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Members of US and Russian delegations, led by US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian President Vladimir Putin, attend a meeting in Moscow, Russia, on April 25, 2025.
Putin and Zelensky’s diplomatic dance
Both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have called for direct Russia-Ukraine talks in Istanbul this Thursday.
Behind these calls for talks, though, is a battle over whether the US will continue funding Zelensky’s army.
Here’s the bottom-line: Putin won’t stop the war. He hopes instead that US President Donald Trump will grow frustrated (or bored) with the quagmire and withdraw support for Kyiv. That, Putin believes, would allow Russia to seize more of Ukraine.
Zelensky will keep calling for a ceasefire to persuade Trump – who toyed with the idea of coming to Istanbul on Thursday – that Putin’s the problem, in hopes of keeping some US support in place.
In the Philippines, Duterte edges latest edition of family feud
The battle for power in the Philippines is fought between two families: the Marcoses and Dutertes. Monday’s midterm elections favored the latter.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s partners look set to retain the Senate, but allies of Vice President Sara Duterte – who faces an impeachment trial – won more seats than expected. Duterte’s conviction is now less of a surefire bet.
In spite of the politics, House Republicans seek extra Medicaid requirements
When one House committee released its plan for adjusting Medicaid, it omitted the cuts that some ardent deficit hawks in the Republican Party sought. However, it still includes changes that could leave millions of recipients uncovered.
Politically, this is a risky move – polls show huge support for the welfare program. Fiscal conservatives in the GOP, though, will feel that the party must do it now, while they hold unified control of Congress.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson talks with reporters in the US Capitol on May 8, 2025.
GOP retreats on Medicaid cuts
US House Speaker Mike Johnson is walking a tightrope on Medicaid — and wobbling.
After intense pushback from moderate Republicans, Johnson abandoned some of the GOP’s most aggressive proposals to cut federal funding for Medicaid, including a plan that would cap the federal government’s per capita grants to states for the program.
The background: A budget framework passed earlier this year commits Congress to slashing some $1.5 trillion in spending in order to fund the extension of President Donald Trump’s first term tax cuts without further ballooning the deficit.
Why the climbdown?The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 5.5 million Americans would lose coverage under the mooted cost cuts. More than 70 million Americans are currently enrolled in Medicaid, a program that is viewed positively by nearly 80% of the country, according to recent polls.
What’s the president’s position? Trump has said he will not touch entitlements, including social security and Medicaid, which further narrows the GOP’s realistic options.
The president has imposed a deadline of Memorial Day for a “big beautiful” budget bill. We’re watching to see how the Republicans close the gap, without turning off the tap.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) speaks with reporters following the Senate Republicans' weekly policy lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 11, 2025.
The GOP’s budget battle begins
Wait, didn’t Congress just pass a budget? Well, kinda.Two weeks ago, Congress passed a continuing resolution, a bill to keep the government’s coffers at current levels until the end of September. But that didn’t allocate additional funds for Trump’s legislative goals – like tax cuts and increases in border and defense spending – which require Congress to pass a budget reconciliation package.
Johnson wants to pass the reconciliation before Congress leaves for Easter Break in two weeks so that he can have the bill on Trump’s desk by Memorial Day.
Key details: Budget reconciliations only require a simple majority to pass. The Republicans have that in the House and the Senate, so they don’t need Democratic votes. The Byrd Rule limits what can be in the bill to just things that affect spending, which in theory keeps reconciliation from being used as a loophole for passing nonbudgetary policies without bipartisan support. Still, parties have been known to push the envelope to get things passed that wouldn’t otherwise.
But right now, each chamber is backing very different bills. The House’s includes $1.5 trillion in spending cuts – which many in the Senate worry will affect Medicaid – and $4.5 trillion for tax cuts. Meanwhile, the Senate’s bill is far less ambitious: It calls for less spending and fewer cuts and is heavily focused on defense, allocating $325 billion in new military and border security spending.
And the debt ceiling is looming. The House’s reconciliation package would increase the debt limit by $4 trillion, meaning that Congress would also have to vote to raise the debt ceiling, something that Senate Republicans have opposed in the past but may cave on, especially if Trump starts applying pressure to get the bill over the finish line.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland on February 20, 2025
Will Republicans really slash Medicaid?
This week, House Republicans are expected to vote on a budget measure that would fund an extension of President Donald Trump’s first-term tax cuts by taking an axe to one of America’s key entitlement programs: Medicaid.
What’s Medicaid? A joint federal and state program that funds medical care for low-income people. About a quarter of Americans are enrolled directly, and two-thirds say they or their family members have benefitted from the program.
What would the measure do? Slash $2 trillion from the federal budget over the next decade, including about $800 billion from Medicaid. The Medicaid cuts would come by placing per-capita limits on federal funding, narrowing states’ tax options for funding Medicaid, and imposing work requirements on recipients.
The debate: The GOP says these measures will root out waste and abuse, shift more of the burden onto states, which know their own needs better, and incentivize recipients to get off the dole.
Critics say the sweeping reductions would harm the poor by slashing their access to health care while funding tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
What’s Trump saying? He said he would “love and cherish” Medicaid, along with its related old-age benefit programs, Medicare and Social Security, which the GOP has said it wouldn’t touch. But Trump has also endorsed the budget resolution.
How the people see it: Strong majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents view Medicaid favorably, according to recent polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The GOP’s dilemma: The party is committed to cuts in taxes and spending, but several GOP districts with large populations of Medicaid recipients are up in arms. And given the GOP’s razor-thin House majority, and unified Democratic opposition, the Republicans can’t afford to lose more than a single vote in the House.
FILE PHOTO: Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the Forum River Center in Rome, Georgia, U.S. March 9, 2024.
Biden hits Trump on threats to cut entitlements
On Monday, a TV interviewer asked Donald Trump to detail his “outlook on how to handle entitlements: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?” His response: “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements — in terms of cutting — and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements.”
Within hours, strategists working on President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign issued a 20-second digital response for release on its X, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads social media accounts. It featured Trump’s words followed by a quick clip from Biden’s State of the Union Speech last week in which he pledged that “If anyone here tries to cut Social Security, Medicare or raise the retirement age, I will stop you.”
The Trump campaign quickly accused the Biden team of twisting Trump’s meaning. A spokesman insisted he meant cuts to “waste” in the programs, not to benefits.
Despite widespread concerns about the impact of long-term US debt, cuts to entitlement benefits or calls to raise the retirement age have long been taboo – nearly 80% said last year that they opposed reducing the size of Social Security – in American politics. We may find out this election year if that’s still true.
Trump has opened divisions within his own party on this issue in the past, and no matter what he says on it in the future, the Biden campaign will highlight his every word.