Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

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May 23

The Washington Post says Trump should work with the Senate on tax bill

In the past week, as never before, President Donald Trump showed mastery of the legislative process. On Tuesday, when his gargantuan tax bill was stalled, he went to Capitol Hill to deliver a double-barreled message. To the fiscal hawks, he said not to “f--- around with Medicaid.” To blue-state Republicans, he warned against holding out for further increases in caps on state and local tax (SALT) deductions.

Again and again, to advance his One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump capitalized on his acolytes’ love and fear. Opposing the bill would be “ the ultimate betrayal,” the White House warned Wednesday morning, as Trump’s political advisers threatened to work for primary challengers against anyone voting no. That afternoon, Trump invited on-the-fence members of the Freedom Caucus to the White House. One of them, Eric Burlison (Missouri), said afterward that “it was amazing to see him in action.”

Burlison wound up supporting the bill. So did all but three House Republicans. It passed by one vote on Thursday morning.

This does nothing to alter the fact that the legislation, as it stands, would drastically enlarge America’s already enormous debt to 129 percentof gross domestic product, and that this would be disastrous for the economy and the dollar. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that Trump, when pressed, is able to act via Congress rather than executive order. He should endeavor to choose this path more often.

The president is savvier about working the Hill today than he was eight years ago. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) says Trump has been “ much more engaged in directing what happens than the first time because he and the leadership of Congress in 2017 were not seeing eye-to-eye.” Trump made repealing Obamacare his first legislative priority, for example, only because Congress wanted him to.

By now, most Trump antagonists in the Republican Party have retired from politics and the GOP is more MAGA than ever. But the president is also coordinating better with party leaders. He no longer agrees to requests from rank-and-file members that undermine delicate negotiations with party leaders.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) did the nitty-gritty work of shepherding the tax bill despite having the smallest House majority in nearly a century. He said it was like “crossing over the Grand Canyon on a piece of dental floss.” After the House Budget Committee blocked the bill last Friday, Johnson worked all weekend to persuade four deficit hawks to change their votes to “present” so it could advance to the floor Sunday night.

In the following days, working in concert with Trump, Johnson continued to hammer out compromises. He revised the bill’s work requirements for Medicaid recipients so that they would kick in at the end of 2026 rather than 2029. And he agreed to raise the cap for SALT deductions to $40,000 for people making up to $500,000 a year. (Under current law, the cap is $10,000 for everyone.)

The hard, sometimes dirty work of legislating might not be the easiest way to govern, but it is the most legitimate. Executive orders can be easily rescinded by future presidents or overturned by the courts. Laws are far more likely to endure. And the horse trading that’s required to secure majorities ensures that policy reflects the broadest possible array of interests. Because all members of the House must stand for reelection every other year, they are more directly accountable to the people for votes they take than a president is — especially a president who will never again appear on a ballot.

Too often, Trump bypasses or otherwise short-circuits the House and Senate, despite his party’s majorities. Rather than turn out executive orders and social media posts unilaterally dictating policy, he should more often work toward meaningful legislation. Of course, he still has not pushed his tax bill over the finish line.

It next moves to the Senate, where Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) says his members want to leave their “imprint.” Thune can afford to lose the support of only three GOP senators. Some want deeper cuts in Medicaid, while others demand no cuts at all. Republican senators care little about SALT deductions, because they mainly affect blue states.

Ideally, the Senate will improve on the bill by scaling back the tax cuts and identifying additional spending cuts. The House bill is projected to grow the country’s $36.2 trillion national debt by more than $2.5 trillion, not counting interest payments. If temporary provisions now set to expire in four years are extended, the cost could rise above $5 trillion.

As he voted no, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) called the bill a ticking debt bomb. “We’re not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” he said on the House floor. “We’re putting coal in the boiler and setting a course for the iceberg.”

Massie isn’t wrong. At a minimum, the Senate should make the final package less fiscally irresponsible. This is how the legislative process is supposed to work.

ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/23/trump-tax-bill-house-senate/

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May 23

The New York Times says Republicans can't hide Medicaid cuts in “Big, Beautiful” Bill

President Barack Obama’s signature achievement, the 2010 expansion of health insurance known as Obamacare, has proved successful and popular. More than 45 million Americans have health insurance today as a direct result of the legislation. And most Republican politicians have stopped openly campaigning to kill the program.

