By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans narrowly got their budget plan over the finish line. Now comes the hard part.

The resolution adopted this week was only a first step that allows Republicans to draft legislation that they can push through Congress without Democratic support. Next, they begin crafting a final bill with enough spending cuts to satisfy those on the right while not jeopardizing the reelection prospects of more vulnerable lawmakers whose constituents rely on key safety net programs.

With thin majorities in the House and the Senate, Republicans can afford to lose hardly any votes from their side of the aisle as they draft legislation, giving each lawmaker leverage over the process.

“It’s going to take all of us to get it done,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., talks to reporters just after House Republicans narrowly approved their budget framework, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The road ahead is daunting.

Republicans are determined to extend the individual tax cuts that were approved during President Donald Trump’s first term before they expire at year’s end. But they intend for the legislation to do far more than that, potentially enacting a host of tax reductions that Trump promised during the campaign, such as no income tax on tips and overtime.

And the tax cuts are only half the equation. Conservatives in the House gave the budget plan the final votes needed for passage Thursday after they said they received assurances from leadership in both chambers that they would work to have a final product with at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts — forcing changes to federal programs including Medicaid that could prove hard for some in the party to support.

“The struggles Republicans have faced so far are only a glimmer of what’s to come,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.

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Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, senses a difficult fight for Republicans. He said Trump has made clear he doesn’t want any benefit cuts for those who get health insurance coverage through Medicaid, which could conflict with the desire some conservatives have for steep spending cuts.

“If it’s this rocky now, it’s only going to get worse from here on out if the speaker is not able to get the entire conference in line,” Miller said.

Democrats have framed the debate as Republicans looking to slash key government programs so they can pass tax cuts that predominately help wealthier households. It’s a message Democrats will hammer home leading up to the 2026 midterm elections.

“At this point, they’re all worried about primaries and they are worried about Elon’s money, but they ought to be worried about a general election as well,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., referring to Trump’s billionaire ally and adviser, Elon Musk. “I think it’s going to be very difficult for a moderate Republican, if there’s still any left, to be able to vote for this and go home and defend it.”

Some Republicans also made clear to GOP leadership before Thursday’s budget vote that they will be closely monitoring the changes to Medicaid in the final bill.

“This was just making sure that there is a clear understanding here that there are a group of members that will not cut benefits from seniors and our most vulnerable New Yorkers who rely on Medicaid,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is up for reelection next year, said she’s also made her position known to leadership.

“I could not make my position on Medicaid cuts clearer,” she said. “I am not going to support cuts that affect low-income families, disabled individuals, low-income seniors, rural hospitals.”

Republicans say their focus is on instilling work requirements for able-bodied beneficiaries and more rigorous eligibility assessments. But Democrats say Republicans can’t generate the savings being discussed without also cutting benefits.

Meanwhile, Republicans see extending the individual and estate tax cuts passed in Trump’s first term as key to their electoral success next year. The House Ways and Means Committee says a family of four making $80,610 a year, the median income in the United States, would see a $1,695 tax increase if the tax cuts are not extended.

Republicans spent the last few years blaming President Joe Biden’s administration for increasing the debt, and a key test will be how many keep that focus as they seek to extend and expand tax cuts.

A recent estimate from the Joint Committee on Taxation projects that extending the 2017 tax breaks will add $5.5 trillion over the next decade when including interest, and $4.6 trillion not including interest. On top of that, adding Trump’s campaign promises would swell the price tag to $7 trillion.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he’ll advocate for splitting the measure into two reconciliation bills if Republicans take too long to get to a final product.

“I’m going to say break it apart, because they need money for the border yesterday and they also need money for DoD,” Graham said, referring to the Department of Defense.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said he looked forward to the challenge and there was a lot of work ahead.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., talks to reporters just after House Republicans narrowly approved their budget framework, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

“The American people are counting on us,” Johnson said.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., said he’s confident a final bill will pass with the House winning the most important tussles on the scope of taxes and spending cuts.

“I will bet you they will fold rather than inflict the largest tax increase in American history on their voters,” Cole said of the Senate. “And two-thirds of them, with all due respect, aren’t on the ballot next time. … Whereas everyone here is on the line. And our majority is much more on the line that their majority is.”

Associated Press staff writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Lisa Mascaro and Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

The poster for Christopher Landon’s “Drop” features star Meghann Fahy’s eyes peering over the top of a mobile phone. This image conveys everything you need to know about “Drop,” a techno-thriller about a first date sent off the rails by a series of threatening airdrops, but it also nods to the most important cinematic tool in Landon’s kit. In this one-setting genre piece, Fahy’s character Violet spends most of her time scanning a restaurant trying to identify who could be tormenting her. Her big blue eyes are searching, concerned, tremulous and tearful. She weeps beautifully, a crucial aspect of this performance.

