A look at where things are on the GOP’s tax bill, and who stands to benefit and lose. Tax-policy reporter Richard Rubin with the Wall Street Journal has the details.After oral arguments, the Supreme Court appeared divided over how much power lower courts should have to issue nationwide injunctions. The Washington Post unpacks the issue.The Trump administration is rolling back some protections against forever chemicals. Mariah Blake tells Apple News In Conversation why there’s still optimism on the state level, and suggests some ways to protect yourself.Plus, a Milwaukee judge pleaded not guilty to attempting to block immigration arrest, a landmark moment in gene editing, and what to know about the WNBA’s new team. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: What are the key issues in the Supreme Court's birthright citizenship case?
Good morning. It's Friday, May 16th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, what's in the GOP's big tax bill, the EPA's regulatory rollback on forever chemicals in drinking water, and the world's first patient treated with personalized gene editing therapy. But first, the Supreme Court seems torn over what to do with the birthright citizenship case.
As we mentioned yesterday, the constitutionality of Trump's order calling to end birthright citizenship is not what the court is being asked to consider. Rather, justices yesterday were asked to weigh the limits of judicial power. and whether a lower court is allowed to block an executive order like this one from being enforced nationwide.
The Trump administration has asked the court to scale back the nationwide injunctions against his order so they can apply to only those who are pregnant, immigrant advocacy groups, and residents of the 22 states that challenged his order in the courts. Here's Solicitor General D. John Sauer arguing on behalf of the administration.
Chapter 2: How is the Trump administration challenging nationwide injunctions?
Respectfully, I think what we have are lower courts making snap judgments on the merits that ignore the fundamental principle of the 14th Amendment, that it was about giving citizenship to the children of slaves, not to the children of illegal immigrants.
For more than a century, most scholars and courts have agreed that the 14th Amendment is not exclusively about slavery and that it plainly states intent that every child born within the territory of the United States is a citizen. The defendants, meanwhile, argued that restricting the scope of injunctions would go against the Constitution and previous court rulings.
New Jersey Solicitor General Jeremy Feigenbaum said the Trump administration's request to let the injunction stand in some places, but not others for now, would lead to chaos.
Since the 14th Amendment, our country has never allowed American citizenship to vary based on the state in which someone resides. Because the post-Civil War nation wrote into our Constitution that citizens of the United States and of the states would be one and the same without variation across state lines.
This isn't the first time justices have been asked to weigh in on nationwide injunctions, and justices have expressed dismay in the past. Yesterday, Justice Clarence Thomas seemed to focus on the history of nationwide injunctions, suggesting at one point the United States had, quote, survived until the 1960s without using them.
From the liberal wing, Justice Elena Kagan acknowledged that critics of both the Biden and Trump administrations had used friendly jurisdictions to their advantage. But she asked Sauer how else states could tackle executive orders they perceived to be blatantly unconstitutional.
And Justice Katonji Brown Jackson questioned the fairness of the Trump administration, pushing ahead, denying citizenship documents regardless, knowing only those with the means could successfully challenge in courts.
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Chapter 3: What arguments are being made by the justices and advocates?
The real concern, I think, is that your argument seems to turn our justice system, in my view at least, into a catch-me-if-you-can kind of 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.
As for how they might weigh in on a future, more direct question of birthright citizenship, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Trump was violating four established Supreme Court precedents. And the conservatives on the court raised issues, too. Justice Neil Gorsuch referred to a patchwork of problems with enforcing the executive order in some states and not others.
And Justice Brett Kavanaugh had a testy exchange with Sauer on the practicalities.
With a newborn, what do states do with a newborn?
I don't think they do anything different. What the executive order says in section two is that federal officials do not accept documents that have the wrong designation of citizenship from people who are subject to the executive order. How are they going to know that? The states can continue to, the federal officials will have to figure that out. How?
So you can imagine a number of ways that the federal officials could. Such as? Such as they could require a showing of, you know, documentation showing legal presence in the country. For a temporary visitor, for example, they could see whether they're on a B-1 visa, which would exclude kind of the birthright citizenship in that context.
For all the newborns? Is that how that's going to work?
Again, we don't know. These were the last scheduled arguments of the court's term. A decision may not come until June or July, but the unusual nature of the case could mean that we would see a decision arrive sooner. Let's turn now to the huge economic package that Republicans in the House are hoping to pass to deliver on major parts of President Trump's agenda.
And I should say first, we are in the middle of this process. Large portions of the package are still unresolved, and it'll likely go through significant changes as it winds its way through the House and eventually the Senate. But as of this week, we have a better sense of what Republicans want.
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Chapter 4: What are the expected outcomes of the Supreme Court case?
