Off tomorrow,,, 

Turns ugly

House GOP infighting turns ugly over Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’

By Sarah Ferris, Manu Raju and Lauren Fox

President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” is running into a wall in the sharply divided House Republican conference, with tensions spiking over Speaker Mike Johnson’s handling of the party’s biggest sticking point: overhauling Medicaid.

As Johnson presses for a House vote before Memorial Day, the battlelines are becoming more pronounced, with Republicans in swing districts saying the sweeping bill can’t slash social safety net benefits while GOP hardliners are demanding trillions more in spending cuts – far beyond what many centrist members are willing to swallow.

Those frustrations emerged in a two-hour meeting in Johnson’s leadership suite on Tuesday night, in which the speaker huddled with roughly a dozen GOP centrists who have refused to back any Medicaid changes that could hurt eligible Americans who rely on the program.

Inside the room, Johnson made one more attempt to sell those members on a contentious plan — backed by the hard-right House Freedom Caucus and others — to sharply reduce Medicaid payments to states that expanded the program under Obamacare, according to two people in the room. His push drew a rebuke from multiple centrists in the room, who believed that idea was already off the table, the people said.

“We laid down the law,” one Republican member who had attended the meeting said of the firm position many members took.

Johnson and his leadership team insist that, in the end, GOP members will not be willing to stand in the way of Trump, who has said the actions taken in the next phase of his presidency will be charted through Capitol Hill. But the intraparty sparring between the two vastly disparate factions of Johnson’s conference raises the question of whether he can meet his own deadline to pass the package out of the House this month — with perhaps his own political survival on the line.

On Tuesday, some of those lawmakers also delivered a cautionary note to Johnson: They did not want to vote for any bill that Trump hadn’t endorsed, eager to avoid a repeat of 2017 when the president called the House GOP’s health care plan “mean” after they’d already passed it. Less than a year later, Republicans lost the chamber in the midterms.

“I don’t want to be mean,” Rep. Andrew Garbarino, a Republican from a New York swing district, told CNN on Wednesday. “And I think any time it looks like we’re actually hurting people, that’s gonna piss off the American population. And if you piss them off, they’re probably not going to vote for you.”

“The House cannot be its own worst enemy,” said Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, one of the moderates in the meeting. “We have to work in conjunction with the president.”

With their slim GOP majority, Johnson and his team have no choice but to mollify their centrist wing to pass the massive package along party lines. The bill would include new immigration restrictions, a massive increase in defense and border security spending and a two-year extension of the national debt limit. But the most divisive parts of the proposal involve the steep spending cuts the party is seeking on top of a multi-trillion-dollar overhaul of the tax code.

Many of those Republicans are staunchly opposed to the party’s push to use Trump’s agenda to chop spending on programs like Medicaid and food stamps — something that many of the House’s ultraconservatives are demanding. And those GOP hardliners are threatening not to support any plan without those big cuts.

Added to their problems: hard-right Republicans are demanding cuts well above $1.5 trillion — even as the centrist members are signaling such an approach would cost their support and are willing to see those cuts greatly reduced.

One visibly frustrated hardliner, GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, told CNN that Republicans would “fail” if they don’t find enough spending cuts to help jumpstart the economy.

“My colleagues, who do not want to address that, are burying their head in the sand and already trying to worry about elections next year, when the best way to win elections is to actually deliver,” said Roy, who can use his leverage as a member of a pair of key House panels to demand his own changes to the final bill.

Roy then offered this blunt warning: “I’ve got my own set of red lines I’m happy to start putting out there if they want me to.”

Rep. Rich McCormick added he “absolutely” would vote against the president’s agenda if it didn’t include at least $1.5 trillion in cuts, the goal outlined in the GOP’s budget blueprint. And McCormick was one of more than two dozen Republicans who signed onto a letter to Johnson on Wednesday that specifically called for “at least $2 trillion” in cuts.

“We made a promise to the people,” the Georgia Republican said. “The speaker made a promise to the people. The president made a promise to the people.”

A long-simmering rift between centrists and hardliners

The rift between the GOP’s centrist wing and its hardliners has been simmering long before Trump took office in January, fueled by years in a razor-thin majority. But those same Republicans are now under fierce pressure to deliver Trump’s high-stakes tax plan while satisfying demands that, at times, seem incompatible.

Ultraconservatives, for instance, want to cut as much as $5 trillion to pay for the full cost of Trump’s tax cuts. But others in the party, including those from battleground seats, believe they won’t even reach the party’s stated goal of $1.5 trillion in cuts.

“If we don’t [agree on $1.5 trillion in cuts], we should lower the number,” said Rep. Nick LaLota, a swing-district New York Republican. “We should do something that is compassionate yet reasonable to put our great country in a better trajectory.”

Some have said that GOP leadership had privately assured them – in conversations before they voted for that budget resolution – that the spending target was simply a goal and not a necessity.

“Leadership is telling everyone what they want to hear to get to the one-yard line,” a frustrated GOP lawmaker told CNN on the condition of anonymity to discuss intraparty dynamics.

Yet some of those same more moderate Republicans – namely from New York and California – are pushing for an increase of the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions, known as SALT, a costly proposal that has drawn the ire of hardliners.

“We have to address Medicaid,” Roy told CNN on Wednesday. “My colleagues, who are saying that they won’t touch it are the same colleagues, by the way, who want their SALT caps increased. Somebody come back and show me your basic math.”

Leadership and centrists did make some progress at the Tuesday meeting: They agreed on work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries, though they haven’t yet decided what age requirement to implement, according to a person in the room. They also agreed on more frequent eligibility checks to ensure only program-qualified people are accessing it and not to go after hospital funding, the person said.

But some of those members are still seeking assurances that Trump and the Senate GOP also back their plans — especially on Medicaid. One member told CNN that if House GOP leaders won’t hold formal talks with their Senate counterparts on the subject, the moderates themselves are willing to sit down with senators who’ve previously expressed opposition to such cuts.

Trump met with Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and other key GOP committee leaders to discuss tax policy at the White House on Wednesday.

Johnson, returning from the White House, said any changes limiting Medicaid “would affect a very small number of people” but that overhauling federal contributions to state-run Medicaid programs, known as the FMAP, is “off the table.”

Publicly, the president has remained mostly silent on the policy details as Republicans have worked behind the scenes to write his bill. But Republicans across the conference believe the only way it will pass is if Trump takes sides publicly.

Rep. Eric Burlison, another GOP hardliner, told CNN that he will refuse to support any bill that adds to the deficit in any way — and that must include the cost of Trump’s tax cuts. That means the spending cuts would have to equal roughly $5 trillion – far beyond the scope of what is under discussion.

“Where my redline is is that I’m not going to be a part of causing the deficit to be any worse than it is today, that that gap and how much we’re adding to the national debt, I cannot live with myself if I … exacerbate that and make that worse,” Burlison said. “They need to find some way to offset the tax cuts.”

He added: “I’m not looking to see funny math.”

Some Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are also watching with concern as House GOP centrists look to narrow down the size of the spending cuts.

“I think you might see the Senate come up with more spending cuts,” said Sen. John Cornyn, emerging from the Senate GOP’s policy retreat Wednesday. “This is a once in a generation opportunity to get our fiscal house in better shape.”

Killed 40 to 50 Indian soldiers

Pakistan claims it killed 40 to 50 Indian soldiers along de facto border in Kashmir

From CNN’s Sophia Saifi and Sana Noor Haq

Pakistan’s armed forces have killed 40 to 50 Indian troops along the de facto border with Indian-administered Kashmir, according to the country’s information ministry.

The ministry confirmed the figures to CNN, after they were first reported by other media outlets earlier Thursday.

“We have blown their (Indian) military installations on the de facto border,” Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar told Sky News.

Islamabad has vowed to retaliate following Delhi’s fierce onslaught on Punjab and Pakistan-administered Kashmir early Wednesday.

Pakistani security sources say they shot down five Indian Air Force jets and dozens more drones — allegations that New Delhi has not commented on.

CNN cannot verify the figures, and has sought comment from the Indian defense ministry.

16 civilians have been killed

India says 16 civilians have been killed as a result of Pakistani shelling

From CNN’s Vedika Sud, Aishwarya S. Iyer and Sophie Tanno

A total of 16 civilians have died, among them children, as a result of Pakistani fire since early Wednesday, India’s defense ministry has said.

“Sixteen innocent lives have been lost, including three women and five children, due to Pakistani firing,” a statement from the ministry Thursday said.

India and Pakistan have had near daily exchanges of fire across the Line of Control since the April 22 tourist massacre that sent relations between the two sides plummeting.

