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
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.
These differ from traditional cuts considered by Congress, whereby lawmakers usually vote on the *next* year’s spending.
Once Trump proposes rescissions, Congress has 45 legislative days 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.
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.
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 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, including all nominees 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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.
WHILE GUTTING CLIMATE RESEARCH, TRUMP ADMINISTRATION RAISES CONCERN OVER ‘CLIMATE ANXIETY’
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 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 has conflated weather and climate to downplay the crisis, such as suggesting that snowfall disproves global warming. (It doesn’t.) 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 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.
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.
Coast to coast, millions of Americans participated in a nationwide demonstration 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 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] 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. 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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