempts by House Republican leaders to reach a deal with members like Mr. LaLota yielded little progress this week, leaving the issue unresolved as G.O.P. lawmakers prepare to release the first draft of their tax bill next week. Along with Medicaid, the health care program for the poor that Republicans have targeted for cuts, the state and local tax deduction could determine the fate of the entire G.O.P. legislative agenda.That’s because any change to the current $10,000 limit would be incredibly expensive, threatening to swamp the overall Republican budget for tax cuts. Even a relatively modest change, like doubling the cap for married couples, would cost $230 billion over a decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. More generous alterations along the lines of what New York Republicans have demanded could surpass $1 trillion.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