Divisions emerge among House Republicans over how much to cut taxes and Medicaid in Trump’s bill

Divisions emerge among House Republicans over how much to cut taxes and Medicaid in Trump’s bill
US House Speaker Mike Johnson also worked past midnight trying to resolve issues with Trump’s plan. . (Getty Images/AFP)
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Updated 15 May 2025
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Divisions emerge among House Republicans over how much to cut taxes and Medicaid in Trump’s bill

Divisions emerge among House Republicans over how much to cut taxes and Medicaid in Trump’s bill
  • Democrats decry the package as a give away to the wealthy

WASHINGTON: Cheers broke out early Wednesday as Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee signed off on the GOP tax breaks bill after a grueling round-the-clock session that pushed President Donald Trump’s package past overwhelming Democratic opposition.
But there’s still more work to do.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, also worked past midnight trying to resolve issues with Trump’s plan. Opposition is mounting from various corners of the GOP majority as he tries to muscle the party’s signature package to passage without any votes from Democrats.
On the one hand, the conservative leader of the Freedom Caucus derides the new Medicaid work requirements as a “joke” that do not go far enough at cost-cutting. Meanwhile, a handful of GOP lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states are refusing to support the measure unless changes are made to give deeper state and local tax deductions, called SALT, for their constituents back home.
“To say we have a gulf is an understatement,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a leader of the conservative wing.
Roy said there is “a significant number of us who could not bless this product” in its current form.
Nevertheless, momentum is building toward an end-of-the-week inflection point to stitch together the sprawling package. That means combining hundreds of pages of bill text covering $5 trillion in tax breaks and at least $1.5 trillion in spending reductions on Medicaid, food stamps and green energy programs to deliver Trump’s second-term legislative priority.
Democrats decry the package as a give away to the wealthy at the expense of safety net programs that millions of Americans rely on. But Johnson insists the Republican majority is on track to pass the package by Memorial Day, May 26, sending it to the Senate where Republicans are crafting their own version. With his slim majority, he can only afford a few defections from his ranks.
“We’re still on target,” Johnson said at the Capitol. “The American people are counting on us.”
Democrats also stayed up all night forcing marathon public hearings. One at the House Energy and Commerce Committee was still going more than 26 hours later before finishing Wednesday afternoon. All told, Democrats proposed hundreds of amendments trying to change the package, with dozens of votes that largely failed.
“It is a cruel, mean, rotten bill,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., as the House Agriculture Committee debated changes to the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, known as SNAP.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said at least 7.6 million fewer people would have health insurance with the changes to Medicaid, and possibly more with additional changes to the Affordable Care Act.
The CBO also gave lawmakers a preliminary analysis showing that 3 million fewer people each month would participate in the SNAP food program under the changes proposed.
More than 70 million Americans rely on Medicaid for health care, and about 40 million use SNAP.
The Republicans are targeting Medicaid and SNAP for a combined $1 trillion in cuts as a way to offset the costs of the tax package, but also to achieve GOP goals of reining in the social safety net programs.
Most of the cost-savings would come from imposing stiffer work requirements for those receiving the health care and food assistance, meaning fewer people would qualify for the aid. The legislation would raise from 54 to 64 the age of able-bodied adults without dependents who would have to work to qualify for SNAP. It also would also require some parents of children older than 7 — it’s now 18 — to work to qualify for the benefits. Under current law, those recipients must work or participate in a work program for 80 hours a month.
The chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Kentucky, insists the changes would “strengthen and sustain” Medicaid for the future, and are the kind of “common sense” policies Trump promised voters.
But Democrats told repeated stories of their constituents struggling to access health care. Rep. Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., revealed his own diagnosis with Type 2 diabetes at the House Ways and Means Committee hearing and the sticker shock of health costs.
Democrats had proposals to revive subsidies to help people buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Most of the amendments were failing.
One of the most difficult issues for Johnson, has been the more localized debate over state and local taxes as he works to come up with a compromise for New York, California and New Jersey lawmakers. They have rejected an offer to triple the deduction cap, now at $10,000, to $30,000 for married couples.
The speaker met for more than an hour with lawmakers in his office and later into the night.
Rep. Nick LaLota, R-N.Y., said the talks were cordial, but there was no deal. “More sizzle than steak in that meeting,” he said late Tuesday.
“The reality is you need 218 votes to pass a bill and the way this bill is currently constructed, it will not have that because it does not adequately the issue of SALT,” said Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y.
The lawmakers believe they have leverage in the talks because without a deal, the $10,000 limit established under the 2017 tax bill expires at the end of the year and reverts to no cap at all.
“These things are in negotiation,” LaLota said, adding that his constituents “shouldn’t be asked to pay for the large amount of the bill like the were asked to pay for it eight years ago.”
But as Johnson and the lawmakers edge closer to a SALT deal, the conservatives are balking that their priorities must also be met.
Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Missouri, said he’s a no for now, but would be working to improve the bill so that he could support it.
The conservatives argue that the tax breaks without deeper spending cuts will pile onto the deficit, and they worry that the Medicaid reductions do not go far enough in rolling back federal funds to expand the Affordable Care Act. They also want the work requirements, which don’t take effect until Jan. 1, 2029, to start sooner.
“Basically Republicans are enforcing Obamacare, which is a surreal situation to me,” Burlison said.
Republicans are racing to extend Trump’s tax breaks, which are set to expire later this year, while adding the new ones he campaigned on in 2024, including no taxes on tips, Social Security benefits and others.
A new analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation shows that most tax filers would see a lower tax rates under the proposal, except those at the lowest rates, who earn less than $15,000 a year. Their average tax rate would go up.
 


