Less than halfway into Trump’s second presidential term, families confront an affordability crisis that threatens the well-being of millions across the country. 

Inflation is up, utility costs are soaring, and the cost of food, housing, and healthcare continues to rise. Americans are wondering how they will build stable lives for their families, as nearly half cannot afford the rising cost of living. 

At the same time, the United States is experiencing one of the most significant rollbacks of social safety net programs in recent history. These cuts to critical programs are happening alongside major tax breaks for the wealthy and large budget increases for the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. 

The passage of H.R. 1, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” on July 4, 2025, marked what’s been called the most sweeping transfer of wealth from working families to the richest Americans in our history. The law cuts over $1 trillion from critical programs such as Medicaid, SNAP, and other forms of public assistance that millions of families rely on to meet basic needs. These programs aim to reduce poverty in the country and provide crucial resources for individuals and families. 

The same bill gives over $1 trillion in tax cuts to the nation’s wealthiest one percent over a 10 year period, while extending corporate tax breaks under the 2017 Trump tax cuts. And it handed over an additional $156 billion to the Pentagon (raising total Pentagon spending for that year to $1 trillion) and nearly $200 billion to the Department of Homeland Security, each of which was already funded through regular spending bills that Congress passes each year. 

Chart by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).

This is an affordability crisis created by choice — and we know how to fix it. We know anti-poverty policies work. For example, many COVID-era policies resulted in a record-low supplemental poverty measure rate of 7.8 percent, while child poverty was cut nearly in half to a historic low of 5.2 percent. However, as COVID-era policies expired, not only did poverty rise, but so did the choice to deepen it through federal policy choices. 

The passage of H.R. 1 makes the U.S. government’s priorities clear: instead of supporting families, it is cutting the programs many families depend on. Alongside the 2026 federal budget reconciliation bill, newly released work requirements, and major agency-level changes, these policy choices are pushing millions of people into increasingly precarious conditions. The effects are already devastating — and as more implementation requirements take effect, the harm is likely to grow.

This report examines how recent policy changes in healthcare, food assistance, housing, and immigration are affecting families and communities, while also outlining what to expect in the coming year.

Healthcare 

Medicaid is one of the most important sources of health coverage in the United States.

•  Over 65 million people relied on Medicaid for their health coverage during March 2026, a fairly typical month. 

Medicaid and CHIP are federally funded programs that provide low-cost or free health coverage to eligible low-income adults, families, children, pregnant women, seniors, and people with disabilities. Medicaid helps cover essential services like routine doctor visits, inpatient and outpatient hospital services, laboratory and X-ray services, nursing home care, and in-home care, among many others. 

• The passage of H.R. 1 threatens this, with an estimated 10 million people expected to lose coverage within the next decade. 
• The bill slashed Medicaid spending by $911 billion, part of the largest healthcare cut in U.S. history. 

The effects of these cuts will not fall evenly.

• Among non-elderly Medicaid enrollees, nearly half are children, 57 percent are female, and 6 in 10 are people of color. 
• Forty-one percent of all births in the U.S. are covered by Medicaid. 

One of the most harmful of these changes is the creation of new Medicaid work reporting requirements. The final rule released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) directs states to implement new, burdensome work reporting requirements by January 2027, requiring people on Medicaid to work up to 80 hours per month or obtain a health-related exemption. 

• Researchers find that between 19 percent and 37 percent of recipients who are already working will lose their coverage due to challenges in documenting work hours. 

This means that eligible people could lose coverage due to paperwork, missed deadlines, or confusion about changing state rules.

These requirements are especially dangerous for people with serious or complex medical conditions. Although the reconciliation law exempts people who are medically frail or have special medical needs, that protection depends on how states define, identify, and verify medical frailty. As a result, people who should be exempt could still be forced to prove their medical condition or risk losing coverage. 

Federal requirements that force people to work to be eligible for health coverage are unprecedented. They threaten the foundation of public health, especially for disadvantaged medically frail people and those suffering from chronic health conditions.

The effects of these cuts will also reach hospitals and health systems. Medicaid is a major funding source, especially for those living in rural areas. Medicaid covers a higher proportion of adults in rural areas (21 percent) than in urban areas (16 percent). 

• More than 40 percent of rural hospitals operate at a loss, and 417 rural hospitals are considered vulnerable to closure. 

Although H.R.1 created a $50 billion rural health fund, researchers warn that this temporary fund will not fully offset the Medicaid-related losses facing rural health systems. Even when hospitals do not close, they may reduce services. This is already happening in rural health care. 

• Between 2014 and 2024, 448 rural hospitals stopped offering chemotherapy services, and hundreds also stopped offering obstetric and surgical services. 

These service reductions force families to travel farther for care. For families without reliable transportation, paid time off, or child care, longer travel distances can mean delayed or missed care.

