Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

President Donald Trump said Thursday that his administration would issue $500 rebate checks to some Americans who were purportedly “overcharged” under the Affordable Care Act, a move that would provide little to no relief to the millions of people impacted by surging health insurance premiums.

The White House said in a fact sheet that around a million Americans in 30 states would receive rebate checks, beginning next month—just weeks before the November midterms. Brad Woodhouse, president of the advocacy group Protect Our Care, ripped the rebate plan as “an absolute joke,” calling $500 “a drop in the bucket compared to what Americans are paying because Trump and Republicans gutted healthcare to bankroll massive tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations.”

Woodhouse was referring to a Republican budget measure, signed into law last summer by Trump, that enacted more than $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.

The GOP also declined last year to extend enhanced ACA subsidies that helped reduce costs for tens of millions of Americans, sending premiums skyrocketing. Some families have seen annual premium increases in the thousands of dollars, leading many to drop marketplace coverage entirely. ACA premiums are set to surge by double digits for a second consecutive year in 2027.

“At a time when people are scraping by to keep up with the high cost of groceries, rent, and healthcare, this $500 gimmick won’t even begin to dig them out of the hole that Trump and Republicans created,” said Woodhouse.

The White House said ACA enrollees who “do not receive premium assistance” and who live in states that “use the federal exchange for the operations of their Obamacare markets” would be eligible for a rebate check, meaning the payments would disproportionately benefit enrollees with higher incomes in red states.

“The vast majority of ACA enrollees won’t get $500 from the Trump administration, including: those who still get premium subsidies, though what they’re paying has gone up a lot with expiration of enhanced tax credits. And, those in mostly blue states that run their own exchanges,” noted Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF. “There are 19.2 million ACA enrollees. The Trump administration is talking about sending $500 rebate checks to fewer than one million of them.”

Policy experts disputed the Trump administration’s claim that Americans were “overcharged” due to the Biden administration’s “gross mismanagement” of the ACA. As The Associated Press reported:

Cynthia Cox, a vice president and director of the ACA program at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF, said it’s entirely possible that the funds Trump has promised came from fees collected during Trump’s first term. His first administration collected more user fees from insurers than it spent, resulting in an estimated $1 billion in unspent funds, according to KFF analysis.

It is unclear whether the $500 rebate represents what each enrollee may have overpaid, where the money for the rebates would come from, and whether it requires congressional approval for disbursement.

The White House’s rebate check pledge came as Trump also vowed to send $5,000 to every American adult if Republicans retain control of the House and Senate in the November midterms, a promise that was widely derided.

“The ‘Trump dividends’ scam is just Trump’s latest attempt to distract the country from the Republican affordability crisis,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). “Trump promised he would lower prices, and instead he keeps mashing the ‘make stuff more expensive button.’ The American people will not be fooled.”

A complaint submitted Thursday by a legal watchdog argues that US President Donald Trump’s sizable cash gifts to political aide Natalie Harp and other White House staffers violated federal law because the payments improperly supplemented their government salaries.

“Laws prohibiting government employees from receiving supplemental income are not arbitrary; they exist to ensure that public servants’ priorities remain focused on public service, not a wealthy benefactor who may have other objectives in mind,” said Kedric Payne, vice president, general counsel and senior director for ethics at Campaign Legal Center (CLC), which submitted the new complaint to the US Office of Government Ethics. “An investigation into this matter is clearly warranted, and, if a violation is indeed found, this matter must be referred to the Department of Justice.”

The complaint came days after financial disclosures revealed that Trump has doled out gifts totaling $155,000 to several staffers, including Harp, a former far-right news anchor whose role in the White House and relationship with the president have drawn close scrutiny in recent weeks.

Harp, Trump’s most loyal aide, received a $45,000 cash gift from the president. Her salary, according to the White House, is $150,000 per year. Trump also gifted White House communications adviser Margo Martin and deputy director of Oval Office operations Chamberlain Harris $45,000 each. The Washington Post reported that the three payments were described as “Cash Gift for Holidays.”

Walt Nauta, the director of Oval Office operations, received a $20,000 gift from the president.

CLC’s complaint points to 18 US Code § 209, which prohibits executive branch employees from receiving “any salary, or any contribution to or supplementation of salary,” from “any source other than the government of the United States, except as may be contributed out of the treasury of any state, county, or municipality.”

The watchdog group noted that, when the gifts from the president are included, the four recipients were effectively compensated at the maximum salary for a full-time White House employee—a “rate for which they were ineligible” due to their junior roles.

“In paying White House employees funds beyond their government salaries, President Trump has created the same scenarios Congress specifically contemplated and sought to prevent,” the complaint states. “Additionally, it raises the legitimate question as to whether President Trump is paying them for acting on his personal behalf, rather than in the interests of the public. For these reasons, it is important that the OGE investigate whether these payments were impermissibly made.”

According to the Post, “there are no other public instances of US presidents giving staff employed by the White House large cash payments. Government ethics experts said they were not aware of any other payments of this scale from a superior to a subordinate government worker.”

Richard Briffault, a professor of legislation at Columbia Law School, told NBC News that Trump’s cash payments to aides appeared to be “technically illegal.”

