Here Is the Real Route to Freeing Palestinians

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By Bret Stephens


Opinion Columnist


The world should remember the name of Odai Al-Rubai. The 22-year-old Palestinian man joined protests in Gaza last week to demand an end to 18 years of Hamas’s violent misrule in the territory. Demonstrators could be heard shouting, “Out, out, Hamas get out,” and “Hamas are terrorists,” while displaying banners saying “Hamas does not represent us.” In retaliation, Al-Rubai’s family says, he was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by members of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades. Then his body was dumped in front of the family home.

Did the “Free Palestine” protesters of Columbia, U.C.L.A. and other campuses gather to pause for a moment of silence for Al-Rubai? And was there an additional prayer for the recovery of Hussam al-Majdalawi, another dissident whose views reportedly got him kidnapped by Hamas, shot in the legs and left in a square as an example to others?

Last week’s protests are not the first time Gazans have tried to rise against Hamas: There were also major protests in 2019 that were bloodily suppressed yet went almost unreported in Western media. Some of us have been writing about the plight of Palestinians under their own rulers for decades — the struggle of Palestinian journalists to write freely; the tragedy of gay Palestinians seeking to live freely — only to be met with a collective yawn.

For too many, including those who call themselves “pro-Palestinian,” Palestinian misery seems to matter only when the blame can be pinned on Israel.

The difference now is that Hamas may no longer be able to deploy its full apparatus of repression, at least not while it must spend much of its time hiding underground from Israeli strikes. Those attacks are both the impetus and the means by which Gazans are demanding their freedom: impetus, because a growing number of Palestinians in the territory recognize that there will be no end to wars with Israel so long as Hamas continues to drag them into those wars; means, because it’s only on account of Israeli attacks on Hamas that the protesters stand a chance of overthrowing that tyrannical regime.And what a tyranny it has been. Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the Oct. 7 massacres and Hamas’s leader in Gaza until he was killed last year, rose through the ranks by killing other Palestinians he suspected of disloyalty. Once in power, he set up a Stasi-like network of domestic surveillance and torture chambers. Sinwar also described the thousands of civilian Gazans killed in the conflict as “necessary sacrifices” to his cause. Images of muscled Hamas fighters at hostage-handover ceremonies are further evidence that the group’s leaders divert food aid to themselves at the expense of hungry Palestinians.

Whatever else that is, it is not a route to a free Gaza, much less a free Palestine. That concept of freedom might be better exemplified by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, another third world death cult that promised liberation and promoted slaughter — and that came with its own prominent apologists on American college campuses.

The real route to freeing Palestinians, both in Gaza and the West Bank, must begin with the elimination of Hamas as a military force, something that, for now, only Israel has the power and the will to accomplish. Among other necessaries will be Israeli control of the Philadelphi Corridor separating Gaza from Egypt, to ensure that Hamas can’t resupply itself with weapons. Longer term, an Arab Mandate for Gaza, complete with a security force from moderate Arab states, may be the best solution for preventing the resurgence of Hamas and avoiding the need for a long-term Israeli reoccupation of most of the territory.

But even that won’t work if a broad majority of Palestinians isn’t willing to unshackle themselves from Hamas’s political and ideological grip. In that sense, it isn’t enough for Gazans to revolt against the group for being the prime instigator and perpetuator of the last 18 months of war and misery, a fact the Gazan protesters seem to understand far better than their mindless champions abroad.What matters even more than overthrowing Hamas is overcoming the mentality of the so-called Resistance on which movements such as Hamas (but not only Hamas) were built. If the core Palestinian demand is not the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel but rather of one in place of Israel, then the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is bound to continue.

For Palestinians, that will mean not only abandoning terrorism or guerrilla warfare but also the more insidious forms of seeking Israel’s destruction, such as the spurious call for a “right of return” for the descendants of Palestinian refugees — a right whose main purpose is to swamp Israel demographically so that it will no longer be able to maintain a Jewish majority.

As for Israelis, last week’s protests represent both a hope as well as a challenge. Hope: Ultimately, the protests suggest the possibility that, eventually, an overwhelming majority of Palestinians will never again allow themselves to be ruled by revanchist tyrants of any shade. Challenge: If and when that happens, there will be no plausible argument against a Palestinian state.

The sooner Hamas is defeated, the sooner the day might come.

California Governor Newsom Says the Democratic Brand Is ‘Toxic’

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California described Democrats as being stuck in an “echo chamber” while getting crushed by Republican opponents.Credit...Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press

By Laurel Rosenhall

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said on Friday that the Democratic brand was “toxic” and that his party had to admit its own mistakes, delivering tough love as Democrats struggle in their fight against the Trump administration.

Mr. Newsom, once considered a liberal combatant, has embarked on a political soul search in the months since President Trump won the White House and Republicans won both houses of Congress. On Friday, he used his strongest language yet to criticize his own party during an appearance on “Real Time With Bill Maher.”

“The Democratic brand is toxic right now,” he said, pointing to a recent NBC News poll that showed Democrats with a 27 percent favorability rating, the lowest in at least a generation.

Mr. Newsom, a possible 2028 presidential candidate, blamed his fellow Democrats for his party’s woes. He criticized Democrats for being judgmental, staying in an echo chamber and resorting to “cancel culture” to ostracize people whose views they find abhorrent.

“We talk down to people,” he said. “We talk past people.”

The governor found in Mr. Maher a sympathetic figure who for decades has questioned Democratic orthodoxy despite his liberal leanings.

Mr. Newsom this month launched a new podcast, “This Is Gavin Newsom,” on which he has interviewed guests from across the political spectrum to discuss, in part, what went wrong for Democrats in the 2024 elections. Early episodes featured conversations with Charlie Kirk, who leads the youth organization Turning Point USA, and Steve Bannon, an architect of President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

Those guests in particular drew fierce criticism from Mr. Newsom’s liberal allies, who accused the governor of legitimizing right-wing views and failing to correct inaccuracies expressed by his guests.

