SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
This time last week the big, beautiful bill had been blocked by House conservatives, but Thursday, an updated bill passed by the most slender of margins - 215 to 214. It's now on to the Senate. NPR's Ron Elving joins us. Ron, thank you for being with us.
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: Conservatives wanted deeper spending cuts. As Chip Roy of Texas said, the legislation would add to the deficit. What changed?
ELVING: The Congressman's attitude changed more than the bill did. The dates changed a bit for requiring certain Medicaid recipients to have jobs, and then there was some tinkering with the timing of certain cuts. But the Congressional Budget Office says the bill still deepens the deficit and adds $3.3 trillion to the national debt over 10 years.
So what about all this Republican opposition we heard so much about? Well, President Trump got, shall we say, personally involved. He came to the Capitol. He called out the holdouts. He explicitly threatened to promote challengers against them in next year's primaries, and he also vowed to end the careers of two Republicans who actually did vote no in the House this week - Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio.
SIMON: Bill is on to the Senate now, where Republicans have a majority with 53 seats, so easy sailing?
ELVING: This is a reconciliation bill, so it cannot be filibustered. It only needs a simple majority - 50 senators plus Vice President Vance. Now, some senators still want to see the deficit come down. They campaigned on that. They promised their voters. But we've seen this movie before in both chambers. The script is all about how they can't vote for it. They won't vote for it. And then the president shows up. And so far, at least, that's been enough.
SIMON: Ron, we are in a tariff hiatus at the moment, if you please. The escalations with China are on pause until August. The levies on goods for most of the rest of the world are on pause until July. Why the call from President Trump yesterday for a 50% tariff on goods from the European Union, beginning in just a week?
ELVING: Well, one explanation is there in Trump's own remarks this week. He said trade talks with the EU - European Union - were going nowhere. You could kind of read that as criticism of the carrot-and-stick strategy Trump has said was going to lead to a golden age of trade. So now that we are halfway through the 90-day pause, it seems Trump is withdrawing the carrot and getting a bigger and nastier stick.
He's also threatening Apple with a 25% tariff on their iPhones unless they start making them here, rather than in China or India. And that, too, seems to be a test. Just as Trump is using Harvard to test whether or not he can govern a college's policies, he's using Apple to see whether he can tell private companies where to manufacture their products. And if he can do that, well, what else can he tell them to do?
SIMON: Ron, two young people - Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim - were shot and killed this week as they left an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. And there is a man in custody who's been charged with murder. FBI data shows that anti-Jewish hate crimes increased by 63% in 2023 alone. A recent song praising Adolf Hitler by Kanye West has millions of views on X. What is going on in America?
ELVING: There has been a surge in antisemitism in America in attitudes and in actions. Some of this comes from people such as you mentioned - entertainers who have long been associated with antisemitic statements whose motives may be remote from the current fighting in the Middle East. But whenever there is such fighting, Scott, it multiplies these manifestations of antipathy toward Israel - and not just the current regime in Israel, but against Jews in general, wherever they may be. The Hamas terror attacks in the fall of 2023 are still very much with us, as is the heavy retaliation that has been visited on Gaza ever since, especially in recent weeks. That is adding fresh fuel to a very old fire, a very old set of disputes and animosities. And these new outbreaks threaten to extend the region's tragedy indefinitely.
SIMON: NPR senior contributor Ron Elving. Ron, thank you so much for being with us.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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