US taxation

Subterms

    Latest story

    75 Shares55 Views

    Trump’s big beautiful betrayal – podcast

    by

    On 4 July – as Americans celebrated their country’s independence – Donald Trump signed into law his sweeping tax and spending bill.Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, as he and fellow Republicans call it, is a sprawling piece of legislation covering everything from tax cuts to border walls to repealing environmental protections, the Guardian US’s chief reporter, Ed Pilkington, explains.But for a president who normally rules by executive order, the act perhaps tells us better than anything so far what he wants to achieve in office. ‘It enshrines what Trump wants to do in his second term,’ says Pilkington.Most controversially, it includes enormous tax breaks for the country’s super-wealthy, while making swingeing cuts to social welfare programmes used by its poor. More than 10 million US citizens are expected to lose access to Medicaid – despite Trump’s continued insistence since coming into office that he would not touch the service.So, asks Michael Safi, why is Trump doing it? And will it cost him the support of the millions of poorer Americans, who came out to vote for him last year? More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares58 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump expected to sign tax-and-spending bill in win for administration

      by

      Donald Trump is expected to sign his sweeping spending package into law on Friday during a Fourth of July picnic at the White House, setting up significant cutbacks on federal safety-net programs and increasing funds for aggressive immigration enforcement.Trump has touted the legislation’s passage as a “birthday present for America”, speaking before a crowd at a campaign-style rally in Iowa on Thursday evening, even as Democrats expressed their displeasure at the spending package.After months of deliberations, the bill passed by a single vote in the Senate and later passed the House with a 219 to 213 vote on Thursday, with only two Republicans voting against it. The sweeping legislation accomplishes what rightwingers have pushed for, for decades, as the Guardian explained this week, and provides Trump a huge legislative win.The bill, once signed into law, will significantly cut taxes, building on the 2017 tax cuts during Trump’s first term. Although temporary tax exemptions for tips, overtime pay and car loan interest are included, research from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that the bill is skewed to the rich, with the wealthiest in the US benefiting the most from the tax relief.Additionally, the law, once signed by Trump, will add new restrictions to Medicaid, which provides healthcare to low-income and disabled people, and Snap, also known as food stamps, which helps low-income people afford food. Researchers estimate that the Medicaid cutbacks will leave as many as 11.8 million people without healthcare, while 8 million people will lose their Snap benefits. Critics say that the Medicaid cuts will have massive ripple effects on healthcare nationwide.“This is highway robbery,” the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The bill Republicans just passed steals from you to give to the rich.”Proponents of the bill say that the Medicaid and Snap changes are designed to root out waste and abuse.Additionally, the spending package will allocate $170m to immigration enforcement, a monumental amount of money that will help support the Trump administration’s push to engage in “mass deportations”.“This disgraceful, anti-immigrant budget hands the Trump administration a blank check to further ramp up its shameful efforts to terrorize American communities and separate families,” said Nicole Melaku, the executive director of the National Partnership for New Americans, an immigrants’ rights organization. “Instead of safeguarding people’s access to healthcare and wellness, the bill gives tax cuts to big corporations and funnels billions of dollars to hire more immigration agents, build more immigration jails and deny people their fair day in court.”Already, the Trump administration has engaged in widespread attacks on immigrant communities, by increasing resources to immigration enforcement operations.“This budget promises to supercharge US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests that disappear community members, leave children parentless and threaten constitutional and due-process rights for all of us,” said Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, alegal organization.A recent Guardian analysis shows that undocumented immigrants without any criminal history have been arrested at an exponentially increasing rate, after top White House officials instructed agents to increase arrests.Trump temporarily walked back some of Ice’s aggressive immigration enforcement actions after complaints from leaders in the farming and hospitality industries: last month, the Trump administration engaged in a short-lived pause on raids at farms, restaurants and hotels. But at Thursday’s event, Trump again brought up the idea of pausing large-scale enforcement on farms.“If a farmer is willing to vouch for these people in some way, Kristi, I think we’re going to have to just say that’s going to be good, right?” Trump said to the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem. “We don’t want to do it where we take all of the workers off the farms.”In addition to tax cuts, restrictions on Medicaid and Snap and the aggressive supercharging of immigration enforcement, the bill seeks to end green energy incentives created under Joe Biden, seen as a further blow against efforts to combat the climate crisis.The US budget deficit will increase with this bill, leading to opposition by some Trump allies. The non-partisan congressional budget office estimates the bill will add $3.3tn to the country’s debt through 2034, leading to clashes with some rightwingers.One of the two Republicans who voted against the bill, Thomas Massie, said he opposed the spending bill “because it will significantly increase US budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates”.Elon Musk, the rightwing billionaire who established the federal government’s office tasked with slashing federal spending during the first few months of the Trump administration, has also publicly called out the spending bill. Days before Congress passed the bill, Musk repeated his call for the creation of a new political party to oppose the Republicans and Democrats. More

