El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said he will not help return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S. after Garcia was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. NBC News has more. And Rolling Stone reports on private White House considerations about sending U.S. citizens there as well. Joseph Walker from the Wall Street Journal joins to talk about a possible way that Republicans could cut Medicaid funding. Anil Oza, Sharon Begley fellow at Stat News, discusses the rise in U.S. maternal mortality rates. Plus, Harvey Weinstein goes back on trial, an internal government memo refutes the narrative behind the detainment of a Tufts University student, UConn star Paige Bueckers was selected first in the WNBA draft, and why the IRS is extending the tax-filing deadline for certain states. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Chapter 1: What is the controversy around Kilmar Abrego Garcia's deportation to El Salvador?
But first, President Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele say they will not return a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador. Bukele met with Trump in the Oval Office on Monday and addressed the situation directly with reporters.
How can I return him to the United States? Like, I smuggle him into the United States? Of course, I'm not going to do it. The question is preposterous.
This comes despite a unanimous Supreme Court order directing the administration to, quote, facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. He's originally from El Salvador, but he lives in Maryland under legal protected status with his wife and children, who are U.S. citizens. He has no criminal record in the United States or El Salvador.
The White House has called his deportation an administrative error, but at least one Trump advisor, Stephen Miller, contradicted that, saying, quote, this was the right person sent to the right place. In court filings, the Trump administration has claimed there's nothing they can do to bring Abrego Garcia home because he's no longer in U.S. custody.
And more recently, it has said the language of the Supreme Court's order only means U.S. officials have to allow him back into the country if El Salvador chooses to release him. Here's Attorney General Pam Bondi speaking to reporters on Monday.
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Chapter 2: What is President Nayib Bukele's stance on returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S.?
That's up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That's not up to us. The Supreme Court ruled, President, that if, as El Salvador wants to return him, this is international matters, foreign affairs, if they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.
Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia's wife, Jennifer, says their family hasn't heard from him in a month.
The last time I spoke to him was March 15th, when they were about to abort a plane. And since then, I haven't heard from him. He told me to take care of the kids and to be strong.
Chapter 3: What legal arguments surround the U.S. government's response to the deportation case?
Lawrence Tribe is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School. He told NPR the administration's response runs counter to the Supreme Court's ruling.
they've taken the position that even if it's clearly illegal and the government admits it, they say, too bad, too late, oops, the person is gone and we cannot get him back. And all nine justices reject the idea that suddenly the greatest nation on earth is powerless and its courts are powerless just because someone is outside the country. That's not the law of
As Abrego Garcia's case continues to play out, Trump says he is considering expanding his partnership with El Salvador by also sending incarcerated U.S. citizens to El Salvador prisons. He told reporters at the Oval Office yesterday he, quote, loved the idea, which has alarmed civil rights advocates. Trump said he would only use this approach if it's legal.
Chapter 4: Is President Trump considering sending U.S. citizens to El Salvador prisons?
But legal experts say it would be flagrantly illegal to deport U.S. citizens under both U.S. and international law. Let's turn to Congress, where at the end of last week, House Republicans passed a budget plan that sets the groundwork for President Trump's legislative agenda. On that agenda are tax cuts and additional new tax breaks, which will cost a lot of money.
And analysis shows there really aren't many places to find that money other than by making big cuts to Medicaid. House Speaker Mike Johnson has promised to protect Medicaid, but some Senate Republican lawmakers are eyeing the math and saying they definitely won't support a bill that contains Medicaid benefit cuts.
Chapter 5: What budget cuts are House Republicans proposing to support Trump's legislative agenda?
Joseph Walker, a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, says one potential cut that Republicans are considering are what are known as provider taxes. These are taxes that states impose on hospitals, nursing homes, any place that's providing health care.
Medicaid is jointly funded by the states and by the federal government. The federal government's contribution depends on a state's per capita income and how much money it's putting into Medicaid itself.
So when states levy these taxes on hospitals, that counts toward the state's budget for Medicaid.
Chapter 6: How could eliminating provider taxes affect Medicaid funding and healthcare providers?
And so what states can do is they get this big matching contribution from the federal government and then basically funnel back most or all of the money and make it so that basically many of the hospitals get back much more money in extra payments than they paid out in taxes.
This system has made provider taxes popular among governors and state legislators on both sides of the aisle. And it's why advocates have warned that eliminating or changing them would negatively impact eligible patients. But if Congress were to eliminate just those taxes, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it could save more than $600 billion over the next decade.
What would happen is states might be forced to cut benefits in some ways or certainly reduce payments to hospitals and other health care providers that benefit from these state provider taxes and matching contributions from the federal government.
Supporters of eliminating provider taxes say they've allowed states to game the system, to artificially inflate their Medicaid contributions, and to enrich politically powerful hospitals. One former Trump advisor called it a kickback. Defenders maintain that it helps hospitals cover what they say insufficient Medicaid reimbursements won't.
Congress is currently in recess, but lawmakers are on a tight timeline. Speaker Mike Johnson wants House members to confer with their Senate counterparts on proposed changes to the bill and have those ready by May 9th. That same week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, is expected to begin identifying more than $800 billion in spending cuts over 10 years.
Pregnancy-related deaths are on the rise, despite the fact that more than 80% of these types of fatalities are preventable, according to the CDC. And a particularly dangerous period that's long been overlooked is finally getting counted. Almost one-third of these deaths are taking place anywhere from six weeks to a year after childbirth.
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Chapter 7: What are the arguments for and against eliminating Medicaid provider taxes?
That's according to a recently published study looking at CDC data from 2018 to 2022. It found a 27 percent increase in pregnancy-related death rates in the U.S. Anel Oza with Stat News spoke to us about the study.
In 2018, there was about 25.3 deaths per 100,000 births. And by 2022, that was closer to 32.6, which is concerning all on its own. But I think it also stands in stark contrast to the political moments that we're in, where a lot of the work that would sort of work to undo this increase is being gutted and not funded anymore. And in some cases, that work is being terminated.
Last month, much of the CDC department that oversees maternal and child health was put on leave. Some researchers studying maternal mortality have had their funding taken away. This division is aimed at identifying the health gaps that still exist that lead the U.S. to have, compared to all other high-income nations, the highest rate of maternal deaths.
The other thing that I think is pretty notable here is the increase we saw from 2018 to 2022 was largely driven by maternal mortality in young women. So those that are age 25 to 39 who saw an even greater increase than that overall statistic.
Also, by expanding the window to up to a year postpartum, the study's authors were able to identify several chronic diseases as the leading causes of late maternal deaths, including cardiovascular disease, cancer, and mental disorders. Compared to white women, maternal mortality rates are higher among Indigenous and Black women.
The study found that maternal health disparities also varied by geographic location.
So in California, which was the state with the lowest maternal mortality, they were seeing about 18 deaths per 100,000 births. And in the state that was highest, which was Alabama, they saw almost 60 deaths per 100,000 births. And they calculated that if the whole country had a rate that was about equal to California's, that would have saved 2,600 lives.
Just last week, Alabama lawmakers unanimously passed a bill to provide immediate access to Medicaid for pregnant women, even as their application for the program is being considered. Medicaid was used to pay for almost half of all births in the state in 2023, and the bill would increase Medicaid spending statewide by about $1 million per year over the course of three years.
Before we let you go, a few other stories we're following. Convicted rapist and disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is back on trial starting today. Jury selection begins in New York in a redo of the high-profile Me Too era case where Weinstein was initially convicted of sexual criminal assault in the first degree and rape in the third degree.
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