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      Trump expected to sign tax-and-spending bill in win for administration

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      Donald Trump is expected to sign his sweeping spending package into law on Friday during a Fourth of July picnic at the White House, setting up significant cutbacks on federal safety-net programs and increasing funds for aggressive immigration enforcement.Trump has touted the legislation’s passage as a “birthday present for America”, speaking before a crowd at a campaign-style rally in Iowa on Thursday evening, even as Democrats expressed their displeasure at the spending package.After months of deliberations, the bill passed by a single vote in the Senate and later passed the House with a 219 to 213 vote on Thursday, with only two Republicans voting against it. The sweeping legislation accomplishes what rightwingers have pushed for, for decades, as the Guardian explained this week, and provides Trump a huge legislative win.The bill, once signed into law, will significantly cut taxes, building on the 2017 tax cuts during Trump’s first term. Although temporary tax exemptions for tips, overtime pay and car loan interest are included, research from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that the bill is skewed to the rich, with the wealthiest in the US benefiting the most from the tax relief.Additionally, the law, once signed by Trump, will add new restrictions to Medicaid, which provides healthcare to low-income and disabled people, and Snap, also known as food stamps, which helps low-income people afford food. Researchers estimate that the Medicaid cutbacks will leave as many as 11.8 million people without healthcare, while 8 million people will lose their Snap benefits. Critics say that the Medicaid cuts will have massive ripple effects on healthcare nationwide.“This is highway robbery,” the Democratic senator Raphael Warnock posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The bill Republicans just passed steals from you to give to the rich.”Proponents of the bill say that the Medicaid and Snap changes are designed to root out waste and abuse.Additionally, the spending package will allocate $170m to immigration enforcement, a monumental amount of money that will help support the Trump administration’s push to engage in “mass deportations”.“This disgraceful, anti-immigrant budget hands the Trump administration a blank check to further ramp up its shameful efforts to terrorize American communities and separate families,” said Nicole Melaku, the executive director of the National Partnership for New Americans, an immigrants’ rights organization. “Instead of safeguarding people’s access to healthcare and wellness, the bill gives tax cuts to big corporations and funnels billions of dollars to hire more immigration agents, build more immigration jails and deny people their fair day in court.”Already, the Trump administration has engaged in widespread attacks on immigrant communities, by increasing resources to immigration enforcement operations.“This budget promises to supercharge US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests that disappear community members, leave children parentless and threaten constitutional and due-process rights for all of us,” said Meg McCarthy, executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, alegal organization.A recent Guardian analysis shows that undocumented immigrants without any criminal history have been arrested at an exponentially increasing rate, after top White House officials instructed agents to increase arrests.Trump temporarily walked back some of Ice’s aggressive immigration enforcement actions after complaints from leaders in the farming and hospitality industries: last month, the Trump administration engaged in a short-lived pause on raids at farms, restaurants and hotels. But at Thursday’s event, Trump again brought up the idea of pausing large-scale enforcement on farms.“If a farmer is willing to vouch for these people in some way, Kristi, I think we’re going to have to just say that’s going to be good, right?” Trump said to the secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem. “We don’t want to do it where we take all of the workers off the farms.”In addition to tax cuts, restrictions on Medicaid and Snap and the aggressive supercharging of immigration enforcement, the bill seeks to end green energy incentives created under Joe Biden, seen as a further blow against efforts to combat the climate crisis.The US budget deficit will increase with this bill, leading to opposition by some Trump allies. The non-partisan congressional budget office estimates the bill will add $3.3tn to the country’s debt through 2034, leading to clashes with some rightwingers.One of the two Republicans who voted against the bill, Thomas Massie, said he opposed the spending bill “because it will significantly increase US budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates”.Elon Musk, the rightwing billionaire who established the federal government’s office tasked with slashing federal spending during the first few months of the Trump administration, has also publicly called out the spending bill. Days before Congress passed the bill, Musk repeated his call for the creation of a new political party to oppose the Republicans and Democrats. More