“Bosses will give gifts to their assistants,” said Briffault. “[But] these are substantial sums—much more than the usual Christmas gifts for most people.”

Despite the apparently unprecedented and unlawful nature of the gifts, Briffault said there is “zero chance” that the current Justice Department—headed by Trump’s former personal attorney, Todd Blanche—will investigate the payments.

The top Democratic appropriator in the US Senate responded with alarm and outrage on Tuesday to news that the Trump administration is preparing a rule change that would siphon federal dollars away from a chronically underfunded program that helps working-class parents afford childcare.

The diverted funds would be used to finance a new federal subsidy for “married couples with one stay-at-home parent in certain income brackets,” The New York Times reported late last week. The proposed change, a top priority of Vice President JD Vance, is “outrageous and backwards,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement on Tuesday. Murray argued it would be illegal and immoral for the administration to shift taxpayer money away from the Child Care and Development Fund, which serves around 1 million families nationwide in a typical month.

“It’s not the 1950s in America—our government shouldn’t punish people for being single parents or choosing not to marry,” said Murray. “Nobody cares what JD Vance thinks constitutes a ‘real’ family—single parents and parents who aren’t married pay taxes, too. Raiding an underfunded program solely to score culture war points is not pro-family—it’s a wasteful grift that I will fight every step of the way.”

The Times reported that “the policy change would effectively create a government incentive for parents to stay home with their children, an idea embraced as part of a broader conservative effort to advance policies that promote more mothers staying at home.” Unmarried couples with one stay-at-home parent would not qualify for the newly proposed subsidy.

“The move could end up redirecting money away from working parents and their childcare providers, causing some to raise their rates or even close, critics said, potentially worsening what many experts say is a childcare crisis in the country,” the newspaper added. “About 80% of the 870,000 families who currently get the childcare subsidies have single working parents, most of them mothers, according to Health Department data.”

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), House Democrats’ top appropriator, said in a statement that “supporting stay-at-home parents should never come at the expense of working families.”

“At a time when families are already struggling to find and afford childcare, this proposal would force more parents to compete for the same inadequate pot of money, threaten childcare providers, and disproportionately hurt single working parents, most of whom are mothers,” said DeLauro, “If Republicans want to support families, they should join Democrats in passing the expanded Child Tax Credit and increasing access to affordable childcare—not rob Peter to pay Paul while imposing their preferred definition of what a family should look like.”

Childcare costs—which run many families tens of thousands of dollars per year—are a major concern of US voters. One recent survey found that more than 80% see childcare costs as part of the nation’s broader affordability crisis, and 76% view them as “a crisis or major problem” for families with young children.

But the Trump administration has so far done nothing to lower childcare costs—and has taken steps that could raise them and deny low-income families badly needed relief.

Earlier this year, roughly a month after launching his costly and destructive war on Iran, President Donald Trump suggested that the federal government should not provide any funding for childcare.

“We’re fighting wars,” the president said. “We can’t take care of daycare. You gotta let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too.”

Amy Matsui, vice president for childcare and income security at the National Women’s Law Center, said it is “outrageous that the administration would propose siphoning money away from families who are struggling to afford childcare to send cash to married couples with a stay-at-home parent, when hundreds of thousands of families are on childcare waiting lists around the country.”

“If this administration really wanted to support families,” Matsui added, “it would invest more—not less—dollars in childcare, create a national paid family and medical leave program, expand access to a fully refundable Child Tax Credit, and restore health care and nutrition assistance.”

The far-right Alternative for Germany party thanked the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, after decisively winning a key regional election on Sunday, sparking alarm across Europe and around the globe.

Ulrich Siegmund, AfD’s lead candidate in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, praised Musk—who has openly advocated for the far-right, xenophobic party—for his support and “clear and highly important perspective on the political developments of our time—including here in Germany.” Siegmund wrote that if AfD ends up leading the state government, the party “would very much welcome the opportunity for strong and constructive cooperation,” adding that “Germany would once again be a place worth investing in.”

Siegmund’s post on the social media platform X, which Musk owns, came after AfD won just over 44% of the vote in the Saxony-Anhalt election, trouncing the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz. CDU finished a distant second with 17.1% of the vote.

“Well done!” Musk wrote, in German, following AfD’s election win. The mega-billionaire has called AfD “the only hope for Germany.”

US President Donald Trump, a political ally of Musk, posted to Truth Social a screenshot of exit polls showing AfD leading the regional election on Sunday afternoon.

“Leave it to Trump to celebrate the victory of a far-right German party that shows sympathy for the Nazis, downplays the Holocaust, and flirts with Putin,” Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote on social media in response to the US president.

The Associated Press noted that “to win an absolute majority, AfD needed to clinch 42 of the 83 seats in the state parliament, but the party appeared on track to win 39. Depending on the ultimate make-up of parliament, it could still end up leading the state government.” Siegmund would be the first far-right leader to govern a German state since 1945.

But other German parties have refused to work with AfD, raising doubts about its ability to form a government in Saxony-Anhalt, which has a population of around 2.1 million people.

