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• Now that Republicans control the House, they’re ready to start cutting spending.
• Their first target: $80 billion in IRS funding from the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act.
• But a nonpartisan CBO analysis found cutting that spending would actually increase the deficit.

The GOP, newly in control of the House, has one big objective in mind: Cutting spending.

They already have a clear target — the $80 billion in funding allocated to the IRS in the Inflation Reduction Act, the last major policy package passed by Democrats before losing the House. A bill to revoke that funding has already landed on the House floor.

—Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) January 8, 2023

There’s just one problem: Cutting out that IRS funding would actually weigh on the national debt. According to an analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the GOP bill to rescind IRS funding would reduce revenue by about $186 billion over the next decade — while cutting just $71 billion in spending.

All told, that would add a net $114 billion to the deficit.

The IRS funding was meant to relieve an overburdened agency and beef up enforcement on some of the wealthiest Americans. Of the $80 billion, $45.6 billion is directed towards tax enforcement, specifically targeting areas that have been challenging for the IRS, like global high-net-worth filers. The tax gap, which measures the chasm between taxes owed and actually paid, is likely over $1 trillion. At the same time, according to a 2021 study from IRS researchers and economists, the top 1% of Americans don’t report 21% of their income — and under-reporting is nearly twice as large for the top 0.1%.

The Congressional Budget Office previously found that the enforcement funding would bring in $204 billion over the next 10 years. The funding will also go towards improving taxpayer services, an issue that’s been plaguing the agency as it struggled through aging technology and rooms full of paper to get taxpayers their refund checks.

“Even under good economic and fiscal conditions, it would make little sense to reduce revenue by allowing more individuals and businesses to avoid paying taxes they rightfully owe,” the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote. “With inflation high, interest rates rising, and debt approaching record levels, rescinding IRS enforcement funds would be a big mistake.”

The White House also took aim at the proposal, with Biden already promising to veto such a bill in the unlikely event it passes both the GOP-controlled House and the Democrat-held Senate. White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates took to Twitter to lambast the GOP House’s first CBO score.

“The verdict: Their tax welfare for rich tax cheats and big corporations who break the law at your expense would increase the deficit by $114 billion,” Bates wrote. “But don’t worry, it will also make inflation worse.”

So the two year anniversary of January 6 has come and gone. The Democrats marked this tragic anniversary with solemnity and tributes. The GOP barely mentioned it. Figures. And Donald Trump? How did the CEO of the January 6 insurrection choose to remember it?

By unleashing a vicious torrent of words against the Capitol police, that’s how. Figures. Trump gave a speech on Saturday at his home Mag-a-lago. Calling the Capitol Police “lunatics,” Trump accused them of killing Ashli Babbitt “for no reason.” Figures.

Trump referred to the insurrectionists as “protesters” and talked about the wrongs done to them by “horrible, horrible people.” It’s sad. It is sad that this creature of the insurrectionist swamp ever was President. In terms of Babbitt — while I feel for her family, the police were doing their job. The Capitol police were protecting Congress and all the people in the Capitol that day.

They did their job with honor. And they were celebrated by President Biden. And Trump does not give a damn about Babbitt. He is using her as a pawn. That’s what makes all of this so heartbreaking. I sincerely doubt Mr. Trump gives a damn about her or anybody. He’s a narcissist and cares only for himself.

It would have been nice if Trump — AND the GOP — had marked that day with soothing words, with thanks to our Capitol police, with the seriousness, and dignity such a day requires. But alas, that is asking too much from both Trump and the GOP. For Trump, January 6 was just another day to manipulate people, spread false grievances, and, in general, act like an asshole. That’s all he’s got, one supposes.

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Alzheimer’s patients and their families welcomed the news on Jan. 6 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. Lecanemab, marketed as Leqembi, is made by Eisai and Biogen for people in the early stages of the disease. The FDA granted lecanemab accelerated approval based on early phase testing results, and it’s now reviewing the companies’ completed data for consideration of traditional, full approval. It’s only the second drug approved to treat Alzheimer’s, not just address symptoms.

Doctors can now prescribe the medication, but many patients won’t be able to afford it. Eisai said the drug, which is given every two weeks via an IV infusion at a doctor’s office or clinic, will cost about $26,500 a year. While it’s not clear yet how long people will need to take the drug, Ivan Cheung, Eisai Inc.’s CEO, estimated that most people might need to take it at least three years.

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Here’s what to know about why lecanemab will be out of reach for most patients.

