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      America is over neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Trump is not | Samuel Moyn

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      The convergence of the US Senate’s passage of Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” in domestic policy with his strike on Iran in foreign policy has finally resolved the meaning of his presidency. His place in history is now clear. His rise, like that of a reawakened left, indicated that America was ready to move on from its long era of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. In office, Trump has blocked the exits by doubling down on both.The first of those slurs, neoliberalism, refers to the commitment across the political spectrum to use government to protect markets and their hierarchies, rather than to moderate or undo them. The second, neoconservatism, is epitomized by a belligerent and militaristic foreign policy. The domestic policy bill now making its way through Congress, with its payoff to the rich and punishment of the poor, is a monument to neoliberalism; the Iran strike a revival of neoconservatism.Up to now, uncertainty about Trump’s place in history has prevailed, in part because he has done little and dithered so much. From before he took office, apocalyptic premonition of the doom he might bring reigned supreme. Everyone assumed that the Trump era was going to be different, disagreeing only about the exact shape of the horror. On the right, some projected their hopes for transformation on the president, anticipating a different future, wishcasting without knowing whether (or when) their leader would side with them.Now, with his bill and his bombing, Trump has confirmed beyond any doubt that he is a man of a familiar past instead. Though the damage that neoliberalism and neoconservatism wrought helped make Trump’s charlatanry a credible choice for millions, the man himself stands for the eternal return of those very same policies. Trump’s appeal to the working class and more measured rhetoric about war from the start of his political career suggested that he might renege on these two dominant creeds from the beltway “swamp”. He renewed them both instead.This is where Trump’s ultimate significance so clearly lies: in continuity, not change. He busted a lot of norms from the first in 2017. Cries of abnormalcy and authoritarianism arose before there was evidence to back them – and evidence has accumulated through both terms. Charlottesville and January 6 in the first – intimations of deeper reservoirs of hate that could come out of American woodwork, with Trump coyly pandering to the mobs – were preludes to both mass and targeted immigration roundups in this term, reminiscent of classical fascism.Yet climactically, and when it mattered most, Trump has chosen to walk in lockstep with the dead consensus in domestic and foreign policy of the past half-century – not merely among conservatives, but among many liberals. Americans do best when the rich do best of all, with the poor punished for crime and sloth: that has long been our outlook. And the country must go it alone with military force, in order to back our interests or principles or both, Americans have long presumed.Neoliberalism and neoconservatism each has more complexity than this – but, leaning into both, Trump has shown in recent weeks they are not much more complicated either. And if so, Trump is far more a politician of American continuity with the past 50 years than many originally feared (or hoped).The “beautiful” domestic policy bill is one of the morally ugliest in American history. Making Trump’s signature tax cuts from his first term permanent requires both draconian cuts to programs (Medicaid for the poor, worst of all) and piling up even more debt for future generations to figure out. It turns out that Ronald Reagan and the Democrats who followed him in lowering taxation and “reforming” welfare (including by imposing work requirements, as this bill does) were not in another world from Trump. He is in theirs. Revealingly, the main trouble that Trump faced in getting the obscenity of a bill passed – and that he still faces in the House – is convincing Republicans who claim to hate deficit spending so much to rationalize even greater cuts to welfare.On the world stage, Trump has longed for the recognition of a Nobel peace prize. But the deals he thinks will deserve it have proved elusive. In Israel/Palestine, the ceasefire he helped force has broken down and the civilian toll has worsened. In Ukraine, the considerable distance between the warring parties has meant that Trump has not managed to either antagonize or lure either to come to terms. Unlike during his first four years, his Iran intervention means that, rather than bringing peace, exacerbating war is his foreign policy legacy for now.Squandering the inclinations of his base and outraging many more lukewarm supporters sick of foreign entanglements, it was a surprise that he acted with the reckless militarism that was once American common sense. He is no doubt open to any deals that come his way – apparently thinking that Canada or Greenland should clamor to be annexed. But it was foolish in response to the early rhetoric of his second term to expect Trump to revert to expansionist war by sending troops. But in sending B-2 bombers on so escalatory a mission to Iran, he clarified his support for war – incurring risks like no other presidents have taken. If the peace he wants to brag about doesn’t materialize, he is not above a dose of coercive violence.