David Adler, co-general coordinator of the Progressive International, wrote that the election “sent a clear message, to Germany as to all of Europe, that the far-right rampage is not slowing down, but accelerating instead.”

AfD focuses heavily on immigration, vowing “deportation from minute one” and calling for abolition of “the fundamental right to asylum.”

“In addition to deporting immigrants, the party has proposed cutting funding for public broadcasters, banning gay pride flags in schools, and teaching more Russian, as well as tax breaks for large families and free childcare,” The New York Times reported. The newspaper noted that Siegmund declined to condemn supporters who “chanted his surname... in the style of the Nazi salute, ‘Sieg Heil.’”

European officials voiced deep concern about AfD’s surge in the regional election, with France’s Europe minister calling the results “a serious moment.”

“Nationalism and xenophobia will never be a solution,” said Benjamin Haddad. “We must listen with humility to the anger, the concerns, the fears, and respond to them. We cannot forget our history. That is the meaning behind the choices made by France and Germany.”

Spanish Julen Bollain wrote on social media that “the far-right is managing to turn discontent, economic insecurity, and disaffection into votes.”

“AfD is doing something that should especially worry the left: transforming precarity, frustration, and disaffection into political identity and votes,” Bollain added. “And if we don’t manage to give a collective response to the existing social discontent, someone always shows up ready to turn it into fear, hate, and scapegoats. And there they beat us, because they move like fish in water.”

The far-right Alternative for Germany party thanked the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, after decisively winning a key regional election on Sunday, sparking alarm across Europe and around the globe.

Ulrich Siegmund, AfD’s lead candidate in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, praised Musk—who has openly advocated for the far-right, xenophobic party—for his support and “clear and highly important perspective on the political developments of our time—including here in Germany.” Siegmund wrote that if AfD ends up leading the state government, the party “would very much welcome the opportunity for strong and constructive cooperation,” adding that “Germany would once again be a place worth investing in.”

Siegmund’s post on the social media platform X, which Musk owns, came after AfD won just over 44% of the vote in the Saxony-Anhalt election, trouncing the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), led by Chancellor Friedrich Merz. CDU finished a distant second with 17.1% of the vote.

“Well done!” Musk wrote, in German, following AfD’s election win. The mega-billionaire has called AfD “the only hope for Germany.”

US President Donald Trump, a political ally of Musk, posted to Truth Social a screenshot of exit polls showing AfD leading the regional election on Sunday afternoon.

“Leave it to Trump to celebrate the victory of a far-right German party that shows sympathy for the Nazis, downplays the Holocaust, and flirts with Putin,” Kenneth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote on social media in response to the US president.

The Associated Press noted that “to win an absolute majority, AfD needed to clinch 42 of the 83 seats in the state parliament, but the party appeared on track to win 39. Depending on the ultimate make-up of parliament, it could still end up leading the state government.” Siegmund would be the first far-right leader to govern a German state since 1945.

But other German parties have refused to work with AfD, raising doubts about its ability to form a government in Saxony-Anhalt, which has a population of around 2.1 million people.

David Adler, co-general coordinator of the Progressive International, wrote that the election “sent a clear message, to Germany as to all of Europe, that the far-right rampage is not slowing down, but accelerating instead.”

AfD focuses heavily on immigration, vowing “deportation from minute one” and calling for abolition of “the fundamental right to asylum.”

“In addition to deporting immigrants, the party has proposed cutting funding for public broadcasters, banning gay pride flags in schools, and teaching more Russian, as well as tax breaks for large families and free childcare,” The New York Times reported. The newspaper noted that Siegmund declined to condemn supporters who “chanted his surname... in the style of the Nazi salute, ‘Sieg Heil.’”

European officials voiced deep concern about AfD’s surge in the regional election, with France’s Europe minister calling the results “a serious moment.”

“Nationalism and xenophobia will never be a solution,” said Benjamin Haddad. “We must listen with humility to the anger, the concerns, the fears, and respond to them. We cannot forget our history. That is the meaning behind the choices made by France and Germany.”

Spanish Julen Bollain wrote on social media that “the far-right is managing to turn discontent, economic insecurity, and disaffection into votes.”

“AfD is doing something that should especially worry the left: transforming precarity, frustration, and disaffection into political identity and votes,” Bollain added. “And if we don’t manage to give a collective response to the existing social discontent, someone always shows up ready to turn it into fear, hate, and scapegoats. And there they beat us, because they move like fish in water.”

This story was published in partnership with Common Dreams. Read the original here.

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday dismissed the impact of massive food aid cuts signed into law last summer by President Donald Trump, saying he doesn’t believe the cuts will have “that much effect” as new data showed at least 5 million people have lost assistance so far—including roughly 1.5 million children.

Speaking at a news conference on children’s nutrition in Florida, Kennedy falsely claimed that “the only people kicked off of” the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under the GOP budget law signed by Trump “were people who were not eligible for it,” either “because their income is too high or because they were illegal aliens.”

Kennedy’s remarks came as a new analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) found that SNAP enrollment nationwide has fallen to a 17-year low following enactment of the Trump-GOP budget law, which will cut the program by around $190 billion over the next decade, enact stricter work reporting mandates, and require states to contribute a portion of benefit costs for the first time.

