Trump admin resumes funding to Penn after agreement on transgender athletes
The Trump administration suspended funding to the University of Pennsylvania in March based on its policy stipulating that there are only two sexes -- male and female.
The action was related to a transgender swimmer on the university's women's team winning a national championship. The event has ignited a debate over fairness.
CNN on Wednesday quoted a White House official as saying that the Trump administration has released 175 million dollars in previously frozen federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania.
The university had announced on Tuesday that it will keep transgender athletes out of all women's sports in a policy shift apparently made to concede to pressure from the administration.
The Trump administration has notified universities that do not abide by its policies of funding cuts and other measures.
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Japan Times
an hour ago
- Japan Times
Trump extends his political power with 'big, beautiful' win in U.S. Congress
As U.S. President Donald Trump worked to pass his signature spending bill, he blended charm and threats, bestowed gifts and bellowed frustration to bend Congress to his will. In the end, after days of intense behind-the-scenes pressure from the White House, Congress proved no match for a president at the peak of his power. Trump secured the biggest legislative victory of his second term in office on Thursday when the House of Representatives passed his sweeping tax-cut and spending bill, sending it to the Republican president for his signature by his dictated deadline of Friday's Independence Day holiday. The measure will give Trump billions of dollars and new legal avenues to press forward with his domestic agenda, ramping up migrant deportations and cutting taxes while rolling back health benefits and food assistance. One-by-one, major U.S. institutions from the Supreme Court, law firms, universities, media outlets and beyond have given way for Trump to push the bounds of presidential authority in his first five months in office. With its narrow passage of Trump's self-styled "big, beautiful bill," Congress, too, delivered the president a victory that will further extend his power. "There's no question that it's a capstone to what has been a very strong last few weeks for President Trump,' said Lanhee Chen, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a think tank, and a former adviser to Republicans Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio. In acceding to Trump's wishes, Republican lawmakers pushed past their nonpartisan budget office and Senate parliamentarian, mega-donor Elon Musk, bond market fears about U.S. debt and their personal doubts about whether the bill's benefit cuts could shorten their constituents' lives or their own political futures. Nonpartisan forecasters say the legislation will add $3.4 trillion to the nation's $36.2 trillion in debt, a prediction many Republicans contend overlooks future economic growth from business tax cuts. The bill isn't popular with many Americans: 49% oppose the legislation, while only 29% favor it, according to recent polling by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Pew said majorities expressed concern that the legislation would raise the budget deficit and hurt lower-income people while benefiting the wealthy. The White House disputed the polling data, insisting that internal polls across the country had found great support for many specific provisions of the law. Republican voters do want Trump to rule with little interference from lawmakers. Some 64% of Republicans polled by Reuters/Ipsos in June agreed with a statement that the country needs a strong president who can rule without too much interference from Congress or the courts. Only 13% of Democrats agreed. "It's the rare piece of legislation that can both at the same time be a big victory for one side but also present some political traps for that same victorious side," Chen said. Trump spent recent days wooing small groups of Republican lawmakers from the Senate and House who stopped by the Oval Office or his Sterling, Virginia, golf course. He handed out branded merchandise and encouraged them not to give Democrats the satisfaction of handing Trump a major defeat, according to people familiar with the outreach. He vented frustration, privately and then publicly, at the idea that Republicans might break ranks. "FOR REPUBLICANS, THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE,' Trump posted on Truth Social after midnight Thursday as the bill struggled to gain sufficient votes to clear a procedural hurdle. "RIDICULOUS!!!' A senior White House official told reporters after the final vote on Thursday that Trump was deeply involved in the production of the legislation, going over it line-by-line with senior advisers including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and working through "endless" late-night phone calls with members of Congress. Trump started working the phones at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday in the run-up to the vote, leveraging relationships built during dinners and engagements at the White House and at his Florida estate in Palm Beach, the official said. Ultimately, only two House Republicans ended up joining Democrats to vote against the bill. Hyma Moore, a Democratic strategist, said Trump will pay little political price in the long-term for pushing an unpopular bill because he is a term-limited president. Republicans seeking future office may have to deal with the consequences, however. Deep cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, along with growing U.S. government debt, are certain to figure in the 2026 midterm elections, when Democrats hope to take advantage of the longstanding tendency of voters to hand the opposition party more control of Congress. Two Republicans, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, have already announced their retirements in recent days after clashing with Trump, potentially giving Democrats an easier path to pick up those seats. "He's a lame duck, there's not much of a price he can pay at this point,' Moore said of Trump. "Next step is more GOP (Republican) in-fighting as the primaries shape up.' While Republican lawmakers in tough districts fight to keep their jobs, the bill they just passed will empower Trump to govern as freely as ever.
