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      Pete Hegseth suggests he would disobey court ruling against deploying military in LA

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      The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, suggested on Wednesday that he would not obey a federal court ruling against the deployments of national guard troops and US marines to Los Angeles, the latest example of the Trump administration’s willingness to ignore judges it disagrees with.The comments before the Senate armed services committee come as Donald Trump faces dozen of lawsuits over his policies, which his administration has responded to by avoiding compliance with orders it dislikes. In response, Democrats have claimed that Trump is sending the country into a constitutional crisis.California has sued over Trump’s deployment of national guard troops to Los Angeles, and, last week, a federal judge ruled that control of soldiers should return to California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom. An appeals court stayed that ruling and, in arguments on Tuesday, sounded ready to keep the soldiers under Donald Trump’s authority.“I don’t believe district courts should be determining national security policy. When it goes to the supreme court, we’ll see,” Hegseth told the Democratic senator Mazie Hirono. Facing similar questions from another Democrat, Elizabeth Warren, he said: “If the supreme court rules on a topic, we will abide by that.”Hegseth was confirmed to lead the Pentagon after three Republican senators and all Democrats voted against his appointment, creating a tie vote on a cabinet nomination for only the second time in history. The tie was broken by the vice-president, JD Vance.There were few hints of dissatisfaction among GOP senators at the hearing, which was intended to focus on the Pentagon’s budgetary needs for the forthcoming fiscal year, but Democrats used it to press for more details on the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, as well as the turmoil that has plagued Hegseth’s top aides and the potential for the United States to join Israel’s attack on Iran.The Democratic senator Elissa Slotkin asked whether troops deployed to southern California were allowed to arrest protesters or shoot them in the legs, as Trump is said to have attempted to order during his first term.“If necessary, in their own self-defense, they could temporarily detain and hand over to [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. But there’s no arresting going on,” Hegseth said. On Friday, marines temporarily took into custody a US citizen at a federal building in Los Angeles.The secretary laughed when asked whether troops could shoot protesters, before telling Slotkin: “Senator, I’d be careful what you read in books and believing in, except for the Bible.”An exasperated Slotkin replied: “Oh my God.”Trump has publicly mulled the possibility that the United States might strike Iran. Slotkin asked if the Pentagon had plans for what the US military would do after toppling its government.“We have plans for everything,” Hegseth said, prompting the committee’s Republican chair, Roger Wicker, to note that the secretary was scheduled to answer further questions in a behind-closed-doors session later that afternoon.In addition to an aggressive purge of diversity and equity policies from the military, Hegseth has also ordered that military bases that were renamed under Joe Biden because they honored figures in the Confederacy to revert to their previous names – but officially honoring various US soldiers with the same name.The Virginia senator Tim Kaine said that in his state, several bases had been renamed under Biden in honor of accomplished veterans, and their families were never officially told that the names would be changed back.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You didn’t call any of the families, and I’ve spoken with the families, and the families were called by the press. That’s how they learned about this. They learned about it from the press,” Kaine said,He asked Hegseth to pause the renaming of these bases, which the secretary declined to do, instead saying: “We’ll find ways to recognize them.”Democrats also criticized Hegseth for turmoil in the ranks of his top aides, as well as his decision to name as the Pentagon’s press secretary Kingsley Wilson, who has repeatedly shared on social media an antisemitic conspiracy theory.The Pentagon head had a sharp exchange with the Democratic senator Jacky Rosen, who asked whether he would fire Wilson. “I’ve worked directly with her. She does a fantastic job, and … any suggestion that I or her or others are party to antisemitism is a mischaracterization.”“You are not a serious person,” the Nevada lawmaker replied. “You are not serious about rooting out, fighting antisemitism within the ranks of our DOD. It’s despicable. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”Rosen then asked if the far-right activist Laura Loomer was involved in the firing of a top national security staffer. Hegseth demurred, saying the decision was his to make, but the senator continued to press, even as the committee chair brought down his gavel to signal that she had run out of time for questions.“I believe your time is up, senator,” Hegseth said. A furious Rosen responded: “It is not up to you to tell me when my time is up. And I am going to say, Mr Secretary, you’re either feckless or complicit. You’re not in control of your department.” More