Those who rely on Affordable Care Act marketplace plans are also facing loss of coverage. At least five million people have dropped the coverage after the GOP Congress declined to extend the subsidies that made these plans affordable.

These changes make healthcare less stable and less accessible for families and vulnerable communities across the country. Millions are at risk of losing coverage, facing greater financial strain in an already unaffordable time.

Graphic by Layla Sayed / Institute for Policy Studies. Sources: Center for Best Practices and Kaiser Family Foundation.

Food Assistance

Food assistance programs are one of the most direct ways the federal government helps families meet basic needs. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, provides monthly funds to buy groceries. 

• In a typical month in 2021, SNAP helped about 41.5 million low-income Americans afford a nutritious diet. 
• Two-thirds of SNAP participants are in families with children, and over a third are in households with older adults or people with disabilities. 
• SNAP improves child health and even improves academic performance. 

•  In 2021, increased SNAP benefits reduced child poverty by 8.6 percent.
• SNAP also benefits local economies, with each dollar in federally funded SNAP benefits generating $1.54 in economic activity according to a federal estimate from 2019. 

Despite these benefits, new requirements enacted through H.R. 1 have led to a sharp decline in SNAP participation. While many of the law’s changes will not be fully implemented until 2027, some are already in effect and are already affecting access to benefits.

One major change is the elimination of  SNAP nutrition education (SNAP-ed) at the end of fiscal year 2025. 

H.R. 1 also expanded work requirements.

• The age limit for able-bodied adults without dependents has been expanded to include adults through age 64 (previously through age 54),  requiring individuals to work at least 80 hours per month or participate in an education/training program to receive benefits.
• Parents who were previously exempted if they had a child under age 18 are now only exempted if they have a child under age 14. 

The law also removed key exemptions for vulnerable groups. Veterans, formerly unhoused individuals, and young adults aging out of foster care are no longer exempt.

H.R. 1 makes several categories of lawfully present immigrants — including many refugees, asylees, and survivors of human trafficking — ineligible for SNAP,

These changes are already reflected in participation data.

• From the passage of H.R.1, to March 2026, the estimated number of people receiving SNAP has dropped by 10 percent. 

The effects vary across states. In Arizona, for example, SNAP participation fell by an estimated 53 percent. It’s estimated that the number of children receiving SNAP has dropped by more than 1.5 million, since July 2025.

H.R. 1 also shifts major SNAP costs from the federal government to the states. Currently, the federal government pays 100 percent of SNAP benefit costs. Beginning in fiscal year 2027, states with SNAP payment error rates above 6 percent — that’s 44 states as of FY 2024 — will be required to pay between 5 and 15 percent of benefit costs. As of FY 2024, 44 states have had an error rate above 6 percent. 

The law also increases the state share of SNAP administrative costs from 50 percent to 75 percent starting October 1st, 2026. This shift will likely lead to cuts to SNAP benefits as state governments face difficulty raising sufficient revenue. 

When 1 in 5 children in the United States rely on SNAP benefits, these cuts represent a direct attack on one of the country’s most important anti-hunger programs that benefits child well-being. 

Housing

In the U.S., homelessness remains at record highs, with 745,650 people experiencing homelessness as of the most recent “point-in-time” count. That’s well above pre-pandemic levels. 

• There is also a shortage of 7.2 million affordable and available rental homes to renters with extremely low incomes. 

The U.S. is facing a housing crisis, and its impacts on children are particularly concerning. A longitudinal study found that teens who experienced housing insecurity in early childhood were more likely to report worse health, including higher rates of depression and anxiety, by age 15 than teens who had stable housing. Another study shows that poor housing conditions are associated with lower kindergarten readiness scores when children enter school.

The importance of housing security has led many policymakers in the U.S. to focus on a Housing First model, especially for those experiencing homelessness. This model focuses on finding permanent housing for individuals in precarious situations so they can focus on other necessities. A meta-analysis of 26 studies found that Housing First programs decreased homelessness by 88 percent and improved housing stability by 41 percent, compared to Treatment First programs. 

However, this administration has rejected this approach, asserting it has “failed.” In a statement released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the agency says it is “making necessary reforms to put recovery first” in the projects it funds. But for families already living in unstable conditions, adding more requirements before housing support can create delays and increase the risk of homelessness.

At the same time, proposed federal funding cuts threaten the programs communities use to build and preserve affordable housing.

The House Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development appropriations proposal would cut $6 billion for HUD and the Department of Transportation. 

• The HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which helps finance affordable housing production and preservation, would see a $750 million reduction from fiscal year 2026. 
• The proposal would also eliminate funding for the Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing program. 
• Tenant-based rental assistance funding would decrease by $356 million. 

The Department of Housing and Urban Development also proposed a new rule that, if enacted, could force many families with mixed immigration status to separate and  80,000 people  — including 37,000 children — to lose their homes. 