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      Trump has ‘good conversation’ with Zelenskyy after heavy bombardment of Ukraine by Russia

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      Donald Trump spoke with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Friday as the US president appears increasingly disheartened over his chances of fulfilling a campaign pledge to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.The call with Zelenskyy comes as Washington has halted its latest shipment of military aid to Ukraine including Patriot air defense missiles and other crucial munitions meant to support the country’s defenses, and hours after Russia launched a devastating air attack on Kyiv using a record number of drones and ballistic missiles.Zelenskyy called the conversation “important and useful” and said in a post said that he and Trump had discussed Ukraine’s air defense capabilities, joint defense production and “mutual purchases and investments”, all potentially avenues for Ukraine to restart aid from the United States by providing incentives for the Trump administration to rush crucial munitions to Kyiv.He said that the two sides had also agreed to “increase aerial protection”, a particular focus for Kyiv as Russia has increased bombardments of Ukrainian cities despite outrage from Trump and other world leaders.Yet it was not immediately clear if Zelenskyy had achieved any concrete progress with Trump and in his statement he did not mention the halt of aid shipments from the US or announce their resumption. Axios reported that a source described the call as a “good conversation”.Trump said he was “very disappointed” after a telephone call with Vladimir Putin on Thursday. A Putin aide told reporters that the Russian president was not willing to make concessions on what the Kremlin has called the “root causes” of the war with Ukraine, a list of grievances that includes Nato expansion and Ukraine’s desire to join western economic and security blocs.“I’m very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don’t think he’s there,” Trump told reporters after holding a rally in Iowa on Thursday evening. “I don’t think he’s there, and I’m very disappointed. I’m just saying, I don’t think he’s looking to stop, and that’s too bad.”The US has said that it halted the shipments, some of which were already in Poland, due to a review of US military stockpiles that suggested that the country is running low on munitions for its own troops.Germany has said that it is in “intensive talks” to buy the Patriot missiles for Ukraine, although it’s unclear whether those stocks would be available immediately.“There are various ways to fill this Patriot gap,” a German government spokesperson told a news conference in Berlin on Friday. One option being considered was for the German government to buy the Patriot missile batteries in the United States and then send them to Ukraine.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I can confirm that intensive discussions are indeed being held on this matter,” the spokesperson said.The shortage of Patriot missiles was further highlighted by the record bombardment of Ukraine in which Russia sent more than 550 drones and ballistic missiles at major cities in what Zelenskyy described as a “deliberate act of terror”.The strike immediately followed the call between Putin and Trump, Zelenskyy said, and was a “clear interpretation of how Moscow interprets diplomacy”. More

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      Trump’s Medicaid cuts are coming for rural Americans: ‘It’s going to have to hit them first’

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      When Hurricane Helene drowned western North Carolina in muck and floodwater last year, it caught folks off-guard.Now, local leaders in places like Asheville expect the Republican-led reconciliation bill – called the “big, beautiful bill” by Donald Trump – to bear down on rural America. And they wonder whether people are missing the warning signs.“It’s going to have to hit them first,” said Laurie Stradley, CEO of Impact Health in Asheville, a Medicaid-funded non-profit providing social services to some people still digging out from the flood.Medicaid is the single largest health insurance program in the US. The public program covers 71 million low-income, disabled and elderly US residents. It pays for half of all US births and the care of six in 10 nursing home residents.When Trump’s sprawling tax-and-spending bill passed on Thursday, it heralded more than $1tn in federal cuts to Medicaid, which experts worry will push Republican-led states to abandon parts of the program and leave people without access to timely healthcare.