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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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      Ice agents use pepper spray and smoke grenades to disperse LA protesters

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      The Department of Homeland Security conducted raids on multiple locations across Los Angeles on Friday, clashing with the crowds of people who gathered to protest.Masked agents were recorded pulling several people out of two LA-area Home Depot stores and the clothing manufacturer Ambient Apparel’s headquarters in LA’s Fashion District. Immigration advocates said the raids also included four other locations, including a doughnut shop.There has not yet been confirmation of how many people were taken into custody during the coordinated sweeps.At an afternoon press conference, Angelica Salas, executive director for the Coalition of Humane Immigrant Rights, said at least 45 people were arrested without warrants.“Our community is under attack and is being terrorized. These are workers, these are fathers, these are mothers, and this has to stop. Immigration enforcement that is terrorizing our families throughout this country and picking up our people that we love must stop now,” Salas told the crowd.The protest only grew as the afternoon wore on. By 6pm local time, hundreds of people assembled around the federal building in downtown Los Angeles, where those taken into custody during the raids are being held.Earlier in the day, armed agents clad in heavy protective and tactical gear, including some who wore gas masks, could be seen on video and through aerial footage pushing individuals and trying to corral large groups that congregated to challenge the raids.Smoke grenades were reportedly thrown near the crowds and pepper spray was used as the federal officers attempted to clear the area. As the demonstrations continued into the evening, videos showed officers firing less-lethal weapons toward protestors.View image in fullscreenSome people in the crowd attempted to block large armored trucks carrying FBI agents as they departed. One person reportedly threw eggs at the vehicles.The Los Angeles fire department was called to the scene to administer aid to protesters injured by agents and officers, which included the president of the California branch of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), David Huerta, the organization said in statement calling for his immediate release.“We call for an end to the cruel, destructive, and indiscriminate Ice raids that are tearing apart our communities, disrupting our economy, and hurting all working people,” Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California said.“Immigrant workers are essential to our society: feeding our nation, caring for our elders, cleaning our workplaces, and building our homes.”The Los Angeles police department also assisted the federal officers in dispersing demonstrators, despite the department’s insistence that it is not involved in “civil immigration enforcement”, and would only have a presence to ensure public safety.Advocates used megaphones from the streets outside where the raids were occurring to remind workers inside of their rights, the Los Angeles Times reported. Some called out individual names and demanded they be given access to lawyers.“The community is here with you,” one person shouted. “Your family is here with you.”Los Angeles leaders were quick to condemn the actions, which were part of a string of high-profile raids undertaken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement under orders from Donald Trump.“I am closely monitoring the Ice raids that are currently happening across Los Angeles, including at a Korean-American owned store in my district,” Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove said in a post on X, along with instructions on how impacted constituents could reach her office for help.“LA has long been a safe haven for immigrants,” she added. “Trump claims he’s targeting criminals, but he’s really just tearing families apart and destabilizing entire communities.”Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement that she was “deeply angered by what has taken place,” and that her office was coordinating with immigrant rights community organizations.“These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city,” she said. “We will not stand for this.”Los Angeles councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said in a statement: “These actions are escalating: agents arrive without warning and leave quickly, aware that our communities mobilize fast. I urge Angelenos to stay alert.” More

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      Trump and Musk trade barbs as rift over tax and spend bill erupts into open

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      A public feud erupted between Donald Trump and Elon Musk on Thursday, with the president saying he was “very disappointed” by the former adviser’s opposition to his top legislative priority, and Musk firing back that Trump would not have won election without his financial support.The falling-out came days after Musk had stepped down as head of Trump’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and then pivoted to attacking the One Big Beautiful Bill, which would extend tax cuts, fund beefed-up immigration enforcement and impose new work requirements for enrollees of federal safety net programs.While the Tesla CEO has focused his complaints on the price tag of the bill, which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates will add $2.4tn to the deficit over the next decade, Trump accused him of turning against it because of provisions revoking incentives for consumers to purchase electric vehicles.“I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot,” Trump said, adding that “he knew every aspect of this bill. He knew it better than almost anybody, and he never had a problem until right after he left.”“Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will any more,” the president said.Musk responded almost immediately on X, saying that the president’s comment was “false”, and “this bill was never shown to me even once”. He then pivoted to personal attacks on Trump, after praising him just days earlier in an Oval Office appearance to mark the end of his time leading Doge.