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    Senate Bill Would Make Deep Cuts to Medicaid, Setting Up Fight With House

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    The proposal would salvage some clean-energy tax credits and phase out others more slowly, making up some of the cost by imposing deeper cuts to Medicaid than the House-passed bill would.Senate Republicans on Monday released legislation that would cut Medicaid far more aggressively than would the House-passed bill to deliver President Trump’s domestic agenda, while also salvaging or slowing the elimination of some clean-energy tax credits, setting up a fight over their party’s marquee policy package.The measure, released by the Senate Finance Committee, contains the core provisions of that chamber’s version of the legislation that Republicans muscled through the House last month and are hoping to speed through the Senate and deliver to Mr. Trump’s desk by July 4. But its differences with that bill are substantial and are all but certain to complicate the measure’s path to enactment, casting doubt on that timetable.Most notably, the proposal would take a slower and less sweeping approach to phasing out clean-energy tax credits created during the Biden administration, and cover part of the cost of doing so by imposing deeper and more expansive cuts to Medicaid.While the House measure would add a new work requirement to Medicaid for childless adults, the Senate proposal would expand its application to the parents of older children. It also would crack down even harder than the House bill on strategies that many states have developed to tax medical providers and pay them higher prices for Medicaid services.In making the case for the bill, Republicans focused on another, far more politically popular element of the measure: its extension of tax cuts that were enacted in 2017 and are set to expire at the end of the year.A $7,500 tax credit for buyers of electric cars would phase out immediately within 180 days of the bill passing into law.Lauren Justice for The New York TimesWe 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’s ‘big, beautiful’ bill is built on falsehoods about low-income families | Brigid Schulte and Haley Swenson

