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Por Issy Ronald, CNN

El Gobierno de Irlanda está implementando un programa pionero que otorgará a 2.000 artistas un ingreso básico durante tres años, lo que les permitirá centrarse en su producción creativa mientras mantienen un nivel de vida adecuado.

Bajo el esquema, que sigue a un piloto de tres años, los creativos elegibles recibirán 325 euros (US$ 386) a la semana durante tres años, seguidos de un período de tres meses en el que sus ingresos se reducirán de forma gradual.

El ingreso está sujeto a impuestos, pero no depende de su producción, lo que permite a los artistas contar con una renta relativamente estable, planificar a futuro y trabajar menos en otros empleos para sostenerse.

Cualquier tipo de artista, desde escritores, artistas visuales y actores hasta músicos, diseñadores de maquillaje y directores, podrá postularse.

“Es un cambio fundamental”, dijo Peter Power, artista, músico y diseñador que integra el comité directivo de la Campaña Nacional por las Artes, que impulsó el programa.

“Cambia tu relación con los bancos, los arrendadores, los ahorros, las pensiones. La arquitectura fundamental de ser un ciudadano con seguridad se vuelve accesible… es difícil ponerle una métrica a eso”, dijo a CNN.

Para artistas como Aisling O’Mara, que tuvieron la suerte de ingresar al programa piloto, el ingreso básico ofreció un salvavidas y una forma de permanecer en las industrias creativas. Fue “transformador”, dijo a CNN el miércoles, particularmente porque descubrió que estaba embarazada casi al mismo tiempo que fue aceptada en el programa.

Sin él, “no creo que fuera viable para mí y mi hija seguir viviendo como lo hacemos, y no creo que hubiera sido posible que siguiera en esta industria”, dijo.

“La actuación requiere tiempo, necesitas poder dedicar tiempo a tus audiciones… necesitas prepararte para esas cosas”, agregó.

Su carrera, que combina con trabajo docente, floreció mientras formaba parte del programa y ahora interpreta el papel principal en una adaptación teatral de las memorias superventas de Katriona O’Sullivan, “Poor”.

Aun así, es plenamente consciente de la inestabilidad financiera que enfrentan incluso los actores exitosos. “Tengo amigos en sus 40 que son enormemente exitosos en la industria y están durmiendo en sofás… eso me parece increíble”.

No todos los artistas recibirán un ingreso básico bajo la nueva política del Gobierno. Más de 8.000 artistas elegibles solicitaron el programa piloto original, pero solo una cuarta parte fue seleccionada al azar para participar.

Y el ingreso también tiene un límite de tiempo, lo que significa que creativos como O’Mara tendrán que reajustarse cuando sus tres años lleguen a su fin. No podrán postularse para el siguiente ciclo de financiamiento y tendrán que volver a aplicar para tener la oportunidad de recibir el ingreso básico nuevamente tres años después.

“Todos queremos una sociedad que sea justa para todos, pero por ahora hay un límite”, dijo Power. “Esta es una rama completamente nueva de financiamiento, de ideología sobre cómo se valora el arte cultural y socialmente. Esto es nuevo, tenemos que verlo como un primer paso”.

Consultado sobre qué apoyo estaría disponible para los artistas entre estos ciclos de financiamiento, un portavoz del Departamento de Cultura, Comunicaciones y Deporte dijo a CNN que “se han asignado fondos récord por más de 140 millones de euros (US$ 167 millones) al Consejo de las Artes en 2026, lo que representa un aumento de 75 % desde 2020”.

No precisó si el programa se ampliará en el futuro.

La mayoría de los programas piloto que prueban distintas formas de ingreso básico universal nunca superan la etapa de prueba.

Pero, según Power, el éxito del piloto, combinado con el lugar único que ocupan las artes en la cultura irlandesa, especialmente tras la pandemia de covid-19, permitió q

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By Adam Cancryn, CNN

(CNN) — The White House is looking to exercise tighter control over key areas of the US Health and Human Services Department, planning a shakeup of top personnel as the administration looks ahead to the midterm elections, an administration official told CNN.

The moves are aimed at restructuring HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s senior-most ranks, installing four new senior counselors who will be charged with more closely managing the department’s daily operations and communications across the federal government.

Chris Klomp, the administration’s current Medicare head and senior adviser at HHS, will become a senior counselor and the department’s de facto chief of staff, the administration official said.

