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Economy
Refuting Trump Claims of Fraud, Analysis Shows Millions Dropped Health Insurance Due to GOP Cuts
"They didn’t cheat their way in. They simply can’t afford to stay in the program."
Jul 07, 2026
President Donald Trump's administration has tried spinning government data showing millions of people have dropped their health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act by claiming these people were defrauding the program.
However, an analysis published Tuesday by Public Citizen refutes this claim, finding that most people who lost their ACA coverage did so because they could not afford to keep it after congressional Republicans let enhanced health insurance subsidies expire last year.
Data released last month showed that nationwide ACA enrollment fell from 22.3 million people in 2025 to just 17.5 million in 2026, a drop of nearly five million people over the span of just a year.
US Health and Human Services Director Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz have both said this drop is due to the administration's efforts to root out fraud, with Oz even saying that current enrollment in the program is at "too high of a number."
The Public Citizen report, however, finds that "the decline in... enrollment this year has nothing to do with removing deceitful enrollees," as what "the numbers show is that American families are being priced out of coverage."
According to Public Citizen's analysis, the best way for a fraudster to game the system created by the ACA would be to falsely claim to have an income right around the poverty line, which would ensure the fraudulent enrollee would get a higher subsidy to purchase coverage.
In other words, if the administration were really pursuing fraud on a mass scale, it would likely mean a drop in enrollees who are claiming incomes near the poverty line.
"But that’s not what is happening," the report explains. "The people losing coverage are concentrated at incomes well above the poverty line. They are low- and middle-income families whose premiums doubled after subsidies were cut. They didn’t cheat their way in. They simply can’t afford to stay in the program."
In fact, the report finds that enrollment is actually growing among people who claim income right at the poverty line, which could suggest there is more prospective fraud in the program than before.
However, the report authors do not think that this increase is due to fraud, but rather to "people living just below the poverty line in states that refused to expand Medicaid" and whose income is not low enough to qualify for Medicaid, but too high to qualify for ACA subsidies.
"To escape the coverage gap, some have reported incomes just above the poverty line," states the report, "enough to be eligible for the ACA marketplace."
The ACA isn't the only federal healthcare program under pressure from Trump administration and GOP policies, as cuts to Medicaid included in Republicans' 2025 budget law are projected by the Congressional Budget Office to leave more than 10 million fewer people enrolled in the program by 2034.
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95% of Americans Say Country Faces Cost-of-Living Crisis as Half Struggle to Afford Essentials
"Meanwhile, Trump wants to hike military spending to $1.5 trillion a year," said one observer.
Jul 07, 2026
Days after President Donald Trump made his latest dismissive remark about the cost of living and Americans' struggles to afford housing, new polling released Tuesday finds that nearly the entire voting public views the US as facing an affordability crisis and are increasingly pessimistic that the economy—and working people—will recover.
The Harris Poll, conducted on behalf of The Guardian newspaper, found that 57% of respondents believe the economy is still getting worse for Americans even after the US and Iran signed a peace deal last month to end the conflict started in February by the Trump administration and Israel—a war that sent oil prices soaring.
The average price of gas in the US is still $3.79 per gallon, despite the fact that Brent crude prices have fallen sharply.
Across party lines, about half of respondents said they are struggling to afford basic items like gas and groceries, and two-thirds of Americans, including nearly half of Republican voters, said they do not believe the Trump administration will improve the affordability crisis.
The poll was taken nearly a week after Trump, who ran on lowering costs for Americans, refused to sign affordable housing legislation, calling the bipartisan bill "a big yawn."
In May, as the administration was negotiating an end to the Iran War, Trump said that he did not “think about Americans’ financial situation,” even as the Middle East conflict he and Israel started hit family budgets hard.
A month earlier, he said the federal government "can’t take care of daycare" and healthcare programs for Americans, because it was focused on one thing and one thing only: "military protection."
According to the new survey, gas is at the top of the list of expenses that Americans are struggling to afford, with 52% saying they are having trouble keeping up with the cost. More than half of respondents also reported having trouble affording groceries, and 46% said they are struggling to make their loan payments and pay for utilities.
Trump ended the Biden administration's Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) program, terminating the income-based student loan repayment plan for millions of borrowers. A report by Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee in March also found that the average utility bill was up by $110, or 6.4%, over last year, following the Republican Party's elimination of tax credits for solar and wind power and as Trump pushed for the unregulated expansion of energy-sucking artificial intelligence data centers, despite warnings that they would drive up household utility bills.
The president's tariffs and his refusal to take on corporate consolidation in the meatpacking industry have also contributed to high grocery prices, recent analyses have found.
The Harris Poll found that 57% of Americans believe the economy is steadily getting worse, compared with 46% who said so in February. Just 16% said the economy is getting stronger, and only 27% of Republicans said the same. In February, 49% of Republican voters reported a positive outlook on the economy.
The survey also found that 54% of respondents said neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party has a solution to the growing affordability crisis.
However, the poll was taken on the heels of several electoral victories by progressive and democratic socialist candidates who have centered the needs of working families, demanded that billionaires pay their fair share in taxes, and called for Medicare for All and universal childcare—programs that would be similar to ones that are commonplace in other wealthy countries.
In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, has made strides toward a universal childcare program, a wealth tax, and a rent freeze for rent-stabilized housing units to address the economic inequality and cost-of-living crises.
On Monday, Trump claimed that "a social Democrat is a communist," in an apparent reference to democratic socialists like Mamdani and US House candidates Melat Kiros in Colorado's 1st District, Claire Valdez in New York's 7th District, and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York's 13th District.