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      As they race to deliver Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill, Republicans in Congress are using familiar tropes to justify massive cuts to the safety net that will leave millions of low-income children and families without healthcare or sufficient food. The programs, they argue, are rife with waste, fraud and abuse, and the people who use them just aren’t working hard enough. So work requirements are necessary to force the obviously lazy “able-bodied” people to get to work.Here’s the reality check: a majority of those receiving this aid who can work are already working. More than 70% of working-age people who receive nutrition benefits or Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income children and adults that covers one in five Americans, are already working, according to the Government Accountability Office. Those who aren’t working, research shows, are mostly ill, disabled, caring for a family member, or in school.Take the story of Ruaa Sabek. When the Covid pandemic hit in 2020, she and her husband worked at a fast-food restaurant in Philadelphia. Both their hours were cut, but they didn’t qualify for unemployment benefits because they remained employed. With two young children at home, their carefully managed budget began to crumble under rising prices and reduced incomes.What saved them wasn’t extraordinary luck or family wealth. It was the streamlined and expanded government support programs that turned what economists predicted would be a financial apocalypse into a springboard toward financial stability for some families.One analysis of Medicaid work requirements by KKF, a health policy research organization, found that most working people with low enough incomes to qualify for Medicaid typically work for small companies or in sectors, like agriculture, that don’t offer employer-sponsored health insurance, or the rates are unaffordable. In other words, their jobs don’t pay them enough to afford basics, don’t offer benefits, and they have no other choice but Medicaid.There’s no doubt that safety net programs like Medicaid could be improved. They’re rife not so much with waste, fraud and abuse, as conservative lawmakers say – though there is some – but confusing red tape; disincentives to upward mobility, because benefits cut off sharply as soon as incomes start to rise; and cumbersome, punitive rules designed to dissuade people from applying for benefits in the first place.Fueling the Republican drive to slash public benefits is a long-held belief among many conservatives that the reason most people live in poverty is because they don’t work, or don’t work hard enough, and are instead lazing about, dependent on government largesse, and robbing Americans of their hard-earned tax dollars.That view features prominently in Project 2025, the playbook for the Trump administration authored by the conservative Heritage Foundation. The foreword reads: “Low-income communities are drowning in addiction and government dependence.”And it was clearly on display in recent House congressional hearings on how to slash $1.5 trillion from the federal budget in order to pay for extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. “That little gravy train is getting ready to run out,” one Republican lawmaker said of federal safety net programs like Medicaid and food and nutrition aid for people living in poverty. “The spigot is getting ready to be turned off.” The billionaire Elon Musk, charged with cutting federal spending, has even posted a meme calling people who rely on federal spending the “Parasite Class”.Here’s another reality check: Three in 10 Americans, more than 99 million people, rely on some form of federal aid to live. That includes nearly half of all children in the United States. Another 52 million households, 41% of all US households, make too much to qualify for public safety net benefits but still not enough to survive. Nearly 40% of Americans would struggle to cover a $400 emergency expense.There is a problem with making policy decisions based on the unfounded belief that poverty is about people with bad moral character making bad choices, or on debunked racial tropes of undeserving “welfare queens.” (In fact, white people make up the largest group receiving public food and healthcare aid.) Shaping policy around false stereotypes, rather than the complex reality, prevents policymakers from working together on real solutions.In fact, if you talk to people living in poverty, what they say they want tracks nearly exactly with what Project 2025 aims to foster: “empowering individuals to achieve economic independence.”“If I earn good money, I’m not going to be looking for benefits. I’ll take care of my bills,” said Blessing Aghayedo, a licensed practical nurse in Minnesota. Instead, she earns barely more than the federal minimum wage, which has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009.Breathing roomIn the Sabeks’ case during the pandemic, expanded Medicaid and enhanced nutrition benefits helped weather health emergencies and soaring grocery prices. Rental assistance prevented them from losing their housing when they fell behind on payments. Stimulus checks and the expanded monthly child tax credit provided crucial cash that covered essential expenses like milk, diapers, children’s clothing, utility bills, and car repairs when they needed a new transmission.Perhaps most significantly, public subsidies for childcare and the Head Start program reduced their childcare expenses from an overwhelming $1,300 per month to $120, enabling Ruaa Sabek to continue working part time and enroll in a banking training program. “I feel like, ‘Oh my God, peace of mind,’” she said of the breathing room the public benefits gave her and her family. As a result, she landed a full-time position in 2023 as a personal banker that pays $45,000 annually with benefits – a dramatic improvement from her previous part-time $12-an-hour cashier job with irregular hours and no benefits.The family is now thriving without public assistance, aligning with decades of research. “You can’t actually figure out how to get to flourishing until you’re in a stable and secure situation,” said Megan Curran, director of policy at the Center on Poverty and Society Policy at Columbia.Research shows that when families have a stable foundation, they are healthier and live longer. Adults are more likely to keep working, and children are more likely to stay in school, graduate, get better jobs, and pay taxes as adults. Even babies’ brain development is improved.And the stability pays for itself: the Child Tax Credit, for instance, returns $10 for every $1 spent every year. The United States remains the only wealthy country with no national paid maternity leave, yet the return on investment for paid family leave is 20:1. For childcare, it’s 8:1.Meanwhile, rather than saving taxpayers a ton of money, as Musk promised, slashing safety-net support ignores the real problem that keeps families from economic independence: 44% of the workforce in the United States, the wealthiest country on earth as measured by GDP, is low-wage, a share far higher than in many economic peer countries.Squeezing families already struggling financially could increase the share of those already waking up hungry, homeless, or worried they soon might be. The United States already has one of the highest rates of child poverty among wealthy countries. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine estimates that high poverty rate costs as much as $1tn a year in lost adult productivity, increased crime and poor health.Childcare is keyIf lawmakers are serious about adding work requirements for safety net programs, then ensuring families have access to affordable childcare is critical. Compared with other advanced economies, the United States invests the least in childcare. That means childcare costs are second only to mortgage or rent for most families who have to pay out of pocket. And federal childcare subsidies for low-income parents come nowhere close to covering those eligible.The lack of affordable childcare sent Kiarica Schields, a college-educated hospice nurse and single parent in Georgia, spiraling into a cycle of joblessness, eviction, instability, and poverty. “Childcare. That’s my issue,” she said.Trump has said he wants families to have more children. Yet surveys show that young people aren’t having children, or having as many as they’d like, because they can’t afford childcare.Kel, a divorced parent of four, wants lawmakers to think of public benefits for families like hers as a short-term investment with long-term benefits. Kel, who asked not to use her last name, fled an abusive marriage, struggles to pay bills, though she works as much as she can, and relies on Medicaid for life-saving physical and mental health treatments for her and her children. “Lifting me and people like me up will have a cascading effect on so many lives in a positive way,” she said. “We will give back to our communities tenfold, a hundredfold. It’s worth that investment in us. We’re a really good investment.”