“This is an extraordinarily regressive bill,” said Joan Akler, executive director and co-founder of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. “This is the largest rollback of healthcare coverage that we’ve ever seen and all in service of an agenda to drive tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit wealthy people and corporations.”Medicaid “expansion” is a key provision of Obamacare, formally called the Affordable Care Act of 2010. The expansion provides largely no-cost health insurance to people earning up to 138% of the federal poverty level, or $36,777 for a family of three. Although Obamacare has been the law for more than a decade, Medicaid expansion proved politically divisive in Republican states, and many only recently decided to accept enormous federal subsidies to cover their residents.North Carolina will lose $32bn in the next decadeThe Medicaid cuts in the bill could have particularly acute consequences in North Carolina, a politically competitive state, where experts said the bill could trigger a “kill switch” to end Medicaid expansion.“If the state spends any state dollars to implement the expansion population or expansion coverage, it triggers an automatic ending to Medicaid expansion,” said Kody Kinsley, North Carolina’s former secretary of health and an architect of the state’s Medicaid expansion.North Carolina is set to lose $32bn in federal funding in the next decade, according to an analysis by the office of the Republican senator Thom Tillis, who represents the state. He’s one of just three Senate Republicans who voted against the bill on Tuesday.North Carolina’s expansion only went into effect in December 2023, and in less than 19 months it enrolled more than 650,000 people – all of whom will lose coverage if the program ends.Those North Carolinians are only some of the 17 million people expected to lose health insurance by 2034 across the country, according to estimates from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Nearly 12 million people will lose insurance because of attacks on Medicaid.“Ultimately, Medicaid being cut is going to kill people,” said Molly Zenkler, a nurse at Mission hospital in Asheville. “I deal with people getting their feet literally amputated because they don’t have access to diabetic care. This is just going to get increasingly worse.”The reconciliation bill cuts state funding through a number of provisions. On healthcare specifically, the bill attacks complex financial maneuvers states use to draw down federal funds. It also requires states to spend enormous sums – perhaps tens of millions of dollars per state – implementing work requirements, effectively adding layers of expensive red tape.Congressional Republicans in favor of the bill argue it targets “waste, fraud and abuse”. However, it is already well-known that most Medicaid beneficiaries who can work do, and that Medicaid is one of the most cost-efficient health programs in the US, according to the American Hospital Association.North Carolina is one of a dozen conservative states that wrote a “trigger” law into Medicaid expansion. Not all function like North Carolina’s – the laws are, in the words of an expert with Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, a “lesson in federalism” – but they nevertheless underscore the difficult choices state legislators will face because of congressional Republicans’ cuts.One such program that could be on the chopping block is a pilot with Impact Health, which uses Medicaid expansion funds for social needs that affect health – an effort to reduce long-term costs. Stradley gave the example of a Medicaid-covered child with severe asthma who hit the local emergency room three times a week for breathing treatments.Impact’s program used Medicaid funds to replace moldy rugs with laminate flooring in the child’s home, and to buy a vacuum with a Hepa filter. The cost to Impact Health was about $5,000, “but now this child is going to the emergency room a couple times a year instead of a couple times a month. And so, every month we’re saving about $4,500.”The program’s knock-on effects boost the local economy: the work to replace the rug was done by a local carpenter, and the child’s mother isn’t calling out from work, increasing her job stability.“One of the ways that we talk about this program is that it’s a hand up rather than a handout,” she said. “Almost half of the folks that are recipients in our program are children … Then you look at the adults. Most of them are working multiple jobs, and those jobs don’t come with benefits, because they’re working two or three part-time jobs in order to make ends meet.”The enormity of Medicaid means large cuts to the program imperil not only patients, but the institutions that serve them – especially rural hospitals and clinics hanging on “by a thread”, according to Kinsley.One of US residents’ few rights to healthcare is in emergency departments, where hospitals are required to stabilize patients regardless of ability to pay. That makes emergency departments the go-to source for healthcare for the uninsured.An analysis released by the Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill earlier this year showed that 338 rural hospitals around the country were at risk of imminent closure with the cuts to Medicaid contained in the bill.