The U.S. Capitol on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released detailed analysis Wednesday showing Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” would increase federal deficits by $2.4 trillion during the next decade.

CBO projects that if enacted as written, the legislation would result in 10.9 million people losing access to health insurance by 2034, a number that includes “1.4 million people without verified citizenship, nationality, or satisfactory immigration status who would no longer be covered in state-only funded programs in 2034.”

The score is the most up-to-date analysis by Congress’ official scorekeeper on how the sweeping tax and spending cuts package the House approved last month will impact the federal budget in the years ahead.

Republicans have been highly critical of the CBO’s assessment of the legislation’s real-world impacts, arguing that keeping tax rates as they are now, instead of letting them rise at the end of the year when the 2017 GOP tax law expires, will boost economic growth.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., lambasted the CBO during a press conference shortly after the report came out, arguing its economic growth projections haven’t been completely accurate.

“This bill will actually reduce the deficit, if you recognize the historical economic growth that has always been there,” Scalise said. “To say you’re going to get 1.8% growth. At a minimum, we think you can get 2.5 to 4% growth. Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, says over 4% economic growth. So I get that we’ve got to play by the rules of the referee, but the referee has been wrong.”

During the last decade, U.S. growth only surpassed 3% during one year, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Gross domestic product growth measured 2.5% in 2014, 2.9% in 2015, 1.8% in 2016, 2.5% in 2017, 3% in 2018, 2.6% in 2019, -2.2% in 2020 during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, 6.1% in 2021, 2.5% in 2022, 2.9% in 2023 and 2.8% in 2024. 

White House budget director Russ Vought posted on social media that the CBO score “confirms what we knew about the bill at House passage.”

“The bill REDUCES deficits by $1.4 trillion over ten years when you adjust for CBO’s one big gimmick–not using a realistic current policy baseline,” Vought wrote. “It includes $1.7 trillion in mandatory savings, the most in history. If you care about deficits and debt, this bill dramatically improves the fiscal picture.”

Disagreement over the ‘big beautiful bill’

GOP lawmakers have also sought to brush aside criticism from some of their own members, including Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who both argue the legislation must cut spending more to reduce the federal deficit in the long run.

Billionaire and former Trump administration staffer Elon Musk has also become increasingly vocal about his opposition to the package, writing on social media this week that the “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.”

The House voted mostly along party lines in May to send the sweeping spending and tax cuts package to the Senate, which is expected to debate and amend the legislation in the weeks ahead.

CBO’s analysis will likely inform some of that conversation, and help senators better understand how the policy changes proposed by their House colleagues would affect state government budgets and the communities they represent. 

The CBO previously shared analysis of each of the 11 bills that make up the package, but those didn’t reflect several changes GOP House leaders made just hours before the floor vote in that chamber.

Updated numbers

The updated projections show Republicans’ plan to extend the 2017 tax law and make other tweaks to tax policy would increase the deficit by $3.754 trillion during the next decade. That increase to the deficit caused by the tax changes, which CBO has also found would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners, would be partly offset by spending reductions on certain programs.

The Armed Services Committee’s bill would increase deficits by $144 billion, more than the $100 billion ceiling Republicans envisioned in the budget outline that was supposed to set guardrails on the package. Homeland Security’s provisions would increase deficits by $79 billion. And the Judiciary Committee’s language would increase deficits by $9 billion during the 10-year budget window.

The section of the package drafted by the Energy and Commerce Committee, which would make substantial changes to Medicaid and several other programs within the panel’s jurisdiction, would decrease spending by $1.086 trillion during the 10-year budget window.

The panel’s bill has four subcategories: energy, environment, communications and health. The health provisions, which include substantial changes to Medicaid, would reduce federal spending by $902 billion between 2025 and 2034.

Language barring Medicaid from covering gender transition procedures for anyone in the state-federal health program would reduce federal spending by $2.6 billion during the next decade.

Requiring some people on Medicaid to work, participate in community service or attend educational programs for at least 80 hours a month would reduce federal spending by $344 billion during the next 10 years.

Blocking any Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood would cut federal costs by $261 million during the 10-year budget window. Federal law already bars health care programs like Medicaid from covering abortions unless the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or it endangers the life of the woman.

Separate analysis from CBO, released later Wednesday, projects that 7.8 million people would lose access to Medicaid because of the policy changes laid out in the House GOP bill. Another 2.3 million would lose access to health insurance due to changes to tax policy and 1.3 million people would no longer be able to purchase health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

CBO estimates that about 500,000 people would be impacted by interactions among the various health care policy changes. That number, subtracted from the numbers of those who would lose access, leads  to a total of 10.9 million people losing access to health insurance by 2034.  

Democratic criticism

Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, wrote in a statement that it’s “shocking House Republicans rushed to vote on this bill without an accounting from CBO on the millions of people who will lose their health care or the trillions of dollars it would add to the national (deficit).

“The truth is Republican leaders raced to pass this bill under cover of night because they didn’t want the American people or even their own members to know about its catastrophic consequences.”

The Agriculture Committee’s provisions, including pushing off some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to states, would reduce federal spending by $238 billion during the next decade.

The Education and Workforce Committee’s language would decrease federal spending by $349 billion. The Financial Services section of the package would reduce federal spending by $5 billion. Natural Resources would lower spending by $18 billion. And Transportation and Infrastructure would reduce spending by nearly $37 billion. 

The Oversight and Government Reform bill would decrease spending by $12 billion, significantly less than the minimum of $50 billion the panel was supposed to cut under the reconciliation instructions included in the budget resolution. 

Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report. 

Elon Musk arrives for a meeting with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol on March 5, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Billionaire and former Trump administration official Elon Musk published a flurry of social media posts Tuesday slamming the “big, beautiful bill” in Congress, but his criticisms were mostly ignored or brushed aside by Republican senators.

Musk wrote that the “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination” and told the GOP lawmakers who voted for it in the House that they “did wrong.”

“In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” he wrote in a later post.

But Musk’s frustrations largely fell flat.

White House press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed Musk’s opposition, saying that President Donald Trump is well aware of his views on the legislation and will be moving forward anyway.

Musk last week said he will continue to advise Trump despite stepping away from his official role as a special government employee who oversaw dramatic spending cuts as head of the U.S. DOGE Service.

The tax and spending package would cut about $1.5 trillion in federal funding for several programs during the next decade, including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to release its full analysis of the package Wednesday, including how changes made just before the bill went to the floor will impact state budgets and people’s access to safety net programs.

‘We have a job to do’

Leavitt’s comments came just before Republican senators were peppered with questions about Musk’s statements following a closed-door working lunch on Capitol Hill.

Many disregarded Musk’s lobbying efforts during brief interviews, saying they don’t expect his opposition to affect Senate debate on the sweeping tax and spending cuts package that the House passed last month.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that he and Musk clearly held differing opinions about the package, which he said was possibly based on Musk’s reading of analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Thune said that he expects the tax and spending cuts policies included in the package would “lead to significant growth” and that would lead to a reduction in the annual deficit.

“My hope is that as he has an opportunity to further assess what this bill actually does, that he’ll come to a different conclusion,” Thune said. “But nevertheless, we have a job to do, the American people elected us to do. We have an agenda that everybody campaigned on, most notably the president of the United States, and we’re going to deliver on that agenda.”

Thune added he expects the legislation “can be strengthened in the Senate in a number of ways,” though he didn’t detail exactly what those would be.

‘We’ll see what President Trump does’

West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said that Musk is “entitled to his opinion” and that GOP lawmakers are well aware that he’s “frank,” but that likely won’t sway them in the weeks ahead.

“President Trump is the one that’s going to be the biggest advocate, biggest influencer, in terms of how the Senate deals with this vote,” Capito said. “So no matter what Elon Musk or anybody else says — and I don’t want to diminish him, because I don’t think that’s fair — it’s still going to be second fiddle to President Trump. So we’ll see what President Trump does.”

Arkansas Sen. John Boozman said he doesn’t expect Musk’s tweets will have much of an impact on internal GOP debates about the bill.

“He’s entitled to his opinion. I don’t think it will make any difference,” Boozman said, adding efforts to cut spending are already a central part of the GOP’s goals for the package.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said the tweets won’t have any influence on which amendments GOP senators propose to the legislation.

“No,” Tillis said, when asked about Musk’s overall sway.

Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno said people raising concerns with the legislation need to give that chamber time to review what the House passed and figure out what they’re going to keep and what they’re going to change.

“We have to refocus and remember that this bill, all along, wasn’t supposed to solve every problem on Earth,” Moreno said. “This bill was about making certain that President Trump had the resources to secure our border, that was the biggest part of the election; to avoid a $4 trillion tax increase, that is something that Americans care a lot about; and to start a process of reducing government spending. So that’s what we’re doing.”

‘Donald Trump is our president, not Elon Musk’

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said he didn’t have much of a reaction to the social media posts, while laughing, other than to say that Musk is “entitled to his opinion.”

Hawley said he doesn’t expect Musk’s lobbying efforts would have any impact on how GOP senators amend the bill, before sending it back to the House.

West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice noted that Musk isn’t the president, when asked how the tweets might impact his deliberations on the legislation.

“Y’all may like this or not like this, but you know, Donald Trump is our president, not Elon Musk,” Justice said.

“And really and truly, I don’t know of the disagreement that they may have with one another or what they have going on,” Justice added. “I really respect Elon Musk, and I think he did a great job and I’m very, very pleased with all the things that he uncovered. But with all that being said, I think we all should stand by our president.”

‘All of us are a little frustrated’ 

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said he hopes Musk’s attempts to influence lawmaking will yield more spending cuts than the $1.5 trillion in the House bill, though he didn’t say he’d oppose the measure if that doesn’t happen.

“Well, I think all of us are a little frustrated. We’re not getting as much cuts as we thought we would, but we could in the long run, because we’re not done with it,” Tuberville said. “So I think that was a little bit of an encouragement.”

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said he shares Musk’s skepticism about the legislation’s impact on the annual federal deficit and the rising national debt.

But when asked how influential Musk has been at swaying Republican senators to oppose the package, Paul noted that anyone standing against the bill risks “the ire of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” referring to the White House’s address.

Paul said that if he and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who has also raised concerns about the way the package is written, can get the support of two more GOP senators, then they believe they can begin direct talks with Trump.

“The president will negotiate if he needs to,” Paul said. He won’t if he doesn’t need to.”

A sign for the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS,  is seen on its building headquarters on Feb. 18, 2025, in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration sent its first spending cuts request to Congress on Tuesday, asking lawmakers to swiftly eliminate $9.4 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and various foreign aid programs.

The request for what are called rescissions allows the White House budget office to legally freeze spending on those accounts for 45 days while the Republican-controlled Congress debates whether to approve the recommendation in full or in part, or to ignore it.

The proposal calls on lawmakers to eliminate $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. That means NPR and PBS would lose their already approved federal allocations, if the request is approved by Congress.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in May seeking to block the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from providing funding for NPR and PBS, leading to two separate lawsuits citing First Amendment concerns.

In the rescissions request, Trump wants to cut $8.3 billion from foreign aid programs, including the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a global initiative to combat HIV/AIDS, and the African Development Foundation.

The proposal is the first of several that will seek to codify efforts undertaken by U.S. DOGE Service and billionaire Elon Musk before he left his official role as a special government employee.

White House budget director Russ Vought wrote in a letter accompanying the request that it “emphasizes the need to cut wasteful foreign assistance spending at the Department of State and USAID and through other international assistance programs.”

“These rescissions would eliminate programs that are antithetical to American interests, such as funding the World Health Organization, LGBTQI+ activities, ‘equity’ programs, radical Green New Deal-type policies, and color revolutions in hostile places around the world,” Vought wrote. “In addition, Federal spending on CPB subsidizes a public media system that is politically biased and is an unnecessary expense to the taxpayer.”

GOP leaders in Congress appear likely to hold floor votes on the request, which only needs a simple majority to pass the Senate, avoiding the need for Democratic support to get past the 60-vote legislative filibuster.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., wrote in a statement the House “will act quickly on this request.”

“This rescissions package reflects many of DOGE’s findings and is one of the many legislative tools Republicans are using to restore fiscal sanity,” Johnson wrote. “Congress will continue working closely with the White House to codify these recommendations, and the House will bring the package to the floor as quickly as possible.”

But Republican leaders could run into problems with centrist Republicans in each chamber, especially those on the Appropriations committees, which approved the funding in the first place.

The GOP holds especially narrow majorities in Congress, requiring the support of nearly every one of the 220 Republicans in the House and the party’s 53 senators.

Republican leaders may need to negotiate what exactly gets written into the rescissions bill if too many moderate Republicans raise objections to cutting off the funding.

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, wrote in a statement the committee “will carefully review the rescissions package and examine the potential consequences of these rescissions on global health, national security, emergency communications in rural communities, and public radio and television stations.”

Foreign aid, public media take hits

The request calls for lawmakers to make cuts to dozens of foreign aid programs, including $500 million out of $4 billion for certain global health programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“This proposal would not reduce treatment but would eliminate programs that are antithetical to American interests and worsen the lives of women and children, like ‘family planning’ and ‘reproductive health,’ LGBTQI+ activities, and ‘equity’ programs,” the request states. “This rescission proposal aligns with the Administration’s efforts to eliminate wasteful USAID foreign assistance programs.”

The rescissions request proposes Congress eliminate $400 million of the $6 billion for global health programs that seek to control HIV/AIDS, which OMB writes “would eliminate only those programs that neither provide life-saving treatment nor support American interests.”

The request asks lawmakers to eliminate $2.5 billion of the $3.9 billion they approved for development assistance, which “is intended to fund programs that work to end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies, but in practice, many of the DA programs conflict with American values, interfere with the sovereignty of other countries, and bankroll corrupt leaders’ evasion of their responsibilities to their citizens, all while providing no clear benefit to Americans.”

