House Budget Plan, DOGE Resignations, Battle Against Bird Flu

Summary

Up First from NPR – February 26, 2025

NPR's Up First delivers the essential news to kickstart your day, and the February 26, 2025 episode delves into three major stories: the House Republicans' controversial budget plan, the ongoing tension between the White House and Elon Musk's influence over federal agencies, and the escalating battle against bird flu threatening the poultry industry.

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1. House Republicans Pass Sweeping Budget Plan

Timestamp: 00:03 – 05:10

The episode opens with a significant development in U.S. politics as House Republicans narrowly pass a budget plan aimed at reshaping government spending and tax policies. Hosted by Layla Faldid, the discussion highlights the plan’s inclusion of substantial tax cuts and reductions in programs like Medicaid.

Key Points:

• Tax Cuts and Spending Reductions: The budget plan proposes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts tied to the extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, alongside $2 trillion in federal spending cuts over a decade. These measures are designed to overhaul immigration, defense, energy, and tax policies.

• Internal Party Dynamics: Speaker Mike Johnson faced challenges from within his party, with some Republicans initially resistant to the proposal. However, strategic negotiations and last-minute votes, including intervention from President Trump, secured the passage of the bill. Claudia Grisales, NPR's congressional correspondent, notes, “We saw a lot of those that were worried about the spending as holdouts at the beginning of the day… they were facing a very tight margin and could only lose perhaps one member” (03:56).

• Impact on Medicaid: One of the controversial aspects of the budget is the potential cuts to Medicaid, which could affect over 70 million Americans relying on this health insurance program. This remains a critical issue that Republicans need to address in the coming weeks.

Steve Inskeep underscores the magnitude of the proposed changes, stating, “These unbelievably large numbers are over the course of a decade, but they're still pretty big on an annual basis” (03:56), highlighting the internal conflicts between the party's right-wing factions and moderates.

Quote: “We are going to deliver the American first agenda. We're going to deliver all of it, not just parts of it. And this is the first step in that process.” – Representative Tim Burchett (02:37)

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2. White House and Elon Musk’s Overreach in Federal Agencies

Timestamp: 05:10 – 09:51

The second major story examines the contentious involvement of Elon Musk in federal government operations. President Trump convenes his first Cabinet meeting since taking office, amidst reports that Musk has been attempting to influence federal employees, leading to confusion and resistance within agencies.

Key Points:

• Musk’s Influence and White House Denials: Despite claims by Musk that he is directing federal employees, the White House denies any official authority granted to him. Stephen Fowler explains the mismatch between Musk’s directives and actual government policies, “There's a Venn diagram of what Elon Musk says and does and posts… and that Venn diagram has very little overlap right now” (06:36).

• Conflicting Directives: An incident involving a mass email to federal employees illustrates the discord. Musk advocated for employees to report their weekly activities, but the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) declared such requests optional. This led to mixed responses from agencies, with some instructing employees to comply and others advising them to ignore the emails.

• Cabinet Meeting Tensions: The upcoming Cabinet meeting is poised to address these conflicts, serving as a platform to mediate the strained relationship between Musk’s initiatives and the federal agencies’ adherence to established protocols.

• Resignations and Legal Challenges: The episode highlights significant fallout, including nearly two dozen resignations from the US Doge Service (USDS), a precursor to Musk’s government initiatives, as employees refuse to compromise core government systems. Additionally, the Merit Systems Protection Board has issued a stay on the firing of six probationary employees, reflecting the ongoing legal disputes over Musk’s actions.

Quote: “This was a pretty great example where Elon Musk's preference is not government policy, is not what the government does in practice.” – Stephen Fowler (07:16)

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3. The Struggle Against Bird Flu in the Poultry Industry

Timestamp: 09:51 – 13:02

The final segment focuses on the severe bird flu outbreak impacting the United States' poultry industry. Host Kate Wells reports on the escalating crisis, featuring insights from industry leaders and health experts.