    • 200 Shares112 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s Medicaid cuts are coming for rural Americans: ‘It’s going to have to hit them first’

      by

      When Hurricane Helene drowned western North Carolina in muck and floodwater last year, it caught folks off-guard.Now, local leaders in places like Asheville expect the Republican-led reconciliation bill – called the “big, beautiful bill” by Donald Trump – to bear down on rural America. And they wonder whether people are missing the warning signs.“It’s going to have to hit them first,” said Laurie Stradley, CEO of Impact Health in Asheville, a Medicaid-funded non-profit providing social services to some people still digging out from the flood.Medicaid is the single largest health insurance program in the US. The public program covers 71 million low-income, disabled and elderly US residents. It pays for half of all US births and the care of six in 10 nursing home residents.When Trump’s sprawling tax-and-spending bill passed on Thursday, it heralded more than $1tn in federal cuts to Medicaid, which experts worry will push Republican-led states to abandon parts of the program and leave people without access to timely healthcare.“This is an extraordinarily regressive bill,” said Joan Akler, executive director and co-founder of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. “This is the largest rollback of healthcare coverage that we’ve ever seen and all in service of an agenda to drive tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit wealthy people and corporations.”Medicaid “expansion” is a key provision of Obamacare, formally called the Affordable Care Act of 2010. The expansion provides largely no-cost health insurance to people earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level, or $36,777 for a family of three. Although Obamacare has been the law for more than a decade, Medicaid expansion proved politically divisive in Republican states, and many only recently decided to accept enormous federal subsidies to cover their residents.North Carolina will lose $32bn in the next decadeThe Medicaid cuts in the bill could have particularly acute consequences in North Carolina, a politically competitive state, where experts said the bill could trigger a “kill switch” to end Medicaid expansion.“If the state spends any state dollars to implement the expansion population or expansion coverage, it triggers an automatic ending to Medicaid expansion,” said Kody Kinsley, North Carolina’s former secretary of health and an architect of the state’s Medicaid expansion.North Carolina is set to lose $32bn in federal funding in the next decade, according to an analysis by the office of the Republican senator Thom Tillis, who represents the state. He’s one of just three Senate Republicans who voted against the bill on Tuesday.North Carolina’s expansion only went into effect in December 2023, and in less than 19 months it enrolled more than 650,000 people – all of whom will lose coverage if the program ends.Those North Carolinians are only some of the 17 million people expected to lose health insurance by 2034 across the country, according to estimates from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Nearly 12 million people will lose insurance because of attacks on Medicaid.“Ultimately, Medicaid being cut is going to kill people,” said Molly Zenkler, a nurse at Mission hospital in Asheville. “I deal with people getting their feet literally amputated because they don’t have access to diabetic care. This is just going to get increasingly worse.”The reconciliation bill cuts state funding through a number of provisions. On healthcare specifically, the bill attacks complex financial maneuvers states use to draw down federal funds. It also requires states to spend enormous sums – perhaps tens of millions of dollars per state – implementing work requirements, effectively adding layers of expensive red tape.Congressional Republicans in favor of the bill argue it targets “waste, fraud and abuse”. However, it is already well-known that most Medicaid beneficiaries who can work do, and that Medicaid is one of the most cost-efficient health programs in the US, according to the American Hospital Association.North Carolina is one of a dozen conservative states that wrote a “trigger” law into Medicaid expansion. Not all function like North Carolina’s – the laws are, in the words of an expert with Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, a “lesson in federalism” – but they nevertheless underscore the difficult choices state legislators will face because of congressional Republicans’ cuts.One such program that could be on the chopping block is a pilot with Impact Health, which uses Medicaid expansion funds for social needs that affect health – an effort to reduce long-term costs. Stradley gave the example of a Medicaid-covered child with severe asthma who hit the local emergency room three times a week for breathing treatments.Impact’s program used Medicaid funds to replace moldy rugs with laminate flooring in the child’s home, and to buy a vacuum with a Hepa filter. The cost to Impact Health was about $5,000, “but now this child is going to the emergency room a couple times a year instead of a couple times a month. And so, every month we’re saving about $4,500.”The program’s knock-on effects boost the local economy: the work to replace the rug was done by a local carpenter, and the child’s mother isn’t calling out from work, increasing her job stability.