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIronically, Trump’s warlike turn meant that a long list of his neoconservative “never Trump” scourges became “sometimes Trump” supporters overnight. Where populist Republicans have had to grit their teeth and support a neoliberal bill – so much for the working-class party they promised – it was even more spectacular that neoconservatives overcame the hatred for Trump that had helped them launder their former reputations for catastrophic warmongering.With neocon scion Bill Kristol in the lead, after the Iran strike they fawned over the man whom they had spent years castigating as irresponsible, or malignant, or both. No wonder: Trump, far from acting as an isolationist or realist, was executing one of the longest-held and longest-denied neoconservative fantasies: that bombing Iran’s nuclear program off the map would work, and might have the fringe benefit of causing the regime to fall. It remains a fantasy. But Trump’s place in history is now defined by that fantasy more than by any other foreign policy choice he has made so far.Like in his first term, when he ordered the assassination in Iraq of Iranian general and terror master Qassem Suleimani in 2020, Trump’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities was illegal. But as the saying goes, Trump’s escalatory and risky use of bunker-busting munitions to wipe Fordow and other sites off the map was worse than a crime; it was a mistake. At best, it elicited a face-saving attack from Iran so that it could come to the negotiating table with a nuclear program to continue in the future; at worst, it will prompt Iran to intensify its efforts to achieve the weapon. And while Israel has certainly set back Iran’s regional designs and capacity for sponsoring terror, there are no signs the regime will relent in its policies.With hopes that he might stand for restraint shredded, it is likelier that a lackey will find a place on Mount Rushmore than that Trump will get the call from Oslo he badly wants. But like the politicians whose faces are already carved in the granite of South Dakota, Trump is a man of the past – and never more clearly than in recent weeks, as America continues to look for someone to liberate it from the zombie neoliberalism and neoconservatism that still define their disastrous present and president.

      Samuel Moyn is the Kent professor of law and history at Yale University, where he also serves as head of Grace Hopper College More

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      Planned Parenthood CEO warns Trump bill will lead to $700m loss and ‘backdoor abortion ban’

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      Planned Parenthood stands to lose roughly $700m in federal funding if the US House passes Republicans’ massive spending-and-tax bill, the organization’s CEO said on Wednesday, amounting to what abortion rights supporters and opponents alike have called a “backdoor abortion ban”.“We are facing down the reality that nearly 200 health centers are at risk of closure. We’re facing a reality of the impact on shutting down almost half of abortion-providing health centers,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of Americas’s CEO, said in an interview Wednesday morning. “It does feel existential. Not just for Planned Parenthood, but for communities that are relying on access to this care.”Anti-abortion activists have longed to “defund” Planned Parenthood for decades. They are closer than ever to achieving their goal.That $700m figure represents the loss that Planned Parenthood would face from a provision in the spending bill that would impose a one-year Medicaid ban on healthcare non-profits that offer abortions and that received more than $800,000 in federal funding in 2023, as well as the funding that Planned Parenthood could lose from Title X, the nation’s largest family-planning program. In late March, the Trump administration froze tens of millions of dollars of Title X funding that had been set aside for some Planned Parenthood and other family-planning clinics.“Essentially what you are seeing is a gutting of a safety net,” said McGill Johnson, who characterized the bill as a “backdoor abortion ban” in a statement.Medicaid is the US government’s insurance program for low-income people, and about 80 million people use it. If the latest version of the spending-and-tax bill passes, nearly 12 million people are expected to lose their Medicaid coverage.Donald Trump has said that he would like the bill to be on his desk, ready for a signature, by 4 July.The provision attacking Planned Parenthood would primarily target clinics in blue states that have protected abortion rights since the overturning of Roe v Wade three years ago, because those blue states have larger numbers of people on Medicaid. Although not all Planned Parenthood clinics perform abortions, the reproductive healthcare giant provides 38% of US abortions, according to the latest data from Abortion Care Network, a membership group for independent abortion clinics.Among the clinics at risk of closure, Planned Parenthood estimated, more than 90% are in states that permit abortion. Sixty percent are located in areas that have been deemed “medically underserved”.In total, more than 1.1 million Planned Parenthood patients could lose access to care.“There’s nowhere else for folks” to go, McGill Johnson said. “The community health centers have said they cannot absorb the patients that Planned Parenthood sees. So I think that we do need to just call it a targeted attack because that’s exactly how it is.”Nationally, 11% of female Medicaid beneficiaries between the ages of 15 and 49 and who receive family-planning services go to Planned Parenthood for a range of services, according to an analysis by the non-profit KFF, which tracks healthcare policy. Those numbers rise in blue states like Washington, Oregon and Connecticut.In California, that number soars to 29%. The impact on the state would be so devastating that Nichole Ramirez, senior vice-president of communication and donor relations at Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties, called the tax-and-spending package’s provision “a direct attack on us, really”.“They haven’t been able to figure out how to ban abortion nationwide and they haven’t been able to figure out how to ban abortion in California specifically,” said Ramirez, who estimated that Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties stands to lose between $40m and $60m. Ramirez continued: “This is their way to go about banning abortion. That is the entire goal here.