“This idea that we can’t even have a conversation with the other side?” Mr. Newsom said with incredulity Friday.

“You have to. They won,” Mr. Maher replied.Democrats have split over how best to confront the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress, most notably this month when Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, delivered the votes to avoid a government shutdown. Mr. Schumer defended his decision as a responsible, if unpopular, choice. But many Democrats saw it as a sign that their party was weak.

Internally, Democrats are still trying to figure out what went wrong last year and how they can retake Congress in 2026.

Mr. Newsom hosted Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate last year, for a conversation released last week about “where the hell our party is right now,” as Mr. Newsom put it.“This is an existential moment, and our unity against Trump is not increasing our trust, it’s not helping the Democratic brand,” Mr. Newsom told Mr. Walz.

Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, also criticized his party on Friday, saying in an interview with Politico that the party would be in a “permanent minority” if it did not get its act together.

On Friday, Mr. Newsom told Mr. Maher: “We need to own our mistakes. We need to own what’s wrong with our party.”

Mr. Newsom’s comments were reminiscent of the time that former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told his own California Republican Party members in 2007 that they were “dying at the box office.” Nearly two decades ago, Mr. Schwarzenegger urged his conservative base to move toward the center to gain relevance in California, at a time when Democrats controlled the legislature and nearly all statewide offices there.

California Republicans for the most part ignored the advice, lost even more seats and have never won statewide office since then. State party activists have taken comfort in the national success of Republicans, who have shifted rightward and made gains elsewhere.

On Saturday, Representative Ro Khanna, another California Democrat who may run for president in 2028, issued a rebuttal to Mr. Newsom and said the Democratic Party was “not ‘toxic.’”

“This is not the time to join the chorus in bashing our party,” Mr. Khanna said on X. “The rage should be about what Trump is doing TODAY. Let’s share what our party has done & offer a forward vision for the future.”

Mr. Newsom surprised Democrats this month when he said on his podcast that it was “deeply unfair” for transgender athletes to play in female sports. He reiterated that stance on Friday night, to the approval of Mr. Maher.

The host, however, pressed Mr. Newsom on a California state law that prohibits school districts from requiring teachers to tell parents when a student asks to change their gender identity at school. The Trump administration asserted on Thursday that California’s law violated federal law, and Mr. Maher has taken the position that parents should be informed when their children seek an identity change.

Mr. Newsom defended the law as sound policy, saying that California simply wanted to protect teachers who “did not report or snitch on a kid talking about their gender identity.”

“What is the job of a teacher? It’s to teach,” Mr. Newsom said. “I just think that was fair.”

Mr. Maher has repeatedly expressed his desire to see Mr. Newsom run for president. On Friday, he put the question to his guest: “Are you going to do it or not? Just come on, tell us.”

Mr. Newsom left plenty of room to maneuver after his final term as governor comes to a close in early 2027.

“I deeply respect the question,” he said, “but I don’t have any grand plans as it respects that.”

MAGA worldview: Some people are better than others and have the right to rule.

The Trump regime is the result of at least 45 years of Republican rhetoric that undermined the idea of a government that worked for the good of everyone by claiming that such a government was “socialism” or “Marxism.” That argument had nothing to do with actual Marxism, which called for the people to take over farms and factories, and everything to do with America’s peculiar history.

That rhetoric that tied racism and taxes elected Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980, and it has since metastasized until the top seven donors to the 2024 political cycle together gave almost a billion dollars to Republicans, with Elon Musk alone contributing more than $291 million. The list, compiled by Open Secrets, shows that Democratic donors don’t kick in until number eight on the list, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who gave slightly more than $64 million to Democrats. George Soros, the Republicans’ supervillain, didn’t make the top 25. As those wealthy donors wish, the Trump administration is shredding the post–World War II government and has prioritized tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

Trump’s government is also firing women, Black and Brown Americans, and gender minorities from public positions and working to erase them from our history. MAGA Republicans have fired up their base against immigrants they claim are “invading” the United States,

Just how profoundly the administration is violating civil rights came through today when news broke of an “Alien Enemies Act Validation Guide” obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The guide lays out a point system by which officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can determine if an immigrant is eligible for rendition to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador. The guide tags people as members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang if they reach 8 points on a point system in which officers determine what seems to them a “gang tattoo” or a gang sign, or interact with those ICE says are gang members.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council notes that nearly all of the criteria on the list are subjective, which helps to explain why so many people who are apparently unaffiliated with TdA were swept up in the rendition. “With this checklist,” Reichlin-Melnick writes, “ICE can declare any Venezuelan an ‘Alien Enemy’ without ANY concrete evidence—based solely on an ICE officer's interpretation of tattoos and hand signs which may be completely innocent or the bad luck of having a roommate ICE thinks is TDA.”

The MAGA Republicans’ worldview is the same as that of the Confederates who preceded them: some people are better than others and have the right to rule.

DOGE’s cuts likely to fall short.

All of the other programs you hear about (schools, welfare payments, foreign aid, medical research) make up roughly 30 percent of the federal budget. Trump would have to eliminate all of those to balance the budget without touching the programs he has deemed untouchable.

Trump and Musk claim they can eliminate most of the deficit by downsizing the federal work force — the Times is tracking the firings here — and ending waste and fraud. This is the work DOGE says it’s doing. But these efforts, too, are likely to fall short.

Presidents and Congress have launched many initiatives over the past few decades to tackle waste and fraud. They did not find significant savings. Watchdogs also track improper payments, which include fraud, duplicate charges and payments to ineligible recipients. These made up $149 billion in the most recent fiscal year. Even if DOGE managed to root out all of these payments — a difficult task for many technical reasons, The Wall Street Journal reported — it would shrink the deficit by only 8 percent.

Similarly, shrinking the federal work force can do only so much. Even if Musk managed to fire every civilian employee and cut their benefits — an outlandish scenario — he would reduce the deficit by just 14 percent.

