Trump tries to fix deficit caused by tax cuts by cutting billions from children’s health care

The Trump administration is set to ask Congress to claw back $15 billion in federal spending. If passed, it would be the largest “rescission” package passed in American history.

Nearly half of the cuts — roughly $7 billion — would come from the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a program many low-income families depend on for coverage. The White House claims the cuts will not have an impact on the program, which currently has an enrollment of about 9 mill...

Trump administration stops short of approving the most restrictive Medicaid policy yet

The Trump administration just denied Kansas’ request to create an unprecedented “lifetime limit” on Medicaid, a federal insurance largely for the poor and disabled.

“We seek to create a pathway out of poverty, but we also understand that people’s circumstances change, and we must ensure that our programs are sustainable and available to them when they need and qualify for them,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma ...

States waste hundreds of thousands on drug testing for welfare, but have little to show for it

In 2017, states spent more than $490,000 to drug-test 2,541 people who had applied for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits, which yielded just 301 positive tests.

While the costs for these programs has dropped somewhat over the past three years, the number of positive tests has also declined.

This year, ThinkProgress also asked states to provide the questionnaires used to determine whether there is “reasonable suspicion” that their applicants/recipients ar...

Meet Noel Francisco: The man who will supervise Mueller if Trump fires Rosenstein

Even before he became Donald Trump’s top Supreme Court advocate, Solicitor General Noel Francisco was a magnet for Trumpian causes. Francisco was one of the tobacco industry‘s top appellate advocates. And he represented the coal company at the heart of a deadly mining disaster — a coal company owned by Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

In the Supreme Court, Francisco convinced the justices to effectively strip President Obama of the recess appointments ...