Japan Times
an hour ago
- Japan Times
U.S. Republicans muscle Trump's tax-cut and spending bill through Congress
U.S. President Donald Trump's tax-cut package cleared its final hurdle in Congress on Thursday, as the Republican-controlled House of Representatives narrowly approved the massive bill and sent it to him to sign into law. The 218-214 vote amounts to a significant victory for the Republican president that will fund his immigration crackdown, make his 2017 tax cuts permanent and deliver new tax breaks that he promised during his 2024 campaign. It also cuts health and food safety net programs and zeroes out dozens of green energy incentives. It would add $3.4 trillion to the nation's $36.2 trillion debt, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Despite concerns within Trump's party over the 869-page bill's price tag and its hit to health care programs, in the end, just two of the House's 220 Republicans voted against it, following an overnight standoff. The bill has already cleared the Republican-controlled Senate by the narrowest possible margin. The White House said Trump will sign it into law at 5 p.m. on Friday, the July 4 Independence Day holiday. Republicans said the legislation will lower taxes for Americans across the income spectrum and spur economic growth. "This is jet fuel for the economy, and all boats are going to rise," House Speaker Mike Johnson said. Every Democrat in Congress voted against it, blasting the bill as a giveaway to the wealthy that would leave millions uninsured. "The focus of this bill, the justification for all of the cuts that will hurt everyday Americans, is to provide massive tax breaks for billionaires," House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in an eight-hour, 46-minute speech that was the longest in the chamber's history. Trump kept up the pressure throughout, cajoling and threatening lawmakers as he pressed them to finish the job. "FOR REPUBLICANS, THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE. RIDICULOUS!!!" he wrote on social media. Trump's spending and tax bill is seen after Johnson signs it on Thursday. | REUTERS Though roughly a dozen House Republicans threatened to vote against the bill, only two ended up doing so: Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, a centrist, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a conservative who said it did not cut spending enough. Republicans raced to meet Trump's July 4 deadline, working through last weekend and holding all-night debates in the House and the Senate. The bill passed the Senate on Tuesday in a 51-50 vote in that saw Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaking vote. According to the CBO, the bill would lower tax revenues by $4.5 trillion over 10 years and cut spending by $1.1 trillion. Those spending cuts largely come from Medicaid, the health program that covers 71 million low-income Americans. The bill would tighten enrollment standards, institute a work requirement and clamp down on a funding mechanism used by states to boost federal payments — changes that would leave nearly 12 million people uninsured, according to the CBO. Republicans added $50 billion for rural health providers to address concerns that those cutbacks would force them out of business. Nonpartisan analysts have found that the wealthiest Americans would see the biggest benefits from the bill, while lower-income people would effectively see their incomes drop as the safety-net cuts would outweigh their tax cuts. The increased debt load created by the bill would also effectively transfer money from younger to older generations, analysts say. Ratings firm Moody's downgraded U.S. debt in May, citing the mounting debt, and some foreign investors say the bill is making U.S. Treasury bonds less attractive. The bill raises the U.S. debt ceiling by $5 trillion, averting the prospect of a default in the short term. But some investors worry the debt overhang could curtail the economic stimulus in the bill and create a long-term risk of higher borrowing costs. On the other side of the ledger, the bill staves off tax increases that were due to hit most Americans at the end of this year, when Trump's 2017 individual and business tax cuts were due to expire. Those cuts are now made permanent, while tax breaks for parents and businesses are expanded. The bill also sets up new tax breaks for tipped income, overtime pay, seniors and auto loans, fulfilling Trump campaign promises. The final version of the bill includes more substantial tax cuts and more aggressive health care cuts than an initial version that passed the House in May. During deliberations in the Senate, Republicans also dropped a provision that would have banned state-level regulations on artificial intelligence, and a "retaliatory tax" on foreign investment that had spurred alarm on Wall Street. The bill is likely to feature prominently in the 2026 midterm elections, when Democrats hope to recapture at least one chamber of Congress. Republican leaders contend the bill's tax breaks will goose the economy before then, and many of its benefit cuts are not scheduled to kick in until after that election. Opinion polls show many Americans are concerned about the bill's cost and its effect on lower-income people.
NHK
2 hours ago
- NHK
US Congress passes Trump's 'One Big Beautiful Bill'
Lawmakers in the US House of Representatives have passed President Donald Trump's domestic policy bill, which had been approved by the Senate earlier this week. It passed by a narrow margin and has been sent to Trump for his signature. All but two Republicans voted in favor of the legislation on Thursday, and Democrats were united in their opposition. The final vote was 218 to 214. Trump had been pressuring his party to pass the bill ahead of the Fourth of July holiday. He told reporters: "I think when you go over the bill, it was very easy to get them to a yes. You know, we went over that bill and point after point, biggest tax cut in history." Vice President JD Vance admitted in a post on X that even he sometimes doubted the bill would pass by Trump's deadline. The legislation contains Trump's key agenda items, including sweeping tax cuts. It extends the tax cuts from his first term and temporarily exempts taxes on tips and overtime pay. However, analysts at the Congressional Budget Office said the bill will add over 3 trillion dollars to the US debt over the next decade. Democrats have sharply criticized it for slashing safety-net programs. Former president Joe Biden described it on X as "cruel" and said it will deliver a "massive tax break to billionaires." Trump is expected to sign the bill into law on Friday.