The proposal calls on lawmakers to eliminate more than $1 billion in funding across two fiscal years for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which the administration wrote “would be used to subsidize a public media system that is politically biased and an unnecessary expense to the taxpayer.”

President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Patricia Harrison wrote in a statement the organization “is firmly committed to ensuring that funding for public media provides local communities with accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news and information, and we take seriously concerns about bias that have been raised.

“The path to better public media is achievable only if funding is maintained. Otherwise, a vital lifeline that operates reliable emergency communications, supports early learning, and keeps local communities connected and informed will be cut off with regrettable and lasting consequences.”

President and CEO of PBS Paula Kerger wrote in a separate statement that the “proposed rescissions would have a devastating impact on PBS member stations and the essential role they play in communities, particularly smaller and rural stations that rely on federal funding for a larger portion of their budgets.

“Without PBS member stations, Americans will lose unique local programming and emergency services in times of crisis.”  

Kerger wrote that PBS would seek to keep its funding by demonstrating “our value to Congress, as we have over the last 50 years, in providing educational, enriching programs and critical services to all Americans every day for free.”

NPR CEO Katherine Maher wrote that Congress enacting the rescissions “would irreparably harm communities across America who count on public media for 24/7 news, music, cultural and educational programming, and emergency alerting services.”

“Public safety in every community across the nation could also be affected. NPR, as the entity chosen by public radio stations to operate the nationwide Public Radio Satellite System (PRSS), receives Presidential-level emergency alerts and distributes them across the country within minutes,” Maher wrote. “In the event of a national attack or emergency, communities no longer served by a station would not receive this lifesaving, early warning and civil defense alert.”

More details

A summary of the proposal shared with States Newsroom by the White House budget office ahead of its official release later in the day says the funding cuts would affect programs that sought to reduce xenophobia in Venezuela; support electoral reforms and voter education in Kenya; fund voter identification in Haiti; provide electric buses in Rwanda; broadcast the longtime PBS children’s show “Sesame Street” in Iraq; and strengthen the resilience of LGBTQ global movements.

The proposal would also cut off funding to Harvard University to conduct research models for peace and to New York University to analyze democracy field experiments in South Sudan, according to the OMB summary.

PEPFAR would no longer have funding for circumcision, vasectomies, and condoms in Zambia, or for services for “transgender people, sex workers and their clients and sexual networks” in Nepal, according to the OMB summary.

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a vocal supporter of PEPFAR, said during a brief interview that he was told “that PEPFAR had some cuts, but that the basic core mission was continued.”

Cassidy — chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — said his staff was carefully reviewing the request and knows he cares “about this deeply.”

The rescissions request, which asks lawmakers to claw back already approved funding, is different from the president’s budget request, which proposes spending levels for thousands of federal programs for the upcoming fiscal year.

Both are merely proposals, since the Constitution grants Congress the power of the purse in Article I, Section 9, Clause 7.

Timing on Senate floor vote unclear

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Monday that lawmakers in that chamber will begin reviewing the rescissions request this month, but didn’t detail exactly when he’d hold a floor vote. 

“Another item high on our list to begin work on in June is a rescissions package the White House intends to send Congress this week,” Thune said. “The administration has identified a number of wasteful uses of taxpayer dollars and we will be taking up this package and eliminating this waste. We’ll make that a priority.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., wrote in a statement released Monday that “Trump is looking to go after PBS and NPR to settle political scores and muzzle the free press, while undermining foreign assistance programs that push back on China’s malign influence, save lives, and address other bipartisan priorities.”

“If Republicans choose to go along with this rescission package, they will follow Trump at their peril,” Schumer and Murray wrote. “The power of the purse is one of Congress’s most fundamental Constitutional responsibilities. Democrats will not allow Republicans to play games with the budget.”

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy said during a brief interview Tuesday that he plans to “carefully” evaluate the rescissions request.

West Virginia GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said Tuesday that she would go over the proposals once it officially arrives from the White House to determine whether she can support moving it across the floor.

“It could be a fight. It could not be a fight,” Capito said. “We just don’t know.”

The House Freedom Caucus, a group of far-right members led by Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, posted Monday its members hope the administration sends additional rescissions requests as quickly as possible.

“Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda,” the Freedom Caucus statement said. “While the Swamp will inevitably attempt to slow and kill these cuts, there is no excuse for a Republican House not to advance the first DOGE rescissions package the same week it is presented to Congress then quickly send it for passage in the Republican Senate so President Trump can sign it into law.”

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, U.S. President Donald Trump, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Education Secretary Linda McMahon attend an event for the Make America Healthy Again Commission report in the East Room of the White House on May 22, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration released significantly more detail about its budget request Friday evening, giving Congress the information it needs for lawmakers to draft the annual government funding bills.

The 1,224-page document sheds light on where exactly President Donald Trump and White House budget director Russ Vought want lawmakers to cut federal spending during the upcoming fiscal year.

The Office of Management and Budget released a “skinny” version of the annual proposal in early May, requesting lawmakers cut domestic spending by $163 billion and keep funding for defense programs flat in the dozen annual appropriations bills.

While the documents in that request provided some insight into how Trump wants to reshape the size and scope of about $1.7 trillion in discretionary funding, which is spending that Congress directs, they didn’t include the level of detail that the Appropriations committees need to begin their work.

The appendix document released Friday should aid in that, though it does not represent a full budget request. That type of proposal would include the White House’s goals for mandatory programs, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which make up about two-thirds of federal spending. Such spending is required by law and is not subject to annual appropriations.

A full budget request also typically includes tax policy proposals, though with Republicans in Congress already working to enact an extension of the 2017 GOP tax law in the “big, beautiful bill,” those sections would likely be of little use to lawmakers at this point.

Work on spending bills launching

The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to release and debate its 12 government funding bills throughout June, before voting to send those measures to the floor.

Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., will likely include funding levels and policy closely aligned with the White House request, since legislation in that chamber can pass a floor vote with a simple majority

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, has a more challenging task, since regular bills in that chamber require bipartisanship to get past the 60-vote legislative filibuster. Republicans control the Senate with 53 members.

In general, that means the Senate panel’s bills tend to look much more like the final version that becomes law than the House bills, though not always. 

Both chambers are supposed to reach a bipartisan, bicameral agreement on the dozen bills before the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1, but that rarely happens.

Congress is much more likely to use a stopgap spending bill until mid-December to give members more time to negotiate funding levels and policies on thousands of government programs.

The House and Senate were unable to reach agreement for this fiscal year, and instead leaned on a series of three continuing resolutions to keep the government up and running.

Partial shutdown could loom again

Tensions over the proposed funding cuts in Trump’s first budget request of his second term could reach a boiling point if Cole, Collins, House ranking member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Senate ranking member Patty Murray cannot broker an agreement before their deadline.

Failure to enact some sort of government funding legislation — either the dozen full-year bills, or a stopgap spending measure — would lead to a partial government shutdown. 

Murray, D-Wash., wrote in a statement released Friday evening that it was “telling that President Trump has chosen to release his budget on a Friday night with no fanfare whatsoever.”

“This is a draconian proposal to hurt working people and our economy, and it is dead on arrival in Congress as long as I have anything to say about it,” Murray wrote. “But this is just another reminder we need Republicans to join us to reject these reckless cuts, focus on the investments we actually need to make in our communities and security, and to finally force Trump to follow the law and end his devastating funding freeze.”

DeLauro wrote in a statement that the “government envisioned by President Trump only serves billionaires and the biggest corporations and would do nothing to lower the cost of living.”

“This is not a complete budget,” she wrote. “We are supposed to start putting together the funding bills for 2026 next week. If, as expected, House Republicans follow what President Trump has proposed so far, it is not a serious effort to deliver for the American people.”

A sign for the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS,  is seen on its building headquarters on Feb. 18, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Public Broadcasting Service and Lakeland PBS in Minnesota sued the Trump administration Friday, arguing an executive order seeking to cut off their federal funding violates the Constitution and would “upend public television.”

The lawsuit was filed just days after a collection of National Public Radio stations sued President Donald Trump over the same executive order, which blocked the Corporation from Public Broadcasting from funding the networks.

PBS wrote in its 48-page filing that it disagrees with claims made by the executive order, including that federal spending on public media is “corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence” and that the news organization doesn’t present “a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”

“PBS disputes those charged assertions in the strongest possible terms,” the lawsuit states. “But regardless of any policy disagreements over the role of public television, our Constitution and laws forbid the President from serving as the arbiter of the content of PBS’s programming, including by attempting to defund PBS.”

The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, but hadn’t been assigned to a judge as of Friday evening.

White House: PBS supports ‘a particular political party’

White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields wrote in a statement responding to the lawsuit that the “Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers’ dime.

“Therefore, the President is exercising his lawful authority to limit funding to NPR and PBS. The President was elected with a mandate to ensure efficient use of taxpayer dollars, and he will continue to use his lawful authority to achieve that objective.”

The lawsuit says Trump’s executive order violates the law that governs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which gives it independence from politicians who might try to control its programs.

“Congress took pains to ensure that the development of public television would be free from political interference, including with respect to content and funding decisions,” the suit states.

It also claims implementing the order would violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.

“The EO makes no attempt to hide the fact that it is cutting off the flow of funds to PBS because of the content of PBS programming and out of a desire to alter the content of speech,” the lawsuit states. “That is blatant viewpoint discrimination and an infringement of PBS and PBS Member Stations’ private editorial discretion.”

PBS says federal funds ‘instrumental’ for operations

The lawsuit says the loss of funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting envisioned in the executive order would upend programming at PBS and its member stations throughout the country.

“Public television stations receive approximately $325 million in annual federal funding from CPB, nearly all of which goes to PBS Member Stations,” the lawsuit states. “Those funds, which comprise more than 50% of the overall budgets of certain PBS Member Stations, are instrumental to enabling them to operate, to produce programming that serves their local communities, and to pay PBS dues that make PBS programming and services possible.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk listens as President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Billionaire Elon Musk said Friday he will continue to advise President Donald Trump despite stepping away from his official role as a special government employee.

During a wide-ranging Oval Office press conference, Musk — sporting a bruised right eye he blamed on a punch he invited from one of his sons, 5-year-old X — also said he expects U.S. DOGE Service will continue trying to cut at least $1 trillion in federal spending, setting the middle of next year as a target date.

“This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning,” Musk said. “My time as a special government employee necessarily had to end — it was a limited time thing, it’s 134 days I believe, which ends in a few days. So it comes with a time limit. But the DOGE team will only grow stronger over time. The DOGE influence will only grow stronger.”

Musk then compared his initiative to Buddhism, a religion practiced by hundreds of millions of people, saying DOGE jobs were “like a way of life” that he hoped would permeate throughout the federal government.

DOGE’s efforts so far have led to about $160 billion in spending cuts, Musk said. That’s a small fraction of the $6.8 trillion the federal government spent during the most recent fiscal year and short of the goal he set before joining the administration.

Musk said DOGE was “relentlessly pursuing” at least $1 trillion in spending cuts to benefit American taxpayers, shortly after pointing out a golden eagle on the ceiling of the Oval Office that Trump said used to be plaster.

“Nobody ever really saw it. They didn’t know the eagle was up there, and we highlighted it,” Trump said. “Essentially it’s a landmark, a great landmark, and that’s 24-karat gold. And everybody loved it. Now, they all see it when they come in. So it’s been good.”

Musk hailed Trump for ensuring the Oval Office “finally has the majesty that it deserves.” Neither man shared how much was spent to redesign the eagle.

Musk plans to refocus his professional efforts on his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX.

New York Times story on Musk drug use

Trump said he “hopes” that Musk continues to advise him on government issues, even though he will no longer be employed by the White House.

Republican lawmakers, Trump said, are “totally committed to making the DOGE cuts permanent and stopping much more of the waste in the months to come.”

“We want to get our great, big, beautiful bill finished and done,” Trump said, referring to a tax and spending cuts package the House passed earlier this month. “We put some of this into the bill, but most of it’s going to come later. We’re going to have it (codified) by Congress, affirmed by Congress. In some cases, we’ll make cuts, in some cases we’ll just use it in a different layer to save the money. But it’s hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Musk declined to answer a question about a bombshell New York Times report published earlier in the day that detailed his ongoing use of drugs, including ketamine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.

Trump desires bigger tax cuts from Senate

Trump said during the press conference he hopes the U.S. Senate amends the “big, beautiful bill” by cutting more government spending, without specifying which programs.

That package would cut about $1.5 trillion in federal funding for several programs during the next decade, including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to release its full analysis of the package next week, including how changes made just before the bill went to the floor will impact state budgets and people’s access to safety net programs.

Trump also called on senators to further lower taxes in the package,

“It’s an unbelievable bill…It cuts, you know, it’s a huge cutting,” Trump said. “But there’s things I’d like to see, maybe cut a little bit more. I’d like to see a bigger cut in taxes. It’s going to be the largest tax decrease or cut in the history of our country. I’d like to see it get down to an even lower number. I was shooting for a slightly lower number. I would have liked to have done that.”

Trump appeared to renew his call for Congress to completely eliminate the debt limit, even though the tax and spending cuts package would raise that ceiling by $4 trillion.

“I agree with Elizabeth Warren on that. I think we should get rid of it,” Trump said, referring to the Democratic senator from Massachusetts. “It’s too catastrophic.”

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Screenshot from committee webcast)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services urged health care providers Wednesday to stop several treatments for children with gender dysphoria, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries.

The announcement came just a couple hours before the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services sent letters to hospitals throughout the country, promising “a comprehensive review of federal payment policies” and demanding information about how they determine children and adolescents can give their consent.

