Jon Stewart: Trump will ‘burn' country down for ‘insurance money'
Jon Stewart said President Trump's legal woes with media companies amount to an effort to tear down the country for 'insurance money.'
He referenced Trump's defamation lawsuit warranting a $15 million payout from ABC and first lady Melania's $40 million documentary deal with Amazon as proof of funds in exchange for 'protection.'
'They just put money into the pot. So ultimately, at the end of this, does Trump burn our fucking country down for insurance money? Like, where are we headed?' Stewart said during a Friday appearance on The Bill Simmons podcast.
He said large-scale settlements set a poor precedent for future court battles with the Trump administration.
'Now [Trump will] go after Harvard or Comcast or whatever the hell else he does because a policy of appeasement always leads to more conquest,' Stewart said.
Throughout Trump's second stint in office, he has clashed with Harvard over their campus culture, alleging the school harbors students with antisemitic views.
He has pushed to have one of the country's oldest institutions stripped of their tax exempt status and said their ability to welcome international students should be revoked.
'Harvard's going to have to change its ways,' Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
As the president encourages a nationwide educational overhaul, Stewart has suggested Democrats prepare for the next presidential race in 2028.
He urged the party to 'overcome the stink' in the next election cycle to regain support from voters after November's landslide loss.
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CNN
17 minutes ago
- CNN
Trump is counting on economic growth to offset his tax cuts. But his big, beautiful bill likely wouldn't deliver, experts say
President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are promising that their sweeping tax and spending cuts package will usher in an era of historic economic growth. 'This is going to be jet fuel,' House Speaker Mike Johnson said on NBC's 'Meet the Press' earlier this month. 'The reason we call it the Big, Beautiful Bill is because it is a tremendous pro-growth package entwined in this legislation that is going to make everybody's incomes go up.' But a multitude of economic experts across the ideological spectrum doubt that's going to happen. In fact, many argue that the Trump agenda megabill that narrowly passed the House last month would provide even less economic oomph than his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act – and the jury is still out on how much economic growth that earlier tax cut package spurred. While independent estimates vary somewhat, most find that the House-passed package would only give a small nudge to economic growth and fail to offset its trillions of dollars of tax cuts. The reason: The 'Big, Beautiful Bill' wouldn't provide substantial long-term corporate tax relief, which drives economic expansion. The Senate version, a portion of which was released Monday, would make several business tax provisions permanent, which would increase the bill's economic growth potential but also its cost. But the two chambers would still need to hammer out their differences on these and other provisions. And growth estimates for the Senate bill have yet to be released. The megabill's main focus is to extend the roughly $4 trillion in TCJA individual tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of this year. The House-passed package would also expand some of the measures, such as a four-year enhancement to the child tax credit, and aims to fulfill several of Trump's campaign promises, including temporarily eliminating taxes on tips, overtime and auto loan interest. On the corporate tax side, the package would restore a tax break from the 2017 package that allowed businesses to fully write off the cost of equipment in the first year it was purchased. The incentive has been phasing out since 2023. Also, the legislation would once again allow businesses to write off the cost of research and development in the year it was incurred. The TCJA required that companies deduct those expenses over five years, starting in 2022. The two provisions would expire after 2029. The bill would also allow companies to immediately deduct the cost of constructing or making improvements to certain types of buildings, including manufacturing plants, through 2028. These corporate tax breaks would prompt businesses to invest and expand in the next few years, but the incentives are temporary and won't prompt long-term economic growth, said Will McBride, the Tax Foundation's chief economist. What's missing is the massive business tax break – the permanent reduction of the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20% – contained in the TCJA, which some experts argue drove the economic growth in that package. According to the right-leaning Tax Foundation, the tax provisions in the House-approved bill would boost the economy 0.8% over about three decades – compared to its estimate of 1.7% for the 2017 bill. Increased revenue from economic growth would offset about 22% of the current bill's tax cuts. Still, the package would increase the federal budget deficit by $1.7 trillion over 10 years, even taking its roughly $1.5 trillion in spending cuts into account. 'We look at the bill and kind of shrug our shoulders and say, 'You could have done better on growth',' said Daniel Bunn, the foundation's president. Similarly, the Penn Wharton Budget Model forecasts that the overall House bill would give a 0.4% boost to the economy by 2034, but the deficit would grow by $3.2 trillion over that period. Penn Wharton estimates that the deficit impact would increase when taking the economic effects into account because some lower-income households would reduce their hours worked to requalify for Medicaid coverage and some higher-income people would work less because of their gains from the bill's tax breaks. The Trump administration argues that these independent analyses are wrong. 