Up First from NPR - Negotiating Trump's Sweeping Agenda, South Africa's President, DOGE Cuts

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

The latest on the president's massive tax and immigration bill as it faces continued resistance from both moderate and hardline Republicans. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will travel to Washington next week as relations between the U.S. and South Africa are at their lowest since the end of apartheid. An NPR analysis finds that the ad hoc Department of Government Efficiency keeps finding new parts of the federal government to try to shrink.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Ryland Barton, Kevin Drew, Brett Neely, Tara Neill, Ally Schweitzer and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis and our technical director is David Greenburg.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

President Trump warns House Republicans to accept a proposal for tax and spending changes along with a lot of borrowing. He predicts any Republican who resists would be knocked out, so why are some saying no? I'm Steve Inskeep with Leila Fadl, and this is Up First from NPR News. South Africa's president is coming to Washington. He'll be meeting with President Trump, whose administration has accused South Africa's president is coming to Washington. He'll be meeting with President Trump, whose administration has accused South Africa of discriminating against its own white citizens. How does all this look from Johannesburg?

And Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency is trying to expand its reach. Musk has taken a step back, but an NPR analysis found the unit has sought recently to intervene in dozens more entities, even some outside government is that legal? Stay with us. We've got the news. You need to start your day I'm Tanya Mosley co-host of fresh air at a time of sound bites and short attention spans Our show is all about the deep dive sound bites and short attention spans, our show is all about the deep dive. We do long-form interviews with people behind the best in film, books, TV, music, and journalism. Here our guests open up about their process and their lives in ways you've never heard before.

Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY. Conductor Robert Fron says a good melody captures our attention and then it moves you through time. Music is architecture in time. If you engage in the moment with what you're listening to, you do lose a sense of the time around you. How we experience time. That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. On the Indicator from Planet Money podcast, we're here to help you make sense of the economic news from Trump's tariffs. It's called in game theory a trigger strategy or sometimes called grim trigger, which sort of has a cowboy-esque ring to it.

To what exactly a sovereign wealth fund is. For Insight, every weekday, listen to NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. President Trump met with House Republicans in the Capitol yesterday urging them to get behind his massive tax and immigration bill or risk a tax increase. I mean, what Republican could vote for that to happen

because there wouldn't be a Republican much longer. They would get, they would be knocked out so fast. House Speaker Mike Johnson wants a vote as soon as today, but as always, he needs almost every Republican on his side in order to pass it. And PR's Deirdre Walsh is at the Capitol and she joins me now. Good morning, Deirdre.

Good morning, Laila. So did Trump's pep rally with House Republicans build the support he needs for that bill? He did sway some who praised his sales job, but the president failed to convince a significant block of Republican holdouts. There are moderates who represent districts with high state and local taxes who want a bigger tax break for their constituents. There are conservatives worried about ballooning deficits and say this bill does not go far enough to slash spending and deal with the deficit. The speaker spent the day and overnight hours

trying to negotiate with these factions. And remember, he can only lose three votes, so we already know one member, Tom Massey of Kentucky, is a hard no. Okay, so did leaders agree to any of these demands to move some of these holdouts? Potentially. Overnight, a key committee agree to any of these demands to move some of these holdouts? Potentially overnight a key committee met to set the parameters to start debate on the

House floor and that panel is still meeting. The speaker said when they started around 1 a.m. they were close to a deal, but we haven't seen any details yet. Leaders are expected to increase the amount of that state and local tax deduction to address the concerns of some state and local tax deduction to address the concerns of some moderates they need. Conservatives say there's been some progress on more savings, but, Leila, it's like whack-a-mole. You agree to one change from one group and it could mean losing support from another

group. So, Deidre, talk about the major components in the bill and what their impact would be. So the tax cuts are really the central plank in the bill. The bill permanently extends the 2017 tax cuts that are going to expire at the end of December. It adds new tax breaks, like no tax on overtime, no tax on tips, things that Trump campaigned on. Those tax breaks expire in four years after Trump leaves office.