Some layoffs could even increase the deficit. The Biden administration wanted to hire more workers at the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on tax cheats. Experts said the plan would bring in $2.5 in tax revenue for every $1 spent. Trump wants to get rid of the new employees anyway.

DOGE claims it has slashed $130 billion in spending. But its ledger is filled with errors, my colleagues David Fahrenthold and Jeremy Singer-Vine reported. The agency has revised its estimate downward multiple times, in acknowledgments of mistakes.

In the end, the debt problem remains what it has long been: Republicans and Democrats refuse to cut popular but expensive federal programs and don’t want to raise taxes on most Americans. As long as that’s true, the federal government will remain in the red.

Related: Musk has made sweeping claims about fraud in government spending. Read a fact-check.

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A Paris court found the French far right leader Marine Le Pen guilty of embezzlement. This endangers her plans to run for president in 2027.

The chair of a charity founded by Prince Harry accused him of harassment and bullying to force her out of her post.

The number of Black men attending four-year colleges has fallen, with a drastic shift at historically Black colleges and universities.

Myanmar Earthquake Death Toll Passes 2,000 as Rescuers Race to Find Survivors - Rescuers raced against fears that the death toll could rise sharply as the end of a 72-hour window in which most people trapped in rubble are reasonably expected to survive neared.

The Wall Street Journal has a worrying report about the ways the administration is coming after the mainstream press with lawsuits and other acts of aggression, like booting The Associated Press from the Oval Office because it won’t refer to the “Gulf of America.”

Bret Stephens: I’m no fan of the college campus protests against Israel, too many of which veered into outright antisemitism. And I think there should be swift and stern consequences for bad conduct, like taking over buildings, bullying other students or lying on immigration forms. On the other hand, the right to speak freely is the most elemental right of all, which we should honor for citizens and noncitizens alike. If the administration can’t offer better reasons for arresting foreign students than not liking their opinion pieces, they should be freed. Anything less is un-American.

Trump Administration Imposes Auto Tarriffs. And Other Moves.

An all-electric Porsche in Leipzig, Germany. Jens Schlueter/Getty Images


Shares in automakers around the world, including many in Germany, Japan and Korea, fell after Trump announced tariffs on imported cars and car parts.

Shares in Tesla — which makes all the cars that it sells domestically in the U.S. — rose almost 3 percent.

Trump’s tariffs are likely to encourage more domestic car production in the long run, economists say. But in the short term, they will probably hurt the economy.

Experts say the tariffs will raise the average price of a car by thousands of dollars.


A federal judge ordered several Trump administration officials to preserve the messages from the Signal group chat planning attacks in Yemen.

Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested there probably would not be a criminal investigation into the Yemen chat.

The Health and Human Services Department plans to lay off 10,000 employees. The cuts will be especially deep at the F.D.A. and the C.D.C.

Self-deporters increase, but most illegals are staying.

Jesús, 25, arrived last year from Venezuela. Jimena Peck for The New York Times

It is incredibly hard to deport 14 million people — the estimated number of immigrants in the United States unlawfully. First, the government has to find them. For many, it has to pry them from their lives, their jobs, their communities. That’s why the Trump administration has deported only a few thousand migrants so far, focusing mostly on those it says are criminals.

To make a real change, as Trump has promised to do, millions of people would need to leave voluntarily. So the administration is urging them — in some cases, trying to scare them enough — to “self-deport.” The Homeland Security secretary tells them in TV ads to “leave now” or be hunted down. Those who comply “may have an opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American dream.” (This is unlikely, because anyone who has been in the country illegally for a year is ineligible to return for a decade.)

Self-deportation, a longtime fantasy for immigration hawks, was popularized by Mitt Romney in a 2012 presidential debate and often mocked. But for the first time in my 15 years of reporting on this topic, immigrants tell me they’re considering it. Some have already followed through. If the climate here becomes intolerable — if the risks of being caught and severed from their families seem too high — it’s possible many more migrants will abandon the United States. Today’s newsletter is about what I’ve heard in my reporting.
Who wants to go

Migrants in Denver, Colo., in 2023. Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post, via Getty Images


In recent years, Denver has absorbed 40,000 migrants — the most per capita of any city. Most of the newcomers are Venezuelans who fled their broken country. But the city is also home to many Latino immigrants who came long ago. I visited last week to take their temperature.

Most are not inclined to bolt. Two-thirds of undocumented immigrants have been in the country for a decade or longer. Most pay taxes. They’re people like Mirna, a Mexican who crossed the border 28 years ago. Her husband owns a house-painting business. They bought a mobile home and have three American children, including a daughter serving in the Navy. Mirna, who speaks English fluently, told me she wouldn’t go back to Mexico because it would mean leaving her kids.

But recent border crossers are much more likely to consider departing. I interviewed several young men from Venezuela who are among them. They see footage of shackled migrants shuffled onto deportation planes. They watch the videos of more than 200 Venezuelan men, accused by the Trump administration of gang affiliation, being flown to a mega-prison in El Salvador. Reporting suggests that some of them may not have been gang members.

Rather than risk subjecting themselves to that ordeal, they want to leave on their own terms.

Since arriving in Denver in 2023, Cristian, 29, has delivered meals and worked on construction sites. (Like other migrants I interviewed, he worried that immigration agents would find him and spoke on the condition that I identify him only by his given name.) He sends money to his wife and children in Venezuela. Cristian does not have any tattoos, a customary gang indicator, he said. He possesses a work permit and an active asylum application, which theoretically protects him from imminent deportation.

But the enforcement climate since Trump took office has changed Cristian’s calculus “360 degrees,” he told me. With the help of an American friend who escorted him to several immigration offices, he made an appointment to appear before a judge today so he could request a voluntary departure from the United States. (Immigrants who receive formal permission to leave have an easier time returning later.)

Other Venezuelans contemplating an exit were released into the United States by border officials with orders to report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement every few months. Recently, officials have detained and deported people when they’ve shown up for their check-ins.