“'Not much effect?’ Based on available data from 25 states, we estimate that well over 1.5 million kids nationwide have lost SNAP in the wake of the unprecedented cuts in the Republican reconciliation law,” Katie Bergh, a policy analyst at CBPP, wrote in response to Kennedy’s remarks. “Many of those kids and their families lost SNAP despite still being eligible.”

News reports, anecdotal accounts from impacted families, and expert assessments contradict Kennedy’s insistence that only those who were no longer eligible for SNAP due to income or immigration status have lost benefits. An explosion of red tape due to the new work reporting requirements imposed by the Trump-GOP budget law has made it more difficult for eligible beneficiaries to continue receiving SNAP, forcing many to seek aid from food banks and take desperate measures—such as skipping meals and doses of medication—to make ends meet.

CBPP warned that the impacts of the cuts are likely to intensify once the budget law’s provision shifting benefit costs to states takes full effect next year.

“The magnitude of the cost shift and the urgency surrounding error rates may incentivize states to take drastic measures to reduce their payment error rates quickly and cut program costs, even if it means delaying or improperly denying benefits to eligible people,” the think tank said on Wednesday. “We’re likely seeing some of those initial effects in SNAP participation data.”

A report published last month by a pair of food policy experts argued that the unprecedented assault on SNAP undercuts Kennedy’s so-called “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, which purports to place nutrition “at the center of health.”

“If we are serious about improving Americans’ health, we need policies that make healthy food more accessible, not less,” said Priya Fielding-Singh of George Washington University’s Global Food Institute. “Cutting off food assistance for millions of families undermines MAHA’s stated goals of improving diet quality and preventing chronic disease. Food security and public health go hand in hand.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed it is targeting the Iranian government and coming to the aid of the nation’s people by waging all-out war on the Middle East country, but an analysis of US policy changes announced this week indicates that ordinary Iranians will bear the brunt of the pain from the White House’s new economic assault.

The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) noted that the first actions that the Trump administration has taken under its so-called Operation Economic Outcast “are aimed squarely at ordinary Iranians and at severing personal, familial, academic, and cultural relationships between Americans and Iranians.” The group noted that the Trump administration has “suspended key humanitarian exemptions from existing sanctions on Iran designed to allow Iranian Americans to send personal remittances to family in Iran, to allow universities to enroll or offer scholarships to Iranian students, and to allow for sports exchanges involving American and Iranian athletes.”

NIAC went on to cite specific examples:

• 31 CFR § 560.544: Allowing universities to recruit, enroll, and educate students who are ordinarily resident in Iran, and offer them scholarships;
• 31 CFR § 560.550: Allowing Americans to send personal, non-commercial remittances to non-sanctioned persons in Iran.
• 31 CFR § 560.554 and Iran General License G: Allowing academic and educational exchanges between the US and Iran.
• Iran General License F: Allowing for friendly matches and other sports exchanges involving the US and Iran.

“We have had decades of sanctions underscore that collective punishment is strategically and morally wrong,” said NIAC president Jamal Abdi in a statement. “Iranian civilians have grown poorer while the government elite has been unscathed.”

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared earlier this week that the Trump administration is “launching an economic onslaught against Iran’s financial connections around the globe” with the stated goal of severing “every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime until Tehran stands alone.” Bessent said the administration has given “every country” a “defined timeline to shut down activities we have identified.”

NIAC said Tuesday that “rather than devote US resources to strengthening sanctions exemptions for ordinary people and making the sanctions ‘smarter’ by targeting them against decisionmakers and bad actors, the administration is making our sanctions dumber and even more blunt.”

“This is a radical revision to the Iran sanctions architecture: ending the ability of Iranian Americans to send their family any remittances, blocking universities from enrolling Iranian students, ending sports exchanges,” said Ryan Costello, NIAC’s policy director. “It is senseless, punitive collective punishment.”

The intensified economic warfare comes after months of an illegal, widely unpopular, deadly, and economically destructive war that Trump and his Israeli counterpart, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, launched in late February.

Esmaeil Baghaei, the spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said Tuesday that the new US economic assault is “about annihilating the most foundational rules of international law and the UN Charter—namely, respect for the sovereign equality and self-determination of all states.”

“When a bully declares that every bank, company, port, and government must choose between obeying Washington’s whims or facing American vengeance, this is no longer just about Iran,” Baghaei wrote in a social media post. “No decent state that values its sovereignty and national interests will accept the normalization of such grand lawlessness and systemic bullying.”

President Donald Trump on Friday said that the US economy is “doing unbelievably from the standpoint of Wall Street,” bragging about record equity prices as job and wage growth remain stagnant and millions of Americans struggle to afford groceries.

In remarks to reporters, Trump hailed what he described as “the best market in history” as the S&P 500 index notched its third consecutive week of gains and hovered near its all-time high. The president, a prolific trader who has personally profited from the stock market’s performance, said surging equities are “good for 401(k)s”—retirement accounts that a growing share of Americans are tapping to cover emergency expenses amid a worsening cost-of-living crisis.

