Booker, Jeffries hold sit-in on Capitol steps, slam Trump budget plan | The Excerpt
On Monday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: Congress will take up the fiscal 2026 budget proposal when lawmakers return to session Monday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was pressed Sunday by NBC News over child U.S. citizens removed from the country. Paste BN Reporter Andrea Riquier explains how home renovation costs will climb amid new tariffs. President Donald Trump said his meeting in Rome with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "went well." Paste BN National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise talks about a brood of cicadas first recorded by the pilgrims.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Monday, April 28th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today Congress returns to take on a new budget plus what tariffs mean for the home renovation business and get ready for a brood of cicadas first recorded by the Pilgrims.
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Democratic Senator Cory Booker and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries launched a live-streamed appeal from the steps of the U.S. Capitol yesterday. The pair demonstrated against Republican-backed budget plans and addressed viewers about the Trump administration's proposed budget that they said would slash programs and housing, healthcare, and education that help millions of Americans while expanding tax breaks for the wealthiest.
Hakeem Jeffries:
This is a time to choose and we either going to choose the side of the American people or we're going to choose this cruel budget that Republicans are trying to jam down the throats of the American people.
Taylor Wilson:
That was Hakeem Jeffries. Congress will take up the fiscal 2026 budget proposal when lawmakers return to session today after a 2-week recess. The administration's plan would cut billions from programs that support childcare, health research, education, and housing according to The New York Times, which obtained preliminary budget documents. Trump has pushed for shrinking the federal government that he says spends too much money on programs, contracts, and grants that do not promote the interests of the American people.
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Secretary of State Marco Rubio said three young children aged two, four, and seven were all U.S. citizens and removed from the country in recent weeks were not deported, but went with their mothers to Honduras. The children from two different families were put on a flight to the Central American country with their mothers last week according to multiple outlets. The four-year-old has stage four cancer, and it was without access to medication or contact with doctors, The Washington Post and The Associated Press reported. Rubio told NBC News the children could return if someone here wants to assume them.
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As new tariffs take effect, home renovation costs are set to climb. I spoke with Paste BN reporter Andrea Riquier, about what might be next for a corner of the economy that had been booming in recent years. Andrea, how are you today?
Andrea Riquier:
I'm doing well. Thanks for having me, Taylor.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, thanks for hopping on. So just tell us first, if you would, before we get to some of this kind of tariff impact. We've actually seen several years of growth in the remodeling business.
Andrea Riquier:
Yeah, really gangbusters growth. If you remember back to 2020 when everybody was stuck at home because of the pandemic that started in the springtime, they had the chance to look around their surroundings and realize what they wanted to do differently with their homes. In many cases, they also had to do things differently because they needed to make a workspace, a homeschooling space, a home gym, things like that. I'm actually looking at some of these numbers right now, and I mean, really ridiculous growth, like 10%, 12%, 19% through 2021, and then 25%, 27% year-over-year growth through 2022. It's been a lot for that industry. And we're talking about home design, home remodeling, so anything from countertops to toilets to sinks to rugs, wallpaper, textiles, stuff like that.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, so fast-forward to this moment, Andrea, what are some of the concerns you're hearing from folks in the business? And I guess how much do they estimate remodeling costs will now go up amid tariff tensions?
Andrea Riquier:
So the big problem is that nobody knows anything. Everybody is really anxious and a little nervous. A lot of the vendors who bring supplies to the end users, the contractors and designers and architects and things like that don't know what to expect because tariffs are a moving target. As you probably know, countries are right now asking for exemptions or negotiating. There's all kinds of carve-outs within country designations. Some products are going to be exempt. So there's a lot of fear on the part of the people who interact with the supply chain. And then there's also a lot of concern that consumers are not going to be able to weather this so well. A lot of people are a little worried about their jobs or they might not know what is going to happen in the economy, and it might just feel like taking on a big multi-thousand dollar project, this is not the time for that.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, can you just help us understand folks might be surprised just how global some of these products are, right, Andrea, and are there certain products in particular that I guess need this global market more than others?