But make no mistake: The big domestic policy bill that Republicans are trying to push through Congress is an effort to reverse the progress of the past 15 years. Despite their claims of having become a working-class party, Republicans are seeking to take away health insurance from millions of Americans, and they are doing it to give billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthy.

The most important attempt to undermine Obamacare is also the most cleverly disguised. To restrict access to Medicaid — the federal program that Obamacare expanded and that covers medical costs for lower-income people, including children, the elderly and people with disabilities — House Republicans are proposing to add a work requirement to the program. The proposal would strip Medicaid benefits from working-age adults who do not have children unless they can prove they are working at least 80 hours a month. That would result in 7.7 million Americans losing health insurance by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Proponents describe it as a common-sense measure to encourage work and prevent mooching off the government. They insist it is substantively different from cutting Medicaid funding. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, for example, has described outright cuts as “morally wrong and politically suicidal,” but he says that he is in favor of work requirements.

We are sympathetic to the idea that some government benefits should be tied to employment. People benefit from working, and society benefits when more people are working. But health care is the wrong target. All Americans deserve access to affordable health care. Every other developed nation already ensures universal access, and the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, while flawed and inefficient, has brought the United States closer to that goal. Republicans are not proposing to fix the flaws. They are not proposing to deliver better health care at a lower cost. The bill would save money by depriving Americans of health insurance.

Furthermore, the evidence suggests that work requirements don’t work. Federal law already allows states to impose Medicaid work requirements in some situations, and Arkansas briefly did during the first Trump administration. Subsequent studies found no resulting increase in work force participation. Most of those subject to the work requirements already were working, and the termination of benefits did not address the reasons the remainder were not.

The primary effect of the Arkansas program was to strip Medicaid from people who were eligible. The work requirement was mostly a paperwork requirement. It punished people for failing to fill out forms. Two-thirds of those who lost coverage in Arkansas were victims of red tape, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive think tank.

Luke Seaborn is a case study. He is a 54-year-old auto mechanic in Georgia, another state that introduced a Medicaid work requirement, and he initially obtained insurance through the program. Over the past year, he has worked steadily but lost his insurance twice because of paperwork problems, according to ProPublica. “I did what I was supposed to, but that wasn’t good enough,” he said.

The problems extend beyond paperwork. A work requirement can deprive people of health insurance if they lose work through no fault of their own or if they are unable to obtain enough work. The loss of health care can then make it harder for them to find a new job. Insurance helps to keep workers healthy. Studies show that people with health insurance work more and are significantly more productive. Republicans are right to say that America should increase labor force participation. If they want to help make that happen, they should push legislation to make health insurance cheaper and more widely available.

The expansion of Medicaid has been one of two main ways that Obamacare has helped Americans get health insurance. The other has been the creation of marketplaces selling subsidized private insurance for people who are not covered through their jobs. In 2021, Congress built on Obamacare’s framework by increasing the insurance subsidies, bringing coverage within reach of millions of additional American families. The Republican plan would reverse that progress, too. It would not extend the subsidies, which are scheduled to expire in the fall. The money would be used for tax cuts.

Republicans are also proposing to impose other limits on the exchanges, such as by reducing the annual enrollment period by one month. The stated purpose is to reduce fraud. The effect would be to reduce access to health care. The changes to the exchanges would probably deprive an additional six million people of health insurance.

All told, the number of Americans living without health insurance would increase by at least 13.7 million, or more than 50 percent, by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

It is easy to get lost in the complexities of America’s health care system, but understanding the current debate doesn’t require any mastery of the details. The legislation that Republicans are pushing through Congress does not include any substantive proposals to improve the current system. The question on the table is whether the government should take health insurance from millions of lower-income Americans and give the savings to the wealthiest Americans.

We are heartened that the Republican plan is so unpopular that members of the party have tried to claim that they oppose cutting Medicaid. Last month a dozen House Republicans signed a letter expressing their “strong support for this program that ensures our constituents have reliable health care.” Medicaid cuts, they pointed out, would “threaten the viability of hospitals, nursing homes and safety-net providers nationwide.” And President Trump recently said, “We’re not cutting Medicaid, we’re not cutting Medicare, and we’re not cutting Social Security.”

But the bill that the House passed by a single vote on Thursday morning and that now heads to the Senate would indeed cut Medicaid and deny health care to millions of Americans. Word games do not change that reality.

ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/opinion/trump-republicans-medicaid.html

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May 26

The Wall Street Journal says the GOP should revolt on sanctions against Putin

President Trump is unhappy with Vladimir Putin. The Russian isn’t heeding the President’s entreaties to stop the killing in Ukraine, and Mr. Trump is nonplussed.

“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social.

Separately, Mr. Trump told reporters: “I’m not happy with what Putin is doing. He’s killing a lot of people, and I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin.”

Mr. Trump may be the only person in the world still surprised by how Mr. Putin is behaving. The Russian is the same man he’s been for two decades, bent on reconstituting as much of the old Soviet empire as he can get away with. Ukraine is his obsession. He’s not going to modify his ambitions merely because Mr. Trump alternates between begging for peace and scolding outbursts on social media.

Mr. Trump and his advisers fancy themselves steely-eyed realists on foreign policy. No “neocon” idealism for them. But on Mr. Putin they are starry-eyed idealists, mouthing “peace” as if they can make it happen by wishing it were so. Mr. Trump’s naivete is helping Russia continue the killing as long as Mr. Putin wants.

The good news is that the U.S. Senate still has some genuine realists when it comes to Russia. As GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham writes in a letter nearby, he has 82 co-sponsors on a bill that would hit countries that buy Russian oil and gas with tariff sanctions. Energy sales are Mr. Putin’s financial lifeline. President Biden refused to apply these so-called secondary sanctions, and Mr. Trump can’t make up his mind.

If Mr. Trump signaled that he supports the Graham-Tom Cotton-Richard Blumenthal sanctions bill, it would sail through the Senate. Combined with the promise of more arms to Ukraine when the current supply runs out, these sanctions might change Mr. Putin’s calculations about the price of war. But GOP Senators can act whether or not Mr. Trump approves. They can vote on the sanctions bill, and force the President to face the hard reality of Mr. Putin’s ambitions that Mr. Trump would rather avoid.

ONLINE: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-senate-sanctions-bill-lindsey-graham-280e7fbb?mod=editorials_article_pos2

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May 26

The Boston Globe says vets deserve more than parades and empty promises

The reading of the names of Massachusetts’ fallen military heroes had to be moved indoors this year when the weekend that also marks the unofficial start of summer began in the cold and the rain. But the 37,000 flags planted on Boston Common, representing the state’s war dead through the generations, remained throughout the weekend — a silent tribute to their sacrifice.

There were also dozens of town parades. Many end at local cemeteries, others at war memorials for a wreath laying. They are moving, solemn affairs.

Memorial Day has become, somewhat belatedly perhaps, a time to honor the living as well, those who served and came home with wounds seen and unseen. A time to honor veterans of Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan for whom there were no ticker tape parades upon their return to a deeply divided nation.

No, this nation has never been Russia or North Korea, which mark the anniversaries of their military victories with giant displays of their current military might.

Well, not until now, anyway.

Now the current occupant of the White House, who has long had an issue with fallen soldiers, and more recently even avoided the dignified transfer arrivals at Dover Air Force Base of those killed while on military duty, wants a giant display of military might in Washington on a day that happens to be both Flag Day and his 79th birthday.

But this June 14, a day originally planned to mark the 250th birthday of the US Army with a festival along the National Mall, Trump has now given himself a starring role. The festival has grown into a parade with 28 Bradley fighting vehicles and Stryker armored vehicles, four Paladin howitzers, towed artillery, and multiple infantry squad vehicles, according to an Army spokesperson. It will include the usual military flyover but this time with the addition of some 50 military helicopters. And a member of the Army’s Golden Knights will parachute down to the Ellipse to present Trump with a folded flag.

The Army estimates the cost of the extravaganza at $25 million to $45 million.

And if Trump has his way, it certainly won’t be the last such display of military might. Earlier this month the president said he would rename May 8 as “Victory Day for World War II,” a day widely celebrated in Europe as V-E Day. Of course, it wasn’t the end of World War II at all, and to say so dishonors the thousands of Americans who continued to fight and die in the Pacific theater until August.

And Nov. 11, Veteran’s Day, he vowed to rename, “Victory Day for World War I,” explaining in a Truth Social post, “We won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything. … We are going to start celebrating our victories again!”

Lost in the shuffle of all that celebrating of long-ago victories and conspicuous displays of current-day military hardware is the nation’s ongoing obligation to care for its living veterans, especially those who depend on the government for services they have been promised — care that is congressionally mandated.

