Despite Trump's Promises, Eggs Are About to Get Way More Expensive
Don't expect egg prices to come down anytime soon.
The Agriculture Department announced Wednesday that the current cost of eggs could rise by more than 40 percent before the end of the year.
The sticker-shock warning came amid the unveiling of a new plan by the Trump administration to alleviate egg prices, which included investing another $1 billion in helping American farms tighten up biosecurity to keep the avian flu out of their broods and outsourcing up to 100 million eggs from other countries to feed the American market.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins also proposed stripping regulations from the egg industry to further dampen the rising price tags, even as one of the largest egg producers in the nation faces scrutiny for managing to raise revenues and profits amid the ongoing food crisis, and while small businesses across the nation struggle with containing the rampant illness.
Avian flu—which is largely spread by wild fowl—has added incredible strain on American chicken farmers, extinguishing some small businesses overnight as they contend with infection in their roosts. If just one hen tests positive for the H5N1 virus, it could precipitate the preventative deaths of the entire flock.
The disease, which so far has affected 166 million birds since 2022, temporarily shuttered New York City's poultry markets earlier this month and skyrocketed the cost of a standard dozen eggs to more than $12 in Key Foods and C-Town amid a nationwide egg shortage within the last few weeks. In Connecticut, the price for a dozen eggs at Stop & Shop approached $20.
But the USDA's revelation that egg prices could grow by another 40 percent flies in the face of Donald Trump's repeated promises to lower the cost of groceries and the American public's cost of living. On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to lower costs for American consumers on 'day one.' But a month into his second administration, Trump has routinely avoided detailing specifics for how he's going to provide relief for Americans' wallets.
Meanwhile, House Republicans in Washington passed a budget resolution Tuesday that will gut Medicaid—which provides health insurance to more than 72 million Americans—by $880 billion in order to extend Trump's tax plan, which will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and is projected to add as much as $15 trillion to the national deficit.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Twin federal proposals threaten provider taxes, key source of Medicaid funding for states
Republican efforts to restrict taxes on hospitals, health plans, and other providers that states use to help fund their Medicaid programs could strip them of tens of billions of dollars. The move could shrink access to health care for some of the nation's poorest and most vulnerable people, warn analysts, patient advocates, and Democratic political leaders. No state has more to lose than California, whose Medicaid program, called Medi-Cal, covers nearly 15 million residents with low incomes and disabilities. That's twice as many as New York and three times as many as Texas. A proposed rule by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, echoed in the Republicans' House reconciliation bill, could significantly curtail the federal dollars many states draw in matching funds from what are known as provider taxes. Although it's unclear how much states could lose, the revenue up for grabs is big. For instance, California has netted an estimated $8.8 billion this fiscal year from its tax on managed care plans and took in about $5.9 billion last year from hospitals. California Democrats are already facing a $12 billion deficit, and they have drawn political fire for scaling back some key health care policies, including full Medi-Cal coverage for immigrants without permanent legal status. And a loss of provider tax revenue could add billions to the current deficit, forcing state lawmakers to make even more unpopular cuts to Medi-Cal benefits. 'If Republicans move this extreme MAGA proposal forward, millions will lose coverage, hospitals will close, and safety nets could collapse under the weight,' Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said in a statement, referring to President Donald Trump's 'Make America Great Again' movement. The proposals are also a threat to Proposition 35, a ballot initiative California voters approved last November to make permanent the tax on managed care organizations, or MCOs, and dedicate some of its proceeds to raise the pay of doctors and other providers who treat Medi-Cal patients. All states except Alaska have at least one provider tax on managed care plans, hospitals, nursing homes, emergency ground transportation, or other types of health care businesses. The federal government spends billions of dollars a year matching these taxes, which generally lead to more money for providers, helping them balance lower Medicaid reimbursement rates while allowing states to protect against economic downturns and budget constraints. New York, Massachusetts, and Michigan would also be among the states hit hard by Republicans' drive to scale back provider taxes, which allow states to boost their share of Medicaid spending to receive increased federal Medicaid funds. In a May 12 statement announcing its proposed rule, CMS described a 'loophole' as 'money laundering,' and said California had financed coverage for over 1.6 million 'illegal immigrants' with the proceeds from its MCO tax. CMS said its proposal would save more than $30 billion over five years. 