The eyes have it because Landon spends so much of “Drop” in close-up on his star, keeping her emotional journey front and center, while strapping the audience into a front-row seat for this panicky situation. Fahy, who has been a plucky young journalist in “The Bold Type,” a knowing friend in “The White Lotus” and a tragic party girl in “The Perfect Couple,” plays Violet, a young widowed mother on her first date in a long time. A survivor of intimate partner violence and the mother to Toby (Jacob Robinson), she’s nervous for her dinner with handsome photographer Henry (Brandon Sklenar) at an upscale restaurant on the top floor of a high-rise building. But her jitters are eclipsed by the uneasiness, anxiety and terror she experiences when she starts receiving unsolicited messages via an app called DigiDrop.

The messages move from memes to demands, coupled with threats against her son and sister (Violett Beane). Watching a masked gunman enter her home on her security camera app, Violet is pressured to comply with an order to poison Henry, who happens to work for the city mayor. Doesn’t this anonymous intruder know how hard it is to find a good man like him on these dating apps?

“Drop,” written by Jillian Jacobs and Chris Roach, is a little bit like a Lifetime movie version of “Michael Clayton,” though it is elevated by Landon’s sense of style. The genre auteur has excelled with cutesy horror movie concepts like “Happy Death Day” (slasher “Groundhog Day”) and “Freaky” (slasher “Freaky Friday”), and while “Drop” is less horror, more thriller (though he doesn’t pull any punches during some shockingly violent fight scenes), the limited setting allows Landon to experiment in his cinematic storytelling.

He alternates between longer takes that survey and set the scene in the restaurant, establishing the circular space and the characters within in it: a chatty server (Jeffery Self), a kind bartender (Gabrielle Ryan), a lecherous piano player (Ed Weeks), a bro on his phone who keeps bumping into Violet (Travis Nelson), a nervous older man on a blind date himself (Reed Diamond). In retrospect, you’ll see how Landon subtly nods to the identity of Violet’s tormenter through editing and cinematography, using a kind of abrasive, choppy cutting style, the character invading the space like an intrusive airdrop.

This odd editing style by Ben Baudhuin works in tandem with the beauty of the cinematography by Marc Spicer. Shot-reverse shot sequences are somewhat abrupt, the characters segregated in their individual frames, Spicer using different angles on close-ups to lend to that jagged sense of separation. The resistance to fluidity creates a sense of claustrophobia and tension; we are locked inside Violet’s panic and fear with her, as she feels increasingly isolated and alone, disconnected from her date and anyone who might help her. The text messages blaze across the screen, occupying all of her brain space (and our visual field), the constant vibration of her phone becoming not just an irritant but the sound of a monster getting closer and closer.

Landon’s intense focus on Violet requires a Herculean facial performance from Fahy, and part of what makes it so great is watching the way this woman immediately slips into a pattern of masking and accommodating, a survival skill from her abusive past. So it is deeply satisfying when Violet makes the switch from passive to aggressive, when she stops merely surviving and starts fighting back.

It’s Landon’s visual style and Fahy’s deeply empathetic performance that makes “Drop” so much more than just a silly high-concept woman-in-peril movie of the week. While the material alone could have been basic, what Landon makes of it with such stylish and emotional execution is anything but.

‘Drop’

3 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: PG-13 (for strong violent content, suicide, some strong language and sexual references)

Running time: 1:40

How to watch: In theaters on Friday, April 11

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By ELAINE KURTENBACH, Associated Press Business Writer

BANGKOK (AP) — Global shares wobbled Friday after the latest escalation in the China-U.S. trade war, with Japan and some European markets slipping while others stood firm.

The future for the S&P 500 advanced 0.7% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.4%.

The deepening worries over President Donald Trump’s trade war caused Tokyo’s benchmark to initially fall more than 5%. It later regained some ground, closing 3% lower at 33,585.58.

Then China announced it was boosting its tariffs on U.S. exports to 125%, to match the level of U.S. tariffs not including an earlier 20% imposed weeks ago.

“The U.S. alternately raising abnormally high tariffs on China has become a numbers game, which has no practical economic significance, and will become a joke in the history of the world economy,” a Finance Ministry spokesman said in a statement announcing the new tariffs. “However, if the US insists on continuing to substantially infringe on China’s interests, China will resolutely counter and fight to the end.”

Early Friday, the 10-year Treasury yield was at 4.40%. The markets’ swings have hit the bond market and Treasury yields have jumped as bond prices fell on heavy selling.

The bond market has tended to limit economic policies that investors deem imprudent, helping to topple the United Kingdom’s Liz Truss in 2022, for example, whose 49 days made her Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister.