"If you look at the people that are running, it's crazy what they're doing," said Trump. "But we'll never let that happen to this country... There's no appetite for it."
But in The New York Times on Tuesday, Lindsay Owens of the progressive think tank Groundwork Collaborative suggested the recent elections prove there is, in fact, an "appetite" for candidates who recognize the affordability crisis, and prioritize solutions.
“The economic populist moment is here," she said.
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'A Slap in the Face': Trump Moves to Gut Biden-Era Rules Reining In Meatpackers
"We need robust enforcement of antitrust and fair trade practice laws to finally protect producers from meatpackers’ fundamentally unfair and illegal practices," said one campaigner.
Jul 06, 2026
A leading government accountability watchdog group on Monday ripped the Trump administration's move to rescind Biden-era rules enacted to protect ranchers and farmers from abuse by meatpacking corporations and boost competition in the key industry.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced the reversal of three Biden administration rules under the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921. One of the rules prohibits meatpackers, swine contractors, and poultry companies from retaliating against producers for actions like joining associations, speaking with regulators, or seeking other buyers.
Another rule mandated improved transparency in poultry grower contracts. The third rule‚ which was set to take effect this month, would have limited how poultry companies use the tournament payment system.
USDA said it plans to start the revocation process with proposed rulemakings scheduled for later this month and October.
Farm groups and antitrust advocates argue the move removes protections against monopolistic, deceptive, and retaliatory practices by dominant meatpacking and poultry companies.
“For years, meat corporations have abused hardworking farmers and ranchers. Now, the Trump administration is proposing to undo long-overdue progress made to level the playing field," Emily Miller, staff attorney at Food & Water Watch, said Monday in a statement. "This move is a slap in the face to all those who have long fought for fair treatment in livestock and poultry markets."
The USDA's move comes amid increased meat sector consolidation, which studies by Food & Water Watch, More Perfect Union, and others have found results in higher consumer prices and lower farmer profits.
Over the course of his two terms in office, Trump has boosted the meatpacking industry at the expense of worker rights, competition, and public health. His administration refused to issue binding rules requiring businesses to institute safety measures amid the Covid-19 pandemic, and he invoked the Defense Production Act to classify meatpacking plants as critical infrastructure and force them to stay open even as the coronavirus ravaged industry workers.
Trump has also supported corporate monopolization in meatpacking, and his administration has shut down a Department of Justice antitrust probe of alleged industry collusion. Just four meatpackers control approximately 80% of the market. Meanwhile, cattle producers who in 1980 received 63 cents for every dollar paid by consumers for beef were receiving just 37 cents four decades later.
"We need robust enforcement of antitrust and fair trade practice laws to finally protect producers from meatpackers’ fundamentally unfair and illegal practices," Miller said on Monday. "These rollbacks will do the opposite. We won’t rest until USDA does its job by putting producers above corporations.”
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After Tens of Billions in Stock Buybacks, Microsoft Announces Mass Layoff of 4,800 Workers
"Seeing such strong numbers coupled with the mass layoffs at Xbox is not sitting right with many," wrote one tech journalist.
Jul 06, 2026
President Donald Trump has touted his massive corporate tax breaks in 2017 and 2025 not just as handouts to the rich, but as boons for their employees, who could expect to see rising wages and job growth in the coming years.
But one of the policy's biggest beneficiaries, Microsoft, just announced it was laying off thousands of employees in a move described as "cost-cutting," even though the company has spent tens of billions of dollars buying back its own stock.
When Trump's 2017 tax law reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, Americans for Tax Fairness estimated that the company was saving about $16.5 billion per year.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed last July, rewrote rules to benefit companies investing in artificial intelligence by allowing them to deduct the cost of data centers and other equipment up front rather than spreading the deductions out over time, and introduced new deductions for research and development expenses.
For Microsoft, which pledged roughly $80 billion globally toward AI data center investment last year, that could translate to up to $16.8 billion in near-term federal tax savings.
The added windfall has been great for Microsoft shareholders. From 2018-25, the company returned roughly $139.5 billion to shareholders through stock buybacks since the Trump-GOP tax cut took effect, according to shareholder reports.
In the first nine months of fiscal year 2026, the first since the new tax breaks went into effect, the company bought back another $13.3 billion, an acceleration from the previous year, according to a form filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
At the same time as the company is ramping up AI investment, however, it is laying off employees.
On Monday, the company announced that it was shedding roughly 2% of its global workforce, eliminating about 4,800 jobs—mostly in its Xbox division—as it allocates more money and resources to the AI arms race.
They are among the more than 20,000 Microsoft employees who have been shown the door since 2025. Additionally, thousands more employees took voluntary buyouts this spring.
Microsoft executive Amy Coleman attributed the cuts to a changing technological landscape.
"Our customers’ needs are shifting, the business models that serve them are shifting, and that means the work itself—what we do, where we focus, and how we’re organized—has to transform too,” she said. “Companies don’t get to choose whether their industry changes; they only get to choose whether they change with it."
She also stressed that workers were “not being replaced by AI.”
But Eddie Makuch, a writer at GameSpot, noted that the company has been doing terrifically, and despite falling share prices over the past year, remains "the No. 4 biggest company on Earth with a market cap of more than $2.8 trillion."
"Microsoft stockholders might not have been happy with the company’s share price falling, but for the past quarter alone, Microsoft paid out $10.2 billion to shareholders via dividends and share repurchases," he wrote. "These are signs of strength and health for Microsoft. Xbox is a very small piece of Microsoft’s overall business, but seeing such strong numbers coupled with the mass layoffs at Xbox is not sitting right with many."
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