Healthcare groups blast passing of Trump's tax bill, warn it will harm millions
The bill, when enacted, will overhaul the government's Medicaid healthcare program that covers around 71 million low-income Americans, introducing changes including mandatory work requirements that are expected to leave nearly 12 million people uninsured, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Republicans have said the legislation will lower taxes for Americans across the income spectrum and spur economic growth. According to the CBO, the bill would lower tax revenue by $4.5 trillion over 10 years and cut spending by $1.1 trillion. Much of those spending cuts come from Medicaid.
Bobby Mukkamala, president of the American Medical Association, an influential U.S. doctors' group, warned that the Medicaid cuts would limit access to care by leaving millions without health insurance and make it harder for them to see doctors.
"It will make it more likely that acute, treatable illnesses will turn into life-threatening or costly chronic conditions. That is disappointing, maddening, and unacceptable," he said.
The Alliance of Community Health Plans, which represents local, nonprofit health plans, also rebuked the bill's passage, saying it would drive up consumer costs while slashing federal health spending to historic levels.
The group pledged to work with policymakers to minimize disruption for communities.
Greg Kelley, president of the Service Employees International Union's healthcare branch, representing Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, and Kansas, called the bill a 'moral failure' that threatened healthcare access, jobs, and the stability of the healthcare system.
Craig Garthwaite, director of the healthcare program at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, said their research showed such cuts would hurt patient health. He said expanding Medicaid had saved lives and cutting it back was likely to have the opposite impact.
Ge Bai, a Johns Hopkins health policy professor and adviser to the conservative Paragon Health Institute, said she expected the private market would step in as able-bodied adults lose Medicaid and subsidies.
"These people will come back to the private market," she said. "The financial burden to purchase insurance will be shifted away from U.S. taxpayers to these people's shoulders."
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Near the end of an antisemitism training video that Northwestern University students are required to watch, the narrator urges viewers to play a guessing game. Six statements pop on to the screen – the viewer must choose whether they were made by 'anti-Israel activists' or the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke. Among the statements: 'Every time I read Hitler, I fall in love again.' The video reveals that the statement was made by an 'anti-Israel activist'. The narrator then states: 'The fact that you can't tell the difference is terrifying.' He adds that for most Jews, being anti-Israel and antisemitic 'are the same'. The video is part of a wave of controversial antisemitism trainings being implemented by universities across the US starting this school year, in response to Trump administration threats to pull funding for institutions that, in its view, fail to adequately address campus antisemitism. It is not clear how universities will enforce student participation. 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At Northwestern, which is under multiple federal investigations for alleged antisemitism, the university emailed students in March to say that the implementation of the training 'will adhere to federal policy including President Donald Trump's Jan. 29 executive order, 'Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism''. Students who do not complete the training cannot register for classes, while graduate students can lose stipends. Bez said she had viewed the training, but had so far refused to officially complete it and the university had put a hold on her registration. Introducing the training has not helped Northwestern's relationship with the Trump administration. Even after implementing it, the administration cut $790m in research funding. Trump is now trying to extract further concessions. 'They thought this would save them – it did not,' said Noah Cooper, a Northwestern sophomore and an anti-Zionist with Jewish Voice for Peace who completed the training. The Guardian reviewed training materials developed by the JUF and the Anti-Defamation League, which both push pro-Israel agendas in the US, and found the overarching message is that criticism of Israel or Zionism is antisemitic. The materials advise students on how to respond to antisemitic or anti-Israel speech, and spread a pro-Israel message. That includes tips on effective online debating, media strategies and how to pressure administrators into cracking down on anti-Israel campus speech. Some Jewish and free speech groups have raised a litany of concerns about the materials, including that they are often one-sided, misleading, vague and sometimes historically inaccurate. Not only did the trainings do little to protect Jews from antisemitism, the universities and Trump may even be endangering Jews because they are 'allowing antisemitism to be used for other political purposes', like attacking higher education, said Jeremy Jacobs, executive director of J Street, a center-left, pro-Zionist lobbying and cultural organization. 'If people start to see that their universities, their medical research and their neighbors' immigration status and right to due process are being endangered because the Jewish community is pressuring for enforcement in ways that go way too far – that will generate actual antisemitism,' Jacobs added. In an email, a Northwestern spokesperson said students 'are not required to agree' with the antisemitism trainings and stressed that the speaker in the video said he did not speak for all Jewish people. 