The administration also proposed a new work requirement rule that could put as many as 3.7 million people at risk of losing rental assistance, more than half of them children. The rule would allow housing agencies to impose work requirements of up to 40 hours per adult per week or time limits on assistance as short as two years. 

The result is a housing policy direction that asks families to become more stable while taking away the support that makes stability possible. For families, this means higher risks of eviction, homelessness, unsafe living conditions, and long-term harm. These proposals do not solve the housing crisis. They make it harder for families to survive it. 

Immigration

While many safety net programs that protect millions of families were drastically cut, immigration enforcement received a dramatic increase in funding. About 10 years ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, had a budget of just under $6 billion. H.R.1 provided ICE with an increase of $75 billion in new funding, while Customs and Border Protection received about $60 billion. 

Graphic by Layla Sayed / Institute for Policy Studies. Source: NPR analysis of federal data.

• On June 10, 2026, Trump signed another immigration enforcement bill that provided nearly $70 billion more for ICE, Border Patrol, and the Department of Homeland Security through 2029.

This increased funding is aimed at expanding detention, deportation, and surveillance across the country. The impact has been felt dramatically among immigrant and non-immigrant communities alike. 

The human consequences have already been severe. In January 2026, Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen and mother, was shot and killed by an ICE agent during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis. That same month, five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was detained by immigration officers in Minnesota. These cases, among many others, show the ways women and children, whatever their immigration or citizenship status, are particularly affected by ICE’s aggression. 

• The scale of detention has also expanded. ICE held 60,311 people in detention as of April 4, 2026. 

This administration often justifies expanded enforcement as a response to crime, but detention data show that of all those held in detention, 70.8 percent had no criminal conviction as of early July 2026. 

For families, detention is often traumatic and destabilizing. 

• Researchers estimate that more than 4.6 million U.S. citizen children live with at least one unauthorized parent or parent without firm legal status. 
• They also estimate that about 205,000 children, including 145,000 U.S. citizen children, have likely experienced the detention of a parent. 
• More than 22,000 U.S. citizen children are estimated to have experienced the detention of all parents living in their household. 
• More than 1 in 7 adults in immigrant families with children reported that immigration concerns were increasing emotional distress for their children. 

Increased immigration enforcement can also create a chilling effect, in which eligible families avoid public benefits for fear of immigration consequences. In 2025, nearly 1 in 5 adults in immigrant families with children reported that their family went without public benefits because of immigration concerns.

At the same time that H.R.1 cut or restricted access to Medicaid, SNAP, housing assistance, and other supports that help families survive, the federal government expanded funding for immigration enforcement. 

“With the amount we’re now spending on rogue immigration agencies,” the IPS National Priorities Project reported, “we could instead… 

• Fully restore this year’s cuts to SNAP ($18.6 billion) and Medicaid ($91 billion) from last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
• Provide medical care for more than one million veterans through 2029 ($71.6 billion). 
• Establish universal preschool for kids across the United States ($35 billion).
• Make school lunches free for all thirty million children served through the National School Lunch Program ($6.38 billion).
• And power more than ten million households with solar energy through 2029 ($17 billion), investing in long-term renewable energy while American families grapple with rising fossil fuel costs.”

Conclusion

Families in the United States are facing a perfect storm. Food, housing, and healthcare costs are increasing faster than wages. Inflation and gas prices are high. Immigrant families are being torn apart. Critical supports that help families meet their basic needs have been drastically scaled back or eliminated. More cuts are looming.

We’re experiencing unprecedented disinvestment in our families while seeing unprecedented redistribution of wealth upwards to the nation’s wealthiest, the largest corporations, and the U.S. war machine.

To better support our families and communities, we know what works. 

We saw a robust expansion of critical needs programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under pandemic-era recovery programs,  poverty sharply decreased, health coverage expanded, evictions decreased, and food insecurity fell. Instead of renewing successful policies, Congress allowed these enhanced supports to expire. And the new administration has implemented further drastic cuts.

We’re going in the wrong direction. 

We know that investment in food programs not only gives children the best chance of a happy, healthy life but also yields economic benefits almost double the investment. We know that for child development and stability into adulthood, children need a safe home that their parents can afford. We know access to healthcare is vital for survival and thriving, and we know that tearing apart families, denying them food, shelter, and access to emergency health care is devastating for immigrant families.

A different path is possible. Expand investments in families and communities, and we won’t just have to struggle to survive; we can thrive.

The post A Perfect Storm: How Federal Policy Changes Are Increasing Economic Insecurity for America’s Families appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

From being barred from naturalization and citizenship rights in the 1920s to holding positions at the forefront of political and corporate power today, Indian Americans have come a long way. However, not all members of the South Asian diaspora have benefited equally — and some prominent Indian Americans may be widening that divide by allying with conservative white Americans who support crackdowns on other immigrant communities.