Pakistan’s military previously confirmed it shelled Indian positions in Indian-administered Kashmir in response to India’s airstrikes on its territory. India accused the Pakistanis of unprovoked firing over the Line of Control, the de facto border that divides disputed Kashmir.

Shot down Indian jets

Pakistan foreign minister says it shot down Indian jets with Chinese-made aircraft

From CNN’s Sophia Saifi, Jessie Yeung, Brad Lendon, Nectar Gan and Juliana Liu

Pakistan’s foreign minister has said that its military had used Chinese-made aircraft to shoot down five Indian fighter jets the day before.

Pakistan said it shot down the Indian jets – three French-made Rafales, a MiG-29 and an Su-30 fighter – after India launched airstrikes on what it claimed were “terrorist” sites inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

India has not responded to Pakistan’s claims or confirmed any losses. CNN has not been able to verify these claims. A high-ranking French intelligence official told CNN that Pakistan downed one Rafale, and that French authorities were investigating whether any more had been shot down.

“Our jet fighters were J-10Cs that shot down the three French Rafales and other jets,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said Wednesday. He added that by 4 a.m. on Wednesday, there was “an entire Chinese team at the Foreign Office along with their ambassador” being updated on what had taken place.

When asked about Dar’s comments, a spokesperson from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday he was not familiar with the situation and hadn’t seen “any relevant information” about the activities of the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan.

China is Pakistan’s main arms supplier, with Chinese arms making up 81% of Pakistan’s weapons imports in the past five years, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

On Wednesday, China urged both sides to de-escalate – saying it “expressed regret over India’s military action against Pakistan.”

Some context: The J-10C is a single-engine fighter jet. J-10s first flew in the Chinese air force in the early 2000s, but the latest version — the J-10C – has improved weapon systems and is classified as a 4.5-generation fighter, a rung below 5th-generation stealth jets like China’s J-20 or the US F-35.

The latest versions of the US’ F-16 fighters are also 4.5-generation aircraft.

The J-10C is made by Chinese state-owned company Avic Chengdu Aircraft, which saw its shares in Shenzhen surge after the India-Pakistan escalation. Shares on Thursday closed 40% higher than they had on Tuesday before the escalation, according to Refinitiv data.

Downed 25 Indian drones

Pakistan says it downed 25 Indian drones, calling the fresh attack a “serious provocation”

From CNN’s Esha Mitra, Sophia Saifi, Helen Regan and Aishwarya S Iyer

Pakistan said it has downed 25 Indian loitering munition drones across the country, after what it called a “serious provocation” from New Delhi that wounded four soldiers and killed a civilian.

“Debris of Israeli-made Harop drones is being recovered from various areas across Pakistan,” the military said in a separate statement.

Harop drones are a long-range loitering munition – effectively a flying bomb guided by an operator – that is made by Israel Aerospace Industries, an Israeli aerospace manufacturer.

Earlier, Pakistan Army spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said 12 Harop drones had been shot down across Pakistan overnight Wednesday into Thursday.

CNN cannot independently verify the claims and has reached out to the Indian Air Force and Ministry of Defense for comment.

Drones were downed across Pakistan, from Rawalpindi in the north – home to the military’s main headquarters – to a site near the port megacity of Karachi in the south, Chaudhry said.

One of the drones was able to “partially” engage its target near Lahore – a city of around 13 million people near the border with India – wounding four army personnel, Chaudhry said.

In southeast Sindh province, one civilian was killed and another injured due to the drone’s “activity,” he added.

Chaudhry said that Pakistan air forces were at a “high state of alert and vigilance.”

Carmaker sees 21% profit decline

World’s biggest carmaker sees 21% profit decline as tariffs take a bite

By Reuters

Toyota Motor forecast a 21% profit decline for the current financial year on Thursday, as the strain from US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and an appreciating yen take some of the shine off strong demand for hybrid vehicles.

The world’s top-selling automaker expects operating income to total 3.8 trillion yen ($26 billion) in the year to March 2026, versus 4.8 trillion yen in the financial year that just ended. That was roughly in line with the 4.75 trillion yen average of 25 analysts surveyed by LSEG.

Toyota faces the risk of being hit by widespread fallout from Trump’s tariffs, not only from the impact on its US-bound exports but also because of the potential for a downturn in consumer sentiment in the US and elsewhere. Price rises can lead to a decline in consumer sentiment.

The lower profit for the coming year was due to the negative impact from a stronger yen, as well as higher material prices and the impact of tariffs, Toyota said in a presentation.

Like other global automakers doing business in the world’s top economy, Toyota could face high labor costs and be forced to spend more on investment, if it decides to expand its US production base further.

While Toyota has seen its vehicle sales in China fall less than other Japanese automakers, it has still struggled to halt a sales decline in the world’s biggest auto market amid heavy competition from Chinese brands.

M1

2005

2023

 Cataloged as M1, the Crab Nebula is the first on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab Nebula is now known to be a supernova remnant, an expanding cloud of debris from the death explosion of a massive star. The violent birth of the Crab was witnessed by astronomers in the year 1054. Roughly 10 light-years across, the nebula is still expanding at a rate of about 1,500 kilometers per second. You can see the expansion by comparing these sharp images from the Hubble Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope. The Crab's dynamic, fragmented filaments were captured in visible light by Hubble in 2005 and Webb in infrared light in 2023. This cosmic crustacean lies about 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus.

Drafting a sweeping bill

Congress counters Trump with massive FEMA restructuring plan

Republicans and Democrats are trying to give Congress a voice in the future of the disaster agency.

By Thomas Frank

A bipartisan group of House members is drafting a sweeping bill to overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency — and in some cases expand its services — in an effort to head off President Donald Trump’s threats to shrink or abolish the agency.

Under the bill, FEMA could pay for major repairs to homes damaged in disasters, instead of only temporary fixes. The agency would be able to penalize states that don’t try to mitigate disasters, according to a detailed summary obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News.

The bill also would remove FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security and make it an independent agency reporting directly to the president. The measure, which is described as a discussion draft, was written by House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair Sam Graves, Republican of Missouri, and Washington Rep. Rick Larsen, the panel’s top Democrat.

Committee staffers explained the bill Wednesday in a private virtual conference with about 100 experts. E&E News listened in.

Committee Republicans and Democrats expect to publicly release the discussion draft Thursday.

“The administration has talked about finding a better way to support states taking the lead” in disaster response, Johanna Hardy, a subcommittee Republican staff director, said at the conference. The draft legislation by the committee “will help achieve those goals.”

Making FEMA a Cabinet-level agency “will better enable FEMA to support states and local governments,” Hardy said.

The bill could become Congress’ principal effort to try to influence the future of FEMA, which Trump has started cutting and intends to further weaken or abolish.

“The fact that the committee is moving on this is promising,” Manann Donoghoe, a senior research associate at Brookings Metro, said in an interview after listening to the virtual conference.

One cut by Trump — the cancellation of a multibillion-dollar grant program for states to protect against natural disasters — has drawn widespread and bipartisan opposition. Trump has discussed abolishing or shrinking FEMA and created an expert council to recommend changes.

On Wednesday, as House Transportation Committee staffers were explaining their bill, FEMA acting Administrator Cameron Hamilton bluntly told a House Appropriations subcommittee that the agency should not be abolished.

“I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Hamilton said in response to a question by the House Appropriations Committee’s top Democrat, Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.

“Having said that, I’m not in a position to make a decision,” Hamilton added. “That is a conversation that should be had between the president of the United States and this governing body.”

Earlier in the hearing, Hamilton said the administration “is looking at policies and initiatives that encourage greater state participation” in disaster recovery.

Trump has been adamant about downsizing FEMA and giving states more responsibility for disaster recovery.

But the House bill would expand FEMA spending in at least one area, according to the 2,500-word summary and Transportation Committee staffers.

The bill would remove restrictions that limit FEMA to paying only for minor home repairs after a disaster and would create a “permanent repair program of owner-occupied homes,” the summary says.

“It would expand FEMA’s authority to continue to repair homes … past the point of habitability,” Lauren Gros, a Democratic committee staffer, told the conference.

“We learned FEMA was spending upwards of $300,000 on travel trailers” to temporarily house disaster victims, Gros said. “Why spend so much money on a temporary solution instead of a permanent solution?”

Under federal law, FEMA currently gives households only enough money — usually a few thousand dollars — to make their home habitable after a disaster. The policy has forced many households without homeowners insurance to live in temporary housing for long periods.

The bill also would urge FEMA to give “greater weight” to events that damage “economically distressed … or rural areas” in deciding whether to recommend that a president declare a disaster, the summary says. Presidents have the final and sole decision on whether to declare a damaged area a “major disaster,” entitling states to federal aid for cleanup and recovery.

