• It’s make-or-break week in the House for President Donald Trump’s ‘one big, beautiful bill.’ House Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday he still believes his party can pass the president’s legislative agenda by the GOP’s self-imposed deadline of Memorial Day. But deep divisions remain within the caucus over cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, state and local tax deductions, and the bill’s implications for the national debt. Marianna Sotomayor, who covers the House for The Washington Post, breaks down the roadblocks facing House Republicans.
• And in headlines: The Supreme Court said the Trump administration can temporarily revoke deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a two-hour phone call to discuss a ceasefire with Ukraine, and the Justice Department is set to pay nearly $5 million to the family of a Trump supporter who was fatally shot by police during the insurrection.

• Check out Marianna’s work – www.washingtonpost.com/people/marianna-sotomayor/
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TRANSCRIPT

 

Jane Coaston: It’s Tuesday, May 20th. I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that read this weekend that champagne is good for your heart and needs no further details. No more information for me, just bottles. [music break] On today’s show, the Supreme Court says the Trump administration can temporarily revoke deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans. And President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have a two hour chit chat over the phone. Fun! But let’s get to President Trump’s mega bill of entertainment for Republicans, not you. Because this week is make or break for the bill in the House. If lawmakers want to stick to their deadline of passing Trump’s one big, beautiful bill before Memorial Day. As you may know, Memorial Day is Monday, and right now things are trending more toward break. Very late Sunday night, a group of ultra conservative Republicans on the House Budget Committee allowed the bill to move forward by voting present. They’d previously voted no, so their flip kept the bill on life support. But they still want big cuts to Medicaid and other programs that benefit millions of Americans. So that means more changes, with not a lot of time to make them. House Speaker Mike Johnson tried to strike an optimistic tone yesterday, ahead of more negotiations with dueling factions in his party. 

 

[clip of House Speaker Mike Johnson] We anticipated all through the process that we would come to this point and there would be some minor modifications in a manager’s amendment to clean up things. We’ve got a few issues to resolve but we’re working with all the interested parties to do that and I’m confident that we will. 

 

Jane Coaston: I’m glad you’re confident, but with so, so, so many disagreements to haggle over and so few votes to spare, it’s hard to see how the speaker gets all but two or three House Republicans to yes on the final bill. Some House Republicans want even bigger cuts to Medicaid. It’s not enough that the bill puts work requirements in place that could throw millions of people off their healthcare coverage. Others say they won’t support a bill with deep cuts to medicaid because it would be bad for their constituents. Some House members want to keep the clean energy tax credits put in place during the Biden administration, which are currently on the chopping block, and some fiscal hawks are upset the legislation would add to the nation’s deficit, which they argue they were elected to reduce. It’s like planning a wedding. Only everyone involved wants the happy couple to only listen to their thoughts on flower arrangements, and also everyone planning the wedding hates everyone else planning the wedding and refuses to attend if they’re invited. And we haven’t even gotten to the Senate. So for more on the status of the president’s legislative agenda and whether the big, beautiful bill can become a law, I spoke with Marianna Sotomayor. She covers the House for the Washington Post. Marianna, welcome to What a Day. 

 

Marianna Sotomayor: Thanks for having me. 

 

Jane Coaston: Okay, so we’re talking to you Monday evening. Where does the bill stand right now? 

 

Marianna Sotomayor: Yeah, so we’re surprisingly still pretty far away to say confidently that Republicans in the House will be able to actually pass the final product of this bill. We actually don’t even know what the final products looks like because there’s still a lot under negotiation. So on the budget panel, there are four members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus who were really mad at the fact that they don’t like that this bill actually does not reduce the deficit as much as they had hoped. They have been on this rallying cry since they actually got to the majority years ago. Didn’t want to be on the record saying that they support it, but they at least allowed it to move to another committee where its fate will be seen on Wednesday. A lot of hurdles to pass. 

 

Jane Coaston: So, yes, they want to reduce federal spending, but what kind of specific changes are those Budget Committee folks asking for and how likely are they to get them? 