“These are irreversible, high-risk procedures being conducted on vulnerable children, often at taxpayer expense,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz wrote in a statement accompanying his agency’s letter.

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in a two-page open letter shared on social media that health care providers should read a review that HHS published earlier this month about treatment options for children with gender dysphoria. He, however, didn’t note that paper was widely criticized by major health organizations.

Kennedy, instead said that HHS expects health care providers to follow the 409-page report’s recommendations and “make the necessary updates to your treatment protocols and training for care for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria to protect them from these harmful interventions.”

The letter recommends “psychotherapy (talk therapy) as a noninvasive alternative” and seeks to discourage health care providers from following the World Professional Association for Health’s Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, version 8.

Among the letter’s criticisms for that standard of care is that it “relied on legal and political considerations rather than clinical ones.”

“The Hippocratic Oath lays down the foundational commitment for the medical profession: ‘First, do no harm.’ The Review makes clear that ‘the evidence for benefit of pediatric medical transition is very uncertain, while the evidence for harm is less uncertain,’” the HHS letter says. “For this reason, the Review states that when ‘medical interventions pose unnecessary, disproportionate risks of harm, healthcare providers should refuse to offer them even when they are preferred, requested, or demanded by patients.’”

HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment about what would happen to health care providers who opt to continue prescribing the treatment protocols that the federal government is trying to eliminate.

Associations say HHS misrepresents research

WPATH and the U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health released a joint statement earlier this month after HHS released its initial report, saying it “misrepresents existing research and disregards the expertise of professionals who have been working with transgender and gender-diverse youth for decades.”

“The HHS report fails to meet established scientific standards,” the two organizations wrote. “Authored anonymously, it relies on discredited narratives and selectively compiles prior systematic reviews, omitting critical findings from recent studies that support treatment interventions for appropriately identified individuals. Instead of conducting a new systematic review, the report dismisses multiple international clinical guidelines and disregards the prevailing medical consensus on gender-affirming care.”

The statement said WPATH “supports a comprehensive, multidisciplinary assessment, ensuring that mental health professionals evaluate and address any co-occurring mental health conditions in youth who are exploring their gender identity and options for treatment.”

Dr. Susan J. Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, wrote in a statement released following the earlier HHS report that the document “misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care.”

“AAP was not consulted in the development of this report, yet our policy and intentions behind our recommendations were cited throughout in inaccurate and misleading ways,” Kressly wrote. “The report prioritizes opinions over dispassionate reviews of evidence.”

WPATH and The American Academy of Pediatrics did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the HHS letter published Wednesday.

The Endocrine Society — which represents more than 18,000 health care providers who treat and research diabetes, obesity, fertility, bone health and hormone-related cancers, as well as gender dysphoria — wrote in a statement shared with States Newsroom on Wednesday that its “guideline development process adheres to the highest standards of trustworthiness and transparency as defined by the National Academy of Medicine.”

“The widely accepted view of the professional medical community is that medical treatment is appropriate for transgender and gender-diverse teenagers who experience persistent feelings of gender dysphoria,” the Endocrine Society’s statement said. “Medical studies show that access to this care improves the well-being of transgender and nonbinary people.”

Matt Rose, senior public policy advocate at the Human Rights Campaign wrote in a statement that the letter released Wednesday shows “HHS is focusing its time and taxpayer dollars spreading anti-science misinformation in order to interfere with health care decisions best made by families with their doctors.”

“This approach is not only ignorant, but also deliberately harmful to a community that depends on best practice, evidence-based healthcare to live their most authentic lives,” Rose wrote. “This letter does nothing except attempt to frighten and compel providers into doing the Trump administration’s bidding.”

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy —chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee — celebrated the HHS letter.

“As a doctor, I am extremely concerned that medical organizations continue to push irreversible gender transition procedures for children against scientific data,” Cassidy wrote in a statement. “I applaud President (Donald) Trump’s strong leadership in telling providers directly that these dangerous practices must end.”

CMS demands info on gender-affirming care

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services sent a separate letter Wednesday to hospitals that perform gender-affirming procedures, asking them to answer a series of questions within the next month.

CMS Administrator Oz wrote in a statement released alongside the letter that hospitals “accepting federal funds are expected to meet rigorous quality standards and uphold the highest level of stewardship when it comes to public resources—we will not turn a blind eye to procedures that lack a solid foundation of evidence and may result in lifelong harm.”

The letter asks hospitals to detail how staff determine that children with gender dysphoria are capable of giving medical consent for a procedure and when parental consent is required.

Hospitals are asked to tell CMS if they plan to update their clinical practice guidelines as requested in the HHS letter sent earlier in the day.

And hospitals are told to share information about “adverse events related to these procedures, particularly children who later look to detransition.”

The CMS letter also tells hospitals to share billing information for the cost of pediatric gender-affirming care procedures that were “paid, in whole or in part, by the federal government.” The letter says the information will be used to conduct “a comprehensive review of federal payment policies related to gender transition procedures for patients under 19 years of age.”

Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought appears during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on Jan. 15, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Two top Democratic lawmakers are calling on the Trump administration to detail exactly how it’s spending money that Congress approved earlier this year for government operations.

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray of Washington released a two-page letter Wednesday demanding the White House budget office share that information this week.

The detailed plans were due to Congress by April 29, but several departments and agencies haven’t submitted the information to lawmakers, or have sent up incomplete documents, they wrote.

“The widespread failure of departments and agencies to abide by the requirements of section 1113 is unacceptable, and the lack of transparency begs serious questions about what exactly this administration is seeking to hide from the Committees — and the American people,” DeLauro and Murray wrote to the budget director, Russ Vought.

“These spending plans are essential to understand how the executive branch is spending taxpayer dollars appropriated by Congress in fiscal year 2025, and they directly inform the legislative responsibilities of the Committees to consider fiscal year 2026 appropriations legislation, a process that is already underway,” the two lawmakers added.

Repeated requests for information

The lack of detailed information about how exactly the Trump administration is spending funding approved by Congress has come up during several Appropriations Committee hearings during the last month.

Concerns from lawmakers, however, have not led to a change in heart as of this week’s letter. The Office of Management and Budget did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Congress was unable to broker agreement on the dozen annual spending bills for the current fiscal year, which began on Oct 1. Instead, lawmakers passed a series of stopgap spending bills that essentially held funding levels flat and kept the prior year’s policies mostly in place.

The third stopgap spending bill, which lawmakers passed in March, required the Trump administration to tell Congress how it planned to spend those resources. The requirement is intended to assist lawmakers with their oversight responsibility and to help them shape the next fiscal year’s dozen appropriations bills.

“As the House and Senate Appropriations Committees intend to mark up the fiscal year 2026 bills next month, we demand that by the end of this month you comply with section 1113 and ensure that all spending plans contain sufficient information to demonstrate how each department and agency intends to prudently obligate all amounts provided by Congress for fiscal year 2025 within their period of availability and resubmit them to the Committees,” DeLauro and Murray wrote.

Website pulled down

The Trump administration did publicly post budget documents earlier this year that detailed how quickly departments and agencies planned to spend the money appropriated by Congress, known as apportionments.

Vought had that website pulled down in late March, leading to lawsuits from government watchdog groups.

The judge in those cases heard arguments earlier this month, but has yet to issue a ruling about whether the Trump administration violated the law by removing that information.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Jan. 29, 2025 in Washington, D.C.. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. changed the federal government’s recommendation for the coronavirus vaccine on Tuesday, saying healthy children and healthy pregnant people no longer need to get it.

Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic who had to broker several deals with Republican senators to secure confirmation, didn’t explain why he was making the change in a brief video.

“I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that as of today the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule,” Kennedy said. “Last year the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children.”

National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Martin A. Makary both spoke briefly during the social media video to say they supported the decision. But neither pointed to new studies regarding COVID-19 boosters or any evidence of safety issues.

“It’s common sense and it’s good science,” Bhattacharya said.

Kennedy made several promises to Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy — chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — in order to secure Cassidy’s vote so that Kennedy could be confirmed as HHS secretary.

Among those was that Kennedy would “maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee on immunization practices recommendations without changes.”

Cassidy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Extremely disappointed’

Public health organizations raised concerns about the change in policy. 

Dr. Steven J. Fleischman, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said the organization was “concerned about and extremely disappointed by the announcement that HHS will no longer recommend COVID vaccination during pregnancy.”

“As ob-gyns who treat patients every day, we have seen firsthand how dangerous COVID infection can be during pregnancy and for newborns who depend on maternal antibodies from the vaccine for protection,” Fleischman wrote. “We also understand that despite the change in recommendations from HHS, the science has not changed.

“It is very clear that COVID infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families. The COVID vaccine is safe during pregnancy, and vaccination can protect our patients and their infants.”

Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, wrote in a statement HHS’ “decision bypasses a long-established, evidence-based process used to ensure vaccine safety and ignores the expertise of independent medical experts, including members of CDC committees who are examining the evidence regarding the vaccine to make recommendations for the fall.” 

“By removing the recommendation, the decision could strip families of choice,” O’Leary wrote. “Those who want to vaccinate may no longer be able to, as the implications for insurance coverage remain unclear. It’s also unclear whether health care workers would be eligible to be vaccinated.”

“What is clear is that pregnant women, infants and young children are at higher risk of hospitalization from COVID, and the safety of the COVID vaccine has been widely demonstrated.”

Former surgeon general under Trump critical

Dr. Jerome Adams, the surgeon general during Trump’s first administration, wrote in a detailed social media post that Kennedy’s announcement “raises significant concerns, as it overlooks both available evidence, and the complexities of public health.”

“Shifting from vaccine mandates to outright prohibitions does not reflect medical freedom; it represents a different form of government intervention, one that restricts individual choice and access to evidence-based care,” Adams wrote. “A balanced approach would prioritize informed decision-making, ensuring that vaccines remain available to those who need them while respecting personal autonomy.

“Hoping as this policy change is implemented, anyone who is truly high risk can still easily get a vaccine, and that we don’t let politics trump science, health, and previous proclamations about ‘personal choice.’”

American Public Health Association Executive Director Dr. Georges C Benjamin wrote in a statement that “(v)accines offer the best protection from severe symptoms and death associated with the COVID-19 virus for all populations.

“This decision by Secretary Kennedy puts kids, pregnant moms and their babies at risk of unnecessary suffering that is preventable. Lots of questions remain as to how HHS leadership plans to implement this poorly thought out announcement that is not supported by the scientific evidence and our national experience.”

An HHS press secretary wrote in an email to States Newsroom that “as part of the Trump administration’s commitment to common sense, the COVID-19 vaccine will be removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule.”

“With the COVID-19 pandemic behind us, it is time to move forward,” the spokesperson wrote. “HHS and the CDC remain committed to gold standard science and to ensuring the health and well-being of all Americans—especially our nation’s children—using common sense.”

The National Public Radio headquarters in Washington, D.C., is pictured on Tuesday, May 27, 2025.  (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — A collection of National Public Radio stations sued the Trump administration on Tuesday, seeking to block an executive order that would cut off their federal funding.

The 43-page filing says the order that President Donald Trump signed earlier this month “violates the expressed will of Congress and the First Amendment’s bedrock guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of association, and also threatens the existence of a public radio system that millions of Americans across the country rely on for vital news and information.”

The executive order called on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which receives its funding from Congress, to cease sending money to the Public Broadcasting Service and NPR.

The order stated that government funding for public media “is not only outdated and unnecessary but corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence.”

The Trump administration also appeared to take issue with the types of news stories that PBS and NPR report, arguing “that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”

‘Viewpoint-based discrimination’

The lawsuit says the executive order has an “overt retaliatory purpose” and “is unlawful in multiple ways.”

“The Order is textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment, and it interferes with NPR’s and the Local Member Stations’ freedom of expressive association and editorial discretion,” the lawsuit states. “Lastly, by seeking to deny NPR critical funding with no notice or meaningful process, the Order violates the Constitution’s Due Process Clause.”

The lawsuit was filed by NPR along with three Colorado stations — Aspen Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio and KSUT Public Radio — in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The case has been assigned to Judge Randolph D. Moss, who was nominated by then-President Barack Obama.

White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields wrote in a statement that the “Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers’ dime.

“Therefore, the President is exercising his lawful authority to limit funding to NPR and PBS. The President was elected with a mandate to ensure efficient use of taxpayer dollars, and he will continue to use his lawful authority to achieve that objective.”

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is funded by Congress and in turn provides grants to more than 1,500 public radio and television stations throughout the United States, was established as a private “nonprofit corporation” and is not “an agency or establishment of the United States Government,” according to the lawsuit.

Power of the purse

Congress has consistently approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on a bipartisan basis, including its current $535 million appropriation.

The lawsuit contends that the “loss of all direct funding from CPB and the loss (or significant decline) of revenue from local stations would be catastrophic for NPR.”

It also states the president “has no authority under the Constitution to” interfere in funding decisions made by lawmakers.” 

“On the contrary, the power of the purse is reserved to Congress, and the President has no inherent authority to override Congress’s will on domestic spending decisions,” the lawsuits says. “By unilaterally imposing restrictions and conditions on funds in contravention of Congress, the Order violates the Separation of Powers and the Spending Clause of the Constitution.”

President Donald Trump points during a White House event for the release of Make America Healthy Again commission report on May 22, 2025. Also pictured are, from left, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Education Secretary Linda McMahon. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Make America Healthy Again commission, created earlier this year by President Donald Trump, released its first report Thursday, calling on the administration and lawmakers to improve the well-being of the country’s children.

The 73-page report was published just after Trump and several Cabinet secretaries held an event highlighting their concerns with four areas — nutrition, physical activity, environmental factors and “overmedicalization.”