FEMA typically pays 75 percent of disaster-recovery costs for states, which pay the remaining 25 percent.

But the House proposal would “incorporate cost-share sliding” that would let FEMA reimburse only 65 percent of costs “if a state were not doing appropriate mitigation measures,” Logan de La Barre-Hays, a Republican staffer on the House Transportation Committee, told the virtual conference.

FEMA could increase its reimbursement to 85 percent for states making significant improvements in their vulnerability to disasters.

It’s unclear how much effect the bill would have if it became law.

Presidents have almost complete discretion over disasters, including when to approve federal aid and how much to give.

Many of the 51 sections in the bill summary simply authorize FEMA or a president to take certain action.

Donoghoe of Brookings said “a lot of good ideas” are contained in the bill, which along with Trump’s executive orders “have put a spotlight on disaster-management reform in a way there hasn’t been in a while.”

Other people who watched the virtual presentation said the federal government needs to revise not just FEMA but its entire response to major disasters, which encompasses numerous departments.

But, Donoghoe added, “I have reservations about what can be accomplished in the current legislative environment.”

Touts a drop in crime

Eric Adams touts a drop in crime. The numbers tell a different story.

While murders and shootings have fallen dramatically, overall crime has risen steadily during the New York City mayor’s tenure.

By Cris Seda Chabrier and Joe Anuta

Eric Adams often laments a central paradox of his mayoralty: While most serious crime is declining, New Yorkers don’t feel any safer.

That’s because, by the NYPD’s own metrics, they’re not.

Total crime has increased every year under Adams — a former police captain who ran for mayor on a promise to curb lawlessness — even as New York City has remained one of the safest big cities in the nation on his watch.

Murder has declined by 22 percent and shootings by more than 40 percent since Adams took office on Jan. 1, 2022. But every other type of crime the police department classifies as “major” is higher. Felony assaults rose by 29 percent, car thefts by 36 percent and robberies by 20 percent from the end of 2021 to the end of last year, according to the most recent year-end NYPD statistics.

And newly released data covering all 34 crime categories — including quality-of-life infractions like trespassing and graffiti — show total infractions grew 28 percent, from 454,404 at the end of 2021, just before Adams took office, to 580,338 at the end of 2024.

That puts crime back at a level not seen in a decade, and New Yorkers are taking notice.

“People feel the small crimes,” said Paul Reeping, director of research at the policy journal Vital City. “And when they build up over time, they are going to feel unsafe.”

It all comes at a politically inconvenient time for Adams, a retired police captain who won the mayoralty on a promise to curb disorder in a pandemic-ravaged city and who must now contend with an incongruent legacy as he seeks reelection this year.

The mayor can credibly claim some wins: Shootings and transit crimes reached record lows during the first quarter of this year, and murders continue to decline to near record lows. Police recorded fewer instances of burglary, robbery and theft — including stolen vehicles — over the last year. And the increase in overall crime has begun to slow.

Adams readily points out he inherited a city experiencing a pandemic-era uptick in lawlessness, mirroring a nationwide trend.

But the data reviewed by POLITICO paints a picture of a city that’s not quite as secure as it was before Covid, or when Adams took office two years later. He is hoping voters continue to trust his professional experience in policing and blame his Democratic rivals for backing policies he argues hamper law enforcement efforts.

“We know our success in numbers must match the success in how people are feeling. And part of that is we’re asking all of you out there and in the media: Let’s not find the worst thing that happens in our city in the day and make it seem like it defines our city,” Adams said at a recent briefing. “Let’s highlight how well we have turned the city around.”

The spikes in crime have come amid chaos and scandal within the upper ranks of the nation’s largest police department. Adams, who campaigned almost singularly on reducing crime in 2021, has burned through three police commissioners who either quit or were pushed out. His fourth, Jessica Tisch, has instituted dramatic leadership changes, presided over some improved crime statistics and launched a quality-of-life division focused on low-level offenses.

New York City mayors typically focus their public safety agenda on the seven most serious crimes, and Adams is no exception. He has touted trends that have been going his way and blamed headlines about subway slashings and broad-daylight slayings for sowing fear across the five boroughs.

But POLITICO’s analysis of NYPD data shows increases in “non-major” crimes have been just as pronounced as the rise in the seven major crime categories — an under-the-radar trend that is contributing to New Yorker’s enduring sense of unease.

Violations, a classification that accounts for harassment and disorderly conduct, showed a similar trend, as did misdemeanors like sexual misconduct and theft.

In particular, felony and misdemeanor assaults have steadily risen to levels not seen since 1998, according to a recent Vital City report on the connection between low-level infractions and public safety fears. These attacks have increasingly come at the hands of strangers, who perpetrated around 40 percent of felony assaults last year.

“There’s a sense that there isn’t a strong management of the city’s bureaucracy in tackling these issues,” said Basil Smikle Jr., a former leader of the state Democratic Party. “That has to be addressed head on.”

City Hall defended the administration’s progress.

“Since taking office, Mayor Adams has made sure that we use every tool in our toolbox to keep New Yorkers safe, and the results speak for themselves: Overall crime citywide was down last year and is down by double digits year-to-date,” spokesperson Kayla Mamelak Altus said, referring to major felonies.

Indeed, between 2023 and 2024, five of the seven major felonies fell with the exception of assault and rape, the latter of which is subject to new reporting requirements under the “Rape is Rape Act.”

And in early April, Adams announced fewer first-quarter shootings than in any recorded quarter since the NYPD launched its data tracking system, Compstat, in the 1990s.

Murders were at their second-lowest rate over the same time period. And other than during the pandemic, the city saw its lowest first-quarter transit crime numbers — following two consecutive years of declines — under its modern record-keeping system.

“[Six] straight months of crime reduction is due to the tireless work of the men and women who put that blue uniform on every day and protect the people of this city,” Adams said when announcing those statistics. “This is how you raise healthy children and families in a safe environment.”

An NYPD spokesperson said the department has also dramatically upped enforcement under the mayor’s watch: Arrests increased from 155,506 at the end of 2021 to 260,501 at the end of last year, a nearly 70 percent spike. Lower level summonses went up by around 225 percent over the same time period. Adams also frequently touts his administration’s work to seize illegal firearms.

Hampering further progress, the mayor’s team argues, are 2019 changes to state bail and discovery laws that continue to reverberate today.

“Make no mistake, these massive strides have been made thanks to the Adams administration’s dedication to public safety and in spite of countless issues within our current criminal justice system, which has produced a revolving door of repeat offenders,” Mamelak Altus said in a statement.

Recidivism’s role in the city’s rising crime rate is difficult to pin down.

The NYPD provided statistics tracking recidivists for six types of crimes before and after bail reform. During the first quarter of 2018, around 2,500 people were arrested more than three times for the same crime. In the first quarter of this year, that number grew to more than 4,500, an increase of 73 percent.

Yet the NYPD would not say how many crimes these people allegedly committed.

In the first quarter of this year, for example, there were around 2,500 shoplifting recidivists, per the city’s numbers, but more than 100,000 shoplifting incidents.

Some criminal justice reform advocates dispute that the 2019 state laws have significantly driven up crime, further clouding the picture the mayor is trying to paint.

Advocates from the New York Civil Liberties Union, for example, said the increased crime numbers are inflated by more aggressive policing and increased arrests — including collars for minor crimes that affect quality of life.

“It’s typically the neighborhoods that are Black and Latino where you see disproportionate enforcement of low level offenses,” said executive director Donna Lieberman. “When you put police on the street, they tend to make more arrests, not because there’s more crime, but because they’re making more arrests.”

Regardless of the cause, candidates looking to deny Adams a second term in this year’s mayoral election have taken notice of voter concerns.

As polls have found public safety to be among the electorate’s major concerns, left-leaning candidates have moderated their previous stances on policing.

Besides Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, most Democratic candidates are planning to increase NYPD headcount. And City Comptroller Brad Lander, who once voted against a City Council budget because it didn’t sufficiently defund the NYPD, has pledged to keep Tisch, the no-nonsense Adams appointee who has readily railed against bail reform.

Frontrunner Andrew Cuomo, meanwhile, has leaned into voters’ public safety fears, painting a portrait of a city in dire straits.

The reality is more complicated.

Not every borough and neighborhood in New York City is equally safe. The Bronx continues to have the city’s highest murder rate, for instance. But overall, New Yorkers had a 1.3 in 10 million daily chance of being a murder victim and a 10 in 1 million chance of being assaulted in 2024, according to Vital City. The murder rate of Los Angeles — the second most populous city in America — is almost double that of the five boroughs.

“The average New Yorker would believe that they’re living in a city that is out of control — that is not the reality,” Adams said earlier this year. “We know that we are doing a good job in fighting crime, as the numbers would show.”