“One of the ways that we talk about this program is that it’s a hand up rather than a handout,” she said. “Almost half of the folks that are recipients in our program are children … Then you look at the adults. Most of them are working multiple jobs, and those jobs don’t come with benefits, because they’re working two or three part-time jobs in order to make ends meet.”The enormity of Medicaid means large cuts to the program imperil not only patients, but the institutions that serve them – especially rural hospitals and clinics hanging on “by a thread”, according to Kinsley.One of US residents’ few rights to healthcare is in emergency departments, where hospitals are required to stabilize patients regardless of ability to pay. That makes emergency departments the go-to source for healthcare for the uninsured.An analysis released by the Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill earlier this year showed that 338 rural hospitals around the country were at risk of imminent closure with the cuts to Medicaid contained in the bill.‘Hospitals will be forced to restrict services, or close’Rural states such as Kentucky are expected to be disproportionately hard-hit as well. Thirty-five of the rural hospitals at risk of closure – about 10% – are in Kentucky, even though Kentucky’s 4.5 million residents comprise about 1.3% of the US’s population. About a third of Kentucky residents are on Medicaid, according to figures from Kentucky’s cabinet for health and family services. The program benefits about 478,900 adults.The situation is similarly dire in Arizona, another battleground state, which also has a trigger law on the books. Although the reconciliation bill may not “trigger” a rollback of Medicaid expansion, it does undermine a key financing mechanism for the state’s program called a “provider tax”.“We estimate Arizona’s healthcare system would lose over $6bn over the next seven years,” said Holly Ward, a spokesperson for the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, in a statement.“In other words, more than 55% of Arizona hospitals would be operating in the red,” she said. “Hospitals will be, at best, forced to restrict services such as obstetrics, behavioral healthcare and other complex services, and at worst, will close their doors altogether.”Another issue is the potential for Republicans’ cuts to drive up the cost of healthcare for Americans who are privately insured, including through employers. As hospitals fight to survive, they will try to extract as much money as possible from other sources of funding – namely, commercial insurance.In addition, rural healthcare providers worry the water will be muddied by the sheer complexity of US healthcare. Private companies have a hand in managing – and therefore branding – state Medicaid programs.“A lot of our rural voters may not even realize that what they have is Medicaid, because there are so many names for it,” said Stradley. However, the precarious situation is already worrying people whose lives have been stabilized because of Medicaid.Amanda Moynihan is a single mother of three children – ages nine, 12 and 16 – living in Kuna, Idaho. Medicaid expansion has helped her become a “functioning human in society”, she said. Routine medical care for herself and her children, along with other assistance programs, has meant the difference between grinding poverty and a shot at the middle class.Idaho, one of the most politically conservative states in the union, expanded Medicaid in 2018 with an overwhelming ballot-referendum vote of 61-39. Even if Idaho’s “trigger law” does not go into effect, the state could face similar fiscal challenges to Arizona.“Back two years ago, before I started school, I was just in fight-or-flight, just trying to pay the bills there. I didn’t ever see a future of what I could do. And then I just started with one class,” she said.Moynihan has completed an associate degree in psychology and is starting the social work bachelor’s degree program at Boise State University in the fall. For now, she’s working part time with the Idaho Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired and planning to pick up work at a gas station because it has a college scholarship benefit.But without stability to pursue higher education, her future “would be making the minimum wage, which is about $15 an hour, barely paying rent in a low-income household”. More