'This proposed rule stops the shell game and ensures federal Medicaid dollars go where they're needed most — to pay for health care for vulnerable Americans who rely on this program, not to plug state budget holes or bankroll benefits for noncitizens,' Mehmet Oz, the CMS administrator, said in the statement. Medicaid allows coverage for noncitizens who are legally present and have been in the country for at least five years. And California uses state money to pay for almost all of the Medi-Cal coverage for immigrants who are not in the country legally. California, New York, Michigan, and Massachusetts together account for more than 95% of the 'federal taxpayer losses' from the loophole in provider taxes, CMS said. But nearly every state would feel some impact, especially under the provisions in the reconciliation bill, which are more restrictive than the CMS proposal. None of it is a done deal. The CMS proposal, published May 15, has not been adopted yet, and the reconciliation bill is likely to be altered significantly in the Senate. But the restrictions being contemplated would be far-reaching. A report by Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services, ordered by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, found that a reduction of revenue from the state's hospital tax could 'destabilize hospital finances, particularly in rural and safety-net facilities, and increase the risk of service cuts or closures.' Losing revenue from the state's MCO tax 'would likely require substantial cuts, tax increases, or reductions in coverage and access to care,' it said. CMS declined to respond to questions about its proposed rule. The Republicans' House-passed reconciliation bill, though not the CMS proposal, also prohibits any new provider taxes or increases to existing ones. The American Hospital Association, which represents nearly 5,000 hospitals and health systems nationwide, said the proposed moratorium on new or increased provider taxes could force states 'to make significant cuts to Medicaid to balance their budgets, including reducing eligibility, eliminating or limiting benefits, and reducing already low payment rates for providers.' Because provider taxes draw matching federal dollars, Washington has a say in how they are implemented. And the Republicans who run the federal government are looking to spend far fewer of those dollars. In California, the insurers that pay the MCO tax are reimbursed for the portion levied on their Medi-Cal enrollment. That helps explain why the tax rate on Medi-Cal enrollment is sharply higher than on commercial enrollment. Over 99% of the tax money the insurers pay comes from their Medi-Cal business, which means most of the state's insurers get back almost all the tax they pay. That imbalance, which CMS describes as a loophole, is one of the main things Republicans are trying to change. If either the CMS rule or the corresponding provisions in the House reconciliation bill were enacted, states would be required to levy provider taxes equally on Medicaid and commercial business to draw federal dollars. California would likely be unable to raise the commercial rates to the level of the Medi-Cal ones, because state law constrains the legislature's ability to do so. The only way to comply with the rule would be to lower the tax rate on Medi-Cal enrollment, which would sharply reduce revenue. CMS has warned California and other states for years, including under the Biden administration, that it was considering significant changes to MCO and other provider taxes. Those warnings were never realized. But the risk may be greater this time, some observers say, because the proposed changes are echoed in the House-passed reconciliation bill and intertwined with a broader Republican strategy — and set of proposals — to cut Medicaid spending by close to $800 billion. 'All of these proposals move in the same direction: fewer people enrolled, less generous Medicaid programs over time,' said Edwin Park, a research professor at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy. California's MCO tax is expected to net California $13.9 billion over the next two fiscal years, according to January estimates. The state's hospital tax is expected to bring in an estimated $9 billion this year, up sharply from last year, according to the Department of Health Care Services, which runs Medi-Cal. Losing a significant slice of that revenue on top of other Medicaid cuts in the House reconciliation bill 'all adds up to be potentially a super serious impact on Medi-Cal and the California state budget overall,' said Kayla Kitson, a senior policy fellow at the California Budget & Policy Center. And it's not only California that will feel the pain. 'All states are going to be hurt by this," Park said. Wolfson writes for KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism. Sign up for our Wide Shot newsletter to get the latest entertainment business news, analysis and insights. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
No More Student Visas? No Problem.