…

Read the full article on India Currents.

The post South Asian Americans Need Solidarity, Not The “Model Minority” Myth appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

The new president was in Riyadh. Instead of going to Europe or Japan or Canada, Trump was making his first presidential trip to Saudi Arabia. And there he was, at the opening of a new World Center for Countering Extremist Thought, flashing his trademark smirk as he put his hands on a glowing orb that represented the globe. Next to him, their hands also on the magic ball, were the Saudi king and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

The three leaders looked like they were in a film, playing an evil trio plotting to take over the world. Twitter lit up with comparisons to the three witches from Macbeth. It was a terrifying irony that Trump and company were inaugurating a center for “countering extremist thought” since they all three, in their own way, represented the promotion of extremist thought.

This appearance in Saudi Arabia was effectively Trump’s announcement that the liberal international order was over. The new president didn’t want to associate with European liberals or Japanese democrats or Canadian moderates. He preferred the company of a military strongman from Egypt and a religious autocrat from Saudi Arabia. Their hands on the globe symbolized their desire to spin the world in a different direction.

A decade later, Trump can still be judged by the company he keeps. He’s buddies with war criminals like Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s tight with autocrats like Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, and Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman.

But, increasingly, even the autocrats are leery of Trump. Sure, no one wants to piss off Trump since, after all, he controls both nukes and tariffs. But the U.S. president is unpredictable and, frankly, erratic. Richard Nixon pretended, more or less, to be a madman in the 1970s so that the North Vietnamese would not be able to predict his next move in the war and would fear that he would do the unthinkable. Trump is probably not pretending. Other leaders are playing it safe by quietly treating him like a lunatic.

In 2017, the autocrats couldn’t wait to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago and then return the favor by inviting him to join their clubs, like the absurdly titled World Center for Countering Extremist Thought. But now, a decade later, some authoritarian countries like India and Russia haven’t even joined Trump’s Board of Peace.

More concerning, at least from the point of view of an American exceptionalist, are the clubs that have been set up to exclude the United States. And that’s where the new Mecca Defense Pact comes in.

It’s Our Party

Last week, Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia signed a mutual security pact in which they pledged to come to each other’s defense in the event of an attack. The new alliance is built on a bilateral agreement signed last year between Islamabad and Riyadh.

Two things are significant about this announcement. The first is that three U.S. military allies have decided that they shouldn’t rely overmuch on Washington for their security. Instead, they will increasingly rely on each other.

Second, this new pact won’t stop at three. The next member will likely be Egypt, which already consults with the other three countries in an arrangement called R4. Also likely to join at a certain point will be Gulf countries like Qatar and Kuwait.

This “Mecca Defense Pact” amounts to a strategic convergence of Sunni-majority countries. It also brings together three largely authoritarian countries, with Turkey subject to the whims of its leader, Pakistan dominated by its military, and Saudi Arabia functioning as a religious monarchy.

The current tripartite alliance is not targeting any particular adversary. But it’s not difficult to guess who they’re thinking about: the three Is of India, Israel, and Iran. These adversaries are a mixed bunch—one majority Hindu, another majority Jewish, a third majority Shia—with no likelihood of responding with their own military pact. They don’t constitute a unified threat even if you add the Houthis of Yemen to the mix. And none of these potential adversaries has identified the new pact as adversarial. It’s tempting, then, to dismiss the Mecca pact as just a Sunni friendship alliance, more declarative than substantive.

But if that were the case, the three countries wouldn’t be so eager to include an Article 5-like provision in their pact and, in so doing, challenge certain geopolitical realities. Turkey is a member of NATO, so now it will be committing to fight in wars on several continents? Pakistan is currently trying to mediate in the war involving the United States, Israel, and Iran, so will it now commit to intervene against Tehran the next time Iranian missiles fall on Saudi Arabia? Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has strong economic and military relations with India, so is it now willing to cede all of that to Israel?

All of these complications point to one conclusion. The three countries are willing to make some sacrifices to align against their adversaries, but the real aim is to protect themselves from their ally, the United States. Ever since his first term, Donald Trump has threatened not to uphold U.S. security commitments if countries don’t spend more on their own militaries (NATO), if countries don’t spend more on their alliance commitments (Japan, South Korea), or if countries look at the U.S. president the wrong way (Canada and much of the rest of the world).

Instead of just complaining about U.S. fickleness, the leadership of Turkey, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia have decided to do something about it.

Trump’s Version of Globalism

For a guy who has trashed internationalists and globalists, Trump seems to be spending a lot of foreign policy energy on creating new multilateral security arrangements. His Board of Peace, with its 27 members willing to pay the $1 billion entrance fee, is a rather anemic version of the United Nations, but it’s also clear evidence that Trump doesn’t want to go it alone. He wants other countries to follow behind him like ducklings in a row.