John Brooks, the deputy administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, will be a senior counselor in charge of CMS-related issues. Two senior US Food and Drug Administration officials, Grace Graham and Kyle Diamantas, will take on senior counselor roles at HHS managing FDA-related issues.

Matt Buckham, the current HHS chief of staff, will move to a senior counselor role, the administration official said.

An HHS spokesperson did not immediately comment.

The White House is preparing a midterm push that will rely heavily on promoting key health policies President Donald Trump has increasingly touted as central to his domestic agenda. That includes the “most favored nation” drug pricing deals that Klomp took a lead role in negotiating and recent efforts to spotlight healthier eating that Trump aides view as appealing to a broad spectrum of voters.

The moves also represent an effort to keep closer tabs on Kennedy and an HHS leadership that has struggled at times to coordinate with its own agencies and the White House, frustrating senior Trump officials and generating dayslong controversies.

Kennedy last year ousted his first chief of staff, Heather Flick Melanson, and a top deputy, Hannah Anderson, after just months on the job following a series of internal clashes. The department was also roiled last year by the abrupt firing — and then rehiring — of top FDA official Dr. Vinay Prasad, who has since made a series of controversial drug approval decisions that have overruled career staff and angered the drug industry.

In the meantime, Kennedy has also pressed ahead on a major overhaul of the nation’s vaccine system — a top priority for the longtime vaccine skeptic that has raised concerns among Republicans that it could damage the party politically ahead of the midterms.

The White House installed Klomp, who is well-regarded among Trump’s top aides, in large part to keep tighter hold on HHS priorities and messaging as the officials seek to focus on areas like drug pricing and nutrition that will be central to the midterm push, the official said.

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By Sarah Ferris, Morgan Rimmer, CNN

(CNN) — A bitterly divided Washington is headed for its third government funding lapse of President Donald Trump’s second term — this time, a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security over the issue of federal immigration enforcement.

With lawmakers leaving town Thursday, funding for the department is set to expire Friday at midnight. GOP leaders sent their members home after the two parties made no concrete progress toward a deal that Democrats are demanding must rein in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations after last month’s fatal shootings by federal agents of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota.

The next steps are uncertain. With talks ongoing between the White House and Democrats, the two chambers aren’t scheduled to return to Washington for 11 days, though GOP leaders could still call members back if a deal is reached.

Democrats have demanded that Trump administration end its “roving” patrols, require independent oversight of ICE, bar the deportation of US citizens and forbid ICE agents from wearing masks. Another major sticking point: Democrats want immigration warrants to be signed by a judge, not by an ICE agency official. But Republicans are firmly opposed.

“We will find out, I think, very quickly, whether or not the Democrats are serious,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters just after the chamber’s final vote Thursday. He said he hoped Democrats would soon show the GOP that they, too, are willing to compromise after the White House’s latest proposal, though he declined to say what new policies are being discussed.

“I think the White House has given more and more ground on some of these key issues,” Thune said.

One senior White House official, who declined to speak publicly, was even more blunt: “At this point it seems clear the Democrats are going to walk away from that bipartisan conversation. They’re going to shut the department down.”

“We will not be held hostage on an issue the president was elected on,” the official said.

But top Democrats insist the White House needs to come closer to the party’s demands or risk national backlash.

Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a top Senate Democrat, criticized Republicans for not understanding “the depth of the anger” across the country over Trump’s aggressive deportation efforts.

“Maybe this break will allow [Republicans] to go home and get yelled at — not just by people who are progressive, but everybody who thinks this agency is out of control,” Schatz said. “It’s gonna take them maybe another week to figure out how pissed off their own voters are about the idea of a masked police force terrorizing communities.”

Behind the scenes, top Democrats and the White House have been negotiating, but Democrats have criticized the White House for being unserious in those talks, refusing to yield to the party’s biggest demands to overhaul federal immigration enforcement.

Republicans, meanwhile, have argued that the White House demonstrated its commitment to the talks by sending a full legislative proposal to Democrats the night before — as well as announcing a formal end to its ICE operation in Minnesota.

Speaker Mike Johnson called the White House proposal in the negotiations for DHS funding “eminently reasonable” and criticized some Democrats for wanting “to impose pain.”

“I saw the last proposal sent over from the White House. It is eminently reasonable,” he told CNN, adding: “It seems to me, the appearance here is that some Democrats, House and Senate, want