Trump Administration Live Updates: Trump Relays Putin’s Plans to Retaliate Against Ukraine
President Trump said Russia planned to retaliate against Ukraine for its surprise attack over the weekend, after speaking to President Vladimir V. Putin on the phone for more than an hour on Wednesday.
“President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on social media. He described their exchange as a “good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace.” The post briefly disappeared from the site without explanation, then reappeared.
Mr. Trump did not say in the statement if he sought to discourage Mr. Putin from attacking Ukraine. He rather expressed optimism over the prospect of working with Mr. Putin on another foreign policy priority: deterring Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
The White House did not immediately respond to questions inquiring if Mr. Trump had pushed back against Mr. Putin in the phone call or why his Truth Social post had been temporarily deleted.
The post broke a rare, if temporary, silence by Mr. Trump on complex international affairs. The statement was his first about Kyiv’s drone attack on airfields in Russia, a stunning assault that hit nuclear-capable bombers, revealing a significant vulnerability.
In what amounted to a strategic and symbolic blow, Ukraine hid drones across Russia before attacking airfields in five regions stretching across five time zones. The attack cost about $7 billion in damage.
Mr. Trump described the episode as if he were a bystander, and suggested that an aggressive Russian response was a fait accompli.
Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin foreign policy aide who briefed reporters on the call, did not say whether Mr. Putin had discussed retaliation. But he described Ukraine’s government and its actions, including apparent attacks on railroads on Sunday, as “terrorist,” disregarding that Russia initiated the war with its 2022 invasion and that in recent weeks it had stepped up its regular bombardment of Ukrainian cities and civilians.
Even so, he said Mr. Putin had told Mr. Trump that talks with Ukraine were “useful” and they would continue. “This doesn’t mean we cannot hold negotiations, which are needed to bring about some kind of settlement,” Mr. Ushakov said.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told reporters on Wednesday that the operation over the weekend, code-named Spider’s Web, would not have been carried out if the Kremlin had agreed to a truce. “If there had been a cease-fire, would the operation have taken place?” Mr. Zelensky said. “No.”
Advisers say Mr. Trump is exasperated with both Mr. Putin and Mr. Zelensky.
He reserves special animosity, though, for the leader of the country that was invaded in the first place. Mr. Trump has told aides repeatedly that Mr. Zelensky is a “bad guy” who is edging the world to the precipice of nuclear war. But he has at other times told advisers that it is understandable that Mr. Zelensky is fighting back, given that he is in a war against an enemy who seems determined to keep bombing Ukrainian cities.
He tends to be more deferential to Mr. Putin, although he has at times expressed disappointment. He previously seemed to think that what he described as his “very, very good relationship” with the Russian leader would bring a quick end to the war. Mr. Trump has learned the hard way what the limits of American leverage are when he is unwilling to send Ukraine more weapons and money. He has considered adding more sanctions against Russia, but has so far held off from doing so. He has refused to endorse a bipartisan Senate bill, led by his Republican ally Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, that would impose harsh economic penalties against Russia.
After calling Mr. Putin “absolutely crazy” last month, Mr. Trump shifted his tone and said he wanted to give the Russian leader two weeks to show signs of progress. And now, he says he wants Mr. Putin’s help in securing a nuclear deal with Iran.
“I stated to President Putin that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and, on this, I believe that we were in agreement,” Mr. Trump said in his statement on Truth Social. “President Putin suggested that he will participate in the discussions with Iran and that he could, perhaps, be helpful in getting this brought to a rapid conclusion.”
The Trump administration sent Iran a proposal for a deal over the weekend, but Iran has yet to offer a detailed response.
Nataliya Vasilyeva and Marc Santora contributed reporting.
Elon Musk renewed his attacks on the Republican domestic policy bill in a series of posts on his social media site X on Wednesday. He declared that America is “in the fast lane to debt slavery” and urged Americans to call their lawmakers and “kill the bill.” The posts reflect a growing rift with the president. But President Trump, for his part, has not directly responded to Musk’s attacks. He used his own social media site, Truth Social, to amplify Musk’s message last week thanking the president for the opportunity to help lead the Department of Government Efficiency.
Devlin Barrett and Benjamin Weiser
Devlin Barrett reported from Washington, and Benjamin Weiser from New York.
The Justice Department, intent on pursuing a criminal case against student protesters at Columbia University, argued that graffiti with a Hamas symbol outside the home of the school’s interim president threatened her life and was comparable to a racist cross burning, newly unsealed court documents show.
The documents offer new insight into a contentious fight between political appointees in the department who told the civil rights division to open the case in late February and federal judges and career prosecutors who believed the move was risky overreach.
The records also underscore how determined the Trump administration was to press forward with a case judges viewed as weak. Justice Department leaders pushed for an investigation of a student group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, but federal judges in New York rejected the administration’s efforts to get a search warrant four times, in what some veteran lawyers described as an unusually prolonged disagreement between federal prosecutors and the courts.
The release of the records came in response to a request from The New York Times, which first reported on the dispute and then filed a court motion to unseal the documents. The nonprofit news site The Intercept later joined.
The new details come at a time of heightened security concerns for Jewish Americans. Last month, two Israeli Embassy staff members were fatally shot outside the Jewish museum in Washington. On Sunday in Boulder, Colo., a man used Molotov cocktails to attack a group of people peacefully marching in support of hostages taken by Hamas. The suspects shouted “Free Palestine” at the scenes, the authorities have said.
Campus protests against Israel’s military actions in Gaza have roiled college campuses for more than a year, particularly at Columbia. The Trump administration has promised to take on such demonstrations, saying they reflect antisemitism that must be punished. A Justice Department spokesman said Wednesday that the agency “makes no apologies for our zealous efforts to prevent violent acts by antisemitic groups.”
From the beginning, some career prosecutors believed the case threatened First Amendment protections of free speech and assembly. They resisted their superiors’ efforts to use a criminal investigation to identify and intimidate protesters, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details intended to be private.
Part of the inquiry, which appears to have stalled, focused on Columbia University Apartheid Divest’s Instagram account. To help identify student participants, prosecutors applied for a search warrant.
Three times, the documents show, Sarah Netburn, the chief magistrate judge in Manhattan federal court, rejected Justice Department arguments that a social media post by the student group constituted a criminal threat to Columbia’s interim president at the time, Katrina Armstrong.
At a March 28 hearing conducted by telephone, prosecutors said the inverted triangle spray painted on the university wall was a threatening symbol used by Hamas.
“I’m not saying that the conduct is exactly equivalent, but symbolic,” said a prosecutor who works in the Justice Department’s civil rights division in Washington, adding that the department had “routinely prosecuted, under various threat statutes, the burning of crosses.”
Judge Netburn, in turn, questioned whether that symbol could constitute a threat, or be understood as a threat, in the United States. After rejecting an amended complaint by the prosecutors a second time, she added an unusual instruction: If they sought approval for the search warrant from any other judge, they had to include a transcript of the telephone hearing.
When the administration appealed those decisions to John G. Koeltl, another federal judge in Manhattan, he also rejected them.
“Although the writing on the wall was reprehensible, there are statutes that cover such vandalism,” Judge Koeltl ruled.
After opening the investigation in late February, a senior Trump administration official, Emil Bove III, sought to expand the case after the group on March 14 posted a photo on its Instagram page, the people familiar with the investigation said.