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a post on X, the prominent anti-abortion group Live Action reposted an image of a Planned Parenthood graphic calling the provision “backdoor abortion ban”. “They might be onto us,” Live Action wrote.The Planned Parenthood network is overseen by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, but it also consists of dozens of independent regional affiliates that operate nearly 600 clinics across the country. In June, as the spending-and-tax bill moved through Congress, Autonomy News, an outlet that focuses on threats to bodily autonomy, reported that Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s accreditation board had sent waivers out to affiliates to apply for approval to cease providing abortions in order to preserve access to Medicaid funding. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that a memo sent to the leadership of one California affiliate suggests that leaders there had considered ending abortion services.McGill Johnson said that there have been discussions within Planned Parenthood’s network about what it would mean to stop offering abortions. But no affiliates, to her knowledge, are moving forward with plans to stop performing the procedure.“Educating our volunteers and teams around hard decisions to stand and understand the impact of that is different than weighing and considering a stoppage of abortion,” McGill Johnson said.The budget bill and Title X funding freeze aren’t the only sources of pressure on the group. The US supreme court last week ruled in favor of South Carolina in a case involving the state’s attempt to kick Planned Parenthood out of its state Medicaid reimbursement program – a ruling that will likely give a green light to other states that also want to defund Planned Parenthood.At least one other organization that provides abortion and family-planning services, Maine Family Planning, will be affected by the provision, according to the organization’s CEO, George Hill. Maine Family Planning directly operates 18 clinics, including several that provide primary care or are in rural, medically underserved areas. If the provision takes effect, Hill estimates, the organization would lose 20% of its operating budget.“It’s dressed up as a budget provision, but it’s not,” Hill said. “They’re basically taking the rug out from under our feet.” More

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      House set to vote on Trump’s big bill as Johnson vows to ‘get it over the line’

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      Donald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill is hanging in the balance as Republicans struggle to muster sufficient votes in the US House of Representatives.A five-minute procedural vote remained open and tied for more than an hour on Wednesday as Republican leaders told members they could leave the floor, suggesting they still do not have the numbers they need.Trump, JD Vance and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, had spent much of the day trying to pressure conservatives to support the bill despite changes made by the Senate.A preliminary motion on the sweeping tax-and-spending bill did gain approval on party lines with 214 in favor and 212 against, setting the stage for another vote later on Wednesday afternoon to adopt the rule. If that is successful, the chamber will debate the bill, then vote on its final passage.But with the House at a standstill, the timing of the all-important rule vote was uncertain. “Either you vote on the rule or you go home,” said the conservative Tennessee representative Tim Burchett as he exited the Capitol.The Senate passed the bill, with Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, on Tuesday, after a record-setting all-night session. Now the chambers must reconcile their versions: the sprawling mega-bill goes back to the House, where Johnson has said the Senate “went a little further than many of us would have preferred” in its changes, particularly to Medicaid, a program that provides healthcare to low-income and disabled Americans.But the speaker vowed to “get that bill over the line”. Trump has set a Fourth of July deadline for Congress to send the bill to his desk.According to CNN, Johnson told reporters: “When you have a piece of legislation that is this comprehensive and with so many agenda items involved, you’re going to have lots of different priorities and preferences among people because they represent different districts and they have different interests.“But we can’t make everyone 100% happy. It’s impossible. This is a deliberative body. It’s a legislative process. By definition, all of us have to give up on our personal preferences. [I’m] never going to ask anybody to compromise core principles, but preferences must be yielded for the greater good, and that’s what I think people are recognizing and come to grips with.”Early on Wednesday morning, the House rules committee advanced the measure, sending it to the floor for consideration. On their way into the Capitol, two conservative Republicans signaled optimism that the bill would get through the House.Congresswoman Nancy Mace told reporters: “I think these votes will take a little bit or a lot longer than usual. But that’s Washington. You guys are watching how the sausage is made, and that’s how business is run.”Like several other members, Mace wound up driving from her South Carolina district to Washington after a flurry of thunderstorms yesterday prompted major flight delays and cancellations around the capital.Smoking a cigar, Congressman Troy Nehls of Texas said: “There’s things in the bill I don’t like, but would I change the bill because I didn’t get what I wanted? I don’t think that would be good for America.”The House approved an initial draft of the legislation in May by a single vote, overcoming Democrats’ unanimous opposition. But many fiscal conservatives are furious over cost estimates that project the Senate version would add even more to the federal deficit than the House-passed plan.But Johnson’s wafer-thin Republican majority risks losing decisive votes from rightwing fiscal hardliners demanding steep spending