The bill has roughly one and a half trillion in spending cuts, and a big chunk of those come from changes to Medicaid. That's the health care program for elderly, low-income and disabled. It adds work requirements for adults without dependence on Medicaid. It changes eligibility rules that can mean people end up getting removed from the roles. Trump said during his visit to the Capitol there wouldn't be any cuts and the measure is focused on cutting waste, fraud, and abuse, but the Congressional Budget Office found that at least

8.6 million people could lose health care coverage due to these changes. And CBO analysis that came out late last night found out that the poorest, the bottom 10 percent of Americans, would see their household resources drop due to the policy and tax changes in this package, while the bottom 10% of Americans would see their household resources drop due to the policy and tax changes in this package, while the top 10% would get a bump in income. And we should also note that the bill makes cuts to food assistance programs, and that could impact millions of children who rely on that program for school lunches. So if this bill gets through the House, what are the prospects in the Senate? I mean, there are going to be changes in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Senate Republicans want to see further spending cuts to reduce the deficit. Other Republicans in the Senate are critical of the Medicaid changes in this House package. But there's big pressure for both chambers to get to a final deal because those tax cuts expire at the end of December and the Treasury Department is going to run out of money to pay its bills this summer so lawmakers included a four trillion dollar increase in the debt ceiling to avoid a default but for right now House Republican leaders are still negotiating to try to get the votes to get it through the House.

That's NPR's Georgia Walsh. Thank you, Georgia. Thanks, Leila. South African president, Syora Moposa, is set to meet President Trump today at the White House for talks amid deteriorating relations between the two countries. Yeah, this is interesting. Earlier this year, the Trump administration cut aid to South Africa and expelled the South African ambassador.

In recent days, the US took another step. The president who has been pushing away refugees from other parts of the world granted refugee status to white South Africans. Now the government of the black majority country says it wants a reset. With me now is reporter Kate Bartlett, who's in Johannesburg. Good morning, Kate. Good morning. Okay, so get us up to speed. What brought this

meeting about? Basically, for months, Trump has been saying terrible things have been happening in South Africa. He's been repeating right-wing conspiracy theories, claiming without evidence that white Africana farmers are being persecuted and their land confiscated. The South African government, the data, and most experts say there's no evidence of that. And Ramaphosa hasn't hidden his frustration over Trump's actions here he is last week. We're the only country on the continent where the colonizers came to stay, and we have never driven them out of our country.

The South African government says the people taking up Trump's refugee offer are simply people who still can't accept apartheid is over. So Ramaphosa faces an uphill battle and Trump will likely berate South Africa for taking Israel to the Hague over claims of a genocide in its war in Gaza. So how will Ramaphosa approach the meeting?

Well, Ramaphosa is a skilled negotiator. He worked alongside Nelson Mandela and was instrumental in the talks that ended apartheid. Now he needs to salvage the US relationship, which is of huge economic importance to South Africa. He might try to appeal to Trump's transactional side, South Africa's rich in minerals like platinum. And Ramaphosa is expected to appeal to the US's interests

in countering China's influence in Africa as well. And he could offer a deal to Trump's South African-born advisor, Elon Musk. The billionaire businessman objects to affirmative action laws that he claims prevent him from rolling out his styling satellite service in South Africa. And what do ordinary South Africans think about all this?

Well, South Africans are watching anxiously to see if Ramaphosa is humiliated the way Ukrainian President Zelensky was on his visit to the Oval Office earlier this year. And many South Africans, both white and black, are really angry with Trump's attacks on their country. I spoke to people at a Johannesburg cafe, including 42-year-old Barista Ciarallo. We all know the genocide narrative is false. They should tell him to stay away from our affairs.

But not in those words, you know, in a nicer way. Ramaphosa might also want to bring up the one South African Trump does seem to admire, Nelson Mandela. He's repeatedly compared himself and his legal problems to Mandela's 27 years in jail for the struggle against apartheid. That comparison drew anger from Mandela's family. That's reporter Kate Bartlett in Johannesburg. Thank you, Kate.