“Over the next 80 days, the commission will build on its work in this report to develop a road map to bold and transformative public health reforms for our consideration,” Trump said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the report and the administration’s approach to childhood health issues is that “there is no difference between good economic policy, good environmental policy and good public health policy and good industrial policy. We can have all of them.”

U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said that everyone knows American farming interests need to be at the center of the Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, agenda.

“We have the most robust, the safest, the best agriculture system in the world,” Rollins said.

Mainstream farm groups, however, were not happy. “Farmers are identified as ‘critical partners,’ yet were excluded from development of the report, despite many requests for a seat at the table,” American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall wrote in a statement.

‘Corporatization and consolidation’ in food system

The numerous ways that American agriculture and the food people choose to eat have evolved received considerable attention in the report.

“Our agricultural system has historically focused on abundance and affordability. The progress we have made is largely thanks to the hard work of American farmers, ranchers, and food scientists,” it states. “However, the rise of (ultra processed food) has corresponded with a pattern of corporatization and consolidation in our food system. Today’s diet-related chronic disease crisis, demand a closer examination of this pattern and its broader impact.”

The report mentions pesticides numerous times, but doesn’t call for them to be banned outright.

“Some studies have raised concerns about possible links between some of these products and adverse health outcomes, especially in children, but human studies are limited,” the report says. “For example, a selection of research studies on a herbicide (glyphosate) have noted a range of possible health effects, ranging from reproductive and developmental disorders as well as cancers, liver inflammation and metabolic disturbances.”

Kennedy testified during a U.S. Senate committee hearing earlier this week that based on drafts of the report he had seen, “there is not a single word in them that should worry the American farmer.”

His comments came during an exchange with Mississippi Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who specifically asked him about glyphosate, a commonly used herbicide, that she referred to as “one of the most thoroughly studied products of its kind.”

“We’re talking about more than 1,500 studies and 50-plus years of review by the EPA and other leading global health authorities that have affirmed its safety when used as directed,” Hyde-Smith said. “Have you been able to review thousands of studies and decades of scientific review in a matter of months?”

Kennedy responded during that Tuesday hearing that her “information about the report is just simply wrong.”

Sleep, stress, social media

The report combines recommendations that have long been supported by research, like exercising regularly and eating a well-balanced diet, with proposals that aren’t fully supported by science.

It notes that “physical activity, encompassing moderate-to-vigorous exercise, aerobic fitness, and reduced sedentary time, is critical for child health and well being.

“However, American youth have seen a steady decline in activity and cardiorespiratory fitness over decades, contributing to rising obesity, diabetes, mental health disorders, and cardiometabolic risks.”

The report calls out children who are unable to get enough sleep and chronic stress as health challenges, in addition to the prevalence of social media.

“The near-ubiquitous presence of social media in the lives of American adolescents, with up to 95% of teens regularly using at least one or more of these platforms—is increasingly correlated with a concerning rise in mental health challenges, particularly among younger users,” the report says. “With the vast majority of teenagers engaging with these platforms, understanding the nuanced consequences and mental health impacts of social media on their developing well-being is of critical public health importance.”

No mention of gun violence

The report didn’t include any mention of gun violence, a leading cause of death in American children and teenagers, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, analysis from the nonpartisan health research organization KFF and a report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

“The United States has by far the highest rate of child and teen firearm mortality among peer nations. In no other similarly large, wealthy country are firearms in the top four causes of death for children and teens, let alone the number one cause,” KFF’s analysis states. “U.S. states with the most gun laws have lower rates of child and teen firearm deaths than states with few gun laws. But, even states with the lowest child and teen firearm deaths have rates much higher than what peer countries experience.”

The Johns Hopkins report notes that the gun death rate in children between the ages of 1 and 17 has “increased by 106 percent since 2013 and (has) been the leading cause of death among this group since 2020.”

In 2022, there were 2,526 gun deaths in that age range, for an average of seven a day, according to the report.

The KFF analysis shows other leading causes of childhood death include motor vehicles, cancer, suffocation, congenital anomalies, poisoning and drowning. 

Farm Bureau, Corn Growers critical

Farm groups were dubious about the report’s conclusions.

The American Farm Bureau’s Duvall said it was “deeply troubling for the White House to endorse a report that sows seeds of doubt and fear about our food system and farming practices, then attempts to celebrate farmers and the critical role they play in producing the safest food supply in the world.”

“The report also expresses a desire to ensure farmers continue to thrive, but undermining confidence in our food system directly contradicts that noble goal,” said Duvall. “The report spotlights outlier studies and presents unproven theories that feed a false narrative and only then does it acknowledge a mountain of evidence about the safety of our food system.”

Iowa Corn Growers Association Chair Jolene Riessen said the “misinformation surrounding crop protection tools is incredibly upsetting because if there’s one thing all farmers have in common, it’s that we care about raising safe, healthy, and affordable food that nourishes families around the world.

“Agriculture is a science, and we have spent years testing and researching pesticides, like glyphosate, to reaffirm that they are a safe and vital tool farmers rely on to feed and fuel the world.”

Others said the report was lacking. Lori Ann Burd, the Center for Biological Diversity’s environmental health director, wrote in a statement the “report’s acknowledgement of pesticides’ risks to our children’s health is a small step forward,” before rebuking Trump administration officials for not going further.

“The grassroots movement of millions of Americans who trusted Trump with their votes won’t forget that RFK Jr. was cowed by the powerful industrial farming forces determined to make sure there are no U.S. restrictions on harmful pesticides like atrazine, which is banned in 60 nations,” Burd wrote. “Instead of protecting our kids, we use over 70 million pounds of atrazine each year on the corn and sugarcane crops that are making Americans sick. The fight to ban atrazine will continue.”

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., is pictured on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House early Thursday approved the “big, beautiful bill” that Republican leaders spent months negotiating with centrists and far-right members of the party — two distinct factions that hold vastly different policy goals — over intense opposition from Democrats.

The 215-214 vote ships the package to the Senate, where GOP lawmakers are expected to rewrite much of it, before sending it back across the Capitol for final approval, a process likely to stretch through the summer.

President Donald Trump, who said he backed the House version, would then need to sign the legislation, which under the complicated process being used by Republicans can pass with just a majority vote in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Trump called on the Senate to pass the legislation as quickly as possible, writing in a social media post that “(t)here is no time to waste” and that the bill is “arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!”

Speaker Mike Johnson said minutes before the vote that he expects lawmakers to give the measure final approval before the Fourth of July.

“Now, look, we’re accomplishing a big thing here today, but we know this isn’t the end of the road just yet,” Johnson, R-La., said. “We’ve been working closely with Leader (John) Thune and our Senate colleagues, the Senate Republicans, to get this done and delivered to the president’s desk by our Independence Day. That’s July 4. Today proves that we can do that, and we will do that.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., argued against the legislation, saying it “undermines reproductive freedom, undermines the progress that we have made in combating the climate crisis, undermines gun safety, undermines the rule of law and the independence of the federal judiciary. It even undermines the ability of hard-working and law-abiding immigrant families to provide remittances to their loved ones, who may just happen to live abroad.”

Jeffries raised concerns with how the proposals in the bill would impact the economy and the federal government’s financial stability.

“Costs aren’t going down. They’re going up. Inflation is out of control. Insurance rates remain stubbornly high,” Jeffries said. “Our Moody’s rating, our credit rating, has been downgraded, and you’ve got people losing confidence in this economy. Republicans are crashing this economy in real time and driving us toward a recession.”

Ohio’s Warren Davidson and Kentucky’s Thomas Massie were the only Republicans to vote against passing the bill, which members debated throughout the night prior to the vote just after daylight in the nation’s capital. All Democrats, who dubbed it “one big ugly bill,” were opposed. Maryland GOP Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, voted “present.”

Massie spoke against the bill overnight, calling it “a debt bomb ticking.”

“I’d love to stand here and tell the American people: We can cut your taxes and we can increase spending, and everything’s going to be just fine. But I can’t do that because I’m here to deliver a dose of reality,” Massie said. “This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term, but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now. Where have we heard that before? How do you bind a future Congress to these promises?”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing later in the day that Trump wants Davidson and Massie to face primary challenges next year during the midterm elections.

“I believe he does,” Leavitt said. “And I don’t think he likes to see grandstanders in Congress.” 

In the works for weeks

The 1,116-page package combines 11 bills that GOP lawmakers debated and reported out of committee during the last several weeks.

The legislation would:

• Extend the 2017 tax law, including tax cuts for businesses and individuals;
• Bolster spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars;
• Rework energy permitting;
• Restructure higher education aid such as student loans and Pell Grants;
• Shift some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food aid program for low-income Americans to state governments; and
• Overhaul Medicaid, the nation’s program for health care for low-income people and some people with disabilities.

The bill would make deep cuts to Medicaid spending, reducing the program by $625 billion over 10 years under the latest estimate by the Congressional Budget Office.

The budget measure would also raise the debt limit by $4 trillion.

A new Congressional Budget Office analysis released late Tuesday showed the package tilted toward the wealthy, projecting it would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners.

Republicans hold especially thin majorities in the House and Senate, meaning that nearly every GOP lawmaker — ranging from centrists who barely won their general elections to far-right members who are more at risk of losing a primary challenge — needed to support the bill.

Balancing the demands of hundreds of lawmakers led to nearly constant talks during the last few days as Johnson struggled to secure the votes to pass the bill before his Memorial Day deadline.

Any deal Johnson made with far-right members of the party risked alienating centrist GOP lawmakers and vice versa.

An agreement finally came together Wednesday evening when GOP leaders released a 42-page amendment that made changes to various sections of the package, including the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, and Medicaid work requirements and nixed the potential sale of some public lands.

Tax cuts

House debate on the package fell largely along party lines, with Democrats contending it would benefit the wealthy at the expense of lower-income Americans, including millions who would lose access to Medicaid.

Republicans argued the legislation is necessary to avoid a tax hike at the end of the year, when the 2017 GOP law expires, and to curb government spending in the years ahead.

Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said the tax section of the package would halt a tax increase for many that would have taken place after the vast majority of the provisions in that law expire at the end of this year.

“Working families, farmers and small businesses win with this bill,” Smith said. “We expand and make permanent the small business deduction and increase the child tax credit, the standard deduction and the death tax exemption.”

The legislation would increase the tax rate for colleges and universities with substantial endowments, which would match the corporate tax rate, he said.

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Richard Neal, ranking member on that tax-writing committee, said the legislation would lead the United States to “borrow $4 trillion and with interest payments over the next 10 years, $5 trillion, to justify a tax cut for the billionaire class.”

Neal said that the wealthy would see a greater benefit from the GOP tax provisions than working-class Americans.

“If you made a million dollars last year, you’re going to get $81,000 of tax relief. If you made less than $50,000 Guess what? Not quite so lucky,” Neal said. “But you know what? $1 a day goes a long way, because that’s where the numbers land.”

Neal said Democrats would have worked with Republicans to extend the 2017 tax cuts if the GOP had capped them for those making less than $400,000 a year, with people making more than that going back to the higher rate. 

Child tax credit

The child tax credit will increase to $2,500, up from the $2,000 enacted under the 2017 tax law. The refundability portion of the credit, or the amount parents could receive in a refund check after paying their tax liability, will remain capped but will increase with inflation by $100 annually. As of now, the amount a parent could receive back per child stands at $1,700.

While Republicans hailed the increase as a win for families, critics say it continues to leave out the poorest families as the refund amount is dependent on how much a parent earns. The credit phases in at 15 cents per income dollar, one child at a time.

“The Republican bill will leave out 17 million American children who are in families that don’t earn enough to receive the full child tax credit,” Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington said Wednesday in the House Committee on Rules. Her amendment to make the tax credit fully refundable was rejected.

On the House floor Thursday morning, DelBene criticized the bill as a “big, broken promise.”

SALT

Republicans from high-tax blue states declared victory on the increase in the SALT cap, or the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted from federal taxable income. After long, drawn-out disagreement, Republicans representing districts in California, New Jersey and New York secured a bump to $40,000, up from the $10,000 cap enacted under Trump’s 2017 tax law.

However, the cap comes with an income limit of $500,000, after which it phases down. Both the $40,000 cap and the $500,000 income threshold will increase annually at 1% until hitting a ceiling of $44,000 and $552,000.

Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said during debate that he “would never support a tax bill that did not adequately lift the cap on SALT.”

“This bill does that. It increases the cap on SALT by 300%,” Lawler said. “And I would remind my Democratic colleagues, when they had full control in Washington, they lifted the cap on SALT by exactly $0, zilch, zip, nada.”

Medicaid work requirements 

Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said his panel’s bill would ensure Medicaid coverage continued for low-income families, individuals who are disabled and seniors through new work requirements and other changes.

“This bill protects coverage for those individuals by ensuring ineligible recipients do not cut the line in front of our most vulnerable Americans,” Guthrie said. “The decision by left-leaning state governments to spend taxpayer dollars on people who are ineligible for the program is indefensible. Medicaid should not cover illegal immigrants, deceased or duplicative beneficiaries, or able-bodied adults without dependents who choose not to work.”

The policy change would require those who rely on the state-federal health program, and who are between the ages of 19 and 65, to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month.

The language has numerous exceptions, including for pregnant people, parents of dependent children, people who have complex medical conditions, tribal community members, those in the foster care system, people who were in foster care who are below the age of 26 and individuals released from incarceration in the last 90 days, among others.

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, ranking member on the committee that oversees major health care programs, said the Republican bill would not only cut funding for Medicaid, but also for Medicare, the program relied on by seniors and some younger people with disabilities.

“Republicans are stripping health care away from people by putting all sorts of burdensome and time-consuming road blocks in the way of people just trying to get by,” Pallone said. “The vast majority of people on Medicaid are already working. This is not about work. It’s about burying people in so much paperwork that they fall behind and lose their health coverage, and if someone loses their health coverage through Medicaid, this GOP tax scam also bans them from getting coverage through the ACA marketplace.”