“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” he said, responding to a video of Trump’s remarks. “Such ingratitude.”The tech boss’s criticism has become the latest obstacle facing the One Big Beautiful Bill , which the House of Representatives approved last month by a single vote.The Senate this week began considering the bill, not long after Musk commenced the barrage of tweets over its cost, which he warned would undo Doge’s efforts to save the government money by cancelling programs and pushing federal workers out of their jobs. Musk said he believed the initiative could reduce spending by $1tn, though its own dashboard shows it has saved less than 20% of that amount since Trump was inaugurated.The House speaker, Mike Johnson, spent weeks negotiating with his fractious Republican majority to get the bill passed narrowly through his chamber, and on Wednesday said he had been trying to speak with Musk about his concerns. In an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday, he called the Tesla CEO “a good friend” and said the two had exchanged text messages ahead of a call he expected to take place that morning.View image in fullscreen“I just want to make sure that he understands what I think everybody on Capitol Hill understands. This is not a spending bill, my friends, this is a a budget reconciliation bill. And what we’re doing here is delivering the America first agenda,” Johnson said.“He seems pretty dug in right now, and I can’t quite understand the motivation behind it,” the speaker added.Later in the day, Johnson told reporters at the Capitol that the call did not take place, but that the disagreement “isn’t personal”. On X, Musk publicly questioned Johnson’s resolve to cut government spending, prompting the speaker to reply that he “has always been a lifelong fiscal hawk”.The Senate’s Republican leaders have shown no indication that they share Musk’s concerns. Instead, they are eyeing changes to some aspects of the measure that were the result of hard-fought negotiations in the House, and could throw its prospects of passage into jeopardy.One issue that has reappeared is the deductibility of state and local tax (Salt) payments, which the tax bill passed under Trump in 2017 limited to $10,000 per household. House Republicans representing districts in Democratic-run states that have higher tax burdens managed to get a provision increasing the deduction to $40,000 into the One Big Beautiful Bill act.But there are almost no Republican senators representing blue states. The majority leader, John Thune, said after a meeting with Trump on Wednesday that his lawmakers were not inclined to keep that provision as they negotiate the bill.“We also start from a position that there really isn’t a single Republican senator who cares much about the Salt issue. It’s just not an issue that plays,” Thune said.That could upset the balance of power in the House, where Republicans can lose no more than three votes on any bill that passes along party lines. More

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      Republicans are dodging fired federal staff: ‘They will not even look in our direction’

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      Workers hit by the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts of federal government jobs, programs and services turned to congressional Republicans for help. But Republicans don’t want to talk about it, according to people who have tried to reach the politicians.Sabrina Valenti, a former budget analyst for the Coastal Wetland Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), was fired in February, then reinstated, and fired again weeks later.She started contacting Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives to express concern. “They represent hundreds of thousands or millions of people and those people deserve a safe and healthy life,” said Valenti. “They are allowing the people who create that safe and healthy life to be fired.”But as she worked with other fired federal workers in the Fork Off Coalition to reach members of Congress, the responses ranged “from indifference and being ignored to outright hostility”, Valenti claimed.Senators Josh Hawley and Chuck Grassley “just will not even look in our direction” in the hallways, she said. Hawley and Grassley’s offices did not respond to requests for comment.The House of Representatives narrowly passed Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill on Thursday, which would extend tax cuts for individuals and corporations; sunset clean energy incentives enacted under Joe Biden; relieve taxes on tips, overtime and car loan interest; and fund construction of a wall along the border with Mexico, and facilities for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.To offset its costs, the GOP has approved funding cuts and new work requirements for Medicaid, which provides healthcare for poor and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as Snap, which provides food benefits to low-income families. Analysts fear these changes will bar millions from these benefits.Jeanne Weaver worked as an aide for 35 years at the Ebensburg Center in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, one of two state-operated facilities for adults with intellectual disabilities, and is worried about the facility’s future .But when Weaver, now president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Retiree Chapter 13, tried to reach her representative in Congress, the Republican John Joyce, she had no luck. Even when she traveled to Washington, she was unable to get a meeting.View image in fullscreen“I’ve called, I’ve left him messages,” Weaver told the Guardian. “If he votes for cuts for Medicaid, I will make sure everyone knows him, because they don’t know him now. He’s hiding out, not doing what his constituents want him to do.”After the Guardian went to Joyce for comment, Weaver heard from a member of his staff. His office declined to comment. On Sunday, after House Republicans advanced Trump’s tax cut and spending package out of a key committee, Joyce claimed the legislation would “strengthen, secure, and preserve” Medicaid for “future generations of Americans who need and deserve these benefits”.John Kennedy, senator for Louisiana, did speak with Valenti – a graduate of Louisiana State University – about her program at Noaa, and its impact on Louisiana’s coast.