Latest news with #R-La.
New York Post
3 hours ago
- Business
- New York Post
House Speaker Mike Johnson backs efforts to sanction Russia ‘as strongly as we can'
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) threw his support behind renewed congressional efforts to sanction the Kremlin over Russian President Vladimir Putin's brutal war against Ukraine. 'There's many members of Congress that want us to sanction Russia as strongly as we can,' Johnson told reporters on Monday. 'And I'm an advocate of that.' The House speaker's support for legislation punishing the Russian regime comes amid a bipartisan push in the Senate to impose 'bone-breaking sanctions' on Russia. 3 Johnson expressed support for passing sanctions legislation against Russia on Monday. AP Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have co-sponsored a measure in the upper chamber that would slap a 500% tariff on any country purchasing Russian energy products. Graham expects the Senate to 'start moving' the bill forward this week. 'You will see congressional action,' the South Carolina Republican said during a press conference in Ukraine last week. Like Johnson, Graham noted that 'there are House members that are ready' to pass the sanctions bill and get it to President Trump's desk for his signature. It's unclear if Trump would support severe sanctions on Moscow amid Russia-Ukraine peace talks that have seemingly failed to gain any traction. 3 Graham met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv over the weekend. UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/AFP via Getty Images 'We are in conversations with the White House, obviously, about that subject and that issue,' Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters on Monday. 'There's a high level of interest here in the Senate, on both sides of the aisle and moving on it, and it very well could be something that we would take up in this work period,' Thune added. 'Obviously, we're working with the White House to try and ensure that what we do and when we do it works well with the negotiations that they've got underway.' 3 The Senate bill would impose 500% tariffs on countries that purchase energy from Russia. via REUTERS The Graham-Blumenthal bill – 'Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025' – has more than 80 co-sponsors in the Senate. 'The bill would put Russia on a trade island,' Graham wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week. 'The consequences of its barbaric invasion must be made real to those that prop it up. If China or India stopped buying cheap oil, Mr. Putin's war machine would grind to a halt.' 'I'm hoping for the best, but when it comes to the thug in Moscow, we should all prepare for more of the same.' The bill is currently under consideration by the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Trump has expressed mounting frustrations with Putin's refusal to curtail strikes against Ukraine, but has stopped short of announcing tougher sanctions on the regime despite having threatened them earlier this month.
NBC News
2 days ago
- Politics
- NBC News
Speaker Johnson says he texted Elon Musk after his criticism over the bill's cost
In an exclusive interview with Meet the Press, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) reacts to Elon Musk's criticism of President Trump's agenda bill. Johnson says he addressed the concerns from Musk and other GOP colleagues by speaking with them directly about the 'big beautiful bill.'June 1, 2025
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Republicans Would Have Impeached Joe Biden 100 Times For The Stuff Trump Is Doing
WASHINGTON — For two years, Republicans hounded former President Joe Biden's family for any evidence he participated in his son Hunter's foreign business deals. Lawmakers grilled witnesses about the Bidens' phone habits, sifted through family bank records, hauled in Hunter Biden's art dealer for questioning and even subpoenaed people who bought his paintings. Republicans swore they uncovered impeachable offenses, even if they uncovered no direct evidence of wrongdoing. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, is openly inviting anyone to put money directly in his pockets by purchasing his crypto token. He's rewarded the biggest spenders with direct access to himself personally. By any reasonable standard, Trump's self-enrichment is more contrary to ethical standards and norms of good governance than anything Joe Biden did. But House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has a ready rationalization for why it's OK. 'The difference, of course, is that President Trump does everything out in the open. He's not trying to hide anything. There's no shell companies or fake LLCs or fake family businesses. He's putting it out there so everybody can evaluate for themselves,' Johnson said Sunday. Scott Jennings, a CNN analyst who frequently defends the White House, offered a similar defense of Trump pardoning political allies, saying Thursday, 'It's being done out in the open. It's being done in the light of day.' It's a variation of the frequent White House boast that Trump, by virtue of his frequent interactions with reporters, is the most transparent president in history, and especially so compared to the reclusive Biden. In the final report of their impeachment inquiry last year, Republicans said 'overwhelming evidence demonstrates that President Biden participated in a conspiracy to monetize his office of public trust to enrich his family.' Biden allegedly participated by 'attending dinners with his family's foreign business partners and speaking to them by phone, often when being placed on speakerphone by Hunter Biden.' Last week, Trump hosted a dinner at his Virginia golf club for the 225 top purchasers of his $TRUMP meme coin, including several who told reporters they hoped to influence the president. One attendee had already seen fraud charges dismissed after he invested in a separate crypto venture backed by the Trump family. Richard Briffault, an expert on government ethics at Columbia Law School, said Trump's private enterprises create a clear conflict of interest with his public service. 'Conflict of interest questions come up when somebody is taking action in an official position, like being president, setting law enforcement policy or setting regulatory policy, in an area in which that person also has a significant financial interest,' Briffault told HuffPost. 