cuts, moderates wary of dismantling safety-net programs and Republicans from Democratic-led states expected to make a stand on a contentious tax provision. Any one of these groups could potentially derail the bill’s passage through a chamber where the GOP can afford to lose no more than three votes.Trump celebrated the Senate’s passage of the bill as “music to my ears”. He has described the bill as crucial to his second-term agenda, and congressional Republicans made it their top priority.The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill in its current form would add $3.3tn to the US budget deficit through 2034.It will extend tax cuts enacted during the president’s first term in 2017, and includes new provisions to cut taxes on tips, overtime and interest payments for some car loans. It funds Trump’s plans for mass deportations by allocating $45bn for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, $14bn for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029.It also includes more than $50bn for the construction of new border fortifications, which will probably include a wall along the border with Mexico.To satisfy demands from fiscal conservatives for cuts to the US’s large federal budget deficit, the bill imposes new work requirements on enrollees of Medicaid. It also imposes a limit on the provider tax states use to fund their program, which could lead to reductions in services. Finally, it sunsets some incentives for green-energy technologies created by Congress under Joe Biden.In a floor speech on Wednesday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, warned: “This bill is a deal with the devil. It explodes our national debt. It militarizes our entire economy, and it strips away healthcare and basic dignity of the American people.“For what? To give Elon Musk a tax break and billionaires, the greedy, taking of our nation. We cannot stand for it and we will not support it. You should be ashamed.”Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi said of the policy bill: “Well, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then you, GOP, you have a very blurred vision of what America is about.“Is it beautiful to cut off food from seniors and children? Is it beautiful to cut off 17 million people from healthcare? Is it beautiful to do this? To give tax cuts to billionaires in our country? Is it beautiful to take money from education and the rest? The list goes on and on.” More

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      Senate Republicans pass Trump’s sweeping policy bill, clearing major hurdle

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      Senate Republicans on Tuesday passed a major tax and spending bill demanded by Donald Trump, ending weeks of negotiations over the comprehensive legislation and putting it another step closer to enactment.But it remains unclear whether changes made by the chamber will be accepted by the House of Representatives, which approved an initial draft of the legislation last month by a single vote. While Republicans control both houses of Congress, factionalism in the lower chamber is particularly intense, with rightwing fiscal hardliners demanding deep spending cuts, moderates wary of dismantling safety-net programs and Republicans from Democratic-led states expected to make a stand on a contentious tax provision. Any one of these groups could potentially derail the bill’s passage through a chamber where the GOP can lose no more than three votes.The bill’s passage is nonetheless an accomplishment for Senate Republicans who faced their own divisions in getting it passed, and saw one lawmaker announce his retirement after clashing with Trump over the bill. The push to get the legislation done intensified on Saturday when the chamber voted to begin debate, then continued with amendment votes that began on Monday and stretched all night.The vote for passage came just after noon on Tuesday, and required the vice-president, JD Vance, to break a tie that resulted after three Republicans joined with all Democrats in voting against it.In a joint statement, the speaker, Mike Johnson, and the House Republican leadership said: “Republicans were elected to do exactly what this bill achieves: secure the border, make tax cuts permanent, unleash American energy dominance, restore peace through strength, cut wasteful spending, and return to a government that puts Americans first. This bill is President Trump’s agenda, and we are making it law.”The Senate majority leader, John Thune, said Republican senators and staff began laying the groundwork for this budget bill more than a year ago, planning how they would extend tax breaks if they had the votes. He said: “Since we took office in January, Republicans have been laser-focused on achieving the bill before us today. And now we’re here, passing legislation that will permanently extend tax relief for hard-working Americans.”The lower chamber will take up the measure on Wednesday, before a deadline Trump has imposed to have it on his desk by Friday, the Independence Day holiday. But the president has recently made comments indicating the bill could arrive later, saying at a press conference on Friday “we can go longer”, before writing on Truth Social that “the House of Representatives must be ready to send it to my desk before July 4th”.Trump has described the bill as crucial to his presidency, and congressional Republicans made it their top priority. It will extend tax cuts enacted during the president’s first term in 2017, and includes new provisions to cut taxes on tips, overtime and interest payments for some car loans. It funds Trump’s plans for mass deportations by allocating $45bn for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, $14bn for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029. It also includes more than $50bn for the construction of new border fortifications, which will probably include a wall along the border with Mexico.To satisfy demands from fiscal conservatives for cuts to the US’s large federal budget deficit, the bill imposes new work requirements on enrollees of Medicaid, which provides healthcare to low-income and disabled Americans. It also imposes a limit on the provider tax states use to fund their program, which could lead to reductions in services. Finally, it sunsets some incentives for green-energy technologies created by Congress under Joe Biden.Nonetheless, the bill would add $3.3tn to the US budget deficit through 2034, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-profit focused on fiscal responsibility, called the bill “a failure of responsible governing” because it will add to the federal debt and includes budget gimmicks that disguise how much debt it is adding. The group estimated it would add more than $4tn to the national debt through 2034, and said that if some “arbitrary expirations” were made permanent, they would add $5.4tn.