While the GOP bill doesn’t directly address Medicare, he said, a federal budget law, known as the Pay-As-You-Go Act, would force spending cuts called sequestration to that health program.

“The Medicare cuts will lead to reduced access to care for seniors, longer wait times for appointments, and increased costs,” Pallone said.

States to share in food aid costs

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., pressed for support for his piece of the legislation, saying changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are needed.

“SNAP is the only state-administered welfare program that does not have a cost-share component, and while the federal government funds 100% of the benefit, states are tasked with operating it,” Thompson said. “The only problem: They aren’t operating it well.”

He also cheered several of the package’s tax provisions, saying they would benefit farmers.

“The one big, beautiful bill makes permanent and expands the Trump tax cuts. It also prevents the death tax from hitting over 2 million family farms,” Thompson said. “It locks in the small business deduction, helping 98% of American farms stay afloat.”

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Angie Craig, ranking member on the panel, wrote in a statement that the proposed changes would “make America hungrier, poorer and sicker.”

“At a time when grocery prices are going up and retirement accounts are going down, we must protect the basic needs programs that help people afford food and health care,” Craig wrote. “As a mother and someone who needed food assistance at periods in my own childhood, I condemn this attempt to snatch food off our children’s plates to fund tax breaks for large corporations.”

Border security, air traffic control, EV fees

House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., said his piece of the package would combine “critical investments in border security, national defense and modernization of America’s air traffic control system, while eliminating wasteful spending and other deficit reduction measures.”

“Specifically, this bill addresses long overdue needs in the United States Coast Guard, which for over two decades has received less than half of the capital investment necessary to effectively carry out its critical missions,” Graves said.

The transportation section of the package, he said, includes $21 billion for the Coast Guard and $12.5 billion to modernize the air traffic control systems while establishing a $250 annual fee for electric vehicles and a $100 annual fee for hybrid vehicles that would go toward the Highway Trust Fund. That account has traditionally been funded through a gas tax. 

Washington Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen, ranking member on the transportation panel, said he wanted “to continue historic funding for transportation, infrastructure, and stronger and healthier communities.”

“Unfortunately, this reconciliation package leaves very little room for those investments,”  Larsen said.

“This bill causes immediate harm by yanking money from locally selected projects that our constituents in Republican and Democratic districts alike are counting on,” he added. “And for what? To help pay for the tax cuts for the richest Americans and largest and largest corporations.”

Student loan overhaul, medical research

House Education and Workforce Committee ranking member Bobby Scott, D-Va., urged opposition to what he called the “big, bad billionaires bill,” saying it would lead to a massive reshaping of higher education aid.

“The bill not only can increase the deficit, it has 4 million students who will lose their Pell Grants, 18 million children could potentially lose their free school lunch, 13.7 million people are set to lose their health care and everybody loses when the National Institutes of Health research is cut,” Scott said.

Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., said his portion of the legislation would “generate over $20 billion in savings and new revenue for the federal government, primarily by direct royalty and lease fees from the sale of oil, gas, timber and mine resources, while curbing wasteful spending.”

“Our title reinstates onshore and offshore oil and gas lease sales, holds annual geothermal lease sales and ensures a fair process for critical mineral development nationwide,” Westerman said. “We’ve also directed the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to utilize long-term timber sale contracts.”

The Trump administration released a Statement of Administration Policy on Wednesday urging GOP lawmakers to approve the legislation, when it still appeared several members of the party might delay or even block the bill in the House. 

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act reflects the shared priorities of both Congress and the Administration,” the SAP states. “Therefore, the House of Representatives should immediately pass this bill to show the American people that they are serious about ‘promises made, promises kept.’

“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises, and failure to pass this bill would be the ultimate betrayal.”

U.S. House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, R-Md., center, speaks to reporters on Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at the U.S. Capitol. From left are Republicans Keith Self of Texas, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Chip Roy of Texas. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republican leaders released changes to their “one big beautiful bill” late Wednesday after marathon negotiations with conservatives demanding deeper cuts to safety net programs, teeing up debate and a final vote likely sometime Thursday.

The alterations, which will have to be adopted later, moved up implementation of work requirements for Medicaid by at least a couple of years and tossed out plans to sell some public lands. The new language also tightened the timeline for clean energy tax breaks and raised the ceiling for taxpayers who deduct state and local taxes.

The package of adjustments — the manager’s amendment — was incorporated into the larger reconciliation bill, which was approved by the House Rules Committee just before 11 p.m. Eastern on an 8-4 party-line vote. Far-right holdout Rep. Chip Roy of Texas was absent.

Next, the package must pass a procedural vote on the House floor before lawmakers can debate and take a final vote.

With a razor-thin margin, House Speaker Mike Johnson can only lose a handful of members on each vote. Democrats are expected to uniformly vote “no” in the procedural and final votes.

Medicaid

Republicans moved up implementation of work requirements for Medicaid enrollees from taking effect after January 1, 2029 to no later than December 31, 2026. That could mean some states will make the changes before next year’s midterm elections.

The provision would require those who rely on the state-federal health program for lower-income Americans and some people with disabilities, who are between the ages of 19 and 65, to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month.

The language has numerous exceptions, including for pregnant people, parents of dependent children, people who have complex medical conditions, tribal community members, people in the foster system, people who were in the foster system who are below the age of 26 and people released from incarceration in the last 90 days, among others.

The GOP changes also would bar Medicaid from covering gender transition procedures for anyone in the program. The bill previously barred that type of treatment for anyone below the age of 18.

Clean energy tax credits

Republicans also tightened the timeline on the termination of clean energy tax credits enacted under President Joe Biden. Hardliners focused on reducing the deficit had demanded a quicker phase-out for the credits.

The new language would accelerate phase-outs for clean energy investment tax credits to 2028, up from 2031, with special carve-outs for nuclear facilities. Companies that break ground on new facilities 60 days after the bill is enacted, if passed, will not qualify for the tax credits. The same applies to any facility placed into service after 2028.

State and local taxes

A separate contingent of Republican holdouts reached a deal with Johnson to raise the SALT cap to $40,000, up from the $10,000 lid enacted under the 2017 tax law. The SALT cap  — the amount of state and local taxes constituents can deduct from federal taxable income — is a top issue for Republicans who represent districts in high-tax blue states, including California, New Jersey and New York.

The amount of SALT taxpayers can deduct decreases for those making more than $500,000 annually. The SALT cap and the income cut-off will increase by 1% each year from 2027 until 2033.

Public lands sale

The amendment removed language that would have allowed the sale of public lands in Nevada and Utah.

The National Wildlife Federation credited Montana Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke with removing the provision.

“Thank you to Rep. Ryan Zinke and his colleagues who listened to their constituents and worked with House leaders to eliminate the provision from the budget reconciliation bill,” NWF Associate Vice President for Public Lands David Wilms said in a statement. “We urge all members of Congress to refrain from similar attacks on America’s public lands.”

Jessica Turner, president of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, wrote in a statement that “Congress avoided setting a dangerous precedent that lands can be sold anytime the U.S. Treasury needs a budget ‘pay-for’ and threatening outdoor recreation businesses and rural communities alike that need certainty, access, and long-term infrastructure.”

The Center for Biological Diversity’s Great Basin Director Patrick Donnelly wrote in a separate statement that it was “appalling that GOP leaders tried to get away with auctioning off some of our country’s most beautiful landscapes to fund tax cuts for billionaires and make developers richer. This is Gilded Age-level stuff, and I hope people remember it the next time Republicans try to pretend they care about public lands.”

A separate provision in the amendment appeared to narrow the federal authorizations energy projects could bypass by paying a $10 million fee. The section had been attacked by environmental groups as a “pay-to-play” for energy companies.

White House meeting

The changes come after Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, and far-right holdouts huddled with President Donald Trump at the White House Wednesday afternoon.

Johnson, speaking to reporters at the Capitol following the meeting, said that lawmakers had “a good discussion” and that he believes the GOP is “in a very good place.”

“I think that all of our colleagues here will really like this final product, and I think we’re going to move forward,” Johnson said.

Johnson said members of the Freedom Caucus, who previously argued the legislation doesn’t go far enough to restructure Medicaid and reduce federal spending, may end up supporting the bill, in part because Trump plans to address their other concerns through unilateral actions.

“You will see how all this is resolved. But I think we can resolve their concerns and it’ll be probably some combination of work by the president in these areas as well as here in Congress,” Johnson said. “So there may be executive orders related to some of these issues in the near future.

“And, you know, this is a commitment the president has made. He wants to go after fraud, waste and abuse.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt released a written statement saying the “meeting was productive and moved the ball in the right direction.

“The President reiterated how critical it is for the country to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill as quickly as possible.”

Complex process

Republicans are using the complex reconciliation process to move the package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber, avoiding the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which would otherwise require bipartisanship.

Reconciliation measures must address federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit in a way not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian. That means the GOP proposals must carry some sort of price tag and cannot focus simply on changing federal policy.

Republicans are using the package to extend the 2017 tax law, increase spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, overhaul American energy production, restructure higher education aid and cut spending on Medicaid.

A new Congressional Budget Office analysis released late Tuesday projected the massive reconciliation package would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners.

Freedom Caucus

Earlier Wednesday, members of the Freedom Caucus told reporters following a different meeting with Johnson that they believed negotiations were moving in the right direction, but were skeptical of trying to approve the entire package this week.

Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the group, said they wanted the legislation to go further in terms of addressing “waste, fraud and abuse” within Medicaid, though he declined to elaborate.

The Medicaid proposals in the version of the bill prior to the negotiated changes would cut $625 billion in federal spending during the next decade, under a CBO analysis. Democrats have warned the result would be millions of vulnerable people losing access to the health program for lower income people and some people with disabilities.

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy said during that same impromptu press conference that leadership and members of the Freedom Caucus had made “significant progress” toward a final agreement.

“We’re trying to deliver so that the people who are actually out there working hard can actually get the health care that they want to get, that they can get, and get it the best way possible,” Roy said. “That’s what this is all about; changing a broken system, making sure we’re saving taxpayer dollars and being able to provide a better environment for people to be able to thrive.”

Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry, who used to chair the Freedom Caucus, said that holding a House vote before Memorial Day was a made-up timeline and that if negotiations needed to last longer, they should.

“This is a completely arbitrary deadline set by people here to force people into a corner to make bad decisions,” Perry said. “It’s more important to get this right, to get it correct, than to get it fast. We are sitting at the table to do that.”

Jacob Fischler contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump arrives with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., for a House Republican meeting at the U.S. Capitol on May 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Republicans who have yet to rally behind the party’s “big, beautiful bill” huddled in the speaker’s office Tuesday as different factions tried to hash out agreement on taxes, Medicaid and a few other outstanding issues.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters before those meetings began there were “a number of loose ends to tie up” with deficit hawks and members from high-tax states, who are pressing to raise the state and local tax deduction, also known as SALT.

“We got some hours ahead of us to work this out, and I’m very confident we will,” Johnson said. “I’m going to have a series of meetings that will begin right now in my office to try to tie up the final loose ends. This is a 1,100-page piece of legislation. We’re down to a few provisions so we are very confident, very optimistic we can get this done and stay on our timetable.”

Johnson hopes to pass the legislation this week, though he didn’t appear to have the votes as of Tuesday afternoon.

Trump pays a House call

The smaller meetings followed a closed-door huddle between all the chamber’s GOP lawmakers and President Donald Trump earlier in the day that didn’t quite have the intended effect of immediately convincing holdouts to vote for the bill.

Trump, however, appeared to declare victory before leaving the Capitol.

“I think we have unbelievable unity. I think we’re going to get everything we want,” Trump said after the morning meeting. “And I think we’re going to have a great victory.”

House Republicans have an extremely thin 220-213 majority, requiring nearly every GOP lawmaker to support the 1,116-page package in order for it to reach the Senate.

Getting SALT-y

The reconciliation bill currently proposes lifting the SALT cap from $10,000 to $30,000 for married couples filing jointly, with a phase-down for those earning $400,000 or more, but that’s not enough for Republicans from states most impacted by the aspect of tax law.

New York Republican Rep. Nick LaLota told reporters in the early afternoon that he would likely lose reelection if he can’t secure a better SALT agreement than what was on the table.

“If I do a bad deal, I would expect my constituents to throw me out,” LaLota said. “If I did a deal at $30,000, my own mother wouldn’t vote for me.”

LaLota said Republicans leaders should prioritize a deal that benefits swing voters to avoid the party losing centrist members and possibly the House majority in the 2026 midterms.

“If we win that one issue, they’ll have a much easier November of 2026. And thus we’ll be able to keep the House and do other fiscally responsible things for the next couple of cycles here, if we get this one issue right,” LaLota said. “Conversely, you get this issue wrong — you vote for a bad bill and you keep the cap low — those folks are getting thrown out of office, we lose the majority, and then we have an open border, then we have an impeached president, and then we have all the other things that America voted against.”

LaLota said later Tuesday, after GOP leaders proposed different SALT cap numbers, that there was still “no accepted deal, yet the parties are talking a little more with an understanding of each other’s position.”

“Leadership understands better what our pain threshold is,” LaLota said. “We clearly rejected the $30,000 number that’s in the Ways and Means bill.” 

He declined to say if the SALT Caucus was prepping a counteroffer for leadership, but said that staff were conducting “some research on some of the mixes of income caps and what SALT cap there would be and how much that would be valued at relative to the entire $4 trillion package.”

‘Bad faith negotiation’

Rep. Mike Lawler, a staunch supporter of raising the SALT cap for his constituents north of New York City, would not comment to reporters outside the speaker’s office about a specific dollar amount but said there’s an “improved offer” on the table.

