'God was protecting me,' Trump says, one year after assassination attempt
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Washington Post
11 minutes ago
- Washington Post
As Waltz faces UN post hearings, an update on the Signal situation that led to his initial ousting
As Mike Waltz , President Donald Trump's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations , appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday for his confirmation hearing, focus returns to his ousting as national security adviser over what some referred to as 'Signalgate.' The former Florida Republican congressman served mere weeks in Trump's administration before revelations that he mistakenly added journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic to a private Signal chat that was used to discuss sensitive military plans , including planning for strikes on Houthi militants in Yemen.
Politico
12 minutes ago
- Politico
House Democrats strain to corner Republicans on Jeffrey Epstein
Senate Majority Leader John Thune says he will bring the first procedural vote to the floor Tuesday on the White House's request to claw back $9.4 billion in spending. It's not clear he has even the 51 votes necessary to start debate on the package. Congress needs to approve the request before it expires Friday, or the administration will have to spend the money as lawmakers originally intended. That deadline is looming large as several GOP senators insist the administration clarify what spending it is actually seeking to rescind. They'll question President Donald Trump's budget director Russ Vought during senators' closed-door lunch Tuesday afternoon. 'We still are lacking the level of detail that is needed to make the right decisions,' Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins told reporters Monday evening. 'It's extremely unusual for any senator to not be able to get that kind of detailed information.' The Maine Republican is concerned not just over the administration's proposal to scale down the global AIDS-fighting program PEPFAR, but also about broader cutbacks in overseas public health. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) told POLITICO he's particularly interested in protecting funding for global food aid programs like Food for Peace and the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. It's increasingly evident the rescissions package will have to be changed in order to pass the Senate, and Thune told reporters as he left the Capitol on Monday that leadership is working with wary senators to 'see what a path forward on amendments looks like.' Senate leaders expect a vote-a-rama on amendments to start Wednesday, teeing up a final vote late Wednesday or early Thursday. If senators are able to advance a package with tweaks, House GOP leaders plan to put the package on the floor Thursday; they have already started to clear away procedural hurdles that would prevent them from passing the spending cut proposal ASAP. Throwing another wrinkle into it all, though, is that House GOP leaders don't want the Senate amending the package at all, knowing their members will be jammed with changes they don't like and be forced to choose between passing a watered-down product or missing the deadline to act. 'I think you got to respect the White House's request, and that's what we did, so I hope that's what we get back,' Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Monday. 'There are two big categories of rescissions, and I'm not sure either of them should be subject to dispute.' It's also unclear whether an amended rescissions package would even have the support in the Republican House. Fiscal hawks are already drawing red lines, with Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) going as far as telling POLITICO he won't support a rescissions package that is 'a penny less' than the House-approved version. MEANWHILE, IN OTHER FUNDING FIGHTS — Senate appropriators remain at a standstill on moving a funding bill forward for the Commerce and Justice departments. They're trying to schedule a briefing with the FBI on the administration's rationale for abandoning the plan to move the bureau to suburban Maryland, according to Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), whose stand against Trump's desire for a site in the District of Columbia derailed a markup of the bill last week. But Van Hollen insists that even if the FBI assures senators that the Washington location is a secure site, he won't back off his attempt to block the administration from diverting about $1.4 billion that has been set aside for relocating the agency's campus to Maryland. Across the Capitol: House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said that House leaders began whipping votes Monday night as the chamber prepares to take its vote on the $831.5 billion defense appropriations bill later this week. While defense appropriations bills have been bipartisan in the past, Republicans are expecting this measure to be a largely party-line affair. What else we're watching: — Epstein meltdown: We'll see if Republican leaders' headache from their members over the DOJ's failure to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein continues. Rep. Norman voted Monday in favor of a Democratic amendment in the House Rules Committee that would have forced a floor vote on the DOJ releasing more materials from the federal case. — Russia sanctions timeline: The bipartisan Russian sanctions bill might stall in the House and Senate after Trump announced secondary tariffs on countries trading with Russia. Thune said Monday he would hold off on advancing the bill for now. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise also said a vote could be delayed to post-August recess. — Dems' last stand against a controversial Trump pick: Senate Democrats are making a final bid to draw the spotlight to a whistleblower's allegations that Emil Bove, a top Justice Department official and 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals nominee, urged defiance of the same judicial branch he is seeking to join. Democrats want the whistleblower, Erez Reuveni, to testify before senators prior to their confirmation vote on Bove, which is set for Thursday morning. Jordain Carney, Katherine Tully-McManus, Jennifer Scholtes, Meredith Lee Hill and Cassandra Dumay contributed to this report.
