It’s Tuesday, the traditional day for elections and for our pause-and-consider newsletter on politics and policy. We think of it as a mini-magazine in your inbox.
YOUR CHEAT SHEET TO THE SENATE BUDGET DEAL
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews
Correspondent
Longtime readers know we LOVE A CHEAT SHEET.
This week, Republican leaders hope that the House approves the budget framework that passed the Senate over the weekend. Nothing less than President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda hinges on it.
So let’s take a look at some basics of what is in the Senate plan. (Read the 70-page proposal here.)
This would put the entire Trump agenda — tax cuts and border security spending — into one bill.
An extension of expiring tax cuts. The Senate would allow up to $5.3 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade. This would extend the 2017 tax cuts that Trump signed into law during his first term.
This includes another $500 million for border security, detaining migrants and national defense.
This budget framework would raise the national debt by $5 trillion dollars. The nation’s debt currently stands at $36 trillion.
Here is where the Senate plan takes some unconventional turns.
The Senate plan calls for $4 billion in spending cuts, yet almost none of them are expected to come from committees in the upper chamber.
Instead, it instructs House committees to find $2 trillion in cuts, the amount the House originally passed. That includes the $880 billion in cuts from the House committee overseeing Medicaid.
So what is going on here? This is essentially a policy punt.
If this budget resolution passes the House, then both chambers would need to write the actual legislation laying out the tax cuts and Trump agenda.
Both Republican-controlled chambers will need to compromise. BUT the Senate has an advantage in that negotiation.
Will this pass the House?
Unclear. My reporting is that there are dozens of unhappy House Republicans.
But if Trump leans in on them, he could sway them.
What’s next?
To be frank, as we send this week’s newsletter, the situation is extremely messy.
The number of House Republicans inclined to go against this budget deal was rising this morning.
Speaker Mike Johnson told us the “idea” is to pass the bill this week.
But it is clear Republicans don’t have the votes. Trump will attempt to turn that around, but from this distance it is not clear how committed he is to this bill passing this week.
On Friday night, I was on my way to a hockey game (Ovechkin!) when a source messaged me a tip: “During all hands meeting,” they wrote of a gathering USAID employees, “it was mentioned that the three person team [in the Myanmar earthquake zone] received termination notices while sleeping outside. Unimaginable.”
I needed more details to report this. And texting on the way to and during the game, I was able to get on a call with someone directly familiar with the situation.
This source confirmed several key details:
The U.S. assessment team in Myanmar received termination notices while sleeping outdoors in the heart of the earthquake zone.
Those firings are effective either in July or September. My source did not know which month.
The three-person team was exponentially smaller than usual. I was told by another source, a disaster of this scale could have easily triggered a 200-person Disaster Assistance Recovery Team, or DART.
My source also told me that humanitarian aid programs they regarded as life and death (think: food aid) were being cut elsewhere, like in Gaza, Yemen, Syria, and Afghanistan.
After posting my initial reporting to X, I spent the weekend gathering more details from other sources with knowledge of the Myanmar and USAID news. When seeking a response from the State Department, a spokesperson pointed us to a post on X that said my reporting was false, without providing evidence.
For now, the small team is still in Myanmar. They have roughly 10 to 12 hours of power a day.
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PAUSES TRANSLATED ALERTS
A thunderstorm outside of Blackwell, Oklahoma. Photo by Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images
By Adam Kemp
Communities Correspondent, Oklahoma City
The National Weather Service has paused automated services that provide severe weather alerts in languages other than English.
The government contract for those services expired, the agency confirmed to PBS News.
As strong storms bear down on large portions of the U.S. in recent weeks and with hurricane season around the corner, those who work on severe weather and emergency operations are concerned that a pause or the end of these communications could be devastating for non-English speaking communities that depend on them.
In this public administrative message, the NWS said the agency has paused its automated language translation service due to a “contract lapse.”
Joseph Trujillo-Falcón, a researcher at the University of Illinois who formerly led a NOAA team researching translated weather alerts and their effects, called the contract lapse “extremely disappointing.”
“No matter what language you speak or where you come from you deserve to have this life-saving information,” he said.
More than 68 million people in the U.S. speak a language other than English, according to a 2022 report from the U.S. Census Bureau.
If a contract with Lilt, an AI company based in California, is not signed again within 30 days of the April 1 expiration, language translation services would be difficult to restart because it will have to seek new bids for companies to provide the AI services, two NOAA employees told PBS News.
The employees spoke to PBS News under the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media and feared being fired.
THIS WEEK’S TRIVIA QUESTION
By Joshua Barajas
Senior Editor, Digital
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is embarking on a “Make America Healthy Again” tour this week.
He kicked off his trek through the southwestern states by directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change its guidelines for adding fluoride to drinking water. Fluoride helps prevent tooth decay, as the CDC laid out on its website, and medical experts have hailed low-level water fluoridation one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century.
Kennedy said a new task force will study water fluoridation and come up with a new federal recommendation for communities. One state already took action late last month.
Our question: Which U.S. state became the first to ban adding fluoride to its public drinking water?
Send your answers to [email protected] or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.
Last week, we asked: What did U.S. President William Howard Taft give to Japan in return for the cherry blossom trees?
The answer: Dogwood trees. Taft sent several flowering dogwood trees to the people of Japan in 1915. Those trees have since died, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Congratulations to our winners: Nabiha Chowdhury and Paul Taylor!
Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
Want more news and analysis in your inbox?
Explore all of the PBS News' emails.