'So called 'experts' panning The One, Big, Beautiful Bill, without a smidge of self-awareness, should remember that they made these same exact gloomy predictions about President Trump's tax cuts during his first term,' Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said in a statement to CNN, adding that the TCJA 'helped usher in historic job, wage, investment, and economic growth.' The Congressional Budget Office has yet to release its analysis that takes the House package's economic impact into account. A separate CBO analysis forecasts the bill would increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion over a decade, not accounting for economic growth. One way to boost the economic growth potential of the package would be to make the business tax breaks permanent, some experts say. The Senate Finance Committee version of the bill calls for making several of the provisions permanent. For instance, the temporary corporate tax breaks for equipment and for research and development would cost $60 billion over a decade, but making them permanent would increase the price tag to $507 billion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimate, which was calculated prior to the Senate Finance Committee proposals were released. Penn Wharton forecasts that making permanent the temporary business tax provisions and other time-limited measures in the House bill would increase the deficit after taking the economic impact into account. Higher levels of federal debt can reduce incentives for private investment, which typically spurs more economic growth. Providing subsidies for new commitments is a much more efficient way to encourage growth than cutting the corporate rate since companies only get the benefit if they invest, said William Gale, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. 'Making the investment provisions permanent would be a pro-growth move relative to almost anything else in the bill,' Gale said, though the increase in deficit and other measures in the legislation could negatively affect private investment.
USA Today
18 minutes ago
- USA Today
Trump's LA National Guard orders draw comparisons to Jan. 6
Trump's LA National Guard orders draw comparisons to Jan. 6 Some legal experts and Democratic lawmakers question why Trump didn't deploy the Guard to quell the Jan. 6 Capitol assault but is doing so in LA. Show Caption Hide Caption National Guard major general clarifies military's role in Los Angeles National Guard Major General Scott Sherman outlined the role of military personnel in Los Angeles and said troops will not conduct arrests. President Trump said the National Guard was needed to put down a 'form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States." Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congressional leaders had pleaded for National Guard troops during the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters. A former Trump-appointed prosecutor told USA TODAY the 2020 Geroge Floyd riots are a more appropriate comparison with Trump's actions in Los Angeles. WASHINGTON – One group was considered a rampaging mob whose members bear-sprayed and beat police officers while breaking into the seat of American democracy to stop the peaceful transfer of power. The other was a more dispersed and uncoordinated group of violent agitators burning empty cars, looting and throwing rocks at police. In the first incident, the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, then-President Donald Trump never called in the National Guard, despite pleas from local officials and some congressional lawmakers. They said troops were needed to prevent further violence from an angry mob that Trump himself had riled up to stay in power after losing the 2020 election. In the second case, which is still ongoing, Trump not only deployed the California National Guard over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom, he also called in 700 active duty Marines to quell anti-ICE protests that erupted in Los Angeles over aggressive immigration raids. The contrast between Trump's actions in 2021, when the U.S. Capitol was overrun by a violent mob, and this month in Los Angeles is proof, his critics say, the president is using the U.S. military for political purposes. But some supporters of the president say the more appropriate comparison isn't with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, but the riots and disturbances that rocked American cities in the summer of 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd. The Floyd protests showed "you've got to put out small fires before they turn into forest fires,' Jay Town, who served as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama during Trump's first administration, told USA TODAY. Trump said the troops were needed in Los Angeles to put down a 'form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States." The protests in Los Angeles are seen as more tepid compared to the Jan. 6 riots in terms of constituting a rebellion or threat to the federal government, according to Newsom, Democratic lawmakers, and legal experts. They accuse Trump − who was impeached and criminally indicted over Jan. 6, though the charges were dropped after his reelection − of deploying soldiers to serve his own political ends. "There was not plausibly a rebellion in Los Angeles, under any reasonable interpretation of the term," said Chris Mirasola, a law professor at the University of Houston and a former Department of Defense legal advisor. Critics saw a cracked mirror image of Jan. 6 in Trump's mobilization of the National Guard in Los Angeles. 