The battle to sway voters over Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ begins
CNN
For months, more than a dozen Hill Republicans have been sounding the alarm about the steep Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s sprawling agenda package, which is now just hours away from becoming law.
For months, more than a dozen Hill Republicans have been sounding the alarm about the steep Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s sprawling agenda package, which is now just hours away from becoming law. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis called cuts to Medicaid “inescapable.” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley called Republicans’ targeting of Medicaid “a mistake.” Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, who once declared he wouldn’t support anything with over $500 billion in cuts, said he reluctantly supported the Senate’s nearly $1 trillion in cuts because of other tax breaks in the bill. Now, Democrats are turning those precise GOP warnings into the centerpiece of their strategy to seize control of Congress in the midterms next November. “It’s 2018 all over again,” said Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, a Democrat who holds one of his party’s toughest, most Trump-friendly swing seats. “I’m not gonna predict the future but I think today was a pretty bad vote for them,” Golden told CNN, adding that he did not consider voting for the GOP bill, despite billions for border security and military funding. “I would never vote for these Medicaid cuts. Never.” Recent polling so far shows Republicans have a tough sales job ahead of them, with 53 percent of voters opposing the bill in a Quinnipiac University poll from June. But the GOP plans to hit back, armed with their own argument that Democrats stood in the way of broadly popular tax breaks for many Americans, billions more for border security and additional support for American troops. They argue that Democrats are vastly exaggerating the cuts to Medicaid, most of which come from work requirements largely targeted at able-bodied adults without dependents who don’t work or attend school 80 hours a month.
Speaker Mike Johnson is a political survivor, weathering crisis after crisis since his unlikely ascent two years ago.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan are well matched, rhetorically forceful opposites. And they have been clashing for more than a decade over an increasingly relevant question of presidential power: How easy should it be for the president to fire the heads of independent agencies?
The Army gynecologist described in a recent lawsuit as a “predator in uniform” is now being held in the Bell County Jail in Texas, “after apparently violating conditions of liberty imposed by his commander,” according to an Army spokesperson.
Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.
The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
A grand jury voted against indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James after being asked to look at the mortgage fraud case against her a second time, according to multiple people familiar with the development Thursday.
National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and his architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.
If nothing else, the controversy over the Trump administration’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean has surfaced a long-overdue debate about its already legally dubious first strikes.
Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.