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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump privately pressed Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., during a phone call on Wednesday to add two additional proposals to the massive package for his agenda: raising the tax rate on the highest earners and closing the so-called carried interest loophole, according to a Republican leadership source as well as two other GOP sources familiar with the call.

The 11th-hour requests from Trump add a new wrinkle to an already complicated process for Republican lawmakers as they desperately try to find enough savings for the bill, which seeks to extend the president’s 2017 tax cuts, boost funding for immigration enforcement and defense, and raise the debt limit.

The White House has kicked around the idea of hiking the top tax rate for the wealthiest Americans for the past few months, and it now believes it is close to finalizing a topline number for the bill, according to one of the GOP sources familiar with the call.

The other GOP source familiar told NBC News that Trump is considering allowing the rate on individuals making $2.5 million or more annually to revert from 37% to the pre-2017 39.6% as a way to help pay for middle and working class tax cuts and protect Medicaid.

 Punchbowl News was first to report the Trump-Johnson call.

While Republicans have previously floated the idea of allowing tax rates to go up on top earners when major parts of the 2017 tax law expire at the end of this year, GOP leaders have been resistant to a tax hike on the wealthy, traditionally anathema within the party. But with Trump pushing Johnson to reverse course, and House Republicans struggling to make the math work for their massive bill, leadership is now reconsidering its options.

One senior House Republican closely involved in the negotiations confirmed to NBC News that there has been revived talk inside the House GOP conference over the last 24 hours about potentially allowing the top tax rate to go up, as well as closing the carried interest loophole.

When asked how seriously these new proposals are being taken, the House Republican told NBC News: “At this point we have to find the savings so I think everything is being taken under consideration.”

The tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee is planning to mark up its portion of the reconciliation bill next week, but is still sorting through a number of thorny issues, such as how to raise the cap on the state and local tax deduction, or SALT. House GOP leaders are aiming to pass the final package on the floor before Memorial Day, which is an ambitious timeline.

Bitcoin on Thursday hit its highest level since February, climbing back above the key $100,000 level.

The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by nearly 5% at $100,881.90, according to Coin Metrics.

The move began overnight after President Donald Trump first teased an announcement between the U.S. and the United Kingdom on trade. Bitcoin continued its climb and touched $100,000 as Trump revealed a broad outline of the agreement on Thursday morning. Stocks also rallied.

“Bitcoin has not only reclaimed $100,000 for the first time in three months but it’s also reaffirmed its status as the ultimate bouncebackability asset as the prospects for U.S. trade deals brighten,” said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto exchange Nexo.

The recent market uncertainty has been a boon for bitcoin — and it could continue to lift the flagship crypto with investors beginning to doubt the safe-haven status of the U.S. Although the Trump administration has walked back some of its aggressive rhetoric on tariffs, investors are still looking for clarity on what trade policy will be.

“Bitcoin remains buttressed by a pro-crypto Trump administration along with hungry buying from spot-ETF investors … while its outperformance versus U.S. equity benchmarks in 2025 highlights its resilience and safe haven status,” Trenchev said.

“Expect bitcoin’s resilience to be tested further in an uncertain and volatile global macro and geopolitical environment,” he added. “Look no further than rising tensions between India and Pakistan, which risk escalating into a full blown conflict. Meanwhile we have a Federal Reserve in no rush to cut rates and equally concerned about unemployment and inflation.”

Stocks rose broadly, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up more than 500 points. Coinbase advanced more than 5%, and Strategy gained nearly 7%.

Other cryptocurrencies, which have struggled to keep pace with bitcoin this year, rallied. Ether jumped 13%, while the token tied to Solana gained 9% and dogecoin rose 11%.

Since Trump introduced the tariff policy in early April that rocked markets for several weeks, bitcoin is up more than 16%. In the same period, spot gold has gained nearly 6% while the S&P 500 marginally higher.

Bitcoin isn’t out of the woods, however, until it tops its January high of about $109,350, and the cryptocurrency could languish in its post-election trading range — between $70,000 and $109,000 — for another two months, Trenchev said.

Still, he added, “the retaking of $100,000 must go down as one of bitcoin’s more formidable feats and is a reminder that buying peak fear — just last month Bitcoin was languishing around $74,000 — can be exceptionally lucrative.” 

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s fight against the Houthis never dealt a crippling blow to the militant group, but it has cost America more than $1 billion since March, including the thousands of bombs and missiles used in strikes, along with seven drones shot down and two fighter jets that sank, according to two U.S. officials briefed on the cost. 