The photo showed graffiti in bright red paint on the building where the university president lived, with the words “free them all” and an inverted triangle.
A caption accompanying the picture declared: “The people will not stand for Columbia University’s shameless complicity in genocide! The University’s repression has only bred more resistance and Columbia has lit a flame it can’t control. Katrina Armstrong you will not be allowed peace as you sic NYPD officers and ICE agents on your own students for opposing the genocide of the Palestinian people. WALKOUT at 12:30 PM. COLUMBIA MAIN GATES.”
Prodded by Mr. Bove, the Justice Department sought a search warrant for data associated with that account — not just who posted to the account, but the user names of those who “liked” the posts or followed the accounts. At the Justice Department, some career lawyers viewed Mr. Bove’s demands as a misuse of a criminal investigation, seeking to punish and intimidate constitutionally protected protest activity.
President Trump last week announced he would nominate Mr. Bove to be a federal appeals court judge in Philadelphia.
The federal investigation began shortly after masked pro-Palestinian protesters barged into Milbank Hall, a building at the Columbia-affiliated Barnard College, on Feb. 26. That protest was against the expulsion of students who had been accused of disrupting a “History of Modern Israel” class in January.
Video shows students pushing past a security guard and occupying a hallway. School officials said at the time that the guard was assaulted and taken to the hospital for minor injuries.
Shortly after that incident, prosecutors assigned to the case were told by superiors that Mr. Bove wanted a list of members of the group, and of accounts that “liked” the group’s posts, so the information could be shared with immigration agents.
Inside the civil rights division, prosecutors came to fear their criminal investigation was a pretext to facilitate an intimidation and deportation campaign against student protesters. They refused to compile a list that could be shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
Mr. Bove’s boss, Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, has defended the investigation, saying it was justified because the inverted triangle is a “symbol used by Hamas to designate targets for violence.”
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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced President Trump’s pick for the next leader of U.S. Central Command, which directs U.S. military operations throughout the Middle East, and of U.S. Africa Command, which covers operations across the African continent.
If confirmed by the Senate, Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, below, will receive a fourth star and take over Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., and Lt. Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson of the Air Force will be promoted and run Africa Command from a base in Stuttgart, Germany.
Reporting from Washington
Lawyers representing the wife and children of the man charged with attacking an event honoring Israeli hostages sued the U.S. government on Wednesday, seeking to release the family from custody and block their deportation, according to a court filing.
Hayam El Gamal, the wife of Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the Egyptian man accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at a crowd in Boulder, Colo., on Sunday, was arrested on Tuesday along with her five children by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
The lawsuit was filed by Ms. El Gamal’s immigration lawyers and others seeking to help the family. The suit says that Ms. El Gamal and her five children entered the United States on tourist visas in 2022. The children are between 4 and 17 years old, according to the lawsuit.
The filing, in Federal District Court in Colorado, said that Ms. El Gamal “was shocked to learn” that her husband “was arrested for having committed a violent act against a peaceful gathering of individuals commemorating Israeli hostages.”
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said her agency would be investigating what the family knew about the attack before it happened.
“Today the Department of Homeland Security and ICE are taking the family of suspected Boulder, Colo., terrorist and illegal alien Mohamed Soliman into ICE custody,” Ms. Noem said on social media on Tuesday.
Later that day, the White House indicated in a social media message that the family could be deported imminently. On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security said that ICE was “processing Soliman’s family members for removal proceedings from the U.S.”
The filing on Wednesday said Ms. El Gamal was a network engineer who has lived in Colorado Springs for nearly three years and had applied for a U.S. work visa. Her husband, Mr. Soliman, also entered the country in 2022 with a tourist visa and quickly applied for asylum. His visa expired in early 2023, U.S. officials said, but he overstayed it.
The lawsuit says that the family is part of his asylum application and that it is pending. It also includes emails that Ms. El Gamal purportedly sent to her immigration lawyer on Tuesday, the day she was arrested.
“Hi please call urgently Florence Colorado ice office,” one email reads.
Eric Lee, one of the lawyers representing Ms. El Gamal, said the family was being detained at a family detention center in Texas.
The lawsuit requests that a federal judge order the release of Ms. El Gamal and her family.
“Punishing individuals for the alleged actions of their relatives is a feature of premodern justice systems or police state dictatorships, not democracies,” Mr. Lee said in an interview. “The detention and attempted removal of this family is an assault on core democratic principles and should provoke widespread opposition in the population, immigrant and nonimmigrant alike.”
Stephanie Saul contributed reporting.
Trump raised the idea of getting rid of the debt ceiling in an interview with NBC News in December, before he returned to the White House. But his comment at the time was an about-face for the president, who had encouraged Republicans in 2023 to use the nation’s borrowing cap as political leverage to force concessions from then-President Biden.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTHours after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that the Republican budget bill would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt, President Trump said on Truth Social that the debt ceiling, a limit to how much the government can borrow without further approval, should be entirely scrapped. Concerns that Trump’s agenda would create excess debt has been one of the obstacles to the bill, which would also raise the debt limit by $4 trillion.
“It is too devastating to be put in the hands of political people that may want to use it despite the horrendous effect,” Trump said of the debt ceiling.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Wednesday that Canada would not respond immediately to President Trump’s escalation in steel and aluminum tariffs.
“We will take some time, not much, some time, because we are in intensive discussions right now with the Americans on the trading relationship,” he told reporters on his way into a cabinet meeting. “Those discussions are progressing.”
But there is some disagreement within the country. Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, the province were the steel industry is based, pressed for immediate retaliation.
President Trump said he just got off the phone with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. For the first time since the weekend attack, Trump mentioned Ukraine’s drone strikes against nuclear capable bombers inside Russia.
In a Truth Social post, Trump described the situation without taking sides, saying, “President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”
The president did not say whether he tried to persuade Putin to halt his response. Trump also said he thought Putin could play a productive role in the Iran nuclear negotiations and accused the Iranians of “slow walking.”
Stanley ReedPatricia Cohen and Melissa Eddy
Stanley Reed and Patricia Cohen reported from London, Melissa Eddy from Berlin.
Britain breathed a sigh of relief on Wednesday after it was granted a carve-out from President Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imported to the United States, while the rest of Europe fumed that it was now paying twice as much.
The exemption for British exports was granted because the country had already agreed to the framework of a trade deal, which was announced to much fanfare on May 8. But Britain’s steel industry is still frustrated that it faces 25 percent tariffs because the pact has yet to be put into place.
And Britain still faces the prospect of 50 percent tariffs on those goods starting July 9 if London has not ironed out a final deal with Washington.
“This is a time-bound vote of confidence for U.K. steelmaking and our industry’s ability to supply to the U.S. market, but in many ways also creates further uncertainty, which is disruptive,” said UK Steel, an industry trade group.
Some customers in the United States are still ordering semifinished steel from Marcegaglia Stainless Sheffield in Britain’s Midlands, said Christian Bruggmann, the company’s chief operating officer. Britain is better positioned than producers from other countries that have to pay the higher tariff, but the latest wrinkle “creates more uncertainty,” he added.
Some of Marcegaglia’s steel is processed through Sweden and Italy and would be subjected to the 50 percent tariffs. And company executives worry that Europe will be swamped by exports from countries like China and Indonesia, increasing competition for European steel. “The competition will be even worse,” Mr. Bruggmann said.