'However, he does represent how many in the Jewish community feel when targeted with certain actions and words, and we believe it is important for our students to have an understanding of that,' the spokesperson wrote. The ADL also has created their own antisemitism training and is partnering with Columbia among other universities to implement it. A centerpiece of their 'Think. Plan. Act.' toolkit for higher education is a section titled 'How can I be prepared for antisemitic and anti-Israel bias on campus? Scenarios and best practices.' It lays out 10 hypothetical antisemitic and 'anti-Israel situations', why the ADL views them as a problem and advises students on how to respond. One scenario explains why someone spray-painting swastikas on a Jewish fraternity home is a problem, while another example examines why fliers criticizing the Israeli government for demolishing Palestinian homes is similarly an issue. A third raises concerns over a hypothetical 'charge that a sponsored Israel trip Is 'pro-apartheid propaganda''. Lumping together examples of legitimate criticism of Israel's government and obvious antisemitic acts is designed to convince students and administrators that the actions are similarly problematic, critics say. It also appears to raise the specter of Title VI discrimination violations, said Veronica Salama, an attorney with the New York Civil Liberties Union. However, Title VI doesn't protect against criticism of countries, and a term like 'anti-Israel situation' has no legal meaning, Salama said. But the ADL's intent is evident, she added. 'The tactic is to scare universities into placing a limitation on this type of speech for fear that they will get hit with a Title VI lawsuit or be investigated by the Trump administration,' Salama said. The ADL's hypothetical scenario involving flyers critical of Israel's demolition program encapsulates many other issues that those who reviewed the material or completed a training raised. The scenario begins with a student leaving their dorm room to find a flyer taped to the door 'warning that your residence hall will soon be demolished'. 'The rest of the flyer contains 'facts' about how many Palestinian homes have been demolished by the Israeli military to collectively punish and 'ethnically cleanse' Palestinians,' the toolkit continues. The ADL is referring to the highly charged debate over Israel's mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank. The training material then offers the Israeli narrative around the demolitions, claiming they target 'terrorists' and 'deter others from terrorist action'. Other homes were demolished because they were 'built without proper permits', the ADL states. 'While you may agree or disagree with these Israeli government actions, the charge that Israel has demolished these homes to 'ethnically cleanse' Palestinians is inaccurate and inflammatory,' the ADL material states. The Palestinian perspective on the demolitions is not found in the training material, and excluding their side story is a problem, those who reviewed the material said. As many as 40,000 Palestinians in the West Bank alone, including refugee camps, are estimated to have been forced from their homes since the beginning of 2024, in addition to millions more in Israel and the Palestinian territories in previous decades. A UN special rapporteur in March warned of an 'ethnic cleansing' in the West Bank as Israel has accelerated demolitions. Meanwhile, the Israeli military often won't issue building permits to Palestinians. The antisemitism training video was shown as part of a new mandatory bias training called Building a Community of Respect and Breaking Down Bias. The antisemitism video is shown alongside a separate video made in partnership with The Inclusion Expert, a bias training company, on anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias, and a third video about campus protest. The Islamophobia training covers forms of bias and racism toward Arab, Muslim and Palestinian people. But, unlike the JUF antisemitism video that presented a pro-Israel viewpoint on the conflict, there was no historical context or basic arguments for the Palestinian cause. Nor did it mention what has happened in Gaza after the 7 October Hamas attack. 'The point was not to foster conversation or give people a nuanced view of this conflict,' Northwestern's Cooper said. 'The point was to get people to agree on one particular worldview.' The trainings also drew criticism because they are often vague, and demand different standards for the Israeli and Palestinian causes. The ADL concedes that the hypothetical flyers criticizing Israel over its demolition of Palestinian homes 'could represent legitimate political discourse'. But it states that the flyers would be 'less acceptable' if the university administration had approved of them. 'What this training is saying is, 'If your school allows let's say Students for Justice in Palestine to put up a flyer like this, then they are necessarily violating Title VI', and that is just not true,' Salama said. The ADL's material repeatedly advises students on how to respond to criticism of Israel and antisemitism. It suggests pressuring administration to respond, contacting Hillel, reporting issues to the ADL or writing op-eds, among other actions. 'Strategize with your friends, campus Hillel and/or representatives of the pro-Israel community about countering the false allegations made in the flier and further educating about Israel's security challenges,' the ADL states. Northwestern students pointed to a list of controversial statements and claims made throughout the antisemitism training video, called 'Antisemitism Here/Now'. It employs a controversial and legally dubious definition of antisemitism written by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association, that critics say equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. The video states that Israel was founded in 1948 'on British land', and refers to the West Bank as 'Judea and Samaria', the biblical name controversially used for the region by the Israeli government. The original Jewish homeland comprises parts of modern-day Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, the video states. Bez questioned why the university did not utilize Northwestern scholars on the region and its history, and instead hired an outside pro-Israel group to develop the training. 'The content is incredibly unscholarly and has really, really egregious claims,' Bez said. 'It erases the pain and suffering of Palestinian people, and normalizes language that is being used to push the occupation.' In a statement, a Northwestern spokesperson said, 'part the University's mission is exposing our students to viewpoints that are different, and in some cases challenging, from their own – a key part of Northwestern's mission.' Meanwhile, as the narrator attempts to conflate Judaism and Zionism, it states that the 'vast majority' of Jewish people are Zionist. 'I am an anti-Zionist Jew and it doesn't make me feel good, safe or protected in the way the video claimed to,' Cooper said.