    • 175 Shares106 Views

      in US Politics

      No one wanted Trump’s devastating budget bill. Of course it passed | Moira Donegan

      by

      The budget reconciliation bill that passed the US House of Representatives on Thursday and was promptly to be signed into law by Donald Trump represents the particular perversity of national politics in America: seemingly no one wants it, everyone hates it, and it is widely agreed to be devastating for staggering numbers of Americans. And yet, the bill felt inevitable: it was a foregone conclusion that this massive, malignant measure was something that everyone dreaded and no one had the capacity to stop.They didn’t really even try. In the Senate, a few conservative Republicans made noise about the bill’s dramatic costs: the congressional budget office estimates that the bill will add $3.3 tn to the deficit over the coming decade, and the senator Rand Paul, a budget hawk from Kentucky, declined to vote for it for this reason. But other Republicans, who used to style themselves as fiscally responsible guardians against excessive government spending, engaged in a bit of freelance creative accounting in order to produce an estimate that falsely claimed the cost of the bill would be lower. Most of them quickly found themselves on board.Moderate Republicans, or what remain of them, also quickly quit the field. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina facing down an uncertain re-election bid, expressed concerns about the bill’s massive cuts to Medicaid, the federal low-income healthcare program on which many Americans – and many of his constituents – rely. When Donald Trump threatened to secure a primary challenge to Tillis in retaliation, the senator announced that he would not seek re-election after all; he voted against the bill, but also ended his political career. Susan Collins, of Maine – she of the perennial “concern” about the sadistic Republican agendas that she continues to support – made a rare departure from her usual formula and voted against the bill, a move that came close on the heels of polling showing her dismal approval rating among her constituents. That left just Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, who agreed to play ball: she would vote for the bill, which she had publicly disparaged, in exchange for some money for her state. The result was that Alaska will be exempted, at least temporarily, from new rules associated with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or Snap, which helps low-income Americans buy enough food to keep themselves alive. Republicans threw in a tax deduction for Alaskan whaling captains – of all things – and with that, her vote was secured.When the bill was sent to the House, a handful of Republicans threatened to withhold their votes over budget and Medicaid concerns. But no one believed them. They were always going to cave, abandon their stated principles and follow Trump’s orders, and they did. Trump, after all, had said that he wanted the bill passed in time for the Fourth of July; it passed on the third. He says jump, and the Congress asks: How high?They do so even when the demands that Trump makes are morally grotesque. The bill will devastate Americans. Its massive cuts to Medicaid, combined with expiring Obamacare subsidies, will result in an estimated 17 million Americans losing health coverage over the next 10 years, effectively undoing the expansion of healthcare coverage that was achieved with Barack Obama’s health law. Cuts to Snap are so profound that they cannot be made up with additional state spending; some people who are eating today because they have food assistance will go hungry in the future. There are deep cuts to federal loans and grants for college students, and a near-reversal of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act’s investments in green