ICE agents and the local authorities detain a person in Denver. Chet Strange for The New York Times


Jesús, 25, has his next ICE appointment in early May and sees the writing on the wall. After arriving last year, he languished for months in detention until officials turned him loose, probably to make room for others. He found work remodeling homes in Denver. Now he’d rather return voluntarily to Venezuela than be confined again. “I came here to work to help my family,” said Jesús, the sole brother to five sisters. “I just hope to manage to leave before they deport me.”

He has enough money to buy an airline ticket. But, like others, he told me that the U.S. authorities had confiscated his passport. How can he board a plane without it?

American women in Denver formed groups in late 2023 to help recent arrivals from Venezuela. But more recently they also share tips about how to leave because the bureaucracy can be hard to navigate. A mother with a U.S.-born child needs to get a passport for her child, for instance. But his father, who needs to sign forms, has been deported. The local volunteers have researched what happens if migrants leave without an ID — and whether it’s safer to depart by air or over land.

The departures are not exclusive to Denver. A family in Chicago recently left for Mexico, according to their lawyer. People have abandoned Springfield, Ohio — the town where Trump claimed Haitians were eating their pets — employers there told me. Others are contemplating leaving from elsewhere, like Houston.
The right moment

For now, most migrants are staying put. They’ve trekked through jungles and cartel territory to get here. Instead of giving up, they limit their outings and keep a low profile.

What could change their minds? The job market, several told me. A crackdown on U.S. businesses that employed undocumented workers would drive many into the shadows and others back home. A recession would have the same effect. Wayne Cornelius, an immigration scholar at the University of California, San Diego, has found that bleak job prospects are most likely to impel undocumented immigrants to leave.

Take Karla and Ender, a Venezuelan couple with four children. They worry about immigration enforcement. But they have plenty of work, and their family is thriving in Colorado. Since arriving in late 2023, they have relocated from a rundown apartment complex, acquired two cars and bought their kids cellphones.

“You can barely make enough money to feed your family in Venezuela,” Karla said. “We live much better here.”

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Teams of masked agents in masks have approached foreign students, zip-tied them and bundled them into unmarked vehicles. These tactics are usually reserved for criminal suspects.

Trump gives power to a CEO, to run Gov't without any interference from Cong or courts, shutting most public institutions.

The craziness going on around us in the first two months of the second Trump administration makes a lot more sense if you remember that the goal of those currently in power was never simply to change the policies or the personnel of the U.S. government. Their goal is to dismantle the central pillars of the United States of America—government, law, business, education, culture, and so on—because they believe the very shape of those institutions serves what they call “the Left.”

Their definition of “the Left” includes all Americans, Republicans and Independents as well as Democrats, who believe the government has a role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, promoting infrastructure, and protecting civil rights and who support the institutional structures Americans have built since World War II.

In place of those structures, today’s MAGA leaders intend to create their own new institutions, shaped by their own people, whose ideological purity trumps their abilities. As Vice President J.D. Vance explained in a 2021 interview, he and his ilk believe that American “conservatives…have lost every major powerful institution in the country, except for maybe churches and religious institutions, which of course are weaker now than they’ve ever been. We’ve lost big business. We’ve lost finance. We’ve lost the culture. We’ve lost the academy. And if we’re going to actually really effect real change in the country, it will require us completely replacing the existing ruling class with another ruling class…. I don’t think there’s sort of a compromise that we’re going to come with the people who currently actually control the country. Unless we overthrow them in some way, we’re going to keep losing.” “We really need to be really ruthless when it comes to the exercise of power,” he said.

This plan is central to Project 2025, the plan President Donald Trump insisted before the election he knew nothing about but which, now that he’s in office, has provided the blueprint for a large majority of the administration’s actions. Project 2025 author Russell Vought, who is now Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, called for a “conservative President” to “use…the vast powers of the executive branch” aggressively “to send power away from Washington and back to America’s families, faith communities, local governments, and states.”

Last month, journalist Gil Duran of The Nerd Reich noted that Curtis Yarvin, a thinker popular with the technological elite currently aligned with the religious extremists at Project 2025, laid out a plan in 2022 to gut the U.S. government and replace it with a dictatorship. This would be a “reboot” of the country, Yarvin wrote, and it would require a “full power start,” a reference to restarting a stalled starship by jumping to full power, which risks destroying the ship.

Yarvin called for “giving absolute sovereignty to a single organization,” headed by the equivalent of the rogue chief executive officer of a corporation who would destroy the public institutions of the democratic government. Trump—whom Yarvin dismissed as weak—would give power to that CEO, who would “run the executive branch without any interference from the Congress or courts…. Most existing important institutions, public and private, will be shut down and replaced with new and efficient systems.” Once loyalists have replaced civil servants in a new ideological “army,” the CEO “will throw it directly against the administrative state—not bothering with confirmed appointments, just using temporary appointments as needed. The job of this landing force is not to govern.” The new regime must take over the country and “perform the real functions of the old, and ideally perform them much better.” It must “seize all points of power, without respect for paper protections.”

Earlier this month, Yarvin cheered on the idea of hacking existing infrastructure “to operate in an unusual way that its designers, its previous operators, or both, did not expect,” and complimented DOGE for the way it has hacked into existing bureaucracies. The key performance indicator of DOGE, he wrote, “is its ability to take power from the libs, then keep it.”

Far from saving money for the United States, as Jacob Bogage at the Washington Post reported on March 22, billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” has cost the government $500 billion, 10% of what the Internal Revenue Service took in last year. Bogage reports that the administration has demolished the IRS, firing nearly 20,000 employees, especially in the divisions that focus on enforcement, and dropping investigations of corporations and the richest taxpayers. Officials project that these changes will result in more tax evasion, and they are expecting a sharp drop in tax revenue this spring.