 

Marianna Sotomayor: So it’s a little complicated. Um. We’re gonna get a little wonky here. There’s a couple of points specifically that um these hardliners are looking at. First and foremost, there’s work requirements that’s now part of the bill for Medicaid. A lot of those work requirements would kick in in 2029 that’s currently written in the bill. Hardliners want that to start early because they say that that could actually help reduce the cost of federal spending. And if you talk to those really conservative hardliners, they wish they could see a significant pushback against Medicaid. They really do want to see that program and the federal spending that goes to it lessen significantly. And there’s conversations about how much states should be paying for it. And that’s where it gets a little tricky with moderates. A lot of these moderates are the reason why House Republicans have the majority. They call themselves the majority makers. A number of them live in blue state districts. So, you know, any of these changes that we’re talking about right now, and there’s a couple other policies I can mention as well, it’s almost like a yin and yang. If you pull too far to the right, you’re going to really upset the centrists. If we pull too far to the center, you are going to upset those far right lawmakers. And one of the issues that I should mention that is still under negotiation that the moderates really want is state and local taxes. There are six Republicans from blue states, so think New York, New Jersey, California, there’s a cap on tax deductions that went in during the 2017 tax bill. It was capped at $10,000. They want to see that cap go even higher. Republican leadership said, are you guys cool with $30,000 cap? And there you’re saying, absolutely not. And based on where we are right now, Monday evening, they’re in a logjam. I’m not sure how they’re going to be able to resolve that issue. 

 

Jane Coaston: So where does this leave the big, beautiful bill? It’s out of the Budget Committee. You said it’s now headed to another committee later this week. Is its passage any more secure at this point? You said you could. I mean, it sounds like no, I’m hearing logjam. I’m hearing complication. 

 

Marianna Sotomayor: Yeah. 

 

Jane Coaston: I am not hearing this is going to pass. 

 

Marianna Sotomayor: Yeah, we’re not there yet. We’re really not there. And I think one thing to keep in mind is that Johnson, if all members, Republicans and Democrats, are voting, he can only lose three Republicans. Just talking about that salt issue, the state and local taxes, that’s six Republicans who are already saying they’re not going to vote for this bill unless things change. Add the Freedom Caucus, that is probably closer to a dozen, so there is a significant number of Republicans who are against this bill. It will have to change. It can change in the rules committee, they’re going to be meeting at 1 a.m. on Wednesday, and that’s going to be a really long debate. And if even if it passes that point, it’ll go to the House floor as early as Wednesday afternoon. You could still make last-minute changes to the bill on the floor, but there’s a lot that’s still going to have to be resolved even before we get to the house floor. 

 

Jane Coaston: Now, setting aside the actual mechanics of how we would make this bill, or how they would make this bill pass, in terms of what’s actually in the bill, the top line takeaway seems to be we’re passing lots of tax cuts because everybody loves a tax cut, and boosting funding for border protection, and we’re paying for it with cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, education, and clean energy tax credits. So, for like, everyday average people, how would their day-to-day lives look different if this thing becomes law? 

 

Marianna Sotomayor: Well, it’s gonna be really tough. I mean, you know, we’re talking about when are these tax credits, when are these work requirements going to be, you now, felt? A lot of Republicans are being a little sneaky. They want those things to be felt later on when it’s likely to be a House Democratic majority. The reason why? It’s not really popular. To your point of how is this gonna affect people, I mean if you are someone who receives a number of benefits, it is entirely possible that you can get kicked off of Medicaid. Um. Some nutritional programs, there’s other provisions in there about, for example, it doesn’t specifically state Planned Parenthood, but any kind of reproductive agency where you can essentially go to a Planned Parenthood, that receives some kind of federal funding, they wanna strip that out. So we could likely see less access to abortions across the country if this becomes law. So it might not, the impacts may not be felt right away, but they will be significant. 

 

Jane Coaston: Right. And especially because tax cuts for many people, especially since if you are probably on the lower end of the income spectrum, you don’t pay taxes in the first place. So a tax cut is kind of eh. 

 

Marianna Sotomayor: Yeah. 

 

Jane Coaston: But uh the Medicaid and food stamp cuts in particular have been the big hang up. We were talking about that. Fiscal conservatives want deep cuts, moderates do not. I’m thinking specifically about California Republican David Valadao, who Politico says represents more Medicaid beneficiaries than any other Republican in the House. Is there a middle ground between these two coalitions? 

 

Marianna Sotomayor: Yeah, and I will say someone like Valadao is in a really tough position. He’s an interesting Republican because he actually lost re-election during the 2018 midterms because he voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And many moderates remember to this day voting for health care bills under the last Republican majorities, immigration bills that went nowhere in the Senate. And they paid the political price for that. So there are a lot of questions from moderates about, okay, even if we vote to pass this bill in the House, the Senate, many senators have said it’s going to change. So, why am I going to take a really tough vote that includes measures that are bad for my constituents if, in the long run, it’s all going to change.