Key Points:

• Human Impact: The CDC reports a low risk to humans, with the first death from bird flu occurring last month and additional hospitalizations in Wyoming and Ohio. However, the primary devastation is within the poultry sector.

• Economic and Emotional Toll: Greg Herbrook, CEO of Herbrook's Poultry Ranch, discusses the alarming loss of six and a half million chickens across multiple sites, emphasizing the mental strain on workers: “The mental toll on our team of dealing with that many dead chickens is just, I mean, you can’t imagine” (10:37).

• Ineffective Containment Measures: Traditional methods like the stamping out protocol—immediately culling infected flocks and extensive sanitization—have proven insufficient against this resilient strain of bird flu. The virus has mutated, now affecting over 40 species of mammals, making containment increasingly challenging.

• Vaccination Debate: David Swain, a former USDA official and avian influenza expert, advocates for vaccinating poultry as a necessary step to control the virus and reduce the risk of human infection. However, opposition arises from poultry farmers who fear that vaccination could jeopardize international trade by making U.S. meat products less desirable due to potential undetected virus spread.

Quote: “It’s time for the US to try vaccinating poultry for bird flu. It’s a good tool not just to reduce the virus in animals but also to reduce chances for human infection.” – David Swain, avian influenza expert (12:17)

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Conclusion

The February 26 episode of Up First from NPR provides a comprehensive overview of critical national issues, from high-stakes political maneuvers in the House budget plan and the intricate power struggles involving Elon Musk within federal agencies, to the urgent public health crisis posed by bird flu in the poultry industry. By featuring in-depth reporting and firsthand quotes, the episode ensures listeners are well-informed about the pressing matters shaping the nation.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• “We are going to deliver the American first agenda… and this is the first step in that process.” – Representative Tim Burchett (02:37)
• “This was a pretty great example where Elon Musk's preference is not government policy… the government works.” – Stephen Fowler (07:16)
• “It’s time for the US to try vaccinating poultry for bird flu… to reduce chances for human infection.” – David Swain (12:17)

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This summary captures the essence of the February 26, 2025 episode of Up First from NPR, providing a detailed and engaging overview of the key topics discussed.

Transcript

[Layla Faldid]

House Republicans barely passed a budget plan, making room for tax cuts and cuts to programs like Medicaid.

[Steve Inskeep]

Some Republicans hope to avoid the spending cuts later. And Democrats all voted no. So how do they work out the details?

[Layla Faldid]

I'm Layla Faldid. That's Steve Inskeep. And this is up first from NPR News. The president holds a Cabinet meeting today and will bring along an aide. The the White House insists Elon Musk is not in charge of anything, and some departments ignored his most recent order. So who is making decisions?

[Steve Inskeep]

Also, egg farmers say they're losing the battle against bird flu.

[Stephen Fowler]

The mental toll on our team of dealing with that many dead chickens is just, I mean, you can't imagine why.

[Steve Inskeep]

Is the outbreak so hard to contain? Stay with us. We've got the news. You need to start foreign.

[Stephen Fowler]

This message comes from NPR sponsor Saatva Founder and CEO Ron Rudson shares the story of how he got started Creating.

[Ron Rudson]

Saatva in 2007, 2008, I went out and I bought the most popular luxury mattresses. I tore them apart and I realized based on the raw materials, cost and the analysis that I had done that I was able to sell that level mattress, but with a very affordable price.

[Stephen Fowler]

To learn more, go to saatva.com NPR.

[Caroline Levitt]

This message comes from PEMCO Mutual Insurance Company. You know that moment when things take an unexpected turn and you get that sudden sinking feeling that maybe it could have been avoided? Pemco Insurance wants to help you avoid that feeling by sharing prevention tips that empower you to prevent some of life's preventable pitfalls. Because Pemco's commitment to their customers goes beyond the moment of acclaim. It's about being with their customers every day. [e-mail] prevention support for this podcast and the following message come from jitasa, providing bookkeeping, accounting and CFO services exclusively to the nonprofit sector. Jitasa is committed to serving nonprofits who make the world a better place. J I T A S A dot.