energy, with tax breaks now going to climate-damaging sectors like coal and oil instead. Because the bill creates a dramatic budget deficit, law requires that Medicare, the healthcare program for seniors, will face cuts, too.All of this is to say nothing of the downstream effects of the legislation. The steep cuts to Medicaid, in particular, will devastate America’s already fragile and partial healthcare system. Planned Parenthood is now excluded from federal Medicaid dollars, meaning that about 200 of its roughly 600 clinics will probably have to close, making abortion less accessible even in states where it is legal, and putting contraception and STD and cancer screenings out of reach for untold numbers of American women. Many rural hospitals will likely have to close, too, along with nursing homes. Those healthcare clinics that remain will have longer wait times and more crowding, and offer more expensive care. Ultimately, fewer people will be going to the doctor, and more of them will suffer and die needlessly of treatable and preventable conditions.But the bill does have winners. It has been called, among other things, the largest tax cut in the nation’s history, although the benefit is disproportionately to billionaires. The budget of Ice, Trump’s anti-immigrant secret police force, is also expanded exponentially: from $3.5bn to $48.5bn, making it the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, though still no more accountable.The bill, in other words, steals from the sick, the elderly, the hungry and the curious, and gives that plundered loot to billionaires and jackboots. It will warp American life – already sickly and impoverished by the standards of our peer nations – in cruel and enfeebling ways. It will make us sicker, poorer, more fearful, more ignorant and more endangered. It will make the rich, meanwhile, even richer.Why are Republicans voting for a bill that will hurt their own constituents? A bill that undermines their stated values and threatens their careers and will immiserate people they care about – if only themselves?One of the more confounding aspects of the Trump era is his ability to vacate what the constitution’s authors – and indeed most reasonable adults – would have assumed would be a defining feature of the contest among the branches: self-interest. Republicans will follow him anywhere, even to unpopular votes, even to self-sabotage, and frequently to the diminishment of their own branch’s relevance. Some say that now, he is leading them to a midterm defeat. Democrats made a show of their opposition to the bill – in the minority, shows are about all they can accomplish – with the minority leader Hakeem Jeffries delivering an eight-and-a-half-hour, filibuster-style speech on the floor telling the stories of Americans who will be hurt by the legislation, laying out the bill’s cruelty and recklessness. But you could also detect a hint of pleasure in his voice as he read out the testimonies of Americans who live in what the Democrats see as particularly vulnerable districts for Republicans in 2026.The bill is unpopular now, and it is likely to become much more so as the full breadth of its cuts to social services, and its impacts on Americans seeking to get healthcare, buy food, secure an environmentally livable future or go to school, become clear. Many of the politicians who ultimately voted for it criticized it sharply just days or hours before. They will be attacked about this in the midterms: the suffering that the bill will cause will be cut into television and social media ads and played incessantly on networks in what the Democrats believe are winnable districts. But it is unclear, in the end, if hurting Americans, including their own voters, really will come back to bite the Republican party. It hasn’t for a long time.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