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      Tina Smith on confronting colleague over his posts: ‘Joking about an assassin killing people is beyond the pale’

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      The Minnesota senator Tina Smith said she was so “appalled” by her colleague Mike Lee’s social media posts spreading misinformation about the assassination of state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband on Saturday that “I felt that he needed to hear directly from me.”The Democratic senator told the Guardian that she lost a friend and colleague this weekend when a shooter killed Hortman and her husband, Mark. Lee, a Republican senator from Utah, posted erroneously that the assassin was a “Marxist” and blamed the state’s governor for the killings. Although he deleted the posts on Tuesday, he has not apologized.Lee needed to know he had disrespected not only Hortman, but all those who grieved her, Smith said. Rather than take it up with him online and get into a back-and-forth social media spat, she told him to his face.Photos of Smith confronting Lee went viral, perhaps because person-to-person accountability is rare in Washington. Smith, who is retiring from the Senate after finishing her current term, previously grabbed headlines for colorfully calling out Elon Musk and Donald Trump.She knew if she talked to Lee in person, he and others watching would be reminded that his words had an impact on real people.“I’ve gotten a flow of messages from people in Minnesota and around the country that have said, I’m so glad you said that to him, because that’s what I wanted to say to him,” she said.She said she had not talked to Lee much in the past. She wasn’t aggressive or angry when she approached him, but said they needed to have a conversation. She told him he had posted photos of the man who killed her friend, potentially seconds before he started shooting.“I want you to know how painful that was for me and for thousands and thousands of Minnesotans, and you have a responsibility to think about the impact of your words,” she recounted telling Lee.Lee’s post about Walz has more than 15m views, while the one about Marxism has more than 8m. He needed to take responsibility for that, she said.Smith’s deputy chief of staff, Ed Shelleby, also reached out to Lee, sending an email to Lee’s office, which was obtained by media, that questioned how the senator could post such things after a tragedy. Shelleby wrote that he knew Hortman, as did many in Smith’s office, and he wanted Lee to know that his posts caused “additional pain” on an “unspeakably horrific weekend”.“You exploited the murder of a lifetime public servant and her husband to post some sick burns about Democrats,” Shelleby wrote. “Did you see this as an excellent opportunity to get likes and retweet[s]? Have you absolutely no conscience? No decency?”He wrote that he prayed Lee would not go through anything like this, but that if he did, he would find himself “on the receiving end of the kind of grace and compassion that Senator Mike Lee could not muster”.The suspect had a hit list of Democrats and abortion providers, and Smith’s name was among them. Lee didn’t say anything to her about that element. He didn’t really say much of anything, she said. He seemed surprised to be confronted for something he said on social media, where his feed is full of conspiracy theories.When reporters asked Lee about his conversation with Smith and about his social media posts, he refused to answer questions. Lee’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.“I mean, literally joking about an assassin killing people is beyond the pale,” Smith said. “I think he listened to what I had to say. He didn’t have much to say about it, and he certainly didn’t do anything that I would have hoped he would have done. For example, he should apologize. He should take those posts down. He should clarify that the man who did the shooting is not a Marxist, that that is not what was happening here, and he hasn’t done any of those things.”Smith described Hortman as both a skilled lawmaker and a person who found joy in the job. She always had a glint in her eye, a smile on her face, Smith said. She was ready to work, but appreciated the absurdity and hilarity that can come alongside that work. She wasn’t afraid to call people out, but she was never cruel. “She, regardless of which side of the political line you lived on, she was so respected,” Smith said.Local Republican elected officials in Minnesota have pushed back on Lee’s posts, too. Harry Niska, the Republican floor leader in the Minnesota house and a colleague of Hortman’s, wrote on X that Lee’s post was “a very bad take on so many levels” and said Lee should reconsider it. “Sen. Lee’s post was classless, baseless, and counterproductive,” Niska said in another post.Smith said the responses from state Republican officials have given her hope. “They are showing the respect and not spreading misinformation about what happened here, which is what’s happening in Washington.” More