“He seemed really certain that if there was any, if any mistakes were made in the past, that they would be able to go back and reverse them,” Valenti said. Kennedy’s office did not respond to requests for comment.Other workers reliant on federal funds that have been cut, or are facing cuts, have also been pressuring their elected officials to address their worries.Jesse Martinez, a teacher and co-president of the La Crosse Education Association in La Crosse, Wisconsin, expressed concern about cuts to education, Medicaid and Snap benefits to staff working for the Republican representative Derrick Van Orden.The staff claimed Van Orden would not vote for cuts to Medicaid or Snap benefits, according to Martinez – but he voted for a budget blueprint that included cuts.“In the school district of La Crosse, we receive approximately $500,000 per year in Medicaid funding. We use that to pay for speech and language pathologists in our schools, occupational and physical therapists across the district and school nurses in our schools,” said Martinez. “Losing that funding would be devastating to our kids.”Van Orden argued in a statement that “being fiscally responsible and protecting benefits for vulnerable Americans can exist in the same universe”, and a spokesperson for Van Orden denied the budget bill cuts Medicaid.Stephanie Teachman, an administrative assistant at the State University of New York at Fredonia, and president of Suny Fredonia Local 607, an affiliate union of AFSCME, fears that cuts could threaten the future of the only hospital in her rural area, Brooks Memorial, and the university, which is one of the largest employers in the area.But attempts to speak with her congressional representative, the Republican representative Nick Langworthy, have not elicited any responses, she said.“I’ve been to Langworthy’s office and he’s never there. We’ve written letters to him, and he doesn’t respond,” she added. “All of us deserve to have a voice and be heard. It’s unfortunate the people we vote for aren’t listening to us and they don’t seem to care what people of their districts are up to or what life is like for us.”View image in fullscreenA spokesperson for Langworthy claimed his office did not hear from Teachman until a few hours before a debate on the budget bill. “Not one penny is being cut from eligible Americans who rely on Medicaid,” the spokesperson claimed in an email, accusing Democrats of “dishonest fearmongering”.In Washington, those urging Republicans to resist cuts to key services have struggled to make headway. Senator Bill Cassidy’s office “kicked us out”, said Valenti, who noted the senator Katie Britt of Alabama called Capitol police on some fired federal workers, and that the Indiana Republican senator Jim Banks called a fired health and human services worker, Mack Schroeder, a “clown” who “probably deserved it”.Senators Britt, Cassidy and Banks’s respective offices did not respond to requests for comment. Senator Banks declined to apologize for his remarks following the incident and said he “won’t back down”.Four of the largest public sector unions in the US – AFSCME, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the Service Employees International Union, collectively representing 8.3 million workers – have launched a new campaign to target GOP representatives over the cuts.The drive includes a $2m ad campaign across 18 congressional districts held by Republicans, including in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa and Arizona.“Their goal is the gutting of the schools and hospitals that help working Americans have a shot at a better life. And for what? To pay for tax cuts for billionaires,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT. “These ads send a message to Congress about the human toll of the administration’s attacks.” More

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      Trump visits Capitol to urge House Republicans to pass ‘big, beautiful bill’

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      Donald Trump traveled to the Capitol on Tuesday to insist that the fractious House Republican majority set aside their differences and pass his wide-ranging bill to enact his taxation and immigration priorities.In a speech to a closed-door meeting of Republican lawmakers in Congress’s lower chamber, the president pushed representatives from districts in blue states to drop their demands for a bigger State and Local Tax (Salt) deduction, and also sought to assuage moderates concerned that the legislation, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, would hobble the Medicaid health insurance program.“I think we have unbelievable unity. I think we’re going to get everything we want, and I think we’re going to have a great victory,” Trump said as he left the meeting.But it is unclear if the president’s exhortations had the intended effect ahead of the Monday deadline that House speaker Mike Johnson has set to get the bill passed through the chamber, which Republicans control by a mere three votes. Following his meeting, at least one key lawmaker said he remained opposed to the bill as written, while others announced no changes to their position.“As it stands right now, I do not support the bill,” said New York congressman Mike Lawler, one of the Republicans representing districts in Democratic-led states that are demanding a larger Salt deduction.The next test of the bill’s prospects is scheduled for 1am on Wednesday, when the rules committee convenes for a procedural vote that, if successful, clears the way for consideration of the measure by the full House of Representatives.The nearly 1,100-page legislation is Trump’s top priority in Congress, and would codify several of his campaign promises, including making permanent or extending tax cuts enacted during his first term, temporarily ending the taxation of tips and overtime and paying for a wall along the border with Mexico and the mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.To offset its costs, House Republicans have approved slashing federal safety net programs like Medicaid, which covers poor and low income Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap). But even with those cuts, the bill is estimated to cost $3.8tn through 2034, rankling rightwing fiscal hardliners who want to see the measure reduce the government’s large budget deficit.Johnson and other Republican leaders have spent weeks trying to square their demands with the blue-state Republicans and moderates wary of slashing safety net programs. As he arrived at the Capitol on Tuesday morning, Trump quickly made it known who he favored in the negotiations, insisting that “we’re not touching” Medicaid and that cuts would only hit “waste, fraud and abuse”.While Salt taxes were once fully deductible on federal returns, the tax cuts Trump signed in 2017, imposed a $10,000 cap . The president said he opposed increasing the deduction, because “we don’t want to benefit Democrat governors.”At his meeting with lawmakers, “he was emphatic, we need to quit screwing around. That was the clear message. You all have tinkered enough, it is time to land the plane,” South Dakota congressman Dusty Johnson told reporters.