If the administration is working not to save money but rather to destroy the government, the cuts that threaten the well-being of American citizens make more sense. Today, Emily Davies and Jeff Stein of the Washington Post reported that Trump officials are looking for cuts of between 8% and 50% of the employees in federal agencies. They obtained an internal White House document that calls for the Department of Housing and Urban Development to be cut in half, the Interior Department to lose nearly 25% of its workforce, and the Internal Revenue Service to lose about one third of its people. The Justice Department is set to lose 8% of its workforce, the National Science Foundation 28%, the Commerce Department 30%, and the Small Business Administration 43%.

Cuts to the government have led to the Social Security Administration’s website crashing four times in ten days this month, and there are not enough workers to answer phones. Yesterday, Sahil Kapur and Julie Tsirkin of NBC News reported that lawmakers, including Senate Finance subcommittee on Social Security chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA), have been kept in the dark as the men working for DOGE have cut SSA phone services and instituted new rules requiring that beneficiaries without access to the internet prove their identity with an in-person visit to an SSA office.

Washington Post reporters Lisa Rein and Hannah Natanson warn that “Social Security is breaking down.” Senator Angus King (I-ME) told them: “What’s going on is the destruction of the agency from the inside out, and it’s accelerating…. What they’re doing now is unconscionable.”

In a televised Cabinet meeting on Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she planned to “eliminate FEMA,” the Federal Emergency Management Agency that responds to national emergencies like hurricanes. This news comes on top of Trump’s executive order last week calling for the Department of Education to be shuttered, along with cuts of about half of its workforce.

Yesterday, Apoorva Mandavilli, Margot Sanger-Katz, and Jan Hoffman reported in the New York Times that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has suddenly cancelled more than $12 billion in federal grants to states. That money supported mental health services, addiction treatment, and programs to track infectious diseases. Today HHS announced it will be cutting 10,000 employees on top of the 10,000 who have already left and the more than 5,000 probationary workers who were fired last month. These cuts will include 3,500 full-time employees from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and 2,400 employees from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition to slashing and burning through government agencies, the administration is trying to undermine the rule of law. Trump has signed executive orders suspending security clearances for law firms that represent Democratic clients and barring the government from hiring employees from those firms.

Trump and his team have challenged the judges who have ruled against Trump, working to destroy faith in the courts. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has suggested that Republicans in Congress could eliminate some federal courts, telling reporters: “We do have the authority over the federal courts, as you know. We can eliminate an entire district court. We have power of funding over the courts and all these other things.”

Trump’s administration is also working to take over colleges and universities, beginning with a high-profile fight against Columbia University in which the administration withheld $400 million in grants, allegedly over antisemitism at the school, until the university bent to the administration's will. Columbia’s leaders did so, only to have the administration say the changes are only “early steps” and that Columbia “must continue to show they are serious in their resolve to end anti-Semitism…through permanent and structural reform. Other universities…should expect the same level of scrutiny and swiftness of action if they don’t act to protect their students and stop anti-Semitic behavior on campus,” a member of the administration said.

Chillingly, on Tuesday federal authorities in plain clothes took Tufts University international student Rumeysa Ozturk into custody on the street in Somerville, Massachusetts, saying she had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas,” apparently a reference to a pro-Palestinian op-ed she had written for the Tufts newspaper. On Wednesday the Department of Homeland Security said she was being held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement center in Louisiana.

The administration is also working to reshape American culture according to their vision. The project of stripping words like “climate crisis,” “diversity,” “health disparity,” “peanut allergies,” “science-based,” “segregation,” “stereotypes,” and “understudied” from government communications are an explicit attempt to reshape the way Americans think. Today, in an executive order “restoring truth and sanity to American history,” Trump tried to change the ways in which Americans understand our history, too. He called for Vance, who as vice president serves on the Smithsonian Board of Regents, “to work to eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology from the Smithsonian and its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.”

The problem for those who embrace this vision of America is that it is not popular. Before the election, only 4% of voters liked Project 2025, and it has not gained in popularity as the dramatic cuts to the government have hurt farmers by killing grain purchases for foreign aid, cut funding for cancer research, and thrown people out of work. Because Republican-dominated counties rely more heavily on government programs than Democratic-dominated counties do, cuts to government services are hitting Republican voters particularly hard.

Today, Wired reported that it had found four more Venmo accounts associated with the Trump administration officials who participated in the now-infamous Signal chat about a planned military attack on the Houthis in Yemen. A payment on one of them was identified only with an eggplant emoji, which is commonly used to suggest sexual activity.

On Tuesday, Democrat James Andrew Malone won a special election for a state senate seat in a Pennsylvania district that Trump won in November with 57% of the vote. Today, Trump was forced to withdraw New York Republican representative Elise Stefanik’s name from consideration for ambassador to the United Nations out of concern that a Democrat might win her vacant seat, although Trump won her district in 2024 by 21 points.

Trump’s adm planned mil strikes on Yemen over an unsecure app, which incl reporter of The Atlantic

Monday’s astounding story that the most senior members of President Donald Trump’s administration planned military strikes on Yemen over an unsecure commercial messaging app, on which they had included national security reporter and editor in chief of The Atlantic Jeffrey Goldberg, has escalated over the past two days.

On Monday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looked directly at a reporter’s camera and said: “Nobody was texting war plans.” Throughout the day Tuesday, the administration doubled down on this assertion, apparently convinced that Goldberg would not release the information they knew he had. They tried to spin the story by attacking Goldberg, suggesting he had somehow hacked into the conversation, although the app itself tracked that National Security Advisor Michael Waltz had added him.

Various administration figures, including Trump, insisted that the chat contained nothing classified. At a scheduled hearing yesterday before the Senate Intelligence Committee on worldwide threats, during which senators took the opportunity to dig into the Signal scandal, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said: “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group.” Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe agreed: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.” In the afternoon, Trump told reporters: “The attack was totally successful. It was, I guess, from what I understand, took place during. And it wasn’t classified information. So this was not classified.”