Then there are the purpose-built associations. Trump has created a Pax Silica to secure mineral access in friendly countries. This grouping only has 24 members, but they’re powerhouses, including the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and India. The U.S. president continues to push forward with his Abrahamic Accords to integrate and elevate Israel in the Middle East. The Quad—India, Australia, Japan, and the United States—is designed to contain the ambitions of China in the Indo-Pacific region.

At the same time, Trump has pushed back against other multilateral efforts. He has pulled the United States out of a plethora of UN institutions, including UNESCO and the World Health Organization. He has threatened the BRICS with economic devastation if they have the temerity to issue a currency to compete with the dollar. He pulled the U.S. delegation out of the last G20 meeting in South Africa and ignored the last Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in South Korea.

The message is clear: it’s my multilateralism or no multilateralism.

So far, the Trump administration seems to view the Mecca Defense Pact as a friendly grouping that can implement the burden-sharing that the president has pressed on U.S. allies. It’s the same kind of tacit approval that the administration has shown the greater coordination between Japan and South Korea or the moves to expand the European Defense Fund.

As with so many things, the Trump administration is failing to read the room. U.S. allies are not openly defying the Trump administration, but they are also not following orders. The actions of these allies, from Europe to Asia to the Middle East, are more akin to family members telling a violent, dangerous, and unhinged father that they’re taking him to a lovely vacation spot when they’re really shipping him off to a lunatic asylum. Papa, still powerful in his dotage, needs his ego stroked and his suspicions allayed before he can be nudged off the stage.

In the global version of Succession that is currently taking place, everyone is making contingency plans. The Mecca pact is just the latest indication that the liberal international order is dying, Pax Americana is on its last legs, and the rough outlines of what comes next is just becoming visible.

The post Another Blow Against Pax Americana appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

If Trump and his Pentagon get their way, robotic warfare will be the new normal. Buried in the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget request is a number that has stunned even seasoned defense watchers: a whopping $54.6 billion for the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group (DAWG). Despite the informal connotations of its acronym, DAWG represents the Pentagon’s serious commitment to expanding the development and use of killer robots, or in more technical words, autonomous weapons systems–unmanned military systems that can conduct military missions with limited or no human oversight.

The government’s emphasis on building an arsenal of autonomous weapons is not a recent development. DAWG is a refurbished version of a Biden-era program that sought to fast-track the acquisition of AI-powered military technology. However, there are two significant differences that set DAWG apart from its predecessor.

The first is the FY 27 request amount itself. With $53.6 billion requested as mandatory funding and $1 billion left discretionary, DAWG’s funding request marks a 24,000% increase from the previous year’s budget of $225.9 million. This could instead fund SNAP benefits for nearly 8 million people, Medicaid for 2 million people, and public housing for another 2 million Americans.

Second, Secretary Hegseth has signaled a long-term commitment to robotic warfare by announcing plans for a permanent institutional home within one of the military’s “combatant commands” for the consistent procurement and production of autonomous weapons systems. The $53.6 billion funding request is critical to safeguarding DAWG’s institutional permanence: it would give DAWG a headstart on funding and keep it going for multiple years before Congress needs to approve more funds. This would likely make it harder for Congress to end the program.

In an ominous sign of how dangerous these weapons might be, the Pentagon directive behind missions like DAWG deliberately offers little room to govern the use of autonomous weapons. The directive specifies that “autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems will be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force,” but there is little consensus on what constitutes an “appropriate level of human judgment.”

The Trump administration’s request of $54.6 billion for DAWG sets a dangerous precedent–our taxpayer money will aid the expansion of the nearly ungoverned use of robotic weapons and AI-powered technology, which will further lower the threshold for war. Limiting human intervention detaches us from the use of force, and the risks of dehumanization lower the bar to hold any administration accountable for its military decisions.

And at a time when Americans are struggling to afford basic necessities, a federal budget that truly reflects the needs of its people should not allocate disproportionate funding for an autonomous weapons program that is facilitating war.

It is worth noting that the vast majority of this funding faces a high hurdle in Congress. This year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which has yet to pass, is likely to include about $1 billion in funding for DAWG–already more than quadrupling previous spending. But the rest of the requested funding depends on whether Congress takes up the administration’s request for an additional $350 billion in spending on war and weapons.

With more and more members of Congress balking at the administration’s $1.5 trillion war request, there is a real chance to defeat this. Every dollar Congress approves for the Pentagon will only prolong Trump’s war on Iran. Congress should work to end that war and slow the march toward robotic warfare.

The post $54 Billion for Killer Robots? A Look Into DAWG appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Since President Trump took office, a top priority for his administration and supporters in Congress has been an agenda of mass deportation and detention.

The primary institutional enablers of this agenda are Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), both housed within the Department of Homeland Security. Other agencies, including the Department of Defense/ War; the U.S. Coast Guard (also part of DHS), and others have also supported this agenda.