“Ninety-eight percent of that conference is ready to go. They were enthused. They were pumped up by the president, and I think with the holdouts, he did move them. I don’t know that we are there yet, but that was a hugely impactful meeting.”Under the bill, Medicaid would receive a $715bn budget reduction, mostly by imposing work requirements on recipients. After the meeting, Don Bacon, a Nebraska moderate who had warned against cutting Medicaid too deeply, signaled approval of the bill, saying: “We did as well as we could do.”But David Valadao, whose central California district has one of the large shares of Medicaid recipients nationwide, said he was “very concerned” about the impact of the cuts.The Democratic minority is largely powerless to stop the bill from advancing in the House, and the GOP’s use of the budget reconciliation procedure means the bill cannot be blocked by a filibuster in the Senate. Democratic House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and James McGovern, the ranking member on the rules committee, called for the panel’s consideration of the bill to be rescheduled, noting it is currently set to take place “during the dead of night”.“It is deeply troubling that you would attempt to jam this legislation down the throats of the American people. What else are you hiding? It is imperative that you immediately reschedule the meeting so that it may be debated in the light of day,” they wrote in a letter to Johnson and the rules committee’s Republican chair.House GOP leaders cast the president’s visit as a sign to their members that it was time to stop quibbling.Majority leader Steve Scalise told a press conference after Trump departed: “President Trump had a strong and clear message to a packed House Republican conference, and that is, after months of long, intense discussions over really important differences and issues, this One Big, Beautiful Bill has come through the committee process, and it’s time to end the negotiations, unify behind this bill and get it passed on to the Senate.”Yet it was plain that there are kinks left to iron out. Johnson declined to take questions at the press conference, saying he had to leave to “gather up the small subgroups in the House Republican Conference and tie up the remaining loose ends. I’m very confident that we’ll be able to do that.” More

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      Trump can complain all he wants – but he can’t stop his own economic mess | Sidney Blumenthal

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      With his usual threats, Donald Trump is trying to ward off the dire reality that he has created and is bearing down on him. He can clamp migrants in foreign gulags, coerce white-shoe law firms into becoming his pro bono serfs and try to simply erase the National Endowment for the Humanities, but he can’t rescind his harm to the economy. Trump can slash the National Weather Service, but he can’t stop the storm he’s whipped up. He’s shouting into the wind at his twister.No matter how much he might lower his draconian tariffs after his 90-day breathing spell, the velocity of damage is just building. It’s not a mistake that can be rectified. There’s no do-over. It’s not a golf game at one of his clubs where he gets endless mulligans and is declared the champion. Nor does Trump really want to draw back completely from his tariffs as if he never had proudly displayed his “Liberation Day” idiot board.When the Walmart CEO inevitably announced that prices would have to be raised as a result of Trump’s tariffs, Trump warned: “Between Walmart and China they should, as is said ‘EAT THE TARIFFS,’ and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!”Trump has falsely insisted that tariffs are levied on foreign importers. But Walmart demonstrated the indisputable fact that tariffs are price increases passed on to consumers. They are a tax. Trump is furious at the early indication of the renewed inflation and price rises that are coming. His natural response, of course, is an attempt at intimidation.The tariffs are a shakedown by which Trump could exercise his control over corporations that must scrape and bow before him, asking for targeted relief in exchange for, perhaps, payments to his personal political action committee, or, perhaps, throwing money into the kitty of his various financial endeavors, his crypto firm and meme-coin scheme. According to his wishful thinking, businesses should “eat the tariffs” to cover up his falsehood and maintain his popularity. For his sake, shut up and “eat” it. Trump is at war with the corporations’ bottom line.He can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but he can’t fool the bond market any of the time. When Moody’s Ratings downgraded the US credit rating, the Trump White House put out a statement attacking Moody’s “credibility” while blaming “Biden’s mess”. Moody’s reasons were an oblique criticism of Trump’s pending “big, beautiful bill” for massive regressive tax cuts in addition to his tariffs, which have led to the suspension of any further cuts in interest rates from the Federal Reserve.Blaming Biden, in any case, hasn’t been cutting it with public opinion. Only 21% of Americans attributed the state of the economy to Biden’s policies in a poll in early April conducted by CBS News/YouGov. In Trump’s first hundred days alone, he denigrated Biden at least 580 times, according to NBC News. Trump sought to make him the scapegoat for his own policies. But the public is certain that Trump and nobody else owns the economy as he desperately tries to restore it to where Biden bequeathed it to him, with inflation and interest rates falling. And, now, very ill, Biden can no longer serve as a convenient target.Even if, after Trump’s 90-day pause on tariffs, he cuts them in half, the result will be devastating to small businesses, family farms and many large corporations. Nearly 90% of American small businesses rely on imported goods. More than 20% of the US agricultural sector depends upon exporting its products, according to the US Department of Agriculture. US manufacturers