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      Trump is steamrolling congressional Republicans. What’s in it for them? | David Kirp

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      Like soldiers in a well-disciplined army, Republican members of US Congress do whatever Commander Donald Trump demands. While the foot soldiers may occasionally grumble, they quickly fall in line when Trump intervenes.Republican representatives go through contortions to satisfy the bully in the White House: we hated deficits, goes the party orthodoxy, but now we vote for adding trillions to the deficit; we supported Ukraine, but now we cozy up to the Russians; we scrutinized cabinet nominees, but now we give our “advice and consent” to a cabinet of knaves and charlatans.In being supremely supine, these legislators are behaving as if they were members of parliament, taking their cues from the prime minister. Yet as every schoolchild knows, “balance of powers” was the framers’ watchword, with the three branches of government each held in check by the others.Apologies for this civics lesson, but it’s a reminder that this is not the world we now live in. The constitution is merely an inconvenience for Trump, who says that he “doesn’t know” whether he must abide by its provisions.“I run the country and the world,” the president said, in an Atlantic interview. He regards Congress’s role as merely rubber-stamping his decisions – its members have no business thinking for themselves. Case in point: Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”The final version of that 1,037-page measure was pushed through the House of Representatives in less than a day. Legislators had precious little time to understand, let alone debate, its provisions because Trump and his sock-puppet, Mike Johnson, the House speaker, don’t give a fig about their opinions. To adapt a line from the comedian Rodney Dangerfield: “They don’t get no respect.”Under these circumstances, even the brightest bulb would have missed a provision here or there. It’s no wonder that some Republicans were embarrassed by their ignorance of the specifics of the legislation.Consider the case of Mike Flood, a Republican backbencher from Nebraska. “I am not going to hide the truth – this provision was unknown to me when I voted for that,” Flood said during a town meeting, responding to questions about a provision that makes it easier for the federal government to defy court orders. He would not have voted for the bill, Flood said, if he had realized what was in it.Marjorie Taylor Greene, the walking conspiracist from Georgia, was also flummoxed. “Full transparency, I did not know about this section, blocking states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade. I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.”Why do the Republican members of Congress stand for such treatment? Why don’t they speak up or quit?Imagine how Republican lawmakers would respond under the influence of truth serum. “Should Congress have a say in setting tariffs?” they might be asked. “Is it OK to lift immigrants off the streets and ship them to a hellhole in El Salvador?” “Should Elon Musk & Co have been allowed to rampage through the federal government?” “How about Trump intimidating federal judges who dare to challenge his actions?”Some true believers in the Republican party would doubtlessly follow their Pied Piper, even if it meant leaping over a cliff, but many lawmakers would be aghast. How do they reconcile their beliefs and their behavior?Ethicists argue that government officials have a duty to speak out against moral rot, even if there’s a price to pay. Consider the fate of the former congressman Adam Kinzinger, who voted to impeach Trump and, facing likely defeat, opted not to run again, or Liz Cheney, who lost her House seat because she spoke truth to power. Those principled decisions are as rare as hens’ teeth.My colleagues are too scared to express their opinions, said the Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, who is often the lone Republican voice of dissent in the upper chamber. “You’ve got everyone zip-lipped. Not saying a word, because they’re afraid they’re going to be taken down, they’re going to be primaried, they’re going to be given names in the media. You know what, we cannot be cowed into not speaking up.”Resigning on the grounds of principle is almost unheard of, and it’s easy enough to understand why. If you’re a Republican legislator, you have a nice life, with a decent salary, a generous healthcare plan and a solid pension. Constituents fawn over you. Little League all-stars and scout troops pay you a visit, hanging on to your every word. You get VIP treatment at Butterworth’s, the “in” restaurant for the Trump crowd.Maybe you justify your decision to stay on the job by imagining that you’re doing something of value. Perhaps you contend that there’s no point in your resigning because whoever replaced you would behave in the same way. But those rationales cannot stand the light of day.The lawmakers who privately blanch at Trump’s authoritarian impulses presumably entered politics with the idea of doing good. They might ask themselves whether – by following the herd and being dissed by the White House – they are still doing good. If their honest answer is “no,” the only justification for their remaining in office are the creature comforts and the intangible perk of obeisance. Should that suffice?Such arguments would have carried weight during the Watergate era, when ethics in public life were taken seriously. In the present political climate, on the other hand, even to remind lawmakers that speaking out or resigning may be the morally right course of action risks being dismissed as terminally naive. But history will surely be unkind to the politicians who put ambition over principle and paved the way to autocracy. How will they justify their actions – or inaction – in this crucible year?