“Trump’s right. His economy is a win for Wall Street,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in response to the president. “Meanwhile, while the rich get richer, millions of Americans cannot afford the basic necessities of life—food, housing, healthcare, and a decent retirement.”

The Alliance for Retired Americans, an advocacy group with more than 4 million members across the US, expressed astonishment at Trump’s rosy and narrow assessment of the economy, which the White House posted on its official YouTube page.

“Can’t make it up,” the group wrote on social media. “We don’t live on Wall Street. How is the economy working for you?”

Trump’s comments came the same day that new data showed US consumer sentiment has fallen in August after two consecutive months of improvement, with Americans’ outlook on the nation’s economic conditions worsening across the political spectrum.

Last week, the Labor Department published figures showing that the US economy shed 23,000 jobs in July, wage growth decelerated, and the unemployment rate fell slightly as more people left the workforce.

Despite Trump’s promise to bring them down, prices remain elevated across the economy, driven in part by the president’s illegal war against Iran. Research published last month by the Urban Institute found that American families are increasingly relying on savings and credit—including buy now, pay later programs—to meet their grocery needs.

Americans are also facing what The Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers describe as “a worsening utility debt crisis.”

“Energy bills have increased three times faster than the rate of inflation while Trump has been president,” the groups wrote in an analysis published last month. “The national average monthly utility bill reached $280 in early 2026, a 12% increase since the end of 2024, just before the second Trump administration took office.”

Meanwhile, corporate profits are booming under Trump, with the pharmaceutical industry, Big Oil, and other sectors posting banner earnings.

“Second quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are on pace to rise 50% year over year, the highest growth rate since the second quarter of 2021,” Yahoo Finance reported.

Food banks across the US, from New Mexico to Oregon to Illinois, are seeing massive increases in demand as the unprecedented federal nutrition aid cuts that President Donald Trump signed into law last summer take hold, stripping benefits from millions of Americans amid elevated grocery costs—a recipe for disaster.

“Our freezers are getting empty,” Eddie Nelson, the manager of a food bank in Dallas, Oregon, told an Oregon Public Broadcasting reporter earlier this week. The outlet noted that the line for the food bank “stretches out the door and around the corner at the end of the month, when federal food stamp benefits dry up and families struggle to fill their pantries.”

An estimated 4.5 million people, including roughly 1.5 million children, have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits since the Trump-GOP budget law took effect last year, enshrining around $200 billion in cuts—the largest in the program’s history—as well as new work reporting requirements that are expected to put millions more at risk of losing aid.

The large-scale loss of benefits and expectations of even more hardship in the near future have heavily strained local food banks.

Pam Molitoris, executive director of the Central Illinois Food Bank, said during a panel discussion last month that his organization “cannot absorb” the damage from the federal nutrition cuts, noting that “we are one meal to every nine meals provided by SNAP.”

“We are feverishly fundraising and talking to the board about the need to provide grants, but in reality, we are limited,” said Molitoris.

Roadrunner Food Bank in Albuquerque, New Mexico said it has seen a massive increase in demand this year as the combination of aid cuts and a worsening cost-of-living crisis forces families to seek out charities for assistance. More than 18,000 people lost SNAP benefits in New Mexico between July 2025 and April 2026, according to a tracker maintained by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“You could look at it like SNAP is the first line of defense against food insecurity in our country; food banks are the last line of defense,” Jason Riggs, Roadrunner’s director of advocacy, said earlier this week. “So the idea is we need both.”

Feeding America, a nonprofit network of hundreds of food banks, says the Trump-GOP cuts to SNAP equate to up to 9 billion meals lost per year—“more than the entire Feeding America network of food banks, meal programs, and church pantries provided last year.”

In the face of growing evidence of the damage their cuts have inflicted on communities across the US, Republican lawmakers have shown no inclination to seriously mitigate the impacts—much less reverse the funding reductions. GOP senators are currently working to advance a farm bill that would only delay for one year the Republican budget law’s potentially catastrophic shift of a significant portion of SNAP costs to states.

Earlier this month, the Republican farm legislation failed to advance out of committee due to Democratic opposition and the absence of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

“While it is a step in the right direction to give states more time to implement the benefit cost-share, increasing the SNAP cost for states in exchange for a one year delay only increases the unprecedented burden on states. Children will suffer as a result,” said George Kelemen, senior vice president of the No Kid Hungry campaign. “Already, 4.5 million people, including over a million kids, have lost access to SNAP over the past year.”

“Those families are now missing out on the nutritious food SNAP provides,” Kelemen added, “and sadly that number will only grow under this proposal.”

The Trump administration’s far-reaching assault on voting rights has extended to nursing homes, a group of Democratic senators warned on Thursday, pointing to federal guidance recently issued by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The guidance, released in July, removes previous recommendations on how nursing home staff can assist residents in exercising their constitutional rights and warns facility employees against violating “federal or state voting laws.” The guidance points to a highly dubious Texas case in which a social worker was charged with orchestrating an election fraud scheme, even though no improper votes were cast.

