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      The Thing That Could Be Trump’s Undoing

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      If there are Martian scholars examining the United States right now, they might be puzzling over the great Trump paradox.It’s that President Trump is doing immense long-term damage to the United States by undermining democratic norms, vandalizing the federal government and siding with alleged war criminals in the Kremlin, yet if support for him falls, I doubt it will have anything to do with all this. Rather, it may be … egg prices.American voters have been, to my mind, surprisingly comfortable with a felon who pardons other, violent felons and engages in reckless attacks on our rule of law and the global system that we created in 1945 and that has hugely enriched and empowered us. Trump doubled down on his, er, “cultural revolution” in his speech to Congress a few days ago, and about three-quarters of those who watched the speech approved of it to some degree (largely because those who watched were disproportionately Republican).Attacks by Democrats on Trump as undemocratic never got much traction among working-class voters; they cared less about issues at 30,000 feet and more about economic and cultural concerns at three feet. So in a strange way, what may impede Trump and preserve American democracy is not popular revulsion at the historic damage that he is doing to America but rather alarm at the myriad banal impacts on our daily lives because of Trumpian mismanagement.Trump’s tariffs, even if partly delayed, presumably will raise consumer prices and hurt the financial markets and thus our retirement savings; they will create a mess of supply chains for manufacturing goods. One gauge of what to expect: The latest estimate from the Atlanta Federal Reserve is an astonishing 2.4 percent decline in American G.D.P. in the first quarter of 2025.Americans may put up with a president calling journalists enemies of the people, may even accept a president pardoning felons who club police officers while trying to overturn an election. But historically, they’ve not been very forgiving of presidents who preside over recessions.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 administration briefing: pro-Ukraine rallies across US as Trump officials fume at Zelenskyy

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      The disastrous meeting between US president Donald Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday has catalysed a series of pro-Ukraine protests across the US.Protesters took to the streets in New York, Los Angeles and Boston, with hundreds gathering to express support for Ukraine and Zelenskyy.Hundreds of protesters also gathered in Waitsfield, Vermont, on Saturday to oppose vice-president JD Vance’s visit to the state for a ski trip with his family.The demonstration had been planned earlier in the week by the Mad River Valley chapter of Indivisible, a grassroots group, but additional protesters said they were motivated to join after watching Vance and Trump’s combative Oval Office meeting.Pro-Ukraine rallies in multiple US cities after chaotic White House meetingVideos posted on social networks showed hundreds of demonstrators gathered in New York’s Times Square, many carrying the blue-and-yellow flag of Ukraine on their backs. In Los Angeles county, a pro-Ukraine crowd rallied in front of a SpaceX’s facility, and protesters in Boston held an “emergency rally” for “fair peace” for Ukraine at Boston Common.Read the full storyTrump officials fume at Zelenskyy for disregarding advice before meetingInside the Trump White House, officials blamed Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, for the meltdown in the Oval Office on Friday, and expressed frustration that he pushed for security guarantees even though the US had made clear they wanted to negotiate that later, according to people familiar with the matter.Read the full storyFiring of watchdog agency chief illegal and would give ‘license to bully officials’, court rulesA US judge on Saturday declared Trump’s firing of the head of a federal watchdog agency illegal in an early test of the scope of presidential power likely to be decided at the US supreme court.Read the full storyKennedy Jr backtracks and says US measles outbreak is now a ‘top priority’Two days after initially downplaying the outbreak as “not unusual”, the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, on Friday said he recognized the serious impact of the ongoing measles epidemic in Texas – in which a child died recently – and that the government was providing resources, including protective vaccines.Read the full storyAndrew Cuomo announces run for mayor of New York CityFormer New York state governor Andrew Cuomo announced on Saturday he would run for New York City mayor, an attempt to come back from a sexual harassment scandal that forced him to resign more than three years earlier.Read the full storyEmail shows Musk ally is moving to close office behind free tax-filing program at IRSAn Elon Musk ally installed in the US government said in a late-night email going into Saturday that the office behind a popular free online tax-filing option would be shuttered – and its employees would be let go.Read the full storyMedicaid recipients fear ‘buzzsaw cuts’ for Trump’s agendaRepublicans are considering a rollback of the federal social safety net, particularly Medicaid, which has nearly 80 million enrollees in all 50 states. The budget plan proposes an $880bn reduction in funding for the insurance over the next decade, an amount experts warn would hollow out the program.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Civil rights attorneys sued the Trump administration on Saturday to prevent it from transferring 10 undocumented immigrants detained in the US to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

      A FedEx cargo airplane caught on fire after striking a bird shortly after the plane’s departure from Newark, New Jersey, on Saturday morning, according to officials.