But across Europe, other countries were angry that tariffs on steel and aluminum shot up.
“Most of the 3.8 million tons of E.U. steel exports to the U.S. are now under a de facto import ban: at a 50 percent blanket tariff,” Axel Eggert, the director general of the European Steel Association, said in a statement. “Even Europe’s highest-quality, most competitive steel products will be priced out.”
He warned that the 27 million tons of steel that was already heading to the United States is likely to be redirected at least in part to Europe and dumped on the market, which is what happened in 2018, when Mr. Trump imposed tariffs during his first term.
“We are being flooded by cheap foreign steel,” said Mr. Eggert, who pushed for both sides to negotiate a solution. “Without swift action, we will not just be underwater — we will drown.”
Germany, which is Europe’s largest steel-producing country and made up 6 percent of the United States’ total steel imports in 2024, will be particularly hard hit by the higher tariffs. The German Steel Federation, which represents the country’s leading steel producers, called the tariffs “a new level of escalation in the trans-Atlantic trade conflict,” warning that the consequences would present a “massive burden for our industry.”
The federation added that Germany, like the rest of Europe, now risks facing competition from an influx of steel from other countries that lost access to the U.S. market because of the tariffs. The European Union already imports one out of every three tons of steel used in production within the bloc.
German aluminum producers expressed similar concerns about the threat of cheaper imports from other supplier countries flooding the European market.
The steel industry is an integral part of Germany’s traditional heavy industry, which includes automotive and machine production. Dependent on steel, production of heavy machinery dropped 6 percent in April from the same month in 2024, and VDMA, which represents Germany’s producers of heavy machinery, blamed the decline on the tariffs and the uncertainty they have created.
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President Trump’s tariffs will reduce the size of the economy, in part because of the tariffs that other countries impose on U.S. exports in retaliation, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. In a letter responding to a request for analysis by congressional Democrats, the office said that inflation was also set to increase, by an annual average of 0.4 percentage points in 2025 and 2026, which would reduce the purchasing power of households and businesses.
The office also said that the revenue from tariffs would reduce the deficits. After accounting for the effect of those economic changes, it estimated that the tariffs Trump had put into effect before May 13 would decrease U.S. deficits by $2.8 trillion by 2035, compared with previous projections.
The Republican bill’s largest category of cuts is in health care, where reductions to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act total roughly $1 trillion and will result in 10.9 million more Americans losing health insurance, according to new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.
Last-minute changes to the bill, introduced just before it passed the House, increased the size of cuts to those programs. The biggest change, which moved up enactment of a work requirement for childless adult Medicaid beneficiaries, would save around $70 billion more than a previous version of the bill. A tweak to an Affordable Care Act funding formula would save $30 billion.
Speaker Mike Johnson said at his news conference that part of his discussion with Elon Musk on Monday was about helping Republicans in the midterm elections. “He said, ‘I’m going to help,’” Johnson recounted. “‘We’ve got to make sure that the Republicans keep the House majority. We can’t have the president impeached, which is what the Democrats would do on Day 1.’” Musk has hinted on social media that he would try to find primary challengers for Republicans who supported the domestic policy bill.
Speaker Mike Johnson, at his weekly news conference at the Capitol, said he had spoken with President Trump about Elon Musk’s continuing attacks on the major domestic policy bill Republicans are trying to pass. “He’s not delighted that Elon did a 180 on that,” Johnson said. He added that he had spoken to Musk on Monday by phone and discussed his concerns with the bill, but said they left the conversation on “a great note” and continued to exchange “happy texts” throughout the day.
“Then yesterday, 24 hours later, he does a 180 and he comes out and opposed the bill,” Johnson said. “And it surprised me, frankly. We don’t take it personal. Policy differences are not personal.”
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President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico called President Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum an unjust order with no legal basis. She also warned that her country could react next week with its own measures.
“We disagree with it. We don’t think it’s fair or sustainable because it makes everything more expensive,” she told reporters, adding that Mexican officials are set to meet with their U.S. counterparts to negotiate a deal. “If this is not achieved, then we will also be announcing some measures that we must necessarily take to protect and strengthen jobs. It’s not a matter of revenge or retaliation.”
Mexico’s steel trade with the United States has historically shown a deficit, meaning Mexico imports more steel than it exports to the U.S.
Reporting from Washington
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday that the broad Republican bill to cut taxes and slash some federal programs would add $2.4 trillion to the already soaring national debt over the next decade, in an analysis that was all but certain to inflame concerns that President Trump’s domestic agenda would lead to excessive government borrowing.
The C.B.O. estimate focused on the version of the bill that passed the House late last month, but the tally could change as Republicans in the Senate begin to put their imprint on the legislation. G.O.P. lawmakers there want to deepen some of the bill’s tax cuts, while others are pressing to pare back some its cuts to Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, and clean-energy tax incentives.
Total effect on the budget, through 2034
Costs
$4.2 trillion
Tax cuts
Spending hikes
Savings
$1.8 trillion
$2.4 trillion
added to the debt
Costs
$4.2 trillion
Tax cuts
Spending hikes
Savings
$1.8 trillion
$2.4 trillion added to the debt
Conservatives and Wall Street investors had already expressed grave concerns that the measure would swell federal deficits, and some Senate Republicans have said they cannot back the legislation in its current form for that reason. That could derail the bill’s progress, given that the party can afford to lose no more than three votes in the Senate if all Democrats vote against it.
The United States government currently has roughly $29 trillion in public debt, and C.B.O. had previously forecast that it would grow by roughly $21 trillion over the next decade, reaching nearly $50 trillion in 2034, as a growing share of Americans take advantage of government retirement support. With a roughly $3.8 trillion tax cut at its core, the Republican bill had long been expected to significantly add to that debt and make a precarious situation worse.
Hard-right lawmakers in the House demanded that the G.O.P. use its total control of Washington to also slash spending and contain the cost of the legislation. The cuts it included were ultimately significant, with changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act that the C.B.O. projected would save roughly $1 trillion over a decade while also resulting in nearly 11 million Americans losing their health insurance.
But even with the bill’s cuts, which also include substantial reductions to food stamps, Republicans have fallen well short of their stated goal of covering the cost of the legislation and improving the nation’s fiscal standing.
That has drawn cries of protest from some in the party, highlighting a fundamental disconnect between fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party and Mr. Trump, who does not share their aversion to debt and has pledged not to pursue the kind of structural changes that would rein it in.
That divide became clear this week as the president attacked Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, one of the Republicans opposing the bill because of its cost. Elon Musk, the billionaire technology executive who had led Mr. Trump’s effort to slash government spending, echoed Mr. Paul’s concerns, blasting the legislation as an “abomination” that would “burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”
To defend the measure, some Republicans and White House aides have taken to attacking the C.B.O. as politically motivated and unreliable, though several other nonpartisan, independent groups have also concluded the bill would add significantly the debt.
Some administration officials have also trotted out a series of other familiar arguments to discount concerns about the bill’s effects on the debt. Chief among them is that the tax cuts would help the economy grow, thus paying for themselves.
Under this thinking, the tax cuts help people make more money and therefore pay more in taxes, even if their tax rates are lower. The C.B.O. analysis released Wednesday did not explore the possible economic effects of the legislation, but a previous estimate from the Joint Committee on Taxation, another nonpartisan office, showed that the tax cuts would generate almost no additional economic growth.
