Latest news with #CatherineRampell
Yahoo
23-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Catherine Rampell Becomes Latest Washington Post Writer to Exit Paper
The new MSNBC host says she accepted a buyout, adding to the growing list of staffers who have left following owner Jeff Bezos' revamp of the opinion section Another day, another Washington Post writer exiting the paper. This time it is columnist Catherine Rampell, who said on Wednesday she had accepted a buyout offer from the paper she has worked at for the last 11 years. Rampell has covered a number of topics for WaPo, including politics, economics and public policy. More from TheWrap Catherine Rampell Becomes Latest Washington Post Writer to Exit Paper Trump Appeared 'Multiple Times' in Epstein Documents, New WSJ Report Says Candace Owens Sued for Defamation by French First Lady Brigitte Macron Over 'Knowingly False' Claims She's Transgender 'Daily Show' Jokes Trump's Election Theft Claim Against Obama Is 'So Old Jeffrey Epstein Wouldn't Date It' | Video The 40-year-old writer has also been a frequent critic of President Trump, ripping the president on a number of topics, from his 'Liberation Day' tariff plan, which she called 'tariffmageddon,' to his 'Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship' executive order in January. She called the EO the 'start of an Orwellian effort to root out wrongthink from government ranks and the private sector.' Rampell's exit comes just a few months after she joined MSNBC as a co-host of 'The Weekend: Primetime,' and also follows WaPo owner Jeff Bezos' revamping of the paper's opinion section to focus on 'two key pillars': personal liberties and free markets. A number of prominent WaPo staffers left soon after, including opinion editor David Shipley, who resigned immediately. Columnist Ruth Marcus, who had been at the paper for 40 years, quit weeks later, after she said a column 'expressing concern' over Bezos' new direction for the opinion section was 'spiked.' More WaPo staffers have left recently, including columnist Jonathan Capehart, who accepted a buyout on Monday, as well as Dave Jorgenson, WaPo's 'TikTok Guy.' A person familiar with the newsroom told TheWrap on Monday it would not be surprising to see more people leave the paper this week, as it is offering buyouts to those who do not 'feel aligned' with the paper's 'reinvention' through the end of July. The post Catherine Rampell Becomes Latest Washington Post Writer to Exit Paper appeared first on TheWrap. Solve the daily Crossword
Washington Post
18-07-2025
- Washington Post
The paradox of fixing airline travel
The paradox of fixing airline travel It's summertime, and when you're traveling by air, flights are often overbooked, seats are cramped, and unexpected cancellations and delays feel all too frequent. Why do passengers find themselves in this situation, and is there a way to make it better? This week, we're revisiting an episode with Charles Lane, Catherine Rampell and Marc Fisher exploring how, when people primarily look for the lowest price, airline travel becomes a race to the bottom.
Washington Post
30-06-2025
- Health
- Washington Post
Decision time on the One Big Beautiful Bill
You're reading the Prompt 2025 newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox. On Monday, the Senate is voting on amendments to its version of the One Big Beautiful Bill. Leaders seem confident it will pass despite some expected 'no' votes and arguments over last-minute changes. It's a behemoth of a bill: headlined by an extension of President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts, steep cuts to health care coverage, and a potpourri of additional items that includes everything from a senior-citizen tax deduction to a new benefit for Alaskan whalers. Despite some popular provisions, the bill's overall polling is poor; it has also drawn bipartisan criticism over budget gimmicks that downplay its cost. I'm joined by my colleagues Ramesh Ponnuru and Catherine Rampell to discuss what's going down on Capitol Hill. — Benjy Sarlin, assignment editor 💬 💬 💬 Benjy Sarlin What's the one-paragraph summary you'd give to a voter trying to figure out what this bill means for them? Ramesh Ponnuru This bill extends the tax cuts that passed during Trump's first term, so you will avoid a tax increase. It also makes some spending cuts, importantly including changes to Medicaid that will result in fewer people having health insurance coverage. And because the spending cuts are not nearly as large as the tax cuts, it widens an already large deficit with consequences that are unknown but seem unlikely to be happy. Catherine Rampell Less access to health care. Less access to food assistance. More expensive energy. Bigger debt, which you or your grandkids will eventually have to pay back. Story continues below advertisement Benjy Let's talk about the health care part. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) announced he was opposing the bill. Trump threatened him with a primary challenge, and now the senator is not running for reelection. Tillis gave a speech warning that Trump was betraying the Medicaid recipients he had promised not to harm. Is he right? And is this a bellwether for political problems to come in the midterms? Ramesh First, a minor point: Some of the Medicaid recipients who will 'lose coverage' under the bill are people who don't have Medicaid now, but who the Congressional Budget Office thinks might get it in the future if the bill doesn't pass. That effect matters but may not be what people are thinking when they see the quoted numbers. Then the bigger point: This bill polls terribly and is unlikely to get better. And even without the bill there are reasons to think the midterms will go poorly for Republicans — as they usually do for the party in power. But they might go even