Some of their goals have been outlined, and three committees approved critical pieces of the legislation. Richard Rubin, a U.S. tax policy reporter for The Wall Street Journal, spoke with us about what's in it so far.
They're trying to extend all of the tax cuts that are expiring at the end of this year, the ones they passed in 2017, but temporarily. They're trying to add some new tax breaks in addition to that.
There are a few temporary tax breaks in this bill that Trump campaigned on, like extending and increasing the 2017 child tax credit by $500 through 2028, also eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay through 2028. As for how it might impact taxpayers across different income brackets, the biggest savings would go to the wealthiest.
The Trump administration proposed raising the income tax for higher earners by 2.6 percentage points, but that doesn't appear in this bill. By one estimate, if this bill advances, the top 1% would save nearly $65,000 in taxes in 2027, and they would gain the ability to pass more wealth on to their heirs through a larger estate tax exemption.
For middle-income taxpayers, the bill would provide an average tax reduction of $1,300, according to the House Ways and Means Committee. And for people with low incomes who aren't paying income taxes now, Rubin reports that this bill offers relatively little.
And according to one recent analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, the lowest income households would see an average tax increase in some years. That's in part because they would lose tax credits that help pay for health insurance.
Overall, this bill calls for a reduction in spending of more than $900 billion, much of which would come from Medicaid and food stamps, both of which benefit low-income Americans. Rubin says it's unclear how the Medicaid cuts might be applied.
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Chapter 5: What is included in the GOP's proposed tax bill?
Does that change, you know, does it hit beneficiaries, does it hit providers, does it hit hospitals? I mean, there's a lot of concern about what a shrinking flow of funding might mean for rural hospitals in particular. And so I think that's something that we're still getting analysis on.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, estimates over 10 million people would lose health care coverage. And House Republicans still have a number of issues to iron out on state and local tax deductions, also known as SALT. Some Republicans want more Medicaid cuts and changes.
Others have questioned parts of the bill that would cut clean energy tax credits, raising concerns about impacts to manufacturing in their districts.
It's an incredibly difficult job that House Speaker Mike Johnson has, right? Like he's got all of these different factions who know that for all intents and purposes, this is their one big beautiful shot to write legislation with a Republican majority. So they want to make sure that they get something that they can live with.
They don't have much time. The House has a self-imposed deadline to pass the legislation before Memorial Day weekend. Republicans want to make this bill law by July 4th. In both chambers, they can afford to lose no more than three votes. So advancing this legislation with consensus will be easier said than done.
Earlier this week, the EPA announced a partial rollback of Biden-era drinking water standards for PFAS, also known as forever chemicals. Forever chemicals are a group of thousands of different compounds, many of which have been linked to higher risks of health conditions like cancer, infertility, and thyroid disease.
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Chapter 6: How might the GOP tax bill impact different income brackets?
They're found in virtually every corner of the planet, in many household items, and in the bodies of nearly every person in the United States. In its announcement, the EPA said it was keeping strict limits on two types of forever chemicals found in drinking water, PFOA and PFOS, but delayed a deadline for water utilities to meet those standards until 2031.
It's rescinding and reconsidering the limits on four other compounds. Despite these federal actions, local bans on these chemicals remain in effect.
So at this point right now, 30 U.S. states have passed a total of, I think, 120 laws on PFAS, including 14 full or partial bans on these chemicals and consumer products.
That's Mariah Blake. She's an investigative journalist and the author of the book They Poisoned the World, Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals. And she's my guest this week on Apple News in Conversation. Blake told me states are considering more limitations on these chemicals.
So right now, there are 200 bills that have been introduced in state legislatures that would restrict the use of these chemicals. And a lot of them are in red states. So Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, you know, some of these red states are... are weighing consumer product bans, Montana, for example.
There's also thousands of pending lawsuits against the manufacturers of these chemicals. The company 3M has announced that it's going to stop all PFAS manufacturing by the end of this year. But if you're still concerned about your exposure, Blake offers some ways to protect yourself. One of her tips? Avoid locally caught freshwater fish.
Freshwater fish have been found to be a major contributor to PFAS in human blood. So eating a single serving of locally caught freshwater fish can increase your blood levels as much as drinking highly contaminated water for an entire month.
To hear the rest of our conversation and a bunch more tips on how to protect yourself and your family from exposure, stick around after today's show. We'll have that queued up for you to listen to next. Music Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan pleaded not guilty yesterday to charges that she interfered with an immigration arrest.
Back in April, federal agents showed up outside her courtroom to arrest Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a Mexican immigrant who was in court that day related to state misdemeanor domestic battery charges. According to the criminal complaint, Dugan sent the ICE agents down the hall, and while they were away, she postponed the hearing and escorted Flores Ruiz and his lawyer through a jury exit.
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