The C.B.O. analysis also may not actually account for the full costs of the tax cuts included in the bill. In the House version, several of the cuts — including Mr. Trump’s campaign pledges to not tax tips and overtime pay — would last for only a few years. Those cuts would become far more costly if, as almost always happens with major tax reductions, they were eventually extended. A J.C.T. analysis requested by Democrats found that extending those measures would add an additional $1.7 trillion in debt.
Republicans last used this strategy in 2017, when they first put into place many of the tax cuts they are now seeking to make permanent. Back then, they scheduled many of the largest tax cuts, like lower individual income rates and a larger standard deduction, to end this year so that the overall cost of the legislation would fall under $1.5 trillion.
The ultimate judge of America’s debt problem is Wall Street. Global investors have long been happy to keep lending the government money, even as Congress increased spending and cut taxes. But in recent weeks, some analysts have started to question whether investor appetite for American debt could start to wane, a change that could raise borrowing costs across the economy, including for the government itself.
Moody’s downgraded the credit rating of the United States last month, the last of the major rating firms to cast some doubt on the country’s ability to pay its bills.
Margot Sanger-Katz contributed reporting.
Elon Musk continued to slam President Trump’s domestic policy legislation overnight. In a series of posts on X, his social media platform, he said that the bill’s expansion of the deficit would erase the cost-cutting he hoped to accomplish with the Department of Government Efficiency. “It more than defeats all the cost savings achieved by the @DOGE team at great personal cost and risk,” he wrote.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe cost of Trump’s bill could still increase, as Republicans in the Senate discuss changes, including some that could require even more government borrowing. Some G.O.P. lawmakers want to deepen the tax cuts, while others have raised concerns about slashing Medicaid and clean-energy programs too deeply.
The House-passed version of President Trump’s domestic policy legislation could add roughly $2.4 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday in its first full accounting of the bill’s cost.
This estimate could inflame concerns among conservatives and investors on Wall Street about the fiscal consequences of the legislation, which includes both broad tax cuts as well as reductions to spending on programs for the poor like Medicaid.
The Trump administration’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year eliminates funding for programs that provide lifesaving vaccines around the world, including immunizations for polio.
The budget proposal, submitted to Congress last week, proposes to eliminate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s global health unit, effectively shutting down its $230 million immunization program: $180 million for polio eradication and the rest for measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. The budget plan also withdraws financial support for Gavi, the international vaccine alliance that purchases vaccines for children in developing countries.
Overall, the budget request explicitly follows President Trump’s America First policy, slashing funds for global health programs that fight H.I.V. and malaria, and cutting support altogether to fight diseases that affect only poorer countries.
“The request eliminates funding for programs that do not make Americans safer, such as family planning and reproductive health, neglected tropical diseases, and nonemergency nutrition,” the proposal said.
Many public health experts said that such thinking is flawed because infectious diseases routinely breach borders. The United States is battling multiple measles outbreaks, prompting the C.D.C. last week to warn travelers about the risks of contracting measles. Each of those outbreaks began with a case of measles contracted by an international traveler.
“Every single measles case this year is related to actual importations of the virus into the United States,” said Dr. Walter Orenstein, associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center and a former director of the United States’ Immunization Program.
A case of polio in an unvaccinated adult in New York in 2022 was also linked to importation of the virus from a country where it still circulates.
Ultimately, it is up to Congress to determine the budget, and, as in previous years, many of the president’s proposals could be changed or discarded. Lawmakers are only starting to embark on the annual process. The current fiscal year expires at the end of September.
Gavi is in talks with administration officials and members of Congress to try to restore the organization’s funding, according to a spokeswoman for the organization.
“I think the world has forgotten those days when graveyards used to be full of graves of children that died of measles, that died of diphtheria, that died of simple infectious diseases,” Dr. Sania Nishtar, Gavi’s chief executive, said in an interview. “There is so much at stake.”
Measles, polio and other diseases have resurged around the world, in part because of disruptions to immunization campaigns during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as misinformation that percolated during the pandemic.
Polio seemed tantalizingly close to eradication a couple of years ago, but new cases have sprung up in dozens of countries this year, including in Papua New Guinea, which was declared polio-free 25 years ago.
An estimated 3.2 million children in the World Health Organization’s Western Pacific Region, which includes Papua New Guinea, did not receive a single dose of vaccine between 2020 and 2023. This year, several countries in the region, including Cambodia, the Philippines and Vietnam, are reporting the highest number of measles cases since 2020, according to the W.H.O.
The Global Measles and Rubella Laboratory Network, which comprises more than 700 labs in more than 150 countries, is at risk of imminent closure, precipitated by the Trump administration’s decision to stop funding it. So is the W.H.O.’s National Public Health Support Network, which monitors immunization for polio, measles and other diseases in India.
“The U.S. has been extremely generous over many years, and is of course within its rights to decide what it supports, and to what extent,” said Christian Lindmeier, a spokesman for the W.H.O.
“But the scale, scope, and abrupt nature of the U.S. cuts will lead to more disease and death, and countries have not been able to plan a sufficient transition,” he said. “We hope the U.S. will reconsider and continue their legacy of leadership in global health.”
The polio eradication effort faces a 40 percent budget deficit in 2026, Dr. Hanan Balkhy, a senior WHO official, told the World Health Assembly in Geneva last month.
“We are at a tipping point,” she said. “Either we invest now to finish the job or risk a global resurgence.”
The Trump administration has also canceled contracts that support local health systems and disease surveillance for malaria, said Martin Edlund, chief executive of the advocacy group Malaria No More.
The budget proposes to cut funding for the U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative, a program to fight the disease around the world, by 47 percent. The proposal leaves flexibility for the State Department to support the Global Fund, which finances the majority of the campaigns worldwide against H.I.V., malaria and tuberculosis, but says that the U.S. should contribute $1 for every $4 from other donors instead of the current $1 for every $2.
Mr. Edlund said that the change “will undoubtedly have a chilling effect on other donors.”
The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which supplies H.I.V. treatments in developing countries, fared somewhat better than expected.
In January, the Trump administration halted disbursement of funds from the program. The State Department later issued waivers to allow treatments to resume but did not restore funding for H.I.V. prevention.
The 2026 budget proposes just under $3 billion for the program, less than half its previous funding. On Tuesday, the Trump administration also asked Congress to approve clawbacks of $9.4 billion from programs, including PEPFAR, that were already authorized for 2025.
PEPFAR is credited with having saved more than 20 million lives since its inception in 2003, and is widely regarded as the most successful global health campaign in history.
A spokeswoman for the federal Office of Management and Budget said the president’s proposed budget “prioritizes lifesaving global health activities, including PEPFAR treatment for those on lifesaving medications and global health security to prevent infectious diseases from reaching our homeland, while eliminating programs that do not serve Americans and where other countries and donors should be contributing their fair share.”
She added that the budget eliminates programs that focus on transgender and L.G.B.T.Q. people as well as “programs that have supported abortions.” She did not address questions about immunization programs.
The budget references a “responsible off-ramp” for PEPFAR, aiming to transfer control of H.I.V. programs to recipient countries.
“In effect, the administration is signaling an intent to wind down the most successful U.S. global H.I.V. initiative in history,” said Jirair Ratevosian, who served as chief of staff for PEPFAR during the Biden administration.