In a letter sent earlier this week to CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz, Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and 11 other Democrats argued that the agency’s July guidance “may intimidate nursing home staff from helping residents exercise their constitutional right to vote and ultimately prevent nursing home residents from voting.”

“The nation’s 1.2 million nursing home residents face unique problems in obtaining access to the voting booth,” the lawmakers added, “and must not be denied their rights because they are disabled, elderly, lack transit, or face difficulties in obtaining a ballot or voting in person.”

The senators emphasized that the new CMS memo breaks with guidance issued during President Donald Trump’s first term in the White House. That guidance, issued in October 2020, states that “nursing homes should have a plan to ensure residents can exercise their right to vote, whether in person, by mail, absentee, or other authorized process.”

Such language is entirely absent from the new guidance, which focuses heavily on preventing voter fraud—an obsession of Trump’s, despite it being extremely rare in the US.

“CMS’s release of this memo is just the latest in a series of actions the Trump administration has taken to restrict vote by mail and undermine the right to vote based on unfounded allegations of voter fraud tied to the president’s denial of prior valid election results,” the Democratic senators wrote in their letter. “We are concerned that by highlighting examples of prior voter fraud investigations and threatening criminal penalties on nursing home staff—many of whom are legal immigrants who have already been targeted by Trump’s immigration policies—CMS’s July 2026 guidance may intimidate nursing home staff from helping residents with the voting process.”

“And the removal of guidance on vote by mail procedures, combined with specific threats to investigate nursing home staff for assisting residents who are exercising their right to vote, may deter nursing homes from assisting residents with voting by mail,” they added. “Ultimately, we are concerned that the changes to CMS’s guidance will result in the disenfranchisement of nursing home residents.”

The Houston Chronicle, in its coverage of the new CMS guidance, spotlights the Trump administration’s decision to cite the Texas case, which involved social worker Kelly Brunner.

“When Kelly Brunner was tasked in 2020 with getting the State Supported Living Center in Mexia ready to vote, she was excited to assist the residents with intellectual and developmental disorders prepare for a big election. Instead, her work as the assistant voter registrar at the facility east of Waco spiraled into a nightmare,” the outlet noted. “Brunner admitted making technical errors in the complicated registration system, which were all quickly caught; no resident cast an improper vote. Yet, pushed by Attorney General Ken Paxton—who at the time was promoting President Donald Trump’s false claims of a rigged presidential election—she was criminally charged with orchestrating one of the largest election fraud cases ever in Texas.”

“Brunner spent $50,000 on lawyers, pleaded guilty to minor charges to put it behind her, lost her teacher’s license and nearly her social worker’s license,” the Chronicle added. “Still, she thought the episode was finally over—until... [CMS] cited Brunner as the reason it needed to officially place employees of long-term care facilities on notice that they should be on the lookout for voter fraud in the upcoming midterm elections.”

Richard Mollot, executive director of the New York-based Long Term Care Community Coalition, told the Chronicle that the Trump administration’s heavy focus on preventing voter fraud “will have a chilling effect” on nursing home resident voting.

“The language is important,” said Mollot. “Most nursing homes will do as little as possible; if you’re not affirmatively telling them what to do, they won’t do it.”

The Trump administration has reportedly decided to yank federal funding from an annual National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report that examined the state of the Arctic, which is warming significantly faster than other regions of the world as continued fossil fuel extraction and use drive up global temperatures.

Politico, which first reported the decision, noted that the move “jeopardizes public dissemination of the report that NOAA has published since 2006. It has previously been available on the agency’s website, requires NOAA staff for its production, and pools data from NOAA scientists for many of its findings.”

Zack Labe, a climate scientist who has been an author on NOAA’s peer-reviewed Arctic Report Card since 2020, wrote on social media that the Trump administration’s decision “is truly devastating.”

“The Arctic Report Card has been one of my favorite scientific endeavors,” Labe wrote. “For two decades, it has documented conditions across the Arctic system, bringing together physical and social sciences with real-world observations/data and consistent updates.”

Speaking to the science news outlet EOS, Labe warned that “the loss of the Arctic Report Card would be significant not only for the scientific community, but also for decision-makers and the public.”

“Written for a broad audience and developed by more than 100 scientists from around the world, the report is an important resource for consistently documenting changes in one of the fastest warming regions on our planet,” Labe added. “Discontinuing it would create a significant gap in our ability to track and connect these changes from year to year, with implications for people and communities around the world.”

Last year’s edition of the report card found that “surface air temperatures across the Arctic from October 2024 through September 2025 were the warmest recorded since 1900.”

“The last 10 years are the 10 warmest on record in the Arctic,” the report observed.

The Trump administration, packed with fossil fuel industry allies and headed by a climate denier, has worked aggressively to gut federal initiatives designed to track the worsening impact of the global climate emergency. Since taking power last year, the administration has dismissed government scientists, scrubbed climate information from federal websites, stopped updating a database that tracked the country’s costliest weather disasters, and picked a climate denier to oversee the federal government’s flagship climate report.

Rick Thoman, an Arctic climate specialist, called the Trump administration’s latest move “devastating news for Arctic environmental monitoring.”