This memo provides an estimate for funding allocated by Congress to this effort as of this writing, in late July 2026. Allocations under the second Trump administration include funds provided from 2025 through 2029. If Congress approves more funding through regular appropriations or other avenues, the total will grow.

Major sources of funding for Trump’s mass deportation and detention agenda enacted through July 2026 are as follows, and are detailed below:

• H.R. 1/ Public Law 119-21, Reconciliation 2025 (“One Big Beautiful Bill Act”)
• Public Law 119-98/ Reconciliation 2026 (“Secure America Act”)
• FY 2025 and FY 2026 appropriations
• Repurposed funds under the Department of Defense: National Guard and other deployments, deportation flights, detention operations

Under the Trump administration, Congress and federal agencies have already committed a total of $268.9 billion in federal funds for immigration enforcement from FY 2025 through FY 2029.

Visit our trade-offs tool to see what else this money could pay for.

The post Trump Bill for Mass Deportations: $268.9 Billion, and Counting appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Nearly nine years after Hurricane Maria tore through the island, a dangerous myth persists: that Puerto Rico’s ongoing humanitarian crisis is a failure of local resilience or an unavoidable consequence of climate change. This is a lie.

What the island is suffering from is not a lack of fortitude, but a manufactured financial chokehold. While Congress has technically allocated over $42.5 billion in disaster relief to the island, the federal government’s bureaucratic neglect — and restrictive conditions — have actively broken the infrastructure meant to sustain human life.

…

Read the full article on In These Times.

The post Congress Has a Responsibility to Reverse the Water Crisis It Caused in Puerto Rico appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

On Netanyahu’s rejection of the structured withdrawal plan, Phyllis cuts to the core: “The so-called pressure from the United States is simply in the arena of words. It’s only statements, and we’ve seen this from the beginning of the genocide in Gaza, back in 2023, when we saw requests from the White House, whether it was from President Biden and then later President Trump, to say please stop killing so many Palestinians, please negotiate seriously — but without any real pressure behind that.”

She is direct about what real pressure would look like: “What that would have to mean is saying there will be no more U.S. arms transfers to Israel. Period. Full stop. There will be no more military aid to Israel. Period. Full stop. You know, this is what makes the genocide, which is still going on in Gaza, possible. It’s the support from the United States — support diplomatically in the United Nations, protection from the International Criminal Court.”

The human toll of the stalemate is not abstract, she stresses: “There have been 1,100 people killed in Gaza by Israeli strikes just since the so-called ceasefire deal was passed in October of last year. The notion that the genocide is over is simply not the case. If it goes into stalemate, that means the genocide is continuing. This is what’s so dramatically dangerous about this.”

On the shifting political landscape in the U.S., Phyllis notes a significant development: “AIPAC has been one of the most powerful sectors of the pro-Israel lobby. Their money is now toxic among a huge sector of candidates, particularly Democratic Party candidates, who know that if they accept AIPAC money, it will discredit them in the eyes of their own base.”

Asked whether meaningful pressure on Israel could come before the midterms, Phyllis is candid: “I think it’s very unlikely.” But she lays out what it would take: “No more money, no more weapons, and no more deals to be closer — until or unless Israel goes ahead with what they had originally agreed to in terms of a structured, phased withdrawal.” She also flags the dangerous provision now moving through Congress to formally merge the U.S. and Israeli militaries, describing it as something that must be taken off the agenda entirely.

She closes with a sharp assessment of Trump’s political calculus: “He’s actually carrying one out and enabling another. So I think that there is a serious problem facing the elections. Some of it may be that he’s more concerned about his own reputation than that of his Republican colleagues — looking ahead only to 2028 and what happens to his reputation at that point, rather than worrying about which Republicans get elected to either the House or the Senate in November of this year.”

See the full interview below.

The post VIDEO: Netanyahu’s Rejection of Gaza Withdrawal Plan Keeps the Genocide Going appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Antifa militants and their comrades travel from across Europe and to the Americas to participate in each other’s attacks, to funnel propaganda and training, materials, and target information through shared encrypted channels — moving through underground networks of safe houses, and finance and sustain their operations through transnational funds.

This description sounds eerily like what global far-right networks have been doing for years. The “antidem” network, crisscrossing the Atlantic and ranging up and down the Americas, has helped far-right politicians take over parties, those parties take power, and those resulting governments coordinate anti-immigrant, anti-climate, anti-LGBT, and fundamentally anti-democratic policies. This effort is well-funded by right-wing sugar daddies like Elon Musk and Robert Shillman.

In the United States, even more extreme right-wing militants have been responsible for 152 attacks and 112 deaths between 2016 and 2025, compared to 35 attacks and 13 deaths by the extreme left (according to the right-leaning Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Fascism, not anti-fascism, is the threat, both domestically and internationally.