He praised the proposal’s embrace of artificial intelligence and long-acting H.I.V. prevention technologies, as well as the explicit call for handoff to countries.
“But these transitions cannot succeed atop weakened or dismantled infrastructure,” he said. Coupled with the deep cuts proposed, “this approach risks hollowing out the very systems needed for a successful handover.”
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President Trump resumed his attacks on the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, saying the central bank chief should cut interest rates after data showing May had the lowest number of private jobs added in more than two years. “‘Too Late’ Powell must now LOWER THE RATE,” the president wrote on his social media site.
The Federal Reserve has repeatedly said it was waiting to see the economic effects of the Trump administration’s early policies, which could add to inflation and require interest rates to remain elevated for longer.
Maros Sefcovic, the European Union’s trade commissioner, is in Paris today for a trade meeting with advanced economies. He met with Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, this morning, and called the chat “productive and constructive.” Speaking to reporters, Sefcovic said that he told Greer that imposing the 50 percent steel and aluminum tariffs “doesn’t help” with ongoing trade negotiations between the E.U. and the U.S.
Germany, which is Europe’s largest steel-producer and provided the U.S. with 6 percent of its steel imports in 2024, will be hard hit by the higher tariffs. The German Steel Federation, which represents the country’s leading steel producers, called the tariffs “a new level of escalation in the transatlantic trade conflict,” warning that the consequences would present a “massive burden for our industry.”
President Trump indicated in a late-night post that efforts to negotiate with China on trade were not going well: “I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!” In recent days, the U.S. and China have accused each other of violating the terms of a 90-day rollback of tariffs and other trade barriers that is aimed at allowing more time for talks.
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President Trump’s order on Tuesday raising steel and aluminum tariffs to 50 percent exempted exports from Britain. But that country’s steel industry is still frustrated that 25 percent tariffs continue to apply, despite the announcement on May 8 of the framework of a trade deal that would fully exempt British steel and aluminum. And Britain still faces the prospect of 50 percent tariffs on those goods starting July 9 if London has not ironed out a final deal with Washington.
“This is a time-bound vote of confidence for U.K. steelmaking and our industry’s ability to supply to the U.S. market, but in many ways also creates further uncertainty which is disruptive,” said UK Steel, an industry trade group.
U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports doubled on Wednesday, as President Trump continued to ratchet up levies on foreign metals that he claims will help revitalize American steel mills and aluminum smelters.
The White House called the increased tariffs, which rose to 50 percent from 25 percent just after midnight Eastern time, a matter of addressing “trade practices that undermine national security.” They were announced during Mr. Trump’s visit to a mill run by U.S. Steel last week, and appear to be aimed at currying favor with steelworkers and the steel industry, including those in swing states like Pennsylvania, where U.S. Steel is based.
The higher levies have already rankled close allies that sell metal to the United States, including Canada, Mexico and Europe. They have also sent alarms to automakers, plane manufacturers, home builders, oil drillers and other companies that rely on buying metals.
In an executive order, Mr. Trump said the higher tariffs would “more effectively counter foreign countries that continue to offload low-priced, excess steel and aluminum in the United States market and thereby undercut the competitiveness of the United States steel and aluminum industries.”
Kevin Dempsey, the president of the American Iron and Steel Institute, an industry group, praised the move. He said China and other countries oversupplied the international market, making it harder for U.S. producers to compete.
“Given these challenging international conditions that show no signs of improvement, this tariff action will help prevent new surges in imports that would injure American steel producers and their workers,” Mr. Dempsey said.
But companies that use steel and aluminum to make their products criticized the tariffs, saying they would add costs for American consumers.
Robert Budway, the president of the Can Manufacturers Institute, said doubling the steel tariff would further increase the cost of canned goods at the grocery store.
“This cost is levied upon millions of American families relying on canned foods picked and packed by U.S. farmers and can makers,” he said.
The increase Wednesday is the latest in a mounting array of import taxes that Mr. Trump has announced since returning to the Oval Office in January, including the 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum in March. Taken together, the president’s trade tactics have increased concerns of a global downturn and heightened corporate America’s worries about the cost of doing business.
Economists have pointed out that tariffs on factory inputs such as metals risk slowing U.S. manufacturing, since they raise prices for factories. By adding to the cost of making cars, drilling for oil and building data centers, higher steel tariffs could slow other goals of the Trump administration.
An economic analysis published by the U.S. International Trade Commission, an independent, bipartisan government agency, suggested that while the steel and aluminum tariffs levied in Mr. Trump’s first term helped American steel and aluminum producers, they hurt the broader economy by raising prices for many other industries, including automaking.
U.S. unions and major companies like Cleveland-Cliffs and U.S. Steel, which have significant lobbying networks, have argued that tariffs are necessary to keep them in business. After struggling financially for years, U.S. Steel agreed in late 2023 to be acquired by Nippon Steel of Japan, though Mr. Trump will make the final call on whether the merger can go through.
Foreign governments have bristled at the idea that their steel exports are a national security threat to the United States, in part because American demand for the metals far exceeds the country’s current ability to produce them.
Canada is the largest foreign supplier of both steel and aluminum to the United States. Mexico, Brazil, South Korea and Germany are major suppliers of steel, while the United Arab Emirates, China and South Korea provide the United States with small amounts of aluminum.
Where the United States imported steel and aluminum from in 2024
Steel $32 bil.
- Kuwait, <1%
- Azerbaijan, <1%
- Belarus, <1%
- Lebanon, <1%
- Lithuania, <1%
- Panama, <1%
- Venezuela, <1%
- Latvia, <1%
- Estonia, <1%
- Bosnia And Herzegovina, <1%
- Bahrain, <1%
- Liechtenstein, <1%
- Qatar, <1%
- El Salvador, <1%
- Israel, <1%
- Hungary, <1%
- Croatia, <1%
- Hong Kong, <1%
- Cambodia, <1%
- Peru, <1%
- North Macedonia, <1%
- Ireland, <1%
- Singapore, <1%
- Norway, <1%
- Kazakhstan, <1%
- Serbia, <1%
- Costa Rica, <1%
- Denmark, <1%
- Georgia, <1%
- Brunei, <1%
- Chile, <1%
- Philippines, <1%
- Colombia, <1%
- Pakistan, <1%
- Saudi Arabia, <1%
- New Zealand, <1%
- Switzerland, <1%
- Guatemala, <1%
- Slovakia, <1%
- Poland, <1%
- Malaysia, <1%
- Dominican Republic, <1%
- Greece, <1%
- Bulgaria, <1%
- Portugal, <1%
- Oman, <1%
- Algeria, <1%
- Czech Republic, <1%
- Slovenia, <1%
- Argentina, <1%
- Indonesia, <1%
- Egypt, <1%
- S. Africa, <1%
- Ukraine, <1%
- Luxembourg, <1%
- Australia, <1%
- Thailand, <1%
- Finland, <1%
- U.A.E., 1.0%
- Belgium, 1.1%
- Türkiye, 1.2%
- France, 1.3%
- Romania, 1.3%
- Spain, 1.3%
- U.K., 1.4%
- Sweden, 1.5%
- India, 1.5%
- Austria, 1.8%
- Neth., 2.4%
- China, 2.5%
- Italy, 2.8%
- Vietnam, 3.6%
- Taiwan, 4.2%
- Japan, 5.5%
- Germany, 6.0%
- South Korea, 9.1%
- Brazil, 9.4%
- Mexico, 11.0%
- Canada, 22.5%
Aluminum $18 bil.