Andrea Riquier:
Very hard to say. As you probably have heard from discussions of tariffs in other industries, it's really hard to unpack. Some parts of a particular product might be made in one country, made in another country, assembled in a third country, and so on. There are some things that are very easy to trace. For example, in high-end design, there's marble from Italy, there's expensive woods from Europe. That's when you're talking about real sort of pure materials that go into the home design process. But again, appliances, countertops, cabinets. I even talked to one roofer who said, "Well, asphalt is the primary type of roof that the majority of American homes have, and that's domestic. But the fasteners of those shingles to the roof are made in China."
Taylor Wilson:
Were there already some supply chain adjustments or changes in place in recent years? Especially in the wake of COVID, I remember we heard the word supply chain, supply chain, supply chain over and over again.
Andrea Riquier:
Yeah, you remember right. The people that I talked to said even earlier than that because of the tariffs that were put on particularly China in the first Trump administration. So I've been hearing we took out all the low-hanging fruit already, and when those supply chain snarls happened that you were mentioning during the pandemic, they tried to get as lean as possible, they tried to do workarounds. A lot of them did invest in logistics and supply chain consultants and got some help with that. But they kind of feel like they've done all this work already and it's not like they're importing from places where they have other options.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, you mentioned consumers, and I guess we are a little bit in wait-and-see mode still, but are people ordering major remodeling projects in this moment?
Andrea Riquier:
Some of the designers that I talked to said they've had cancellations, they've had people pull back, they're having fewer inquiries than before. To some extent, this is a nice-to-have kind of service or shopping experience to have rather than a need-to-have. And some of the thinking is that consumers are going to just focus on those things that they need. If they need a new roof, maybe spend on that as opposed to, I'd really like to upgrade the kitchen or whatever it may be.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, folks can find this full story with a link in today's show notes. Paste BN reporter Andrea Riquier. Thank you as always.
Andrea Riquier:
Thank you Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
President Donald Trump said his meeting in Rome with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went well while expressing disappointment with Russian President Vladimir Putin's attacks on Ukraine urging him to sign a peace deal.
President Trump:
I want to see what happens with respect to Russia because Russia, I had been surprised and disappointed, very disappointed that they did the bombing of those places after discussions.
Taylor Wilson:
Trump met with Zelenskyy on the sidelines of Pope Francis' funeral over the weekend. Trump said Zelenskyy told him he needs more weapons, but he's been saying that for three years. Trump's meeting came after his envoy. Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday as U.S. officials pressed to halt the three-year conflict and warned they could walk away from the peace talks.
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A brood of cicadas first recorded by the Pilgrims is emerging once again. I spoke with Paste BN national correspondent Elizabeth Weise to learn more. Welcome back, Beth.
Elizabeth Weise:
Happy to be here.
Taylor Wilson:
So let's talk cicadas today. What is Brood XIV, also known as the Pilgrim's Brood? Let's start there.
Elizabeth Weise:
So we're talking periodical cicadas. These are the cicadas that have either 13 or 17 year life cycles. This in fact is a group that has a 17-year life cycle, and they're called the Pilgrim's Brood because they were first described by people from England who had come to Plymouth Colony in the United States in 1634 by William Bradford, who was the second governor of the colony. And he wrote in his journal, "Such a quantity of a great store of flies, which came out of holes in the ground and ate the green things and made such a constant yelling noise has made all the woods ring with them and ready to deaf the hearers." This type of periodical cicada does not exist in Europe.
Taylor Wilson:
You mentioned these are periodical cicadas, such a fascinating animal. Can you just refresh us on this special life cycle and just how the science works with these?