Medicare won’t cover lecanemab

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) does not cover medications granted accelerated—not full—approval in lecanemab’s category: treatments that target a protein called amyloid in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. That decision goes back to the drug that preceded lecanemab, called aducanumab (brand name: Aduhelm), which the FDA approved in 2021. The FDA’s controversial approval was based on the results of two studies: one that showed patients benefited from the drug compared to those receiving placebo, and another that showed no difference between the two groups. The FDA decided to approve the drug because there were no treatments for Alzheimer’s, and aducanumab would address the urgent and unmet need to give patients something that they assumed, based on the data, would slow down its progression.

Because of the conflicting data, however, CMS decided not to reimburse for aducanumab unless people were enrolled in continuing clinical trials to solidify the drug’s effectiveness. The policy also applied to all future therapies that used the same strategy of tackling amyloid in the brain—such as lecanemab, which targets a different form of the same protein. This means patients who aren’t participating in a clinical trial of the drug will have to foot the bill. Private insurance companies generally follows CMS’s lead.

Will Medicare change its policy and start reimbursing for lecanemab?

CMS said it would consider changing its policy when the complete set of data on lecanemab, including the results from the phase 3 studies, were submitted to the FDA. Eisai provided that data to the FDA on the same day it received accelerated approval. The phase 3 results were also published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Jan. 5. “Every day we cut the timeline to get traditional approval is one day closer to lifting the restrictions to access for Medicare beneficiaries,” says Cheung.

In a statement after lecanemab’s approval, CMS administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said, “CMS is examining available information and may reconsider its current coverage based on this review.”

What Medicare’s policy means for patients

For now, patients will have to wait until the FDA issues a traditional approval for lecanemab in order to receive reimbursement for the drug. That could be costly in more than just financial ways. Because lecanemab is indicated specifically for people in the earliest stages of mild Alzheimer’s-related dementia, waiting additional months could make many people ineligible to benefit from the treatment because they will have progressed to more advances stages of the disease, beyond the reach of lecanemab’s demonstrated effectiveness.

While the complete data sets on lecanemab’s safety and effectiveness are now available for doctors to consider, “what is missing is access,” says Maria Carrillo, chief scientific officer of the Alzheimer’s Association. “Not having access based on the accelerated approval is a detriment to our patient community.” The Association estimates that each day, more than 2,000 people move from mild dementia to more advanced Alzheimer’s, which lessens their chances of being able to benefit from lecanemab. CMS’s policy could potentially deny thousands of people the chance to slow their cognitive decline and push back the more severe effects of their disease. “That’s not acceptable, and unprecedented,” says Carrillo. “We feel it’s wrong.”

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

Foreign capitals fetishize American democracy. It is not uncommon for party leaders and community organizers in other countries to seek out American political strategists to consult on their races, often pitting long-standing rivals based in the United States against each other as opportunities for revenge for the last race. A marked rise in hard-fought primaries followed the global phenomenon that was the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton contest in 2008; if that intra-party race could help Democrats to build a political infrastructure, the argument went, then leaders abroad were eager to ditch the smoke-filled back rooms for data-collection bonanzas of their own. And such an unwavering embrace of liberal democracy—lowercase “d,” to be sure—seemed to help usher in economic prosperity and political stability for much of the post-World War II era.

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Here’s the thing: America’s leading intellectual export may also be its most combustible, if not dangerous. After all, there is no quality control for an idea, and once it crosses U.S. borders, Americans ostensibly cede any fail-safe controls for ideas. Democracy can carry great risk if it is sparked in a place with insufficient ventilation.

Just witness the recent developments in Brazil, where more than a few echoes of America’s darkest day for democracy itself rumbled over the weekend. Both Jan. 6, 2021, and Jan. 8, 2023, featured a seeming victory for democracy in an autumn election, only to have it threatened with malice from the losers.

On Sunday, supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, often referred to as the Donald Trump of Brazil, stormed Brazil’s National Congress, Supreme Federal Court, and the presidential offices in the hopes of restoring him to power. At the National Congress, so-called ​​“Bolsominions” overtook the police and raised a flag demanding “Intervention,” a call for the military to depose current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in October and took back an office he had earlier held on Jan. 1. The rioters even posed for photographs in the legislative chamber in a throwback to Jan. 6 here in the states.

It’s tough to argue that this was impossible to predict. Bolsonaro refused to concede or attend Lula’s inauguration, much as Trump refused to attend Joe Biden’s festivities. Bolsonaro riled up his people with the same fervor as Trump and with the same tactics beset in grievance. A huge basecamp of Bolsonaro supporters had formed in plain sight over the last two months to prepare for the assault, fueled with the false belief that the election had been rigged. It was as if Brazil watched the Jan. 6 mob and copied it with impunity, right down to having its own “shaman.” (Although, to be fair, the “shaman” featured in many photographs from Brazil was not necessarily on site for the actual assault on Sunday but rather was present at an early protest.)