'This is a reverse of Jan. 6, where Trump allowed his most violent supporters to attack the Capitol on his behalf," Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., told USA TODAY, "and here he is sending in federal troops to provoke his opponents to attack them.' "In both instances, his aim is chaos,' Swalwell said. What happened on Jan. 6, 2021? Four people died during the Jan. 6 assault on Congress and five police officers died in its aftermath − one from a stroke the following day and four by suicide. About 140 other law enforcement officers were injured. More than 1,575 people were charged in connection with Jan. 6, ranging from misdemeanors such as trespassing to felonies such as assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy. At least 600 were charged with the felony of assaulting or impeding law enforcement, according to the Police Executive Research Forum. Damages for Jan. 6 surpassed $2.7 billion, according to an investigation by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. How much damage in LA? In the current case, at least nine LAPD officers and an unknown number of protesters have been hurt, with most sustaining minor injuries. The Los Angeles Police Department has arrested more than 500 people in eight days of protests, the majority of them on minor charges such as failure to disperse or not obeying a nighttime curfew. Two were charged with throwing firebombs, authorities said on June 11. Though the extent of damage from the current LA protests are unknown, it is far less significant than on Jan. 6, Democratic lawmakers and city and state officials say. What's Trump's response? Trump and other administration officials repeatedly have said there's no comparison between Jan. 6 and the Los Angeles violence, and that California and LA officials forced the President's hand by failing to quell the growing protests. 'Generations of Army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion,' Trump told Army soldiers in a June 10 speech at Fort Bragg, N.C. 'As commander in chief, I will not let that happen.' Trump didn't make any such pronouncements four years ago as a stunned nation watched the Capitol attack unfold, with organized groups including the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia taking leading roles. In 2021, Trump spent 187 minutes watching the Capitol assault on TV, while mobs ransacked Congressional offices and hunted for Democratic lawmakers and even his own vice president, Mike Pence, according to a House committee investigating the attack. Hours later, only after the crowd began dispersing, Trump posted a video on social media at 4:17 p.m.: 'Go home. We love you, you're very special.' It wasn't until 5:20 p.m. on Jan. 6 that the first National Guard troops arrived at the Capitol, while police secured the complex. 'In a bipartisan way, on Jan. 6 − with violence against the Constitution, against the Congress and against the United States Capitol − we begged the president of the United States to send in the National Guard,' former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., told reporters. 'He would not do it.' 'And yet, in a contra-constitutional way, he has sent the National Guard into California,' Pelosi said on June 10. 'Something is very wrong with this picture." On June 13, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily halted a federal judge's order blocking Trump's Guard mobilization in Los Angeles. 'Small fires' vs 'forest fires' Supporters of Trump's National Guard call-out in California point to a different set of disturbances to justify his actions. Jay Town, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2017 to a 2020 and a former Marine, described a more complex set of circumstances than Pelosi. He cited statements by Steven Sund, the U.S. Capitol Police chief at the time, that he begged for National Guard assistance on Jan. 6 but that it was congressional officials who reported to Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who delayed approval. More: Amid LA deployment, Hegseth falsely attacks Tim Walz over 2020 George Floyd riots Town said the appropriate comparison isn't with Jan. 6, but the National Guard deployments in 2020 during riots following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. 'What we learned in 2020, as a guy who was in office then, is that you've got to put out small fires before they turn into forest fires,' Town told USA TODAY. "President Trump is not going to let what happened under the failed local and state leadership in Minneapolis and Seattle and so many other places happen again.' Trump's order in Los Angeles On his first day back in office in 2025, Trump pardoned all but 14 of the approximately 1,270 convicted Jan. 6 rioters. He and Cabinet members including Attorney General Pam Bondi say they will prosecute anyone who even touches a law enforcement official in Los Angeles to the fullest extent of the law. Asked if that was hypocritical in light of Trump's Jan. 6 pardons, Bondi said, "Well, this is very different." "These are people out there hurting people in California right now,' Bondi said in an on-camera gaggle with reporters at the White House. 'This is ongoing." Newsom, who is suing Trump over the Marines and Guardsmen in Los Angeles, disagreed. "Trump, he's not opposed to lawlessness and violence, as long as it serves him,' Newsom said. 'What more evidence do we need than Jan. 6?"