      Brigid Schulte is the director of New America’s work-family justice program, Better Life Lab, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, and the author of Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life and the New York Times bestselling Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play when No One has the Time. Haley Swenson is a research and writing fellow for the Better Life Lab More

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      ‘This isn’t just about Trump’: the Rev William Barber arrested after prayer-protest against Republican-led budget

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      A police officer’s sense of timing seemed to illuminate the Rev William Barber’s moral mission with startling clarity.During a prayer vigil on Monday in the Capitol Rotunda, close to the very heart of US democracy, Barber was lamenting that Congress starts each day with its own prayers to the Almighty even while preying on the poor. A Capitol police captain, John Hersch, serendipitously choose that very moment to intervene.“Your activity right now is taking the form of a demonstration,” Hersch told Barber and an accompanying gathering of clergy. “It is unlawful to demonstrate in the Capitol Rotunda. If you do not cease your demonstration at this time, there is a possibility you will be placed under arrest.”Moments later, after two further warnings, Barber and seven accomplices – standing in front of the portrait of three 19th-century women’s suffrage campaigners – were arrested as police sealed off the Rotunda.The arrests marked the climax of the latest Moral Monday protest organised by Repairers of the Breach, a group founded by Barber that’s trying to derail Donald Trump’s planned tax and spending bill on the grounds that it will slash vital health and social services to lower-income Americans.It was the third Moral Monday Barber had led at the Capitol since April – and the third time he and his cohorts had been arrested.Barber, a social activist and founding director of Yale Divinity School’s centre for public theology, had earlier led a rally outside the US supreme court attended by an estimated 2,000 protesters.As a band belted out gospel songs, demonstrators held signs with slogans such as “Slashing the safety net is moral murder” and “Don’t cut Snap for 40 million poor people.”Wearing a white robe emblazoned with the words “Jesus was a poor man,” Barber – the son of civil rights workers who campaigned for racial desegregation – enjoined demonstrators to crusade against legislation that the US president has termed his “big, beautiful bill” and deemed essential to extending his 2017 tax cuts, which are due to expire this year.The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed the bill last month by a single vote, 215 to 214. It now goes forward to the Senate against a chorus of criticism over its potential impact on the most vulnerable.Passage would result in 13.7 million people losing access to Medicaid and health insurance, Barber said.“This bill represents the worst kind of evil, which is the love of money … the root of all evil,” he said “This isn’t just about Trump. Two hundred and fifteen Republicans in the House voted for this bill – and now every senator is going to decide whether they’re going to vote for the ‘we’re all going to just die’ approach to politics.”Barber was referring to remarks by Joni Ernst, a Republican senator for Iowa, who faced criticism for telling a town hall last week that “we’re all going to die” after a constituent warned that health cuts could result in some people dying.Ernst doubled down by issuing a mock “apology” filmed in a cemetery, saying: “For those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and saviour, Jesus Christ.”Barber compared Ernst’s rhetoric with justifications used by slaveowners.“That’s the same language that slave masters used to tell slaves,” he said in an interview. “They would say: ‘Don’t fight for freedom, but believe in Jesus so that in the eternal life …’“It’s so cynical. What she said was one of the most contradictory misinterpretations of faith I’ve ever heard. It’s theological malpractice.“As Dr [Martin Luther] King once said, we’re not talking about over yonder. We’re talking about over here and people need healthcare over here. People need food over here. For her to bring up religion and bring up Jesus – if Jesus did anything, he provided everybody he met free healthcare. He never charged a leper, or a sick person, or a blind person, for their healing.”The Moral Monday protests have been adapted from similar demonstrations Barber started in North Carolina in 2013, following the election of rightwing Republican Pat McCrory as governor. The protests lasted two years, recalled Barber, resulting in thousands of arrests for civil disobedience but also spurring thousands more to register to vote.As protests against Trump ramp up, Barber is vowing to make Moral Mondays a regular feature of the landscape of dissent.“Moral Monday is not a one-time event,” he said. “If this budget passes the way it is, it will have a negative impact on this country for 10 years. It could possibly not be fully reversed for up to 50 to 60 years. This is serious business.”The protests are likely to expand to encompass a broader pro-democracy agenda. “Our role is not just the budget passing or not passing, but mobilizing poor and low-wage folk. We stand against any attacks on voting rights, on public education, [or] on healthcare,” said Barber.“Poor and low-wage people now represent 30% of the electorate in this country, and in battleground states, over 40%,” he said, making them the largest potential expansion for voting power in the country.In an acknowledgment of Moral Monday’s growing significance, this week’s rally was addressed by Ezra Levin, co-executive director of the progressive Indivisible movement, which spearheaded nationwide Hands Off protests in April that drew millions of participants.Levin praised protesters for having the courage to overcome fear.“People see us organized, and they say, wow, you are fearless,” he said. “Oh no. If you are fearless in this moment, you’re not paying attention. The authoritarians over there, they’re taking over our democracy.”But congressional Republicans, too, felt fear, he said. “They are projecting strength right now. They’re acting as if this is inevitable. They’re acting as if they have the power, you know, passing a bill through the House in the middle of night. [But] that’s not strength, pushing it through before the public can comment on it“The truth is, they’re terrified. They are terrified their voters are going to see what they’re doing. They’re terrified they’re going to lose their majority. And you know what? They should be terrified.” More