      David Kirp is professor emeritus at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley More

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      House votes to claw back $9.4bn in spending including from NPR and PBS

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      The House narrowly voted on Thursday to cut about $9.4bn in spending already approved by Congress as Donald Trump’s administration looks to follow through on work by the so-called “department of government efficiency” when it was overseen by Elon Musk.The package targets foreign aid programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides money for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, as well as thousands of public radio and television stations around the country. The vote was 214-212.Republicans are characterizing the spending as wasteful and unnecessary, but Democrats say the rescissions are hurting the United States’ standing in the world and will lead to needless deaths.“Cruelty is the point,” the Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, said of the proposed spending cuts.The Trump administration is employing a tool rarely used in recent years that allows the president to transmit a request to Congress to cancel previously appropriated funds. That triggers a 45-day clock in which the funds are frozen pending congressional action. If Congress fails to act within that period, then the spending stands.“This rescissions package sends $9.4bn back to the US Treasury,” said Representative Lisa McClain, House Republican conference chair. “That’s $9.4bn of savings that taxpayers won’t see wasted. It’s their money.”The benefit for the administration of a formal rescissions request is that passage requires only a simple majority in the 100-member Senate instead of the 60 votes usually required to get spending bills through that chamber. So, if they stay united, Republicans will be able to pass the measure without any Democratic votes.The Senate majority leader, John Thune, said the Senate would probably not take the bill up until July and after it has dealt with Trump’s big tax and immigration bill. He also said it was possible the Senate could tweak the bill.The administration is likening the first rescissions package to a test case and says more could be on the way if Congress goes along.Republicans, sensitive to concerns that Trump’s sweeping tax and immigration bill would increase future federal deficits, are anxious to demonstrate spending discipline, though the cuts in the package amount to just a sliver of the spending approved by Congress each year. They are betting the cuts prove popular with constituents who align with Trump’s “America first” ideology as well as those who view NPR and PBS as having a liberal bias.In all, the package contains 21 proposed rescissions. Approval would claw back about $900m from $10bn that Congress has approved for global health programs. That includes canceling $500m for activities related to infectious diseases and child and maternal health and another $400m to address the global HIV epidemic.The Trump administration is also looking to cancel $800m, or a quarter of the amount Congress approved, for a program that provides emergency shelter, water and sanitation, and family reunification for those forced to flee their own country.About 45% of the savings sought by the White House would come from two programs designed to boost the economies, democratic institutions and civil societies in developing countries.The Republican president has also asked lawmakers to rescind nearly $1.1bn from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which represents the full amount it is slated to receive during the next two budget years. About two-thirds of the money gets distributed to more than 1,500 locally owned public radio and television stations. Nearly half of those stations serve rural areas of the country.The association representing local public television stations warns that many of them would be forced to close if the Republican measure passes. More