Disrespects Those Who Sacrificed

Trump’s New World War II Celebration Disrespects Those Who Sacrificed for Victory

By ignoring the thousands who died in the Pacific, Trump shortchanges history and deprives us of lessons we need to learn.

Opinion by Jonathan Horn

In May 1945, spring had only recently arrived at the remote prison in Manchuria, where the Japanese kept their highest-ranking American prisoner, Army General Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright IV. During the three years since he had surrendered the Philippines for fear the Japanese would have massacred what remained of his garrison, Wainwright had endured beatings, starvation and temperatures as low as minus 49 degrees. The pain from an old lower back injury he aggravated during the second week of that month would become so debilitating he had no idea whether he would survive a war he feared might last at least two more winters.

News of Germany’s surrender that same week did not reach Wainwright and, even if it had, would have brought no end to his struggle. “If this keeps up, I know I can’t survive. Thin and weak as I am and no proper food, I doubt if I can endure this pain for any long period of time,” Wainwright wrote in his diary more than a month later on June 19.

Wainwright’s prison diary — which now resides at an Army archive in Carlisle, Pennsylvania — offers a poignant rebuke of President Trump’s plan to rebrand Victory in Europe Day, marking the surrender of Germany on May 8, into something called “Victory Day for World War II.” As every high school student should know, World War II did not end until Japan finally surrendered four months and two atomic bombs later.

The president argues the revision is necessary because Americans have forgotten how to celebrate their history. “We never celebrate anything,” he wrote on the social media platform Truth Social. “That’s because we don’t have leaders anymore, that know how to do so!” Apparently not, as Trump has unwittingly proved by issuing an official proclamation for his newly named holiday and making no mention of the war in the Pacific or the more than one hundred thousand Americans who died in that theater.

If this is what the president meant when he issued an executive order promising to restore “patriotism” to history classrooms, he has the concept exactly backwards. By skipping ahead to the part of the story where the United States achieves ultimate victory, the president does not celebrate America’s achievements but diminishes them.

By contrast, Trump’s predecessor Harry Truman knew exactly how Americans should celebrate the original V-E Day: by rededicating themselves to the task of achieving victory in the Pacific. “We can repay the debt which we owe to our God, to our dead, and to our children, only by

work, by ceaseless devotion to the responsibilities which lie ahead of us,” Truman said. “If I could give you a single watchword for the coming months, that word is work, work, and more work. We must work to finish the war. Our victory is only half over.”

To prematurely celebrate the anniversary of America’s final victory in the largest war ever fought is to insult those who heeded Truman’s call: the Americans still battling for an island called Okinawa; the servicemembers preparing to redeploy from Europe for the Pacific; the generals planning a massive invasion of Japan’s main islands of Kyushu in the fall of 1945 and Honshu in early 1946; the policymakers trying to predict how many thousands of Americans would die in these operations; and the scientists racing to test an atom bomb that would upend all these calculations by persuading an enemy that didn’t believe in surrender to do so.

Even Americans with the best sources of information could not know how the war might end, but Wainwright, like his fellow prisoners of war, had only the worst sources — that is, the occasional tidbit from prison guards in Manchuria, where he received no letters, newspapers or other sources information from the outside world. Nevertheless, Wainwright tried his best to guess when the war would end and arrived at an estimate of no earlier than 1947.

By June of 1945, he had good reason to doubt whether he would live to see it. The pain from the injury to a joint between his lower back and pelvis had become so severe that he could neither rise from bed nor fall asleep. “It is very bad, and seems to get worse,” he wrote.

A man who had never known desperate odds before might have given up, but Wainwright was not such a man. Even when his commanding general, Douglas MacArthur, had received orders to escape the Philippines after the Japanese invaded the archipelago at the start of World War II, Wainwright had made a vow to stay and share the fate of the tens of thousands of starving and besieged American and Filipino forces fighting together under the United States flag. The memory of the doomed five-month stand that he had made with them gave him the fortitude he needed to confront adversity again in Manchuria.

“I will make a fight for life, as I fought against overwhelming odds in the Philippine Islands,” Wainwright wrote in his diary. “No one called me yellow then, and, by God, I won’t be now.”

There is a much-needed lesson in these words for Trump. Through his thoughtless attempt to abridge the end of World War II so as to make it easier to celebrate, he would cheat Americans of a richer and more valuable inheritance: the story of the full measure necessary to achieve victory in both Europe and the Pacific and a reminder that at no point before was the outcome ever guaranteed. Until the end, it had required struggle and sacrifice.

Trump likes to talk only about winning. But when the moment of supreme triumph finally came in the Pacific on September 2, 1945, the organizers of the ceremony aboard the USS Missouri made certain to include a reminder of the hardships and humiliations America had endured along the way. If Trump looks at photographs, he will see MacArthur signing the instrument of surrender and, behind him, an emaciated general: the newly liberated Wainwright. His war had finally ended. And so had America’s.

At a time when freedom and democracy face new threats — and the outcome once again looks far from assured — let Americans mark the 80th anniversary of V-E Day, as their forebears at the time marked the original, by vowing to carry on the cause for which so many sacrificed so much.

Bigger threat to UK than terrorists

Donald Trump is bigger threat to UK than terrorists, some Brits think

Almost a quarter of Brits thought the U.S. president is the biggest risk to national security — second only to Russia.

By Noah Keate

Some Brits believe Donald Trump is a bigger threat to U.K. national security than terrorist organizations, new polling released Thursday showed.

A Good Growth Foundation report found 24 percent of Brits thought the U.S. president was the biggest threat to national security interests compared to 22 percent for terrorist organizations. Trump was second only to Russia on 34 percent.

JL Partners polled 2,209 adults in Great Britain between March 14 and 19, including an oversample of 222 Labour to Reform UK switchers.

The polling also showed almost half of Brits thought Trump would worsen the U.K. economy (47 percent) while 45 percent thought the president would damage Britain’s safety and security.

Nearly three in 10 (29 percent) voters also said one of the worst things about Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who achieved a successful set of local election results last week, was his closeness to Trump.

The U.S. president has repeatedly polled poorly with British voters and protests are expected ahead of his second state visit.

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has repeatedly stressed his government would not choose between good relations with the U.S. or EU, while the White House is poised to announce a trade agreement with Britain on Thursday.

However, the report showed 62 percent of all Britons, including two-thirds (67 percent) of Labour’s 2024 voters and 60 percent of Labour Leave voters, backed joining forces with the EU against “unpredictable partners” in a forced choice against doubling down on U.S. relations.

Exactly half (50 percent) of Labour to Reform UK switchers saw the EU as the U.K.’s most trustworthy ally, with 75 percent of them supporting “some” or “a lot” of cooperation on trade and the economy.

Trying to Put a Guy in Jail

Ed Martin Called Jan. 6 ‘Mardi Gras.’ Now He’s Trying to Put a Guy in Jail for a Nonviolent Protest.

Jan. 6 looms large in a case against a nonviolent demonstrator.

By Michael Schaffer

Donald Trump’s Justice Department is trying to jail a guy for trespassing on federal property in order to mount an illegal protest — a nonviolent version of what the president pardoned 1,500 people for doing.

And the case is being handled by the office of interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, the Trump ally who once represented Jan. 6 defendants and described the day as “Mardi Gras in D.C.” On taking office, Martin summarily demoted veteran prosecutors who pursued Jan. 6 cases, part of a controversial record that this week has suddenly put his nomination in jeopardy.

Now this little-noticed prosecution looks likely to become a test of whether Trump’s pardons have created new legal defenses for people who get arrested at Washington demonstrations.

I spoke to a half-dozen lawyers who have worked both sides of protest arrests and they all said the legacy of Jan. 6 is likely to shape future proceedings, either in court or in the minds of jurors. The defendant’s own attorney, Robert Haferd, signaled the strategy when he said in an interview: “Why is this harmless, conscientious, respectful, nonviolent, organized demonstration being prosecuted seeking a conviction when, on the other hand, other violent, disgraceful mob-style vigilantism is being pardoned?”

Indeed, when marauding rioters get off scot free, it has a way of changing the culture for everyone.

The specifics of the case are laughably mild: According to charging documents, a longtime activist named Adam Eidinger was among a group that went to the front steps of the National Archives on Jan. 10, climbed ladders to the top of its Corinthian columns and raised a 40-foot banner urging then-President Joe Biden to recognize the Equal Rights Amendment.

After police arrived, six demonstrators were arrested for unlawful entry, similar to the charge that faced 95 percent of Jan. 6 participants. The arrests happened without incident; the activists never went inside the building. “I followed all orders” from law enforcement, Eidinger told me. There were no tasers, bear-spray canisters or purloined metal barriers involved.