'The Biden stuff was incredibly trivial compared to this,' Briffault said. The Trump administration has abandoned the Biden administration's efforts to enforce securities laws against crypto firms, and Congress is working to entrench crypto in the financial system by giving bank regulators an oversight role. As for the claim that the openness of Trump's business schemes makes them OK, Briffault said the transparency would be useful to voters if Trump were going to run for reelection, which he can't do under the Constitution's prohibition on a president serving more than two terms. 'In some ways, it's much more subversive, because at least when it's hidden, it reflects some respect for the idea that this stuff is improper,' Briffault said. 'If the president's doing it, why can't a governor do it? Why can't a senator do it? Why can't a mayor do it?' (On Capitol Hill, most Republicans HuffPost interviewed pleaded ignorance about Trump's crypto dinner. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri sounded a skeptical note: 'I don't love the sound of that.') Biden seemed to realize his son's entanglement with foreign business interests, which started while Biden was vice president, created the appearance of a conflict of interest. He repeatedly denied having spoken to his son or his son's business associates about their work. Several of Hunter Biden's former partners told lawmakers in transcribed interviews, however, that Joe and Hunter Biden would talk on the phone almost every day, and that Hunter Biden would sometimes put his father on speaker in their company. Business associates also described the elder Biden attending a dinner and greeting them at a bar. In every instance, the witnesses described Biden exchanging pleasantries, such as by talking about the weather, and not discussing business. None had evidence of Biden getting involved or changing U.S. policy for their benefit. But the testimony gave Republicans what they needed to claim they'd uncovered secret acts of corruption. 'The reason many people refer to the Bidens as the Biden Crime Family is because they were doing all this stuff behind curtains, in the back rooms. They were trying to conceal it, and they repeatedly lied about it,' Johnson said last week. The centerpiece of Republicans' impeachment inquiry against Biden was an allegation, sourced to a mysterious FBI informant, that Hunter Biden's Ukrainian employer paid the former vice president a $5 million bribe in exchange for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor. The allegation turned out to have been made up, and in January the informant was sentenced to six years in prison for fabricating the story. The House never voted to impeach Biden, but Republicans are continuing their focus on his administration, demanding interviews with Biden's doctor and other White House aides who might have helped conceal Biden's increasing frailty in office. Polling released Thursday by the progressive messaging firm Navigator Research suggests voters view Republicans as more corrupt than Democrats, especially with Trump in the mix, but also that voters may be more receptive to messages about corruption being a bipartisan problem in Washington. Jeff Hauser, director of the Revolving Door Project, a progressive watchdog group focused on corporate influence in politics, said Democrats are squandering their advantages on corruption. Democrats highlighted Trump's crypto dinner last week, for instance, but they also helped Republicans advance Senate legislation that would benefit the crypto industry. 'We have American hospitals that get shut down, we have elderly people who are being scammed out of their life savings, and this is all made possible by a crypto industry that Trump is unleashing because it is how Trump is becoming a genuine mega billionaire,' Hauser said. 'Democrats voting for Trump's bill, that really undercuts the notion that this is abhorrent behavior and one on which you can make a partisan distinction.'
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump Adviser Admits Republican Tax Bill Makes Huge Cuts to Medicaid
President Donald Trump and Republican leaders keep pretending they aren't cutting Medicaid with their new tax bill, which will further enrich the wealthy and pay for it in part by significantly slashing Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans. Trump, who has repeatedly promised to protect Medicaid, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have both claimed that Republicans are simply targeting 'waste, fraud, and abuse' in their tax bill, which passed the House last week. David Sacks, who is serving as Trump's 'AI and crypto czar,' put the Medicaid situation more plainly Saturday on his All In podcast: 'This bill cuts $880 billion from Medicaid over a decade.' Like Trump's 2017 tax law, the GOP's reconciliation legislation is expected to disproportionately benefit the wealthy. This year's bill will even reduce the after-tax income of households earning less than $51,000 per year. It is also expected to force at least 10 million Americans off Medicaid, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. This carnage will primarily be achieved by imposing work requirements — a demand that any able-bodied Medicaid recipients work at least 80 hours a month. Such requirements, which have previously failed at the state level, would come in addition to the program's existing income caps. Taken together, this means that Medicaid recipients will be expected to work low-paying jobs and deal with burdensome paperwork demands if they want to maintain their insurance coverage. Many eligible recipients will likely lose coverage due to the added bureaucracy. The president and Republican leaders have nonetheless tried to argue they are not actually cutting Medicaid, and that their changes won't actually harm their constituents who deserve access to the program. Trump said last week that his tax bill simply targets 'waste, fraud and abuse for Medicaid,' and he promised that his working-class supporters 'won't lose health insurance' as a result of the legislation. (Some of his supporters will certainly lose health insurance.) 