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Just how mad is Beijing about President Donald Trump's decision to revoke student visas for Chinese nationals? Not as mad as it says, and not as mad as one might expect. Publicly, China's leadership will likely complain that Trump's action is yet another attempt to thwart the country's rise. But in reality, Beijing would probably just as soon keep its smartest kids at home. Late last month, the U.S. State Department announced that it would 'aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,' and that it would 'enhance scrutiny' of the applications it received in the future. The new visa policy, a spokesperson said, is meant to prevent China from exploiting American universities and stealing intellectual property. A spokesperson for the foreign ministry quickly registered Beijing's objection to the new policy. But when Chinese leader Xi Jinping spoke with Trump by phone last week, either he didn't raise the new visa policy or his foreign ministry didn't regard his comments on the matter worth including in its official summary of the call, which suggests that the issue is not a top priority in Beijing's negotiations with Washington. One reason for this underwhelming response may be that re-shoring its university students serves Beijing's current agenda. China first opened to the world in the 1980s; in the decades that followed, securing a Western education for its elite helped the country bring in the technology and skills it needed to escape poverty. China was 'sending people out, learning from other places, finding the best quality wherever it was, and bringing that quality back to China,' Robin Lewis, a consultant for U.S.-China education programs and a former associate dean at Columbia University, told me. Now that period has given way to one of nationalism and self-reliance, which means promoting China's own companies, products, technologies—and universities. [Rose Horowitch: Trump's campaign to scare off foreign students] Xi has consistently stressed the importance of education in sustaining China's rise. His government has invested heavily in China's schools and lavished resources on science and technology programs, with some success. Some of China's top institutions, such as Tsinghua University in Beijing, have gained international recognition as serious competitors in scientific research. China would like to have its own Harvards, rather than sending its elite students to the United States, for political and cultural reasons as well as economic ones. Chinese authorities have long worried that the hundreds of thousands of students it exports to America will absorb undesirable ideas about democracy and civil liberties—and that they will access information about China that is suppressed at home, such as the story of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. In fact, many young Chinese who study in the United States seem to enjoy American freedoms and seek to stay rather than return to serve the motherland. Beijing has tried to deal with this in part by monitoring the activities of its students in the U.S. and attempting to hold them firmly to the party line, including by harassing the families back home of those who stray. Within China, authorities can more easily confine students inside the government's propaganda bubble, which in recent years has become more airtight. Domestic media seek to portray the U.S. as unsafe, especially for Asians, by highlighting incidents of racial discrimination, violence, and disorder. One story published last year by the state news agency Xinhua, under the headline 'Chinese Students' Dreams Turned Into Nightmares at U.S. Doorstep,' tells the harrowing tale of a Chinese student detained and deported at an airport and claims that others had suffered the same fate. China's top spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, warned Chinese students at universities abroad against being recruited as foreign agents, and told of one such unfortunate national who was discovered and punished. Even before Trump's announcement, this climate of mutual distrust had led to a drop-off in Chinese students enrolled in American universities. The number had reached an all-time high during the 2019–20 academic year, topping 372,000, according to the Institute of International Education. But that figure has fallen since—by a quarter, to 277,000, in the 2023–24 academic year. Now India, with more than 331,000 enrolled, sends more students to American institutions than China does. The Trump administration appears to believe that curtailing Chinese access to American technology, money, and, in this case, education will give the U.S. the edge over its closest competitor. In some areas, this might work: Restricting the export of advanced U.S. semiconductor technology to China seems to have helped hold Beijing's chip industry back. So why not do the same with higher education? A case can be made that keeping Chinese students out of some of the world's top research institutions will hold back their skills acquisition and, with it, the country's progress. [Adam Serwer: Trump is wearing America down] In practice, though, the effect of this policy could be hard to gauge. The engineers behind the Chinese AI firm DeepSeek, which wowed Silicon Valley by developing a competitive chatbot on the cheap, were mainly locally trained. And the skills that Chinese students can't find at home they can seek in any number of places. There may be only so many Harvards, but Chinese students can receive a good education—and a warmer reception—in countries other than the United States. Universities in Japan and Hong Kong are already trying to capitalize on Trump's harassment of international students to lure them. The idea that any American policy can effectively dampen Chinese ambition may be far-fetched. 