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Get Smarter Today About: The Senate is less enthusiastic about the “big, beautiful” budget bill; RFK Jr changes COVID vaccination recommendations; and Trump throws more tariff darts.
Warm Up Those Brains…
►House Republicans narrowly passed their budget and immigration funding bill last week before leaving town for a 9-day recess. But as The Washington Post explains, President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” could have a tougher road to passage in the Senate:
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) can lose no more than three Republican votes because no Democrat is expected to support it — and more than three Republicans have voiced serious concerns with the bill.
Some of them have balked at the spending cuts the House included in its version. Others are pushing for much more aggressive cuts. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has vowed to oppose the bill unless Republicans strip out a provision to raise the debt limit by trillions of dollars.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has pleaded for senators to revise the bill as little as possible, but Trump said Sunday that he expected the Senate to make “fairly significant” changes. Thune will need to rework it to reflect Senate Republicans’ concerns and include their priorities — without tearing it up so much that it can’t pass the House again once it clears the Senate.
Senate Republicans have broadly targeted July 4 as a deadline to finish the bill, but that may be overly-optimistic.
► While House Republicans wait for the Senate to act on their legislation that would gut Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps), they’re having trouble explaining the problems they created for millions of Americans in order to fund tax cuts for rich people. From Huff Post:
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) says Republicans aren’t actually cutting anyone’s federal health or food benefits in President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax bill — a plan that slashes $1 trillion from Medicaid and food assistance programs.
“I want to be super clear: When these Democrats have been lying to you, saying we’re cutting Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP benefits, that we’re going to cut all of these other programs — they’re lying,” Van Orden said Thursday on a Wisconsin-based podcast, “The Meg Ellefson Show” on WSAU.
“We did this early enough so that folks are going to understand that we’re telling the truth. It’s fantastic,” said Van Orden. “I want anybody in my district to call me if their benefits have been dropped by a nickel. Not gonna happen.”
It’s not clear what the GOP congressman is talking about. Trump’s hugely consequential tax and spending bill, which House Republicans passed Thursday and sent to the Senate, represents the largest upward transfer of wealth in U.S. history. It cuts $1 trillion from federal health and food programs to help pay for $4 trillion in new tax cuts to rich people.
The effects of this bill, if it became law, would be devastating for millions of low-income people who rely on Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the food stamps program. The bill would kick an estimated 8 million people off of health insurance. [Pols emphasis]
Who you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?
► President Trump’s on-again/off-again Tariff War is on again…or maybe off? As The Associated Press reported on Friday:
President Donald Trump on Friday threatened a 50% tax on all imports from the European Union as well a 25% tariff on smartphones unless those products are made in America.
The threats, delivered over social media, reflect Trump’s ability to disrupt the global economy with a burst of typing, as well as the reality that his tariffs have yet to produce the trade deals he is seeking or the return of domestic manufacturing he has promised voters.
The Republican president said he wants to charge higher import taxes on goods from the EU, a longstanding US ally, than from China, a geopolitical rival that had its tariffs cut to 30% this month so Washington and Beijing could hold negotiations. Trump was upset by the lack of progress in trade talks with the EU, which has proposed mutually cutting tariffs to zero even as the president has publicly insisted on preserving a baseline 10% tax on most imports.
But then — SURPRISE!!! — Trump changed his mind. As NBC News reports today:
Stocks climbed Tuesday after President Donald Trump said he was resetting a deadline for imposing tariffs on the European Union…
…Trump’s decision to delay a deadline on European Union trade talks lifted sentiment, even as he has shown a willingness to upend his trade policies on the fly. On Sunday, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform he had restored the date he would impose fresh tariffs on the E.U. to the previous deadline of July 9. Two days earlier, Trump threatened to hit the region with a 50% across-the-board tariff June 1, citing stalled trade negotiations.
The E.U.’s trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, spoke with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and said they “continue to stay in constant contact,” according to a post on X.
Trump’s latest E.U. tariff warning, plus a threat to impose a 25% tariff on tech giants like Apple for smartphones produced abroad, sent markets into reverse after a steady period of overall gains in recent weeks.
► Michael Booth of The Colorado Sun looks at how Congressional Republicans have decimated clean energy programs in recent weeks.
► Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr is making major changes on COVID vaccination recommendations. From The Washington Post:
Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday that his agency would no longer recommend the coronavirus vaccine for healthy pregnant women and healthy children — a rare move that bypasses the traditional system of vaccine recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In a 58-second video posted on X, Kennedy said the vaccine had been removed from the CDC’s immunization schedule for those two groups of people.
