Bessent Resists DOGE Cuts That Put Low-Income Lending Program Under Fire
President Donald Trump's aggressive government cost-cutting agenda is forcing his Treasury chief to balance support for that mission with efforts to protect a crucial financial lifeline for millions of low-income Americans.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is trying to preserve the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund while also adhering to an order from Trump that his department reduce the initiative to the maximum extent allowed by law, according to people familiar with the matter who aren't authorized to speak to the media.
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Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US and Chinese officials will resume trade talks in London on Monday, Trump says
President Donald Trump announced Friday that US and Chinese officials will meet in London on Monday to discuss trade between the two nations. 'I am pleased to announce that Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, and United States Trade Representative, Ambassador Jamieson Greer, will be meeting in London on Monday, June 9, 2025, with Representatives of China, with reference to the Trade Deal,' the president wrote in a post on Truth Social. The announcement comes after Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping spoke for 90 minutes on Thursday. After the phone call, the US president said he was encouraged that ongoing trade tensions could soon be resolved. The last talks between the Trump administration and their Chinese counterparts, held on May 12 in Geneva, represented a major turning point for the global trade war. Delegates from China and the United States announced they would significantly roll back their historically high tariffs on one another. Markets rallied, Wall Street banks curtailed their recession forecasts, and moribund USconsumer confidence rebounded significantly. That marked a significant change from April, when tensions ran so high that trade between the United States and China came to an effective halt. The 145% tariffs on most Chinese imported goods made the math impossible for American businesses to buy virtually anything from China, America's second-largest trading partner. But since then, tensions had re-escalated. Trump on Wednesday said in a Truth Social post that Chinese leader Xi Jinping was 'extremely hard to make a deal with.' Trade talks have stalled, Bessent said, apparently frustrating Trump. Last week, Trump posted on social media that China 'TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US.' Trump said that he made a 'fast deal' with China to 'save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation.' He added: 'So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!' The Trump administration had expected China to lift restrictions on rare earth materials that are critical components for a wide range of electronics, but China has largely refused, causing intense displeasure inside the Trump administration and prompting a recent series of measures to be imposed on the country three administration officials told CNN last week. For example, the White House warned US companies against using AI chips made by China's national tech champion Huawei. It stopped US companies from selling to China software that is used to design semiconductors. And the US State Department announced it would 'aggressively revoke visas' for some Chinese students in in turn, has accused the United States of 'provoking new economic and trade frictions.' 'The United States has been unilaterally provoking new economic and trade frictions, exacerbating the uncertainty and instability of bilateral economic and trade relations,' the Chinese Commerce Ministry said Sunday. In the meantime, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, America's chief negotiator in the détente with China, said talks with China had stalled. But Trump and and Chinese leader Xi Jinping held a long-awaited phone call Thursday, which appears to have lowered the temperature a bit. The New York Times on Friday reported China has issued some licenses for rare earths, although the market is hardly back open. The talks in the UK are significant, and much is riding on their success – US economic growth remains steady but there are signs of cracking. And no one wants to return to April's standoff, which threatened to plunge the global economy into a stocks, which had rallied earlier in the day on a strong jobs report, rose a bit higher after Trump's Truth Social message about the resumed talks. The Dow was up 450 points, or 1.1%. The S&P 500 rose 1.2%, and the Nasdaq was 1.3% higher.
Yahoo
14 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Friday's Mini-Report, 6.6.25
Today's edition of quick hits. * I guess returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia to U.S. soil wasn't impossible after all: 'Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been returned to the U.S. to face federal human smuggling charges in Tennessee, the Justice Department said Friday, in a case that became emblematic of the combined coarseness and incompetence behind the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.' * In this 6-3 ruling, all of the Republican-appointed justices sided with the White House: 'A divided Supreme Court on June 6 said Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency can access to the data of millions of Americans kept by the U.S. Social Security Administration. The court paused a judge's order blocking DOGE from getting the data, which includes Social Security numbers, medical and mental health information, tax return information and citizenship records.' * Harvard's winning streak continues, but the White House's relentless offensive is ongoing: 'A federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's efforts to block visas for foreign students planning to attend Harvard, after the Ivy League college filed a legal challenge.' * No one benefits from misguided steps like these: 'More than $12 million worth of contraceptives and HIV-prevention medications purchased by the U.S. government as aid for developing countries under programs thathavesince been discontinued will probably be destroyedunless officials sell or otherwise off-load them, an examination by The Washington Post found.' * The White House vs. the ICC: 'The Trump administration is slapping sanctions on four judges at the International Criminal Court over the tribunal's investigation into alleged war crimes by Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza and in the West Bank.' * It's not a great sign when no one seems to know who's leading the CDC: 'The CDC, a $9.2 billion-a-year agency tasked with reviewing life-saving vaccines, monitoring diseases and watching for budding threats to Americans' health, is without a clear leader.' * This effort fell short, but it was interesting to see Republicans scramble: 'House Oversight Committee Democrats have once again failed to subpoena Elon Musk to testify on Capitol Hill. The panel rejected the minority party's request Thursday morning for the former DOGE chief to appear before lawmakers in a party-line, 21-20 votes.' * Should we assume that a generous settlement in this civil suit is inevitable? 'Five members of the Proud Boys, once convicted of masterminding the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol, are accusing the federal government and FBI employees of violating their rights in connection with their prosecutions in a new lawsuit. ... The suit seeks $100 million in punitive damages.' * A New Jersey health official's recent inspection at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster did not go well: 'For more than three hours, the inspector tallied enough violations — a faulty dishwasher, poorly stocked sinks, improperly stored raw meat — to give the club a score of 32 out of 100, one of the lowest ratings earned by any establishment in Somerset County this year.' * Noted without comment: 'For sale at the White House: one bright red Tesla Model S. Should run fine; the owner just seems to have had buyer's remorse. Less than 24 hours after President Trump and Elon Musk engaged in a rancorous public spat, Mr. Trump has decided to sell the red Tesla he got in March, according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity because the person wasn't authorized to speak publicly.' Have a safe weekend. This article was originally published on
E&E News
14 minutes ago
- E&E News
What's next for DOGE after the wild Trump-Musk breakup?