 

Jane Coaston: Now, despite all of their differences, and there are many, House Republicans were able to rally together a few months ago to start these debates around the details of this bill. Do you think they can do it again? 

 

Marianna Sotomayor: So Trump really has been a legitimate factor here. You know when you look back at the last two years when they were in the majority but without Trump, any discussion about cutting federal spending or the deficit, they could not find any agreement on those subjects. Like it literally led to the ousting of Speaker Kevin McCarthy. That’s why he was removed in part. So this really is a test for Trump because he has been really good at twisting arms. He’s actually going to be speaking to House Republicans Tuesday morning coming to Capitol Hill to start that pressure campaign. So whether he is actually able to get a number of lawmakers to fold is going to be interesting because again, a number of those really stubborn holdouts have said, your threats by, you know, your allies that want to primary me, well, bring it on. Like I’m not afraid of a primary challenger. They’re really not scared of what could come. And it’s interesting because I will always remember majority whip Tom Emmer earlier this year, when I asked him about just that, there’s some members who just don’t care. If you come at them with a primary challenger, you come at them with any threat, what do you say to them? And he goes, well, you know, some members just aren’t afraid to die. There’s nothing you can do if you’re not afraid to die. Kinda bleak.

 

Jane Coaston: Marianna, thank you so much for joining me. 

 

Marianna Sotomayor: Thanks for having me. 

 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Marianna Sotomayor. She covers the house for the Washington Post. We’ll link to her work in our show notes. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

 

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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

 

[sung] Headlines. 

 

[clip of President Donald Trump] It’s my honor to officially sign the Take It Down Act into law. It’s a big thing, very important, so horrible what takes place. 

 

Jane Coaston: President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan bill from the White House Rose Garden on Monday targeting so-called revenge porn. First Lady Melania Trump, who earlier this year advocated for the Take It Down Act on Capitol Hill, joined the president in applauding the legislation. She said it’s a powerful step forward in making sure every American, especially young people, feel more protected from their image or identity being used against them. 

 

[clip of First Lady Melania Trump] Artificial intelligence and social media are the digital candy for the next generation. Sweet, addictive, and engineered to have an impact on the cognitive development of our children. But unlike sugar, these new technologies can be weaponized, shape beliefs, and sadly, affect emotions and even be deadly. 

 

Jane Coaston: The Take It Down Act was authored by Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz and co-led by Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. It criminalizes the publication of non-consensual intimate imagery, including those generated by AI. It also requires social media and other sites to remove such content within 48 hours of notice from a victim. The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to halt legal protections for nearly 350,000 Venezuelan migrants living in the U.S. under temporary protected status. Venezuelans migrants were granted temporary status by the Biden administration, which deemed it potentially unsafe to deport migrants back to the country under President Nicolas Maduro’s regime. The former president extended those protections before leaving office. But in February, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem terminated the extension of the program. The federal judge blocked Noem in March. The Trump administration filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. The justices temporarily lifted the block Monday, potentially opening the door for deportations while the case continues in court. The decision was unsigned and no reasons were given. Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to publicly note her dissent. The high court did note that it would allow individual migrants to bring legal challenges. President Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the phone Monday. The call lasted more than two hours. In a Truth Social post, the president said, quote, “Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a ceasefire and, more importantly, an end to the war.” The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of. Sure. But there is no mention of Putin making any major concessions to move negotiations along. And the call came one day after Russia launched one of the largest missile attacks on Ukraine since the start of the war. Putin said the conversation was, quote, “meaningful and quite frank and overall, in my view, very useful” in televised remarks. He told reporters that Russia is, quote “ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace accord.” But, of course, didn’t provide any details. Last week, Ukrainian and Russian officials met for direct negotiations in Turkey and agreed to a mass prisoner swap in the coming days. Trump also posted that the Vatican had expressed interest in hosting negotiations between the warring nations. He ended his post with quote, let the process begin. The Trump administration is set to pay nearly $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt, the Trump supporter who was fatally shot by police after breaching the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Outgoing U. S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger confirmed to CBS News that he was told the Justice Department agreed to the payment to settle a wrongful death claim, which was filed by Babbitt’s family in 2024. They were seeking $30 million. Babbitt was fatality shot while trying to break into the speaker’s lobby with a mob during the 2021 insurrection. The DOJ did not pursue criminal charges against the Capitol Police officer after determining there was no evidence the officer used unreasonable force. In the civil suit, Babbitt’s estate argued the officer was negligent in his use of deadly force. In a statement sent to officers earlier this month, Manger expressed his disappointment with the settlement. He said it, quote, “sends a chilling message to law enforcement officers across our nation, especially those who have a protective mission like ours.” And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino have a very special announcement to make. Most of the stuff they said in their previous lives as right-wing media figures was bullshit. Okay, they have not actually said that, but the evidence is mounting that that’s where they stand. Case in point, the 2019 death of financier and alleged sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York and the belief by some, actually, many people, according to polling by Circus Insights, that he did not die by suicide ahead of his trial. Let’s go back to February of this year, before Bongino joined the FBI, when he was just a right-wing podcast host who yelled a lot. On a segment of a show entitled All Hell is About to Break Loose and Epstein’s Scandal Over This Little Black Book, Bongino says that the entire conspiracy surrounding Epstein crimes and death which obviously just happened to involve long time political enemies of the right was just days away from being exposed. 