Elizabeth Weise:
They're just so amazing, really when you think about it. The mother cicada lays an egg, the egg hatches, they are then called nymphs. They're these little tiny things that attach themselves to tree bark. And then they fall down to the ground and they dig down. They can dig down two feet. And mind you, these things are little. They go down 2 feet and then they just stay put for 13 years or 17 years. They attach themselves to a tree root. They have a little mouthpiece called a rostrum that sucks liquid out of the tree roots. And they just sit there kind of growing slowly over the course of years. And then finally, and exactly how they know when it's time to come up, I mean, they know when it gets warmer, but the periodicity is fascinating, they all at the same time rise up out of the ground as cicadas, and then they fly around for a couple of weeks, they mate, they lay more eggs and then they die. And we are talking millions and millions and millions of them.
Taylor Wilson:
It is indeed fascinating. So where and when is this Pilgrim's Brood beginning to emerge this spring?
Elizabeth Weise:
So in the United States, this type of cicada only exists east of the Mississippi. Brood XIV, the Pilgrim's Brood, it's the second-largest periodical cicada brood in the U.S. It will be in 13 states, only bits and pieces of these states, because they only come up where there are forests and trees for them to live on. A good portion of the Eastern Coast will be seeing cicadas in at least some places.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. And I know we've talked cicadas before and I've asked you should folks be worried at all, and I'll ask the same question about this brood. And can folks take any precautions, I guess, ahead of the expected arrival?
Elizabeth Weise:
These things will not hurt you. They do not bite. They do not pinch. They're not dangerous. They don't even eat plants because they don't eat anything that's green, leafy. All they do is they will attach and suck some of the juice out of a plant. If you have a newly planted tree that you're especially worried about, you can go and buy a mesh that goes over that to protect them, but a full-grown tree, they're not going to harm. They might prune off little branches that might die off. When they die, I mean, you get big piles of them, and they actually are great compost. They rot pretty quickly, [inaudible 00:11:41] they don't smell great while they're rotting, but they rot pretty quickly and they do make wonderful mulch.
But yeah, they're not dangerous. They won't hurt you. They won't hurt your pets. Pets eat them. Don't try to spray for them. I mean, first off, because it does absolutely no good because they fly. So you could spray every square inch of your garden and it wouldn't matter because new ones would fly in. And if you kill the cicadas that are there with poison and they die, then pets can eat them or wild animals can eat them and then you've killed a pet or a wild animal.
Taylor Wilson:
You mentioned Beth in this piece that ordinary people can get involved with mapping this brood this spring. What can you tell us about that?
Elizabeth Weise:
Yeah, this is actually quite cool. So there's this app called Cicada Safari. Great thing to do with your kids. It is a way to report periodical cicada emergences. You take a picture of it, you upload it to the app. There's a bunch of entomologists who are looking at what's coming in because they can identify by where that cicada is, which brood it is, and then they can create very detailed maps of where these cicada broods live. And that's something that we haven't had before. I mean, we have kind of general ones, but down to the square mile, we don't have that. And so the first one that they did this in a major way was Brood 10 in 2021 and they actually got a really great map. And so they're hoping for the same this year.
Taylor Wilson:
Awesome. And when will cicadas next appear after this event?
Elizabeth Weise:
So after this one, we've got a bit of a break, well, if you're on the East Coast. If you're on the West Coast, you're not going to see them at all. The next brood after this comes out in 2028. So next year there's no big broods coming.
Taylor Wilson:
Elizabeth Weise is a national correspondent with Paste BN. Thanks, Beth.
Elizabeth Weise:
Always happy to be here.
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Taylor Wilson:
And later today, a new episode of Forum hosted by Michael McCarter.
Michael McCarter:
What do you think of President Trump's leadership in the first 100 days? You can hear what listeners and readers like you are feeling about this. Tune into Forum, publishing today at 4:00 PM Eastern Time on this feed.
Taylor Wilson:
You can find more views and conversations at usatoday.com/forum.
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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.