    • 125 Shares125 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s tax-and-spending bill passes Congress in major win for president

      by

      The US House of Representatives passed Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill on Thursday, handing the president the first major legislative victory of his second term and sending to his desk wide-ranging legislation expected to supercharge immigration enforcement and slash federal safety net programs.The 218-214 vote came after weeks of wrangling over the measure that Trump demanded be ready for his signature by Friday, the Independence Day holiday. Written by his Republican allies in Congress and unanimously rejected by Democrats, the bill traveled an uncertain road to passage that saw multiple all-night votes in the House and Senate and negotiations that lasted until the final hours before passage. Ultimately, Republicans who had objected to its cost and contents folded, and the bill passed with just two GOP defections: Thomas Massie, a rightwing Kentucky lawmaker, and Brian Fitzpatrick, who represents a Pennsylvania district that voted for Kamala Harris in last year’s election.“We’ve waited long enough, some of us have literally been up for days now, but this day – this day – is a hugely important one in the history of our nation,” the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, said, just before voting began.“With one big, beautiful bill, we are going to make this country stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before, and every American is going to benefit from that.”The legislation is expected to speed up and expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations, and will probably make Trump’s longstanding desire for a wall along the border with Mexico a reality.It also strikes a blow against the US government’s efforts to fight the climate crisis by phasing out tax incentives created under Joe Biden that were intended to spur investments in electric cars, wind and solar power and other green energy technologies.The bill’s centerpiece is a permanent extension of tax cuts made in 2017, during Trump’s first term, as well as the creation of new, temporary exemptions for tips, overtime pay and car loan interest that the president promised voters during last year’s campaign.The government will lose trillions of dollars in revenue from those provisions, and to offset their costs, Republicans approved an array of cuts to Medicaid, the federal program providing health insurance coverage to poor and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap).Those changes are expected to cost millions of people their benefits, but the bill remains expensive, with the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) saying it will add $3.3tn to the country’s debt through 2034.Massie explained his decision to vote against the bill in a post on X, writing that “it will significantly increase U.S. budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates”.Fitzpatrick issued a statement saying “it was the Senate’s amendments to Medicaid, in addition to several other Senate provisions, that altered the analysis” for his district and made him vote no.Democrats blasted the proposal as “one big, ugly bill” that dismantles anti-poverty programs to fund tax breaks for the wealthy. Analyses have shown that high earners benefited most from Trump’s tax policies.The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, made a last-ditch effort to halt the bill’s passage by delivering a floor speech that lasted eight hours and 44 minutes, the longest ever.“This is extraordinary. This assault on everyday Americans, assault on children, veterans, seniors, people with disabilities. It’s incredible to me, all of this in this one, big, ugly bill,” Jeffries said.“Ripping food out of the mouths of vulnerable Americans – that’s extraordinary that that’s what we’re doing, extraordinary. And all of this is being done, this unprecedented assault on everyday Americans, is being unleashed on the American people, Mr Speaker, on the most vulnerable among us, all of this is being done to provide massive tax breaks to billionaire donors. Shame on this institution. If this bill passes, that’s not America. We’re better than this.”Trump has described the bill as crucial to the success of his second term, and congressional Republicans made its passage their top priority. It was a tall task – the GOP won small majorities in both the House and Senate in last November’s election, and could afford no more than three defections in either chamber.The party’s lawmakers broadly support Trump but were divided on a host of other issues. There were lawmakers who wanted big spending cuts, rapid phase-outs of green energy incentives and an expanded deduction that would mostly benefit taxpayers in Democratic-led states. Their demands butted against others who sought to moderate the bill, but over the course of weeks, Republicans leaders managed to forge a compromise.Trump appears to have also offered some concessions to hard-line holdouts from the Republican House freedom caucus at a meeting at the White House on Wednesday and in subsequent discussions, as his advisers rushed to ensure the bill passed without returning to the Senate.The details of Trump’s concessions – possibly coming in the form of executive actions at a later date – were not immediately clear, and House freedom caucus chair Andy Harris declined to describe their discussions with Trump.“When we looked at this entire package, the significant agreements we got with the administration in the last 24 hours made this package a much, much better package,” Harris told reporters after the vote. “The agreement is with the president. If you want to know, ask the president.”The bill is only able to affect revenue, spending and the debt limit, under the rules of budget reconciliation that allowed the GOP to avoid a filibuster by Democrats in the Senate. Under Biden, Congress’s then Democratic majority had used the same procedure to pass legislation to spur the economy’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and curb US carbon emissions.Trump’s bill allocates $45bn for Ice detention facilities, $14bn for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire 10,000 new agents by 2029. An additional $50bn will go towards the border wall and other fortifications.Enrollees of Medicaid and Snap will face new work requirements, and states will be forced to share part of the cost of the latter program for the first time ever. The CBO estimates the bill’s Medicaid changes could cost as many as 11.8 million people their healthcare, and the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities forecasts about 8 million people, or one in five recipients, may lose their Snap benefits.The legislation also forces changes to provider taxes, which states use to finance their share of Medicaid spending. That is expected to further increase the financial stress of hospitals in rural areas, and when the bill was in the Senate, a $50bn fund was added to support those facilities.Some in the GOP were openly nervous about the cuts to safety net programs that their constituents rely on. Thom Tillis, a senator who represents swing state North Carolina, refused to support the bill for those reasons, leading Trump to announce he would support a primary challenger when he stands for re-election next year. Tillis then made public his plans to retire, a potential boost for Democrats’ hopes of claiming his seat.“It is inescapable this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,” Tillis said on the Senate floor.“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?” More