In announcing a 90-day delay in implementing his higher tariffs against dozens of countries, Trump mentioned that the bond market was a bit “queasy.”

The 10-year Treasury yield shot up to nearly 4.50% Wednesday morning from just 4.01% at the end of last week. It calmed somewhat following Trump’s U-turn Wednesday on tariffs, dropping all the way back to 4.30% shortly after the release of a better-than-expected report on inflation Thursday morning.

In early European trading, Germany’s DAX shed 1% to 20,353.16, while the CAC 40 in Paris lost 0.4% to 7,100.90. Britain’s FTSE 100 gained 0.5% as the government reported the economy, the world’s sixth largest, enjoyed a growth spurt in February, the month before U.S. President Donald Trump started to roll out tariffs on imported goods. It expanded 0.5% in February, ahead of market expectations for a more modest increase of 0.2%.

South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.5% to 2,432.72, while in Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.8% to 7,646.50.

China markets rallied after Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Beijing announced plans for Xi to visit Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia.

China has been seeking to join forces with other countries in apparent hopes of forming a united front against Trump. The world’s second-largest economy is also ramping up its own countermeasures to Trump’s tariffs.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng picked up 1.1% to 20,914.69 and the Shanghai Composite index climbed 0.5% to 3,238.23.

Taiwan’s Taiex gained 2.8% as investors anticipated that orders for the island’s high-tech products will surge as trade between the U.S. and the Chinese mainland dwindles.

On Thursday, the S&P 500 tumbled 3.5%, slicing into Wednesday’s surge of 9.5% following Trump’s decision to pause many of his tariffs worldwide. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 2.5% and the Nasdaq composite tumbled 4.3%.

Investors are viewing Trump’s decision to delay higher tariffs for most countries for 90 days as a ploy, not a pivot, Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management said in a commentary.

“That’s the market hitting the brakes, hard. The sugar high from Trump’s tariff pause is fading fast,” he wrote.

Losses for U.S. stocks accelerated after the White House clarified that the United States will tax Chinese imports at 145%, not the 125% rate that Trump had written about in his posting on Truth Social Wednesday, once other previously announced tariffs were included. The drop for the S&P 500 exceeded 6% at one point.

In other dealings early Friday, U.S. benchmark crude oil added 47 cents to $60.54 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Brent crude, the international standard, added 40 cents to $64.73 per barrel.

One dollar bought 142.58 Japanese yen, down from about 145 yen a day earlier. The euro rose to $1.1380 from $1.1200.

Associated Press writer Jiang Junzhe contributed from Hong Kong.

BEIJING (AP) — China announced Friday that it will raise tariffs on U.S. goods from 84% to 125% — the latest salvo in an escalating trade war between the world’s two largest economies that has rattled markets and raised fears of a global slowdown.

While U.S. President Donald Trump paused import taxes this week for other countries, he raised tariffs on China and they now total 145%. China has denounced the policy as “economic bullying” and promised countermeasures. The new tariffs begin Saturday.

Washington’s repeated jacking up of tariffs “will become a joke in the history of the world economy,” a Chinese Finance Ministry spokesman said in a statement announcing the new tariffs. “However, if the U.S. insists on continuing to substantially infringe on China’s interests, China will resolutely counter and fight to the end.”

A giant billboard promotes Made in China goods at the Yiwu International Trade Market in Yiwu, eastern China’s Zhejiang province on Thursday, April 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

China’s Commerce Ministry said it would file another lawsuit with the World Trade Organization against the U.S. tariffs.

Trump’s on-again, off-again measures have caused alarm in stock and bond markets and led some to warn that the U.S. could be headed for a recession. There was some relief when Trump paused the tariffs for most countries — but concerns remain since the U.S. and China are the world’s No. 1 and No. 2 economies, respectively.

The trade war between the U.S. and China “could severely damage the global economic outlook,” the head of the WTO, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said earlier this week.

Chinese tariffs will affect goods like soybeans, aircrafts and their parts and drugs — all among the country’s major imports from the U.S. Beijing, meanwhile, suspended sorghum, poultry and bonemeal imports from some American companies last week, and put more export controls on rare earth minerals, critical for various technologies.

The United States’ top imports from China, meanwhile, include electronics, like computers and cell phones, industrial equipment and toys — and consumers and businesses are likely to see prices rise on those products, with tariffs now at 145%.

Trump announced on Wednesday that China would face 125% tariffs, but he did not include a 20% tariff on China tied to its role in fentanyl production.

White House officials hope the import taxes will create more manufacturing jobs by bringing production back to the United States — a politically risky trade-off that could take years to materialize, if at all.