Bolsonaro emulated Trump for years, adopting his burn-it-to-the-ground mentality, his fact-deficit approach to Covid-19, his antagonism toward political rivals and embrace of bullying. Even in criticizing the violence unfolding over the weekend, Bolsonaro issued a tepid statement saying protests are part of democracy, and this weekend was not that dissimilar to those that his critics staged in 2013 and 2017. Steve Bannon and other members of Trump’s inner circle even egged on the protests in Brazil from afar.

The consequences for the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol have mostly hit individual rioters while Trump, to this point at least, has been spared any real consequences; why would Bolsonaro make out any differently? The country’s highest court accused Brasilla’s governor and head of security of ignoring—if not aiding—the attackers, and more than 1,200 individuals were detained. That sure sounds familiar to the findings from a U.S. report on the Jan. 6 events that is sure to be chucked in the garbage now that House Republicans have the gavels and ditched the committee investigating the attacks. At present, Bolsonaro also shares another commonality with Trump: both are calling Florida home these days in what one Palm Beach Post columnist worries may become a launching pad for “wannabe despots” and their comebacks.

It seems like everyone wants a piece of the American political consultancy world. Several of my friends in politics have purchased condos, beach houses, or boats with cash collected from foreign heads of state. But the flaws of American hubris in exporting its liberal democratic world order are manifest. Overreach in Vietnam, Somalia, Haiti, and Cuba hampered those nations for decades—some, into today. Afghanistan and Iraq alike have held elections but are hardly the successes once predicted in Washington.

Political intervention has long been a source of diplomatic objection in foreign capitals, until the leaders themselves land a bold-faced name who takes a break from their cable contracts for a few months to advise efforts abroad. Many U.S. officials recognize the folly while in academia only to see a workable win once they’re in policymaking positions. (After all, Japan and West Germany turned out as American victories, right?) So it’s worth considering if America’s most significant—and, for a few, the most profitable—export might also be its most dangerous.

The professionalization of the violent protests with the help from Americans—wittingly or not—changes the game in a major way, and could foretell troubles ahead for other nations where a Trumpist rejection of a democratic loss could come with dire consequences for democracy itself.

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Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin has been released from a Cincinnati hospital one week after suffering a cardiac arrest during an NFL game and has returned to Buffalo, New York, doctors said on Monday.

Doctors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center (UCMC) where Hamlin spent the last week said he traveled well by air and will continue to be monitored by a care team in Buffalo.

“As standard with anybody who has gone through what he’s gone through this past week, and certainly after flying on a plane, he’s going to be observed and monitored to ensure that there’s no impact on the flight of his condition or on his lungs.” Dr. William Knight told reporters.

“I can confirm he is doing well and this is the beginning of the next stage of his recovery.

Knight also said that since Friday Hamlin had been up with physical and occupational therapy walking the unit with “a normal gait,” tolerating a regular diet and meeting with family and many members of the care team.

“Grateful for the awesome care I received at UCMC. Happy to be back in Buffalo,” Hamlin wrote on Twitter.

The 24-year-old collapsed during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals last Monday moments after making a tackle and then had to have his heartbeat restored on the field while stunned players from both teams cried, prayed and hugged.

But Hamlin quickly made remarkable strides in his recovery as he woke up two days later, had his breathing tube removed on Friday and then watched the Bills regular-season finale from his bed on Sunday.

Hamlin was recognised around the NFL over the weekend as players from all teams donned Hamlin-inspired apparel while moments of support for him were recognised at various stadiums.

The Bills wore “3” patches on their uniforms in honor of Hamlin’s jersey number while many fans held up signs in support of the second-year NFL player and first responders who helped save his life.

Hamlin said on Twitter that he is now at Buffalo General Medical Center where doctors and nurses have already made him feel at home.

“Watching the world come together around me on Sunday was truly an amazing feeling,” he tweeted.

“The same love you all have shown me is the same love that I plan to put back into the world n more.”

While Hamlin surprised team mates on a video call last Friday and again after Sunday’s game, Bills head coach Sean McDermott told reporters that having him back in Buffalo was an added boost for the players.

“Like anything else when you have your family close by it just feels right. Feels better,” said McDermott. “It’s just good knowing he’s nearby.”

Bengals coach Zac Taylor was also relieved to hear about Hamlin’s return to Buffalo.

“That’s unbelievable,” Taylor told reporters. “I mean, just think about it – that was one week, not even a week ago. There’s no one in this room that would have expected he’d be in Buffalo.

“God is great. He works miracles. This is certainly a miracle, there’s no question.”

A man charged with using a truck to kill eight people on a Manhattan bike path in 2017 believes his attack was justified and sought to die a martyr for Islam, his defense counsel told the jury at his terrorism trial on Monday.