    • 188 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 175 Shares111 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s sweeping tax cut and spending bill heads to House – US politics live

      by

      CBS parent company Paramount on Wednesday settled a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump over an interview broadcast in October, in the latest concession by a media company to the US president, who has targeted outlets over what he describes as false or misleading coverage.Paramount said it would pay $16m to settle the suit with the money allocated to Trump’s future presidential library, and not paid to Trump “directly or indirectly”.“The settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret,” the company statement added.Trump filed a $10bn lawsuit against CBS in October, alleging the network deceptively edited an interview that aired on its 60 Minutes news program with then-vice-president and presidential candidate Kamala Harris to “tip the scales in favor of the Democratic party” in the election. In an amended complaint filed in February, Trump increased his claim for damages to $20bn.CBS aired two versions of the Harris interview in which she appears to give different answers to the same question about the Israel-Hamas war, according to the lawsuit filed in a federal court in Texas.CBS previously said the lawsuit was “completely without merit” and had asked a judge to dismiss the case.The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Edward A Paltzik, a lawyer representing Trump in the civil suit, could not be immediately reached for comment.Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics as Donald Trump’s sweeping tax cut and spending legislation is expected to head to the House after it cleared the Senate last night with the narrowest of margins.The Senate passed the measure in a 51-50 vote with Vice President JD Vance breaking a tie after three Republicans – Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky – joined all 47 Democrats in voting against the bill.It followed a long debate in which Republicans grappled with the so-called “one big beautiful” bill’s price tag – it is set to raise the deficit by $5 trillion – and its impact on the US healthcare system.The vote in the House, where Republicans hold a 220-212 majority, is likely to be close.Mike Johnson, the House speaker, said during an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Republican leadership would seek to move the legislation through the Rules Committee this morning and get it before the entire House before Friday’s holiday, unless travel plans were upset by thunderstorms that have menaced the Washington area.“Hopefully we’re voting on this by tomorrow or Thursday at latest, depending on the weather delays and travel and all the rest – that’s the wild card that we can’t control,” Johnson said yesterday.A White House official told reporters that Trump would be “deeply involved” in pushing House Republicans to approve the bill. “It’s a great bill. There is something for everyone,” Trump said at an event in Florida. “And I think it’s going to go very nicely in the House.”Is Trump’s optimism misplaced? You can read our report on the bill’s progress so far and prospects for today here:Entertainingly at least, the bill has reanimated the much-missed Musk-Trump feud, with the tech billionaire calling the legislation “insane” and suggesting he could form a new political party if it passed.In response, Trump claimed he could “look into” deporting Musk. So stay with us for all the developments.In other news:

      Trump announced on his social media platform that Israel has agreed to a 60-day ceasefire in its war in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept the terms of the agreement. The news comes as Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is scheduled to visit the White House on 7 July.

      Trump toured “Alligator Alcatraz”, a controversial new migrant detention jail in the remote Florida Everglades, and celebrated the harsh conditions that people sent there would experience. Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, said detainees could arrive at the rapidly constructed facility as soon as tomorrow. Trump later revisited his idea of “renovating and rebuilding Alcatraz”, with a view to reopening the infamous island prison in San Francisco, which has been closed for over 60 years.

      The Pentagon has halted shipments of air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine over concerns that US stockpiles are too low. On Sunday, Moscow fired more than 500 aerial weapons at Ukraine overnight, in a barrage that Kyiv described as the biggest air attack so far of the three-year war.

      USAID will officially stop implementing foreign aid starting today, secretary of state Marco Rubio said. He added that the US’s assistance in the future will be targeted and limited, focusing on trade rather than aid.