- Sierra Leone, <1%
- Virgin Islands (British), <1%
- Cameroon, <1%
- Albania, <1%
- Paraguay, <1%
- Cambodia, <1%
- Tunisia, <1%
- Gaza Strip, <1%
- Serbia, <1%
- Estonia, <1%
- Lebanon, <1%
- Bosnia & Herzegovina, <1%
- Iceland, <1%
- Chile, <1%
- Ukraine, <1%
- Trinidad & Tobago, <1%
- Marshall Islands, <1%
- Liechtenstein, <1%
- Mozambique, <1%
- Philippines, <1%
- Venezuela, <1%
- Pakistan, <1%
- Armenia, <1%
- Guatemala, <1%
- Portugal, <1%
- Kazakhstan, <1%
- Latvia, <1%
- Finland, <1%
- Lithuania, <1%
- Singapore, <1%
- Belarus, <1%
- Ireland, <1%
- San Marino, <1%
- Slovakia, <1%
- Costa Rica, <1%
- Sri Lanka, <1%
- Egypt, <1%
- Jordan, <1%
- Croatia, <1%
- Uzbekistan, <1%
- Hong Kong, <1%
- Israel, <1%
- Romania, <1%
- El Salvador, <1%
- Czech Republic, <1%
- Denmark, <1%
- New Zealand, <1%
- Poland, <1%
- Hungary, <1%
- Neth., <1%
- Switzerland, <1%
- Luxembourg, <1%
- Colombia, <1%
- Slovenia, <1%
- Bulgaria, <1%
- Norway, <1%
- Honduras, <1%
- Ecuador, <1%
- Azerbaijan, <1%
- Indonesia, <1%
- S. Africa, <1%
- Saudi Arabia, <1%
- Sweden, <1%
- Taiwan, <1%
- Malaysia, <1%
- Spain, <1%
- U.K., <1%
- Dominican Republic, <1%
- Qatar, <1%
- Japan, <1%
- Belgium, <1%
- Vietnam, <1%
- Italy, <1%
- Brazil, <1%
- Austria, 1.0%
- France, 1.1%
- Türkiye, 1.1%
- Greece, 1.1%
- Australia, 1.3%
- Oman, 1.3%
- Thailand, 1.5%
- Germany, 1.8%
- Mexico, 2.2%
- India, 2.5%
- Argentina, 2.6%
- Bahrain, 3.0%
- South Korea, 4.4%
- China, 4.6%
- U.A.E., 5.2%
- Canada, 53.3%
On Wednesday, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico called the increased tariffs an unjust order with no legal basis. She also warned that her country could react next week with its own measures.
“We disagree with it, we don’t think it’s fair or sustainable because it makes everything more expensive,” she said, adding that Mexican officials are set to meet with their U.S. counterparts to negotiate a deal. “If this is not achieved, then we will also be announcing some measures that we must necessarily take to protect and strengthen jobs. It’s not a matter of revenge or retaliation.”
Mexico’s steel trade with the United States has historically shown a deficit, meaning Mexico imports more steel than it exports.
On Tuesday, Marcelo Ebrard, Mexico’s economy minister, said that the country would demand to be spared from the latest tariffs. Britain was granted an exemption from the steel and aluminum levies as part of a preliminary deal the two nations struck last month, and it remains to be seen if other countries receive similar treatment as part of trade deals.
Canada, which is both the largest exporter of steel to the United States and the largest importer of American steel, followed the initial 25 percent tariff from Mr. Trump with a retaliatory tariff. But in order to allow manufacturers to adjust and find new sources of supply, it suspended the tariffs’ start until October.
Some Canadian steel manufacturers have said they believe overseas producers are now selling steel once intended for the U.S. market in Canada at unfairly low prices.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Wednesday that Canada would not respond immediately to the escalation. “We are in intensive discussions right now with the Americans on the trading relationship,” he said, adding: “Those discussions are progressing.”
Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, was among the groups that called for immediate retaliation on Wednesday. They were joined by Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, the province where the three largest Canadian steel makers are.
“We can’t sit back and let President Trump steamroll us,” Mr. Ford told reporters in Toronto. “Every single day that it goes by gives uncertainty through the sectors, it adds additional cost on the steel. So we need to react immediately.”
Catherine Cobden, the president of the Canadian Steel Producers Association, a trade group, said in a statement that doubling the tariff on imported steel “essentially closes the U.S. market to our domestic industry.”
The previous 25 percent tariff on steel already had an effect on Canada’s producers. The steel association estimates that since the tariff took effect in March, steel shipments to the United States from Canada have fallen 30 percent.
“Steel tariffs at this level will create mass disruption and negative consequences across our highly integrated steel supply chains and customers on both sides of the border,” Ms. Cobden said.
The Aluminium Association of Canada said in a statement on Tuesday that the expanded tariff “makes Canadian exports to the U.S. economically unviable” and that “the industry may be forced to diversify trade toward the European Union.”
Electricity accounts for about 40 percent of the cost of smelting aluminum, and the trade group estimated that replacing Canadian aluminum with American production would require the expansion of U.S. power generation equivalent to four Hoover Dams.
“The Canadian industry supports the U.S. goal of increasing domestic aluminum production capacity from 50 percent to 80 percent,” the group said. “Punitive tariffs do not create the certainty needed for long-term, capital-intensive investments. Even with higher domestic output, the U.S. will continue to rely on substantial aluminum imports.”
Industry analysts have said the U.S. tariffs so far have not significantly curbed shipments from Canadian aluminum mills. The U.S. aluminum industry is too small to significantly replace imports from Canada without expansion and investment.
Century Aluminum, a U.S. aluminum maker, said last year that it would build the first new aluminum smelter in the United States in half a century, doubling domestic production. But the United States would remain dependent on imports for most of its aluminum.
Emiliano Rodríguez Mega contributed reporting.
Reporting from the Capitol
congressional memo
When Republicans muscled their sweeping domestic policy bill through the House by a single vote after an overnight debate, they breathed a sigh of relief, enjoyed a celebratory moment at sunrise and then retreated to their districts for a weeklong recess.
Not even two weeks later, the victory has, for some, given way to regret.
It turns out that the sprawling legislation to advance tax and spending cuts and to cement much of President Trump’s domestic agenda included a raft of provisions that drew little notice or debate on the House floor. And now, Republicans who rallied behind the bill are claiming buyer’s remorse about measures they swear they did not know were included.
Last week, Representative Mike Flood of Nebraska admitted during a town hall meeting in his district that he did not know that the bill would limit judges’ power to hold people in contempt for violating court orders. He would not have voted for the measure, he said, if he had realized.
And as lawmakers returned to Washington on Tuesday after their weeklong break, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said that she had been unaware that the mega-bill she voted for would block states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade.
“Full transparency, I did not know about this section,” Ms. Greene posted on social media, calling it a violation of states’ rights and adding that she “would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.”