The very public internet feud between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk this week has thrown the fate of Musk's 'Department of Government Efficiency' operation into question. A clash over the Trump-backed spending bill devolved Thursday, with Musk suggesting Trump ought to be impeached and the president suggesting halting government contracts for Musk's companies. Trump downplayed the significance of the pair's blowup Thursday evening, and Republicans appeared eager to ease tensions after their dispute dominated headlines. But their bitter public brawl has raised a host of questions about how the Trump-Musk relationship will change moving forward. Advertisement Some federal employees are hopeful that DOGE will lose power within the administration after its early push to slash funding and fire employees. The fracas also raises questions about whether Musk's allies who remain in the DOGE operation will stick around, or might leave — or be nudged out — sooner than they had planned. 'The girls are fighting, and I'm here for it,' said one Energy Department career official who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. 'This could bode well for shaking things loose at DOE,' that person said. 'Right now, there is an ironclad hold on all funding activities, and that freeze is mostly at the request of DOGE.' Asked Friday about DOGE's fate in the wake of the Trump-Musk fight, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in an email, 'The Trump administration will continue the mission of cutting waste, fraud, and abuse across all agencies to ensure the federal government is effectively using taxpayer dollars.' Rogers added that the passage of 'The One, Big, Beautiful Bill' and the rescissions package the White House sent to Congress are 'essential to further codifying the DOGE cuts.' EPA and the Energy and Interior departments did not respond to requests for comment about whether DOGE's stature within the administration and inside federal agencies will change in the wake of the fight. 'We were hopeful for this failure of relationships,' said an Interior Department employee who was granted anonymity because they fear retaliation. 'There is still a feeling that DOGE is heavily influencing things here,' due in part 'to contracts and agreements being scrutinized,' that person said. The public spat between Trump and Musk could give agency heads like Energy Secretary Chris Wright more leeway to make decisions independently, said a former Energy Department career staffer who was granted anonymity because they fear retribution. Musk being on the outs could also possibly make new hires and normal funding flow a little more likely, said that former staffer, who added that it's unclear whether the gutting of agency staffing and funding was due to Musk's efforts in particular. Tom Pyle, president of the conservative think tank Institute for Energy Research, said it's 'too early to tell' what the feud means for DOGE over the long term. Musk formally left his DOGE post last week, when Trump hosted a farewell event with the Tesla CEO in the Oval Office. Musk said last Friday that his exit was not the 'end of DOGE, but really the beginning.' When Trump created DOGE, he required agencies to establish their own DOGE teams. Many of the officials deployed early on by the administration have ties to Musk's companies, including SpaceX, X and xAI. Trump praised the DOGE team's work last week and said that many DOGE people would be 'staying behind' after Musk's departure. Musk contended at the time that he was leaving because his time as a temporary special government employee had come to an end, but Trump disputed that claim in one of his disparaging posts Thursday on Truth Social. 'Elon was 'wearing thin,' I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!' Trump posted. It remains to be seen whether DOGE was 'just a pet project that Donald Trump created for Elon Musk,' said Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist. The answer will become clear pretty quickly, Payne said. 'I think it's probably a pretty good bet that at a minimum it is not the high-profile effort that it was.' But even if there's a public effort to declare a truce, Payne said, 'I doubt the relationship between their collective worlds will ever be OK.' Despite the rift, Republicans and some agency employees aren't expecting an immediate or dramatic shift in DOGE's work at agencies. 'The DOGE folks that have been planted in these agencies have some pretty firm backing from the White House, and I don't think this changes that dynamic,' Pyle said. 'I think that they're still empowered to do their work, at least for now.' Sean Spicer, who served as White House press secretary during Trump's first term, said DOGE 'is much bigger than a group of staff. It has been a mentality that is now part of every department and agency.' Trump's energy and environmental Cabinet bosses — Wright, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin — were all together in Alaska this week to discuss energy issues and stayed out of the fray on social media. They have all previously praised Musk and the DOGE team's work. Nicole Cantello, president of an American Federation of Government Employees union local that represents employees in EPA's Chicago-based region, doesn't expect big changes in store for DOGE. 'We believe the spat between Trump and Musk will have no effect on the plan to dismantle the EPA,' Cantello said Friday. 'This administration has shown time and again that it is determined to put polluters first, over the health of the American people.'
