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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.

4 THINGS TO KEEP ON YOUR RADAR
By Lisa Desjardins, @LisaDNews ([link removed])
Correspondent

Strreeetch.

Back from some excellent time outdoors, we have oxygen in our lungs and a clear mind to prepare for what’s next.

So let’s lay out four major things ahead for Congress that are worth keeping on your radar.

1. Rescissions

Congress expects to get President Donald Trump’s list of suggested cuts from current spending sometime this week, we are told by a source familiar. These are known as rescissions and could be up to $9 billion in spending, Punchbowl reported. ([link removed])

These differ from traditional cuts considered by Congress, whereby lawmakers usually vote on the *next* year’s spending.

Here, Trump is expected to propose cuts to current spending, including possibly eliminating funding ([link removed]) for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which would affect some 1,500 local public media stations ([link removed]) , as well as NPR and PBS (which includes PBS News).
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Watch the segment in the player above.

Once Trump proposes rescissions, Congress has 45 legislative days ([link removed]) to accept them or amend them. Otherwise, his request lapses and the funding stays intact.

2. Reconciliation

When last we left Republican lawmakers, they had passed the first critical step toward expanding and extending Trump’s tax cuts: a budget resolution. ([link removed])

This blueprint opens up the “reconciliation process” that allows Republicans to pass tax cuts, and some other agenda items, through the Senate with a simple majority vote.

They do not have significant time if they want to make their deadline. The budget resolution sets a May 9 deadline for committees to write the tax cut portions of the next, larger bill.

Doing this will not be easy. The budget resolution left most of the hard questions unanswered.

Among them:
* How much spending must be cut and where will those cuts come from?
* How much should the debt ceiling increase?
* Which tax cuts should be added, for whom and for how long?

3. The future of Medicaid

As part of the reconciliation process, Republicans will have to grapple with how and whether they want to significantly cut or reform Medicaid.

The reconciliation instructions to the House make it mathematically impossible for that chamber to meet its goals without cutting back on funding for Medicaid.

But, to make things more complex, the instructions to the Senate are far more loose.

In other words, the chambers will have to negotiate this part of the Trump “big beautiful bill.” Expect a potentially sharp fight among Republicans over priorities.

For more: PBS News’ Hannah Grabenstein took a closer look at who relies on Medicaid. ([link removed])

4. Nomination holds

We at Here’s the Deal particularly love raising what may be overlooked.

One by one, a handful of Democratic senators have begun using a Senate procedure — placing holds — to slow down or block specific Trump administration nominees, either individually or in large groups. At the minimum, a hold means ([link removed]) that a nominee cannot be fast-tracked and approval may be significantly slowed down. It can de facto prevent a vote on a nominee altogether, depending on circumstances.
* Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, has placed holds on some 300 nominees ([link removed]) , including all nominees ([link removed]) for the Department of State. Schatz has written that he objects to Trump’s gutting of USAID, as well as cuts and actions affecting other agencies.
* Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., has done the same for all nominees ([link removed]) to the Department of Veterans Affairs, objecting to proposed cuts for the agency.
* Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., put a hold on a Trump nominee ([link removed]) to head the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the government’s cybersecurity hub. Wyden wants the agency to release a report on problems in the U.S. telecommunication agency.
* Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., put a hold on Trump’s nominee ([link removed]) to be the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., a pivotal prosecutor in the Department of Justice system. Schiff argues that the nominee is a Trump loyalist who helped organize the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally and should be blocked.

We know that Trump has pushed against any delays in seeing his nominees confirmed, at times threatening to upend the nomination system ([link removed]) itself by launching recess appointments.