      A decision by regulators to extend the life of two of the oldest reactors in the US decades beyond their original permits has elevated the risk of a nuclear disaster in heavily populated south Florida, environmental groups are warning.

      Singer Angie Stone, known for her hit Wish I Didn’t Miss You, has died in a car crash at the age of 63. More

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      Medicaid recipients fear ‘buzzsaw cuts’ for Trump’s agenda: ‘We’re not going to be alive forever’

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      At the age of 62, Marya Parral knows that her, and her husband’s, years of being able to care for their two developmentally disabled sons are numbered, and so they have done everything they can to ensure their children can continue to live independently.For their oldest, Ian, that’s meant placing him in a program on an organic farm that caters to people diagnosed with autism. For Joey, their youngest, who has both autism and Down syndrome, Parral has found a caregiver who can help him deliver newspapers and run errands around their community of Ocean City, New Jersey.Parral said none of this would be affordable without help from Medicaid, the federal government’s insurance program for poor and disabled Americans. But this week, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives approved a budget framework that would make deep cuts to the program, and Parral worries her sons will lose what she has worked so hard to build.“We’re not going to be alive forever. We’re trying to set up a life for them, but that entire life that we’re working so hard to set up for them is dependent on Medicaid,” Parral said. “So it’s really devastating to think about cuts.”Producing a budget is the first step in the Republican-controlled Congress’s drive to enact legislation that will pay for Donald Trump’s priorities. House lawmakers will now spend weeks working to write and pass a bill that is expected to approve $4.5tn in extended tax cuts, as well as funding for Trump’s plan for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.To pay for it, Republicans are considering a rollback of the federal social safety net, particularly Medicaid, which has nearly 80 million enrollees in all 50 states. The budget plan proposes an $880bn reduction in funding for the insurance over the next 10 years, an amount that experts warn would hollow out the program and have ripple effects across the entire American healthcare system.Megan Cole Brahim, a professor at Boston University School of Public Health and an expert on Medicaid, said the cut was the largest ever proposed, and if enacted would “have far-reaching impacts not just for those who rely on Medicaid, but for entire communities and economies”.“These changes mean millions of Americans – including the low-income, elderly, persons with disabilities, children – will lose health insurance coverage,” she said. “Others may see significant reductions in benefits or limited access to care. The impact on hospitals and health systems will be significant, particularly for safety-net and rural hospitals, which are already on the brink of closure. Patient revenues will fall, uncompensated care will rise. There will be staff layoffs and site closures.”John Driscoll, a healthcare executive and chair of the board of UConn Health in Connecticut, said: “The scale of the buzzsaw cuts to Medicaid would undermine every hospital’s ability to actually support its mission to care for the community, and would be a dangerous cut to the nursing-home infrastructure in the country.”Republican leaders backed the cuts to Medicaid, as well as to similar programs such as one that helps poor Americans afford food, as a way to mollify lawmakers in their party who want the US’s large budget deficit addressed. Still, not everyone is pleased. As the budget was being debated, eight Republican representatives, some of whom Democrats are keen to unseat in next year’s midterm elections, wrote to the House speaker, Mike Johnson, warning that their districts’ large Hispanic populations would be harmed.“Slashing Medicaid would have serious consequences, particularly in rural and predominantly Hispanic communities where hospitals and nursing homes are already struggling to keep their doors open,” they said.All eight ultimately voted for the resolution, but the dissent may be a warning sign for the budget’s prospects of enactment, particularly in the House, where the GOP has a mere three-seat majority. It also remains unclear whether Republicans will try to pass all of Trump’s priorities in one bill, or split them into two.The GOP has made clear they want to fully pay for the extension of Trump’s tax cuts, and Elyssa Schmier, vice-president of government relations for advocacy group MomsRising, said Medicaid and social safety programs are the party’s prime targets for cost savings.“If you’re not going to go after, say, the Pentagon budget, if they’re only going to go to some of these big mandatory spending programs, there’s only so many places that Republicans feel that they can go,” she said.In the days since the budget’s approval, Johnson and Trump have scrambled to downplay the possibility of slashing Medicaid, insisting they intend only to root out “fraud, waste and abuse.”“The president said over and over and over: ‘We’re not going to touch social security, Medicare or Medicaid.’ We’ve made the same commitment,” Johnson told CNN in an interview.Democrats have little leverage to stop the budget, which can be passed with simple majorities in both chambers. But the Democratic senator Ruben Gallego warned that gutting the social safety net to extend tax cuts that have mostly benefited the rich will alienate voters who sided with the GOP last November.“It will be on Donald Trump and Republicans, the fact that he’s going to side with the ultra-rich versus the working poor,” said Gallego, who won election to his seat in Arizona even as Trump captured the state’s electoral votes. “Families that are barely making a living, scratching a living, they’re now going to get kicked off healthcare to give tax cuts to the mega-rich.”The proposed cut to Medicaid would remove billions of dollars in funding from congressional districts nationwide that are represented by lawmakers from both parties, according to an analysis by the liberal Center for American Progress.In California’s San Joaquin valley, the Democratic representative Jim Costa’s district would lose the third-largest amount of funding, according to the data, and Medicaid coverage would be imperiled for more than 450,000 residents.“This reckless budget prioritizes the wealthy while devastating those who need help the most,” Costa said. “I voted no because this resolution is bad for our valley and a threat to the wellbeing of the people I represent.” More