In a Washington still haunted by images of a frenzied pro-Trump mob beating up cops and trashing the Capitol, this isn’t exactly the stuff of nightmares. In short order, the offending banner was gone, the original one was back and there was no indication that anything had happened. If Jan. 6 was Mardi Gras, the Archives incident was a sleepy Sunday morning in Lent.

And yet Eidinger, unlike the pardoned mob that stormed the Capitol, still faces the possibility of jail time for this much more sedate stunt just a few blocks away.

In February, Martin’s office let the other arrestees take deferred-prosecution deals that should lead to dropped charges, a common outcome for arrests at demonstrations. Eidinger, with a record of left-wing protests and civil-disobedience arrests, didn’t get the deal. He goes to trial in October.

“It doesn’t seem fair on multiple levels,” Eidinger told me. “I’m a peaceful demonstrator, I haven’t been violent ever, and I wasn’t even the one hanging the banner. Just because you’re in the presence of a demonstration doesn’t mean you’re criminally liable for what others are doing. I find it ironic that the guy who made the same argument on behalf of so many people is now pursuing the case against me.”

The U.S. Attorney’s office declined comment about Eidinger’s case and whether Martin’s Jan. 6 record could imperil a prosecution.

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The office may have bigger concerns at the moment: Martin, who is serving in an interim capacity, must be confirmed by the Senate before May 20. His prospects have suddenly become iffy, with Democrats demanding a hearing in order to ask about an array of controversies that have dogged the prosecutor’s brief tenure. Though Trump on Monday made a lengthy Truth Social post lobbying for Martin, North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis on Tuesday announced that he would not vote to confirm the nominee, citing Jan 6.

In fact, the question of how the Jan. 6 pardons affect criminal prosecutions is going to be with us for a while, and not just in cases involving people like Eidinger, a relentless activist who over the years has thrown himself into issues ranging from decriminalizing marijuana to blocking public stadium funding.

Since the dawn of the republic, people have made their way to Washington to protest. And some portion of those people have gotten themselves arrested. The charges often get dropped, but for those who actually face trial, the pardons are going to be an awfully useful rhetorical device.

“There are those in higher levels of law enforcement authority who are celebrating and countenancing and supporting a violent attack on the Capitol, and have no problem with that, and yet wish to bring the entire force of the state to bear on nonviolent protesters,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a longtime lawyer for free-speech causes and activists in Washington. “I think people would use it to show the nature of the prosecution, that it’s an ideological prosecution.”

Alyse Adamson, a former D.C. prosecutor, said she expected that prosecutors would try to keep Jan. 6 from coming up in a trial, raising objections that invoking the assault could inflame the jury’s emotions. But she said that defense attorneys would still lean heavily on it in pretrial motions, perhaps by noting the administration’s warm treatment of the rioters. “I would say, ‘Your honor … why is my client not being treated the same?’”

Even if a judge puts the kibosh on courtroom invocations of the insurrection, it’s pretty hard to erase memories of that day. A savvy lawyer can conjure them without overtly discussing Trump’s pardons or the U.S. Attorney’s praise of Jan. 6. “There are ways to present this case that will allow the jury to see those parallels,” Adamson said. “They can say, ‘What my client did is nonviolent,’ without even having to mention Ed Martin. If a skillful defense attorney finds a way to powerfully contextualize what his guy did, it could invite jury nullification.”

As a veteran of the office Martin now runs, Adamson views jury nullification as a terrible outcome. But it may be an inevitable byproduct of the administration’s Jan 6 actions. To use a phrase once favored by law-and-order pols, we’ve defined deviancy down. That’ll make it hard to bust others for anything similar. And it’ll make it especially hard to convict them for something so much less frightening, like helping hang an ERA banner at the Archives.

So far, there aren’t a lot of test cases. D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department estimates that only a couple of dozen people have been arrested at protests this year; the U.S. Capitol Police says there are a few hundred protest arrests annually, usually for the charge of “crowding, obstructing and incommoding.” Most of those cases, including last week’s arrest of activist minister William Barber during a “Moral Monday” protest that blocked the Rotunda, wind up with a “post and forfeit” situation. That’s the equivalent of a ticket with no further proceedings.

As for Eidinger, he said he would have taken the deferred-prosecution deal given to his compatriots. And he said he’s not looking forward to the six months of jail time he could face in the event that he’s convicted by a jury.

But he did say he was happy with how the protest turned out. Soon afterward, Biden announced that he agreed that the ERA had indeed been legitimately ratified by enough states to become the 28th Amendment. Of course, a couple days after that, the Trump administration was in office, and it doesn’t agree with the interpretation. The matter will likely be settled by a court.

Ironically, Martin himself got his political start as a close aide to conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, who rose to fame in the 1970s as the face of opposition to the very same amendment.

“I have never been involved in a demonstration that had such a response from the White House,” Eidinger said. “It’s taken over 100 years to get this amendment in. We’re part of the story now.”

2024 message

House Democrat starts ‘abundance movement’-inspired caucus

It comes amid a broader conversation in the party about its post-2024 message and the failures of governance in blue states and cities.

By Nicholas Wu and Holly Otterbein

House Democrats are getting Ezra Klein-pilled.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Rep. Josh Harder (D-Calif.) is launching a new roughly 30-member bloc that’s claiming inspiration from the “abundance movement” championed by the liberal commentator Klein.

“This is a moment that has been building for a while,” said Harder. “I think there’s been a lot of simmering interest in permitting reform and making sure that things are built faster, better, cheaper. But now, I think over the past year or so, it’s really reached a boiling point on both sides.”

It’s the latest sign that some Democrats see the abundance movement’s ideas — something that sprung up around Klein’s book “Abundance” co-authored with Atlantic writer Derek Thompson — as a solution to the party’s woes.

The subject is not without its critics. Some progressives have pushed back on the proposals, which they argue fail to focus on what they see as larger problems like the concentration of power.

But in spite of those detractors, Harder said his new caucus has a broad swath of support.

“I think this may be one of the only active bipartisan caucuses doing work that has folks across the ideological rainbow,” Harder said.

The bloc’s emergence comes amid a broader conversation among Democrats about their post-2024 message and potential failure of governance in blue cities and states. Harder said he’d read the book and had been in touch with Klein, who also spoke at the Senate Democrats’ private gathering this week.

In a short interview, Klein said it was “good” that the caucus was forming but that he didn’t know much about it.

Harder said the “Build America Caucus” is set to focus on cutting red tape around energy permitting and housing, and aimed to make recommendations on embedding provisions in must-pass legislation this Congress like the annual defense authorization bill or federal surface transportation legislation.

But with congressional Republicans currently pursuing a party-line policy megabill, it’s not clear how much of an appetite for bipartisan dealmaking exists in Washington at the moment.

Harder, who represents a district around Stockton, California, cited his frustrations with the cost overruns and delays associated with marquee Democratic projects, including his state’s high-speed rail project and the rollout of funding from the bipartisan infrastructure and climate law signed by former President Joe Biden.

“I think voters want to see action, and I think we need a government that actually works and actually delivers the services that people are voting for,” Harder said.

Progressives to run for office

Bernie Sanders partners with Run for Something to train candidates

The Vermont senator is adding organizational heft to his appeal for progressives to run for office.

By Holly Otterbein

Bernie Sanders, who has been calling for progressives to run for office on his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, is putting more organizational muscle behind his appeal.

The Vermont senator is teaming up with the liberal group Run for Something and other outside organizations to provide support to potential candidates, according to plans shared first with POLITICO. The effort, if successful, could help push the party at least incrementally in Sanders’ direction. And it is almost certain to draw the ire of some Democrats, as Sanders and some of his allies help both Democrats and independents run for office.

More than 5,000 people have signed up with Sanders’ operation to explore campaigns, his team said.

“We want to make sure that we’re not just going into these spaces and holding rallies and disappearing, and we’re not just asking people to run for office,” said Jeremy Slevin, a top Sanders adviser. “We’re giving them the tools they need to actually do it.”

Sanders has long encouraged people to run for office, but some progressives in his orbit have complained in the past that he hasn’t done enough to prepare those in his movement for a post-Sanders future. Sanders, who is 83, appears to be attempting to burnish that part of his legacy, including by touring the country recently with younger progressives and populists such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.).

“It is really exciting to see Bernie model bringing in a new generation of leaders for all other older Democrats,” said Amanda Litman, president of Run for Something. She argued that “it is not enough to just be at the front — you got to build power that sticks behind you.”

