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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Rise and fall [1]
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Date: 2025-06-03
We begin today with Adam Cancryn and Jake Traylor of POLITICO and the Trump regime’s attempts to ram Medicaid cuts through some reluctant Republican Senators.
A strong bloc of Republicans in the Senate has signaled that they are uncomfortable with Medicaid reductions in the sweeping tax-and-spending bill enacted last month by the House. President Donald Trump’s advisers are determined to confront those concerns by claiming that cuts would chiefly target undocumented immigrants and able-bodied people who should not be on Medicaid, according to four administration officials and outside allies granted anonymity to discuss strategy. [...] The megabill would add work requirements to the program and bar undocumented immigrants from getting coverage, among other attempts to tighten eligibility. Those provisions are projected to leave roughly 7.6 million low-income people without health care over the next decade — losses that would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in cost savings for the program. Contrary to Trump officials’ claims, such cuts are widely anticipated to go beyond immigrants and the narrow slice of able-bodied unemployed, according to health experts. The provisions would likely add new layers of paperwork for low-income enrollees, making it more difficult for qualified recipients to stay on the program and pushing otherwise-eligible Americans suddenly out of health coverage.
Chris Geidner of LawDork looks at the upcoming five weeks for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Over the next five weeks, we expect the U.S. Supreme Court to release decisions in all of the remaining cases. That means 34 decisions in fewer than that many days. The Supreme Court’s conservatives will largely control what happens this month with their 6-3 majority. Among other matters, that majority has dramatically increased constitutional protections based on religion even as they decrease other protections — what I’ve referred to as their religious supremacy project. Although Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s recusal from a case over a would-be religious charter school put off a decision for now on that question, there are several other challenges featuring or backed by religious conservative groups and businesses that are likely to expand the religious supremacy project this month. At the same time, three factors have led to the court at least appearing less extreme than it otherwise might appear. First, the lingering of pushback from the Dobbsdecision overturning Roe v. Wade has had an effect on some justices. Second, the need for the court to take and address some of the extremist decisions of appeals courts — primarily, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit — makes recent terms look more “balanced” than they would if the justices truly were just choosing the cases they wanted to take. Finally, the political reality of being the Supreme Court in the Trump era means that both time and political capital is spent addressing Trump’s actions rather than other, longer-term goals of the legal right. This last area is likely to only become a bigger question over time as Trump seeks to part ways with the legal right — as Trump attacks the Federalist Society and begins naming more of his own judicial nominees.
Chad Aldeman of the education blog The 74 writes that many teachers are now being priced out of housing in the communities where they teach.
In a recent analysis, Katherine Bowser of the National Council on Teacher Quality finds that teachers are increasingly being priced out of housing in their communities. She notes that, between 2019 and 2024, the percentage growth in home prices and the cost of renting a one-bedroom apartment have significantly outpaced increases in both inflation and teacher salaries. In short, teachers face, “a widening gap between income and housing affordability,” according to NCTQ President Heather Peske. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines “affordable” as “paying no more than 30% of gross income for housing costs, including utilities.” NCTQ had previously looked at a select sample of 69 large urban districts and found 18 where beginning teacher salaries met the definition for “unaffordable” as of 2019. By 2024, that number had risen to 39, or about half the sample. In 10 of those districts, the rent for a one-bedroom apartment cost 40% of a beginning teacher’s salary. In Boston, for example, it would eat up nearly 43%. [...] These are extreme numbers. But who or what is to blame? And what can be done?
Alec Tyson and Brian Kennedy of the Pew Research Center look at how Americans want to confront some of the challenges of extreme weather.