“The Senate reconciliation bill fails almost every test of fiscal responsibility,” said Maya MacGuineas, the group’s president. “Instead of worrying about arbitrary deadlines or sparing the Senate another vote-a-rama, fiscal conservatives should stand up for what’s right and reject the Senate plan to explode our debt.”While it was formally titled the one big beautiful bill act, the Senate’s Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer, managed to get the name stricken minutes before the vote for passage, though that is not expected to change how many lawmakers refer to it. Because it was passed using the budget reconciliation procedure that requires legislation only affect spending, revenue and the debt limit, Democrats were unable to use the filibuster to block its passage in the Senate.Schumer called the bill a “big, ugly betrayal”, pointing to the millions who will lose health insurance, job losses and debt increase done in favor of tax breaks for the wealthy and corporate special interests. He also decried the process Republicans used to pass the bill, saying they pushed the rules and norms of the chamber in a way that did “grave damage” to the body.“Today’s vote will haunt our Republican colleagues for years to come as the American people see the damage that is done – as hospitals close, as people are laid off, as costs go up, as the debt increases. They will see what our colleagues have done and they will remember it, and we Democrats will make sure they remember it,” Schumer said.In the lead-up to the bill’s passage, several moderate Republicans signaled unease with its cuts to the social safety net, including North Carolina’s Thom Tillis. After saying on Saturday he would not vote for the bill, Trump publicly attacked him, and the senator announced he would not run for re-election next year, potentially improving Democrats’ chances of picking up the purple state’s seat.“It is inescapable this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,” Tillis said on Sunday. Pointing to a forecast that the bill would cost 663,000 North Carolinians their Medicaid coverage, Tillis said: “What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there any more, guys?”In addition to Tillis, Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against passage, criticizing the bill’s impact on the budget deficit and national debt. Susan Collins, who is expected to face a fierce re-election challenge next year from Democrats for her seat in Maine, also opposed it, saying the measure would “threaten not only Mainers’ access to healthcare, but also the very existence of several of our state’s rural hospitals”.The Alaska moderate Lisa Murkowski expressed similar concerns about its effect on Medicaid, but ended up voting for passage.Now that the legislation is back in the House, Johnson faces a difficult task in getting the Senate’s changes cleared by his conference’s competing factions.Moderates remain concerned about the safety-net cuts, while rightwing Republicans have railed against the bill’s expensive price tag. Last week, David Valadao, a Republican representative whose central California district has one of the highest Medicaid enrollment rates in the nation, said he would not support the measure over its funding changes to the program.On Monday, before the bill’s passage, the Democratic National Committee announced the launch of an organizing campaign to capitalize on the unpopularity of the budget plan’s provisions. Ken Martin, the chair of the DNC, shared in a press briefing that when he was growing up, his family relied on the kinds of safety-net programs that are being cut.Martin said in a statement on Tuesday that the bill helps billionaires at the expense of American families – the sort of messaging the party will rely on as it hits the road to turn out voters for the midterms and special elections.“It’s a massive scheme to steal from working folks, struggling families and, hell, even from nursing homes – all to enrich the already rich with a tax giveaway,” Martin said. “Billionaires don’t need more help – working families do. Democrats will stand shoulder to shoulder with working families to kick these Republicans out of their seats in 2026.”The rightwing House Freedom caucus has also criticized the bill for its price tag. “The Senate must make major changes and should at least be in the ballpark of compliance with the agreed upon House budget framework. Republicans must do better,” they wrote on Monday, as amendments were being considered.In a Tuesday press conference, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said the bill represents the “largest cut to Medicaid in American history”. He expects his caucus will uniformly oppose the bill and will be making the case to vote it down in the rules committee and on the House floor.When asked whether House Democrats would use any procedural moves to delay passage of the bill, Jeffries said: “All procedural and legislative options are on the table.” More

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      Republican senator denounces Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ in fiery speech