After Gabbard said she would defer to the secretary of defense and the National Security Council about what information should have been classified, Senator Angus King (I-ME) seemed taken aback. “You’re the head of the intelligence community. You’re supposed to know about classifications,” he pointed out. He continued, “So your testimony very clearly today is that nothing was in that set of texts that were classified.... If that’s the case, please release that whole text stream so that the public can have a view of what actually transpired on this discussion. It’s hard for me to believe that targets and timing and weapons would not have been classified.”

Meanwhile, reporters were also digging into the story. James LaPorta of CBS News reported that an internal bulletin from the National Security Agency warned staff in February 2025 not to use Signal for sensitive information, citing concerns that the app was vulnerable to Russian hackers. A former White House official told Maggie Miller and Dana Nickel of Politico, “Their personal phones are all hackable, and it’s highly likely that foreign intelligence services are sitting on their phones watching them type the sh*t out."

Tuesday night, American Oversight, a nonprofit organization focusing on government transparency, filed a lawsuit against Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio—all of whom were also on the Signal chain—and the National Archives for violating the Federal Records Act, and suggested the administration has made other attempts to get around the law. It notes that the law requires the preservation of federal records.

Today it all got worse.

It turned out that administration officials’ conviction that Goldberg wouldn’t publicly release receipts was wrong. This morning, Goldberg and Shane Harris, who had worked together on the initial story, wrote: “The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared.”

The Atlantic published screenshots of the message chat.

The screenshots make clear that administration officials insisting that there was nothing classified on the chat were lying. Hegseth uploaded the precise details of the attack before it happened, leaving American military personnel vulnerable. The evidence is damning.

The fury of Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), an Army pilot who was nearly killed in Iraq, was palpable. “Pete Hegseth is a f*cking liar,” she wrote. “This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed. He needs to resign in disgrace immediately.” Legal analyst Barb McQuade pointed out that it didn't even matter if the information was classified: it is “a crime to remove national defense information from its proper place through gross negligence…. Signal chat is not a proper place.”

The screenshots also raise a number of other issues. They made it clear that administration officials have been using Signal for other conversations: Waltz at one point typed: “As we stated in the first PC….” Using a nongovernment system is likely an attempt to get around the laws that require the preservation of public records. The screenshots also show that Signal was set to erase the messages on the chat after 4 weeks.

The messages reveal that President Trump was not part of the discussion of whether to make the airstrikes, a deeply troubling revelation that raises the question of who is in charge at the White House. As the conversation about whether to attack took place, Vice President J.D. Vance wrote about Trump’s reasoning that attacking the Houthis in Yemen would “send a message”: “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.” Later, he texted to Hegseth: “if you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again. Let’s just make sure our messaging is tight here. And if there are things we can do upfront to minimize risk to Saudi oil facilities we should do it.”

Hegseth responded: “VP: I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC. But Mike is correct, we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this. Nobody else even close. Question is timing. I feel like now is as good a time as any, given POTUS directive to reopen shipping lanes. I think we should go; but POTUS still retains 24 hours of decision space.”

The decision to make the strikes then appears to have been made by deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who ended the discussion simply by invoking the president: “As I heard it,” he wrote, “the president was clear: green light, but we soon make it clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement.” If Europe doesn’t cover the cost of the attack, “then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.”

“Agree,” Hegseth messaged, and the attack was on.

Also missing from the group message was the person who is currently acting as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Christopher Grady. In February, Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Air Force General Charles Q. Brown Jr., who took on the position in 2023 having served more than 3,000 hours as a fighter pilot, including 130 hours in combat, and commanded the Pacific Air Forces, which provides air power for U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific region; the U.S. Air Forces Central Command, responsible for protecting U.S. security interests in Africa through the Persian Gulf; the 31st Fighter Wing, covering the southern region of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); the 8th Fighter Wing, covering southeast Asia; U.S. Air Force Weapons School for advanced training in weapons and tactics for officers; and 78th Fighter Squadron.

Hegseth publicly suggested that Brown had been appointed because he is Black. “Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt,” Hegseth wrote. With Trump’s controversial replacement for Brown still unconfirmed, Admiral Grady, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, is fulfilling the role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But he was not in the chat. The Pentagon's highest-ranking officer would normally be included in planning a military operation.

Also in the chat, participants made embarrassing attacks on our allies and celebrated civilian deaths in Yemen in the quest to kill a targeted combatant.

Attempts to defend themselves from the scandal only dug administration officials in deeper. On Monday night, independent journalist Olga Lautman, who studies Russia, noted that Trump’s Russia and Ukraine specialist Steve Witkoff had actually been in Russia when Waltz added him to the chat, underscoring the chat’s vulnerability to hackers. By Tuesday, multiple outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, picked up Lautman’s story.

Witkoff fought back against the Wall Street Journal story with a long social media post about how he had traveled to Moscow with a secure government phone and now it was not until he got home that he had “access to my personal devices” to participate in the Signal conversation, thus apparently confirming that he was discussing classified information with the nation’s top officials on an unsecure personal device.

Tonight, news of other ways in which the administration is compromised surfaced. The German newspaper Der Spiegel revealed that the contact information for a number of the same officials who were on the Signal chat is available online, as well as email addresses and some passwords for their private accounts, making it easy for hackers to get into their personal devices. Those compromised included National Security Advisor Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Gabbard, and Secretary of Defense Hegseth. Wired reported that Waltz, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and Walker Barrett of the National Security Council, who was also on the Signal messaging chain, had left their Venmo accounts public, demonstrating what national security experts described as reckless behavior.

In the New York Times tonight, foreign affairs journalist Noah Shachtman looked not just at the Signal scandal but also at the administration’s lowering of U.S. guard against foreign influence operations, installation of billionaire Elon Musk’s satellite internet terminals at the White House, and diversion of personnel from national security to Trump’s pet projects, and advised hostile nations to “savor this moment. It’s never been easier to steal secrets from the United States government. Can you even call it stealing when it’s this simple? The Trump administration has unlocked the vault doors, fired half of the security guards and asked the rest to roll pennies. Walk right in. Take what you want. This is the golden age.”