Sanders sent an email to his supporters recruiting candidates and held a Zoom call with people who are eyeing a run. Potential contenders 40 and under are being connected with Run for Something, which focuses on younger candidates, while others are working with the organizations Contest Every Race and National Democratic Training Committee, Sanders’ team said.

Slevin said the groups will provide candidates “with resources and trainings of how to file, how to hire a staff, how to set fundraising deadlines and comms goals — basically, how to run a campaign.”

Sanders has openly encouraged both Democrats and left-leaning independents to run for office, and a questionnaire from his team asked potential candidates which of the two they consider themselves.

Litman said that all candidates in her organization’s pipeline, regardless of party, have access to resources. Run for Something currently endorses Democratic candidates only. But she said that the group is weighing changing that to include independents, as a growing number of Democrats and liberal strategists consider whether shedding the party label could help some candidates in battleground and red states.

“We’re considering it because there’s certainly some places where it might be a more valuable way to move forward,” said Litman. “I actually don’t know where we’ll land.”

Cry little fucking pussies....

‘Funny way to treat your friends’: Republicans miffed with Trump’s threats to ignore funding

A senior White House official said withholding federal cash is always on “the table” if Trump disagrees with Congress’ funding bills.

By Jennifer Scholtes and Katherine Tully-McManus

Republican appropriators are alarmed that the White House is open to unilaterally freezing cash Congress could approve in September, if lawmakers overshoot President Donald Trump’s latest budget request.

It marks a shift for top Republicans in charge of writing government funding bills, who have largely hesitated to speak too harshly against the president’s funding freezes this year.

As defense hawks on Capitol Hill demand far more funding than Trump is seeking for the military, the president’s willingness to withhold congressionally approved cash — known as “impoundment” — is widening the rift between the White House and GOP lawmakers ahead of the fall fiscal cliff and increasing worries of a government shutdown.

“I’ve got a real problem with impoundment,” Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who chairs the House Appropriations panel that funds the EPA and the Interior Department, told reporters this week.

“That’s like a line-item veto, and I think it’s illegal,” Simpson said. “That will be a challenge, for sure.”

Withholding federal money is nothing new for Trump, who has spent months freezing billions of dollars signed into law on former President Joe Biden’s watch despite lawsuits challenging the tactic. It goes back even further, with Trump’s impeachment in 2018 tied in large part to his decision to hold back military aid to Ukraine. But it would be considered far more radical for the president to defy congressional leaders from his own party by locking up congressionally approved funding after nine months of total GOP control in Washington.

Several senior Republicans decried Trump’s budget proposal last week to keep the military’s funding flat in the upcoming fiscal year while piling on $150 billion more through the party-line package Republican leaders are endeavoring to pass this summer, which is far from guaranteed.

Asked during a call with reporters what Trump would do if lawmakers approve more military funding, a senior official with the Office of Management and Budget said impounding federal cash is always an option.

“Obviously, we have never taken impoundment off the table, because the president and myself believe that 200 years of the president and Executive Branch had that ability,” said the OMB official. “But we’re working with Congress to see what they will pass, and I believe that they have an interest in passing cuts.”

Republican appropriators will soon embark on writing the dozen funding bills for fiscal 2026, which starts in October. Traditionally, they consider a president’s budget request a mere suggestion for how to craft those measures, throwing around the old saying: “The president proposes, Congress disposes.”

That principle would be upended, however, if the White House withholds funding in excess of the budget request, rather than just using the threat of impoundment to influence Congress’ funding decisions.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said he understood the White House’s strategy: “If I were them, I would too,” he said of the administration’s leveraging of the threat of impoundment.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capitol (R-W.V.), a top Senate appropriator and a member of GOP leadership, wasn’t so sure.

“I mean, if that’s a pressure campaign, I get that,” she said this week. “If that’s reality, I think that there’s some fundamental questions there. So that kind of surprises me, actually.”

Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), another senior appropriator, had a similar reaction to the White House leaving open the possibility of withholding funding that the Republican-led Congress clears in the coming months.

“That’s a funny way to treat your friends,” he said in an interview.

The threat of impoundment could undermine the foundation of bipartisan funding negotiations, with Democrats arguing that it’s useless to negotiate if Trump isn’t going to spend the money as Congress prescribes.

Republicans need Democratic votes to pass their funding bills in the Senate. And with less than five months to go until the next shutdown deadline, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — who was derided earlier this year for helping pass a Republican-crafted funding package — is now under pressure to at least fend off Trump’s desire for Congress to cut non-defense programs by more than 20 percent.

At least one Republican, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, said he wasn’t surprised by how things are playing out. He predicted that Trump’s ultimate objective is to get the nation’s highest court to rule that the 51-year-old impoundment law is unconstitutional.

“I think the goal is the Supreme Court,” said Paul, who publicly told a top official from the White House budget office last month that he doesn’t think Trump “can impound direct funds indefinitely” under the Impoundment Control Act.

“It’s a reasonable question to ask. And it’s never been all the way to the Supreme Court,” Paul, a staunch advocate of limited government, said this week. “And of course, everybody has to adhere to what the final decision will be.”

€100B counterstrike

EU takes aim at US planes, autos in €100B counterstrike against Trump tariffs

Brussels moves ahead with its retaliation, conceding its transatlantic ties with Washington may be beyond repair.

By Camille Gijs, Koen Verhelst and Giovanna Coi

The European Union upped the pressure Thursday in its trade dispute with U.S. President Donald Trump by proposing potential tariffs on nearly €100 billion of imports — including big-ticket items like aircraft.

The lists include includes passenger cars, medical devices, chemicals and plastics, and a slew of agricultural products. Also back on the list are bourbon and other spirits, after wine-producing nations France and Italy pressured the Commission to remove them fearing Trump’s wrath. 

These are part of a 200-page catalog of more than 4,800 goods compiled by EU trade officials in response to Trump’s imposition last month of “reciprocal” tariffs as well as tariffs on EU cars. EU imports of these items exceeded €109 billion in 2024 according to Eurostat — aircraft are the biggest at more than €13 billion followed by autos at €7 billion.

The EU is also considering restricting exports of scrap steel and chemical products worth €4.4 billion. 

And, in a parallel measure, Brussels would launch a dispute at the World Trade Organization over Trump’s imposition of so-called reciprocal tariffs, as well as tariffs on cars and car parts. It is not clear yet when Brussels will officially start the case. 

The real objective remains “negotiated outcomes with the US,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. “At the same time, we continue preparing for all possibilities, and the consultation launched today will help guide us in this necessary work”.

No way back

The European Commission is moving ahead with the new lists because it has realized there won’t be a return to the status quo in its relations with Washington. 

Trump hit Europe on April 2 with 20 percent “reciprocal” tariffs on most goods, before dialing them back a week later to the 10 percent he had imposed on most countries, as stock and bond markets panicked over the hit to U.S. growth and prices they would cause.  

It however expects the Trump administration to have more flexibility on lowering the 10 percent U.S. baseline tariff, while the levies on cars, steel and aluminum are likely to stay as it pursues its “reindustrialization strategy goal,” a senior European Commission official said. 

“If we don’t get down from 10 percent, there’s no negotiation, no deal,” they added. 

The lineup is subject to change, as businesses and EU countries will have until June 10 to provide feedback and advocate for sensitive goods to be removed from the list to avoid being caught in Trump’s reprisals. 

This happened when the Commission in April consulted with EU capitals for its retaliation against Trump’s earlier steel and aluminum tariffs, with bourbon whiskey being removed at the request of France, Italy and Ireland. In the end, these measures were announced, but not implemented, as Trump suspended the reciprocal tariffs.

The threatened EU tariffs on aircraft would deal a heavy blow against Boeing, the troubled U.S. plane maker, and could reignite a long-running transatlantic subsidy dispute that was laid to rest after Trump’s first term. 

“Boeing is very welcome to reply,” added the senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The total value of the listed products is much lower than the €379 billion of EU exports that is affected by U.S. tariffs. A second senior Commission official said Brussels had shown some restraint, “to not shoot ourselves in the foot. We want to be prudent,” to avoid a spiralling tit-for-tat dynamic that would ultimately “hurt our industry.”

The list adds to the bloc’s existing retaliation tactics, after several high-level meetings between Brussels and Washington failed to ease soaring trade tensions. In addition to its 10 percent charge on imports of most EU goods, Washington collects 25 percent levies on cars, steel and aluminum. 

The Trump administration is also investigating sectors like pharmaceuticals, trucks, lumber and semiconductors. The higher “reciprocal” tariff of 20 percent would kick back in from early July if no transatlantic deal is reached.

$60B farm bill

House Republicans eye adding $60B farm bill package in Trump megabill

Senior Republicans want to pay for it by shifting some SNAP food aid benefit costs to states for the first time.