[Steve Inskeep]

Com House Republicans last night began a long process of trying to reshape the government to their liking.

[Layla Faldid]

Republicans passed a budget plan without a single vote to spare. Speaker Mike Johnson had a problem with some lawmakers reluctant to sign on until they switched at the last moment.

[Stephen Fowler]

We have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we are going to deliver the American first agenda. We're going to deliver all of it, not just parts of it. And this is the first step in that process.

[Layla Faldid]

Now, the spending cuts in this budget blueprint are different from the ones announced so far by Elon Musk's Department of Government affairs efficiency. For one thing, the cuts are big. For another, they would be legal assuming Congress follows through on the rest of a very long process.

[Steve Inskeep]

NPR congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales has covered that process in the past, is covering it once again. Good morning.

[Claudia Grisales]

Good morning, Steve.

[Steve Inskeep]

Okay, so I'm thinking this through. Democrats all voted no, said they were just gross spending cuts. Some Republicans were worried about this, also worried about too much borrowing, they said still. So what's the final package say?

[Claudia Grisales]

So lots of sweeping changes if Republicans can get to the finish line with the final product. But the framework that was passed last night spells out plans for new immigration, defense, energy and tax policy. And there's a lot of big numbers here. For one, it calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that's tied to an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts that are expiring at the end of the year. And then campaign promises are also included in this plan that Trump made about elim taxes on tips. It also calls for $2 trillion in cuts to federal spending that would dramatically reshape the federal budget numbers that help fuel a lot of internal disagreement for the party.

[Steve Inskeep]

Yeah, and I guess we should mention that's over the course of 10 years. These unbelievably large numbers are over the course of a decade, but they're still pretty big on an annual basis. It sounds like the party's right wing ultimately caused more trouble than the more moderate wings.

[Claudia Grisales]

Exactly. We saw a lot of those that were worried about the spending as holdout at the beginning of the day. That includes Representative Warren Davidson of Ohio, Victoria Spartz of Indiana and Tim Burchett of Tennessee. But they all flipped in the end. They were facing the party was facing a very tight margin in could only lose perhaps one member. That was it. So it's set up this chaotic vote that was on it was off and back on again in a matter of 10 minutes. But members such as Burchett switched to a yes after a phone call with Trump. So in the end, Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie was the only no. He's a loyal fiscal hawk who was opposed to the trillions in new spending. The spending cut plans kept the other fiscal hawks in line. But there's still remaining concerns about the potential to cuts to Medicaid which could impact more than 70 million Americans who depend on this health insurance. And that's something Republicans will have to iron out in the coming weeks.

[Steve Inskeep]

Claudia, I just want to underline the process here as Layla mentioned, whatever Elon Musk has done is being challenged in court in many cases. Seems to be illegal, as we've reported, has hardly saved any money in the larger sense. But this is like real numbers through a legal process. So what comes next in that process?

[Claudia Grisales]

Right. This kicks off a process. It's known as reconciliation. It's an obscure budget tool, but it lets Republicans overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. Next steps involve actually writing the text for the budget that will become law. Last night was supposed to be the easy part, but it took them weeks to get here. So we'll see if they can seal the deal in the coming weeks.

[Steve Inskeep]

Got to reconcile it with what's happening in the Senate. And you have all these other appropriations bills and so forth to come. Claudia, thanks so much.

[Claudia Grisales]

Thank you.

[Steve Inskeep]

NPR's Claudia Gosadis. All right. Today the president holds his first meeting with his Cabinet secretaries since taking office.

[Layla Faldid]

Yeah. Also expected to show up special government employee Elon Musk. He has been telling federal employees what to do, though the White House denies he's in charge of anything. And some Cabinet secretaries have asserted their own authority over agencies.