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      The Trump-Musk feud exposes America’s wealth-hoarding crisis | Gabriel Zucman

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      As the world watches Donald Trump and Elon Musk publicly fight over the sweeping legislation moving through Congress, we should not let the drama distract us. There is something deeper afoot: unprecedented wealth concentration – and the unbridled power that comes with such wealth – has distorted our democracy and is driving societal and economic tensions.Musk, the world’s richest man, wields power no one person should have. He has used this power to elect candidates that will enact policies to protect his interests and he even bought his way into government. While at the helm of Doge, Musk dramatically reshaped the government in ways that benefit him – for instance, slashing regulatory agencies investigating his businesses – and hollowed out spending to make way for tax cuts that would enrich him.Musk is just one example of the ways in which unchecked concentration of wealth is eroding US democracy and economic equality. Just 800 families in the US are collectively worth almost $7tn – a record-breaking figure that exceeds the wealth of the bottom half of the US combined. While most of us earn money through labor, these ultra-wealthy individuals let the tax code and their investments do the work for them. Under the current federal income tax system, over half of the real-world income available to the top 0.1% of wealth-holders (those with $62m or more) goes totally untaxed. As a result, billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have gotten away with paying zero dollars in federal income taxes in some years, even when their real sources of income were soaring.On the other side, millions of hard-working Americans are struggling to make ends meet. Their anxiety is growing as tariffs threaten to explode already rising costs.A broken tax code means unchecked wealth-hoarding. The numbers are staggering: $1tn of wealth was created for the 19 richest US households just last year (to put that number into perspective, that is more than the output of the entire Swiss economy). That was the largest one-year increase in wealth ever recorded. I have studied this rapidly ballooning wealth concentration, and like my colleagues who focus on democracy and governance, I am alarmed by the increasingly aggressive power wielded by a small number of ultra-wealthy individuals.The good news is, hope is not lost. We can break up this dangerous concentration of wealth by taxing billionaires. There is growing public support for doing just this, even among Republican voters. A recent Morning Consult poll found that 70% of Republicans believed “the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes”, up from 62% six years ago.With many of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy set to expire this year, legislators have an opportunity to reset the balance driving dangerous wealth-hoarding. Rather than considering raising taxes on middle-class Americans or even households earning above $400,000, they must focus on the immense concentration of wealth among the very top 0.1% of Americans. This would not only break up concentrated wealth, but also generate substantial revenue.One mechanism for achieving this goal is a wealth tax on the ultra-wealthy. The Tax Policy Center recently released an analysis of a new policy called the Five & Dime tax. This proposal would impose a 5% tax on household wealth exceeding $50m and a 10% tax on household wealth over $250m. The Five & Dime tax would raise $6.8tn over 10 years, slow the rate at which the US mints new billionaires, and reduce the billionaires’ share of total US wealth from 4% to 3%.While breaking up dangerous wealth concentration is reason enough to tax billionaires, this revenue could be invested in programs that support working families and in turn boost the economy. Lawmakers could opt for high-return public investments like debt-free college, helping working families afford childcare, expanding affordable housing, rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, and strengthening climate initiatives.Ultimately, taxes on the ultra-rich could transform American society for the better and grow the economy by discouraging unproductive financial behaviors and promoting fair competition – leading to a more dynamic and efficient system.Critics will inevitably claim such a tax would stifle economic growth or prove too challenging for the IRS to implement. But in our highly educated nation, the idea that growth and innovation comes from just a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals does not withstand scrutiny. And while there are challenges for administering any bold proposal, America has always been up for a challenge.After witnessing the consequences of billionaire governance firsthand under this administration, Americans understand what’s at stake. We are seeing how unchecked, astronomical wealth has corrupted American democracy and stifled the economy. It’s not too late to act. Now it’s time for lawmakers who care about the country’s future to embrace solutions that empower everyone, not just the few at the top.