“We’re waiting on more details. We’ll have more to say later,” Lawler said.

Speaking to Fox News in the hallway, he said, “I’m not going to sacrifice my constituents and throw them under the bus in a bad faith negotiation, which is what this has been by leadership and Jason Smith,” he said referring to the chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means.

“We need to come to an agreement. We need to provide real and lasting tax relief, and that’s what I’m fighting for, for my constituents. I respect the president … but I’ll respectfully disagree,” Lawler said.

Trump urged House Republicans Tuesday morning that raising the SALT cap benefits Democratic governors.

Conservatives still unhappy

Complicating negotiations, some far-right House Republicans remain opposed to the bill, saying it does not go far enough.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who did not support the bill during a committee vote Sunday night, told States Newsroom Tuesday afternoon that his “concerns and problems still exist.”

Roy argues the massive reconciliation deal does not reduce deficit spending enough, particularly with respect to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits.

When asked whether lawmakers were approaching an agreement, Roy said “Not sure. We’re still talking. We’ve had literally like five meetings today already.”

Thune predictions

The House passing the package this week would only be one of many steps in the long, winding process.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said during a press conference Tuesday afternoon, just after Johnson spoke during a closed-door lunch, that changes to the package are expected in the upper chamber.

Thune said one of the major questions for GOP senators is whether the legislation holds “sufficient spending reforms to get us on a more sustainable fiscal path.”

“I think most of our members are in favor of a lot of the tax policy and particularly those portions of the tax policy that are stimulative, that are pro-growth, that will create greater growth in the economy,” Thune said. “But when it comes to the spending side of the equation: This is a unique moment in time and in history where we have the House and the Senate and the White House, and an opportunity to do something meaningful about government spending.”

Thune said that GOP senators would likely make “tweaks” to the tax provisions once the House sends over a package, especially around how long certain tax policy lasts.

“They have cliffs and some shorter-term timeframes when it comes to some of the tax policies,” Thune said. “We believe that permanence is the way to create economic certainty and thereby attract and incentive capital investment in this country that creates those good-paying jobs, and gets our economy growing and expanding, and generates more government revenue.”

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Screenshot from committee webcast)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before Congress on Tuesday that a major report due out later this week from his agency will not disparage farmers or a commonly used pesticide.

Kennedy, who has long been critical of certain aspects of modern agriculture and processed food, at a U.S. Senate hearing urged lawmakers to read the widely anticipated “Make America Healthy Again” report once it’s published Thursday, but didn’t go into details about any possible recommendations.

“Everybody will see the report,” Kennedy said. “And there’s nobody that has a greater commitment to the American farmer than we do. The MAHA movement collapses if we can’t partner with the American farmer in producing a safe, robust and abundant food supply.”

His comments followed stern questioning from Mississippi Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who said she had read news reports from “reliable sources” that the MAHA Commission’s initial assessment “may unfairly target American agriculture, modern farming practices and the crop protection tools that roughly 2% of our population relies on to help feed the remaining 98%.”

“If Americans lose confidence in the safety and integrity of our food supply due to the unfounded claims that mislead consumers, public health will be at risk,” Hyde-Smith said. “I’ve said this before, and it’s worth saying again, countries have gone to war over many things — politics, religion, race, trade, natural resources, oil, pride, you name it — but threaten a nation’s food supply and allow people to go hungry. Let’s see what happens then.”

Hyde-Smith, who was her home state’s commissioner of agriculture and commerce from 2012 to 2018, probed Kennedy about his past work in environmental law and whether he might be inserting “confirmation bias” into the forthcoming report.

She asked Kennedy if he would try to change the current approval for glyphosate, a commonly used herbicide, that she referred to as “one of the most thoroughly studied products of its kind.”

“We’re talking about more than 1,500 studies and 50-plus years of review by the EPA and other leading global health authorities that have affirmed its safety when used as directed,” Hyde-Smith said. “Have you been able to review thousands of studies and decades of scientific review in a matter of months?”

Kennedy responded that her “information about the report is just simply wrong.”

“The drafts that I’ve seen, there is not a single word in them that should worry the American farmer,” Kennedy said.

Hyde-Smith continued her questioning and told Kennedy that it would be “a shame if the MAHA commission issues reports suggesting, without substantial facts and evidence, that our government got things terribly wrong when it reviewed a number of crop protection tools and deemed them to be safe.”

Home energy program in Maine

Several other Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee raised concerns during the two-hour hearing about how Kennedy has run HHS since they confirmed him in February.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, chairwoman of the full Appropriations Committee, brought up the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which the Trump administration has called on Congress to eliminate.

“The LIHEAP program, which we’ve talked about, is absolutely vital for thousands of older Mainers and low-income families,” Collins said. “It helps them avoid the constant worry of having to choose between keeping warm, buying essential foods and medications and other basic necessities.”

Kennedy sought to distance himself from the president’s budget request, saying that he understands “the critical, historical importance of this program.”

“President (Donald) Trump’s rationale and (the Office of Management and Budget’s) rationale is that President Trump’s energy policies are going to lower the cost of energy … so that everybody will get lower cost heating oil,” Kennedy said.

NIH indirect costs

Subcommittee Chairwoman Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., brought up several issues with Kennedy, including efforts to change how much the National Institutes of Health provides to medical schools and research universities for Facilities and Administrative fees, often called indirect costs.

NIH sought to set that amount at 15% across the board for any institution that receives a research grant from the agency, a significantly lower amount than many of the organizations had negotiated over the years, bringing about strong objections from institutions of higher education.

That NIH policy has not taken effect as several lawsuits work their way through the federal court system.

Kennedy indicated NIH has figured out a way to help medical schools and research universities pay for items like gloves, test tubes and mass spectrometers, particularly at state schools.

“In the public universities, we are very much aware that those universities are using the money well, that it is absolutely necessary for them. And we’re looking at a series of different ways that we can fund those costs through them,” Kennedy said. “But not through the independent, indirect cost structure, which loses all control, which deprives us of all control of how that money is spent.”

Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, a Republican, brought up the measles outbreak and pressed Kennedy on whether HHS needed additional resources to help his home state and others get the virus under control.

Kennedy testified the “best way to prevent the spread of measles is through vaccination” and that HHS has been urging “people to get their MMR vaccines.”

South Dakota grant on mine safety

South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds called on Kennedy to continue fixing issues created earlier this year when HHS fired people working on mine safety issues at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

“My office has learned that staff at NIOSH’s Spokane mining research division have been laid off. This office focuses on the unique challenges of Western mining operations that are often more geologically complex and exposed to harsher conditions,” Rounds said. “This division provides critical technical support for institutions like the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, which recently received a $1.25 million grant to improve underground mining safety. However, the grant has now been canceled due to loss of oversight from the Spokane office.

“This is not just a missed opportunity, it undermines our ability to meet national security goals tied to mineral independence and supply chain resilience.”

Kennedy testified that he’s been able to bring back 238 workers at the agency and said he would work with Rounds to address ongoing issues.

Pledge to fund Head Start, but no dollar amount

Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, a Republican, asked Kennedy about news reports earlier this year that HHS would ask Congress to zero out funding for Head Start, one of numerous programs left out of the administration’s skinny budget request. Head Start provides early learning, health, family and development programs for free for children from low-income families.

Kennedy testified that eliminating Head Start would likely not be in the full budget request, which is set to be released later this year, though the White House budget office has not said when. He said it would ask Congress to fully fund the program, but didn’t share a dollar amount.

“There’s 800,000 of the poorest kids in this country who are served by this program. It not only teaches the kids preschool skills — reading, writing and arithmetic — before they get to prepare them for school. But it also teaches the parents and teaches them how to be good parents.”

Kennedy said there are challenges faced by the Head Start program that he hopes to change during the next four years, including the quality of the food.

“The food they’re serving at Head Start is terrible. You need to change that,” Kennedy said. “We’re poisoning the poorest kids from their youngest years, and we’re going to change that.”

The U.S. House Budget Committee votes on Friday, May 16, 2025 on a massive reconciliation package. The vote failed, 16-21. (Screenshot from House webcast)

WASHINGTON — Republicans suffered a major setback to their “big, beautiful bill” on Friday, when amid conservative objections the U.S. House Budget Committee failed to approve the measure, a crucial step in the process.

In a 16-21 vote, Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Chip Roy of Texas and Lloyd Smucker of Pennsylvania broke from their GOP colleagues to block the bill from moving toward the floor, demanding changes to several provisions.

The breakdown over the 1,116-page bill marks an escalation in the long-running feud between centrist Republicans, who have been cautious about hundreds of billions in spending cuts to safety net programs, and far-right members of the party, who argue the changes are not enough.

The committee is scheduled to reconvene Sunday at 10 p.m. Eastern. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has said he wants the package on the floor prior to the Memorial Day recess.

Speedier work requirements

Norman said he remains a “hard no” until new work requirements for Medicaid recipients phase in more quickly. As the bill is written, the requirements won’t begin until 2029.

“To phase this in for four years — We’re telling a healthy-bodied, a healthy American that you got four years to get a job. No, your payment stops now,” Norman said.

Brecheen criticized the bill for not going far enough to repeal wind and solar energy tax credits, which he contends are “undermining natural gas jobs.”

“We have to fix this,” he said.

Clyde denounced the measure for not adhering to President Donald Trump’s promise of “right-sizing government,” as Clyde described it. The Georgia Republican also pleaded for lower taxes on firearms and stronger cuts that would put Medicaid on a “sustainable path.”

“Unfortunately, the current version falls short of these goals and fails to deliver the transformative change that Americans were promised,” Clyde said.

Smucker initially voted ‘yes,’ but then joined his four colleagues to oppose the measure.

Trump wrote on his social media platform shortly before the committee voted that “Republicans MUST UNITE behind, ‘THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL!’”

“We don’t need ‘GRANDSTANDERS’ in the Republican Party. STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE! It is time to fix the MESS that Biden and the Democrats gave us. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

‘A wrecking ball to Medicaid’

Democrats, who as expected unified in voting no against the bill, slammed it as “ugly,” “cruel” and a “betrayal.”

“This bill takes a wrecking ball to Medicaid, on which 1 in 5 Americans and 3 million Ohioans depend for medical care — children, seniors in nursing homes,” said Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who represents northern Ohio. “Please come with me to visit the nursing homes. … Perhaps too many on the other side of the aisle have not had to endure a life that has major challenges.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota said the proposed cuts to safety net programs would be “devastating.”

“Their changes will kick millions of Americans off their health care and nutrition assistance. That means more untreated illnesses, more hungry children, more preventable deaths,” she said.

Republican-only bill

Republicans are using the complex reconciliation process to move the package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber, avoiding the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which would otherwise require bipartisanship. 

Reconciliation measures must address federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit in a way not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian. That means the GOP proposals must carry some sort of price tag and cannot focus simply on changing federal policy.

Republicans are using the package to extend the 2017 tax law, increase spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, overhaul American energy production, restructure higher education aid and cut spending.

The 11 House committees tasked with drafting pieces of the legislation have all debated and approved their measures along party lines.

The Agriculture Committee, Energy and Commerce Committee and Ways and Means Committee all completed their work earlier this week, amid strong objections from Democrats.

Proposed changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, could shift considerable cost-sharing onto states for the first time, presenting challenges for red-state lawmakers who need to explain the bill back home.

More than $600 billion in federal spending cuts to Medicaid during the next decade could also cause some difficulties for moderate Republicans, some of whose constituents are likely to be among the millions of Americans expected to lose their health insurance.

Republicans also have yet to reach an agreement on the state and local tax deduction or SALT, a priority for GOP lawmakers from blue states like California, New Jersey and New York.

The Budget Committee’s role in the process was to package together all of the bills and then send the one massive bill to the Rules Committee, the last stop before floor debate for major legislation.

That won’t be able to happen until after GOP leaders get nearly all the Republican lawmakers on the panel to support the package. 

House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., left, and ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., right, speak during a markup with the committee on Capitol Hill on May 13, 2025 in Washington, DC. . (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House panel in charge of overhauling Medicaid by cutting hundreds of billions in federal spending wrapped up debate on its bill Wednesday, following a 25-hour session.

The Energy and Commerce Committee voted 30-24 along party lines to sign off on the legislation, sending it to the Budget panel, which is expected to bundle it together with the other 10 measures Friday to create Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill.”

The full House is set to vote on that package next week, though GOP leaders need to make sure nearly all of the chamber’s 220 Republicans support the overall bill in order for it to pass.

The legislation, should it gain that backing, will then head to the Senate, where GOP lawmakers are expected to rewrite or eliminate numerous sections of the bill. 

Analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, shared with States Newsroom by Republican staff on the Energy and Commerce Committee, shows the Medicaid changes would cut $625 billion in federal spending during the next decade.

About 10.3 million people would lose access to Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program, with 7.6 million people becoming uninsured during the 10-year budget window, according to the CBO analysis, which has yet to be released publicly.

House committee debate on the bill, which began Tuesday and continued overnight, largely centered around Democrats saying the legislation would lead millions of vulnerable people to lose access to Medicaid, while Republicans contended their overhaul would protect “the integrity” of the health care program for lower income Americans and some people with disabilities.

Democrats proposed dozens of amendments trying to change the bill’s various sections, including the Medicaid provisions, but Republicans on the committee blocked their adoption.

‘They’re going to lose coverage’

Just after the sun rose over Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning, Ohio Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman said Republican claims about people not being kicked off Medicaid due to federal spending cuts were going “off the rails.”

“They’re going to lose coverage in part because of the red tape and the paperwork. We know that because we’ve seen it in other states,” Landsman said. “And these are people who are eligible or deserving — people who need it.”

