Hello, this is Michael Moss.

Heather Crox-Richerson is traveling today, and her travel arrangements did not allow her time to read today's letter.

So I will be reading it in her place. May 18, 2025.

Tonight, late on a Sunday night, the House Budget Committee passed what

Republicans are calling their big, beautiful bill to enact Trump's agenda, although it had failed on

Friday when far-right Republicans voted against it, complaining it did not make deep enough cuts to social programs.

The vote tonight was a strict party-line vote, with 16 Democrats voting against the measure,

17 Republicans voting for it, and four far-right Republicans voting present.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana,

said there would be minor modifications to the measure. Representative Chip Roy, a Republican of Texas,

wrote on X that those changes include new work requirements for Medicaid and cuts to green energy subsidies. And so, the bill moves forward.

In the bulwark today, Jonathan Cohen noted that Republicans are in a tearing hurry to push that

big, beautiful bill through Congress before most of us can get a handle on what's in it. Just a week ago,

Cohen notes, there was still no specific language in the measure. Republican leaders didn't

release the piece of the massive bill that would cut Medicaid until last Sunday night,

and then announced the Committee on Energy and Commerce would take it up not even a full two

days later on Tuesday before the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office could produce a detailed

analysis of the cost of the proposals. The committee markup happened in a 26-hour marathon

in which the parts about Medicaid

happened in the middle of the night. And now, the bill moves forward in an unusual meeting

late on a Sunday night. Cohn recalls that in 2009, when the Democrats were pushing the Affordable

Care Act, more popularly known as Obamacare,

...