‘Hospitals will be forced to restrict services, or close’Rural states such as Kentucky are expected to be disproportionately hard-hit as well. Thirty-five of the rural hospitals at risk of closure – about 10% – are in Kentucky, even though Kentucky’s 4.5 million residents comprise about 1.3% of the US’s population. About a third of Kentucky residents are on Medicaid, according to figures from Kentucky’s cabinet for health and family services. The program benefits about 478,900 adults.The situation is similarly dire in Arizona, another battleground state, which also has a trigger law on the books. Although the reconciliation bill may not “trigger” a rollback of Medicaid expansion, it does undermine a key financing mechanism for the state’s program called a “provider tax”.“We estimate Arizona’s healthcare system would lose over $6bn over the next seven years,” said Holly Ward, a spokesperson for the Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association, in a statement.“In other words, more than 55% of Arizona hospitals would be operating in the red,” she said. “Hospitals will be, at best, forced to restrict services such as obstetrics, behavioral healthcare and other complex services, and at worst, will close their doors altogether.”Another issue is the potential for Republicans’ cuts to drive up the cost of healthcare for Americans who are privately insured, including through employers. As hospitals fight to survive, they will try to extract as much money as possible from other sources of funding – namely, commercial insurance.In addition, rural healthcare providers worry the water will be muddied by the sheer complexity of US healthcare. Private companies have a hand in managing – and therefore branding – state Medicaid programs.“A lot of our rural voters may not even realize that what they have is Medicaid, because there are so many names for it,” said Stradley. However, the precarious situation is already worrying people whose lives have been stabilized because of Medicaid.Amanda Moynihan is a single mother of three children – ages nine, 12 and 16 – living in Kuna, Idaho. Medicaid expansion has helped her become a “functioning human in society”, she said. Routine medical care for herself and her children, along with other assistance programs, has meant the difference between grinding poverty and a shot at the middle class.Idaho, one of the most politically conservative states in the union, expanded Medicaid in 2018 with an overwhelming ballot-referendum vote of 61-39. Even if Idaho’s “trigger law” does not go into effect, the state could face similar fiscal challenges to Arizona.“Back two years ago, before I started school, I was just in fight-or-flight, just trying to pay the bills there. I didn’t ever see a future of what I could do. And then I just started with one class,” she said.Moynihan has completed an associate degree in psychology and is starting the social work bachelor’s degree program at Boise State University in the fall. For now, she’s working part time with the Idaho Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired and planning to pick up work at a gas station because it has a college scholarship benefit.But without stability to pursue higher education, her future “would be making the minimum wage, which is about $15 an hour, barely paying rent in a low-income household”. More

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      No one wanted Trump’s devastating budget bill. Of course it passed | Moira Donegan

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      The budget reconciliation bill that passed the US House of Representatives on Thursday and was promptly to be signed into law by Donald Trump represents the particular perversity of national politics in America: seemingly no one wants it, everyone hates it, and it is widely agreed to be devastating for staggering numbers of Americans. And yet, the bill felt inevitable: it was a foregone conclusion that this massive, malignant measure was something that everyone dreaded and no one had the capacity to stop.They didn’t really even try. In the Senate, a few conservative Republicans made noise about the bill’s dramatic costs: the congressional budget office estimates that the bill will add $3.3 tn to the deficit over the coming decade, and the senator Rand Paul, a budget hawk from Kentucky, declined to vote for it for this reason. But other Republicans, who used to style themselves as fiscally responsible guardians against excessive government spending, engaged in a bit of freelance creative accounting in order to produce an estimate that falsely claimed the cost of the bill would be lower. Most of them quickly found themselves on board.Moderate Republicans, or what remain of them, also quickly quit the field. Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina facing down an uncertain re-election bid, expressed concerns about the bill’s massive cuts to Medicaid, the federal low-income healthcare program on which many Americans – and many of his constituents – rely. When Donald Trump threatened to secure a primary challenge to Tillis in retaliation, the senator announced that he would not seek re-election after all; he voted against the bill, but also ended his political career. Susan Collins, of Maine – she of the perennial “concern” about the sadistic Republican agendas that she continues to support – made a rare departure from her usual formula and voted against the bill, a move that came close on the heels of polling showing her dismal approval rating among her constituents. That left just Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, who agreed to play ball: she would vote for the bill, which she had publicly disparaged, in exchange for some money for her state. The result was that Alaska will be exempted, at least temporarily, from new rules associated with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or Snap, which helps low-income Americans buy enough food to keep themselves alive. Republicans threw in a tax deduction for Alaskan whaling captains – of all things – and with that, her vote was secured.When the bill was sent to the House, a handful of Republicans threatened to withhold their votes over budget and Medicaid concerns. But no one believed them. They were always going to cave, abandon their stated principles and follow Trump’s orders, and they did. Trump, after all, had said that he wanted the bill passed in time for the Fourth of July; it passed on the third. He says jump, and the Congress asks: How high?They do so even when the demands that Trump makes are morally grotesque. The bill will devastate Americans. Its massive cuts to Medicaid, combined with expiring Obamacare subsidies, will result in an estimated 17 million Americans losing health coverage over the next 10 years, effectively undoing the expansion of healthcare coverage that was achieved with Barack Obama’s health law. Cuts to Snap are so profound that they cannot be made up with additional state spending; some people who are eating today because they have food assistance will go hungry in the future. There are deep cuts to federal loans and grants for college students, and a near-reversal of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act’s investments in green energy, with tax breaks now going to climate-damaging sectors like coal and oil instead. Because the bill creates a dramatic budget deficit, law requires that Medicare, the healthcare program for seniors, will face cuts, too.All of this is to say nothing of the downstream effects of the legislation. The steep cuts to Medicaid, in particular, will devastate America’s already fragile and partial healthcare system. Planned Parenthood is now excluded from federal Medicaid dollars, meaning that about 200 of its roughly 600 clinics will probably have to close, making abortion less accessible even in states where it is legal, and putting contraception and STD and cancer screenings out of reach for untold numbers of American women. Many rural hospitals will likely have to close, too, along with nursing homes. Those healthcare clinics that remain will have longer wait times and more crowding, and offer more expensive care. Ultimately, fewer people will be going to the doctor, and more of them will suffer and die needlessly of treatable and preventable conditions.But the bill does have winners. It has been called, among other things, the largest tax cut in the nation’s history, although the benefit is disproportionately to billionaires. The budget of Ice, Trump’s anti-immigrant secret police force, is also expanded exponentially: from $3.5bn to $48.5bn, making it the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, though still no more accountable.The bill, in other words, steals from the sick, the elderly, the hungry and the curious, and gives that plundered loot to billionaires and jackboots. It will warp American life – already sickly and impoverished by the standards of our peer nations – in cruel and enfeebling ways. It will make us sicker, poorer, more fearful, more ignorant and more endangered. It will make the rich, meanwhile, even richer.Why are Republicans voting for a bill that will hurt their own constituents? A bill that undermines their stated values and threatens their careers and will immiserate people they care about – if only themselves?One of the more confounding aspects of the Trump era is his ability to vacate what the constitution’s authors – and indeed most reasonable adults – would have assumed would be a defining feature of the contest among the branches: self-interest. Republicans will follow him anywhere, even to unpopular votes, even to self-sabotage, and frequently to the diminishment of their own branch’s relevance. Some say that now, he is leading them to a midterm defeat. Democrats made a show of their opposition to the bill – in the minority, shows are about all they can accomplish – with the minority leader Hakeem Jeffries delivering an eight-and-a-half-hour, filibuster-style speech on the floor telling the stories of Americans who will be hurt by the legislation, laying out the bill’s cruelty and recklessness. But you could also detect a hint of pleasure in his voice as he read out the testimonies of Americans who live in what the Democrats see as particularly vulnerable districts for Republicans in 2026.The bill is unpopular now, and it is likely to become much more so as the full breadth of its cuts to social services, and its impacts on Americans seeking to get healthcare, buy food, secure an environmentally livable future or go to school, become clear. Many of the politicians who ultimately voted for it criticized it sharply just days or hours before. They will be attacked about this in the midterms: the suffering that the bill will cause will be cut into television and social media ads and played incessantly on networks in what the Democrats believe are winnable districts. But it is unclear, in the end, if hurting Americans, including their own voters, really will come back to bite the Republican party. It hasn’t for a long time.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Keir Starmer says good relationship with Donald Trump based on shared family values