Trump today did not seem on top of the story when he told reporters: “I think it’s a witch hunt. I wasn’t involved with it, I wasn’t there, but I can tell you the result is unbelievable.” When asked if he still believed there was no classified information shared, he answered: “Well, that’s what I’ve heard. I don’t know, I’m not sure. You’ll have to ask the various people involved. I really don’t know.” He said the breach was Waltz’s fault—“it had nothing to do with anyone else”—and when reporters asked about the future of Defense Secretary Hegseth, who uploaded the attack plans into the unsecure system, he answered: “Hegseth is doing a great job, he had nothing to do with this…. How do you bring Hegseth into it? He had nothing to do with it. Look, look, it’s all a witch hunt. I don’t know that Signal works. I think Signal could be defective, to be honest with you….”

The administration appears to be trying to create a distraction from the damning story. Yesterday evening, Trump signed an executive order that would, if it could be enforced, dramatically change U.S. elections and take the vote away from tens of millions of Americans. But, as Marc Elias of Democracy Docket put it, the order is “confused, rhetorical and—in places—nonsensical. It asserts facts that are not true and claims authority he does not possess. It is not meant to be taken seriously or literally. Rather, it is the empty threat of a weak man desperate to appear strong.”

After today’s revelations, Trump announced new 25% tariffs on imported cars and car parts including those from Canada and Mexico, despite a deal worked out earlier this month that items covered under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement Trump signed in his first term would not face a new tariff levy. The 25% tariff is a major change that will raise prices across the board and hit the automotive sector in which more than a million Americans work. Upon the news, the stock market fell again.

And yet, despite the attempts to bury the Signal story, the scandal seems, if anything, to be growing. House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote a public letter to Trump yesterday calling for him to fire Hegseth, accurately referring to him as “the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in American history.” Jeffries wrote: “His behavior shocks the conscience, risked American lives and likely violated the law.” “[H]ey Sen[ator Joni] Ernst and Sen[ator Thom] Tillis,” Jen Rubin of The Contrarian wrote tonight, “proud of your votes for Hegseth? This is on [you] too as much as Hegseth. You knew he was not remotely qualified.”

Crime Down and Tolls Working, MTA Fires Back After ‘Shithole’ Jab From Trump DOT Chief

One transit authority board member called Sean Duffy’s comments “a real slap in the face” as the MTA tries to get back on track.
by Jose Martinez March 24, 2025, 4:00 



After President Trump’s transportation secretary trashed the subway as a “shithole,” baffled MTA and NYPD officials pointed to a nearly 30% drop in major transit crime from a year ago.

Chief Joseph Gulotta, head of the NYPD Transit Bureau Chief conceded Monday that the subway is struggling with a safety perception problem — even as the number of robberies, assaults, burglaries and grand larcenies has sunk amid the latest influx of police officers into stations and trains.

“Over the past two months, we’ve seen a 28.2% reduction in crime, which amounts to 110 fewer victims compared to the same period last year,” Gulotta told members of the MTA board during a transit committee meeting. “I mean, those numbers speak for themselves.”
An NYPD officer keeps watch near a subway entrance at the Fulton Transit Center, Dec. 12, 2024. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY

Gulotta’s monthly presentation on crime within the subway system came after federal transportation chief Sean Duffy said Saturday that Gov. Kathy Hochul could “clean up the subways” within a day and a half — but that “she chooses not to.”

One MTA board member called Duffy’s latest jab at the subway “pretty disappointing,” while another said, “What is our transportation secretary talking about?”

“If our numbers are saying one thing, they’re saying something else,” said Haeda Mihaltses, chairperson of the board’s New York City Transit Committee. “I mean, where are they getting their numbers from?”“I think people love to pick on New York, people really hate what New York is,” added Samuel Chu, another MTA board member. “Now more than ever, we’re a place where people find a way to live together despite our differences, our eccentricities.”

Board member Andrew Albert said the USDOT secretary’s words were “a real slap in the face” to police officers whose presence within the subway surged again in January, when Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams assigned officers to ride on each train during the overnight hours. The $154 million deployment is being split between the city and the state.

“The whole thing is just aimed to make a point, obviously,” Albert said of Duffy’s digs. “I think riders are feeling a lot better seeing the officers and I’ve watched them move from car to car.”

Duffy’s comments on transit crime followed his threat last week to pull federal funding from the MTA unless it provides the feds with plans for boosting subway safety and provides crime statistics that are already largely publicly available.

“If you want people to take the train, take transit, then make it safe, make it clean, make it beautiful, make it wonderful,” Duffy said Saturday while touring New Jersey sinkholes near Interstate 80. “Don’t make it a shithole, which is what [Hochul] has done.”Federal Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy speaks about sinkholes on I-80 in New Jersey, March 22, 2025. Credit: Screengrab via Secretary Sean Du

The country’s largest public transportation authority is already locked in a multi-front battle with the feds over congestion pricing.

The MTA last month sued Duffy and the Transportation Department after the administration of President Donald Trump moved to revoke federal authority for the vehicle-tolling plan approved by state lawmakers in 2019 and later approved under the Biden administration.

The nation’s first congestion-pricing plan launched in early January and is designed to generate more than $15 billion dollars for the MTA’s 2020 to 2024 capital plan. The five-year plan is a more than $50 billion blueprint to fund signal upgrades, station overhauls, the extension of the Second Avenue Subway through East Harlem and other essential infrastructure improvements.

But Trump has pushed to follow through on an August campaign pledge to terminate the vehicle-tolling initiative that Hochul herself paused last summer for several months. Following his shutdown order last month, the president crowed “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD,” in social media posts in which he also proclaimed, “LONG LIVE THE KING!”

The federal DOT, meanwhile, has extended its March 21 congestion-pricing shutdown deadline by 30 days, even as Hochul and the MTA have vowed to keep the south-of-60th Street tolling system in place.