USA Today
18 minutes ago
- USA Today
The trickle-down effect of President Trump's massive NIH budget cuts
The trickle-down effect of President Trump's massive NIH budget cuts U.S. medical research is at a precipice as President Trump proposes cutting $18 billion from the National Institutes of Health. Show Caption Hide Caption Cuts to health research could impact clinical studies and trials at the NIH The Trump administration wants to cut health spending in the coming year, and plans to cut the budget at the National Institutes of Health by $18 billion. Trump administration officials say they are restoring trust in public health and cutting waste. Universities said the Trump administration is marking important studies as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs and mistakenly cutting their funding. Fyodor Urnov left the Soviet Union for the United States more than 35 years ago with a dream: To become a scientist and cure rare diseases in the country that was a beacon for biomedical research. Umrov recently was a key member of a team that used gene editing technology to treat a 'stinking cute' New Jersey baby born with a severe disability. That breakthrough, like decades of other medical research he's done, was funded by the National Institutes of Health. But millions of dollars in NIH research has now ground to a halt at universities across the country after the Trump administration cut studies it says are driven by diversity initiatives or a fixation on COVID-19. And the remaining research stands at a precipice as President Donald Trump's budget proposes cutting $18 billion from the NIH next year – the largest cut to any single government agency. NIH grant money doesn't sit in Washington – it gets funneled down to research universities across the country, where professors, graduate students, and doctors do their life's work. The schools include prestigious Ivy League institutions, such as Harvard University, and dozens of lesser-known private and public colleges. 'I really hope that we're going through a focused, phased of review of how funding is distributed,' Urnov said. 'I just cannot imagine a future where American biomedical research is not the shining light that leads the world.' On Jan. 16, a federal judge in Boston said NIH's cancellation of more than $1 billion in research grants on the basis of DEI was illegal and reinstated them. He signaled he could issue a more sweeping decision in the case as it moves forward. But Trump officials say they are restoring trust in public health and cutting waste. 'In recent years, Americans have lost confidence in our increasingly politicized healthcare and research apparatus that has been obsessed with DEI and COVID, which the majority of Americans moved on from years ago,' Kush Desai, a spokesman for the White House, said in a statement. 'The Trump administration is focused on restoring the Gold Standard of Science – not ideological activism … to finally address our chronic disease epidemic.' Texas university loses virus catalog funding The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, which receives about $150 million in NIH grants annually, has already lost $19.3 million, according to Scott Weave, the scientific director for Galveston National Laboratory. Weaver said he's most concerned about the World Reference Center, a collection of thousands of viruses that has been preserved since the 1950s to help scientists conduct emergency research into new viral threats, such as Zika or West Nile virus. In recent years, the research focused on COVID-19. NIH terminated the center's grant funding in full on March 24. In a letter obtained by USA TODAY, the agency wrote: 'These grant funds were issued for a limited purpose: to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is over, the grant funds are no longer necessary.' Weaver said that framing is incorrect. The project on viruses isn't just focused on COVID-19. Historically, the center worked on mosquito-borne viruses, not respiratory ones. The group only pivoted briefly to help with the pandemic health emergency. He believes the grant was eliminated in error. 