The remorseful statements highlighted the realities of legislating in the modern age. Members of Congress, divided bitterly along partisan lines and often working against self-imposed political deadlines, have become accustomed to having their leaders throw together huge pieces of legislation at the very last moment — and often do not read the entirety of the bill they are voting on, if they read any of it at all. At the same time, the polarization of Congress means that few pieces of legislation make it to the floor or to enactment — and the few “must pass” bills that do are almost always stuffed full of unrelated policy measures that would otherwise have little hope of passing on their own.
In the case of the 1,037-page bill the G.O.P. is calling the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Republicans barely cobbled together the votes to pass it after a protracted fight within their ranks and significant pressure from Mr. Trump to advance some of his top domestic priorities.
As a number of disparate factions threatened to withhold their support, the focus remained on Mr. Trump’s key agenda items: extending tax cuts, boosting defense and immigration spending and rolling back Biden-era climate initiatives.
The effort ended with a sprint to the finish line as Speaker Mike Johnson tried to meet a self-imposed Memorial Day deadline for passing the bill. The final version was not completed and moved to the floor until 10:40 p.m. the evening before it passed, giving lawmakers eight hours overnight to read it and decide how they would vote. By then, it was clear that nearly every Republican was going to toe the party line and vote “yes.”
With the legislative battle in the rearview mirror and the measure in the hands of the Senate, House Republicans can now turn to a politically expedient excuse that they often used to defend their votes on giant spending bills with small objectionable provisions: that the bill was simply too big.
Ms. Greene said she was not sure whether other colleagues had similar concerns about provisions in the bill that they might not have been aware of.
“You know, it’s hard to read over 1,000 pages when things keep changing up to the last minute before we voted on it,” she said.
Their criticism was echoed in part by Elon Musk, a staunch Trump supporter who just last week left his role leading the Department of Government Efficiency. On Tuesday, he unloaded on the sprawling measure, which he described as “massive, outrageous, pork-filled” and “a disgusting abomination.”
“Shame on those who voted for it,” Mr. Musk wrote. “You know you did wrong. You know it.”
Both Ms. Greene and Mr. Flood have urged Republican senators to strike the provisions that they are concerned about. That may well happen, since both could run afoul of the special rules that Republicans are using to push the legislation through the Senate on a simple-majority vote, shielding it from a filibuster and Democratic opposition. Such bills must comply with strict rules that require that all of their components have a direct effect on federal revenues.
Still, Democrats swiftly criticized Ms. Greene and Mr. Flood for failing to properly examine legislation that both of them had backed and at various points championed.
“PRO TIP: It’s helpful to read stuff before voting on it,” Representative Ted Lieu of California said, responding to Ms. Greene’s post.
And throughout the debate on the bill, Democrats repeatedly voiced their objections to the language that would bar states from setting their own regulations on artificial intelligence.
“I even brought this provision up during the debate,” Representative Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, wrote on social media. “I welcome those on the other side to join me in opposition to it.”
The language that Mr. Flood said he opposed, which could shield Mr. Trump and members of his administration from being held in contempt for disobeying court orders, was part of a larger push by Republicans to address injunctions that have blocked the president’s executive actions.
The measure was advanced out of committee three weeks before the policy bill passed the House. Still, at a town hall last week, Mr. Flood told constituents in Nebraska that it was “unknown to me when I voted for the bill.”
Met with boos from the crowd, he added: “I am not going to hide the truth.”
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Reporting from Washington
The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it had revoked a Biden administration requirement that hospitals provide emergency abortions to women whose health is in peril, including in states where abortion is restricted or banned.
The move by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the department led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was not a surprise. But it added to growing confusion around emergency care and abortions since June 2022, when the Supreme Court rescinded the national right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade.
“It basically gives a bright green light to hospitals in red states to turn away pregnant women who are in peril,” Lawrence O. Gostin, a health law expert at Georgetown University, said of the Trump administration’s move.
The administration did not explicitly tell hospitals that they were free to turn away women seeking abortions in medical emergencies. Its policy statement said hospitals would still be subject to a federal law requiring them to provide reproductive health care in emergency situations. But it did not explain exactly what that meant.
Mr. Gostin and other experts said the murky policy could have dire consequences for pregnant women by discouraging doctors from performing emergency abortions in states where abortions are banned or restricted.
“We’ve already seen since the overturn of Roe that uncertainty and confusion tends to mean physicians are unwilling to intervene, and the more unwilling physicians are to intervene, the more risk there is in pregnancy,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California-Davis and a historian of the American abortion debate.
“This is not just withdrawing what the Biden administration did,” she said. “It’s creating a lot of unanswered questions about what hospitals are supposed to do going forward. So more confusion means more risk.”
Abortion opponents were pleased. “President Trump promised to dismantle the abortion radicalism left by his predecessor, and today another abortion mandate bites the dust,” said Roger Severino, the vice president for domestic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, who served in the first Trump administration.
At issue is how the government should interpret the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, a 1986 law aimed at discouraging hospitals from turning away patients who lack insurance or cannot afford care. The law requires hospitals that receive federal funding to treat or stabilize emergency patients, or transfer them to a facility that can provide care.
The law does not specifically include abortion, but Mr. Gostin said administrations going back to President George W. Bush have interpreted it that way. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe, the Biden administration reminded hospitals that the law obligated them to provide abortions in cases where they were medically necessary.
In a statement announcing the revocation of that policy, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it would “work to rectify any perceived legal confusion and instability created by the former administration’s actions.”
The Biden policy resulted in lawsuits; the Biden administration sued Idaho, and Texas sued the administration. Both states asserted that their laws restricting abortion superseded the emergency medical act. Idaho has one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation, offering an exception only when the life — not the health — of the mother is at risk.
The Idaho case made its way to the Supreme Court last year. But the court ultimately decided that it had taken the case in error and dismissed it, leaving intact a lower-court ruling that allowed women in the state to receive abortions when their health was at risk.
The Trump administration’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” could make the United States the most expensive of the Group of 7 countries from which to send money, dealing another blow to poor nations already reeling from recent aid cuts.
As part of the bill, the U.S. government would take a cut of all remittances sent to foreign nations, a move that would hit millions of families worldwide who rely on money sent from loved ones working in America.
Latin American countries would lose several billion dollars if the bill passes the Senate. But for African nations, where poverty levels are far higher, remittances are even more of a lifeline.
The bill’s passage would be the latest sign of a U.S. retreat from Africa, coming on the heels of the gutting of the Agency for International Development and the introduction of steep tariffs after decades of preferential trade agreements on the continent.
People receiving remittances from abroad are, like aid recipients, often the very poorest.
In Africa, Nigerians would pay the most under the bill in absolute terms, losing around $215 million. Gambia and Liberia would lose the most as a percentage of gross national income; for both countries, around a quarter now comes from remittances. Senegal, which the World Bank ranked the country most dependent on remittances, would also suffer.
In 2024, sub-Saharan Africa received nearly $10 billion in remittances from the United States — almost as much as the $12 billion in foreign assistance it received before President Trump took office in January.
People sending money from the United States already pay income tax on their earnings, so they would effectively be taxed twice, critics say. Under the new legislation, immigrants would pay an additional 3.5 percent federal tax on top of the roughly 6 percent they pay banks and remittance companies. That would amount to nearly $10 of every $100, making the United States the most expensive of the Group of 7 from which to send cash.
Helena Saykiamien, a 75-year-old widow in a down-at-the-heel neighborhood in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, bought a fridge in 2023 with $500 sent by her daughter in Delaware.