'We have not cut Medicaid,' Johnson falsely insisted in a Face the Nation interview on Sunday. He added that Republicans are simply 'working on fraud, waste and abuse.' A memo last week from the National Republican Congressional Committee, which elects GOP lawmakers, declared that 'Republicans Are Strengthening Medicaid.' It urged Republicans to go on offense, and depict their changes as efforts to protect the program and 'ensure Medicaid serves those who need it.' Sacks, a venture capital executive and Trump special government employee, skipped some of this pretense in the All In podcast, as he admitted the Republican tax bill 'cuts $880 billion from Medicaid.' He noted that the cuts are 'politically tough and controversial.' In the podcast discussion, Sacks was defending against the argument that the Trump tax legislation should do more to reduce spending. He said he wished the bill cut spending more, but he argued the Medicaid cuts are already 'relatively tough things to do politically,' and that Republicans can't cut more and expect to pass the bill. Even as Sacks acknowledged a basic truth that Republicans have denied — the Trump tax bill cuts Medicaid — he tried to spin the work requirements as a positive thing, as Republican leaders are doing now. 'It imposes work requirements for able-bodied adults,' he said. 'This is similar to what Bill Clinton did back in 1996 with welfare reform, basically saying that you can't be a layabout and get welfare.' Of course, many people on Medicaid are technically considered able-bodied, even if they are functionally disabled and cannot work, because they have not been approved for disability, which is an onerous process. These people will lose coverage — and they won't be able to replace it: The tax bill, as written, says that people who lose Medicaid coverage due to work requirements cannot sign up for alternate coverage on state marketplaces. Johnson, the Republican speaker, has claimed that Republicans are simply trying to remove '29-year-old males sitting on their couches playing video games.' On Sunday, he said that 'when you make young men work, it's good for them.' He framed this as 'moral.' It feels wrong hearing Republicans describe the poor people whose insurance they're terminating as lazy couch-surfers — and hearing Sacks, who's worth at least hundreds of millions of dollars, describe them as 'layabouts' feels even worse. At least he admitted what his boss, Donald Trump, won't: Republicans are about to make huge cuts to Medicaid. And they're doing so to help fund more big tax cuts for the super rich. More from Rolling Stone 'Original Sin' Outlines the Plot Against the American Voter Jasmine Crockett: 'It's Time for Republicans to Question Trump's Mental Acuity' Mike Johnson Insists It's 'Moral' to Throw People Off Medicaid Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
Epoch Times
26-05-2025
- Health
- Epoch Times
DOGE Has Found $14 Billion in Medicaid Fraud, Waste, and Abuse, Dr. Mehmet Oz Says
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said that his agency and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have identified at least $14 billion in fraud, waste, and abuse. 'There's about $14 billion we've identified with DOGE, of folks who are duly enrolled wrongly in multiple states for Medicaid,' Oz As an example, Oz said, 'You live in New Jersey, but you move to Pennsylvania, and which state gets your Medicaid? Turns out both states collect money from the federal government.' There are other areas, he said, that constitute abuse of the federal health care system. He said that some people who are eligible to get a job or seek education are receiving Medicaid, echoing statements made by GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.). who in recent days said that able-bodied individuals and illegal immigrants have received Medicaid benefits. Oz urged that Medicaid be cleaned up so that it can provide services to individuals such as people with disabilities and others, suggesting that Republicans keep a work requirement to be eligible for the program. 'I think there's a moral hazard if we don't, because you've got people who are not working who could work, who should work, and it's better for them and better for the country if they do,' he said, referring to Republicans' having added work requirements into to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed in the House of Representatives last week. Related Stories 5/23/2025 5/20/2025 Medicaid is a joint federal and state program that The bill, which is now in the hands of the Senate, would impose work requirements for low-income adults to receive Medicaid health insurance and increase them for food assistance. Supporters of the bill say the moves will save money, root out waste, and encourage personal responsibility. Starting next year, many able-bodied Medicaid enrollees under 65 would be required to show that they work, volunteer, or go to school in exchange for the health insurance coverage under the measure. Only Arkansas has had a work requirement that kicks people off for noncompliance. Established by President Donald Trump earlier this year, DOGE is tasked with finding fraud, waste, and abuse, although some of its efforts in federal agencies have been blocked by courts. A U.S. district judge in Maryland, for example, in March blocked the agency from accessing Social Security Administration systems, prompting the Trump administration to submit an emergency petition to the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month. The task force has been effectively led by industrialist Elon Musk, a senior adviser to Trump and a special government employee, meaning he has 130 days to complete his work. Musk said during a Tesla earnings call last month that he would be stepping back from his government duties in May to focus on his company. Over the past weekend, Musk wrote in a post on X that he is now working more at his companies, including Tesla and X. 'Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms. I must be super focused on X/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week), as we have critical technologies rolling out,' Musk Oz, a former daytime television personality and doctor known as Dr. Oz, was confirmed as the 17th Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator by the Senate in early April. The Epoch Times contacted the CMS for comment on Monday. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