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      Republican senator criticized for mock apology after saying ‘we all are going to die’

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      Senator Joni Ernst triggered fierce criticism after making light of voters’ fears that Republican Medicaid cuts could prove fatal, telling a town hall audience “we all are going to die” and then filming a mocking response video over the weekend.The Iowa Republican, who is facing a possibly challenging re-election battle in 2026, was explaining at a Friday town hall how the Republican immigration and tax package would affect Medicaid eligibility when an audience member shouted that people could die if they lost coverage through the proposed cuts.“Well, we all are going to die,” Ernst responded as the crowd groaned. “So, for heaven’s sakes. For heaven’s sakes, folks.”Rather than clarify or apologize, Ernst channeled Trump-era defiance in her response on Saturday with an Instagram video that appeared to be filmed in a graveyard.“I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth,” she said. “So I apologize, and I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well.”She concluded by telling viewers: “For those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.”The controversy comes as Senate Republicans prepare to tackle the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which passed the House and would slash social safety net spending by more than $1tn over a decade. Congressional Budget Office projections suggest the measure could strip Medicaid coverage from 8.7 million people and leave 7.6 million more Americans uninsured.On Monday afternoon, the White House defended the legislation with a “mythbuster” statement dismissing claims that the bill would cause deaths as “one of Democrats’ most disgusting lies”.The White House argued the bill would actually “strengthen and protect the social safety net” by removing what it claimed were 1.4 million undocumented people from Medicaid rolls and implementing work requirements for able-bodied adults.“By removing at least 1.4 million illegal immigrants from the program, ending taxpayer-funded gender mutilation surgeries for minors, and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse, the One Big Beautiful Bill will ensure Medicaid better serves the American people,” the statement read.Senate Republicans acknowledge the House-passed bill will undergo significant revisions, with several Republican senators seeking changes to the Medicaid provisions. Ernst’s comments have also provided Democrats with potent ammunition for their argument that Republicans prioritize tax cuts for wealthy Americans over healthcare for ordinary citizens.Iowa Democratic state senator JD Scholten told Politico on Monday he is launching a campaign to unseat Ernst, saying the senator “disrespected” its residents.The Democratic National Committee chairperson, Ken Martin, said Ernst had “said the quiet part out loud”, arguing Republicans don’t care “whether their own constituents live or die as long as the richest few get richer”.Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut told CNN on Sunday that the Republican bill “is about life and death”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Everybody in that audience knows that they’re going to die. They would just rather die in old age, at 85 or 90, instead of dying at 40,” Murphy said. “And the reality is that, when you lose your healthcare, you are much more at risk of early death.”In Iowa, the stakes are notably high, with roughly one in five residents relying on Medicaid coverage, including half of all nursing home residents, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.Ernst attempted damage control during Friday’s town hall, insisting Republicans would “focus on those that are most vulnerable” and protect people who meet Medicaid eligibility requirements.The senator faces several primary challengers as she seeks a third term, with the Medicaid controversy potentially complicating her political positioning in a state where healthcare access remains a key voter concern. In December, she was attacked from her right flank for being a “Rino” after initially hesitating on confirming the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth.When asked for comment, her office stayed the path.“There’s only two certainties in life: death and taxes,” a spokesperson for Ernst said, “and she’s working to ease the burden of both by fighting to keep more of Iowans’ hard-earned tax dollars in their own pockets and ensuring their benefits are protected from waste, fraud and abuse.” More

