President Donald Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson answer questions about the budget bill from the media at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 20, 2025.
Welcome back to the weekly politics chat with Neil and Claire! Remember that if you prefer to read, you can activate a transcript by clicking the “transcript” button above.
We begin this week’s episode with a clip from President Donald Trump’s speech on July 4, 2025, as he prepared to sign H.R.1, otherwise known in the Republican Party as as the One, Big, Beautiful, Budget Bill.
In the news:
* The search and rescue in Kerr County Texas following the July 4 flooding continues as a recovery operation. As of this morning, 120 people are confirmed dead, and 160 still missing. There seem to be several big questions coming out of this tragedy What did officials know and when did they know it? Were the Trump Administration’s cuts to the National Weather Service partly to blame for late and incomplete warnings? Another question is whether the fate of FEMA, which the Trump administration wanted to dismantle to shift costs and coordination of disaster recovery onto states, will proceed as planned. We also highlight the sad story of Camp Mystic, a Christian camp for girls decimated by the rising waters, despite a disaster plan implemented two days earlier: 27 campers are among the dead.
* Since the Kerr County disaster, there has been deadly flooding in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, where 9 to 12 inches of rain fell in 24 hours; and in southeastern New Mexico.
* After feeding conspiracy theories about financier and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and vowing to reveal the “truth” about liberal elites’ coverup, the Trump administration has officially reversed course. Laura Loomer, Tucker Carlson, and other MAGA influencers are crying foul, and demanding resignations from Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. Even Fox News’s Peter Doocy, whose day job appears to be teeing up softball questions that give Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt opportunities to spread lies and propaganda, is demanding answers for why Bondi promised to reveal an “Epstein client list” she now says does not exist. Critics now point to a new conspiracy—one hatched by the Trump administration.
* Late last week, Elon Musk’s X released a new version of Grok; on Tuesday, the AI chatbot started kicking out antisemitic posts and praising Hitler. Although many of the posts are still up, Grok seems to be back on track as of today. On Wednesday, in what was said to be an unrelated development, X’s CEO, Linda Yaccarino, resigned after two years of working in the most highly-paid thankless job in the United States.
Today’s focus: Trump’s Budget Bill, otherwise known as H.R.1:
* What gets cut in this bill to make room for the tax breaks it writes into federal law? Among other things, Medicaid and SNAP, some created by the difficulties recipients have in navigating new work requirements. Billions of dollars will be shifted to federal deportation and incarceration of immigrants, and there is a $150 billion bump in military spending, even as the United States withdraws its soft power around the globe.
* Why was this bill was so huge to begin with? Here, we discuss the way it was passed: reconciliation. Does the use of reconciliation have ramifications for our democracy? The National Immigration Law Center argues that it does. However, President Joe Biden also used reconciliation in 2021 for pandemic recovery; and againin 2022, to pass a sweeping agenda that included expansions of clean energy, the Affordable Care Act, and Medicare-subsidized prices for commonly used drugs.
* Intriguingly, Trump’s bill is extremely unpopular. According to a recent YouGov/Economist poll, only 35% of the public supports it, as opposed to 53% who strongly or somewhat oppose it. In fact, it seems that the more Americans know about it, the less they like it: the bill’s approval has fallen by ten points in the past month, and according to a Quinnipiac poll, only 67% of Republican voters support the bill—about 12 points lower than Trump’s approval rating among Republican voters.
* The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has denounced Republican cuts to public assistance as “an offense to human life.” Evangelical Christians are sharply divided, with the Southern Baptist Convention praising cuts to Planned Parenthood, and those involved in relief work condemning cuts to social welfare.
* A few budget hawks on the Republican side voted no, pointing to the $3 trillion the bill will add to the federal deficit over 10 years. Because of this, the bill passed very narrowly in the Senate: Republicans Rand Paul (KY), Susan Collins (ME), and Thom Tillis (NC) voted against it; Lisa Murkowski (AK) cut big deals with the White House and voted for it, but Alaskans will still lose benefits.
What we want to go viral:
* Neil recommends a podcast he was on this week, “This Guy Sucked: A Podcast by Professional Historians for Amateur Haters.” Hosted by historian Claire Aubin, the show delivers a historical figure to hate on with each episode: Neil’s is on Reagan White House aide Terry Dolan, a closeted gay man who pursued a homophobic agenda as thousands sickened and died from AIDS in the 1980s.
* Claire recently binged “Lost Boys and Fairies,” a three-episode drama from the BBC, released in 2024 and available on Britbox. It’s about two gay men, a drag community in Cardiff, Wales, and the couple’s journey to adopting a child. But really, it is about the trauma of growing up with homophobia, and how those who have been hurt and abandoned helping each other heal and grow.
Your hosts:
Claire Potter is a historian of politics and media, a writer, a podcaster, and the sole author and editor of the Political Junkie Substack. Her most recent book is Political Junkies: From Talk Radio to Twitter, How Alternative Media Hooked Us on Politics and Broke Our Democracy (Basic Books, 2020), and she is currently writing a biography of feminist journalist Susan Brownmiller.
Neil J. Young is a historian of religion and politics, a journalist, and a former co-host of the Past Present podcast. His most recent book is Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (University of Chicago Press, 2024).
You can also get all video and audio content by subscribing to my podcast, Why Now? available for free on Apple iTunes, YouTube, or Spotify.
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Short takes:
* Have you ever wondered what it is like to be some of the most hated people in the United States? When The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff “spoke with a dozen current and former ICE agents and officers about morale at the agency since Trump took office,” he found that the face of Trump’s police state demoralized, burned out, and distressed about what they are being forced to do. “The frustration isn’t yet producing mass resignations or major internal protests,” Miroff writes, “but the officers and agents described a workforce on edge, vilified by broad swaths of the public and bullied by Trump officials demanding more and more.” Furthermore, “ICE’s physical infrastructure is buckling. The agency is holding nearly 60,000 people in custody, the highest number ever, but it has been funded for only 41,000 detention beds, so processing centers are packed with people sleeping on floors in short-term holding cells with nowhere to shower.” (July 10, 2025)
* Democrats are hoping that once the practical realities of the Trump budget sink in that working and middle-class voters will come home. Not so fast, Lauren Egan explains at The Bulwark. True, “The bill’s polling is toxic,” but “The most politically toxic policy changes, like the cuts to Medicaid, won’t be fully implemented until after the midterm elections, while the more popular elements—such as $1,000 investment accounts for newborn children—will go into effect immediately. Some Democrats are concerned that their posture could alienate those parents aided by the new accounts.” Furthermore, the Democrats are still just the Party of No. The party must support “efforts have begun to help the party fill out the ‘What we will do’ part of the pitch to voters.” (July 9, 2025)
* At Axios, Mike Deehan reports that legislation moving through the Massachusetts legislature could ban mobile phones in public schools beginning with the 2026-2027 school year. Although the bill “allows local schools some flexibility in implementing the ban,” such as for students with disabilities and multilingual learners, “School districts must create `bell-to-bell’ prohibition policies during school hours, meaning phones would be off limits during the school day.” You know what would be even better? Legislation that prohibited smart phones for everyone under 16, and that required all major carriers to support a good, affordable flip phone. (July 9, 2025)
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