Meredith Lee Hill

House Republicans are aiming to add $60 billion in farm bill programs to the agriculture portion of the GOP’s megabill. But they’ll have to convince several centrist holdouts to vote for a controversial proposal that pushes some food aid costs onto states in order to do it.

The proposed farm bill safety net package includes roughly $50 billion for crop reference prices, as well as money for crop insurance, dairy, livestock biosecurity, export trade promotion and so-called farm bill orphan programs, according to two people with direct knowledge of the talks.

Senior Republicans want to pay for that additional farm bill piece of the package by shifting some federal spending for food aid benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to states for the first time. But they’re still awaiting an official estimate from the Congressional Budget Office on the cost-share plan that will determine the size of the farm bill package and whether the panel can reach the $230 billion in spending cuts it’s responsible for, given deep opposition from hard-liners for any unpaid for pieces of the megabill.

Still, panel Republicans argue they need to include the new funding given the formal, traditionally bipartisan farm bill has been long-delayed amid partisan fights. Senate Republicans, however, are privately skeptical the package can survive the Senate, where Republicans are already vowing to kill off much of the SNAP cost-share plan.

Backlash from centrists and other lawmakers has already forced Agriculture panel Republicans to alter their original cost-sharing plan by skewing the financial burden to states with higher payment error rates, which includes red states like Alaska and South Carolina. Last week, GOP leaders had to delay the Agriculture panel’s initial expected markup.

Some Republicans are still uneasy even with the reworked plan. GOP Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska, Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin, Zach Nunn of Iowa and other more at-risk Republicans have all raised concerns about House Republicans’ plans triggering benefit cuts across SNAP and Medicaid.

But on Thursday, Bacon said forcing Republicans to revise the plan to push just 10 percent of SNAP costs to states with lower error rates was “a victory.”

Time is running out to get remaining holdouts onboard. The Agriculture panel has locked in its markup for President Donald Trump’s megabill for Tuesday.

“Chairman [G.T.] Thompson [R-Pa.] has not been shy that all options are on the table to secure a stronger safety net for our hardworking farmers,” committee spokesperson Ben Goldey said.

Fatty Fat Boy

Fat turd

 

Why does the government support religion?

Supreme Court likely to side with Catholic Charities seeking exemption from state taxes

By John Fritze

The Supreme Court signaled Monday it is poised to side with Catholic Charities in a dispute over whether religiously affiliated groups are entitled to an exemption from certain state taxes, a decision that could expand the types of groups that would receive a break under the First Amendment.

After nearly two hours of oral arguments, it was clear that even some of the court’s liberal justices had concerns with a decision from Wisconsin’s highest court that drew a line between groups that teach religious doctrine and those, like Catholic Charities, that do not proselyte to beneficiaries.

“There are lots of hard questions in this area,” said Justice Elena Kagan, a member of the court’s liberal wing. “But I thought it was pretty fundamental that we don’t treat some religions better than other religions and we certainly don’t do it based on the contents of the religious doctrine that those religions preach.”

Critics say Catholic Charities’ position could jeopardize unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands people who work at religiously affiliated organizations.

In the first religion-centered appeal the 6-3 conservative Supreme Court has heard in nearly two years, the Catholic Charities Bureau and four affiliate organizations say Wisconsin violated the First Amendment’s religious protections by denying exemptions from the state’s unemployment taxes. Churches already receive that exemption and so the question for the justices was in essence whether religiously affiliated entities that don’t teach religion should also qualify.

But that sort of analysis, Catholic Charities warned, requires the state to address philosophical questions about the meaning of religion – the kind of inquiry federal courts usually avoid. That argument appeared to resonate with many on the court.

“Isn’t it a fundamental premise of our First Amendment that the state shouldn’t be picking and choosing between religions?” Justice Neil Gorsuch, a member of the court’s conservative wing said. “Doesn’t it entangle the state tremendously when it has to go into a soup kitchen – send an inspector in – to see how much prayer is going on?”

The conservative justices in recent years have blurred the line that once clearly separated church from state. They have done so on the theory that some government efforts intended to comply with the First Amendment’s establishment clause have been overbroad and discriminated against religion.

The court has expanded the circumstances under which taxpayer money may fund religious schools, for instance, it allowed a public high school football coach to pray on the 50-yard line and ruled that Boston could not block a Christian group from raising a flag at City Hall.

A decision, expected by the end of June, could have broad implications if it sweeps widely enough to cover other religiously affiliated organizations, such as hospitals. It may also limit the government’s ability to look behind the pulpit to assess whether groups are, in fact, religious or only claiming to be in order to avoid taxes.

“Taking religious organizations at their word on the religiousness of their activities makes it hard for the government to challenge if those activities are actually religious,” said Luís Calderón Gómez, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University who specializes in tax law.

“You open the doors for abuse when you just look at whether there’s a sincerely held belief rather than actually looking at the activity” the business is engaged in, he said.

The Catholic Charities Bureau describes itself as the “social ministry arm of the Diocese of Superior” in Wisconsin and says that it carries out a “wide variety of ministries for the elderly, the disabled, the poor,” and others.

Catholic Charities and the other organizations challenging the state are represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

The group said its employees would continue to have unemployment coverage but that it would be provided by a church-affiliated entity rather than the state. The group’s opponents say employees in other workplaces may not be so lucky.

Forty-seven states and the federal government include exemptions from unemployment taxes for religious organizations similar to Wisconsin’s suggesting the court’s decision could have wide impact.

Approximately 787,000 employees work for six multibillion-dollar Catholic-affiliated health care systems, according to the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which filed a brief supporting the state. The Service Employees International Union, which also backs the state, estimated that more than a million workers are employed by religiously affiliated organizations.

Wisconsin told the Supreme Court that Catholic Charities has participated in its unemployment insurance program without complaint since 1971.

Great......

India and Pakistan are on the brink of wider conflict. Here’s what we know

By Sophia Saifi, Rhea Mogul and Jessie Yeung

India launched military strikes on Pakistan on Wednesday and Pakistan claimed it shot down five Indian Air Force jets, in an escalation that has pushed the two nations to the brink of a wider conflict.

The escalation puts India and Pakistan in dangerous territory, with Islamabad vowing to retaliate against India’s strikes and the international community calling for restraint.

New Delhi said the strikes are in response to the massacre of 26 people – mostly Indian tourists – who died in April when gunmen stormed a scenic mountain spot in the India-administered part of Kashmir, a disputed border region. India has blamed Pakistan for the attack, which Islamabad denies.

Here’s what we know so far.

What happened with India’s strikes?

India launched “Operation Sindoor” in the early hours of Wednesday morning local time (Tuesday night ET) in both Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Indian officials said nine sites were targeted, but claimed no Pakistani civilian, economic or military sites were struck. They said the 25-minute operation targeted “terrorist infrastructure” belonging to two militant groups – Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.

The name ‘Sindoor’ appears to be a reference to the red vermilion, or powder, many Hindu women wear on their foreheads after marriage. The April tourist massacre – which singled out men as victims – left several Indian women widowed.

But Pakistan is painting a different picture of the strikes – saying civilians were killed and mosques were hit. CNN has yet to verify those claims.

A Pakistani military spokesperson said six locations were hit with 24 strikes. Some of those strikes hit the densely populated province of Punjab, Pakistan’s military said, and were the deepest India has struck inside Pakistan since 1971, when the two countries fought one of their four wars.

How did Pakistan respond?

Pakistani security sources claimed they had shot down five Indian Air Force jets and one drone during India’s attack.

They did not say exactly where, or how, the jets were downed – but said three Rafale jets were among those planes. India’s Rafale fighter jets are prized military assets that it bought from France only a few years ago.

India has not confirmed any planes were lost. CNN has not been able to verify the claim and has reached out to India’s government and military for comment.

An eyewitness and local government official said an unidentified aircraft crashed in the village of Wuyan in Indian-administered Kashmir. Photos published by the AFP news agency showed aircraft wreckage lying in a field next to a red-brick building.

It was not immediately clear from the photos who the aircraft belonged to.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Wednesday the country “has every right” to respond, calling India’s actions an “act of war.”

Sharif called on Pakistan’s Armed Forces to “avenge the loss of innocent Pakistani lives,” after an emergency National Security Commitee (NSC) meeting on Wednesday.

How many casualties are there?

At least 26 civilians were killed and 46 injured by India’s strikes, a Pakistani military official told CNN.

Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, a spokesperson for Pakistan’s military, said those killed include teenagers and children – the youngest of whom was three years old.

Twelve civilians in Indian-administered Kashmir were also killed by shelling by Pakistani troops from across the border, a senior Indian defense source told CNN, who added that 57 people had been injured.

