The Headlines - The New Cost of Trump’s Bill, and Gen Z’s Retirement Plan

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

Plus, the tricky science behind lime green Jell-O. On Today’s Episode:Senate Bill Would Add at Least $3.3 Trillion to Debt, Budget Office Says, by Andrew DuehrenTillis Announces He Won’t Run Again as Trump Threatens Him With a Primary, by Annie KarniA Triumphant Supreme Court Term for Trump, Fueled by Emergency Rulings, by Adam Liptak and Abbie VanSickleCourts Will Have to Grapple With New Limits on Their Power, by Mattathias SchwartzCanada Will Scrap Tax That Prompted Trump to Suspend Trade Talks, by Matina Stevis-GridneffGen Z, It Turns Out, Is Great at Saving for Retirement, by Lisa Rabasca RoepeJell-O With Natural Dyes? It’s Not Easy Becoming Green, by Julie CreswellTune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. 

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Monday, June 30th. Here's what we're covering. The table of contents of this act is as follows. Section one. This weekend in the Senate, clerks read aloud the full text of President Trump's signature domestic policy package.

It took nearly 16 hours. Democrats insisted on the reading, all 940 pages, as a protest and to try and delay the process. Section 10306, equitable treatment of certain entities. Tucked into the draft are some key changes from the version that passed the House. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the Senate's version would be more expensive, piling at least $3.3 trillion onto the national debt, and leave more Americans, nearly 12 million, uninsured over the next decade.

I just want to hammer home exactly what is going on here in the Senate. Republicans are about to pass the single most expensive bill in U.S. history. Once the full reading was completed yesterday afternoon, a bitter debate kicked off on the Senate floor with Democrats led by Chuck Sch, calling out that the legislation's projected to cut safety net programs in order to give tax breaks, mainly to the wealthiest Americans. Americans are going to feel this, unfortunately, everywhere they look.

A small number of Republicans also voiced concerns, including Senator Tom Tillis of North Carolina, who railed against the cuts to Medicaid. Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betraying a promise. Considering the narrow margin in the Senate, any GOP resistance could complicate the bill's passage. And President Trump threatened Tillis personally over his objections,

saying that he would recruit a primary opponent to challenge him in the midterms. Then Tillis announced suddenly that he just won't run again, saying that in Washington, quote, leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species. Meanwhile, some of the other Republicans criticizing the bill have said the cuts don't go far enough. And as of this morning, GOP leaders are still working to ensure that they have enough support for the measure.

A marathon series of votes on amendments to the legislation is expected to begin today. Well, this was a big one, wasn't it? This was a big decision, an amazing decision, one that we're very happy about. At the Supreme Court on Friday, the justices issued their final rulings of the term, including a major new restriction on the power of federal judges to block White House policies, limiting so-called nationwide injunctions. So the thing that makes this ruling so big is that nationwide injunctions are one of the most powerful tools that lower court judges can use to just stop any policy by the federal government in its tracks.

My colleague, Mattathias Schwartz covered the ruling. This has been used by judges to stop policies by both Republican presidents and Democratic presidents. Recently under President Trump during his second term, we've seen more than two dozen nationwide injunctions that have blocked very significant and aggressive moves that he's made as a part of his policies. There have been nationwide injunctions that have for a time stopped firings that the White House wanted to undertake. nationwide injunctions that have for a time stopped firings that the White House wanted to undertake. There are some in effect now that would block changes that the White House wants to make to voting rules. So this ruling by the Supreme Court really reduces the opportunity in most circumstances for an individual district court judge to put his or her foot down and

say, White House, what you're doing is illegal. It needs to stop now. Matt says that where a lower court used to be able to block a government policy across the whole country, now with only a few exceptions, its ruling will only apply to the plaintiffs who brought the case. That could include everyone in a state, for example, if the state's attorney general challenges a policy, but overall it sharply limits federal judges' ability to check presidential power. Legal experts said the decision is likely to cause widespread confusion as existing injunctions get re-evaluated by the courts and future policies get challenged in a piecemeal way. One lawyer told the Times she expects there

to be, quote, frantic legal wrangling. The ruling on nationwide injunctions came as part of a case challenging Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship for the children of some immigrants. The court threw out the injunctions that had stopped Trump's policy from going into effect nationwide, though the justices didn't issue a decision on the constitutionality of the order

itself. That means that soon, whether a newborn gets U.S. citizenship or not might depend on which state they're born in. Twenty-eight states did not challenge Trump's order, so the president's policy could go into effect in those states starting next month. For more on the Supreme Court's ruling, listen to today's episode of The Daily. America's second largest trading partner, Canada, is backing down from a trade dispute with the Trump administration.

Late last night, the Canadian government said it would cancel a 3% tax on U.S. tech companies like Amazon, Google and Apple that provide digital services in the country. The tax was set to go into effect today and would have cost American companies several billion dollars. But Trump called the levy a, quote, blatant attack on U.S. corporations. You said you're stopping all trade discussions with Canada? Until such time as they drop certain taxes, yeah.

On Friday, Trump had called off ongoing trade talks because of the surcharge. And within 48 hours, Canada folded, saying it hoped this would clear the way for what it called a mutually beneficial agreement. The two countries have been trying to reach a new deal as Trump's tariffs have taken a toll on the Canadian economy. Trump said of the talks, quote, "'We have all the cards. We have every single one.'"

In 2022, a new law took effect in the US that was aimed at encouraging Americans to save for retirement. It required employers to automatically enroll eligible employees in retirement programs like 401Ks. Now, financial experts say they're seeing that pay off in the savings habits of the country's youngest workers, Gen Z.

A number of recent studies show that people under 30 are contributing more to their retirement accounts and investing more than millennials did at their age. They have the option to opt out from the automatic savings plans, but the default behavior seems to be sticking. There are other factors at play, too, the rise of budgeting and savings apps, which many Gen Z workers have been using since they got their first paychecks. There's also been a flood of easier-to-access financial information, from podcasts to AI

chatbots. At the same time, researchers say they are seeing a gender divide in how young workers are investing. Gen Z women favor more traditional retirement options like 401ks and Roth IRAs, while younger men have been pursuing riskier options, investing more on stock trading apps like Robinhood and putting their cash into cryptocurrency. A Pew survey last year found that 42% of young men invest in crypto, more than double the rate of women. And finally,

Kraft Heinz, the company behind Jell-O and a lot of other products at the grocery store, has become the latest food giant to announce they're planning to remove artificial dyes from their foods over the next few years. One product they're likely going to have a hard time recreating the natural way is lime green Jell-O, that bright jiggling mass that kind of glows with an alien aura. Some colors are relatively simple to replicate naturally. You want red, you can go beet juice, red cabbage, even crushed up insects.

The signature orange of Kraft mac and cheese, that can be done with turmeric and paprika. But the vibrant green is a whole other deal. One company that already makes naturally colored gelatin says they use a formula including an algae extract, but it tends to clump and has been described as having a seedy taste. They hide that by dumping in more lime flavor, but even after all that, the product is still kind of mossy colored or spinnagy at best.

According to one food expert, green is just one of the most difficult colors to create naturally, which also makes it more expensive. That means lime green foods could eventually lose their glow and look less like kryptonite and more like actual lime. Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.