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President Donald Trump faces the challenge of convincing Republican senators, global investors, voters and even Elon Musk that he won’t bury the federal government in debt with his multitrillion-dollar tax breaks package. The response so far from financial markets has been skeptical as Trump seems unable to trim deficits as promised. All of this rhetoric about cutting trillions of dollars of spending has come to nothing and the tax bill codifies that, said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. There is a level of concern about the competence of Congress and this administration and that makes adding a whole bunch of money to the deficit riskier. The White House has viciously lashed out at anyone who has voiced concern about the debt snowballing under Trump, even though it did exactly that in his first term after his 2017 tax cuts. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt opened her briefing Thursday by saying she wanted to debunk some false claims” about his tax cuts. Leavitt said the “blatantly wrong claim that the One, Big, Beautiful Bill increases the deficit is based on the Congressional Budget Office and other scorekeepers who use shoddy assumptions and have historically been terrible at forecasting across Democrat and Republican administrations alike. House Speaker Mike Johnson piled onto Congress’ number crunchers on Sunday, telling NBC’s Meet the Press, The CBO sometimes gets projections correct, but theyre always off, every single time, when they project economic growth. They always underestimate the growth that will be brought about by tax cuts and reduction in regulations. But Trump himself has suggested that the lack of sufficient spending cuts to offset his tax reductions came out of the need to hold the Republican congressional coalition together. We have to get a lot of votes, Trump said last week. We cant be cutting. That has left the administration betting on the hope that economic growth can do the trick, a belief that few outside of Trump’s orbit think is viable. Most economists consider the non-partisan CBO to be the foundational standard for assessing policies, though it does not produce cost estimates for actions taken by the executive branch such as Trumps unilateral tariffs. Tech billionaire Musk, who was until recently part of Trump’s inner sanctum as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, told CBS News: I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.” Federal debt keeps rising The tax and spending cuts that passed the House last month would add more than $5 trillion to the national debt in the coming decade if all of them are allowed to continue, according to the Committee for a Responsible Financial Budget, a fiscal watchdog group. To make the bill’s price tag appear lower, various parts of the legislation are set to expire. This same tactic was used with Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and it set up this year’s dilemma, in which many of the tax cuts in that earlier package will sunset next year unless Congress renews them. But the debt is a much bigger problem now than it was eight years ago. Investors are demanding the government pay a higher premium to keep borrowing as the total debt has crossed $36.1 trillion. The interest rate on a 10-year Treasury Note is around 4.5%, up dramatically from the roughly 2.5% rate being charged when the 2017 tax cuts became law. The White House Council of Economic Advisers argues that its policies will unleash so much rapid growth that the annual budget deficits will shrink in size relative to the overall economy, putting the U.S. government on a fiscally sustainable path. The council argues the economy would expand over the next four years at an annual average of about 3.2%, instead of the Congressional Budget Office’s expected 1.9%, and as many as 7.4 million jobs would be created or saved. Council chair Stephen Miran told reporters that when the growth being forecast by the White House is coupled with expected revenues from tariffs, the expected budget deficits will fall. The tax cuts will increase the supply of money for investment, the supply of workers and the supply of domestically produced goods all of which, by Mirans logic, would cause faster growth without creating new inflationary pressures. I do want to assure everyone that the deficit is a very significant concern for this administration, Miran said. White House budget director Russell Vought told reporters the idea that the bill is in any way harmful to debt and deficits is fundamentally untrue. Economists doubt Trump’s plan can spark enough growth to reduce deficits Most outside economists expect additional debt would keep interest rates higher and slow overall economic growth as the cost of borrowing for homes, cars, businesses and even college educations would increase. This just adds to the problem future policymakers are going to face, said Brendan Duke, a former Biden administration aide now at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. Duke said that with the tax cuts in the bill set to expire in 2028, lawmakers would be dealing with Social Security, Medicare and expiring tax cuts at the same time. Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, said the growth projections from Trump’s economic team are a work of fiction. He said the bill would lead some workers to choose to work fewer hours in order to qualify for Medicaid. I dont know of any serious forecaster that has meaningfully raised their growth forecast because of this legislation, said Harvard University professor Jason Furman, who was the Council of Economic Advisers chair under the Obama administration. These are mostly not growth- and competitiveness-oriented tax cuts. And, in fact, the higher long-term interest rates will go the other way and hurt growth. The White House’s inability so far to calm deficit concerns is stirring up political blowback for Trump as the tax and spending cuts approved by the House now move to the Senate. Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky have both expressed concerns about the likely defict increases, with Paul saying Sunday there are enough GOP senators to stall the bill until deficits are addressed. I think there are four of us at this point” who would oppose the legislation if the bill, at least, is not modified in a good direction, Paul said on CBS’ Face the Nation.” The GOP will own the debt once they vote for this,” Paul said. Four Republican holdouts would be enough to halt the bill in the Senate, where the party holds a three-seat majority. Trump banking on tariff revenues to help The White House is also banking that tariff revenues will help cover the additional deficits, even though recent court rulings cast doubt on the legitimacy of Trump declaring an economic emergency to impose sweeping taxes on imports. When Trump announced his near-universal tariffs in April, he specifically said his policies would generate enough new revenues to start paying down the national debt. His comments dovetailed with remarks by aides, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, that yearly budget deficits could be more than halved. Its our turn to prosper and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt, and itll all happen very quickly, Trump said two months ago as he talked up his import taxes and encouraged lawmakers to pass the separate tax and spending cuts. The Trump administration is correct that growth can help reduce deficit pressures, but it’s not enough on its own to accomplish the task, according to new research by economists Douglas Elmendorf, Glenn Hubbard and Zachary Liscow. Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale University, said additional growth doesn’t even get us close to where we need to be. The government would need $10 trillion of deficit reduction over the next 10 years just to stabilize the debt, Tedeschi said. And even though the White House says the tax cuts would add to growth, most of the cost goes to preserve existing tax breaks, so that’s unlikely to boost the economy meaningfully. It’s treading water, Tedeschi said. Josh Boak, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
If you missed the northern lights, or aurora borealis, over the past weekend, you’re in luckyou may have a second chance tonight, Monday, June 2, when they may be visible for a second night in a row in some U.S. states across the country. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasts that the next possibility for viewing the northern lights is Monday night into early Tuesday, with the most intense activity across Canada and Alaska and the northern U.S. states. This aurora borealis is the result of a geomagnetic storm that occurs when a coronal mass ejection (CME), an eruption of solar material, reaches Earth and causes swaths of blue, green, and purple in the sky. This years increased solar activity is likely the result of an 11-year sun cycle peaking through October. Where and when will the northern lights be visible tonight? While NOAA predicts Alaska is the best U.S. state to potentially view the aurora tonight, the agency says: “The other states that are best positioned are the northern Midwest states, from Washington, northern Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan,” Alex Gianninas, an astronomy professor at Connecticut College told Newsweek. Residents of northern New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine may also be able to witness the light show in the night sky, Gianninas added. The aurora borealis is best observed just after sunset or just before sunrise. Dont worry if you aren’t able to see the northern lights tonightNOAA predicts activity will remain high through 2025 and 2026. You can track the aurora on NOAAs page, where the agency is providing updates.
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trumps administration on Monday renewed its request for the Supreme Court to clear the way for plans to downsize the federal workforce while a lawsuit filed by labor unions and cities proceeds. The high court filing came after an appeals court refused to freeze a California-based judges order halting the cuts, which have been led by the Department of Government Efficiency. By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the downsizing could have broader effects, including on the nations food-safety system and health care for veterans. In her ruling last month, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found that Trumps administration lacked congressional approval to make sizable reductions to the federal workforce. The administration initially asked the justices to step in last month, but withdrew its appeal for technical, legal reasons. The latest filing is one in a series of emergency appeals arguing federal judges had overstepped their authority. Illston’s order rests on the indefensible premise that the president needs explicit statutory authorization from Congress to exercise his core Article II authority to superintend the internal personnel decisions of the executive branch,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the new appeal. Trump has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate to remake the federal government, and he tapped billionaire ally Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE. Musk left his role last week. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, have left their jobs via deferred resignation programs, or have been placed on leave. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation, and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go. Illstons order directs numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the presidents workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management. Illston was nominated by former Democratic President Bill Clinton. Among the agencies affected by the order are the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, the Interior, State, the Treasury, and Veterans Affairs. It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Association, Social Security Administration, and Environmental Protection Agency. The Supreme Court set a deadline of next Monday for a response from the unions and cities, including Baltimore, Chicago, and San Francisco. Some of the labor unions and nonprofit groups are also plaintiffs in another lawsuit before a San Francisco judge challenging the mass firings of probationary workers. In that case, Judge William Alsup ordered the government in March to reinstate those workers, but the U.S. Supreme Court later blocked his order. By Mark Sherman, Associated Press
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