Attention turned to Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy on Friday after his colleague, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, announced her opposition to confirming President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Todd Blanche as US attorney general — leaving the GOP without any additional votes to spare.

With Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) expected to be absent and Sens. Murkowski and Susan Collins (R-ME) planning to vote no, Cassidy (LA) — who lost reelection in May to a Trump-backed challenger — is seen as the last-remaining obstacle to confirming Blanche. The Trump lackey is currently leading the Justice Department in an acting capacity.

Murkowski said in a statement that she decided to oppose Blanche’s confirmation because of the Justice Department’s “handling of the release of the Epstein files; the sweeping immunity protections granted to the President, his family, and their businesses; the statements that have been made to anti-abortion groups; and the repeated targeting of individuals ranging from former administration staff to sitting US senators.”

“I am also keenly aware that the Department’s nearly $2-billion dollar slush fund — which likely would have rewarded January 6 protesters — is only off the table because this nomination is pending and the Senate has leverage. Once we vote, that will end, and there is no telling what the future holds,” the Republican senator added.

“The country needs an attorney general who will check the worst impulses of this administration. I hope Mr. Blanche is able to achieve that, if confirmed, but I simply do not have confidence that will be the case.”

Cassidy met with Blanche earlier this week but has not indicated publicly how he intends to vote. Republicans were hoping to confirm Blanche before senators leave for August recess on Friday.

In an interview earlier this week, Cassidy said that he has to be convinced that Blanche “is an attorney general who just happens to have once been President Trump’s personal attorney, as opposed to President Trump’s personal attorney who is now the attorney general.”

“I think there’s a big difference between the two,” the Louisiana senator.

Cassidy has repeatedly drawn Trump’s ire since voting to convict him in 2021 for inciting the January 6 insurrection. Earlier this year, Cassidy reportedly got into a shouting match with Trump over the Iran war after the Republican senator voted to advance a war powers resolution that sought to bring the illegal conflict to an end.

But in some cases, Cassidy has aided the administration. In February, for instance, the Louisiana Republican cast the deciding vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Health and Human Services Department. Cassidy, a physician, has since criticized Kennedy’s leadership of the health department.

Sarah Longwell, a former Republican and publisher of The Bulwark, wrote Friday that “considering his disastrous decision to confirm RFK and Trump’s attacks against him in the primary, this vote offers one last shot [for Cassidy] to use his power to do what he knows is right.”

“For God’s sake man, stand for something!” Longwell added.

If Cassidy announces his opposition, it’s possible that Republicans will try to summon McConnell to cast the deciding vote on Blanche.

McConnell was hospitalized in June after a fall, according to his office. On Thursday, McConnell said he was discharged and planned to continue his recovery at home.

McConnell’s primary residence is in Washington, DC.

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee voted Thursday to block a Democratic amendment that would have prohibited the Internal Revenue Service from giving sweeping tax audit immunity to President Donald Trump, his family, and their businesses.

If passed, the amendment would have nullified a central element of the deal that the US Justice Department cut with the IRS in May to settle Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the tax agency. Experts have argued that such broad audit immunity is unlawful, and Democrats have warned the agreement could leave the IRS with no recourse if Trump decided to dodge taxes on the billions of dollars he has pocketed during his second stint in the White House.

Democrats on the Finance Committee sought to attach their amendment to bipartisan legislation aimed at streamlining tax administration. The amendment failed in a 13-14 vote along party lines, and the bipartisan bill passed out of committee 26-1—with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) the lone opponent. Warren told Politico that she “cannot support a bill that rubber stamps Donald Trump’s corruption.”

“Senate Republicans blocked Democrats’ proposal to end Donald Trump’s IRS sweetheart deal,” Warren wrote on social media following Thursday’s vote. “This deal gives him FULL IMMUNITY from audits on tax returns he’s filed. It’s corruption on steroids.”

The vote on the Democratic amendment came as Trump’s attorney general nominee, Todd Blanche, remained stalled in the Senate, in large part due to the Justice Department’s failure to commit to sufficient limitations on the IRS audit immunity deal, which Blanche signed.

Blanche, who is currently the acting attorney general, testified during a Senate confirmation hearing earlier this month that the IRS audit immunity deal is “not forward-looking,” but a key Republican said this week that the Justice Department has not yet provided sufficient written commitments to limit the immunity agreement.

Blanche reportedly met with the two Senate GOP holdouts—John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—on Thursday in an effort to hash out a deal to advance his nomination. Trump, who has aggressively avoided taxes throughout his career and broke with political tradition by refusing to voluntarily release his federal income tax returns, threatened on Thursday to pull Blanche’s nomination until Cornyn and Tillis leave the Senate next year, having lost reelection.

The New York Times summarized the IRS immunity deal, should it survive legal and political scrutiny:

First, the IRS has to drop any inquiries, whether civil audits or criminal investigations, it was pursuing into Mr. Trump, his family members, their companies, or ‘affiliated individuals.’ Second, the IRS can’t start any new investigations into tax returns that this potentially large pool of people and companies has already filed.