After weeks of operations by the United States, the Houthis seemed to still be able to strike outside Yemen, launching an attack that targeted Israel’s main international airport just this week.  But the surprise deal that Trump announced Tuesday, in which the U.S. would suspend strikes and other operations against the Iran-backed Houthis in exchange for the group halting its attacks on U.S. ships, might be enough to declare mission accomplished, for now. 

Details about the deal have been sparse. It is still unclear how it was made, how long it might last and what it meant in the long term for a conflict that began weeks after Hamas — which, like the Houthis, is backed by Iran — attacked Israel in October 2023.

What is known is that the agreement, which was brokered in part through the Omani government, according to two U.S. officials, pertains only to U.S. ships. The Houthis are expected to continue firing on Israel and on other countries’ ships. 

“The administration was clearly looking for an off-ramp for this campaign against the Houthis,” said one U.S. official familiar with the military operations against the Houthis.

The Defense Department did not immediately comment.

Success in the fight since March was hard to measure: U.S. drones sent to determine if targets had been hit were often shot down by the Houthis and there were no American forces on the ground in Yemen who could assess the effectiveness of the campaign for the Pentagon, the official said.

But the effort under Trump came at great cost and was depleting American stockpiles, the two U.S. officials said. 

Since March 15, when the Trump administration announced its current campaign against the Houthis, known as Operation Rough Rider, the Pentagon has expended roughly 2,000 bombs and missiles worth more than $775 million against the group, according to the two U.S. officials briefed on the cost. That includes hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs which can cost $85,000 each, at least 75 Tomahawks which run about $1.9 million each, at least 20 AGM 158 air launched cruise missiles at about $1.5 million per missile, and many other munitions.  

The U.S. also spent at least $10 million moving at least two Patriot missile defense systems and military supplies to sustain the systems to the region by ship, according to a U.S. military tally provided to NBC News. That does not include the cost of equipment it moved by air. During congressional testimony last month, Adm. Sam Paparo, who heads U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said the military used 73 C-17 flights in moving a single Patriot air defense system from his region to the Middle East. A C-17 costs about $27,000 per hour to fly, and the U.S. military moved two Patriot systems to the region. 

But there was mounting concern that the Trump administration’s approach to fighting the Houthis would never be long term.

“Washington has little patience and a short attention span, and was unlikely to commit the resources and high-level attention necessary to see this campaign through to a meaningful outcome,” said Dana Stroul, who was the top policy official for the region at the Pentagon during the Biden administration.

If the agreement Trump announced Tuesday holds, it could allow the U.S. to justify suspending operations against the Houthis but it won’t likely change the reality that the Houthis can still be disruptive to shipping in the Red Sea. 

“The Houthis will stop shooting at U.S. ships for some period of time,” said Stroul, now the research director at the Washington Institute. “But they will not stop firing missiles at Israel, commercial shipping will not return, and nothing will change in the Yemen civil war,” she said.

Hesitation under Biden and Trump

After the Houthis began attacking international shipping in the Red Sea following the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023, the Biden administration began a campaign against the Houthis to help restore what is called “freedom of navigation” — the ability of ships to move unmolested by hostile forces. Those operations did little to degrade the group, critics of the Biden administration’s approach have said.

In March, Trump administration officials announced they would increase pressure on the group. A second aircraft carrier and its attendant ships were brought into the region; NBC News reported last month that a number of missile defense platforms, including the two Patriot mobile missile defense systems and a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, system, were also moved in. 

Under Trump, Army Gen. Michael ‘Erik’ Kurilla, who leads U.S. Central Command, was given wide-ranging authorities to go after the group. Under then-President Joe Biden, many of Kurilla’s plans to attack the Houthis had not been approved.

But there were divisions within the Trump administration over just how far the campaign against the Houthis should go. As NBC News has previously reported, Biden officials had put together a blueprint for decimating the Houthis that required a long-term commitment, and felt they were in a position to put that blueprint into action at the start of this year, but held off to avoid boxing in their successors, and gave the plans to the incoming Trump administration. 

While Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke publicly of their ambitions to decimate the Houthis, U.S. and foreign officials said privately they didn’t think Trump had the stomach or the long-term commitment required to get the job done.

Divisions within the administration about the campaign spilled into public view after Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat with multiple top officials. The published logs of the group chat showed Vice President JD Vance expressing concern that Trump did not know what he was getting into and suggesting the U.S. had no business deepening its role in the area. 