 

[clip of Don Bongino] The Jeffrey Epstein case, you do not know all the details of this thing, I promise. There are a lot of really obviously powerful people, this part you know, but the specific names we may not, including, I believe, the Clintons, based on information I discussed yesterday, who are knee deep in involvement with Jeffrey Epstein and no one can figure out what the level of entanglement is. 

 

Jane Coaston: And Bongino assured his audience that he would never stop investigating Epstein, never. 

 

[clip of Don Bongino] I’m not letting it go, ever. 

 

Jane Coaston: But that was then and this is now. Here’s Bongino alongside Patel on Fox News Sunday explaining that uh actually the whole Epstein thing is a nothing burger. He died by suicide. That’s it.

 

[clip of Fox News host unnamed] You said Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. People don’t believe it. 

 

[clip of Kash Patel] Well, I mean, listen, they have a right to their opinion. But as someone who has worked as a public defender, as a prosecutor who’s been in that prison system, who’s been in the Metropolitan Detention Center, who has been in segregated housing, um you know a suicide when you see one. And that’s what that was. 

 

[clip of Don Bongino] He killed himself. Again, you want me to I’ve I’ve seen the whole file. 

 

Jane Coaston: In a tweet about the Fox News interview, Bongino said, quote, “I have reviewed the case. Jeffrey Epstein killed himself. There is no evidence in the case file indicating otherwise.” Obviously, this did not go over well with some of Bongino’s diehard fans. And of course, it didn’t. They’re now accusing him of being a deep state traitor or something. Because for six years, they’ve been told that the life and death of Jeffrey Epstein was a conspiracy that went to the highest places in politics by Bongino. I went back through about five years of his show and how he covered Epstein, and every time, same basic thing. There was a horrifying conspiracy. It involved every liberal figure you already hate, and they’re trying to cover it up. Who is they? The Deep State, the Clinton family, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, if you prime your audience to believe that there was a gigantic conspiracy surrounding the death of Jeffrey Epstein and then you tell them, oops, nothing to see here, they’re gonna be a little ticked off. Same with the other big news of Patel and Bongino’s Fox News interview. That first assassination attempt on the president’s life, there was no big conspiracy there either. Here’s Bongino. 

 

[clip of Don Bongino] In some of these cases, the there you’re looking for is not there. And I know people, I get it, I understand. It’s not there, if it was there, we would have told you. 

 

Jane Coaston: Wild! Look, Bongino gets why you’re suspicious. He understands. Because he’s the one who helped make you suspicious. Really. In an August episode of his podcast, he theorized that Trump’s attempted assassination might have been the work of, quote, “some honeypot operation by the Iranians.” But now that he’s in charge, it turns out that there was, in fact, no giant conspiracy theory just yearning to be unveiled by a guy with a podcast. Conspiracy theories can be incredibly dangerous. Particularly when they’re wielded by people willing to use them until the second they stop being useful. People like FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino. Congratulations Dan, you did it. [music break] 

 

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, contemplate the truly horrible moment when you read about a dance club that closes at 10pm and think, that could work for me, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about early birds, a rotating dance party that takes place between 6pm and 10pm because it’s a, quote, “dance party for ladies who have shit to do in the morning,” like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston and look, I just love sleeping and then getting up early and then going to bed early. Yeah, that’s basically it. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

 

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