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The Texas Republican told Semafor he would not support action on two ambassadorial picks without movement on the AIDS-fighting program for Africa.

The Trump administration announced that it’s pausing $1 billion in Medicare and Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota, accusing the states of widespread fraud. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz made the announcement in a press conference Tuesday, accusing recipients of the programs in the two states of “suspected fraud and noncompliance.” “If those ​states want that money they need to provide ​documentation that these payments are legitimate,” Kennedy said. But as Reuters reported, neither Kennedy nor Oz offered new evidence of fraud. President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and multiple administration officials have attacked Democratic-run states in the last few months, accusing them of engaging in widespread fraud when it comes to public services. In May, the White House blocked $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements for California, claiming that the state was not tackling fraud in its home and hospice health agencies. Last month, Trump reportedly directed federal agencies to look into how they could block funding for the state of California, and the Federal Emergency Management Association was caught holding up disaster aid to blue states earlier this year. Less than a week ago, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin threatened not only to block federal grants but also to jail state officials in Democratic states that refuse to hand over voter registration to the Trump administration. In the past, states have appealed these cuts in court and won. Minnesota and California will likely sue to get their funding back, and they’ll have plenty of evidence that the White House is targeting them for vindictive reasons.  

The Trump administration announced that it’s pausing $1 billion in Medicare and Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota, accusing the states of widespread fraud. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz made the announcement in a press conference Tuesday, accusing recipients of the programs in the two states of “suspected fraud and noncompliance.” “If those ​states want that money they need to provide ​documentation that these payments are legitimate,” Kennedy said. But as Reuters reported, neither Kennedy nor Oz offered new evidence of fraud. President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and multiple administration officials have attacked Democratic-run states in the last few months, accusing them of engaging in widespread fraud when it comes to public services. In May, the White House blocked $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements for California, claiming that the state was not tackling fraud in its home and hospice health agencies. Last month, Trump reportedly directed federal agencies to look into how they could block funding for the state of California, and the Federal Emergency Management Association was caught holding up disaster aid to blue states earlier this year. Less than a week ago, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin not only threatened to block federal grants, but also to jail state officials in Democratic states that refuse to hand over voter registration to the Trump administration. In the past, states have appealed these cuts in court and won. Minnesota and Calfifornia will likely sue to get their funding back, and they’ll have plenty of evidence that the White House is targeting them for vindictive reasons.  

More than 4.5 million people across the country have lost access to federal food assistance since the passage of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, according to a recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, or CBPP.The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, was one of the social safety net programs gutted by Trump’s budget, which narrowed eligibility for food aid and foisted the costs associated with SNAP onto states. As a result, CBPP estimates that 11 percent of SNAP participants—including 1.5 million children—were knocked off their food assistance between July 2025 and April 2026. The “big, beautiful bill” marked the most significant cuts in SNAP history. This included the expansion of work requirements for homeless people, veterans, and all able-bodied adults without children up to age 65, although people over age 54 were previously exempt. The bill also ended eligibility for many people with lawful immigration status and required states with high error rates to pay significantly more in benefit costs.Some parts of the country are being hit harder than others. Arizona in particular has seen a decline of more than 50 percent, as more than 440,000 Arizonans receiving SNAP benefits have been dropped from the program in less than a year. These new cuts have snowballed with bureaucratic red tape, anxieties around error rates, and problems in the state’s SNAP offices, including cuts to staff. Arizona’s approach to SNAP has been praised by federal officials, however, for “leading the way” in carrying out Trump’s changes and cutting “waste, fraud and abuse.” “Arizonans losing SNAP say they are skipping meals, quarreling over food, and missing rent payments to restock pantry shelves,” The New York Times reported Monday. “For the first time, monthly visits to the state’s food banks—private charities—have exceeded enrollment in SNAP.”In its report, the CBPP wrote that Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” poses a “great harm to families, including higher food costs, poverty, and hunger.… We expect these harms to grow as states fully implement eligibility restrictions and take actions to lower their error rates.”But hey, at least the White House is getting a new ballroom.

"What we're talking about is real basic human connection, ... being able to get on the phone and talk to that family member is a basic human need."

At the World Inequality Conference in June, the renowned economist Thomas Piketty and a team of 45 researchers from the World Inequality Lab unveiled the Global Justice Report. It’s a highly impressive and eloquent proposal to achieve ‘equality and prosperity within planetary boundaries’ by the end of the century. Based on a fully quantified roadmap derived [...]

Donald Trump is distancing himself from Capitol Hill at a time when his Congressional allies need him most.The president seemingly does not care that Congress’s long August recess is mere days away, or that the break will force Republicans to head into midterms woefully ill equipped to impress voters.When asked about Trump’s current engagement on the Hill, a person close to him told Politico Playbook Tuesday that it was currently at “zero.”Trump “doesn’t care about anything beyond SAVE, Iran, and the ballroom,” another White House ally told the newsletter.That’s left Republicans in the lurch. Without Trump’s help to ram through key legislation before midterms, incumbent conservatives will have to rely on weak ad hominem attacks to whittle down the predicted Democratic advantage.Michigan Representative Lisa McClain, the GOP conference chair, told Politico that her party’s midterm tagline will rely on framing Democrats as crazy—as opposed to advertising Republican candidates on their own slim merits.“We voted for capitalism,” McClain told Playbook. “We voted to lower your taxes: every Democrat voted to raise your taxes, and they are crazy. They want communism. They hate this country. They hate what this country stands for. That’s crazy.”But Trump can’t even get behind that. When asked if the White House had bought into the agreed-upon message, McClain told Politico: “No.”“We need to use it, and then when we think we’ve exhausted it, we need to use it some more,” McClain said.Trump hasn’t had many wins in his year and a half back in office, either. So far through his second term, the president has failed to resurrect the economy or adequately address the cost of living crisis, inflamed long-standing U.S. alliances, repeatedly tested the rule of law, attempted to create a slush fund for his far-right allies with taxpayer funds, and started another wildly unpopular war in the Middle East—all while grifting billions of dollars in the process.In the meantime, he’s fixated on his White House ballroom renovation and his highly controversial voter ID bill, the SAVE America Act, which even House Republicans have dropped as a lost cause.

The tech company Flock, makers of traffic cameras that automatically record and log car license plates for law enforcement agencies, is facing increasing scrutiny over accusations that its vast, AI-sorted database has created a new, nationwide mass surveillance system. With few regulations or oversight on its use, Flock’s data can be sold to third parties or shared with federal agencies such as ICE, says the ACLU’s Chad Marlow, who works on efforts to regulate and cancel Flock’s contracts with local law enforcement. Because Flock’s indiscriminate system records information on all cars and drivers that pass its cameras, “we have a company working to record the comings and goings of every single person in the country,” in what Marlow calls “a very un-American take on privacy.”

The tech company Flock, makers of traffic cameras that automatically record and log car license plates for law enforcement agencies, is facing increasing scrutiny over accusations that its vast, AI-sorted database has created a new, nationwide mass surveillance system. With few regulations or oversight on its use, Flock’s data can be sold to third parties or shared with federal agencies such as ICE, says the ACLU’s Chad Marlow, who works on efforts to regulate and cancel Flock’s contracts with local law enforcement. Because Flock’s indiscriminate system records information on all cars and drivers that pass its cameras, “we have a company working to record the comings and goings of every single person in the country,” in what Marlow calls “a very un-American take on privacy.”