Washington Democratic Sen. Kim Schrier later in the day raised concerns that people who lose access to Medicaid would put off getting routine care from primary care doctors, only to end up in emergency departments.

“Those kicked off Medicaid will still get care, of course, but they will be sicker, they’ll be treated in the emergency room, the care will be more complicated, more expensive,” Schrier said. “And since they can’t pay for it, all of us will make up that difference. So our insurance rates will go up.”

Florida Rep. Laurel Lee argued the GOP changes to Medicaid are common sense improvements, like “restoring work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents, modernizing systems to prevent fraud and abuse, and ending misdirected payments to those who are deceased or who are not eligible for the program.”

“These reforms are not about taking something away; they are about protecting the integrity of the program so that the people we represent — those who truly need this support — can count on it to be there, now and in the future,” Lee said. “Our reforms are about restoring integrity to the system and ensuring that it works for the long haul.”

Attempts to ax work requirement

Democrats proposed numerous amendments during debate on the health care section of the bill, including some that would have eliminated the work requirements.

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, ranking member on the committee, said those requirements often cause people to lose access to Medicaid due to “red tape” and paperwork.

Pallone said when Georgia implemented work requirements, fewer than 7,000 of the 400,000 people eligible for Medicaid were able to prove to the government they met the standards.

“It’s not that they weren’t eligible, it’s that the state of Georgia put too many barriers in the way of them being able to qualify,” Pallone said. “And that’s what I think is happening here today with this bill.”

He further criticized the GOP for including a provision in the bill saying that if people are not eligible for Medicaid then “they’re not eligible for any kind of subsidy under the Affordable Care Act.”

“So they don’t have that option as well, which is, of course, also the basis for the CBO saying so many people get kicked off Medicaid,” Pallone said. “They assumed that if you didn’t have Medicaid, you would go to the ACA, and that would have probably eliminated most of your savings. But instead, now you say they can’t go to the ACA because they still haven’t filled out the paperwork for Medicaid, so we’re not going to let them go to the ACA and get any kind of subsidized care. And it goes on and on.”

‘We don’t want to repeat the Arkansas law’

Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said the GOP proposals for work requirements sought to avoid the issues experienced in Arkansas and Georgia, when those states implemented their work requirements for Medicaid.

“We don’t want to repeat the Arkansas law,” Guthrie said. “We agree that was the wrong way to do it.”

Arkansas’ experiment with work requirements and monthly checks was “overly cumbersome,” but Guthrie said this legislation would “only require a beneficiary to have to verify work at the time of enrollment or during a redetermined position of their eligibility. This allows states and beneficiaries to take advantage of existing processing and paperwork that they already go through.”

The GOP bill includes several exceptions to the requirement that people enrolled in Medicaid between the ages of 19 and 65 work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month.

Those exclusions include pregnant people, parents of dependent children, people who have complex medical conditions, tribal community members, people in the foster system, people who were in the foster system who are below the age of 26 and people released from incarceration in the last 90 days, among others.

CBO estimates the work requirements would save the federal government $300 billion during the next decade. That savings wouldn’t begin until after the provision takes effect on Jan. 1, 2029.

GOP lawmakers not on the committee have expressed frustration with the delayed implementation, including South Carolina Republican Rep. Ralph Norman.

“Delaying work requirements for able-bodied adults on Medicaid to 2029 isn’t ‘progress,’” Norman wrote in a social media post. “It’s fiscally irresponsible and another sad excuse for the swamp!!”

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, wrote in a four-page letter, that Congress must “significantly amend” several of the bill’s Medicaid provisions, including immediately implementing the work requirements.

“Republicans are in control now and should not let out-of-year savings be compromised by a future Democratic trifecta,” Roy wrote.

Planned Parenthood debate

Texas Democratic Rep. Lizzie Fletcher sought to remove the provision that would block Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood, though GOP lawmakers ultimately voted to keep the language in the measure. 

Federal law for decades has prevented taxpayer dollars from going to abortion services with exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the pregnant patient. But the provision in the GOP bill would block all Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, including for preventive care and regular health check-ups.

Medicaid enrollees who go to Planned Parenthood for wellness checks, birth control, lab work, cancer screenings and other services would have to find a different provider, or go without care.

“To make up the gap, federally qualified health centers would need to increase their capacity by an additional 1 million clients,” Fletcher said. “This is just another way people will lose access to health care. Defunding Planned Parenthood is an assault on the health, dignity and freedom of women across this country.”

Fletcher later pointed out that Planned Parenthood clinics and their affiliates in states with abortion bans would be cut off from federal funding, even though they don’t provide abortions.

She listed the Houston, Texas, Planned Parenthood as one example of a facility that doesn’t perform abortions but would lose federal funding.

The Planned Parenthood language would increase federal deficits by about $300 million during the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It is the only provision in the health care section of the bill that would not reduce federal spending.

Other organizations said to be affected

Virginia Republican Rep. Morgan Griffith said he was told by CBO that other health organizations in addition to Planned Parenthood would be impacted by the provision, but he was unable to name those health care organizations.

The provision would apply to “providers that are nonprofit organizations, that are essential community providers that are primarily engaged in family planning services or reproductive services, provide for abortions other than for Hyde Amendment exceptions, and which received $1,000,000 or more (to either the provider or the provider’s affiliates) in payments from Medicaid payments in 2024,” according to a summary of the GOP bill. It would take effect as soon as the bill becomes law and last for a decade.

Republican staff on the Energy and Commerce Committee did not immediately respond to a request from States Newsroom for the list that Griffith referenced.

Legal staff said the secretary of Health and Human Services would determine what organizations meet that definition and would therefore lose federal Medicaid funding.

Tennessee Republican Rep. Diana Harshbarger opposed the amendment, saying that it was well past time for Congress to cut off all federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

“This bill does not change the availability of funds for women’s health. It simply establishes a safeguard so that the nation’s largest abortion providers are not the one providing services through Medicaid,” Harshbarger said. “Should these entities stop participating in abortion services, they would again be eligible to receive funding.”

Republicans also blocked an amendment from Illinois Democratic Rep. Robin Kelly that would have required Medicaid to cover a full year of postpartum coverage for enrollees.

The vast majority of states already cover postpartum care for a year under an expansion Democrats approved in the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill they enacted in 2021. That was later made permanent in a 2022 appropriations law.  

But Kelly said she was worried that would change if states had to make tough budget choices due to a drop-off in federal funding for the program.

“Medicaid covers almost half of all births in this country and covers more than half of all births in rural communities,” Kelly said. “When we talk about cutting funding, you are cutting into the care that supports moms and babies during the most vulnerable time of their lives.”

Harshbarger spoke against the amendment, saying it was unnecessary. 

A person uses a garden hose in an effort to save a neighboring home from catching fire during the Eaton Fire on Jan. 8, 2025 in Altadena, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress from both political parties are calling on the Trump administration to unfreeze funding for a grant program that helps local communities better prepare for natural disasters.

The letter from more than 80 lawmakers urges the Federal Emergency Management Agency to begin spending money already approved by Congress for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.

“The BRIC program was established by Congress in the 2018 Disaster Recovery Reform Act and signed into law by President (Donald) Trump with bipartisan support,” the two-page letter states. “In the years since, this program has catalyzed community investments in resilient infrastructure, saving federal funds by investing in community preparedness before a disaster strikes.”

The lawmakers wrote that BRIC grant funds go to a variety of projects and that the program has played “an essential role in helping Tribal Nations and rural communities strengthen their defenses against natural disasters and safeguard critical infrastructure.”

“Through BRIC, Tribes and rural communities can access dedicated funding to strengthen community resilience by investing in hazard mitigation projects—such as flood protection, fire prevention, and infrastructure hardening—that are otherwise difficult to finance in rural or remote settings,” the lawmakers wrote.

While the program “has room for improvement,” the lawmakers wrote that FEMA and Congress should work together “to improve the application review and funding distribution process to more effectively reduce the costs disasters pose to our communities, economies, and livelihoods.”

Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski led drafting the letter in their chamber.

Reps. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C.; Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas; Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa.; and Ed Case, D-Hawaii, spearheaded efforts in the House. 

‘Beyond reckless’

FEMA announced in early April that it would unilaterally cancel all BRIC funding approved from fiscal years 2020 through 2023, calling the program “wasteful and ineffective” in a statement.

“Approximately $882 million of funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will be returned to the U.S. Treasury or reapportioned by Congress in the next fiscal year,” a FEMA spokesperson wrote in the statement. “The 2021 law made $1 billion available for BRIC over five years, $133 million to date has been provided for about 450 applications. FEMA estimates more than $3.6 billion will remain in the Disaster Relief Fund to assist with disaster response and recovery for communities and survivors.”

The National Association of Counties wrote in a post about the cancellation that community leaders may “need to halt work or seek new funding sources” and “delay or scale back infrastructure investments.”

“Without access to BRIC’s federal match, counties may find it more difficult to pursue large-scale mitigation projects,” the NaCo post stated.

Association of State Floodplain Managers Executive Director Chad Berginnis wrote that dismantling the country’s “largest pre-disaster mitigation program is beyond reckless.”

“Cutting funding from projects already underway will leave states and communities scrambling, increasing disaster risk to families and businesses instead of reducing it,” Berginnis wrote. “The impact of this decision will be felt for decades to come.”

Capitol Police remove a protester in a wheelchair from the House Energy And Commerce Committee hearing room during the committee markup of part of the budget reconciliation package on May 13, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Protect Our Care)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House committee tasked with overhauling energy policy and Medicaid to achieve $880 billion in spending cuts on Tuesday began what was expected to be a long, grueling session with debate on dozens of amendments.

Republicans on the panel argued during opening statements the proposed changes are necessary to realign several programs with President Donald Trump’s campaign promises and some long-standing GOP policy goals, primarily an extension of the 2017 tax cuts.

Democrats contend the legislation, one of 11 measures that will make up the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill,” would kick millions of people out of Medicaid, the state-federal program for lower income Americans, some people with disabilities and a considerable number of nursing home patients.

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said the GOP bill is aimed at reducing waste, fraud and abuse within Medicaid “by beginning to rein in the loopholes, by ensuring states have the flexibility to remove ineligible recipients from their rolls and removing beneficiaries who enrolled in multiple states.”

“We make no apologies for prioritizing Americans in need over illegal immigrants and those who are capable but choose not to work,” Guthrie said. “Our priority remains the same: strengthen and sustain Medicaid for those whom the program was intended to serve — expectant mothers, children, people with disabilities and the elderly.”

Democratic New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, ranking member on the panel, rejected comments that the GOP bill was “moderate” and said it clearly was not aimed at addressing waste, fraud and abuse.

“Medicaid is a life-saving program that 80 million Americans count on every day,” Pallone said. “It provides health care to 1 in 3 Americans and nearly half of all children in the United States. It covers close to half of all births. And it’s the largest source of funding for long-term care for seniors and people living with disabilities. With this bill, Republicans are essentially telling millions of Americans, ‘Gotcha, no more health care for you.’”

Pallone added that Republican lawmakers were “intentionally taking health care away from millions of Americans, so they can give giant tax breaks to the ultra-rich, who frankly don’t need them.”

Just before Pallone spoke, several protesters in the room, including at least three people in wheelchairs, began chanting “No cuts to Medicaid” and were led out by U.S. Capitol Police, who charged 25 people with illegally demonstrating in the Rayburn House Office Building.

Photos of constituents

Democrats gave numerous opening statements at the start of the markup, each holding up a large photograph of one of their constituents on Medicaid and sharing stories of how the program helped them get or keep access to health care after complex diagnoses, like congestive heart failure, leukemia and cerebral palsy.

Democratic lawmakers expressed concern those people would lose access to the health care program if the GOP bill becomes law.

“You don’t just gut the largest insurer of low income Americans without real harm,” said Illinois Democratic Rep. Robin Kelly. “Call it what it is — abandonment, disinvestment and pure disregard for human life.”

Florida Republican Rep. Kat Cammack rebuked some of the Democrats’ comments, which she said sought to fearmonger and lie to people about what was in the GOP bill.

“The posters that our colleagues on the left have held up are touching. The stories, they’re very emotional. And I agree that we want to protect those most vulnerable,” Cammack said. “As a pregnant woman, I want to make sure that pregnant women, expectant mothers have access to resources around the country.”

Cammack added that “not a single person in those posters is going to be impacted by this legislation.”

Floor action as soon as next week

Republicans have already approved eight of the reconciliation bills in committee and are scheduled to wrap up work on the remaining three measures this week. The Ways and Means Committee began debating the tax bill shortly after Energy and Commerce began its markup, and the Agriculture panel was scheduled to begin its debate Tuesday evening.

Later this week, the House Budget Committee plans to bundle all 11 bills together and send the full package to the floor. The entire House is set to vote on the legislation before Memorial Day.

GOP leaders cannot afford much disagreement over the entire package, given their paper-thin majority in the House. If all of the current members are present at the vote, just three Republicans can oppose the package and still have it pass.

The same margin exists in the Senate, which is expected to make substantial changes to the package should the House approve the measure and send it across the Capitol.

$880 billion cut

The Energy and Commerce Committee’s bill up for debate Tuesday met the panel’s goal of cutting at least $880 billion in federal spending during the next decade, according to a letter from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Congress’ official scorekeepers, however, hadn’t released their full analysis of the panel’s bill before the start of the debate and amendment process, known in Congress as a markup.

Once those details are made public, lawmakers and the voters who elected them will have a much more detailed look at how each of the proposed changes will affect federal revenue, spending and the number of people who could lose access to Medicaid.

Democrats released a CBO analysis last week showing the impact of various proposals, though Energy and Commerce GOP staff cautioned Monday during a background briefing that what they proposed in the actual bill didn’t completely align with those scenarios.