That means that any tax maneuver the Trumps have already used, whether the IRS was already auditing it or not, is now off limits. The agency typically has three years after someone files a tax return to assess more in taxes. So there are potential audits of Mr. Trump and his family that the IRS could have initiated—claims that ‘could have been asserted,’ in the language of Mr. Blanche’s order—that it is now not supposed to. But the next tax return that Mr. Trump files could, theoretically, still be eligible for an audit.

“Trump’s sweetheart audit immunity deal is perhaps the most brazenly corrupt action taken by a president in American history, and Congress must permanently put a stop to the unchecked greed on display,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said earlier this week. “Elected officials cannot look taxpayers in the eye and ask them to play by a set of rules that the president of the United States is exempt from.”

US Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth late Thursday gloatingly posted a photo of an Iranian tower collapsing due to the Trump administration’s massive, illegal assault on the Middle East country’s infrastructure, including bridges, railways, and power facilities.

The photo Hegseth posted to social media appeared to show the surveillance tower at Iran’s Chabahar Port enveloped in smoke and crumbling to the ground amid US forces’ aggressive bombing campaign. Ryan Costello, policy director at the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), called Hegseth’s post “disgusting online revelry in the bombardment of Iran and its infrastructure.”

The Associated Press reported that US strikes on bridges and other infrastructure in southern Iran overnight into Friday killed at least eight people.

“The highway and railway bridge strikes appeared aimed at cutting off Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port, from roads leading into the Islamic Republic’s central region onward to Tehran, the capital,” AP noted.

US strikes, authorized by President Donald Trump, also targeted Iranian power infrastructure amid extreme heat.

The latest wave of US attacks came days after Trump threatened to “knock out all of [Iran’s] power plants” and bridges “unless they get to the table and negotiate.”

Deliberately attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime. Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, said Friday that while “there may be some nominal military use of the bridges,” the US attacks “potentially disrupt the movement of goods needed for Iran’s 90 million people.”

“Trump doesn’t care, but military commanders, who could face prosecution, should,” Roth added.

NIAC said Friday that “the distinction between military and civilian infrastructure has become increasingly blurred,” as “bridges, ports, airports, railways, power networks, and communications facilities sustain civilian life and economic activity, even if they at times are used for military purposes.”

“Their destruction produces civilian casualties, isolates communities, interrupts emergency services, restricts food and fuel distribution, and leaves civilians without electricity during extreme summer heat,” the group added. “As the campaign expands, the humanitarian consequences are therefore likely to grow even if Washington continues to classify the targets as militarily relevant.”

On Thursday, NIAC released a report detailing the “civilian catastrophe” inflicted by the US-Israeli war on Iran, which began in late February. Estimates indicate that the civilian death toll from the war on Iran could be over 2,000—including hundreds of children, a majority of them killed in a US strike on an elementary school in Minab on the first day of the war.

Additionally, millions of Iranians have been displaced by the US-Israeli bombardment and more than 125,000 “civilian units”—including residential housing—have been damaged or destroyed,“ NIAC observed in its report.

“The evidence compiled in this report, independently corroborated across UN agencies, human rights organizations, and satellite analysis, points to a pattern of harm to civilians, homes, schools, and medical infrastructure that warrants urgent international attention,” NIAC said.

Conservationists warned on Tuesday that a new proposal by President Donald Trump’s Interior Department would permit more killing of grizzly bears, which are a threatened species in the lower 48 states of the US.

The Interior Department’s proposed rule would transfer management of grizzly bears from the federal government to states where Republican leaders have sought to strip the species of protections. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced the new proposal—with little specific detail—alongside Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, Idaho Gov. Brad Little, and Republican members of Congress.

Jenny Harbine, managing attorney for the Northern Rockies office at Earthjustice, said it is “extremely concerning that the Trump administration is seeking to hand over more management of the species to hostile Northern Rockies states.”

“While we need to see the details of this proposal, it could put grizzly bears at greater risk at a time of record mortality for the species,” said Harbine. “Anti-science political maneuvers should not be allowed to thwart grizzly bear recovery. If this proposal will further harm the species, we are prepared to take the administration to court.”

Andrea Zaccardi of the Center for Biological Diversity said that with its new proposal, “the Trump administration is trying to make it easier to kill imperiled grizzly bears.”

“Grizzlies shouldn’t be killed at the whim of the livestock industry while it exploits our public lands for its own personal profit,” said Zaccardi. “The science is clear that grizzlies need full federal protection to recover, not a rule that will lead to more grizzly bear mortality. We’ll be reviewing the rule and considering next steps.”

Fewer than 2,000 individual grizzly bears remain in isolated populations in the lower 48 states.

The Interior Department said its new proposal wouldn’t alter the bear’s listing status under the Endangered Species Act, which the Trump administration is trying to weaken. Opponents of the new proposal cautioned that giving more management to GOP-controlled states could be disastrous for the species, rejecting Republican officials’ claim that the bears have sufficiently recovered.

“This is a decision being made for political reasons, it is not based on science, in the best interest of the survival of the species, or in compliance with the requirements of the Endangered Species Act,” Greg LeDonne, Idaho director of Western Watersheds Project, said in a statement.