“That unwillingness to significantly budge on his array of tariffs has bogged down trade negotiations and hindered the administration from crafting substantial trade deals. As the U.S. has set out to negotiate deals with more than 60 trading partners, world leaders have grown increasingly frustrated with what they say are unbalanced demands from the U.S.
Other trading partners, including the European Union, have bristled at the terms of the UK framework and said they would not agree to a similar deal. That arrangement left a 10 percent so-called baseline tariff in place, while laying out a path to slash sector-specific tariffs.
The bloc isn’t alone, and Trump’s numerous demands and “do-it-or-else” approach have made it challenging for countries to corral the domestic political support they’ll need in order to sell any deal at home.”
“Trump’s all-sticks-and-no-carrot approach to trade talks is making it difficult for even friendly foreign governments to reach an agreement they fear could be political suicide back home — no matter how much the White House threatens their economies.”
Trump’s big beautiful bill hits Medicaid hard, which provides health insurance for low-income people. The bill adds onerous paperwork requirements that many people will fail to complete. Republicans represent the cuts as getting able-bodied young men back to work, but for Medicaid to save money, it has to no longer pay medical bills, which do not primarily come from able-bodied young men.
Although both parties have been fiscally irresponsible, the Republicans have been more irresponsible, despite talking about it more. The Democrats tend to offset some of their spending with taxes. Republicans just take on debt to pay for wars and tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy.
“So what does Mamdani actually want to institute, if elected in November, and why would it suck so much?
Consider free childcare, which his canvassers seemed to believe would be persuasive to me as I walked past them last night with my 2-year-old. Under Mamdani, the state would provide childcare—via taxpayer-funded daycares, akin to the universal 3K program currently in place (which doesn’t always provide parents with options they actually want)—for all aged six weeks to 5 years old. But if the idea is to lighten parents’ financial load, why aren’t all forms of childcare treated the same? Why don’t stay-at-home mothers get vouchers from the state to recoup loss of income? Why don’t neighborhood babysitting collectives get help? Why is one form of childcare—administered by the state—privileged above all others? Many education savings account programs, such as the one administered by Florida, recognize that assistance from the state, if it is to exist at all, ought to be handed straight to families so that they may use it as they wish. For socialists to offer universal state-run childcare as some great liberator is frankly insulting to many mothers; in the magnificent post-work future the socialists herald, won’t many women choose to spend more time with their children, not less?
City-run grocery stores—another of Mamdani’s proposals—look like a solution in search of a problem. Food deserts—geographic zones where there aren’t any affordable, healthy options available to residents—don’t exist in New York City.
…
Then there’s Mamdani’s rent freeze. He hopes to fully eradicate all rent increases for the roughly 2 million New Yorkers who are currently the beneficiaries of the city’s rent-stabilization scheme, claiming this will be a boon to the working class. What he does not realize is that decades of city-sanctioned housing market distortion is what has led to untenably high rents in the first place (plus it being too difficult to build), and that many of the beneficiaries of rent stabilization are not the poorest of the poor, but rather people whose friends or family have treated other people’s real estate as their own inheritances.
And don’t even get me started on the will-he-or-won’t-he of defunding the police. Mamdani, like all progressives swept up in the cultural fervor of George Floyd Summer, once talked big talk about defunding the police (a feminist issue, he says!), but has now motte-and-baileyed his way back to more social workers and investing in mental health services including voluntary rehabilitative programs. Other hints about what Mamdani believes: “Jails are not places where people can recover from a mental health crisis, and they often have punitive responses to mental health needs” and lots of talk about reducing stigmas and improving access to care. As with food deserts, Mamdani seems to genuinely believe that violent people in the midst of mental breakdown just don’t have access to care, and that if it is simply offered to them, they will no longer resort to terrorizing their fellow man. This strikes me as a simplistic understanding of this problem which would erase the improvements in crime rates made so far in 2025.
In order to pay for all these proposals—the grocery stores, the daycares, the corps of social workers, the fare-free buses (which 48 percent of New Yorkers fail to pay for in the first place, unfortunately)—Mamdani will simply press the button socialists love: Institute a 2 percent flat tax on those earning over $1 million. What Mamdani does not realize is that you cannot abuse the “tippy top.” It is the HENRYs (“high-earners, not rich yet”) or the “working rich” who are perhaps the best examples of meritocracy in action; they’re not the “idle rich”—those who’ve inherited their wealth or made it long ago, who are now mostly price-insensitive and untouchably well-off—and they’re frequently glued to Manhattan for industries like finance, law, and tech. Meet your tax base, Zohran. You should worry if they flee to the outlying suburbs.”
“House Republicans are aiming to slash funding for the nonpartisan watchdog for waste, fraud and abuse within the federal government by nearly half in the next fiscal year, according to spending bill text released Sunday night.”
…
“GAO has served as the nation’s chief investigator of wrongdoing at federal agencies for more than a century, but has been fighting for months as Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration have attempted to undercut its legal conclusions and independence. Now, they are attempting to shrink the agency into submission as it pursues nearly 40 investigations into whether the White House is illegally withholding, or “impounding,” money Congress had previously approved.
Also tucked into the bill is a major policy change that would eliminate the GAO’s ability to bring civil action against the executive branch over impoundments of funds.
“GAO’s work makes it possible for the legislative branch to hold government accountable,” said Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute. “Congress needs independent expert advice, which is exactly what GAO provides.””