Monrovia has a tropical climate and chronic power outages, so Mrs. Saykiamien chills bottles of water and sells them to her neighbors at a small profit. This pays for the family’s weekly transportation to church. For everything else — food, medicine and school fees for the eight children who live with her — she depends on the $200 her daughter scrapes together to send her every month.
The new tax would make all of this harder to manage, she said.
“The Americans — they really want us to face problems,” Mrs. Saykiamien said in an interview at the house she shares with the children. “They really want us to go through stress.”
The United States is already one of the most expensive places in the world from which to send remittances. Companies that transfer money abroad are taxed, and pass those taxes on to customers in the form of fees.
Africans already pay more than anyone else, according to the World Bank.
“For the poorest people on the planet, they’re going to be hit twice by the various different steps that the U.S. administration is taking,” said Helen Dempster, a policy fellow and assistant director for the Migration, Displacement and Humanitarian Policy Program at the Center for Global Development.
The bill is intended to discourage people from moving to the United States and encourage those in the country now to “self-deport.”
Ms. Dempster said that people will most likely turn to less secure ways of sending money if the bill passes. Informal couriers fly back and forth between the United States and Africa every week carrying money, electronics and other valuables for a fee. And Africans are increasingly turning to cryptocurrency to send money home.
Amma Gyampo, a Ghanaian entrepreneur and philanthropic adviser, called the tax “an attack on the generosity of the diaspora” and said that if it was aimed at curbing immigration, it would probably backfire.
“When you have financial hardship or economic hardship, it actually drives up migration,” she said.
Analysts say the measure risks pushing millions deeper into hunger, driving up illegal migration and slowing growth for African economies struggling to manage decades of debt.
The United Nations wants countries to bring down remittance fees to less than 3 percent by 2030. The global average is currently twice that target.
In Monrovia last weekend, the children living with Mrs. Saykiamien played on the porch as people wandered in and out, buying cold water.
She said that Liberia’s very existence is intertwined with the United States — the country was founded by emancipated American slaves in 1847 — which made the prospect of an additional tax feel like a punishment.
Liberians were forcibly taken to America as slaves, she said, and when they came back, it was as Americans. For America to do this now, she added, “I don’t think it’s fair.”
Tina S. Mehnpaine contributed reporting.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTElon Musk lashed out on Tuesday against the far-reaching Republican bill intended to enact President Trump’s domestic policy agenda, posting on X that it was a “disgusting abomination” and telling House members who voted for it: “You know you did wrong.”
The tech billionaire criticized the bill, one of Mr. Trump’s top priorities, in a series of about 10 posts. In them, Mr. Musk reshared commentary from lawmakers like Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, two Republicans who had sided with him in opposing the rising U.S. deficit.
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Mr. Musk wrote on X. He called the domestic policy bill “massive, outrageous, pork-filled,” adding that it would “massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit” and that “Congress is making America bankrupt.”
He did not target any specific members of Congress, but hinted that he might support efforts to unseat those who backed the bill in the 2026 midterm elections. “In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” he wrote.
The blitz of messages signaled a widening rift between Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump as the tech mogul winds down his governmental role leading the Department of Government Efficiency. While the men have publicly professed continued admiration for each other, Mr. Musk’s departure from Washington has appeared to liberate him from presenting a united front with the White House.
Instead, he has returned to wielding his brand of unpredictable political influence through X, the social media platform he owns. In December, before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Mr. Musk torpedoed a bipartisan spending bill with an onslaught of posts on X, including a threat to find primary challengers for Republicans who supported it. In March, he tried unsuccessfully to sway the outcome of a Wisconsin judicial race with myriad posts in favor of the conservative candidate.
Now unshackled from loyalty to the Trump party line, Mr. Musk can again foment chaos with his X feed.
Mr. Musk, 53, has often criticized legislation, agencies and others that are against the interests of himself and his companies, which include the electric carmaker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX. In its current form, Mr. Trump’s domestic policy bill would end subsidies and tax credits meant to spur consumers to buy electric vehicles, which would have ramifications for Tesla.
The House speaker, Mike Johnson, called Mr. Musk’s criticism of the domestic policy bill “very disappointing.” He told reporters at the Capitol that the two spoke on Monday and that Mr. Musk “seemed to understand” the virtues of the legislation.
The White House and the president were caught off guard by Mr. Musk’s posts, a person with knowledge of the situation said, but it’s not yet clear whether Mr. Trump will return fire.
“The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill,” said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. “It doesn’t change the president’s opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill, and he’s sticking to it.”
A representative for Mr. Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Trump has urged swift passage of the legislation — officially called the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act — which would slash taxes, providing the biggest savings to the wealthy, and steer more money to the military and immigration enforcement. As written, the legislation would cut health, nutrition, education and clean energy programs to cover part of the cost.
White House officials and Mr. Johnson have claimed that the bill would shrink the national debt, although the Congressional Budget Office and a number of independent analysts have estimated that the bill would increase federal deficits by well over $1 trillion, even when economic growth is factored in.
Mr. Musk posted his criticism at a critical moment for the bill, which passed the House on May 22 in the face of a strong pressure campaign by Mr. Trump. As Mr. Johnson corralled several competing Republican factions, the president summoned recalcitrant holdouts to the White House, and his staff likened Republican opposition to the bill to “the ultimate betrayal.”
But Republican senators have already made clear that they plan to make changes to the bill. Fiscal conservatives, alarmed at the estimates that it would swell the national debt, have demanded further changes and cuts to Medicaid and other programs that could help rein in deficits. Mr. Trump has warned Republicans not to mess with Medicaid, a program that many of his supporters rely on.
Mr. Musk started publicly criticizing Mr. Trump’s bill last week, saying on CBS News’s “Sunday Morning” that he was disappointed in the legislation’s size and impact on the deficit.
People close to the congressional negotiations said Mr. Musk was disappointed that Republicans were removing electric vehicle subsidies, according to two people familiar with the negotiations.
“I know that has an effect on his business, and I lament that,” Mr. Johnson said. But he added that he did not believe the government should be subsidizing a transition to electric cars.
In an earlier public break with the administration, Mr. Musk slammed the president’s top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, as a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” in a series of X posts in April. Tesla executives said Mr. Musk, who abstained from criticizing Mr. Trump directly, seemed not to immediately realize the impact that the administration’s tariffs could have on the automaker.
The White House downplayed the conflict at the time. Asked about it then, Ms. Leavitt said, “Boys will be boys.” Late that month, Mr. Musk was briefed on the tariffs’ effects and the company’s supply chain vulnerabilities.
Mr. Musk’s threats about unseating Republicans contrast with his political spending last year. His super PAC, America PAC, spent about $20 million in the last election cycle to boost Republicans running for the House. And a different PAC he backed spent $10 million to help Republicans in the Senate.
Some Democrats celebrated Mr. Musk’s criticism. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, brought a printed-out copy of Mr. Musk’s X posts to the party’s weekly news conference on Tuesday.
“He’s right,” Mr. Schumer said. “Republicans should listen to him.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Musk — who appeared onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February with a chain saw and said it would be “easy” to save the government billions of dollars — shared a meme on X that included a photo of fingertips pinching a minuscule pair of scissors.
“Republicans getting ready to reduce the size of government,” the caption read.
Shawn McCreesh, Theodore Schleifer and Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.
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