If the Houthis hold up their end of the deal, and refrain from attacking American ships, then it will be enough for the Trump administration to justify ending its role in the fight against the group, Stroul said. 

“Washington can send a ship through the Red Sea and claim freedom of navigation has been restored.”

The Trump administration terminated $1.81 billion in National Institutes of Health grants in less than 40 days, including $544 million in as-yet-unspent funds.

That’s according to an analysis published Thursday in JAMA, which relies on data from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System. 

The analysis offers the most comprehensive look to date at how much NIH funding has been slashed since the Trump administration kickstarted a massive effort to reduce what it sees as waste and inefficiency in federal spending. 

Some grants were temporarily reinstated due to court orders as new terminations were being issued, so the data is still in flux, said Michael Liu, an author of the study and a student at Harvard Medical School. Nevertheless, the HHS grant tracker is still the most accurate, real-time dataset available, he said. 

From Feb. 28 to April 8, the administration terminated nearly 700 grants across 24 NIH institutes and centers focused on subjects such as aging, cancer, child health, diabetes, mental health and neurological disorders.

“These cuts were not spread evenly,” Liu said. “Namely, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities was hit the hardest. About 30% of all of its funding was cut. That’s 10 times more than the average.”

President Donald Trump’s new budget proposal would eliminate all funding for the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities next year, and refers to the institute as “replete with DEI expenditures.” His executive order in January called for an end to programs focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.

The proposal also calls for an overall reduction in NIH funding, lowering next year’s budget to $27 billion — a roughly $18 billion cut that would eliminate gender-focused research and research on climate change. The administration plans to prioritize research on chronic disease and other epidemics.

Most of the terminated NIH grants so far had been allocated to research projects, but around 20% were early career grants for fellowships, training or career development. Larger grants were more likely to be terminated, according to the analysis, though it’s unclear from the data whether they were directly targeted. 

“These larger grants are usually funding big clinical trials and big research centers,” Liu said. “Closing the lights or stopping patients from receiving medications or interventions is potentially incredibly disruptive.”

Liu said the analysis also suggests that terminated grants were uniformly disruptive to public and private institutions.

Among grant recipients, Columbia University received the most terminations — 157 in total, according to the analysis. The Trump administration has targeted Columbia with funding cuts, citing “the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students” following large pro-Palestinian protests on campus. Columbia laid off 180 staff members this week who had been working on federal grants affected by the cuts.

“Columbia’s leadership continues discussions with the federal government in support of resuming activity on these research awards,” top university officials wrote in a letter to the Columbia community. “We are working on and planning for every eventuality, but the strain in the meantime, financially and on our research mission, is intense.”

Brad Arnold, lead singer of American rock band 3 Doors Down, has been diagnosed with stage four cancer and is cancelling the band’s upcoming tour, he announced in an Instagram post on Wednesday.

“I had been sick a couple of weeks ago and went to the hospital and got checked out, and actually got the diagnosis that I had clear cell renal carcinoma that had metastasized into my lung,” the 46-year-old rock vocalist said in a video. “It’s stage four, and that’s not real good.”

The band rose to fame in early 2000 when their hit song “Kryptonite” charted third on the Billboard Hot 100. They were set to tour this summer with fellow ’90s/2000s rockers Creed, Nickelback and Daughtry.

The “Here Without You” singer apologized for the cancelled tour, but assured fans he is not fearful of his diagnosis, relying on his strong faith.

“We serve a mighty God and he can overcome anything, so I have no fear,” Arnold said. “I really, sincerely am not scared of it at all.”

Scott Stapp, lead singer of Creed, commented on the post, “If anyone has the FAITH and STRENGTH to face this fight, it’s YOU brother. You and your family are in my prayers daily.”

The family of late country rock legend Charlie Daniels posted on Instagram in support of Arnold as well, who they refer to as a “dear friend” of the family. Daniels helped Arnold on his journey with sobriety and “saved his life — Brad’s words, not ours,” the family said.

“Today he shared his cancer diagnosis with the world, and we want to lift Brad up in prayer for healing,” the Daniels family wrote. “The best part is that he’s done the most important healing already, and that is his spiritual healing and his faith in the power of Jesus.”

With the rock community standing behind him, Arnold is also looking to his own music as he faces his diagnosis.