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      in Elections

      Map: Where Medicaid Enrollment in the U.S. Is the Highest

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      <!–> [–><!–> –><!–> [–><!–>In eastern Louisiana, where Representative Julia Letlow, a Republican, was elected in 2024 by a wide margin, about one-third of the population is enrolled in the program.–><!–> –> <!–> [–> <!–> ]–> <!–> –><!–> [–><!–>And in California’s Central Valley, Republicans control a district where two-thirds of the population is on Medicaid, one […] More

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      What Can House Republicans Cut Instead of Medicaid? Not Much.

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      The math of the G.O.P.’s goals makes the move almost unavoidable.The House passed a budget resolution Tuesday night after the speaker, Mike Johnson, persuaded several Republican lawmakers, including those who have expressed reservations about possible Medicaid cuts, to support the bill.In theory, the budget, which kicks off the process of passing an extension of tax cuts enacted in 2017 and up to $2 trillion in spending cuts meant to partly offset them, could become law without significant cuts to Medicaid. But it won’t be easy. More

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      House Republicans to vote on spending deal that could slash Medicaid funding

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      House Republicans are planning to vote on Tuesday on a spending blueprint central to Donald Trump’s agenda, but the package faces potential derailment over nearly $1tn in Medicaid cuts that could fracture their slim majority.The fiscal year 2025 proposal includes approximately $4.5tn in tax cuts alongside increased spending for defense and border security. To offset these costs, the plan tasks congressional committees with finding about $2tn in spending reductions over the next decade.But some lawmakers are warning that the budget could include an estimated $800bn in potential cuts from Medicaid, a federal program providing healthcare coverage to more than 72 million Americans. Though the resolution doesn’t explicitly target Medicaid, skeptical lawmakers warn there are few alternatives to achieve the $880bn in cuts assigned to the energy and commerce committee.If the budget measure doesn’t pass by the 14 March deadline, the government faces a shutdown – and Democrats are committed to not voting it through.“Let me be clear, House Democrats will not provide a single vote to this reckless Republican budget,” said the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, from the steps of the US Capitol on Tuesday surrounded by Democratic lawmakers and advocates protesting the vote. “Not one, not one, not one.”With Democrats united in opposition, House speaker Mike Johnson’s slim Republican majority cannot afford more than one defection. Several moderate Republicans from vulnerable districts have expressed concerns, particularly those with constituents heavily reliant on Medicaid.Eight House Republicans, including the California representative David Valadao and the New York representative Nicole Malliotakis, warned in a letter to Johnson last week that “slashing Medicaid would have serious consequences, particularly in rural and predominantly Hispanic communities”.The Nebraska Republican Don Bacon, representing a district that backed Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate in November, has demanded leadership to prove the proposal “won’t overly cut Medicaid”.Opposition to the House budget resolution has been steadily building over the last few weeks. During last week’s recess, constituent anger over Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid and other social safety net programs as well as Elon Musk’s efforts to dismantle the federal government boiled over at town halls and congressional offices across the country.At an earlier Capitol Hill rally on Tuesday, Senator Chris Murphy assailed the Republican budget bill as the “most massive transfer of wealth and resources from poor people and the middle class to the billionaires and corporations in the history of this country”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe continued: “You’re talking about $880bn of cuts to Medicaid … That means that sick kids die in this country. That means that hospitals in depressed communities and rural communities close their doors, right? That means that drug and addiction treatment centers disappear all across this country.”The vote comes after the Senate passed its own budget bill last week – a less contentious one that Trump does not support as much as the House’s. House leadership must now navigate competing demands within their caucus: some members want deeper tax cuts while others seek steeper spending reductions or protection for social programs.“There may be more than one [defector], but we’ll get there,” Johnson said on Monday. “We’re going to get everybody there. This is a prayer request. Just pray this through for us because it is very high stakes, and everybody knows that.” More