The bill would make considerable changes to Medicaid if the House and Senate approve the legislation as written, which seems highly unlikely, given objections from several GOP senators, including Missouri’s Josh Hawley.

The House legislation would require able-bodied people between the ages of 19 and 65 to work, participate in community service, or attend an education program for at least 80 hours a month. There would be exceptions for pregnant people, Medicaid enrollees with dependent children and people with complex medical issues, among other exclusions.

That provision would take effect on Jan. 1, 2029, according to an explainer on the bill from nonpartisan health research organization KFF.

States would be required to check eligibility for all Medicaid patients every six months, lowering the threshold from one year for people eligible for the program under the expansion in the 2010 Affordable Care Act. That would need to begin by Oct. 1, 2027.

Republicans are seeking to get the 12 states that allow immigrants without legal status into their Medicaid programs to change course by lowering the percent the federal government pays for those states’ expansion population enrollees from 90% to 80%. That would take effect Oct. 1, 2027.

The legislation seeks to block Medicaid funding for a narrow subset of health care providers who offer abortion services, which appeared to target Planned Parenthood.

The prohibition would apply to “providers that are nonprofit organizations, that are essential community providers that are primarily engaged in family planning services or reproductive services, provide for abortions other than for Hyde Amendment exceptions, and which received $1,000,000 or more (to either the provider or the provider’s affiliates) in payments from Medicaid payments in 2024,” according to a summary of the GOP bill. It would take effect as soon as the bill becomes law and last for a decade.

The Hyde Amendment allows federal funding for abortions that are the result of rape, or incest, or that endanger the life of the pregnant patient.

Planned Parenthood, SBA Pro-Life react

Planned Parenthood Action Fund President and CEO Alexis McGill wrote in a statement that defunding the organization and overhauling Medicaid would mean that “cancers will go undetected; it will be harder than ever to get birth control; the nation’s (sexually transmitted infection) crisis will worsen; Planned Parenthood health centers will close, making it significantly harder to get abortion care; and people across the country will suffer — all so the supremely wealthy can become even richer.”

SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser applauded the potential change to federal funding.

“It’s time to stop forcing taxpayers to fund the Big Abortion industry. Thanks to Speaker (Mike) Johnson and Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, this year’s budget reconciliation bill contains the commonsense language to make that happen,” Dannenfelser wrote. “Taxpayers should never be mandated to prop up an industry that profits from ending lives and harming women and girls.”

More than 80 organizations, including the National Women’s Law Center and the Center for Reproductive Rights, wrote in a letter to congressional leaders that cutting off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood “would be catastrophic, shutting down health centers and stripping millions of patients across the country of access to essential and affordable health care.”

“In many communities, Planned Parenthood health centers are the only affordable provider with expertise in sexual and reproductive health,” the organizations wrote. “For those communities, the gap left by Planned Parenthood health centers would mean that many patients would have nowhere to turn for care.”

President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Stella Dantas wrote in a statement the GOP’s changes to Medicaid might create challenges for pregnant patients seeking to access care and that some states may roll back their expansion of postpartum coverage from a full year.

“Pregnant patients who keep their coverage under Medicaid will still face challenges accessing care as labor and delivery unit closures escalate as a result of Medicaid cuts, leaving patients to travel longer distances to give birth,” Dantas wrote. “Ob-gyns are also concerned that the cuts will threaten the 12 months of postpartum coverage that we have fought so hard to achieve, and which will leave so many without access to medical care during the year after delivery when two-thirds of maternal deaths occur.

“Backsliding on our recent progress in increasing access to postpartum coverage puts lives at risk.”

American Public Health Association Executive Director Georges Benjamin wrote in a statement that House Republicans’ planned overhaul of Medicaid “does nothing to improve public health.”

“Instead, it would undermine much of the progress we have made to expand access to affordable, quality health insurance and implement other evidence-based measures to protect the public’s health,” Benjamin wrote. “We urge the House to reject this bill and instead work in a bipartisan manner on legislation to improve public health and expand access to health care for all Americans.”

 

The U.S. House will begin debate in committee this week on a bill that would cut Medicaid spending. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans plan to debate and approve the three final pieces of their “big, beautiful bill” in committee this week, including the tax measure, major spending cuts to Medicaid that will change how states run the program and an agriculture bill.

At least $880 billion over the next 10 years would be slashed under the piece of the bill that covers energy and health care, including from Medicaid. Republicans would add new Medicaid work requirements for some able-bodied adults; seek to penalize the dozen states that allow immigrants living in the U.S. without legal status in the program; and require states to more frequently check Medicaid enrollees’ eligibility, among other changes.

An estimate was not yet available for exactly how much that would save in Medicaid spending or how many people enrolled might lose coverage. Earlier projections of various other scenarios by the Congressional Budget Office had placed the numbers of displaced enrollees in the millions, and Democrats predicted the same effect from the newest plan.

House panels have already signed off on eight of the 11 bills that will make up the sweeping reconciliation legislation. And if all goes according to plan, that chamber should approve the entire package before the end of the month.

Debate is expected to begin Tuesday in each of the panels and last hours, possibly into Wednesday. Democrats will offer dozens of amendments seeking to change the bills and highlighting their disagreement with GOP policy goals.

Internal Republican disputes between centrists and far-right lawmakers over numerous tax proposals and funding changes to Medicaid will also likely lead to debate on GOP amendments.

With paper-thin majorities in the House and Senate, nearly every Republican needs to support the overall package for it to move through both chambers and to President Donald Trump.

If Republicans fail to reach agreement during the next couple months, it would put nearly every aspect of their agenda in jeopardy. GOP leaders would also need to negotiate a bipartisan debt limit agreement before the August recess, should the reconciliation package fall apart, since they plan to include debt limit language as well.

GOP divided over Medicaid cuts

Kentucky Republican Rep. Brett Guthrie, chairman of the committee that oversees energy and Medicaid, wrote in a statement last week announcing the markup that his panel’s measure would “end wasteful government spending, unleash American energy and innovation, and strengthen Medicaid for mothers, children, individuals with disabilities, and the elderly.”

But the bill released this weekend might not have support from far-right members in the House and seems to be running into opposition from some GOP senators as well. 

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, of the hard right, wrote on social media that he hoped “House & Senate leadership are coming up with a backup plan…. ….. because I’m not here to rack up an additional $20 trillion in debt over 10 years or to subsidize healthy, able-bodied adults, corrupt blue states, and monopoly hospital ceos…”

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who has voiced concern for months about potential cuts to Medicaid, wrote an op-ed published in The New York Times on Monday highly critical of a “contingent of corporatist Republicans” who support lower federal spending on the program.”

“This wing of the party wants Republicans to build our big, beautiful bill around slashing health insurance for the working poor,” Hawley wrote. “But that argument is both morally wrong and politically suicidal.”

The entire House package will be open to amendment if the legislation makes it to the Senate, where several GOP lawmakers are expected to rework or even eliminate entire sections.

Work requirements

The Energy and Commerce Committee’s bill is the one that would cut federal spending by at least $880 billion during the next decade including on Medicaid, the state-federal health program for lower income people.

The legislation would institute work requirements nationwide for able-bodied adults between the ages of 19 and 65, with several exceptions, including for pregnant people, enrollees with certain disabilities or serious medical conditions, and parents of dependent children.

People not exempted from the requirements would need to work, engage in community service, or enroll in an education program for at least 80 hours a month.

A staffer on the panel told reporters during a background briefing Monday that Republicans tried to learn from challenges certain states had in the past when they implemented work requirements.

After discussions with current and former state Medicaid directors, the staffer said the committee wrote a bill that they are confident “states will be able to implement effectively.”

The work requirements take into account various unexpected circumstances, like if someone were to be hit by a bus and unable to complete the 80-hours-per-month requirement on time because they were hospitalized, the staffer said.

“We did try to be very thoughtful about any kind of circumstance that could happen,” they said.

Immigrant coverage, eligibility checks

The Medicaid legislation also seeks to encourage states who include undocumented immigrants in their program to stop doing so or lose some federal funding.

The federal government currently pays 90% of the cost of covering enrollees who are eligible for Medicaid under the 2010 Affordable Care Act expansion. That would decrease to 80% for the expanded population if states choose to keep covering undocumented immigrants.

The committee staffer said this would impact California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington states if they don’t change their policies regarding undocumented immigrants.

Additionally, states would need to check eligibility for all of their Medicaid enrollees every six months, instead of once a year for the expanded population. This likely would lead to some people being kicked out of the program.

Committee staff members were unable to share exactly how each of the Medicaid provisions would affect the federal budget or how many people could lose access to the program if Congress were to implement the legislation as written.

But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office wrote in a letter Monday that it estimates the Energy and Commerce Committee met its target of cutting at least $880 billion in spending “over the 2025-2034 period and would not increase on-budget deficits in any year after 2034.”

Staff on the committee said they don’t expect to have the full CBO score before the markup begins Tuesday and didn’t have an estimate for when that information will be out.

Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., wrote in a statement the GOP bill would lead to millions of people losing access to Medicaid.

“This is not trimming fat from around the edges, it’s cutting to the bone,” Pallone wrote. “The overwhelming majority of the savings in this bill will come from taking health care away from millions of Americans. No where in the bill are they cutting ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’—they’re cutting people’s health care and using that money to give tax breaks to billionaires.”

Repealing clean-energy funds

The Republican proposal would repeal more than a dozen sections of Democrats’ 2022 reconciliation law related to energy and environment programs.

The law, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, included hundreds of billions in tax credits for renewable energy and energy-efficiency measures. It was considered the largest investment by the United States in tackling climate change.

The House bill would repeal sections including the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which helps finance clean-energy projects, and a $40 billion Department of Energy loan program meant to stimulate production of clean-energy infrastructure.

Sections targeting carbon emissions, air pollution, offshore wind transmission, and other programs would also rescind any unspent funds for those purposes appropriated in the Biden-era law.

The measure would allow pipeline builders to pay fees to bypass environmental review. Natural gas pipelines could pay $10 million to access an expedited approval process and liquified natural gas exports could pay $1 million for the Energy Department to deem them “in the public interest.”

Rep. Kathy Castor, the ranking member on the Energy and Commerce Energy Subcommittee, said the proposal would sabotage efforts to drive down prices for consumers.

“Cleaner, cheaper energy for consumers gets left behind,” the Florida Democrat wrote in a statement. “Dismantling our landmark Inflation Reduction Act will kill jobs, hurt businesses, and drive-up Americans’ energy costs.”

Tax cuts

The Ways and Means Committee released its 28-page starter bill late last week and the full 389-page version Monday afternoon, but Republicans on the panel could add to it during the Tuesday markup.

House GOP tax writers propose making permanent the underlying 2017 tax law provisions while temporarily expanding several of them, including the child tax credit and standard deduction.

The child tax credit would increase to $2,500, up from $2,000, until 2028. The refundable amount of the tax credit per child — meaning how much taxpayers could get back — would now reach up to $1,400. Taxpayers claiming the credit would now have to provide a Social Security number, as well as the SSN of a spouse.

The standard deduction for single and married joint filers would temporarily increase until 2029 up to $2,000, depending on filing status.

Trump’s campaign promises, including no tax on tips, also made it into the proposal, though only until 2028. Those claiming the tax break on tips will also need to provide a Social Security number as well as the SSN of their spouse, if married.

Trump’s promise to eliminate taxes on car loan interest, also set to expire in 2028, would not apply to any vehicle that was not finally assembled in the U.S.

Tax writers increased but ultimately left a cap on the amount of state and local taxes, commonly referred to as SALT, that households can deduct, an incredibly contentious issue for lawmakers with constituents in high tax areas like New York and California. GOP lawmakers increased the SALT cap to $30,000, up from $10,000.

That level, however, might not have the support needed among Republicans’ extremely thin majorities and will likely lead to heated debate during markup, or on the floor.

Republicans from higher-tax states have repeatedly said they will not vote for the entire package unless they feel their constituents will benefit from raising the SALT cap.

The dispute has spilled over several times already, including in a statement last week from four New York Republicans, who wrote, “The Speaker and the House Ways and Means Committee unilaterally proposed a flat $30,000 SALT cap — an amount they already knew would fall short of earning our support.”

“It’s not just insulting—it risks derailing President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill,” they wrote. “New Yorkers already send far more to Washington than we get back—unlike many so-called ‘low-tax’ states that depend heavily on federal largesse.

“A higher SALT cap isn’t a luxury. It’s a matter of fairness.”

New York Republican Rep. Nick LaLota wrote on social media Monday afternoon: “Still a hell no.”

How much the tax proposal will cost has not yet been released, but government deficit watchdogs estimated a wholesale extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, without the enhancements, would cost north of $4 trillion over the next decade.

Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, said the proposal provides some certainty to individual taxpayers but it also adds complexity in many areas.

“You can clearly see the thinking here was probably just a straight-up extension (of the 2017 law), people wouldn’t feel like they got a tax cut because it’s just continuing. So they had to do something to make it feel like there’s a larger tax cut,” York said.

Ag cuts remain a mystery

The House Agriculture Committee, led by Pennsylvania Republican Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson, hadn’t released its bill as of Monday afternoon but was scheduled to begin the markup on Tuesday evening.

That panel is supposed to cut at least $230 billion in federal spending during the next decade, some of which will likely come from reworking elements of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Committee leaders are also planning to include elements of the much overdue farm bill, though those provisions could run into issues in the Senate if they don’t have a significant impact on federal revenue or spending.

Republicans are using the complex reconciliation process to move the package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber, avoiding the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which would otherwise require bipartisanship. 

Reconciliation measures must address federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit in a way not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian. That means the GOP proposals must carry some sort of price tag and cannot focus simply on changing federal policy.

Jacob Fischler and Ashley Murray contributed to this report.