[Steve Inskeep]

NPR's Stephen Fowler is covering all this. Stephen, good morning.

[Stephen Fowler]

Good morning.

[Steve Inskeep]

So are all the people around the president on the same page?

[Stephen Fowler]

Well, the White House says everyone is working as a team, but there's a few people claiming to be captain here, especially around this attempted restructuring of the federal government. Think of it this way, Steve. There's a Venn diagram of what Elon Musk says and does and posts what the government has said in many court cases challenging Musk's decrees and what federal agencies have actually done. And that Venn diagram has very little overlap right now.

[Steve Inskeep]

Okay. And I guess an example of that would be this email over the weekend. It appeared over the weekend in Everybody's mailboxes like 2 million federal employees is what I mean, asking them to just explain what they're doing with their time or what they did last week. How much overlap do you see there in that Venn diagram?

[Stephen Fowler]

This is a pretty great example where Elon Musk's preference is not government policy, is not what the government does in practice. Musk was repeatedly posting on the platform that he owns, this threat of basically respond or lose your job. But he's not the boss of anyone within the federal government. And, and for the purposes of this request, neither is the agency that sent the email, the Office of Personnel Management. In fact, OPM previously noted in a privacy assessment, these government wide emails are totally optional. To respond to. And after some agencies told their people to ignore the request, other people said do it. OPM muddied the water even more with a memo that had more contradictory guidance about how to respond and or not respond and or maybe punish employees who didn't. Did you get all that?

[Steve Inskeep]

No, I didn't. But please go on, Go on.

[Stephen Fowler]

Well, so to that point, yesterday, White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt wrapped it all up with this sort of walk back into some semblance of harmony.

[Kate Wells]

So again, the agency heads will determine the best practices for their employees at their specific agencies. Again, this was an idea that Elon come up with. Doge worked with OPM to actually implement the idea, and the secretaries are responsible for their specific workforce.

[Stephen Fowler]

Now, Levitt did say that a million workers responded by the deadline, but we just don't know what that means or what comes next for them there.

[Steve Inskeep]

I appreciate hearing that Elon came up with the idea, according to the White House spokesperson there, because we hear then that a CEO did this thing that, as I understand it, business people will sometimes do. They'll send out a memo like that to everybody. But this is very different than the government has set up and the government works. So where does this go from here?

[Stephen Fowler]

Well, this Cabinet meeting is going to be worth watching because it's one of the first major public sources of tension between the Trump administration and the implementation of Musk's Doge effort. But there's some other simmering conflicts in the background. Many of the actions that Musk and Doge have taken are in court after running afoul of very particular and explicit set of rules and laws that govern the government. And on the same day the White House acknowledged someone else is nominally running the US Doge service. Nearly two dozen people who worked for the precursor USDS say they're quitting instead of using their skills to, quote, compromise core government systems. Finally, as we await more details about a planned reduction in force of the remaining workforce, last night the Merit Systems Protection Board issued a stay on the firing of six probationary employees.

[Steve Inskeep]

Wow. Hard to keep track of it all, but we'll do the best we can. Npr, Stephen Fowler, thanks so much.

[Stephen Fowler]

Thank you.

[Steve Inskeep]

Bird flu has been spreading in the United States.

[Layla Faldid]

Yeah, the first person to die from bird flu was reported last month, and two people were recently hospitalized in Wyoming and Ohio. The CDC still says the risk to humans is low. But inside the poultry industry, there's a fight brewing over how to take the battle against bird flu to the next level.

[Steve Inskeep]

Kate Wells of Michigan Public and KFF Health News is reporting on all this. Kate, good morning.

[Kate Wells]

Good morning.

[Steve Inskeep]

Okay, so what are you hearing from egg farmers here?