UPI
15 minutes ago
- UPI
How 17M Americans with Medicaid, ACA plans could lose health insurance
July 15 (UPI) -- The big tax and spending package President Donald Trump signed into law July 4 will cut government spending on health care by more than $1 trillion over the next decade. Because the final version of the legislation moved swiftly through the Senate and the House, estimates regarding the number of people likely to lose their health insurance coverage were incomplete when Congress approved it by razor-thin margins. Nearly 12 million Americans could lose their health insurance coverage by 2034 due to this legislation, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. However, the number of people losing their insurance by 2034 could be even higher, totaling more than 17 million. That's largely because it's likely that at least 5 million Americans who currently have Affordable Care Act marketplace health insurance will lose their coverage once subsidies that help fund those policies expire at the end of 2025. And very few Republicans have said they support renewing the subsidies. In addition, regulations the Trump administration introduced earlier in the year will further increase the number of people losing their ACA marketplace coverage. As a public health professor, I see these changes, which will be phased in over several years, as the first step in a reversal of the expansion of access to health care that began with the ACA's passage in 2010. About 25.3 million Americans lacked insurance in 2023, down sharply from 46.5 million when President Barack Obama signed the ACA into law. All told, the changes in the works could eliminate three-quarters of the progress the United States has made in reducing the number of uninsured Americans following the Affordable Care Act. Millions will lose their Medicaid coverage The biggest number of people becoming uninsured will be Americans enrolled in Medicaid, which currently covers more than 78 million people. An estimated 5 million will eventually lose Medicaid coverage due to new work requirements that will go into effect nationally by 2027. Work requirements target people eligible for Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act's expansion. They tend to have slightly higher incomes than other people enrolled in the program. Medicaid applicants who are between 19 and 64 years old will need to certify they are working at least 80 hours a month or spending that much time engaged in comparable activities, such as community service. When these rules have been introduced to other safety net programs, most people lost their benefits due to administrative hassles, not because they weren't logging enough hours on the job. Experts like me expect to see that occur with Medicaid, too. Other increases in the paperwork required to enroll in and remain enrolled in Medicaid will render more than 2 million more people uninsured, the CBO estimates. And an additional 1.4 million would lose coverage because they may not meet new citizenship or immigration requirements. In total, these changes to Medicaid would lead to more than 8 million people becoming uninsured by 2034. Many of those who aren't kicked out of Medicaid would also face new copayments of up to $35 for appointments and procedures -- making them less likely to seek care, even if they still have health insurance. The new policies also make it harder for states to pay for Medicaid, which is run by the federal government and the states. They do so by limiting the taxes states charge medical providers, which are used to fund the states' share of Medicaid funding. With less funding, some states may try to reduce enrollment or cut benefits, such as home-based health care, in the future. Losing Medicaid coverage may leave millions of low-income Americans without insurance coverage, with no affordable alternatives for health care. Historically, the people who are most likely to lose their benefits are low-income people of color or immigrants who do not speak English well. The new law will also make it harder for the more than 24 million Americans who currently get health insurance through Affordable Care Act marketplace plans to remain insured. For one, it will be much harder for Americans to purchase insurance coverage and qualify for subsidies for 2026. These changes come on the heels of regulations from the Trump administration that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will lead to almost 1 million people losing their coverage through the ACA marketplace. This includes reducing spending on outreach and enrollment. What's more, increased subsidies in place since 2021 are set to expire at the end of the year. Given Republican opposition, it seems unlikely that those subsidies will be extended. Not extending the subsidies alone could mean premiums will increase by more than 75% in 2026. Once premiums get that unaffordable, an additional 4.2 million Americans could lose coverage, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. With more political uncertainty and reduced enrollment, more private insurers may also withdraw from the ACA market. Large insurance companies such as Aetna, Cigna and UnitedHealth have already raised concerns about the ACA market's viability. Should they exit, there would be fewer choices and higher premiums for people getting their insurance this way. It could also mean that some counties could have no ACA plans offered at all. Ramifications for the uninsured and rural hospitals When people lose their health insurance, they inevitably end up in worse health and their medical debts can mount. Because medical treatments usually work better when diagnoses are made early, people who end up uninsured may die sooner than if they'd still had coverage. Having to struggle to pay the kinds of high medical bills people without insurance face takes a physical, mental and financial toll, not just on people who become uninsured, but also their families and friends. It also harms medical providers that don't get reimbursed for their care. Public health scholars like me have no doubt that many hospitals and other health care providers will have to make tough choices. Some will close. Others will offer fewer services and fire health care workers. Emergency room wait times will increase for everyone, not just people who lose their health insurance due to changes in Trump's tax and spending package. Rural hospitals, which were already facing a funding crisis, will experience some of the most acute financial pressure. By one estimate, more than 300 hospitals are at risk of closing. Children's hospitals and hospitals in low-income urban areas also disproportionately rely on Medicaid and will struggle to keep their doors open. Republicans tried to protect rural hospitals by designating $50 billion in the legislative package for them over 10 years. But this funding comes nowhere near the $155 billion in losses KFF expects those health care providers to incur due to Medicaid cuts. Also, the funding comes with a number of restrictions that could further limit its effectiveness. What's next Some Republicans, including Sens. Mike Crapo and Ron Johnson, have already indicated that more health care policy changes could be coming in another large legislative package. They could include some of the harsher provisions that were left out of the final version of the legislation Congress approved. Republicans may, for example, try to roll back the ACA's Medicaid expansion. Moving forward, spending on Medicare, the insurance program that primarily covers Americans 65 and older, could decline, too. Without any further action, the CBO says that the law could trigger an estimated $500 billion in mandatory Medicare cuts from 2026 to 2034 because of the trillions of dollars in new federal debt the law creates. Trump has repeatedly promised not to cut Medicare or Medicaid. And yet, it's possible that the Trump administration will issue executive orders that further reduce what the federal government spends on health care -- and roll back the coverage gains the Affordable Care Act brought about. Portions of this article first appeared in a related piece published June 13. Simon F. Haeder is an associate professor of public health at Texas A&M University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The opinions in this commentary are solely those of the author.