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      Texas Doctor Who Filed $118 Million in Fraudulent Medical Claims Gets 10 Years in Prison

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      Jorge Zamora-Quezada falsely diagnosed patients with a chronic disease and subjected them to unnecessary treatments to help fund his lavish lifestyle, officials said.For nearly 20 years, a Texas doctor falsely diagnosed patients as having a chronic disease, administered unnecessary, toxic treatments and filed more than $118 million in fraudulent health insurance claims to fund his lavish lifestyle, which included a private jet, luxury cars and high-end properties, prosecutors said.The doctor, Jorge Zamora-Quezada, 68, of Mission, Texas, was sentenced to 10 years in prison this week, according to the Justice Department.From 2000 to 2018, he falsely diagnosed patients with rheumatoid arthritis and administered dangerous, medically unnecessary treatments to defraud federal and private health insurance companies, the Justice Department said.Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic disease that causes a person’s immune system to attack healthy tissue. Some of Mr. Zamora-Quezada’s patients were as young as 13, the Justice Department said.Mr. Zamora-Quezada’s medical license was canceled in 2021, according to Texas Medical Board records.His scheme funded what prosecutors described in court documents as his “lavish and opulent lifestyle,” with properties across the United States and Mexico, as well as a private jet and a Maserati that he used to travel between his offices in the Rio Grande Valley and San Antonio.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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      The US credit rating has been downgraded. But there’s an easy fix for our debt | Robert Reich

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      On Friday, the credit rating of the United States was downgraded. Moody’s, the ratings firm, announced that the government’s rising debt levels would grow further if the Trump Republican package of new tax cuts were enacted. This makes lending to the US riskier.Moody’s is the third of the three major credit-rating agencies to downgrade the credit rating of the United States.So-called “bond vigilantes” have already been selling the US government’s debt, as the Republican tax package moves through Congress. They’re expected to sell even more, driving long-term interest rates even higher to make up for the growing risk of holding US debt.Some rightwing Republicans in Congress are using the Moody’s downgrade to justify deeper spending cuts in Medicaid, food stamps and other social programs that lower-income Americans depend on.But, hello? There’s a far easier way to reduce the federal debt. Just end the Trump tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy and big corporations – and instead raise taxes on them.I’m old enough to remember when the US’s super-rich financed the government with their tax payments. Under Dwight Eisenhower – hardly a leftwing radical – the highest marginal tax rate was 91%. (Even after all tax credits and deductions were figured in, the super-rich paid way over half their top marginal incomes in taxes.)But since the Reagan, George W Bush and Trump 1 tax cuts, tax rates on the super-rich have plummeted.So instead of financing the government with their taxes, the super-rich have been financing the US government by lending it money.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion(You may have heard that the US’s debt is held mainly by foreigners. Wrong. More than 70% of it is held by Americans – and most of them are wealthy.)This means that an ever-increasing portion of the taxes from the rest of us are dedicated to paying ever-increasing interest payments on the debt – payments that go largely to the super-rich.So when the debt of the United States is downgraded because Trump Republicans are planning another big tax cut mainly benefiting the rich and big corporations, most Americans could end up paying in three different ways:

      They’ll pay even more interest on the growing debt – to the super-rich.

      They’ll pay higher interest rates on all other long-term debt. (As higher rates on treasury bonds waft through the economy, they raise borrowing costs on everything from mortgages to auto loans.)