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      “It is inescapable this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,” Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican senator, said on Sunday night, sandblasting the Senate version of the “big, beautiful bill” that is meant to codify the president’s agenda.Tillis made his speech on the Senate floor on Sunday night, a few hours after announcing he would not seek re-election in politically competitive North Carolina. Observers described it as “fiery” and “savage”. But Tillis carefully avoided direct criticism of the president as he denounced proposed cuts to Medicaid, a lack of rigor in the legislative process and the Senate’s headlong drive to an artificial deadline.Instead, in one of the most forceful Republican denunciations of the bill, Tillis attacked “amateurs” advising the president who have “no insight into how these provider tax cuts are going to be absorbed without harming people on Medicare”.Tillis’s office published an analysis concluding that the Senate budget would have a $32bn impact on the North Carolina healthcare system and threaten insurance coverage for 663,000 Medicaid expansion beneficiaries in the state – about one in 16 North Carolinians.“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there any more, guys?” Tillis said in his floor speech.It has become increasingly difficult for lawmakers in the Republican party to break ranks with the president without facing withering blowback from conservative media, “Maga” diehards and Trump himself on social media.“Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER! He’s even worse than Rand ‘Fauci’ Paul!” Trump posted on Truth Social after announcing his opposition to the bill. Trump pledged to back a primary challenger to Tillis. When Tillis subsequently announced he would not seek re-election, Trump called it “good news”, and threatened primary challenges against other Republican fiscal conservatives standing in the way of the bill’s passage.Arguments critical of conservative doctrine on healthcare would fall on deaf ears. Instead, Tillis’s rhetoric emphasized the political threat to Republican lawmakers and the president himself if the bill passed in its current form.“I’m telling the president that you have been misinformed,” he said. “You supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.”Tillis referred back to Trump’s promise not to cut Medicaid while campaigning for president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The last time I saw a promise broken around healthcare, with respect to my friends on the other side of the aisle, is when somebody said “If you like your healthcare, you could keep it. If you like your doctor, you could keep it,” Tillis said. “We found out that wasn’t true. That made me the second Republican speaker of the House since the civil war.”Tillis signaled he would be willing to support the House version of the reconciliation bill.The procedural vote passed 51-49 Sunday. Budget reconciliation bills are not subject to cloture and the 60-vote threshold limiting debate. Trump has repeatedly pushed a 4 July deadline for passage. More

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      Senate Republicans scrambling to pass tax-and-spend bill by Trump deadline

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      The Republican-controlled US Senate advanced president Donald Trump’s sweeping tax-cut and spending bill in a key procedural vote late on Saturday, raising the odds that lawmakers will be able to pass his “big, beautiful bill” in the coming days.The measure, Trump’s top legislative goal, passed its first procedural hurdle in a 51 to 49 vote, with two Republican senators voting against it.The result came after several hours of negotiation as Republican leaders and vice president JD Vance sought to persuade last-minute holdouts in a series of closed-door negotiations.The procedural vote, which would start debate on the 940-page megabill to fund Trump’s top immigration, border, tax-cut and military priorities, began after hours of delay.It then remained open for more than three hours of standstill as three Republican senators – Thom Tillis, Ron Johnson and Rand Paul – joined Democrats to oppose the legislation. Three others – Senators Rick Scott, Mike Lee and Cynthia Lummis – negotiated with Republican leaders into the night in hopes of securing bigger spending cuts.In the end, Wisconsin Senator Johnson flipped his no vote to yes, leaving only Paul and Tillis opposed among Republicans.Trump on social media hailed the “great victory” for his “great, big, beautiful bill.”The megabill would extend the 2017 tax cuts that were Trump’s main legislative achievement during his first term as president, cut other taxes and boost spending on the military and border security.But the controversial bill has caused division, with Elon Musk, the billionaire Trump donor again coming out in strong opposition to the House version of the bill, denouncing the Senate draft on his social media platform, X, on Saturday.“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!” Musk wrote above a comment from a green energy expert who pointed out that the bill raises taxes on new wind and solar projects.“Utterly insane and destructive,” Musk added. “It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”Nonpartisan analysts estimate that a version of Trump’s tax-cut and spending bill would add trillions to the $36.2-trillion US government debt.Democrats fiercely opposed the bill, saying its tax-cut elements would disproportionately benefit the wealthy at the expense of social programs that lower-income Americans rely upon.Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top Democrat, demanded that the bill be read aloud before debate could begin, saying the Senate Republicans were scrambling to pass a “radical bill”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump is pushing Congress to wrap it up, even as he sometimes gives mixed signals, allowing for more time.The legislation is an ambitious but complicated series of GOP priorities. At its core, it would make permanent many of the tax breaks from Trump’s first term that would otherwise expire by year’s end if Congress fails to act, resulting in a potential tax increase on Americans. The bill would add new breaks, including no taxes on tips, and commit $350bn to national security, including for Trump’s mass deportation agenda.Some lawmakers say the cuts go too far, particularly for people receiving healthcare through Medicaid. Meanwhile, conservatives worried about the nation’s debt are pushing for steeper cuts.The final text includes a proposal for cuts to a Medicaid provider tax that had run into parliamentary objections and opposition from several senators worried about the fate of rural hospitals. The new version extends the start date for those cuts and establishes a $25bn fund to aid rural hospitals and providers.Most states impose the provider tax as a way to boost federal Medicaid reimbursements. Some Republicans argue that is a scam and should be abolished.The nonpartisan congressional budget office has said that under the House-passed version of the bill, some 10.9 million more people would go without healthcare and at least 3 million fewer would qualify for food aid. The CBO has not yet publicly assessed the Senate draft, which proposes steeper reductions. Top income-earners would see about a $12,000 tax cut under the House bill, while the package would cost the poorest Americans $1,600, the CBO said. More

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      ‘You open the fridge – nothing’: renewed threat of US hunger as Trump seeks to cut food aid

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      Jade Johnson has a word to describe the experience of going hungry in one of the world’s richest countries. “Humbling.”The last time she endured the misery of skipping meals was about 18 months ago. She was working two jobs as a home health aide and in childcare, but after paying the rent and bills she still didn’t have enough to feed herself and her young daughter Janai.She would always make sure Janai had all she needed and then, when the money ran out, trim her own eating habits accordingly. Three meals a day became one, solids would be replaced with copious amounts of water to dull the hunger pangs.“It’s like you get humbled,” Johnson, 25, says in the apartment where she is raising Janai, six, in Germantown, Maryland. “You open the fridge, close it, open it again but nothing’s gonna change – there’s nothing in there.”Those lean times were in the days before Johnson was accepted on to Snap, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, that provides low-income families with help to buy nutritious groceries. Johnson had applied several times, but had been knocked back.She was finally approved, with the help of an adviser whom she met at a parents’ evening at Janai’s kindergarten. For more than a year now she has received $520 every month to buy good food – equivalent to $8.50 for her and Janai each day, or under $3 a meal.View image in fullscreenThat may not sound much, but it has been transformative. “Snap has been a blessing for me,” she says. “I can provide for Janai when I come home, cook dinner for myself. It’s improved my relationship with my kid, my friends, my clients.”Now Johnson is bracing herself for a return to those grim days of food insecurity. Donald Trump’s multi-trillion dollar domestic policy legislation, his “big, beautiful bill” which is currently battling through Congress, would slash up to $300bn from the Snap program in order to fund extended tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.The cuts amount to the largest in the program’s history. They come at a time when food insecurity is already on the rise in all 50 states.Voting is meant to begin soon in the US Senate, an attempt to clear the bill through the upper chamber in time to meet Trump’s ambition to sign it into law by 4 July. Senate Republican leaders are mindful that any revisions they write into the bill must avoid causing further acrimony when the legislation moves back for final approval to the House of Representatives, where the package was passed this spring by an agonising single vote.Under the House version of the bill, parents of children seven and above would become liable for stringent work requirements from which they are currently exempted until their child is 18. Johnson would be affected by the new restriction, as Janai turns seven in November.If that seven-year cutoff remains in the final bill (the Senate is proposing that parents must meet work requirements once their child reaches 14), Johnson will have to prove from Janai’s next birthday that she is working at least 20 hours a week. Otherwise she would lose her Snap benefits.That would be a tough burden to meet, given that her hours fluctuate week by week as clients’ needs change. She has very little slack in her calendar to work further hours, because on top of her two jobs she is studying part-time at night to become a dialysis technician.So Johnson is nervously following the passage of the bill, and preparing for the worst. Should her food assistance be pulled, it will be back to “grind mode” and a renewed state of humbling.Johnson is one of millions of struggling Americans who are threatened with losing their Snap benefits under Trump’s bill. Most of the political attention in Congress has focused on Medicaid, the health insurance scheme for low-income families which faces even greater cuts of at least $800bn under the House version of the bill.Anti-hunger advocates fear that the potential devastation of Snap cuts is being overlooked. “I just don’t think it’s getting the sort of press and general public attention it demands,” said Stephanie Ettinger de Cuba, executive director of Children’s HealthWatch.She described the proposed cuts as a “catastrophic attack that will change the structure of Snap, damage children’s and parents’ health, and have ripple effects that will devastate local economies”.Since it was founded as a permanent program by Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Snap has grown into America’s most effective weapon against hunger. It currently helps put food on the table for over 40 million people, almost half of whom are children.Poverty experts have been stunned by the scale of Trump’s proposed cuts. They say they would deliver a terrible blow to one of the country’s core values – that all Americans should have enough to eat.