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      Keir Starmer has spoken about his good relationship with the US president, Donald Trump, and their shared family values.To mark the first anniversary of the Labour government coming to power on Friday, the prime minister spoke to the BBC podcast Political Thinking and said it was “in the national interest” for the two men to connect.“We are different people and we’ve got different political backgrounds and leanings, but we do have a good relationship and that comes from a number of places,” he said.“I think I do understand what anchors the president, what he really cares about. For both of us, we really care about family and there’s a point of connection there.”In the interview, Starmer said he had a “good personal relationship” with Trump, and revealed that the first time they spoke was after the then-presidential candidate was shot at during a campaign rally in July last year.He said Trump had reciprocated with a personal phone call a few days after Starmer’s brother Nick died on Boxing Day.Addressing recent political turmoil, Starmer said he would always “carry the can” as leader after coming under fire over a climbdown on welfare reforms and that he would “always take responsibility” when asked questions.“When things go well … the leader gets the plaudits, but when things don’t go well, it is really important that the leader carries the can – and that’s what I will always do.”Starmer also backed Rachel Reeves and said she would be chancellor “for a very long time to come”, after she was visibly tearful in the House of Commons.The scenes came after the government U-turned on planned welfare changes that put an almost £5bn hole in the chancellor’s plans.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionReeves said she had been upset by a “personal matter” before prime minister’s questions on Wednesday.Appearing on broadcast media on Friday, one year to the day since the 2024 general election, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, was asked on BBC Breakfast to score the government out of 10. “I don’t think it is for cabinet ministers to mark themselves and mark their own homework,” she said. More

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      Trump kicks off 4 July celebrating tax-and-spending bill and promising UFC fight at White House

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      Donald Trump has celebrated the passage of his signature tax and spend legislation by declaring “there could be no better birthday present for America” on the eve of the 4 July holiday.The US president took a victory lap during an event in Des Moines, Iowa, that was officially billed as the start of a year-long celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, in 2026.But Trump turned the potentially unifying moment into a campaign-style rally, mocking Joe Biden’s speaking style, repeating his lie of a stolen election and lambasting the “fake news” media. In a policy shift, he said he is willing to let migrant labourers stay in the US if the farmers they work for will vouch for them.Only after half an hour did he address plans for the semiquincentennial, which he said will include a “Great American State Fair” as well as an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) bout for 25,000 spectators in the grounds of the White House.Iowa had been described as a “logical choice” for the anniversary launch by Monica Crowley, Trump’s liaison to the organising group, America250. She said its location in the middle of the country was symbolic of a desire to use the coming celebrations to help bring people together.But once he arrived in the heartland wearing a red “USA” cap, Trump’s rhetoric proved as divisive as ever as he basked in the glow of his “One Big Beautiful Bill” narrowly passing in the House of Representatives on Thursday.View image in fullscreenThe sweeping legislation permanently extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, adds hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for the Pentagon and border security, slashes health insurance and food stamps and phases out clean energy tax credits. It will add nearly $3.3trn to the deficit over a decade, according to the nonpartisan congressional Budget Office.