“We’re Cooked”: Republicans Are About to Tank Their Own Budget

The “big beautiful bill” that Donald Trump demanded from Republicans in Congress is facing opposition from Republicans in the House. 

Since the GOP released a draft budget bill earlier this week with devastating cuts to Medicaid and several other government programs, House Speaker Mike Johnson has had a difficult time selling the bill to the rest of his caucus. The bill is going through the reconciliation process to ensure that it can pass with only a simple majority in both the House and Senate, but even that may be a tall order. 

One House Republican left a party meeting about reconciliation Thursday and was not confident about the bill’s chances. 

“We’re cooked. Speaker let this get out of control,” the representative reportedly texted journalist Jake Sherman. 

Republican Representative Glenn Grothman, a member of the budget committee, criticized the bill Thursday for not being “sincere” and hasn’t disclosed how he will vote when the committee meets tomorrow, saying that he plans to tell the committee chair first. Other Republicans on the committee, including Representatives Ralph Norman and Chip Roy, are reportedly voting “no,” and Representative Andrew Clyde is possibly voting “no” as well. 

The bill also has drawn criticism from Representative Mike Lawler and four other Republicans over its $30,000 cap on state and local tax, or SALT, deductions. Lawler narrowly won reelection in 2024 in a battleground New York district that Vice President Kamala Harris carried, and supports higher deductions due to tax rates in New York.  

Other Republicans, such as Roy and Senator Mike Lee, don’t like the bill’s proposed Medicaid cuts because they feel they don’t go far enough, while 12 GOP representatives wrote a letter to Johnson earlier this month warning that they would “not support a final reconciliation bill that includes any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations.” 

None of this includes Democratic lawmakers’ opposition to the bill, which would necessitate near-unanimous support from the GOP. But with so many Republicans publicly expressing their problems, this budget bill may soon be a big beautiful corpse.

The largest organization devoted to survivors of sexual abuse is caving to Donald Trump and dropping support for immigrants, LGBTQ+ people, and other marginalized groups, out of fear of losing federal funding. 

The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, or RAINN, has directed staff at its crisis hotline not to direct callers to resources that would violate the White House’s executive orders against diversity, equity, and inclusion, The New York Times reports. 

A list of organizations that staffers are authorized to refer callers to has been stripped of specialized mental health hotlines for gay and transgender people; the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, a group that educates students about sex-based discrimination; and books about male-on-male or female-on-female sexual violence. The changes went into effect three months ago, a RAINN spokesperson told the Times.  

RAINN operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline, one of the country’s largest crisis hotlines for survivors of sexual violence, which served 460,000 people in 2024. It also operates a federally funded hotline for military service members. The move to drop support for resources to help immigrants and LGBTQ+ people, groups that are at particular risk of facing sexual violence, has not gone over well with RAINN’s volunteers. 

In February, a group of those volunteers signed a letter urging the organization’s leaders to restore the prohibited resources, and sent another letter to RAINN’s board of directors sharing their concerns. In the second letter, the volunteers wrote, “When trans, queer, Black, brown, Asian and undocumented survivors come to the hotline in crisis, we are not allowed to provide them with the same level of supportive care as other survivors.”

“RAINN may face uncertain risks in the future if we stand by marginalized survivors, but we are certain to lose our values now if we do not stand with them today,” the letter stated. 

RAINN’s actions show how easily one of the largest resources can be intimidated by the Trump administration. Trump in his second term has sought to punish organizations and institutions that defy his executive orders, by withdrawing federal funding, and now RAINN has joined the ranks of Columbia University and others who have complied. In the process, the most marginalized and vulnerable Americans have lost support in combating sexual abuse.

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan railed against the Trump administration’s attack on birthright citizenship during oral arguments before the court on Thursday.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Trump’s executive order restricting birthright citizenship prevents “the percolation of novel and difficult legal questions,” while the courts are operating “asymmetrically” by “forcing the government to win everywhere.” Sauer also posited that the courts can only grant relief to individual plaintiffs.

“Let’s just assume you’re dead wrong,” Kagan replied to the solicitor general. “Does every single person that is affected by this E.O. have to bring their own suit? How do we get to the result that there is a single rule of citizenship that is the rule we have historically applied rather than the rule that the E.O. would have us do?… How else are we going to get to the right result here, which is on my assumption that the E.O. is illegal?”

Kagan continued to chide Sauer.

“You’re losing a bunch of cases: This guy over here, this woman over here—they’ll have to be treated as citizens, but nobody else will. Why would you ever take this case to us (on the merits)?” she asked. “I’m suggesting that, in a case where the government is losing constantly, there’s nobody else who is going to appeal, they’re winning—it’s up to (the government) to decide to take this case to us. If I were in your shoes, there’s no way I’d approach the Supreme Court with this case. So you just keep on losing in the lower courts, and what’s supposed to happen to prevent that?”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also provided input.

“Your arguments seem to turn our justice system—in my view, at least—into a ‘catch me if you can’ regime from the standpoint of the executive, where everybody has to have a lawyer and file a lawsuit in order for the government to stop violating people’s rights,” she said. “Let’s assume for the purpose of this that you are wrong about the merits, that the government is not allowed to do this under the Constitution. Yet, it seems to me that your argument is, ‘We get to keep on doing it until everyone who is potentially harmed by it figures out how to file a lawsuit and hire a lawyer.’ I don’t understand how that is remotely consistent with the rule of law.”