The Trump administration thus far successfully has pushed for increases in military expenditures — largely for shipbuilding, munitions, and a missile shield system dubbed Golden Dome. But Trump has also vowed, “We love our veterans. We’re gonna take good care of them.” The truth of that statement, however, remains elusive.

The Department of Government Efficiency had planned to cut Veterans Affairs by some 80,000 jobs. The administration has acknowledged a target of at least 70,000 in the months ahead.

The administration insists it is increasing veteran benefits by some 4 percent this year but not necessarily within the VA system.

But it’s not just personnel on the line. Among the many research contracts halted in Trump’s assault on Harvard is a project at Harvard Medical School on assessing the likelihood of suicides by veterans in the emergency department. It’s just one instance where Trump’s vendetta against the Ivies might well cost vets’ lives.

A recent investigation by ProPublica found alarm bells being sounded all over the VA system over the ending of clinical trials for head and neck cancers, kidney disease, and traumatic brain injuries.

This nation owes its veterans more than pretty words, empty promises, and parades. And it owes them respect for their service whether the wars they fought were won or lost, popular on the home front or not.

On this day set aside for remembering those who never came home, let us also vow to provide care and comfort to those who did.

ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/05/26/opinion/memorial-day-trump-parades-veterans/

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May 22

The Guardian on Trump, the U.S. and South Africa

The most telling moment of Donald Trump’s meeting with Cyril Ramaphosa was not the cynical screening of footage promoting false claims of “white genocide” in South Africa. It was when a reporter asked the US president what he wanted his counterpart to do about it. Mr Trump replied: “I don’t know.”

Leaders enter the Oval Office uneasily, especially since the kicking administered to Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The South African president came armed with gratitude, two golf stars, a billionaire and compliments on the decor – and kept a cool head and a straight face as he was ambushed. Mr Ramaphosa later described it as “robust engagement”. But, in truth, it was a clash of two worlds rather than an interaction.

On one side sat a political heavyweight who calmly asserted the facts; on the other, Mr Trump, espousing wild and inflammatory myths. One side wanted to do bilateral business; the other to pander to the grievances of his domestic base, many of whom doubtless relished the public scolding of an anti-apartheid veteran. No solution was proffered to the imaginary problem.

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has fallen far short in too many regards. Violent crime is rife. But the administration’s accusations invert reality. White South Africans are 7% of the population but still own 72% of the land. Experts say that it is poor black people, not wealthier whites, who are disproportionately likely to be victims of violence. Yet as the scholar Nicky Falkof has written, white South Africans have become a “ cautionary tale for the White far right (internationally) … central to the landscape and language of White supremacy”. Look where DEI gets you.

Mr Trump aired complaints about the “large-scale killing” of white farmers in his first term, amplifying conspiracy theories that originated in far-right forums. Since then, he has grown closer to the South African-born Elon Musk, who has accused politicians there of “promoting white genocide”. The US has now cut aid to South Africa, accusing the government of “unjust racial discrimination” and attacking its genocide case against Israel at the international court of justice. Washington has expelled the South African ambassador and given white Afrikaners asylum even as it turns away those fleeing wars.

Mr Trump’s divisive conspiracy theories and failed attempt to humiliate Mr Ramaphosa appear, ironically, to be fostering unity on foreign affairs within South African politics, where the ANC and its (white-led) coalition partner, the Democratic Alliance, have had very different histories and priorities. The US still accounts for a tenth of the country’s trade. South Africa must shore up its auto sector and agriculture, given its sky-high unemployment rate. But like other governments, Pretoria is salvaging what it can in US relations now, while looking ahead to diversifying its ties. Few expect Washington to renew duty-free trade arrangements for African states this autumn.

Warming relations with other western countries is one option. But increasing closeness to China, already South Africa’s top trading partner, looks like an inevitability. Members of the Brics grouping see an opportunity to strengthen ties, though South Africa is discovering that expansion does not always mean greater influence for its dominant players. Mr Trump is looking for kudos, free planes and red meat to throw to his base. Washington’s partners are increasingly looking elsewhere. It’s in US interests to show them respect and nurture longstanding relationships.

ONLINE: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/22/the-guardian-view-on-the-us-and-south-africa-trump-looks-to-his-base-and-partners-look-elsewhere

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