Sweden faces call to halt international adoptions after inquiry finds abuses and fraud

Updated 9 sec ago
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Sweden faces call to halt international adoptions after inquiry finds abuses and fraud

Sweden faces call to halt international adoptions after inquiry finds abuses and fraud
STOCKHOLM: A Swedish commission recommended Monday that international adoptions be stopped after an investigation found a series of abuses and fraud dating back decades.
Sweden is the latest country to examine its international adoption policies after allegations of unethical practices, particularly in South Korea,
The commission was formed in 2021 following a report by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter detailing the Scandinavian country’s problematic international adoption system. Monday’s recommendations were sent to Minister of Social Services Camilla Waltersson Grönvall.
“The assignment was to investigate whether there had been irregularities that the Swedish actors knew about, could have done and actually did,” Anna Singer, a legal expert and the head of the commission, told a press conference. “And actors include everyone who has had anything to do with international adoption activities.
“It includes the government, the supervisory authority, organization, municipalities and courts. The conclusion is that there have been irregularities in the international adoptions to Sweden.”
The commission called on the government to formally apologize to adoptees and their families. Investigators found confirmed cases of child trafficking in every decade from the 1970s to the 2000s, including from Sri Lanka, Colombia, Poland and China.
Singer said a public apology, besides being important for those who are personally affected, can help raise awareness about the violations because there is a tendency to download the existence and significance of the abuses.
An Associated Press investigation, also documented by Frontline (PBS), last year reported dubious child-gathering practices and fraudulent paperwork involving South Korea’s foreign adoption program, which peaked in the 1970s and `80s amid huge Western demands for babies.
The AP and Frontline spoke with more than 80 adoptees in the US, Australia and Europe and examined thousands of pages of documents to reveal evidence of kidnapped or missing children ending up abroad, fabricated child origins, babies switched with one another and parents told their newborns were gravely sick or dead, only to discover decades later they’d been sent to new parents overseas.
The findings are challenging the international adoption industry, which was built on the model created in South Korea.
The Netherlands last year announced it would no longer allow its citizens to adopt from abroad. Denmark’s only international adoption agency said it was shutting down and Switzerland apologized for failing to prevent illegal adoptions. France released a scathing assessment of its own culpability.
South Korea sent around 200,000 children to the West for adoptions in the past six decades, with more than half of them placed in the US Along with France and Denmark, Sweden was a major European destination of South Korean children, adopting nearly 10,000 of them since the 1960s.

Tunisian national shot dead by neighbor in the south of France

Tunisian national shot dead by neighbor in the south of France
Updated 19 min 19 sec ago
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Tunisian national shot dead by neighbor in the south of France

Tunisian national shot dead by neighbor in the south of France
PARIS: A Tunisian national was shot dead by his neighbor in the south of France, the Draguignan prosecutor said in a statement, adding that the incident was being investigated as a racially-motivated crime.
The victim, who was said to be “possibly 35,” but has not been officially identified, was killed late on Saturday night in the town of Puget-sur-Argens. A 25-year-old Turkish national was also shot in the hand by the man and taken to hospital.
The incident comes one month after the fatal stabbing of Aboubakar Cisse, a 22-year-old man from Mali, in a mosque in the southern town of La Grand-Combe, amid rising racism in France.
Last year French police recorded an 11 percent rise in racist, xenophobic or anti-religious crimes, according to official data published in March.
In a statement released late on Sunday, the prosecutor said the suspect in the weekend shooting was a 53-year-old who practices sports shooting. He had published hateful and racist content on his social media account before and after killing his neighbor, the prosecutor added.
France has the largest Muslim population in Europe, numbering more than 6 million and making up about 10 percent of the country’s population.
Politicians across the political spectrum, including President Emmanuel Macron, have attacked what they describe as Islamist separatism in a way that rights groups have said stigmatizes Muslims and amounts to discrimination.