      The debt crisis will give Republicans even more excuse to do what they’re always wanting to do: slash safety nets. So many Americans could lose benefits they rely on, such as Medicaid and food stamps.
      The “bond vigilantes” are not the cause of this absurdity. Neither is Moody’s or the other credit-rating agencies. Nor, for that matter, is the growing national debt.What’s the underlying cause? Just follow the money. It’s the growing political power of the super-rich and big corporations to lower their taxes at the expense of most Americans.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      This Mother’s Day, lets talk about why birth rates are really declining | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      Mother’s Day is here, and while Donald Trump may seem an unlikely celebrant of the occasion, his administration has recently floated several proposals to incentivize motherhood – or, more accurately, giving birth. There’s the $5,000 “baby bonus” for every American mother, free classes educating women on their menstrual cycles and a National Medal of Motherhood for moms who have at least six children. (Want to guess which regime also awarded such a medal?)As usual, the president has offered ridiculous solutions to a very real problem. He’s certainly right that every American should be able to afford to raise children, and that programs like social security depend on stable demographics. But of course, every other action he has taken to undermine gender equality would suggest that this sudden interest in the wellbeing of mothers is less than sincere. That’s exactly why progressives have an opening to break up what the Republican party believes to be its ideological monopoly on pro-family policies.The roots of the fertility crisis engage the bread-and-butter issues that have long been the domain of Democrats. US birthrates have hit a record low not because the nation has become “almost pathologically anti-child”, as JD Vance asserted to the New York Times. Instead, surveys have shown that would-be parents want to own a home, repay student debt and have money for childcare before starting a family. Yet the average age of a homebuyer has climbed to 56, almost double what it was 40 years ago. And 43% of young people currently carry student debt, compared with 28% in 1993. The problem isn’t lack of interest – it’s too much interest being paid on record high loans.But most of the Trump administration’s floated fixes are unoriginal swipes from the undemocratic leaders they admire. In 2017, Vladimir Putin declared a “Decade of Childhood in Russia”, an innocent name for a program that calls for everything from defending so-called family values to encouraging conjugal trysts during workplace coffee breaks to censoring “childfree propaganda”. Meanwhile, Viktor Orbán has dedicated 5% of Hungary’s GDP to pronatalist policies, which include nationalized IVF services and lifetime tax exemptions for mothers with three children. These men are carrying on an authoritarian tradition begun by the original strongman, Benito Mussolini, whose “Battle for Births” portended literal battles that decreased Europe’s population by 20 million people.That’s why those who really care about real solutions would be wise to start offering their own plans, and, in fact, some already have. What the Trump administration didn’t plagiarize from autocrats, they took from progressives, which is why “baby bonuses” sounds an awful lot like the “baby bonds” proposed in 2021 by Senators Tammy Baldwin and Cory Booker and Representative Ayanna Pressley. The legislation would put $1,000 in a savings account at birth for every American child. The Biden-era American Rescue Plan also almost doubled the child tax credit, which nearly halved the child poverty rate. Though making that expansion permanent received bipartisan support, it was ultimately killed by the centrist triangulating of Joe Manchin.Four years later, Democrats have the chance to embrace a genuinely progressive agenda that doubles as a pro-family platform. Bernie Sanders has long called for cancelling all student debt, Elizabeth Warren has campaigned for universal childcare, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the first politicians on Capitol Hill to offer three months of paid parental leave to her entire staff. The Congressional Progressive caucus has also called for a whole raft of policies that would lower the cost of living, from expanding Medicaid to investing $250bn in affordable housing. They understand that real relief will come not from handing out medals but from having the mettle to fight for working families.Still, even if Democrats manage a progressive populist revival not seen since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it probably wouldn’t be enough to lift birthrates. In social democracies like Finland and Sweden – which offer 13 months of paid parental leave and cover 90% of preschool costs, respectively – fertility remains below replacement levels.Does that indicate the problem may be more fundamental? One sociologist, Dr Karen Benjamin Guzzo, has attributed this dilemma to apprehension: “People really need to feel confident about the future.” But whether it’s 60% of young people feeling very worried about the climate crisis, or 80% of new mothers feeling lonely, or 90% of voters feeling that American politics is broken, the state of the world doesn’t seem too conducive to domestic bliss. The right’s response to this anxiety is embodied by Elon Musk, who keeps siring children with women he meets on X to create a “legion-level” brood “before the apocalypse”.To help avert said apocalypse, what should be on offer are authentically family-friendly policies that benefit parents and non-parents alike. In doing so, there’s a chance to persuade Americans that the next generation still might have a brighter future than the last. Or, at the very least, that progressives have a more compelling vision for American families than the one whose budget is about to take billions from children’s education, food and healthcare.It’s one thing to incentivize giving birth. Americans deserve leaders who will fight for those kids after they’re born.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of the Nation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has contributed to the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times More

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      Republicans Writing Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Face Risks on Medicaid