Watch this area for possible increased tension in the weeks and months ahead. If it boils, it will boil quickly.
More on politics from our coverage:
* Watch: Pete Hegseth again faces calls to resign ([link removed]) over leadership concerns and new Signal chat revelations.
* One Big Question: Will Republicans in Congress raise concerns over Hegseth? NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter discuss. ([link removed])
* A Closer Look: Supreme Court is weighing parents' objections to LGBTQ+ content in schools. Listen to Tuesday’s oral arguments. ([link removed])
* Perspectives: One of the lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man sent to a prison in El Salvador by the Trump administration, speaks about the refusals to return him to the U.S. ([link removed])

WHILE GUTTING CLIMATE RESEARCH, TRUMP ADMINISTRATION RAISES CONCERN OVER ‘CLIMATE ANXIETY’
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Watch the segment in the player above.
By Joshua Barajas
Senior Editor, Digital

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has moved to to freeze climate spending across the government, following through on a promise to undo Biden-era initiatives.

The administration has targeted climate grants, the Inflation Reduction Act (a signature Biden climate law), and the federal agencies tasked with stewarding and expanding climate research. But this rollback is also threatening to unwind policies ([link removed]) dating as far back as the Nixon administration.

In its bid to aggressively claw back climate change research, the Trump administration has made several arguments for its actions.

Trump, who has regularly called climate change a “hoax ([link removed]) ,” has also mused out loud about the possibility that rising oceans could create more valuable oceanfront property. (No, according to experts.) ([link removed])

Trump has conflated weather and climate to downplay the crisis, such as suggesting that snowfall disproves global warming. (It doesn’t.) ([link removed]) He has boosted climate-damaging industries like coal power, while disparaging clean solutions like wind turbines. He’s argued that the concerns over climate change have been exaggerated or overblown, or that climate solutions being presented are too costly.

When the Commerce Department pulled $4 million in funding ([link removed]) for three climate-related programs at Princeton University two weeks ago, the administration presented another argument: Climate research at the institute was driving an increase of “climate anxiety” among young Americans.

“I spend a lot of time with young people and what I find makes them anxious is that fact that nobody in authority now is doing anything to address what’s obviously the biggest danger facing their future,” environmentalist Bill McKibben told PBS News Hour. ([link removed])

Young people want people in leadership to stand up and take what scientists are saying seriously, he added.

“We got a warning from science. We got it in time to act. So far, we have ignored that warning,” McKibben said. “And that is truly, truly sad, and it should make us anxious.
More on climate change from our coverage:
* Climate Spending Freeze: How the Trump administration is dismantling climate protections. ([link removed])
* The Hardest Hit: How the closure of EPA offices puts poor and minority communities at risk. ([link removed])
* A Wave of Uncertainty: As NOAA shrinks under Trump’s cuts, employees speak out. ([link removed])

THIS WEEK’S TRIVIA QUESTION
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Photo by Harold M. Lambert/Getty Images
By Joshua Barajas
Senior Editor, Digital

The first Earth Day was celebrated 55 years ago. ([link removed])

Coast to coast, millions of Americans participated in a nationwide demonstration ([link removed]) on April 22, 1970, to amplify the mounting concerns over pollution and a lack of national environmental standards.

The first Earth Day was organized by Democratic Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin and a grassroots coalition of college students and activists with the goal of raising public awareness ([link removed]) around a host of environmental issues. This effort would receive broad bipartisan support in the years that followed.

Richard Nixon, who was president during the first Earth Day, would later push protections for clean air and water, and oversee the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Our question: How did Nixon and first lady Pat Nixon commemorate the first Earth Day?

Send your answers to [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) or tweet using #PoliticsTrivia. The first correct answers will earn a shout-out next week.

Last week, we asked: Which historic event that The New York Times once described as “Our Great Loss” happened 160 years ago?

The answer: The death of President Abraham Lincoln. ([link removed]) Following Lincoln’s assassination, constitutional amendments granted citizenship and voting rights to African Americans. Under President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln in the presidency, an increase in racial discrimination and violence from white supremacists ultimately led to the Jim Crow era.

Congratulations to our winners: Marilu Meyer and Ed Nickson!

Thank you all for reading and watching. We’ll drop into your inbox next week.
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