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immigration
Pentagon and Immigration Spending in GOP Bill Could Instead Protect Medicaid Coverage
"Stealing money away from life-sustaining programs to fund war, weapons, and death should be an immediate nonstarter for every member of Congress," said one advocate and author of a new report.
May 23, 2025
With the House GOP's Medicaid-slashing reconciliation bill now headed to the Republican-controlled Senate, a trio of groups on Thursday highlighted that the tens of billions the reconciliation legislation allocates for the Pentagon and the Trump administration's immigration crackdown efforts could instead be used to protect and expand health insurance access for millions.
House Republicans' reconciliation bill includes $163 billion for the Pentagon and for mass deportation and border-related expenses that U.S. President Donald Trump has requested be allocated in fiscal year 2026. Those dollars could instead go toward providing 31 million adults with Medicaid, or providing 71 million people with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, according to a report titled Trading Life for Death: What the Reconciliation Bill Puts at Stake in Your State.
The report is a joint publication from the progressive watchdog Public Citizen, the progressive policy research organization the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), and the National Priorities Project (NPP), which is a federal budget research organization and a project of IPS.
In a statement on Thursday, Lindsay Koshgarian, program director at NPP and one of the authors of the report, framed the reconciliation package as a "direct redistribution of resources from struggling Americans to the Pentagon and militarization."
The reconciliation bill, which passed 215-214 in the House of Representatives on Thursday, includes tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy that would add $3.8 trillion to the national debt, a roll back in clean energy tax credits, sweeping cuts to Medicaid and SNAP to the tune of nearly $1 trillion, and an increase in the maximum payment available through the child tax credit until 2028—though the bill is designed so that it would block an estimated 4.5 million children from accessing the credit, according to the Center for Migration Studies.
Under the legislation, an estimated 8.6 million people would lose Medicaid coverage over the next 10 years, according to a May 11 analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 11 million people would be at risk of losing at least some of their food assistance under the changes to SNAP.
Millions more could lose their healthcare due to Obamacare decisions/provisions.
Per the report, the militarized spending increases for 2026 would more than enough to fund Medicaid for the millions who are at risk of losing their health insurance under the bill, and the millions at risk of losing their SNAP benefits.
In addition to highlighting that the bill includes a huge cash injection for the U.S. Department of Defense, the report argues the Pentagon does not need more money. "The United States is already the world's largest military spender, allocating more taxpayer dollars to the Pentagon than the next nine countries combined," according to the report, which also notes that the department has never passed an audit.
The three groups also quantify the tradeoffs between defense spending and healthcare at a more granular level.
For example, the bill includes a $25 billion initial investment in Trump's "Golden Dome" project, a multilayered defense system that Trump has said will be capable of "intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space," according to CBS News.
In just one congressional district, Tennessee's 2nd District, taxpayer funds going toward the investment in the Golden Dome could instead be used to put 12,310 people on Medicaid, according to the report. In Texas' 21st District, taxpayers' funds redirected to support the Golden Dome could provide Medicaid to 13,589 people.
"If implemented, this budget would rip the rug out from under everyday Americans relying on Medicaid and SNAP to survive, just to further enrich Pentagon contractors," said Savannah Wooten, People Over Pentagon advocate at Public Citizen and report co-author, in a statement on Thursday. "Stealing money away from life-sustaining programs to fund war, weapons, and death should be an immediate nonstarter for every member of Congress."
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Judge Blocks Trump Ban on Foreign Students at Harvard
"Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard."
May 23, 2025
Update (12:10 pm ET):
U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs handed down a temporary restraining order Friday, halting the Trump administration's ban on international students at Harvard University while litigation proceeds.
The judge agreed with Harvard's claim that the action would cause "immediate and irreparable injury" to the university.
Earlier:
Harvard University officials accused the Trump administration of using more than 7,000 international students and their families as "pawns in the government's escalating campaign of retaliation" in a lawsuit filed Friday, a day after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced the Ivy League school would no longer be permitted to enroll foreign students.
"With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard's student body, international students who contribute significantly to the university and its mission," reads the lawsuit. "Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard."
The university said it was seeking a temporary restraining order to the stop DHS from terminating Harvard's Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, which would force thousands of foreign students to transfer to other schools—or risk losing their legal status—and cancel the plans of many other students planning to travel to the U.S. in the coming months to begin attending in the fall.
Harvard said in the lawsuit that the move was a "blatant violation" of the First Amendment, the constitutional right to due process, and other laws.
DHS announced the termination of Harvard's certification weeks after the Trump administration threatened to revoke the school's tax-exempt status and froze more than $2 billion in federal funding after university president Alan Garber said the administration would not comply with President Donald Trump's demands to "derecognize pro-Palestine student groups, audit its academic programs for viewpoint diversity, and expel students involved in an altercation at a 2023 pro-Palestine protest on the Harvard Business School campus."
Harvard filed a lawsuit over the frozen funding last month, and arguments in the case are set to be heard in court in July.