Officials on Monday said that the tolls are on target to generate half a billion dollars in revenue for the MTA by the end of 2024 after taking in more than $40.4 million in net revenue last month.

They also cited gains that include bus speeds being up 4% on routes within the congestion relief zone south of 60th Street, as well decreased travel times for paratransit trips within Manhattan.

Palestinian studies, and antisemitic theories

Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered City University of New York school Hunter College to remove a faculty job listing recruiting professors to teach Palestinian studies, and to “conduct a thorough review of the position to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom.” CUNY has now re-posed the listings — but no longer including language calling for scholars concerned with “settler colonialism, genocide and apartheid.”

Hands off our healthcare’: Brooklynites protest Rep. Malliotakis’ support for Republican budget proposal

 By Lauren Rapp

Posted on March 26, 2025

Demonstrators march in support of health care programs during a rally outside U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ Bay Ridge office on March 22.

Photo by Paul Frangipane

New Yorkers criticized U.S. Rep. Nicole Malliotakis last week after she voted in favor of a House budget proposal they said could lead to cuts for healthcare programs — staging two separate protests, including a “die-in” — outside her office. 

Last month, Malliotakis — and all Republican members of the House of Representatives voted in favor of a budget framework that called for $2 trillion in spending cuts and the extension of tax cuts implemented in Trump’s first term. 

Opponents of the plan argued it could slash funding for Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, and New York State’s Child Health Plus and Essential Plan programs.

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Protestors rallied outside Malliotakis’ Bay Ridge office twice last week, urging her to protect healthcare funding.Photo by Paul Frangipane

On Friday afternoon, residents and community groups chanted “hands off our healthcare” and “healthcare over billionaire welfare” while holding a lifesize cut out of Malliotakis outside her Bay Ridge office. They were there to hand-deliver a petition urging the representative to hold a town meeting for her constituents, oppose cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, and push for state and local governments to supplement lost federal funding. As of March 21, that petition had amassed 350 signatures. 

The protest was supported by organizing groups Popular Democracy, MoveOn Civic Action, and Indivisible Brooklyn. 

“Congresswoman Malliotakis has failed to answer constituent questions about her decision to vote in support of a budget resolution that will slash hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for Medicaid and food assistance,” said Bay Ridge resident Irene Xanthoudakis at the protest. 

Another attendee, Christina Carter, works as a clinical psychologist. Part of her motivation to attend the rally stemmed from working with patients heavily reliant on Medicaid, she said. 

Protestors said Malliotakis has failed to respond to inquiries and requests to hold a town hall.File photo by Paul Frangipane

“The system, as it is, has tons of gaps, these budget cuts not only turn those gaps into chasms that the most vulnerable in society can and will fall through,” shared Carter in an email. “They also have a downstream effect that will threaten our already fragile healthcare system as whole.”

Both neighbors shared concerns that Malliotakis has failed to respond to repeated requests to hold a town hall meeting to discuss budget cuts.

Malliotakis’ office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

“Representative Malliotakis can either choose to vote with Elon Musk and his billionaire friends, or she can vote to protect hundreds of thousands of constituents who depend on Medicaid and SNAP benefits,” said Jon Green, a Bay Ridge resident and organizer with Popular Democracy.

Following the passage of the budget proposal, the United States House Committee on Ways & Means, led by Chairman Jason Smith, described the proposal in a statement as a “big, beautiful reconciliation bill” that supports the expansion of “Trump Tax Cuts” and increases national security. 

“It also opens the door for new resources to secure America’s borders and strengthen national security as well as end the bureaucratic blockade standing in the way of American energy dominance,” stated the Ways & Means office. 

Congressional Democrats disagreed. 

“The reckless Republican budget will cut taxes up to $4.5 trillion for the wealthy, the well-off and the well-connected, and then they are sticking working-class Americans, middle-class Americans and everyday Americans with the bill,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said after the vote last month. “They’re going to slash and burn Medicaid, slash and burn veterans benefits and slash and burn nutritional assistance for children and families.”

Protestors marched through Bay Ridge on Sunday.Photo by Paul Frangipane

On March 22, the day after the petition was delivered, residents and community groups gathered outside Malliotakis’ office for a “die-in.”

Protesters marched with handmade tombstone signs that held messages like “DOGE cut my Medicaid” and “Medicaid cuts killed me” written beside skulls and crossbones. Some laid on the ground in front of Malliotakis’ office, holding their tombstone signs above their heads to create a mock graveyard. 

Lee Crawford, a representative from Indivisible Brooklyn, told Brooklyn Paper that the rally turnout was larger than expected, and earned support from Make the Road New York, Metro New York Health Care for All, and 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East. 

At the “die-in,” protestors held their tombstone signs above their heads.Photo by Paul Frangipane

Crawford estimates around 200 residents attended the march, and more than 50 people participated in the “die-in.” 

Indivisible Brooklyn has been talking to NY-11 constituents for the past five weeks, Crawford said, and they have become “increasingly alarmed”  following Malliotakis’ vote last month. 

“They [NY11 constituents] had started to ask us on their own about when there would be a protest at her office, so they were energized to join this march,” stated Crawford. 

Mark Hannay, the Director of Metro NY Health Care for All, said over 300,000 of Malliotakis’ constituents are enrolled in Medicaid and Child Health Plus, including nearly 21,000 people living with disabilities — according to Medicaid Matters New York. 

Some locals said they worry the cuts will have serious repercussions for healthcare in the U.S.Photo by Paul Frangipane

“It will not only harm individuals and families, but will affect the hospitals, community health centers, nursing homes, and home care programs that everybody relies on, no matter what kind of health insurance someone may have,” stated Hannay. 

The House resolution is just one step in a much longer budget reconciliation process. Last month, the Senate approved a competing framework — and in the coming months, the bodies will have to agree on a common budget resolution. If passed, the bill will be sent to President Donald Trump for approval.