rely on imports for more than 20% of machinery, products and components. More than 41m American jobs are linked to imports and exports, one in five, according to the Business Roundtable. That does not include the multiplier effect of millions, if not tens of millions, of additional jobs created as a result.The supply chain has been severely distorted. For 12 hours on 9 May, zero cargo ships – none, not one – departed from China to the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the two major US ports for Asian imported goods. The more than $906bn trucking industry, which had finally regained stability after the Covid disruption, faces another shock. “Trump trade war is wrecking hope for 2025 US trucking rebound,” reads the headline on a Reuters story.The uncertainty factor that Trump has introduced has frozen all planning. The auto companies, among others, have given up issuing any guidance to investors. Their earnings are plunging, their suppliers in chaos. Nobody can predictably produce, order or hire, and so businesses are in a state of suspension. The prospect of a slowdown has already depressed oil prices to the point where it will soon not be profitable to drill at all. In April, Trump called critics of his tariffs “scoundrels and frauds”, but retailers do not know how to price goods, how much to raise them to sustain often razor-thin profit margins. They face a Hobson’s choice of pricing themselves out of their markets or absorbing the costs and going bust.The head of Trump’s council of economic advisers, Kevin Hassett, cheerfully announced on 12 April that he expected the gross domestic product to grow by 2% to 2.5% in the first quarter of this year. On 30 April, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that GDP had fallen by 0.3% in the quarter.Even after Trump agreed to drop his 145% tariff on China to 30%, Paul Krugman points out that “we’re still looking at a shock to the economy seven or eight times as big as Smoot-Hawley, the previous poster child for destructive tariff policy”. Krugman states that on the optimistic lower end, “we’d expect Trump’s tariffs after last weekend’s retreat on China to cut overall US trade by roughly 50%. Trade with China, which would have been virtually eliminated with a 145% tariff rate, would fall by ‘only’ around 65% with a 30% tariff.”The result will be devastating, with rising inflation, higher unemployment, shortages, and lower growth and investment. In short, the economy will plunge into stagflation for the first time since the 1970s. Then, the phenomenon was the outcome of the Opec oil shock. This is the Trump shock, not the consequence of an external factor, but entirely self-induced through a delusion. Does he care? “Well,” Trump said, “maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. So maybe the two dolls will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally.”All of what’s coming was foreseeable. This is not a case in which unintended consequences suddenly emerged without advance warning, like in the 1970s. Here the red lights flashed; Trump raced through them.The uncertainty he’s injected is not a byproduct of happenstance. Uncertainty is the aspiring dictator’s pre-eminent prerogative. Trump resents any limitation on his ability to act however he wishes. The ultimate privilege of a dictator is to be at liberty to be impulsive. The more unpredictable he is, the more he is regarded as omnipotent.Trump has no real policies. There is no actual analysis, no expertise, no peer review. He brandishes atavistic symbols as primitive representations of his unrestrained power. Lowering or raising the tariffs are functionally equivalent if they are perceived as enhancing the perception of his potency. The merits are of no interest. Policies, such as they are, are measured by how well they gild his lily. The more unpredictable he is, the more he thinks of himself and thinks others think of him as almighty.For Trump, experience is meaningless. He never learns. Even his existential moments are forgotten, like his near-death from Covid. He deduces no lessons. It doesn’t inform his health policies, for example, which he’s turned over to oddballs and snake-oil salesmen led by the chief crank with roadkill in his freezer and a worm in his brain, Robert F Kennedy Jr.Trump’s learning curve is a hamster’s wheel. He goes ’round and ’round, repeating belligerent ignorance unaltered over decades. He’s the hamster who thinks he’s making progress if he receives attention. His solipsism is epistemological. Jared Kushner grasped its essence when he surfed on Amazon to find the one discredited economist, Peter Navarro, to provide sham formulas to justify Trump’s preconceived tariff obsession.Trump’s psychological equilibrium requires the constant rejection of his responsibility for the abrasive reality he churns up. Confronting reality exacts fortitude, both politically and intellectually. He considers that a mug’s game he must resist. His inner fragility is shielded by projecting images of muscular strength, now AI generated videos and pictures of himself produced by the White House communications team as a Jedi, a guitar hero (after Bruce Springsteen called him “treasonous”) and the Pope (the new Pope Leo XIV does not much care for the social Darwinism of JD Vance).Meanwhile, there must be a conspiracy theory to deliver up a scapegoat. That opens the door of the Oval Office for malicious fabulists to whom Trump is particularly susceptible and finds useful as his instruments to terrorize even his own staff. Enter loony Laura Loomer as his virtual national security personnel director with a portfolio in hand identifying six officials on the national security council to be purged, soon to be followed by the defenestration of the national security adviser Michael Waltz, who, rather than the thoroughly incompetent secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, served as the scapegoat for the Signal chat group that invited in Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the Atlantic.A 9/11 truther, Loomer claimed the terrorist attack was “an inside job.” During the 2024 campaign, Trump brought her to the 9/11 memorial service. Loomer said that if Kamala Harris won the White House it “will smell of curry”. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right member of the House from Georgia, assailed Loomer as an “appalling and extremist racist”. “You don’t want to be Loomered,” Trump said. “If you’re Loomered, you’re in deep trouble. That’s the end of your career in a sense. Thanks, Laura.”Trump famously can’t accept the slightest criticism. He is armored against learning in any case. He is incapable of engaging in any self-examination for both emotional and cognitive reasons. It would be too upsetting even to contemplate. His whole being would become paralyzed if he were ever to suffer a bout of introspection. His system couldn’t tolerate it. His brittle peace of mind requires his fabricated self-image to be constantly apple-polished and worshipped.The split between Trump’s anxious need for his cosseted appearance and the terrible reality he’s making is his ultimate credibility gap. He must sustain a completely self-contained inner world or the walls start to close in.Information must therefore be suppressed. When the intelligence community assesses that the Tren de Aragua gang is not being manipulated by the Maduro regime of Venezuela, which is the invented excuse for Trump’s migrant round-up emergency, then fire the intelligence analysts or tell them to redo their report.When the Democrats in the House attempted to bring up a bill to remove Trump’s claim of a national security emergency for his tariffs – another mythical emergency – Republicans moved to block it in the rules committee. No vote, no debate. It’s a disappearing act.If the lying doesn’t work, try intimidation. That is the rhyme or reason behind Trump’s success in imposing his malignancy. But now he’s created a reality he can’t disguise or bully. The planets are hurdling into collision. He’s done it to himself by himself.The passage of his “Big Beautiful Bill”, with its extravagant tax cuts for the wealthy and deep cuts to Medicaid, wounding his white rural base, of which, depending on the county, are 25% to 40% dependent on the federal healthcare program, will spike the inflationary effect of his tariffs as well as the deficit. Republicans no longer uphold the pretense that their tax cut redistribution of wealth upward will actually lower the deficit by reducing revenue. Ronald Reagan’s supply-side economics claims, originally dubbed voodoo economics by George HW Bush, in fact proved Bush prescient. Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, confessed that the supply side charade was a “Trojan horse” for lowering the upper rate and was just a “horse-and-sparrow” theory of “trickle down.” Thus, Trump’s potential legislative success will only deepen his crisis.Donald turns his lonely eyes to the Federal Reserve to bail him out, like his father, Fred Trump, who always arrived in the nick of time to rescue him from his messes. Trump lies in capital letters: “THE CONSENSUS OF ALMOST EVERYBODY IS THAT, ‘THE FED SHOULD CUT RATES SOONER, RATHER THAN LATER.” There is no such consensus. The consensus is to the contrary.Trump’s begging shifts to threats. If Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, doesn’t do what Trump says he will be turned into the scapegoat: “Too Late Powell, a man legendary for being Too Late, will probably blow it again – But who knows???”But Powell is imperturbable. “Higher real rates may also reflect the possibility that inflation could be more volatile going forward than in the inter-crisis period of the 2010s,” he said in his most measured tone on 15 May. “We may be entering a period of more frequent, and potentially more persistent, supply shocks – a difficult challenge for the economy and for central banks.”It’s not Powell who is “too late.” It’s Trump. As Evelyn Waugh wrote in his novel Decline and Fall: “Too late, old boy, too late. The saddest words in the English language.”

      Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      Republicans are attacking childcare funding. Their goal? To push women out of the workforce | Moira Donegan

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      Last month, the White House issued a proposed budget to Congress that completely eliminated funding for Head Start, the six-decade-old early childhood education program for low-income families that serves as a source of childcare for large swaths of the American working class.The funding was restored in the proposed budget after an outcry, but large numbers of employees who oversee the program at the office of Head Start were laid off in a budget-slashing measure under Robert F Kennedy Jr, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. On Thursday, Kennedy said funding for the program would not be axed, but more cuts to childcare funding are likely coming: some Republicans have pushed to repeal a five-decade-old tax credit for daycare. The White House is entertaining proposals on how to incentivize and structurally coerce American women into bearing more children, but it seems to be determined to make doing so as costly to those women’s careers as possible.That’s because the Republicans’ childcare policy, like their pro-natalist policy, is based on one goal: undoing the historic gains in women’s rights and status, and pushing American women out of the workforce, out of public life, out of full participation in society – and into a narrow domestic role of confinement, dependence and isolation.The New York Times reported this week that the White House is now not only looking for ways to make more women have children, but to encourage “parents” to stay home to raise them. “Parents” here is a euphemism. Roughly 80% of stay-at-home parents are mothers: cultural traditions that encourage women, and not men, to sacrifice their careers for caregiving, along with persistent wage inequalities that make women, on the whole, lower earners than their male partners, both incentivize women, and not men, to drop out of the workforce and stay home when they have children.This state of affairs has been worsened by the dramatic rise in the cost of childcare, which is prohibitively expensive for many parents. The average cost of childcare per child per year in the US is now well north of $11,000, according to Child Care Aware of America, an industry advocacy group. In major cities such as New York, that price is significantly higher: from $16,000 to $19,000 per year. Existing tax credits need to be expanded, not eliminated, to reduce this burden on mothers and their families and to enable women to join the workforce at rates comparable to men and commensurate with their dignity and capacities. Currently, 26% of mothers do not engage in paid work, a figure that has barely budged in 40 years. Largely because of the unequally distributed burdens of childcare, men participate in the paid labor force at a rate