      The Trump administration raised the possibility of stripping Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral candidate for New York City, of his US citizenship over his vocal support for Palestinian rights. Democrat senator Chris Murphy slammed the idea as “racist bullshit”. More

    • 125 Shares118 Views

      in US Politics

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

      by

      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

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      What’s in Trump’s major tax bill? Extended cuts, deportations and more

      by

      Senate Republicans on Tuesday passed Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending bill after spending all night voting on amendments. The bill, which the GOP has dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now returns to the House of Representatives, which passed their version last month, before a Friday deadline the president has imposed for the legislation to be on his desk.Here’s what’s in the Senate’s version of the bill:Extending big tax cutsAfter taking office in 2017, Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which lowered taxes and increased the standard deduction for all taxpayers, but generally benefited high earners more than most. Those provisions are set to expire after this year, but the “big, beautiful bill” makes them permanent, while increasing the standard deduction by $1,000 for individuals, $1,500 for heads of households and $2,000 for married couples, albeit only through 2028.Cutting tax on tips or overtimeThe bill has an array of new tax write-offs – but only while Trump is president. Several of the new exemptions stem from promises Trump made while campaigning last year. Taxpayers will be able to write off income from tips and overtime, and interest made on loans to purchase cars assembled in the United States. People aged 65 and over are eligible for an additional deduction of $6,000, provided their adjusted gross income does not exceed $75,000 for single filers or $150,000 for couples. But all of these incentives expire at the end of 2028, right before Trump’s term as president ends.Money for mass deportations and a border wallAs part of Trump’s plan to remove undocumented immigrants from the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) will receive $45bn for detention facilities, $14bn for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029. More than $50bn is allocated for the construction of new border fortifications, which will probably include a wall along the border with Mexico.Slashing Medicaid and food stampsRepublicans have attempted to cut down on the bill’s cost by slashing two major federal safety-net programs: Medicaid, which provides healthcare to poor and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), which helps people afford groceries. Both are in for funding cuts, as well as new work requirements. The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates the Medicaid changes could cost as many as 10.6 million people their healthcare, and about eight million people, or one in five recipients, their Snap benefits.Cuts to green energyThe bill will phase out many tax incentives created by Congress during Joe Biden’s presidency meant to encourage consumers and businesses to use electric vehicles and other clean-energy technology. Credits for cleaner cars will end this year, as will subsidies for Americans seeking to upgrade their homes to cleaner or more energy-efficient appliances. While a draft of the bill targeted wind- and solar-energy projects with a new excise tax, senators voted to remove that at the last minute.State and local tax relief (Salt)One of the thorniest issues the bill addresses is how much relief to provide from state and local taxes (Salt), which many Americans must also pay in addition to their federal tax. Several House Republicans representing districts in Democratic-led states withheld their support from the bill until the Salt deductibility cap was raised from $10,000 to $40,000, but Senate Republicans made clear they would change that. The Senate’s version keeps the $40,000 cap, but only through 2028.Raising the debt ceilingThe bill will increase the US government’s authority to borrow, known as the debt limit, by $5tn. The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has predicted the government will hit the limit by August, at which point it could default on its debt and spark a financial crisis.More benefits for the rich than the poorWealthier taxpayers appear set to receive more benefits from this bill than poorer ones, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University. Taxpayers in the lowest-income quintile will see a 2.5% decrease in their incomes, largely due to the Snap and Medicaid cuts, while the highest earners will see their incomes grow by 2.4%, the Budget Lab estimated. The impact could change based on which amendments the Senate adopts.A huge price tagDespite the GOP’s attempts to use the bill as a vehicle to rein in government spending, the bill would increase the deficit by $3.3tn through 2034, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Most of that price tag is the extension of the 2017 tax cuts. The heavy budgetary impact could complicate the bill’s chances of passing the House, where fiscal hardliners have demanded budget-deficit reductions. More