[Kate Wells]

Yeah, they say that they are just flat out losing this battle against bird flu. At this point, they are desperate for new tools. At this point, they say what they have been doing to try to contain the outbreak just is not working. I talked with Greg Herbrook. He's the CEO of Herbrook's Poultry Ranch. It's one of the largest egg producers in the US and in April, three of his sites got hit with bird flu, one right after the other, and he ended up having to kill six and a half million chickens.

[Steve Inskeep]

Wow.

[Stephen Fowler]

The mental toll on our team of dealing with that many dead chickens is just. I mean, you can't imagine it.

[Kate Wells]

So he used the usda, like, tried and true playbook here. It's the stamping out method right after detection, like, within 24 to 48 hours, the whole flock has to be culled. There's a bunch of cleaning and sanitizing. And this is to prevent the birds from dying really painful, grisly deaths. But it's also to try to keep the virus from spreading even further. And this works like in the 2014 and 202015 outbreak. Ever since then, pharmacists have put in tens of millions of dollars in biosecurity, like employees showering in and out lasers that can stop potentially infected wild birds from landing. But none of it is working this time.

[Steve Inskeep]

Why?

[Kate Wells]

Well, so flu viruses are constantly evolving, right? And this particular strain of the virus has gotten so good at infecting new species, not just wild birds that migrate, but also more than 40 species of mammals. You've heard about dairy cows, but, you know, also dolph rats, skunks. And by this point, bird flu is just too embedded in our environment for us to just stamp it out. I also talked with David Swain. He is a former USDA official. He's one of the leading avian influenza experts. And he says, look, it's time for the US to try vaccinating poultry for bird flu. He says this is good as a tool not just to reduce the virus in animals. Here's Swain.

[Layla Faldid]

But also a tool that reduces chances for human infection.

[Kate Wells]

But egg producers, they will need the green light from the federal government before they can try this.

[Steve Inskeep]

What about poultry farmers that raise chicken for meat?

[Kate Wells]

Well, so they are very against this vaccination plan because they could lose billions of dollars a year in trade deals if the US does start vaccinating poultry. And that's because a lot of countries, they don't want to buy meat from a country that is vaccinating any chickens. Those countries are worried that the vaccine can mask symptoms in birds and that the virus could maybe get borders in that meet undetected. But the pressure on the US Government to do something new is clearly growing.

[Steve Inskeep]

Kate, thanks so much. Really appreciate the reporting.

[Kate Wells]

Thank you.

[Steve Inskeep]

That's Kate Wells with Michigan Public and KFF Health News. And that's our first for this Wednesday, February 26th. I'm Steve Inskeep.

[Layla Faldid]

And I'm Layla Falden. Make your next listen. Consider this the team behind NPR's All Things Considered goes deep into a single news story in just 15 minutes. Listen now on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Steve Inskeep]

Today's up first was edited by Jason Breslow, Padmendarama, Carrie Feible, Janaya Williams and Alice Wolfley. It was produced by Ziad Buch, Nia Dumas and Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott. Our technical director is Carly Strange. Paige Waterhouse doesn't get a no credit for Paige today. Not today. Okay, fine.

[Layla Faldid]

Page Waterhouse.

[Steve Inskeep]

Okay, fine. Just add a line tomorrow.

[Layla Faldid]

She's shadowing. She's hanging out.

[Steve Inskeep]

Shadowing. She's a shadow today. She'll be her real self tomorrow. Join us again tomorrow with Paige.

[Stephen Fowler]

This message comes from NPR sponsor SAATVA Founder and CEO Ron Rutson shares the experience they hope to create in their viewing rooms.

[Ron Rudson]

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[Stephen Fowler]

To learn more, go to saatva.com NPR.

[Caroline Levitt]

This message comes from Warby Parker. If you wear glasses, you know how hard it is to find the perfect pair. But step into a Warby Parker store and you'll see it doesn't have to be. Find a Warby Parker store near [e-mail] retail.