that is more than 10% higher than women.One might think that the solution would be to invest more in high-quality childcare, so that providers could open more slots, children could access more resources, and women could go to work and expend their talents in productive ways that earn them money, make use of their gifts and provide more dignity for women and more stability for families. This is not what the American right is proposing: Brad Wilcox, a sociologist who promotes traditional family and gender relations, has called such policy initiatives “work-ist”. Conservatives are proposing, instead, that women go back to the kitchen.The Trump administration, and the American right more broadly, wants the rate of women’s employment to be even lower, because it is advancing a lie that women are naturally, inevitably, uniformly and innately inclined to caregiving, child rearing and homemaking – and not to the positions of intellectual achievement, responsibility, leadership, ingenuity or independence that women may aspire to in the public world. “We cannot get away from the fact that a child is hardwired to bond with Mom,” says Janet Erickson, a fellow at the rightwing Institute for Family Studies, who once co-authored an op-ed with JD Vance calling on “parents” to drop out of the workforce to raise children. “I just think, why should we deny that?”This kind of vague, evidence-free gesturing toward evolutionary psychology – the notion that babies are “hardwired” to prefer mothers who are not employed – is a common conservative tick: a recourse to dishonest and debunked science to lend empiricism to bigotry. There is in fact no evolutionary reason, and no biological reason, for mothers, and not fathers, to abandon independence, ambition or life outside the home for the sake of a child. The only reason is a sexist one.Over the past decade, the left launched few vigorous defenses of a feminist politics that seeks to advance and secure women’s access to public life, paid work and fair remuneration. The American left has launched vigorous criticisms of the “girlboss”, a figure of malignant female ambition who seemed to make the exploitations of capitalism more offensive by virtue of her sex, and it has instead offered critiques of women’s ambition and romantic defenses of the labor of “care” that just happens to overlap with women’s traditional – and traditionally unpaid – roles in the home. This leftwing rhetoric has at times mirrored the similar romanticization of the unpaid housewife of yesteryear from the right, which has embraced tradwives, homesteading fantasies and an aestheticized rustic simplicity that aims to contrast feminist gains in the workforce with a fantasy of women’s rest. Together, these strains of rhetorical opposition to women in the workforce have made anti-feminism into a new kind of “socialism of fools” – a misguided misdirection of anger and resentment at the rapaciousness of capitalism towards a social justice movement for the rights of an oppressed class.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut what is on offer from the political right is not about the refashioning of work and life to be less extractive and exploitative for women, and particularly for mothers. It is instead about a sex segregation of human experience, an effort to make much of public life inaccessible to women. Combined with the right wing’s successful attack on the right to abortion, the Trump administration’s dramatic cuts to Title X programs that provide contraceptive access, and the rescinding of federal grants aimed at helping working women, what emerges from the rightwing policy agenda is an effort to force women out of education, out of decently paid work and into pregnancy, unemployment and dependence on men.Theirs is an effort to shelter men from women’s economic competition, to revert to the regressive cultural modes of an imagined past, and to impose an artificially narrow vision of the capacities, aspirations, talents and desires of half of the American people.Murray Rothbard, the paleoconservative 20th-century economist whose ideas have had a profound influence on the Trumpist worldview, once vowed: “We shall repeal the 20th century.” As far as the Republican right is concerned, it seems to want to repeal the gains of 20th-century feminism first.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump health cuts create ‘real danger’ around disease outbreaks, workers warn

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      Mass terminations and billions of dollars’ worth of cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have gutted key programs – from child support services to HIV treatment abroad – and created a “real danger” that disease outbreaks will be missed, according to former workers.Workers at the HHS, now led by Robert F Kennedy Jr, and in public health warned in interviews that chaotic, flawed and sweeping reductions would have broad, negative effects across the US and beyond.While Donald Trump’s administration is cutting the HHS workforce from 82,000 to 62,000 through firings and buyouts, grant cuts by Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) have also had a stark impact on state governments – and resulted in firings at state public health agencies.At the South Carolina department of public health, for example, more than 70 staff were laid off in March due to funding cuts.“Disease surveillance is how we know when something unusual is happening with people’s health, like when there are more food-poisoning cases than usual, or a virus starts spreading in a community,” an epidemiologist at the department, whose role was eliminated, said. “It’s the system that lets us spot patterns, find outbreaks early, and respond before more people get sick.”