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      Republicans take aim at subsidies that help tens of millions of women

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      As they prepare to take control of the White House and Congress next month, conservatives are eyeing cutbacks to federal programs that help tens of millions of women pay for healthcare, food, housing and transportation.Slashing or overhauling social support programs, long a goal of Republican lawmakers, could be catastrophic for women experiencing poverty. Supporters contend the social safety-net programs are already grossly underfunded.“With this new administration that is coming in … I really am concerned about the lives of women. We are seeing so many policies, so many budget cuts,” said Christian Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women.Republicans say they want to keep campaign promises to cut government spending, and three major programs make easy targets: Medicaid, the joint state/federal health insurance program for people with lower incomes; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a cash-allowance program that replaced welfare; and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), widely known as food stamps.While conservatives frame cuts as making government more efficient and even restoring freedom, advocates for and experts on families with little or no income say reducing these programs will throw more people – especially women and children – further into poverty.“It is going to fall heavily on women,” said Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a non-profit research organization.Predicting precisely what Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration will do is difficult. Congressional leaders are close-mouthed about negotiations, and the president-elect has not finished putting together his advisory team. None of the spokespeople contacted for this story returned calls or e-mails.But organizations known to advise top leaders in Congress and the previous Trump administration have laid out fairly detailed roadmaps.Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the incoming administration, denies its proposed changes will harm women, saying instead that marriage and “family values” will improve their economic situations. “Marriage, healthy family formation, and delaying sex to prevent pregnancy are virtually ignored in terms of priorities, yet these goals can reverse the cycle of poverty in meaningful ways,” reads the section on proposed changes to TANF and Snap.Numerous other groups that have studied the problem say forcing or even encouraging marriage will not make poverty disappear. And a recent study by a team at the University of South Carolina found that when state laws make it harder for pregnant women to get divorced, they’re more likely to be killed by their partners.Trump has promised not to attack the two most expensive and popular government programs: social security and Medicare. But he and Congress are up against a deadline to extend his 2017 tax reforms, which raised the federal deficit. They’ll have to cut something, and social spending programs, especially the $805bn Medicaid program, are low-hanging fruit for conservatives.Trump repeatedly tried to slash Snap during his last tenure in office: his 2021 budget proposal would have cut the program by more than $180bn – nearly 30% – over 10 years. Conservatives in Congress have continued these efforts and, with majorities in the House and Senate, they may be able to get them through next year.The Republican Study Committee, whose members include about three-quarters of the House Republican caucus, recommends more work requirements for Snap and TANF.“SNAP and our welfare system should embrace that work conveys dignity and self-sustainment and encourage individuals to find gainful employment, not reward them for staying at home,” their plan, released in March, reads.A large body of research questions whether widening work requirements does anything other than force people off benefits without helping them find employment. “I think there is a misperception that people in need of help are not working,” said Mei Powers, chief development and communications officer at Martha’s Table, a non-profit aid organization in Washington DC. “People are a paycheck, a crisis, a broken-down car away from needing services.”Snap currently helps 41 million people buy groceries and other necessities every month. Women accounted for more than 55% of people under 65 receiving Snap benefits in 2022, according to the National Women’s Law Center, a gender justice advocacy group. About one-third of them were women of color, the NWLC said.Among other things, cutting these programs will trap women in dangerous situations, the NWLC said: “SNAP helps survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault establish basic economic security.”TANF, which provides cash assistance, overwhelmingly benefits women. In 2022, 370,000 TANF adult recipients were female and 69,000 were male, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.Perhaps Medicaid is the most tempting target for conservatives because they can use it to undermine the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The GOP has been gunning for the ACA since it was signed into law without a single Republican vote in 2010.The federal government shares the cost of Medicaid with states. The ACA aimed to make Medicaid cover more people by offering to pay for virtually all the extra costs. Many Republican-led states resisted for years, but as of November, all but 10 states had expanded coverage to an extra 21 million people, or about a quarter of all Medicaid recipients.Medicaid pays for more than 40% of births in the US, plus it covers new mothers for post-pregnancy-related issues for 60 days. It also pays for medical care for 60% of all nursing home residents, more than 70% of whom are women.According to the health research organization KFF, expanding Medicaid helped improve care for women before and during pregnancy and after they gave birth.But most Republicans in Congress have never approved of this federal spending. Proposed cuts to Medicaid funding, which would save hundreds of billions of dollars, are laid out by the Paragon Health Institute, a conservative health thinktank headed by Brian Blase, a top health adviser to the first Trump administration.Experts predict states would be unable or unwilling to make up the difference. “Facing such drastic reductions in federal Medicaid funding, states will have no choice but to institute truly draconian cuts to eligibility, benefits and provider reimbursement rates,” Edwin Park, research professor at Georgetown University, wrote in an analysis.That would mean women, children, older adults and people with disabilities would lose coverage as facilities closed and providers stopped seeing patients.The effects, says the National Organization for Women, “will be widespread, devastating, and long-lasting”.This story is published in partnership with the Fuller Project, a non-profit newsroom dedicated to the coverage of women’s issues around the world. 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      Who is Mehmet Oz, Trump’s pick to lead Medicare and Medicaid?