At the first federal death-penalty trial since U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, defendant Sayfullo Saipov, 34, acknowledged through his lawyers that he intended to murder and maim his victims and still believes he had a religious duty to do so.

The only point of contention with prosecutors was whether he carried out the attack in order to join the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIS, which the United States brands a terrorist organization.

“That is not why he did this,” David Patton, a public defender representing Saipov, said in an opening statement at the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, saying Saipov was only inspired by Islamic State, and not planning to survive his attack and join as a member. “He expected to die. He expected to become a martyr.”

Most of the charges in the 28-count indictment include as an element that Saipov committed murder and attempted murder in order to join Islamic State. Saipov has pleaded not guilty.

He sat by his lawyers in court wearing a green pullover and gray pants, a bushy black beard curling beneath his face mask. An Uzbek national who moved to the United States in 2010 and last worked as an Uber driver in Paterson, New Jersey, Saipov was provided a headset to listen to an interpreter.

In the public gallery behind him sat some of the wounded, including a woman who lost both her legs, and relatives of the dead. Five Argentinian tourists, one Belgian tourist and two Americans were killed.

In the prosecution’s opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Li said Saipov left behind “a scene of devastation and horror” when he mowed down his victims using a rental truck on Oct. 31, 2017, before leaving a “truck-sized hole” after crashing into the side of a school bus, leaving one child with brain damage.

Saipov expected the city to be busy with people celebrating Halloween and had planned to also attack people on the Brooklyn Bridge that day, Li said. He carried serrated knives and fake guns that looked real.

“Right after the attack, he proudly declared why he did it,” Li said. “He did it for ISIS, the brutal terrorist organization.”

Saipov was taken to the hospital after a police officer shot him near his crashed truck, and later that night told an FBI agent that he wanted an Islamic State flag to display in his room.

His lawyers confirmed this, saying Saipov still believed what Patton called a “twisted and awful version of Islam.”

He told the jury that Saipov had become isolated from his extended Muslim family in Uzbekistan, and became convinced by sophisticated Islamic State propaganda he had consumed online for years that there was a Western conspiracy to eradicate Islam.

The U.S. Department of Justice told Judge Vernon Broderick in September that it intends to seek the death penalty for Saipov, although there has been a moratorium on federal executions since July 2021 while the department reviews its use of the punishment. If convicted, Saipov could also be sentenced to life in prison without parole. He has been jailed since his arrest.

The jury will not consider punishment during the first phase of the trial, which could last three months. If they find Saipov guilty of any capital crimes they would then weigh whether to sentence him to death.

The S&P 500 index (.SPX) erased early gains to close nearly flat on Monday as expectations that the Federal Reserve will become less aggressive with its interest rate hikes were offset by lingering worries about inflation.

The Dow ended lower, and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) ended well off the day’s highs.

Investors are awaiting comments Tuesday from Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who some strategists expect could say more time is needed to show inflation is under control.

Money market bets were showing 77% odds of a 25-basis point hike in the Fed’s February policy meeting.

A consumer prices report due Thursday could be key for rate expectations, said Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist, LPL Financial in Charlotte, North Carolina. “The CPI report this week is going to be essential for fine-tuning the Fed funds futures market.”

Investors also may have sold some shares after recent strong market gains, said Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Investment Management in Chicago. “You’re seeing a little bit of profit-taking ahead of the CPI number due out this week.”

The technology sector (.SPLRCT) gained as Treasury yields fell. Consumer discretionary stocks (.SPLRCD) also rose, with Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) up 1.5% after Jefferies said it saw cost pressures easing for the e-commerce giant in the second half of the year.

Also, S&P 500 companies are about to kick off the fourth-quarter earnings period, with results from top U.S. banks expected later this week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) fell 112.96 points, or 0.34%, to 33,517.65, the S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 2.99 points, or 0.08%, to 3,892.09 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) added 66.36 points, or 0.63%, to 10,635.65.

Shares of Broadcom Inc (AVGO.O) fell in late trading to end down 2% after Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that Apple Inc (AAPL.O) plans to drop a Broadcom chip in 2025 and use an in-house design instead.

Friday’s jobs report, which showed a moderation in wage increases, lifted hopes that the Fed might become less aggressive in its rate-hike push to reduce inflation.

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) shares rose 5.9% after the electric-vehicle maker indicated longer waiting times for some versions of the Model Y in China, signaling the recent price cuts could be stoking demand.

Macy’s Inc (M.N) fell 7.7% and Lululemon Athletica Inc (LULU.O) dropped 9.3% after both retailers issued disappointing holiday-quarter forecasts.

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 11.35 billion shares, compared with the 10.90 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by a 1.85-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.48-to-1 ratio favored advancers.

The S&P 500 posted 13 new 52-week highs and two new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 129 new highs and 32 new lows.