What else is happening on the ground?

On Wednesday, the two sides also exchanged shelling and gunfire across the Line of Control (LOC), the de facto border that divides Kashmir.

Authorities in Indian-administered Kashmir have ordered citizens to evacuate from areas deemed dangerous, saying accommodation, food and medicine will be provided.

The strikes have disrupted flights, with Pakistan closing parts of its airspace. Multiple major international airlines are avoiding flying over Pakistan, while several Indian airlines have reported disrupted flights and closed airports in the country’s north.

Some context: There have been regular exchanges of gunfire along the Line of Control in the weeks following the Pahalgam massacre.

What prompted all of this? What is Kashmir?

Muslim-majority Kashmir has been a flashpoint in India-Pakistan relations since both countries gained their independence from Britain in 1947.

The two nations to emerge from the bloody partition of British India – Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan – both claim Kashmir in full and, months after becoming independent, fought their first of three wars over the territory.

The divided region is now one of the most militarized places in the world.

India has long accused Pakistan of harboring militant groups there that conduct attacks across the border, something Islamabad has long denied.

The massacre in the tourist hotspot of Pahalgam in April sparked widespread anger in India, putting heavy pressure on the Hindu-nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

India immediately blamed Islamabad, sparking tit-for-tat retaliatory measures in which both countries downgraded ties, canceled visas for each other’s citizens, and saw India pull out of a key water-sharing treaty.

What could come next?

The three previous wars over Kashmir have each been bloody; the last one in 1999 killed more than a thousand Pakistani troops, by the most conservative estimates.

In the decades since, militant groups have fought Indian security forces, with violence killing tens of thousands. The two countries have clashed multiple times, most recently in 2019 when India conducted airstrikes in Pakistan after it blamed Islamabad for a suicide car bomb attack in the region.

But those recent clashes did not explode into all-out war. Both sides are aware of the risks; since 1999, the two countries have worked to strengthen their militaries, including arming themselves with nuclear weapons.

How is the world reacting?

The strikes have raised global alarm and pleas for the two nations to prevent further escalation.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres voiced “deep concern” over India’s strikes, warning that the world “cannot afford a military confrontation” between the two nations.

The United States – which had urged restraint from both countries last week – said it was “closely monitoring developments,” according to a State Department spokesperson.

“We are aware of the reports, however we have no assessment to offer at this time,” the spokesperson said Tuesday. “This remains an evolving situation, and we are closely monitoring developments.”

The United Arab Emirates, China and Japan have also called for both sides to de-escalate.

A senior Indian government official told CNN that New Delhi had briefed its international counterparts on the steps it had taken – including the US, UAE, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Swerves to insanity....

Trump’s meeting with Carney swerves to claims about hiring at Obama’s presidential center

The president, without basis, claimed that Obama has only hired “DEI” and “woke” people to construct it.

By Ben Johansen

President Donald Trump, veering off course from his Oval Office meeting Tuesday with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, slammed former President Barack Obama over the construction of his presidential center.

When asked by a reporter how long it will take for the Trump administration’s investments to appear in economic data, the president went off topic and claimed, without evidence, that Obama only wants to hire “DEI” and “woke” people to build his center in Chicago, as opposed to “good, hard, tough construction workers that I love.”

“It’s a disaster,” he said. “[Obama] said something to the effect of I only want DEI. I only want woke. He wants woke people to build it. Well, he got woke people. … He’s got a library that’s a disaster.”

Despite Trump’s assertion, Obama’s center will not house a presidential library.

Trump maintained that the center’s construction has “massive cost overruns” and that “the job has stopped,” claims that the Obama Foundation has denied.

In a lawsuit filed earlier this year, one of the project’s African American-owned local subcontractors, II in One, alleged that it was racially discriminated against by one of the main firms involved in the construction, identified as Thornton Tomasetti, according to the Chicago Tribune. But Thornton Tomasetti shot back, alleging that construction costs and delays were actually “all unequivocally driven by the underperformance and inexperience” of that subcontractor.

The center’s construction faced legal challenges over its plans to build in a public Chicago park, and as The Wall Street Journal reported in 2021, its delays have “set a modern record for time between a presidency and completion.”

“Everyone who sees the Obama Presidential Center is blown away by its beauty, scale and the way it will be an economic engine for Chicago and a beacon of hope for the world,” Obama Foundation spokesperson Emily Bittner said in a statement. “We look forward to welcoming all visitors to the 19.3-acre campus next spring, to experience a presidential center that not only honors the Obamas’ legacy but also lifts up the next generation of leaders.”

Trump also offered his assistance to the former president. “I don’t like that happening, because I think it’s bad for the presidency,” he said. “I would love to help him with it.”

Yes, take food from starving children, but give billions to your rich buddies...

House Republicans plan major SNAP food aid overhaul in Trump megabill

Republicans in the last day have altered the most controversial piece of the House Agriculture Committee’s portion of the Trump megabill.

Meredith Lee Hill

House Republicans are preparing one of the largest overhauls to the country’s largest anti-hunger programs in decades, with a plan to limit future increases to benefits, implement new work requirements and push costs to states in a move that risks millions of low-income Americans being removed from the program.

The Agriculture bill has faced delays since last recess amid centrist backlash over the deep food aid spending cuts. But GOP leaders are targeting a markup for next week, May 13 or 14, after deciding late last week to push back this week’s expected meeting, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter.

Republicans in the last day have altered the most controversial piece of the House Agriculture Committee’s portion of the Trump megabill: a plan to force states to pay a portion of benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for the first time. The program helps to feed more than 40 million low-income Americans.

A previous proposal the panel was pursuing would have seen the states’ share of costs reach 25 percent by the end of a 10-year window, while stair-stepping in and not starting until after 2027. Several centrists, including Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and David Valadao (R-Calif.), have raised concerns about the plan. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who represents a more competitive district in Wisconsin, walked out of an Agriculture panel GOP briefing last week over the matter, slinging an insult at staff before he left. Van Orden also stood up in the closed-door House GOP conference meeting to raise concerns about the reworked cost-share proposal, arguing his state was being unfairly penalized. California Rep. Doug LaMalfa later stood up and reiterated the panel needs to reach $230 billion cuts.

White House officials and other Republicans have been wary of the impact on deep red states of the SNAP plans in combination with Medicaid spending cuts. Alaska, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maine, North Carolina, New York, California and a slew of other red and battleground states would be hit hard by the proposal. But White House officials effectively green-lit the proposal in recent days. And the latest plan would skew the financial burden to a raft of red states like Alaska and South Carolina, along with Georgia and Pennsylvania.

The latest plan would phase in for the 2028 fiscal year and skew more of the financial burden to states with higher payment error payment rates while decreasing the percentage of the cost share on states with fewer penalties to start as low as 10 percent, as Republicans were considering amid the backlash.

A spokesperson for Agriculture Committee Republicans declined to comment.

Senior House Republicans say they need the cost-share measure to hit the $230 billion in cuts across the Agriculture panel’s jurisdiction, with the bulk focusing on spending cuts to SNAP.

But beyond the cost-share plan, Agriculture Republicans will increase the age of recipients who need to complete work requirements to receive food aid, reaching so-called able-bodied adults with children age 7 and older for the first time. That move alone is expected to save at least $40 billion, according to projections from the Congressional Budget Office.

Another piece of Republicans’ plan, which has long been panned by Democrats, is to limit future increases to families’ SNAP benefits after a recent Biden-era update created a record increase that shocked Republican lawmakers. Republicans would effectively limit future updates to the Thrifty Food Plan that serves as the basis of SNAP benefits in order to make any future updates cost-neutral and also include a cost-of-living adjustment.

The bill will also crack down on what Republicans say are largely blue-state abuses of waivers that skirt current SNAP rules, including waivers of certain layers of work requirements. And it will end a so-called internet utility loophole from the Biden administration and another loophole associated with the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program that Republicans argue allows states to skirt a standard utility deduction in the SNAP program.

The Agriculture panel is also planning to fit a raft of farm bill program funding into its portion of the megabill, with the goal to pass a smaller, slimmed-down farm bill later this year without major fights over mandatory funding.

One aim is to rescind billions in climate-focused agriculture program dollars from the Biden administration and reinvest it into the farm bill baseline. Agriculture Republicans also want to add tens of billions of dollars for crop reference prices but also trade export promotion, livestock biosecurity, additional so-called orphan programs and more pieces that represent mandatory funding to the GOP package. But some Republicans are skeptical GOP leaders will accept such a tall order, especially with hard-line House fiscal hawks deeply opposed to such spending and time running out.

“It’s still gotta math,” hard-liner Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) warned Tuesday morning. “Now they want to add more?”