“I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that as of today the covid vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule,” Kennedy said. “Last year the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another covid shot despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children.”
Currently, the CDC recommends everyone 6 months and older receive the coronavirus vaccine annually.
► The New York Times reports on yet another business in the United States that was doing great until Trump’s Tariff War:
When President Trump temporarily reduced tariffs this month on imports from China from the astronomical level that he had set in March, the stock market soared and economists said a recession was now less likely.
But the emergency is not over for small business owners like Carina Hamel and Robby Ringer who import products from China.
Ms. Hamel and Mr. Ringer’s company, Bivo, sells stainless steel water bottles with a patented nozzle that allows users — think, thirsty cyclists — to gulp drinks quickly. Before Mr. Trump’s tariffs threatened the company’s existence, the founders said, the nearly five-year-old business, run out of a former corset factory in Richmond, Vt., was growing fast and close to becoming profitable.
The drop in tariffs this month to 30 percent from 145 percent on most Chinese goods was a relief but in the way that a flood is better than a tsunami. “Six weeks ago, 30 percent would have shocked the world and been appalling and hard to deal with — and it is now,” Mr. Ringer said.
► Jennifer Brown of The Colorado Sun looks at how services in rural Colorado aren’t keeping up with demand — especially for older residents.
► According to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are now at least 33 extremist and hate groups operating in Colorado. Noelle Phillips of The Denver Post sifts through the data:
The extremist groups in Colorado include anti-government organizations, anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-immigrant groups, white nationalists and sovereign citizens. One organization, Northern Kingdom Prophets, is classified as a hate group…
…Twenty groups on the Colorado list are considered to be involved in anti-government or sovereign citizen movements. Six — mostly based in Colorado Springs — want to suppress the LGBTQ community, three are white supremacist groups and the rest either promote anti-immigrant ideology, run a militia or generate general conspiracy theories.
Last year’s report listed 30 extremist and hate groups operating in Colorado — an increase from 22 in 2019.
► As Trump’s Trade War with China continues, The New York Times looks at the items that Americans buy most often from China — including baby carriages, artificial plans, umbrellas, and filing cabinets.
► Congressman Joe Neguse (D-Boulderish) has introduced legislation to reinstate parks and forest staff fired because of DOGE cuts. From a press release:
As the National Park Service (NPS) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) brace for impact, with public reporting warning additional layoffs are imminent, Congressman Joe Neguse introduced landmark legislation that pushes back against further cuts to the federal workforce and moves to restore adequate staffing levels ahead of the agencies’ busy summer months. The bills, the Protect our Parks Act and Save Our Forests Act, direct administration officials to rehire individuals wrongfully terminated as part of Trump’s DOGE initiative.
Neguse, who serves as Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on Federal Lands, represents some of Colorado’s world-renowned parks and forests, including Rocky Mountain National Park and the Arapaho and Roosevelt and White River National Forests. Since the start of the year, he’s been a vocal opponent of the administration’s full-scale attack on the federal workforce, and his latest effort highlights the dramatic impact of cuts on parks and forests—leaving these shared spaces understaffed and vulnerable, with weakened wildfire prevention, search-and-rescue operations, and maintenance of campgrounds, trails, and restrooms.
“Coloradans are sounding the alarm: the Trump Administration’s federal funding and purging of the workforce have made our national parks and forests less safe and more prone to disaster. This is simply unacceptable,” said Congressman Neguse. “With the summer months fast approaching, we must act to reinstate terminated employees at our land management agencies to protect communities across the West.”
Both the Protect our Parks Act and Save Our Forests Act are co-led by Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (CA-02) and Vice Ranking Member Sarah Elfreth (MD-03), as well as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Forestry and Horticulture, Andrea Salinas (OR-06). They are championed by Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and John Hickenlooper (D-CO) in the United States Senate.
► The City of Denver filed a second lawsuit against the Trump administration, this time over threats to withhold federal transportation funds because of some vague “DEI” nonsense.
► Speaking of lawsuits, Colorado Public Radio, NPR, and two radio stations in Colorado are suing the Trump administration over funding cuts and other restrictions.
► As The Denver Post reports, bars and restaurants in the Denver area are preparing for ICE inspections that could cause massive staffing disruptions.
► The Colorado Nonprofit Association has harsh words for the House Republican budget bill, calling it a “gross overreach.”
► POLITICO looks at how Congressional Republicans are undermining the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which has long worked to root out the kind of waste, fraud, and abuse that these same Republicans claim to be concerned about.
May 27, 2025 11:51 AM UTC
Shhhh…don’t talk about it (lest we jinx things), but it may have stopped raining. Let’s Get More Smarter! 
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