Thank you, Kate. Thank you. Elon Musk may not be spending quite so much time at the White House. But his creation, the ad hoc Department of Government Efficiency, keeps finding new parts of the federal government to try to shrink. A new analysis by NPR found at least 40 agencies and groups that Doge has tried to cut in recent weeks. NPR's Stephen Fowler is covering all of this and is online. Hi there, Stephen. Good morning.

So who's getting a knock on the door here? Well, the knock is often an email from one of a few Doge staffers based in the General Services Administration. They're seeking to learn more about operations and to embed a team within the organization. Now, some of them have already been effectively dismantled by Doge, like the Inter-American Foundation and Millennium Challenge Corporation. Some of them have been targeted for elimination by the president in his proposal for next year's budget, like AmeriCorps.

The outreach has been to this constellation of commissions, boards, and entities that are all small and independent. Well how have some of these dozens of entities responded? After the email, in many of these places, Doge has moved quickly. At the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, for example, in less than one week an email led to a video call, led to an in-person meeting, and now a Doge team is being onboarded. On April 17th alone, Doge staffers scheduled meetings with officials from the Truman Scholarship Foundation, the Denali Commission, the Office of Navajo and Hopi Indian Relocation, and

the U.S. Access Board, and that's according to two sources not authorized to speak about Doge's operations. I guess we should mention different laws apply to different organizations which themselves are organized differently. Could they just say no thanks to Doge's requests? Some of them already have because these Doge folks have also tried to reach out to organizations that aren't government agencies at all like the private nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice, the independent nonprofit corporation for public broadcasting, and the government accountability office which is part of the legislative branch and they are profit Vera Institute of Justice, the Independent Nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Government Accountability Office,

which is part of the legislative branch. And they are also outside of Doge's purview, so they rejected that request from Doge last week. How legal is any of this? Well, there are more than a dozen lawsuits that have been filed related to Doge efforts at these small organizations that say it's not legal. By and large, these are places that have been created by Congress, many of them nonprofits,

and nearly all of them do have their funding and functions spelled out by law, and some of those cases explicitly limiting the President's power to interact with them. That means President Trump can't always go in and fire people and make changes on his own. In the last week, a judge ordered a halt to Doge-related shutdowns at the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and the Minority Business Development Agency. And this week, a different federal judge found Doge's takeover of the U.S. Institute of

Peace was illegal. Stephen, what does all of this add to your understanding of what Doge is doing? Well, President Trump has a very clear mission of what a government remade in his image looks like. It's smaller, there's less bureaucracy and those people and institutions who are left answer directly to him and his viewpoints. But that's not always what the law allows. And the Doge MO of act first, ask questions later has led to plenty of conflicts the last

few months and setbacks in achieving that goal. Also for all the hype about Elon Musk and his role in stepping back from Doge, the small agency outreach we've seen just illustrates where the real Doge work is being carried out and that it's still ongoing. NPR's Stephen Fowler, who reported this story with our colleague Shannon Bond. Thanks so much. Thank you. And that's Up First for Wednesday, May 21st.

I'm Leila Fulden. And I'm Steve Inskeep. Thanks for listening to Up First. You can find more coverage of the stories we discussed today on NPR's morning edition. It's a radio show. Leila co-hosts that radio show, which is one of the main reasons you'd want to tune in. I get to do it with her, along with A. Martinez and Michelle Martin, and you can find Morning Edition

on your NPR station. And if you're wondering how to do that, go to stations.npr.org. Today's episode of Up First was edited by Rylan Barton, Kevin Drew, Brett Neely, Tara Neal, Ali Schweitzer, and Alice Wolfley. It was edited by Rylan Barton, Kevin Drew, Brett Neely, Tara Neal, Allie Schweitzer, and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Nia Dumas, and Christopher Thomas.

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