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      Representatives from swing districts face tough votes as soon as next week, when key House panels are scheduled to consider legislation that would cut popular programs to pay for President Trump’s agenda.Gabe Evans, then a Republican state lawmaker in Colorado, defeated a Democratic member of Congress in November by less than 1 percentage point — just 2,449 votes — writing his ticket to Washington.Now Mr. Evans, 39, is helping to write legislation that could cement his own ticket back home.The first-term congressman, whose swing district just north of Denver includes 151,749 Medicaid recipients, sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee. The Republican budget resolution that lays the groundwork for sweeping legislation to enact President Trump’s domestic agenda instructs the panel, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, to slash spending by $880 billion over the next decade to help pay for a large tax cut. That number is impossible to reach without substantially reducing the cost of Medicaid, the government program that provides health insurance for lower-income Americans.As Republicans in Congress struggle to coalesce around the core pieces of what Mr. Trump calls his “one big, beautiful bill,” Mr. Evans and other G.O.P. lawmakers from some of the most competitive districts in the country are facing committee votes next week to approve cuts to popular programs that could come back to haunt them politically.And Democrats are gleeful at the prospect of Republican incumbents going on the record supporting the effort.“These members of Congress won with fewer votes than the number of people in their district on Medicaid,” said Jesse Ferguson, a veteran Democratic strategist and a former spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Voting for this is like being the captain of the Titanic and deciding to intentionally hit the iceberg.”The group includes Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Republican of Iowa, who also sits on the Energy and Commerce Committee and is on even shakier ground than Mr. Evans, despite having warded off a challenger multiple times. Last year, Ms. Miller-Meeks, who represents 132,148 Medicaid recipients, won her seat by 0.2 percent, or 799 votes. Her local office in Davenport has been besieged by demonstrators concerned about spending cuts.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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      Democrats make long-shot effort to stop Trump cuts to Medicaid and Snap

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      House Democrats are making a long-shot attempt to stop Republicans from downsizing federal safety net programs including Medicaid to offset the costs of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and tax cuts.The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, on Tuesday announced that his lawmakers are circulating a petition which, should a majority of the chamber sign on to it, would force a vote on legislation preventing cuts to the Medicaid health insurance program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap).Known as a discharge petition, the effort faces long odds in the GOP-led chamber. Republican leaders have recently moved to stop such petitions, and while several Republican lawmakers have expressed concerns about some of the cuts being considered to pay for Trump’s agenda, they still generally support it.“House Republicans are determined to jam a reckless and extreme budget down the throats of the American people that will enact the largest cut to Medicaid and the largest cut to Snap in American history,” Jeffries told reporters.“All we need are four Republicans to do the right thing. Stand up for Medicaid and stand up for Snap, so they can stand up for the American people and we can stop the devastating cuts that Republicans are proposing.”Trump has called on Congress’s Republican majorities to send him what he has dubbed “one big, beautiful bill”, which is expected to extend tax cuts enacted during his first term, pay for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and potentially address other campaign promises, such as ending the taxation of tips, overtime and social security payments.The GOP plans to pass the bill using Congress’s reconciliation procedure, which requires only simple majorities in both the House and Senate.Some Republicans have blanched at the possibility of deep cuts to Medicaid and Snap. Under a budget framework that applies to the House, the former program could lose as much as $880bn, while the latter could lose $220bn, both major cuts that are expected to have far-reaching effects.Democrats are hoping to seize on their discontent to attract the small number of Republican signatures needed for their petition to succeed.“All of this poses a question for those House Republicans who like to call themselves moderate,” said Katherine Clark, the Democratic whip of the House of Representatives.“Here’s a chance for you, your friends, your fellow moderates, to show you actually care for your constituents. It only takes a handful of Republicans to stop this, just a few to protect Medicaid and save working families from losing their healthcare and going hungry.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDischarge petitions rarely gather enough signatures, and when they do, House Republican leadership moves forcefully to render them moot.Last month, a small number of Republicans signed on with Democrats to a petition that forced a vote on a measure to allow new parents to vote by proxy in the House. Republican leaders inserted language into a must-pass procedural motion to stop the petition, prompting several GOP lawmakers to join with Democrats in voting down the motion, after which leadership recessed the chamber early. The matter was later resolved by a compromise between the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and Anna Paulina Luna, the Republican representative who was leading the petition.The discharge petition to protect Snap and Medicaid comes after the Democratic National Committee last week announced plans to hold town halls and rally voters in the districts of four Republican lawmakers, with the goal of encouraging them to vote against the forthcoming reconciliation bill.Seven of 11 House committees have written up their section of the bill, which Johnson said he hopes to pass through the chamber by the 26 May Memorial Day holiday. More