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      Donald Trump has chosen Mehmet Oz, best known for starring in his eponymous daytime talkshow for more than a decade and leaning heavily into Trumpism during his failed 2022 run for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The cardiothoracic surgeon, who faced immense backlash from the medical and scientific communities for pushing misinformation at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, will oversee the agency that operates on a $2.6tn annual budget and provides healthcare to more than 100 million people.“I am honored to be nominated by [Donald Trump] to lead CMS,” Oz posted on X on Tuesday. “I look forward to serving my country to Make America Healthy Again under the leadership of HHS Secretary [Robert F Kennedy Jr].”In the announcement of Oz’s selection, Trump said that Oz will “make America healthy again” and described him as “an eminent Physician, Heart Surgeon, Inventor, and World-Class Communicator, who has been at the forefront of healthy living for decades”.Oz has been on US television screens for nearly 20 years, first appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show in 2004. In that time, he’s talked to his audience about losing weight with fad diets and what it takes to have healthy poops and, toward the end of his run, touting hydroxychloroquine as a potential remedy for Covid-19.Here’s what to know about the New York University professor and surgeon turned television show host, and now Trump appointee.Who is Mehmet Oz?Oz, 64, is a Turkish American Ohio native best known for The Dr Oz Show, which ran from 2009 to 2022. His father was a surgeon in Turkey, and after Oz graduated high school in Delaware, he was admitted into Harvard. He also served in the Turkish military in order to maintain dual citizenship, the Associated Press reports.Before entering US homes via daytime TV, he had more than 20 years of experience as a cardiothoracic surgeon at Presbyterian-Columbia Medical Center in New York. He was also a professor at Columbia University’s medical school.His bona fides at the prestigious institutions earned him quick credibility with viewers, and his popularity garnered him nine Daytime Emmy awards for outstanding informative talkshow and host.Though his show ended in 2022, Oz maintains a YouTube channel filled with old episodes of his shows where he interviews guests like Penn Jillette about his weight loss and Robert F Kennedy Jr about his 2014 book about the presence of mercury in vaccines. He also has an Instagram account that boasts more than a million followers, where Oz shares photos of his family and sells products from iHerb, an online health and wellness brand for which he is global adviser.Oz’s questionable medical advice and time in politicsThroughout his TV tenure, Oz dabbled in the hallmarks of weight loss culture like detoxes, cleanses and diets that promised rapid weight loss. He also faced a grilling by senators in 2014 over claims he made and alleged false advertising on supplements he promoted on his show. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Oz regurgitated misinformation that came from the fringes of the right and medical communities.These comments continued when he threw his hat into the race to represent Pennsylvania in the US Senate in 2022 against John Fetterman. At the time, the Guardian wrote:“Oz was dogged by questions about his actual connection to the state during the campaign. Oz lived in New Jersey for decades before he moved to Pennsylvania in October 2020, into a home owned by his wife’s family. He announced his bid to be the state’s US senator just months later.”Following Fetterman’s stroke, during which he said he “​​almost died”, the Oz campaign launched unsavory attacks against him, with one Oz aide, Rachel Tripp, claiming Fetterman might not have had a stroke if he “had ever eaten a vegetable in his life”.Oz ultimately lost to Fetterman, who garnered 51% of the vote compared with Oz’s 46%.What will Oz run?Oz will succeed Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the current administrator of CMS, to lead programs including Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people aged 65 or older and disabled people, and Medicaid, the state-based health insurance program for lower-income people, which is jointly funded by states and the federal government. The two programs provide health insurance for more than 140 million Americans.Also in the CMS fold are the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip) and the Health Insurance Marketplace, which was created by the Affordable Care Act under Barack Obama in 2010.Trump’s economic advisers and congressional Republicans are currently discussing possible cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and other government welfare programs to cover the costs of extending the president-elect’s multitrillion-dollar 2017 tax cut. More