Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free

Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world

To grasp a party’s true values, study its budget. By that test, Donald Trump’s Republicans loathe science, medical research, victims of overseas disasters, food stamps, education for all age groups, healthcare for the poor and clean energy. Each are severely cut. On the other hand, they love the Pentagon, border security, the rich and allegedly those for whom the rich leave tips. They have no desire to reduce America’s ballooning deficit. What Trump wants enacted is the most anti-blue collar budget in memory. Call it Hunger Games 2025. It is an odd way of repaying their voters.

Some Republicans, like Josh Hawley, the rightwing Missouri senator, warn that this budget could “end any chance of us becoming a working-class party”. Steve Bannon, Maga’s original conceptualiser, says the Medicaid cuts will harm Trump’s base. “Maga’s on Medicaid because there’s not great jobs in this country,” says Bannon. The plutocracy is still running Capitol Hill, he adds. It goes against what Trump promised his base — a balanced budget that did not touch entitlements. Indeed, these were the only two fiscal vows he made during the campaign.

In practice, Republicans in the lower chamber have written a plutocratic blueprint. Their bill was temporarily defeated last Friday by a handful of conservative defectors who complained the draft did not cut spending on the poor enough. They wanted to slash Medicare further and end all clean energy incentives. But what they voted against contains most of their priorities. In addition to the renewed Trump tax cuts, the bill would raise the zero inheritance tax threshold to $30mn for a couple. It would also scrap the tax on gun silencers. These are not cuddly people. 

On the surface, it looks as if Elon Musk is out, while Bannon is still around. But rumours of a divorce between Trump and Musk are exaggerated. More likely is that they are taking a marital break. And to judge by the results so far, Musk’s libertarian fiscal instincts are prevailing over Bannon’s. 

The two agree on “deconstructing the administrative state”, Bannon’s original phrase that Musk operationalised with his so-called Department of Government Efficiency. But Musk is more ruthless in his libertarianism than Bannon is in his economic populism. Musk thinks most federal payouts are fraudulent and that he and other corporate titans are victims of the deep state. That is in spite of the $38bn his companies have received in subsidies and federal contracts. Trump’s budget suits Musk’s tastes. 

Bannon’s blue-collar agenda, on the other hand, takes rhetorical centre stage with Trump but a back seat when it comes to policy. Bannon and a handful of Maga Republicans are opposed to Trump’s tax cuts for the top brackets. He wants a 40 per cent tax on the highest earners. He also wants to regulate Musk and the other big AI titans. “A nail salon in Washington DC has more regulations than these four guys running with artificial intelligence,” Bannon says. But no AI regulation is in sight.

To be fair, some of Bannon’s agenda is going ahead. Trump’s prosecutors are squeezing Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and attempting to break up Alphabet. But tough settlements could conclude in a Trump shakedown rather than the Silicon Valley trustbusting Bannon wants. The vice-president, JD Vance, appears to side with the anti-monopolists yet is also a protégé of Peter Thiel, who champions a bizarre form of corporate monarchism. My bet is that any adverse ruling against Google or Meta would be a transaction opportunity for Trump. He has no consistent view on competition policy. 

On America’s core economic problems — inequality and the middle-class squeeze — Bannon talks a convincing game. But there are two glitches. The first is that he is a fan of cutting back the Internal Revenue Service, which collects taxes. Few things please Trump’s big donors more than the budget item that slashes IRS funding. Second, Bannon’s call for Trump to suspend habeas corpus so that at least 10mn illegal immigrants can summarily be deported seems likelier to hit home than his pro-middle class economics. Trump militantly agrees with Bannon’s dark side. He pays lip service to the light.  

Of course, whatever budget is passed by the House of Representatives may be amended in the Senate. But any changes would probably be marginal. People who share Musk’s interests are feeding those of needy Americans into the proverbial woodchipper. Could that potentially split Maga? By the end of Trump’s second hundred days, we will find out how much populist economics matter to Bannon and co. 

edward.luce@ft.com

The NBA’s parity era is officially here.

When the postseason’s conference finals begin Tuesday night, four different title droughts are on the line — meaning one of them is guaranteed to come to an end next month when the NBA Finals wrap.

Three of the teams remaining in the playoffs — the Indiana Pacers, the Oklahoma City Thunder, and the Minnesota Timberwolves — have never won a title in their current hometowns. And the fourth team — the New York Knicks — haven’t taken home a championship in more than half a century.

The New York Knicks have not taken the title since 1973, and it’s been more than 25 years since they reached the Finals. Oklahoma City hasn’t tasted the title series since 2012 — and if you count the achievements of the Seattle SuperSonics before the team moved to Oklahoma in 2008, then the Thunder are the most recent remaining franchise to win it all, with a title in 1979.

The Pacers were a powerhouse in the American Basketball Association in the early 1970s but haven’t won a ring since joining the NBA. The Timberwolves, founded in 1989, have never reached the Finals.

“It’s one of the most wide open years that we’ve seen,” Indiana head coach Rick Carlisle said after the Pacers’ series-clinching win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. “We’ve got to look at this thing as — just being very opportunistic.”

The NBA has long struggled with parity. Since the 1980s, one dynasty has often simply given way to another — from the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers to the Chicago Bulls to the Lakers again to the Miami Heat to the Golden State Warriors. In total, 23 of the NBA’s 78 champions have been back-to-back winners. Another 14 teams won a title a year after losing in the Finals.

But those numbers have plateaued since 2019, when the Toronto Raptors unseated the Golden State Warriors.

Pascal Siakam, a 31-year-old forward with the Pacers, got a taste of glory that year. That was his third season in the NBA, and Siakam assumed he’d reach the Finals again with the Raptors, he recalled earlier this month. But the Raptors weren’t able to repeat, and he was traded to the Pacers last year.

“I can sometimes sound like I’m trying to kill the party, where everyone wants to be excited and I’m just like, ‘Man, I want more,’” Siakam said. “We have a real opportunity, and we can’t take it for granted.”

Many of the remaining players are fresh faces, too. This is a Conference Finals round with no Steph Curry, no LeBron James, no Kevin Durant, no Anthony Davis or Russell Westbrook or James Harden.

Instead, the four teams are fronted by a younger generation of superstars: 28-year-old Jalen Brunson (New York), 26-year-old Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Oklahoma City), 25-year-old Tyrese Haliburton (Indiana) and 23-year-old Anthony Edwards (Minnesota).

Gilgeous-Alexander was still in high school when the Thunder last reached the Conference Finals. Ahead of last Sunday’s series-deciding Game 7 against Denver, he said afterward that the pressure had started to feel intense.

“I turned my phone off, honestly. I wanted to, as best as I could, block out all the noise,” Gilgeous-Alexander said after the Thunder’s clinching win over Denver. “The nerves sat in my stomach for the two days [off].”

The Thunder and Timberwolves tip off for Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals on Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. ET. On Wednesday, the Pacers and the Knicks open the Eastern Conference Finals. The winners of each best-of-seven series will advance to the NBA Finals, which begin June 5.

A minor, 3.8-magnitude earthquake struck in Southern California on Monday, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The temblor happened at 12:09 p.m. Pacific time about 15 miles south of Bakersfield, Calif., data from the agency shows.

As seismologists review available data, they may revise the earthquake’s reported magnitude. Additional information collected about the earthquake may also prompt U.S.G.S. scientists to update the shake-severity map.

Aftershocks can occur days, weeks or even years after the first earthquake. These events can be of equal or larger magnitude to the initial earthquake, and they can continue to affect already damaged locations.