The survey conducted from April 28 to May 4, 2025, among 5,085 U.S. adults explores attitudes about the steps government could take to address extreme weather impacts, as well as the link Americans see between extreme weather and climate change. The report builds on long-standing efforts at the Center to understand how Americans think about the interrelated issues of energy, climate and extreme weather. Key highlights: Americans have mixed views on government helping homeowners cover the rising cost of insurance: 41% say this is a good idea, while 34% call it a bad idea. Americans express some openness to banning new construction in areas at high risk of extreme weather (39% say good idea vs. 28% say bad idea). But few support requiring people to move out of high-risk areas (only 14% say this is a good idea). On this and other policy steps, many Americans say they are not sure, underscoring the developing nature of public views on this issue. Most Americans who have experienced extreme weather in the last year say climate change played a role. Across each of the five types of extreme weather events we asked about (like intense storms or floods), at least eight-in-ten who experienced the event say climate change contributed a lot or a little. Partisanship shapes perceptions of extreme weather itself, as well as the connection to climate change. Republicans are less likely to report extreme weather events than Democrats. And while most Republicans who do report experiencing extreme weather events draw a link to climate change, they are much less likely than Democrats to see a strong connection.
Margaret Sullivan of the Guardian enumerates some of the reasons why Trump is going after parks, libraries, and museums.
Why would any politician – especially one as hungry for adulation as Donald Trump – go after such cherished parts of America? It seems counterintuitive, but this is all a part of a broad plan that the great 20th-century political thinker Hannah Arendt would have understood all too well. Take away natural beauty, free access to books and support for the arts, and you end up with a less enlightened, more ignorant and less engaged public. That’s a public much more easily manipulated. [...] What’s really going on is a long-term power grab. In crippling learning, beauty and culture Trump and his helpers “seek to make the country more amenable to their political domination”.
Former justice of the supreme court of Britain, Jonathan Sumption, writes for The New York Times about what he sees as America’s democracy continues to fail.
As an observer of democracies and a constitutional lawyer in Britain, I have watched with rising alarm as many Western nations threaten to become failed democracies. [...] The United States is a particularly interesting example. It has enjoyed a century and a half of almost unbroken good fortune. This may now be coming to an end in the face of competition from countries like India and China. Old skills have become redundant in high-wage economies as national prosperity has shifted to high-tech industries, hitting incomes traditionally derived from manufacturing, agriculture and the extraction industry. Even in the high-tech sectors where the United States is strongest, its lead has shortened and in some cases vanished. These are not exclusively American problems. Europe suffers from them even more, and European expectations of the state are higher. The shattering of optimism is a dangerous moment in the life of any democracy. Disillusionment with the promise of progress was a major factor in the crisis of Europe that began in 1914 and ended in 1945. The tragedy is that historical experience warns us that strongmen do not get things done. At best they may indulge the fantasies of some of the population. But at what cost? Strongmen tend to be fixated on a few simple ideas that they offer as solutions to complex problems. The concentration of power in a small number of hands and the absence of wider deliberation and scrutiny enable them to make major decisions on the hoof, without proper forethought, planning, research or consultation. Within the government’s ranks, a strongman promotes loyalty at the expense of wisdom, flattery at the expense of objective advice, and self-interest at the expense of the public interest. All of this usually makes for chaos, political breakdown, economic impoverishment and social divisions.
Well, this is what happens, in large part, when America is mis-educated.
Finally today, Howard LaFranchi and Whitney Eulich of The Christian Science Monitor look at Trump’s attempts to impose a new Monroe Doctrine.
In the first few months of his second term, Mr. Trump has presented a vision of the Western Hemisphere that hearkens back to a 19th-century spheres-of-influence approach to international affairs: The regions of North, Central, and South America should be exclusively the United States’ economic, diplomatic, and military domain. This approach is disrupting the postwar global order and the system of regional alliances led by the U.S. and its allies for nearly 75 years, experts say. In the eyes of many, it’s the Monroe Doctrine redux. [...] Today President Trump’s preoccupation with foreign dominance in the region is focused squarely on Beijing. Among his concerns are China’s influence over critical infrastructure in Central and South America, including the ports at either end of the Panama Canal, and now China’s ownership of the megaport at Chancay. This economic and diplomatic clout has made China the top trading partner of most countries in Central and South America.
Have the best possible day that you can!
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