“It’s like we are throwing in the towel, and saying hunger won,” said Salaam Bhatti, Snap director at the Food Research & Action Center (Frac). “It’s upsetting that one of the wealthiest countries in the world is on the brink of increasing hunger for millions of people.”The proposed cuts fall under several headings. The one that Johnson will feel most immediately is the expanded work requirements that will put about 8 million people at risk of losing some or all of their Snap benefits.In addition to the expanded work requirements for parents of children aged seven to 18, older adults aged 55 to 64 would also now have to meet heavy work stipulations. That cohort includes Johnson’s mother, Jámene, who currently receives Snap but might be thrown off it as she is 55 and would be subject to the expanded demands.Jámene currently receives $52 a month in Snap benefits. Again, that might sound minimal, but without it she would be unable to buy fresh vegetables and meat and she would be hard pressed to offer any help to her daughter and granddaughter when reserves are running low.The bill also transfers some of the costs of benefits, for the first time in the program’s 61-year history, from the federal government to individual states. Under the House bill, states would be liable for up to 15% of the benefit costs, while the portion of administrative costs they already bear would rise from 50% to 75%.A state like Virginia would have to fork out an extra $500m a year. In Bhatti’s estimation, many states are simply going to be unable or unwilling to foot that bill – and will pass on the pain to their poorer citizens.“States don’t have that type of money, and so they would either reduce costs by removing families from the program, or by pulling out of the program entirely.”Were Virginia to bail out of Snap, that would put over 800,000 people at immediate risk of food insecurity, including over 300,000 children.Paradoxically, many of the states that would be most impacted, and by extension a large proportion of the families that could be left struggling to feed themselves, are in the rural Republican heartlands that voted heavily for Trump. One of the hardest hit would be Louisiana, which has 44% of its population on Snap or Medicaid or both.The stakes are almost as high in deep red Arkansas (38%) and Mississippi (37%). “I don’t understand why policymakers are pursuing this bill when this will obviously hurt a large majority of their own constituents for whom Snap is a lifeline,” said Lelaine Bigelow of the Georgetown Center for Poverty and Inequality.West Virginia, with 38% of its population in receipt of Snap or Medicaid, is an especially poignant example. This was the state where the food assistance program was born: John F Kennedy opened a pilot program there following his tour of the economically stricken Appalachian coal country.“I don’t know whether the cuts will give rise to what Kennedy saw – hungry children with bloated bellies,” said Tracy Roof, a political scientist at the University of Richmond who is writing a book on the history of food stamps. “But I do know that in a country as wealthy as the US, it’s unforgivable that you should have people going hungry to bed.”Trump’s hydra-headed cuts would also make it harder for low-income families to claim benefits in areas with high unemployment rates. The basket of food against which Snap is calculated would also be frozen, so that over the next 10 years the value of the benefit would decline in real terms from the current average of $6 a day, which many experts already consider inadequate.As a further threat, food assistance will be removed from up to 250,000 refugees and other people granted humanitarian protections in the US.In some ways, the Senate iteration of the bill is even more extreme than the House one. It targets millions of people in special groups, forcing them to meet tough work requirements to which they had been exempted. That includes military veterans, people experiencing homelessness, and young people in foster care.Research by the Georgetown Center exposes the staggering disparity that underpins Trump’s plan. Under the House bill, over $1tn would be withdrawn in Snap and Medicaid cuts from 31% of the American people who earn on average $30,000 a year.The money would then be handed over, in the form of tax cuts, to the top 2% of the population, with average incomes of $1.5m a year.The transfer of resources would not only exacerbate America’s gaping inequality, it would also have a calamitous effect on the local economies in poorer parts of the country. Disrupting the flow of Snap food deliveries could send shock waves through the entire food supply chain, from farmer to truck driver to grocery store.Numerous studies have also revealed the damage done to the health and prospects of children when they endure food insecurity at a young age. A child’s developmental arc for language, hearing, vision and other critical faculties all peak by four, which means that if they receive insufficient nourishment in the early years it can have crushing long-term consequences.View image in fullscreen“Small deprivations have outsized impacts,” Ettinger de Cuba said. “Kids who are food insecure are more likely to be at risk of poor health, hospitalizations, and developmental delays.”In Johnson’s case, she knows Janai will be protected from such a disaster because as a parent she will do everything she can to provide for her daughter. Even if that means giving up her dream of getting on in life, or going hungry herself.What puzzles Johnson about the difficult future she is now facing, courtesy of the “big, beautiful bill”, is that it feels like she is being punished for doing everything she can to be a good American. She’s raised her daughter right, works two jobs to pay the bills, studies at night at her own cost to improve herself and find more stable work.“I’m just trying to be a decent, functioning human being,” she says. “Can’t they let me get my life together first, before they start snatching stuff away from me?” More