UK PM Starmer says situation in Gaza ‘getting worse by the day’

UK PM Starmer says situation in Gaza ‘getting worse by the day’
Updated 55 min 4 sec ago
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UK PM Starmer says situation in Gaza ‘getting worse by the day’

UK PM Starmer says situation in Gaza ‘getting worse by the day’
  • “The situation is intolerable in Gaza, and getting worse by the day,” Starmer told reporters in Scotland, when asked whether the UK would take any action over the issue

LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Monday that the situation in Gaza was getting “worse by the day” and that it was important to ensure the Palestinian enclave receives more humanitarian aid urgently.
“The situation is intolerable in Gaza, and getting worse by the day,” Starmer told reporters in Scotland, when asked whether the UK would take any action over the issue.
“Which is why we are working with allies ... to be absolutely clear that humanitarian aid needs to get in at speed and at volumes that it is not getting in at the moment, causing absolute devastation,” he added.


Pakistan’s anti-polio drive suffers a blow after a northern enclave reports first case in 7 years

Pakistan’s anti-polio drive suffers a blow after a northern enclave reports first case in 7 years
Updated 02 June 2025
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Pakistan’s anti-polio drive suffers a blow after a northern enclave reports first case in 7 years

Pakistan’s anti-polio drive suffers a blow after a northern enclave reports first case in 7 years

PESHAWAR: Pakistan efforts to eliminate polio suffered another blow on Monday after a northern enclave reported its first case in seven years. Overall, it was the country’s 11th case since January, despite the launch of several immunization drives.
The virus was detected in a child from the district of Diamer in the Gilgit-Baltistan region, according to the country’s polio eradication program.
Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan remain the only two countries where the spread of the wild polio virus has not been stopped, according to the World Health Organization. There are ongoing outbreaks of polio linked to the oral vaccine in 10 other countries, mostly in Africa.
The new case was reported after Pakistan on Sunday wrapped up its third nationwide polio vaccination drive of the year, aiming to immunize 45 million children.
Mohammad Iqbal, a director at the polio program in the northwest, said local health officials were still trying to determine how the poliovirus that was found in the southern port city of Karachi had infected the child in Diamer.
During the summer season, thousands of tourists from Karachi and elsewhere visit tourist resorts in Gilgit-Baltistan.
Pakistan’s polio eradication program has been running anti-polio campaigns for years, though health workers and the police assigned to protect them are often targeted by militants who falsely claim the vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children.
Since the 1990s, attacks on polio vaccination teams have killed more than 200 workers and security personnel.


Zelensky arrives in Vilnius for Nato eastern flank summit

Zelensky arrives in Vilnius for Nato eastern flank summit
Updated 02 June 2025
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Zelensky arrives in Vilnius for Nato eastern flank summit

Zelensky arrives in Vilnius for Nato eastern flank summit
  • The summit brings together the Bucharest Nine, the alliance’s members across eastern and central Europe — with its Nordic members, Zelensky and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte

VILNIUS: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived Monday in Vilnius for a summit with the leaders of NATO’s eastern and Nordic members, who are some of Kyiv’s staunchest backers amid the Russian invasion.
The military alliance has bolstered its eastern defenses since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, with Finland and Sweden also overhauling decades of security policy to join the alliance.
The summit brings together the Bucharest Nine — the alliance’s members across eastern and central Europe — with its Nordic members, Zelensky and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Zelensky’s spokesman said he would hold “bilateral meetings” on the sidelines of the summit in the Lithuanian capital.
It comes ahead of a full NATO summit later in June in The Hague to which Zelensky has demanded he be invited to.
“If Ukraine is not present at the NATO summit, it will be a victory for Putin, but not over Ukraine, but over NATO,” he said last week.
Zelensky wants NATO to offer security guarantees to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire or peace deal with Russia — something Moscow has called “unacceptable.”
NATO’s eastern members have been some of the strongest backers of Ukraine since Russia invaded and have repeatedly warned about the prospect of Moscow stepping up its aggression.
Baltic states Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia are former Soviet republics, now EU members, that fear they are in Moscow’s crosshairs.
US President Donald Trump has heaped pressure on NATO’s European members to increase their defense spending, sparking fears about the US commitment to protect the continent.