It’s a common Trumpian tactic: to blame adversaries for that which the accuser has perfected. Thus, according to Trump, his enemies are always lying; they’re completely corrupt; they are anti-democratic. This from the most mendacious, corrupt, and anti-democratic force in modern politics. Remember the canard that it was actually “antifa” that caused all the havoc during the obviously right-wing insurrection on January 6? What better way to throw people off the scent of a vast right-wing conspiracy than to assert that something much more sinister is percolating on the left.

In practice, the administration is engaged in a category error. It assumes that organized opposition presupposes an organization. But, as Gertrude Stein once said rather cruelly of her hometown of Oakland, there’s no “there” there. Fascism has experienced a successful rebrand in the age of Trump. Lots of people and institutions are organizing against this fascism. But what the Trump administration calls “antifa” just doesn’t exist.

The Antifa that Isn’t

Understood broadly, anti-fascist forces defeated Hitler, Mussolini, and their various axis partners. Those forces would eventually include everything from the U.S. government to the Red Army to underground resistance movements. Later, such forces helped to suppress fascist parties in Germany. They challenged white supremacist and neo-Nazi formations in the United States. Anti-fascist movements saved democracy and then made it stronger.

But that’s not the “antifa” that the Trump administration has in mind. True, Vice President JD Vance has berated German politicians for refusing to partner politically with the far-right Alternative for Germany party. And the Trump administration has pursued a legal vendetta against the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the premier U.S. organizations that has gone after the Ku Klux Klan and similar organizations.

But in invoking the “antifa” rubric, Rubio and company have a somewhat narrower focus. They have labeled several discrete assassinations (of far-right youth leader Charlie Kirk and health care CEO Brian Thompson), attempted assassinations (of Donald Trump), and plots to assassinate (Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanagh) as the work of this shadowy organization. Perhaps more to the point, the administration has been looking for ways to discredit the protestors and the organizations who have challenged the administration’s mass deportation campaign.

In June, the Justice Department celebrated the conviction of “eight North Texas Antifa Cell operatives” for their involvement in a protest outside an ICE detention facility in Texas. One police officer was injured in the incident. The man accused of shooting the officer received a sentence of 100 years in prison. Another defendant, charged with “transporting a box containing numerous Antifa materials” and trying to conceal what was in reality a box of his belongings that included some political zines, received a sentence of 30 years.

Credit the severity of the sentencing with the Justice Department’s tactic of calling the protests the acts of antifa terrorists. To make this case, the Justice Department lawyers employed the services of Kyle Shideler, who works for the Center for Security Policy. This is the outfit founded by Frank Gaffney, a notorious far-right fabulist who used Islamophobia as rocket fuel to ascend to infamy.

On the stand, Shideler frankly made a fool of himself by lecturing the judge and jury about the origins of antifa only to fall apart under the questioning of defense attorney Patrick McLain. Here’s Zoe Chase’s account for This American Life:

McLain approaches, asks some questions about Shideler’s credentials for this, pointing out he’s never held a position at a college or a university. He’s never published a peer-reviewed paper.

Then he gets to this.

McLain– “There is no national leadership of Antifa, is there?”

Shideler– “It would be inconsistent with their ideology.”

“Is that a no?”

“It would be inconsistent with their ideology, so they do not, no.”

“OK. They don’t have membership rolls.”

“It would be inconsistent with their ideology, so no.”

“Just for the sake of efficiency, if there is a yes or no answer, could you lead with that?”

“Sure.”

“OK. Thank you. And no dues or hierarchy in anything that you would call Antifa, right?”

“No, they’re opposed to it.”

So, to summarize: no leadership, no membership, no dues. Shideler goes on to admit that the members of this supposed cell of a larger organization didn’t even refer to themselves as “antifa” in their private Signal chats.

The attempt to associate the defendants with this thing called antifa was so ludicrous that the defense attorneys saw no need to call their own expert witness. In fact, convinced that the Justice Department had badly screwed the pooch on the case, the defense didn’t even bother to call any witnesses of their own.

Having failed to prove the existence of antifa, the prosecution fell back on the more general charge of “terrorism.” In the spirit of the Sacco and Vanzetti case (which used “anarchism”) and the Rosenberg case (which used “communism”), the jury and then the judge threw the book at the hapless eight because they supposedly served as the pawns of an all-powerful shadowy force.

Global Ties

The failure of the Justice Department to prove the existence of antifa notwithstanding, the Trump administration has worked hard to play up the threat of this shadowy organization and connect it to other convenient bogeymen.

If Vladimir Putin weren’t a friend of Trump’s, Russia would no doubt be on the State Department’s list of antifa supporters because of its Soviet credentials and its stated goal to root out Nazism in Ukraine. The administration has sought an economic accommodation with Beijing, so China is out of the picture as well (though congressional Republicans have nonetheless gone after other left-wing groups for their closeness to China).