Governor Ron DeSantis signed the Florida Farm Bill into law Thursday, officially banning fluoride from public water.

The bill does not call out the enamel-strengthening ingredient by name but effectively ends its inclusion in Florida drinking water by banning “certain additives in a water system.” The law goes into effect July 1.

“Yes, use fluoride for your teeth, that’s fine, but forcing it in the water supply is basically forced medication on people,” DeSantis said while announcing the new law. “They don’t have a choice, you’re taking that away from them.”

In making S.B. 700 law, Florida has become the second state in the nation to ban the naturally occurring mineral. Utah took the lead by banning fluoride in March. Their law just went into effect last week.

But not everyone in Florida wants the fluoride gone. When Miami-Dade County voted to strip fluoride from their drinking water last month, Mayor Daniella Levine Cava overrode it with a veto, citing public interest and the recommendations of medical experts.

“Medical experts also stress that there are serious public health risks of ending fluoridation that go beyond dental care,” Levine Cava said in a statement. “Removing fluoride will have long-term consequences for children’s health, especially for our most vulnerable children who lack access to regular dental and medical care.”

“Water fluoridation is a safe, effective, and efficient way to maintain dental health in our county—and halting it could have long-lasting health consequences, especially for our most vulnerable families,” she added. County commissioners voted to override her veto last week.

Fluoride was first introduced to U.S. water in 1945 as part of a public health decision to reduce cavities and tooth decay in adults and children. It was remarkably successful, dropping the cavity and decay rate in both groups by as much as 25 percent, according to the American Dental Association. In 1999, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention listed water fluoridation as one of the 10 greatest public health achievements in the twentieth century, for that reason.

Furthermore, fluoride levels in public water are lower than they’ve been in decades. In 2015, the Obama administration dropped the maximum level of fluoride per liter of water to 0.7 milligrams from the previous guidance issued in 1962, which allowed levels to range between 0.7 and 1.2 milligrams per liter in an effort to further waylay instances of dental fluorosis (discoloration and poor mineralization of the tooth.)

“The benefits of fluoride for oral health considerably outweigh the risks,” Rodrigo Lacruz, a professor at New York University’s College of Dentistry, said in 2020 after he published a study on the effects of high fluoride ingestion.  

But research hasn’t stopped conspiracists from doubting the dental aide. Under Donald Trump’s helm, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy has sworn to remove fluoride from all public water systems. Last month, Kennedy said he was assembling a task force on the issue, with plans to tell the CDC to end its fluoridation program for good.

Georgia’s LIFE Act is killing at least one family, as it keeps a brain-dead woman on life support against the wishes of her family—all because she was nine weeks pregnant at the time of her death.

Atlanta mother Adriana Smith has been transformed into a human incubator due to Georgia’s heartbeat law, which bans abortions once a heartbeat is detected in the fetus. That can happen as early as six weeks into pregnancy, making it one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the nation. One in three people discover they’re pregnant at the sixth week of pregnancy or later, according to the University of California San Francisco’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.

Smith, a 30-year-old registered nurse for Emory University Hospital, was declared brain-dead more than 90 days ago. In early February, she began experiencing intense headaches and sought treatment at Northside Hospital, where she was given medication and released.

“They gave her some medication, but they didn’t do any tests. No CT scan,” Smith’s mother, April Newkirk, told 11AliveNews. “If they had done that or kept her overnight, they would have caught it. It could have been prevented.”

Smith woke up the following morning gasping for air. Two hospital trips later, CT scans at Emory University Hospital revealed multiple blood clots in her brain.

“They asked me if I would agree to a procedure to relieve the pressure, and I said yes,” Newkirk said. “Then they called me back and said they couldn’t do it.”

Smith had been declared brain-dead, but the state is the one not letting her go—and her family is having to foot the mounting hospital bills.

Smith’s medical team is legally required to keep her alive until they believe the fetus can survive outside of the womb, at approximately 32 weeks’ gestation. Doctors advised Smith’s family that they are not legally allowed to consider alternatives, reported 11Alive. Newkirk said Smith is currently 21 weeks pregnant.

“I think every woman should have the right to make their own decision,” said Newkirk, who described seeing her daughter’s still-breathing body as “torture.”

“And if not, then their partner or their parents.”

Georgia’s LIFE Act bestows legal personhood on unborn fetuses. It was passed in 2019 and went into effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022.

Pro-abortion activists have long warned that fetal personhood, an ideology that calls for providing equal human rights to a fetus (even if it’s just a cluster of cells), will effectively strip pregnant people of their own rights. The legal language behind fetal personhood also effectively categorizes any person receiving an abortion at any stage as a murderer.

“How many different ways can they prove to us that they do not see us as human beings?” asked abortion columnist Jessica Valenti in a video reacting to the news of Smith’s situation. “You are a vessel, you are an incubator, but you are most certainly not a human being.”

“Corpses have more rights than a pregnant person in these states with abortion bans,” Valenti continued. “How many families are they going to devastate?”

The language of “fetal personhood” has already reached the national stage by way of sneakily drafted executive orders. One of dozens of executive orders signed by Donald Trump the evening of his inauguration cemented language at the executive level to delegitimize transgender identities. But within the fold of that order, titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government,” the Trump administration also decided to legally brand a person’s gender identity as beginning “at conception.”

“‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell,” the order read in part. “‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”