worse if Republicans let taxes rise as they are scheduled to. Catherine Tillis is correct. Trump and congressional Republicans have portrayed this bill as not kicking anyone off insurance, or only kicking off supposedly undeserving freeloaders — not, of course, any of their hardworking voters. In reality, nearly 12 million Americans will lose insurance. And many will be Trump voters. (Fun fact: About half of Medicaid recipients voted for Trump in 2024.) However, many of the significant changes don't start right away. So it's possible the actual harm to voters — and GOP candidates — arrives after the midterms. Ramesh There's an odd House-Senate dynamic here too. The House has assumed that its narrow margin gave it the whip hand in negotiations. The Senate seems to be largely dismissing that idea. I think the net effect of Tillis's decision not to run for reelection will be to strengthen Trump's hand within the GOP — even if his poll numbers continue to be lackluster. Benjy To that point: I'm a little surprised by the process on this bill. Going in, moderate Republicans sounded worried about the House's cuts to health care and energy; conservatives sounded worried about the deficit. The Senate bill somehow hits health care and energy even harder and adds even more to the debt. How did the talks end up here? Catherine I think the reason we got a more expensive bill with even bigger Medicaid cuts is related to these slim majorities. Senate leadership is trying to give some concessions to Republicans who might stray, and that's resulted in a bill that's even worse on many dimensions. Ramesh And yet they shrank the child tax credit increase! Catherine What's that line that Joe Biden used to use — show me your budget, and I'll tell you what your values are? Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Benjy So, you've both been very critical of the procedural tricks around this bill, especially asking budget scorekeepers to ignore the cost of making existing tax cuts permanent. What do you think the implications will be for future Senates, beyond just the short-term hit to deficits? Catherine I think this is effectively the end of any attempt at honest accounting. Politicians often use gimmicks to make their expensive goodies look cheaper — gaming the budget window, claiming gangbusters growth, etc. But this time, they're not even pretending to care anymore. I do wonder how much attention the bond market is paying to this. U.S. Treasury bonds have long been considered the safest assets to invest in. This is despite the fact that we've run big deficits before — people continued to lend to us because the dollar is the world's reserve currency and we were trusted to pay debts back. Now we are signaling we're not really attempting to keep track of how much debt we're adding. Ramesh To the extent some Trump administration officials have wanted to see the dollar weaken — or other currencies strengthen, as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put it — they seem to be succeeding. It will be interesting to see if this bill has any effect there, too. Benjy This bill also challenges some political assumptions about these big policy bills. Elon Musk and others on the tech right are currently railing against it for not only cutting energy subsidies, but adding new taxes on wind and solar. Biden's idea behind passing those subsidies was that they'd get too much buy-in from businesses to be repealed. Yet even the top 2024 GOP donor is helpless to protect them. What's up there? Ramesh Culture war trumps all. Catherine It was a reasonable assumption, under any presidency other than Trump's. He has astonishing control over his party. There are so many Trump policies that I would have expected the business community to loudly object to (tariffs, immigration policy, general uncertainty), yet they have been astonishingly meek. Why should energy policy be different? Story continues below advertisement Advertisement Benjy It sounds like you're both expecting this bill to reach the president's desk in some form. Are there any last twists you expect on the Senate or House side, or do you think this is mostly what we should expect to see become law? Ramesh It will probably pass, but I expect there to be some drama before it does. That margin in the House is still very narrow. Catherine I think we know directionally what the bill will look like, but specifics may change. Will Medicaid cuts get more heartless? How much more red ink will they ultimately decide to spill? I agree with Ramesh that we'll probably have some continued drama over these details, but eventually everyone will cave.
Yahoo
29-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump admin sued by Honduran family detained by ICE including six-year-old son with leukemia
The Trump administration is being sued by a Honduran woman after ICE detained her and her children, including her six-year-old son who was diagnosed with leukemia. Their story is just one of many of immigrants being targeted by the White House. MSNBC's Ayman Mohyeldin, Catherine Rampell, Anotnia Hylton and Elise Jordan speak with Columbia Law School's Elora Mukherjee who is representing the Honduran family suing ICE.
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ramy Youssef on playing a billionaire tech bro in "Mountainhead" amid Trump-Musk break-up
Actor and comedian Ramy Youssef stars in the new satirical film "Mountainhead," which follows four tech bros gathered at a mountaintop mansion, in the midst of widespread fallout and violence from AI tools they created. MSNBC's Ayman Mohyeldin, Catherine Rampell, and Elise Jordan speak with Youssef, who said about the movie's characters: "In a lot of ways, they reminded me of myself when I was 13. I kind of played my character as if I was my own 13-year-old self, but also with a lot of money, an