'People wake up in the morning and it's all about education here. There is nothing more important,' James McGregor, the chair for China at the consulting firm APCO, told me. 'You're going to stop Chinese people from learning the top skills in the world? No. They'll just deploy them somewhere else.' For now, the Trump team can't seem to decide whether it wants to get tough on China or make deals with China, and the new student-visa policy reflects this confusion. 'Chinese students are coming. No problem,' Trump said in a briefing after his call with Xi. 'It's our honor to have them, frankly.' China's leadership surely knows that many Chinese families still aspire to send their young-adult children to American universities. But Beijing is much more single-minded than Washington about the future of relations between the two countries: Xi appears to see Washington as the primary impediment to China's rise, and ties to the U.S. as a vulnerability best eliminated. From that viewpoint, relying on Harvard to train China's most promising students is a national-security risk. That means that Trump may be doing Xi a favor. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Tim Walz lets loose in rant-filled talk with liberal think tank
Former Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz has built a reputation for his off-the-cuff comments. The Democratic Minnesota governor made no exception during a Center for American Progress (CAP) event on Friday morning called, "What's Next: Conversations on the Path Forward." Walz said China might be the voice of "moral authority" following Israel's strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and military leaders. "Now, who is the voice in the world that can negotiate some type of agreement in this? Who holds the moral authority? Who holds the ability to do that? Because we are not seen as a neutral actor, and we maybe never were," Walz said of the U.S.' role in de-escalating tensions in the Middle East. Tim Walz Hopes It Rains On Trump's Military Parade: 'I'm Just Going To Confess' According to Walz, the U.S. once attempted "to be somewhat of the arbitrator" in those negotiations during the Iran Nuclear Deal, but he said Americans must face the reality that the "neutral actor" with the "moral authority" to lead negotiations in the Middle East "might be the Chinese." Read On The Fox News App Tim Walz Floats China As 'Neutral Actor' With 'Moral Authority' To Negotiate Middle East Peace Walz didn't elaborate on why China would be that world leader. The Minnesota Democrat also admitted he is hoping for rain during President Donald Trump's military parade. "I have never so hoped for rain in my life," Walz said. Trump is hosting a massive Flag Day military parade on Saturday to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are expected to gather in the nation's capital to witness the historic parade, which also coincides with the president's 79th birthday. "This is not Pyongyang on a Saturday," Walz said, referring to the capital of North Korea, which is a communist, totalitarian dictatorship. Walz has joined many Democrats, including those planning to protest on Saturday, in criticizing Trump's military parade by drawing comparisons to China and North Korea's military parades. Trump's military parade on Saturday comes amid escalated conflict in the Middle East, after Israel launched air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and military leaders, and Iran responded by launching missiles toward Israeli territory. Walz was ridiculed earlier this year for celebrating Tesla's stock drop as protests raged on, rejecting Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). "On the iPhone, they've got that little stock app. I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day — $225 and dropping," Walz said at the time. Walz on Friday said that speaking out against Musk and Tesla "worked" because it started to hurt the billionaire personally. The Democrat, who rose to the national stage as former Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate during her brief 2024 presidential campaign, criticized Trump along his usual attack lines on Friday. Walz said Trump is "incompetent at governing," and America is in a "dangerous time" under Trump's leadership, which he said is "marching towards authoritarianism" following the chaotic incident in which authorities forcibly removed Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., at a Department of Homeland Security press conference on Thursday. The former vice presidential candidate also said he was successful in labeling Trump "weird" during the 2024 presidential campaign. "I thought instead of making him a scary authoritarian wannabe who is incredibly dangerous, which I believe he is, I just thought, what a weird dude doing some of this stuff," Walz said. Walz added he "got a bunch of heat" for "inciting violence because I said we should bully the c--- out of Donald Trump." Earlier this year, the Minnesota governor said Harris chose him as her running mate, in part, because, "I could code talk to White guys watching football, fixing their truck" and "put them at ease," describing himself as the "permission structure" for White men from rural America to vote for Democrats. "I think I'll give you pretty good stuff, but I'll also give you 10% problematic," he added. Walz laughed off criticism over inconsistencies in his background on the 2024 campaign trail, describing himself as a "knucklehead."Original article source: Tim Walz lets loose in rant-filled talk with liberal think tank
