Vance Says It Doesn’t Matter How Many People Lose Medicaid in Budget

Vice President JD Vance is being lambasted for dismissing social safety net rollbacks under the Trump tax bill currently making its way through Congress.

On Monday night, Vance attempted to rally support for the bill in a post on X, writing, “Everything else—the CBO score [the Congressional Budget Office cost estimate], the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”

Many were rubbed the wrong way by Vance’s claim that the bill’s worrisome qualities are of little consequence compared to its staggering expansion of federal immigration enforcement (which a majority of Americans already believe has “gone too far” in carrying out Trump’s deportation agenda).

Particularly odious was the suggestion that “the minutiae of the Medicaid policy,” among other all-but-trivial concerns, is “immaterial.” After all, in delivering “the most dramatic reductions in safety net spending in modern U.S. history,” per The Washington Post, the bill could cause 17 million people to lose their health insurance and, according to some estimates, lead to tens of thousands of preventable deaths each year. It is also projected to add trillions to the deficit.

“If Republicans wanted to pass a big ICE funding bill they could,” posted journalist Matthew Yglesias on X. “What they wrote is a bill that has trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of regressive tax cuts partially offset by cuts in programs for poor Americans but that also massively increases debt.”

Yahoo Finance reporter Jordan Weissmann tweeted: “As far as I can tell, the Medicaid changes would be the largest rollback of the health care safety net that a modern developed country has ever passed. JD Vance is dismissing that as ‘minutia.’”

“100K+ people will die from preventable deaths when millions lose their health insurance,” posted Yale Law professor Natasha Sarin. “Hard to see how that is immaterial.”

Democratic Representative Ro Khanna tweeted, “What happened to you [JD Vance]—author of Hillbilly Elegy—now shrugging off Medicaid cuts that will close rural hospitals and kick millions off healthcare as ‘minutiae?’”

To think that the vice president touting mass deportations as an acceptable balm for the untold suffering unleashed by historic social program cuts positions himself as something of a populist within the GOP.

The next victim of Donald Trump’s deportation crusade could be Elon Musk.

The president suggested Tuesday that he’s open to giving his biggest financier the boot, telling reporters before boarding Marine One that his administration would “have to take a look” at getting the South African out of the country.

“We might have to put DOGE on Elon,” Trump said. “You know what DOGE is? DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible. He gets a lot of subsidies.”

The world’s richest man has become one of the most vocal opponents of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which would extend his 2017 tax cuts for millionaires and corporations at a cost to critical social programs such as Medicaid. But Musk’s frustration with the bill stems more from the initiative’s exorbitant price tag, which he claims is incongruent with Trump’s previous promises to size down government spending. On Saturday, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Senate legislation would increase the deficit by more than $3.9 trillion over the next 10 years.

Trump, however, suggested that Musk’s real reasoning behind his recent opposition of the administration was due to the termination of electric vehicle mandates.

“When you look at it, who wants—not everybody wants an electric car,” Trump said. “I don’t want an electric car. I want to have maybe gasoline, maybe electric, maybe a hybrid, maybe someday a hydrogen—if you have a hydrogen car there’s one problem, it blows up.”

“So I’m going to give that one to Peter,” Trump added, likely referring to trade adviser Peter Navarro.

(It’s interesting Trump says he doesn’t want an electric car, considering he staged a whole Tesla dealership at the White House for Musk in March. Trump promptly sold the Tesla he bought that day after he and Musk publicly broke up.)

Responding to the video Tuesday, Musk posted on X: “So tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting. But I will refrain for now.”

Musk has spent the last several days elevating opposition to the bill and its contents. Late Monday night, the billionaire retweeted a post claiming that “ELON NEVER WANTED AN EV MANDATE OR SUBSIDIES,” pointing to a 2022 interview in which Musk argued that ending the electric vehicle mandate would improve Tesla’s performance.

He also shared graphs of America’s rising debt and questioned why both parties continue to raise the debt limit ceiling. He underscored that the conservative hoopla regarding undocumented immigrants receiving Medicaid was effectively a red herring, since it’s already illegal for them to do so, and posted a poll on X for his 221.5 million followers asking if the bill should be “allowed.”

“Removal of funding for enforcement of federal contempt of court orders is the actual crux of this spending bill,” Musk wrote. “This is nominally aimed at removal of illegal immigrants, but obviously also enables many other abuses of power by the President.”

An hour after the poll was shared, more than 65,000 respondents, or 64.7 percent, had voted “no.”

Donald Trump’s sycophants are seriously pissed that people are trying to track ICE’s sweeping deportation efforts.

CNN aired a segment Monday night highlighting ICEBlock, an app that allows users to anonymously log sightings of ICE agents, serving as an “early warning system” about immigration enforcement, according to app creator Joshua Aaron. Users can provide additional information about what ICE officers are wearing, and details about their vehicles, to make their communities aware of ICE’s movements.

One by one, members of Trump’s team hit back at the report, touting the dubiously increasing rates of assault against ICE agents and threatening Aaron with legal action.

Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed during an appearance on Fox News’s Hannity that the government was investigating Aaron, and fretted that the app might “hurt” law enforcement officers.

“He’s giving a message to criminals where our federal officers are, and he cannot do that, and we are looking at it, we are looking at him, and he better watch out,” Bondi said. “Because that is not protected speech, that is threatening the lives of our law enforcement officers throughout this country, and shame on CNN!”

Crucially, the majority of people swept up in ICE’s sweeping raids aren’t criminals at all. Seven out of 10 people arrested during ICE’s crackdown in Los Angeles last month had no criminal convictions, and six out of 10 had never even been charged with a crime.

ICE acting Director Todd Lyons released a statement following CNN’s report, claiming that ICEBlock “basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs” and touting the number of alleged assaults against ICE agents.

Border czar Tom Homan also railed against CNN for elevating the app. “This is horrendous that a national media outlet would be out there trying to forecast law enforcement operations throughout the country,” Homan said. “It’s incredible where we’re at as a country, and I think the [Department of Justice] needs to look at this and see if they crossed a line.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that the app “sure looks like obstruction of justice” in an X post Monday. “If you obstruct or assault our law enforcement, we will hunt you down and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” she wrote.

CNN hit back at the implication that they’d crossed a legal line by reporting on ICEBlock. “This is an app that is publicly available to any iPhone user who wants to download it. There is nothing illegal about reporting the existence of this or any other app, nor does such reporting constitute promotion or other endorsement of the app by CNN,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement to The New Republic.

This story has been updated.

The fate of the centerpiece legislation of President Trump’s agenda—the wildly unpopular, social safety net–slashing, “big, beautiful bill”—may rest in the hands of moderate Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. 

In recent days, the Senate has been seeking to buy off Murkowski’s vote to win over the key GOP holdout on the bill, which would be potentially ruinous to Murkowski’s home state, to say nothing of the other 49. 

To court Murkowski, the Senate exempted Alaska from a provision shifting greater portions of the cost to administer the Supplemental National Assistance Program, or food stamps, onto the states.

The Senate sought to add a version of the carve-out Monday night—which included just Alaska and Hawaii, evidently to pretend it wasn’t a carve-out for a single state—but it didn’t pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian, who has been winnowing away nonbudgetary provisions of the bill (which cannot be included if it is to pass as a budget reconciliation, which requires just a simple majority, rather than the impossible 60 votes that would be needed to break a filibuster). 

Early Tuesday morning, however, Senate Republicans succeeded in getting the SNAP carve-out in the bill—by having it apply to states with the highest error rates.

Several Democratic lawmakers have expressed their disapproval of the bribe. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, for example, tweeted, “The most absurd example of the hypocrisy of the Republican bill: they have now proposed delaying SNAP cuts FOR TWO YEARS ONLY FOR STATES  with the highest error rates just to bury their help for Alaska: AK, DC, FL, GA, MD, MA, NJ, NM, NY, OR. They are rewarding errors.”

It’s unclear whether this’ll be enough to win Murkowski’s vote. Republicans failed to include other provisions to sweeten the pot—or, rather, make it less sour—such as one that would have increased the federal share of Medicaid spending for Alaska.

Summing up the absurdity of the situation aptly, journalist Sam Stein of The Bulwark wrote on X: “So basically, the future of this bill comes down to whether one Senator (Murkowksi) feels comfortable enough that she has shielded her state from the worst parts of this bill that the other 49 states (give or take a few) will have to endure?”

Stein also observed that Murkowski, in 2017, told the press she would be unswayed by attempts to buy her vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. 

Murkowski had said at the time, “Let’s just say that they do something that’s so Alaska-specific just to, quote, ‘get me.’ … Then you have a nationwide system that doesn’t work. That then comes crashing down and Alaska’s not able to kind of keep it together on its own.” We’ll soon know whether she maintains this noble resolve.

President Trump and former DOGE head Elon Musk still seem to be on icy terms as their beef over Trump’s budget bill continues. 

Trump took to Truth Social at nearly 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning to assert that Musk was only against his One Big Beautiful Bill Act because it revokes the electric vehicle mandate that directly benefits Musk’s Tesla corporation. He also posited that DOGE should investigate Musk for the amount of subsidies he’s received from the federal government.  

“Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. It is ridiculous, and was always a major part of my campaign. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one,” he wrote. “Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

Musk had been lambasting the bill for days on X before Trump’s Truth Social post, and on Monday threatened to primary any Republicans who support the legislation and start his own third party if it passes. 

“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,” Musk wrote on Monday. “Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.

“Anyone who campaigned on the PROMISE of REDUCING SPENDING, but continues to vote on the BIGGEST DEBT ceiling increase in HISTORY will see their face on this poster in the primary next year,” he wrote above a picture of Pinocchio up in flames. 

This dynamic—Musk eviscerating the spending bill, while Trump asserts that Musk’s known about the legislation and is only upset about the E.V. mandate removal—has been ongoing since early June. While Musk’s vehement opposition to the spending bill is surprising given his months of close proximity to Trump, this bromance seems to be all but over as the “big, beautiful bill” is likely to pass through Congress.