'I think it would've been clear if anyone with an understanding of science had read the information about of our grant that we were not a COVID grant,' Weaver said. Research programs mistaken for DEI Andy Johns, who administers research grants at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, described a similar situation. The school lost $7.7 million in NIH contract terminations, which he said began in February but picked up pace in March and April. The cuts include a study on how to improve tobacco regulatory science to reduce health disparities, a study to address COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in rural communities, a study on neurobiological susceptibility to peer pressure and drug use among teenagers, and a study on malaria in Africa. 'The ones that might sting the most are ones that get caught up because they're perceived as being involving a particular issue that they don't actually involve – where a project may have been deemed as DEI, but there's actually not a DEI focus in any way shape or form,' Johns said. Sometimes, only a small portion of a research project involves analyzing how research affects a specific demographic, experts said, but this has been enough for the Trump administration to flag the grant as DEI. Johns said professors involved in the defunded studies asked NIH to let them continue the underlying scientific research and simply omit the demographic analysis. But the university hasn't haven't seen much success with this approach, he said. Weaver, the Texas researcher, mentioned a grant that helped students who graduated from small colleges that lack research opportunities get research experience before applying to PhD programs. He said NIH cut that on the grounds it was a DEI initiative. Weaver said that while the grant may have technically fit into that category, it was 'more opportunity-based.' He lamented what stripping the campus of the program means: 'I've really taken a lot of pleasure in seeing them succeed and go on and thrive as scientists.' Layoffs in Maryland and California Daniel Mullins, a health outcomes professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, said he laid off off five people and reduced the workload of a sixth worker after NIH told them to stop work on a five-year, $9.4 million grant for a health care study. The grant helped Mullins study how to make patients more likely to participate in clinical trials − a vital step in the approval of new medicines. He describes the program as a 'health equity hub,' but says there's no one disease or demographic of people it is specifically designed to help. Mullins' biggest challenge has been walking into work every day and seeing people who are about to lose their jobs. 'I asked the department chair and the dean if we could just fund these people a little bit so they could at least find a job,' he said. Kim Elaine Barrett, the vice dean of research at the University of California Davis School of Medicine, said her school lost grants aimed at building a biomedical workforce that is more representative of the population. Other terminated grants provided stipends and salaries for graduate students and junior faculty. Barrett said the school historically received just over $200 million a year from the National Institutes of Health. She said the funding loss affects about 100 people. "If the situation continues for much longer, and/or gets worse, then we will have to start looking at layoffs, and not just for trainees, but for lab personnel in general," Barrett said. "A lot of faculty derive some or all of their salaries from research grants." 'I wish we had better medications' At Northwestern University, just outside of Chicago, Dr. Benjamin Singer, the vice chair for research in the Department of Medicine, said the university has been 'very gracious' in helping his research group fill in the funding gaps to keep his research group's work going. Singer treats patients in the intensive care unit, and some of his research focuses on how a specific cell can help rebuild a damaged lung – research that can benefit people suffering from pneumonia. His group also identifies targets for potential future prescription drugs. 'I take care of critically ill patients at a high risk of dying,' Singer said. 'When they're really up against a tough spot, I think, 'I wish we had better medications. I wish we had better therapies to help your mom, your son, your daughter.'' The University of Minnesota, which reported losing 24 NIH grants as of early May, created a program to help researchers continue their work if their funding was terminated or they received a stop-work order from the federal government. 'I just can't be clear enough, however," said Rebecca Cunningham, the university's president. "There is no mitigation for the loss of federal funding.' Contributing: Reuters