“When you lose public health staff, you lose time, you lose accuracy, you lose responsiveness, and ultimately that affects people’s health,” they added. “Without us, outbreaks can fly under the radar, and the response can be delayed or disorganized. That’s the real danger when these roles get cut.View image in fullscreen“It’s invisible work, until it’s not. You may not think about it day to day, but it’s protecting your drinking water, your food, your kids’ schools and your community.”A spokesperson for South Carolina’s public health department declined to comment on specifics, but noted employees hired through grants are temporary. “When funding for grants is no longer available, their employment may end, as happened with some temporary grant employees who were funded by these grants,” they said.In Washington, the HHS has been cut harder by Doge than any other federal department. Hundreds of grants to state, local and tribal governments, as well as to research institutions, have been eliminated, worth over $6.8bn in unpaid obligations.The HHS receives about a quarter of all federal spending, with the majority disbursed to states for health programs and services such as Medicare and Medicaid, the insurance programs; medical research; and food and drug safety. Trump’s budget proposal calls for cutting the department’s discretionary spending by 26.2%, or $33.3bn.RFK Jr, who has a history of promoting conspiracy theories and medical misinformation, was nominated by Trump and approved by the Senate along party lines, with Mitch McConnell the sole Republican dissenter.Following a reduction in force of 10,000 employees on 1 April, Kennedy Jr claimed 20% of the firings were in error and that those workers would be reinstated, though that has not happened.An HHS spokesperson blamed any such errors on data-collection issues, and did not comment on any other aspects of the Guardian’s reporting.Aids relief program ‘dismantled’At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an operating division of the HHS, employees working on maternal and child health at the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (Pepfar) program were shocked to be included in the reduction in force, as earlier in the administration their work had received a waiver for parts of the program from federal funding freezes.All federal experts on HIV prevention in children overseas were fired as part of the reduction in force.“Our concern initially was that it was a mistake with the name. We hoped around that time it came out that there were 20% errors, that we would be included,” said an epidemiologist who was included in the reduction in force, but requested to remain anonymous as they are currently on administrative leave. They also noted that they were in the middle of planning and delivering a new pediatric HIV treatment medication set to be dispersed this year, and that that work was now at risk.View image in fullscreenThey said 22 epidemiologists in the branch of their CDC division had been fired. Pepfar was created in 2003 by George W Bush to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission and credited with saving 26 million lives.“We were very shocked on April 1 that we were put immediately on admin leave,” said another epidemiologist affected by the reduction in force at the CDC. “We really feel our branch being cut was a mistake. The state department had said services were a priority and needed to continue, but then we were cut by HHS.”They noted HIV treatment had already stopped in regions of countries that had been reliant on USAID programs, such as Zambia.“It is one of the most successful global health programs in history, data driven with high levels of accountability and the dollars spent achieve impact. Our concern now is, yes, they are continuing Pepfar in name, but they are dismantling all the systems and structure that allowed it to succeed,” they added. “The US made a huge investment in this program in 20 years and a lot of it is now undone. We’ve now disrupted those systems that could have reduced and eventually removed US investment in these programs.”‘Long-term impact’ on US familiesInside the HHS, the Administration for Children and Families is responsible for enforcing court-ordered child-support payments. For every dollar it receives in federal funding, ACF says it is able to collect $5 in child support.A child-support specialist with the HHS, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, said reductions in force at the department have increased workloads on those who were not fired by multiple times, making it so state and tribal agencies have no way of ensuring they are compliant with federal requirements.“The regional staff with direct oversight of the program are gone,” they said. “There are entire regions that have two staff members managing a quarter of the work for the program with no management, no support, no knowledge of the program.”After the Trump administration took office, the agency was under an unofficial stop-work order, where staff were not permitted to provide guidance or support to grantees or even answer phones, until late February, the specialist said. A reduction in force followed on 1 April, when, the child-support specialist claimed, about half the ACF staff working on child support were fired.Their department is responsible for overseeing child-support programs at state, tribal and local levels. States “could very well lose millions of dollars in funding” if ACF does not provide key training and assistance and the states do not have qualified staff, the specialist cautioned. “And that is the long-term impact to vulnerable children and families in the country.”They added: “The entire function of the program is to give economic stability to children and families, so that they do not depend on any other government program, or their reliance on these programs is lower, because the children are supported by both parents.”‘A living hell’At the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also within the HHS, one of 300 workers terminated as part of a reduction in force claimed it had been illegal, and had not followed any proper procedures. The National Treasury Employees Union has filed a grievance over how the firings were carried out, including incorrect information on notices.They explained that, on 1 April, they received a generic letter informing them of an intent of reduction in force. Hours later, they were locked out of their government logins. “We started emailing the management that was left, trying to get clarification on what our status was. Nobody could give us an answer,” the worker said.On 7 April, they discovered through their paystub that they had been placed on administrative leave, despite never receiving a notice. They didn’t receive an RIF notice until weeks later, after requesting it.“Based on my tenure, and as a disabled veteran, I should at least have a chance of reassignment,” they said. “I’m not mad about losing my job. It happens. I’ve been laid off. The first time was in the private sector, and it was way more humane, more empathetic, and I was given different offers.“This, on the other hand, is unbridled hate. This administration has gone out of their way to make it a living hell for all of its public servants.” More