“Now, I believe “ITS NOT MY TIME” is really my song,” Arnold wrote in the caption of his post, referencing a 3 Doors Down track. “This’ll be a battle so we need our prayers warriors! Thank y’all for being the best fans in the world.”

Wildfires driven by climate change contribute to as many as thousands of annual deaths and billions of dollars in economic costs from wildfire smoke in the United States, according to a new study.

The paper, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment, found that from 2006 to 2020, climate change contributed to about 15,000 deaths from exposure to small particulate matter from wildfires and cost about $160 billion. The annual range of deaths was 130 to 5,100, the study showed, with the highest in states such as Oregon and California.

“We’re seeing a lot more of these wildfire smoke events,” said Nicholas Nassikas, a study author and a physician and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. So he and multidisciplinary team of researchers wanted to know: “What does it really mean in a changing environment for things like mortality, which is kind of the worst possible health outcome?”

Lisa Thompson, a professor at Emory University who studies air pollution and climate change and was not involved in the paper, said it is one of the first studies she has seen to isolate the effect of climate change on mortality. Looking at the impacts across time and space also made it unique, she said.

The paper’s researchers focused on deaths linked to exposure to fine particulate matter, or PM2.5 — the main concern from wildfire smoke.

These particles can lodge deep into lungs and trigger coughing and itchy eyes with short-term exposure. But longer term they can make existing health problems worse and lead to a range of chronic and deadly health issues. Children, pregnant people, the elderly and outdoor workers are among the most vulnerable. The Health Effects Institute estimated the pollutant caused 4 million deaths worldwide.

Evidence is emerging that PM2.5 from wildfire smoke is more toxic than other pollution sources. When wildfires encroach into cities, burning cars and other toxics-containing materials, it adds to the danger.

Numerous studies have tied human-caused climate change — caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas — to a growth in fires in North America. Global warming is increasing drought, especially in the West, and other extreme weather. Drier conditions suck moisture from plants, which act as fuel for fires. When drier vegetation and seasons are mixed with hotter temperatures, that increases the frequency, extent and severity of wildfires and the smoke they spew.

Findings dismaying but not surprising, scholar says

Jacob Bendix, professor emeritus of geography and environment at Syracuse University, said he was “dismayed” by the findings but not surprised.

“(T)hese numbers are really significant. I think there’s a tendency for people outside of the areas actually burning to see increasing fires as a distant inconvenience … This study drives home how far-reaching the impacts are,” said Bendix in an email. He wasn’t involved in the study.

The study’s authors drew on modeled and existing data to reach their findings. First, they sought to understand how much area burned by wildfires was attributable to climate change. They did that by analyzing the real climate conditions — heat and rain, for instance — when wildfires erupted from 2006 to 2020, and compared that to a scenario where weather measurements would be different without climate change.

From there, they estimated the levels of PM2.5 from wildfire smoke tied to climate change using the same approach. Lastly, integrating the current understanding of how particulate matter affects mortality based on published research, they quantified the number of deaths related to PM2.5 from wildfires and calculated their economic impact.

This framework showed that of 164,000 deaths related to wildfire-PM2.5 exposure from 2006 to 2020, 10% were attributable to climate change. The mortalities were 30% to 50% higher in some western states and counties.

Questions about the study’s conclusions

Marshall Burke, global environmental policy professor at Stanford University, said the evidence linking climate change to burned areas was “rock solid,” but the subsequent steps were harder.

“Linking burned area to smoke is trickier because you never know exactly which way the wind’s going to blow,” he said, and he wondered how the death estimates compared to fatalities tied to general air pollution.

Still, their approach was sensible and reasonable, Burke said.

Johns Hopkins University lecturer in climate and energy policy Patrick Brown said he had some concerns about the study. One was conceptual. The study acknowledges the power non-climate drivers have on wildfires, but it doesn’t give them proper weight, he said in an email.

Brown, who was not involved in the study, worries decision-makers could wrongly conclude that mitigating planet-warming carbon emissions is the only solution. “Yet in many regions, the more immediate life‑saving action may be fuel breaks, prescribed burns, ignition‑source regulation, public health efforts, etc.,” he said.

Land management practices such as prescribed burns can reduce wildfire fuel, Nassikas said. But ultimately, the study notes, the problem of deaths from wildfire smoke will only get worse without the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Part of the study is raising awareness,” he said. “And then once we kind of understand that … now what are the interventions that we can deploy at a personal level, at a community level, and then obviously at a larger level across the country and across the world?”

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