What remains are Iran and Cuba, which Secretary of State Rubio accuses, without providing any credible evidence, of supporting the vast left-wing conspiracy. Even if any sort of connections could be proved among the three—ayatollahs, communist apparatchiks, and anti-fascist campaigners—it doesn’t add up to much of an “axis of evil.”

It’s no surprise, then, that the Trump administration has been unable to convince anyone other than itself about this supposed threat. The State Department held a meeting in The Netherlands in May about left-wing violence, but it had to be at the U.S. embassy since the Dutch declined to host the event. In June, a similar gathering at the U.S. Institute for Peace failed to launch. A request sent by the State Department to a number of countries for information about antifa didn’t elicit much response. The four foreign left organizations that have earned the label “terrorist” from the U.S. government have, at worst, committed some acts of vandalism, and European countries have by and large rejected the designation.

More interesting than the tortuous arguments deployed by the administration to pursue its case are the likely reasons and the timing of the campaign. The United States is at war with Iran, so it’s an obvious candidate for demonization. The administration has talked of regime change in Cuba—as soon as it wraps up its war in Iran—so the “antifa” charge is but one of many placed at the island’s doorstep as a rationale for intervention.

But the real target is the “enemy within.” Trump has been eager to portray the Democratic Party as extremist, as anti-democratic, as a front for its more radical members like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). It is thus simultaneously preparing an electoral campaign to defeat the opposition in the November elections and a post-electoral campaign to marginalize a party likely to win one if not both chambers of Congress.

The open question is whether the administration will use the antifa conspiracy and the terrorist label to widen the scope of arrests. Trump has demonstrated a willingness to detain hundreds of thousands of people, some of them U.S. citizens, in his fervor to whiten the country through mass deportations. Perhaps the two final years of the administration will be spent sending members of an imaginary conspiracy to detention centers.

It wouldn’t be the first time that the U.S. government targeted immigrants and left-wingers in a single campaign. In 1920, for instance, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer ordered the arrest of thousands of people on the suspicion that they were anarchists or communists and were planning an insurrection against the U.S. government. Later he warned of assassination plots against U.S. officials. Many of those arrested were immigrants and, like celebrated activist Emma Goldman, unceremoniously kicked out of the country.

If it hadn’t been for the courageous actions of Louis Post, an assistant labor secretary in the Wilson administration who was also in charge of immigration, thousands more people would have been deported. In an administration staffed by the likes of Stephen Miller and Kash Patel, it might be nearly impossible to find a modern-day Louis Post to head off any future witch hunt. The obvious alternative is to put up as many roadblocks to the mass deportation campaign as possible before it destroys more lives and spreads to other segments of the population.

The post The Myth of a Global Antifa appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

“We are a nation at war,” Phyllis told the crowd. “Our leaders are spending our money and the lives of people around the world in a war that is not in our interest, is not being fought because we want it — although it is being fought in our name.”

She catalogued the scope of U.S. military violence since January 2025: “We have seen this government go to war, dropping bombs in countries from Somalia to Iraq to Venezuela to Iran, Nigeria — enabling the genocide in Palestine, and then coming back to bomb, with Israel, Iran again, and starting another war against the peoples of the Middle East.”

The human toll, she said, demands to be named: 3,375 civilians killed in Iran, 3,400 killed in Lebanon, more than 1,000 killed in Gaza since the most recent so-called ceasefire, and 18 U.S. soldiers dead. And the financial cost — now at $103 billion for the Iran war alone — represents a direct choice about what America values. “That $103 billion that we’ve paid so far could have been spent on 2.9 million public housing units for people that are unhoused, 2.9 million livable wage jobs for families with two children.”

On the military budget more broadly, Phyllis was direct: “The weapons don’t keep us safer. It makes war more likely.” She called for cutting the military budget in half — noting that at over $1 trillion, it has reached a level that demands accountability from every elected official in the country.

Her closing message tied it all together: “When we march to defend our right to vote, we are marching against war. We are marching against genocide, and we are marching for a new kind of world.”

The Repairers of the Breach Moral Monday movement will now return to the states for 100 days of marches to the polls across the country.

Watch Phyllis’ remarks below:

The post VIDEO: “When We March to Defend Our Right to Vote, We Are Marching Against War” appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Its architect, Senator J. William Fulbright, was one of the 20th century’s most incisive critics of American militarism. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the Cold War and the Vietnam era, Fulbright watched US global leadership grow through overwhelming military power and concentrated executive authority. Long before phrases like “forever wars” or the “national security state” entered the political lexicon, he warned that the greatest danger facing American democracy was not adversaries abroad but the gradual acceptance of militarism as the central orientation of foreign policy. That warning deserves another hearing.

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Read the full article on The Nation.

The post Senator J. William Fulbright Is Remembered Today Primarily for the Scholarship Program That Bears His Name appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.