The Trump administration's attacks have largely centered on what it claims is Harvard's failure to address "antisemitism" on campus, but a statement by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Thursday additionally accused the school of "coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus." Noem provided no evidence of the claim.
Garber wrote to the university community on Friday, announcing the lawsuit and assuring foreign students that they are "vital members of our community."
"You are our classmates and friends, our colleagues and mentors, our partners in the work of this great institution," said Garber. "Thanks to you, we know more and understand more, and our country and our world are more enlightened and more resilient. We will support you as we do our utmost to ensure that Harvard remains open to the world."
He added that Trump's latest attack amounts to retaliation "for our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government's illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body."
Garber noted in Friday's lawsuit and in the letter to students, faculty, and staff that Harvard has complied with the administration's demands, send on April 16, for information about each student visa holder at the university's 13 schools.
"On May 22, DHS deemed Harvard's response 'insufficient,' without explaining why or citing any regulation with which Harvard failed to comply," reads Friday's lawsuit.
The New York Timesinterviewed one Harvard student from Ukraine who said she would not be able to return home due to Russia's war on the Eastern European country. She said she was considering disrupting her education to go elsewhere in Europe to live with relatives.
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology swiftly extended an open invitation for international students at Harvard to transfer with an expedited admissions process in light of Trump's action.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council said he expected Harvard to "win a temporary restraining order before Monday" in the case.
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Human Rights Group Blasts Trump Admin for Deporting Hundreds of Non-Costa Ricans to Costa Rica
"These summary expulsions violated the right to seek asylum and the right to a fair hearing and other due process protections prior to deportation," according to a report from Human Rights Watch.
May 22, 2025
Dozens of non-Costa Rican nationals who were deported to Costa Rica by the Trump administration in February say they did not receive an asylum screening interview before being expelled, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch on Thursday.
The report alleges that the U.S. government did not follow the "minimal, if deficient" protections around the right to seek asylum and the right not be returned to harm, and kept those expelled in "inhumane conditions" while they were detained in the United States.
The report explores one instance of the Trump administration expelling migrants to a country besides their country of origin, a tactic the administration has repeatedly reached for as part of its immigration crackdown.
In the report, Human Rights Watch calls on the U.S. government to stop expelling or transferring noncitizens to third countries.
In February, Costa Rica received two flights with 200 deportees, including 81 children, from the U.S. as part of an expulsion agreement, the details of which have not been disclosed, according to the report.
"I genuinely think the [U.S.] authorities treated us so poorly, held us in those horrendous, degrading conditions, to force us to sign those volunteer deportation papers as fast as possible and maybe also to tell others, so that people would be scared to seek asylum, to come to the U.S.," said one 33-year old woman from Russia who was deported to Costa Rica.
In some cases, U.S. officials separated families when carrying out the expulsions to Costa Rica. In one instance, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sent an Iranian man and his daughter to Costa Rica but kept the girl's stepmother in the U.S., according to the report.
Human Rights Watch interviewed dozens of the migrants sent to Costa Rica and heard stories from those people that, "if true, indicate that people fled persecution based on factors such as ethnicity, religion, gender, family associations, and political opinion."
U.S. law guarantees the right to apply for asylum, and while many of those who spoke to Human Rights Watch appeared to have strong claims, only two out of 36 people interviewed by the group had a screening interview for asylum in the U.S. before being deported to Costa Rica. Almost all of the 36 people said U.S. officials ignored their repeated attempts to request asylum, per the report.
Some of the people whom Human Rights Watch spoke to had been in Mexico and made appointments to present themselves at a U.S. point of entry to seek asylum through an application developed by CBP, CBP One. When the Trump administration canceled all pending appointments through CBP One, some went to U.S. checkpoints to request asylum, while others crossed irregularly, such as by climbing over or through gaps in the border wall and then sought out or "waited for" U.S. border agents, according to the report.
Once apprehended, those who spoke to Human Rights Watch reported conditions such as freezing temperatures, little access to showers, and families being separated while being held at immigration processing centers.
"In every case documented by Human Rights Watch, DHS expelled people to Costa Rica without following the deportation processes set forth in U.S. law—not even the streamlined process known as 'expedited removal,'" according to the report, referencing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. "Instead, acting under the purported authority of a presidential proclamation, DHS agents sent people to Costa Rica, a country of which they are not nationals and to which they had no intention of traveling."
"These summary expulsions violated the right to seek asylum and the right to a fair hearing and other due process protections prior to deportation, in violation of statutory and constitutional guarantees and international treaties ratified by the United States," the report states.
The people interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported that they were not given the necessary documents required to be issued during a deportation proceeding. They reported being taken to an airfield and given no explanation until they were about to board the plane to Costa Rica.
Human Rights Watch says those deported were then initially subject to arbitrary detention in Costa Rica, and in practice they were not allowed to freely leave the center where they were being held except under certain circumstances. The Costa Rican government says they were not "detained" and indicated instead that freedom of movement was limited for their own safety, according to the report.
In April, officials in Costa Rica told them they could obtain a humanitarian permit that would give them 90 days to apply for asylum in Costa Rica or leave the country.
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