      Gabriel Zucman is professor of economics at the University of California Berkeley and the Paris School of Economics 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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      Money can’t buy him love: Republicans give Elon Musk the cold shoulder

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      Elon Musk may believe his money bought the presidential election and the House of the Representatives for the Republicans. But he is discovering painfully and quickly that it has not bought him love, loyalty or even fear among many GOP members of Congress on Capitol Hill.Faced with the choice of siding with Musk, the world’s richest man, or Donald Trump, after the two staged a public relationship breakdown for the ages on Thursday, most Republicans went with the man in the Oval Office, who has shown an unerring grasp of the tactics of political intimidation and who remains the world’s most powerful figure even without the boss of Tesla and SpaceX by his side.The billionaire tech entrepreneur, who poured about $275m into Trump’s campaign last year, tried to remind Washington’s political classes of his financial muscle on Thursday during an outpouring of slights against a man for whom he had once professed platonic love and was still showering with praise up until a week before.“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk posted to his 220 million followers on X, the social media platform he owns – and which he has used ruthlessly to reshape the political agenda.It was a variation on a theme from a man who has repeatedly threatened to deploy his untold millions in funding primary challengers to elected politicians who displease him or who publicly considered blocking Trump’s cabinet nominations.But a gambit that had been effective in the past failed to work this time – and might not be enough to sink the “big, beautiful bill” that Musk this week condemned as a deficit-inflating “abomination”.One after another, Republican House members came out to condemn him and defend Trump, despite having earlier been told by Musk that “you know you did wrong” in voting for what has become Trump’s signature legislation that seeks to extend vast tax cuts for the rich.Troy Nehls, a GOP representative from Texas, captured the tone, addressing Musk before television cameras: “You’ve lost your damn mind. Enough is enough. Stop this.”It chimed with the sentiments of many others. “Nobody elected Elon Musk, and a whole lot of people don’t even like him, to be honest with you, even on both sides,” Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey congressman, told Axios.“We’re getting people calling our offices 100% in support of President Trump,” Kevin Hern, a representative from Oklahoma, told the site. “Every tweet that goes out, people are more lockstep behind President Trump and [Musk is] losing favour.”Greg Murphy, a North Carolina Republican, called Musk’s outburst of social media posts – that included a call for Trump’s impeachment, a forecast of a tariff-driven recession and accusation that the president is on the Jeffrey Epstein files – “absolutely childish and ridiculous”. Musk had “lost some of his gravitas”.There were numerous other comments in similar vein.They seemed to carry the weight of political calculation, rather than principled sentiment.Republicans were balancing the strength of Trump’s voice among GOP voters versus the power of the increasingly unpopular Musk’s money – and most had little doubt which matters most.“On the value of Elon playing against us in primaries compared to Trump endorsing us in primaries, the latter is 100 times more relevant,” Axios quoted one unnamed representative as saying.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAnother said: “Elon can burn $5m in a primary, but if Trump says ‘that’s the person Republicans should re-elect,’ it’s a wasted $5m.”Trump said on Thursday that he would have won the battleground state of Pennsylvania even without his former benefactor’s significant financial input.But it is also evidence-based. In April, Musk discovered how finite his influence was when a Republican judge he had backed with $25m of his own money lost by 10 percentage points in an election for a vacant supreme court seat in Wisconsin.It was a chastening experience that bodes ill for any hopes he has of persuading Republicans to change their minds on Trump’s spending bill.Yet Musk still has his sympathisers on Capitol Hill, even if they are a minority.With the “big, beautiful bill” still likely to pass through the Senate, Thomas Massie, a senator for Kentucky – who has been labelled “a grandstander” by Trump for his consistent criticism of the legislation – was unambiguous when CNN asked which side he choose between Trump and Musk.“I choose math. The math always wins over the words,” he replied. “I trust the math from the guy that lands rockets backwards over the politicians’ math.”It was a rare case of economics trumping politics on a day when political self-interest seemed paramount. More

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      Musk calls for Trump to be impeached as extraordinary feud escalates

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      Elon Musk called for Donald Trump to be impeached after mocking his connections to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as the president threatened to cancel federal contracts and tax subsidies for Musk’s companies in an extraordinary social media feud on Thursday.The deterioration of their once close relationship into bitter acrimony came over the course of several remarkable hours during which the president and the world’s richest man hurled deeply personal insults over matters significant and insignificant.In the most churlish moment of the astonishing saga, Musk said on X the reason the Trump administration had not released the files into Epstein was because they implicated the president. He later quote-tweeted a post calling for Trump to be removed and said Trump’s tariffs would cause a recession.“Time to drop the really big bomb: Donald Trump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!” Musk wrote, after Trump threatened to cut subsidies for Musk’s companies as it would save “billions”.The direct shots at Trump were the latest twist in the public feud over a Republican spending bill that Musk had criticized. Trump and Musk had been careful not to hit each other directly, but the pair discarded restraint as it escalated online.The bizarre drama served to underscore the degree to which Trump and Musk’s relationship has been one of mutual convenience, despite the White House claiming for months that they were simply ideologically aligned.It also caused the rightwing writer Ashley St Clair, who gave birth to Musk’s 14th known child and sued Musk for child support, to weigh in. “Let me know if u need any breakup advice,” she posted on X, tagging Trump.Shares in Tesla, Musk’s electronic vehicle company, fell almost 15% on Thursday afternoon with the decline timed to when Trump’s remarks began. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, is not publicly traded, but competitors to SpaceX rose on the news.For weeks, Musk has complained about the budget bill, and used the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimating the bill would add $2.4tn to the deficit over the next decade as an opening to condemn the legislation as a “disgusting abomination”.On Thursday, Trump appeared to finally have had enough of Musk’s complaints. Speaking in the Oval Office as the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, looked on in bemusement, Trump mocked Musk’s recent black eye and questioned why he didn’t cover it up.“You saw a man who was very happy when he stood behind the Oval desk. Even with a black eye. I said, do you want a little makeup? He said, no, I don’t think so. Which is interesting,” Trump said. “Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will any more.”Trump then ratcheted up his barbs against Musk, accusing him of turning against the bill solely out of self-interest, as the bill did not benefit Tesla, Musk’s electronic vehicle company. Trump also pulled the nomination of Musk’s preferred candidate to lead Nasa.“I’m very disappointed with Elon,” Trump said. “He had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out we’re going to cut the EV mandate.”Musk then went on the warpath.Within minutes of Trump’s comments appearing in a clip on X, where Musk was responding in real time, Musk accused the president of lying about the bill, and accused Trump of being ungrateful for the millions he spent to get him elected.“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk said in a post on X. He added: “Such ingratitude.”Musk taking credit for Trump’s election win initially threatened to be the touchpoint for their relationship, given Trump had made a point to say that Musk’s contributions had no effect on him winning the battleground state of Pennsylvania.But then Trump posted on Truth Social that he had fired Musk from his role as a special adviser because he was “wearing thin” at the White House, and Musk responded: “Such an obvious lie. So sad.”It was less than a half an hour later that Musk fired off his Epstein tweet, in effect accusing him of being part of an alleged child sexual abuse ring linked to Epstein, using a dog whistle for the Maga movement to try to set them against the president.In doing so, Musk ignored his own connections to Epstein. In 2014, like Trump, Musk was photographed at a party with Ghislaine Maxwell, a former Epstein girlfriend who was convicted in 2021 on charges that she helped the financier’s sex-trafficking activities.The public feud comes after a remarkable partnership that lasted longer than many Democrats on Capitol Hill and in Trump’s orbit predicted.Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Trump’s re-election campaign through his specially created America Pac, which shouldered a large portion of Trump’s door-knocking campaign, although the actual impact of that ground-game effort is unclear. More