“There could be no better birthday present for America than the phenomenal victory we achieved just hours ago, when Congress passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” to make America great again,” Trump told a crowd at the state fairgrounds, in a car park that was far from full.As he championed the bill’s impact on estate taxes, Trump referred to bankers who exploit their clients as “shylocks”, a term the Anti-Defamation League has called an antisemitic stereotype. Biden apologised after using the word in 2014 when he was vice-president.Later Trump claimed he was unaware the word “shylocks” is linked to antisemitism, according to a pool report. “I’ve never heard it that way,” the president told reporters travelling back to Washington. “The meaning of Shylock is somebody that’s a money lender at high rates. You view it differently. I’ve never heard that.”Democrats say the bill will take food and healthcare from the poor while handing billions to the rich. But Trump complained bitterly that their unified opposition was personal: “Only because they hate Trump. But I hate them too, you know that? I really do. I hate them. I cannot stand them because I really believe they hate our country.”The president went on to boast, “one-hundred-and-sixty-five days into the Trump administration, America is on a winning streak like, frankly, nobody has ever seen before in the history of the presidency.”With characteristic brio, he told how an aide called him the greatest president in US history, surpassing George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. He touted the recent US strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, the declining price of eggs, trade deals with Britain and Vietnam and the lower number of migrants crossing the southern border with Mexico.View image in fullscreenBut in a tacit admission that his hardline policy of mass deporations may have overreached, Trump noted there have been some complaints from farmers that their crops are at risk due to a depleted work force.Addressing his homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, Trump said: “If a farmer is willing to vouch for these people in some way, Kristi, I think we’re going to have to just say that’s going to be good, right?”Speaking in a midwestern state where farming is a dominant industry, the president added: “We don’t want to do it where we take all of the workers off the farms.” He said he will also work with the hotel industry on the issue.A few thousand spectators waited for Trump for hours in temperatures above 90F (32C), wearing Trump paraphernalia, including “Make America Great Again” hats, shirts that said “Ultra Maga” and a stuffed monkey with its own miniature Trump shirt.Giant TV screens showed images of the founding fathers while the makeshift outdoor arena had 55 national flags flying, including a massive one hanging from a crane. Singer Lee Greenwood greeted Trump with his song “God Bless the USA”.A recent Gallup poll showed the US is experiencing the widest partisan split in patriotism in more than two decades, with only about a third of Democrats saying they are proud to be American, compared with about nine in 10 Republicans.View image in fullscreenIn a preview of battles to come over historical narratives, Trump promised to open a National Garden of America’s Heroes then alleged: “They took down a lot of our statues. They took down statues of some of the greatest people that we’ve ever had living. I stopped them from taking down Thomas Jefferson … You could imagine who they were going to put up.”He said the 250th anniversary commemorations would also include a televised “Patriot Games” led by Robert Kennedy Jr for top high school athletes and a national state fair that will begin in Iowa, travel to state fairs across the country and culminate with a festival on the National Mall in Washington.Most surprisingly, Trump said he is planning to bring the mixed martial arts of UFC to the White House. He has been a regular attendee at UFC fights, counts UFC president Dana White as a close friend and considers fans of the sport part of his political base.“We’re going to have a UFC fight – think of this – on the grounds of the White House,” Trump said. “We have a lot of land there. We are going to build a little – we are not, Dana is going to do it … We are going to have a UFC fight, championship fight, full fight, like 20-25,000 people, and we are going to do that as part of 250 also.”During the hour-long address, which ricocheted from topic to topic, Trump heard a sudden bang in the distance. The anniversary of his attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, is only 10 days away. “It’s only fireworks, I hope,” he said. “Famous last words.”View image in fullscreenUnlike a year ago, Trump was speaking from behind thick bulletproof glass. “You always have to think positive,” he said. “I didn’t like that sound either.”The rally ended with a chorus of “YMCA” and fireworks display in the evening sky. Despite the punishing heat, Trump supporters went home satisfied by the president’s recent run of wins, especially gratified that the “One Big Beautiful Bill’” made it across the finish line.Ray Seeman, 52, who works for a gas company, said: “I couldn’t believe it. I looked last night and I thought, ‘boy, I don’t know if they can get this pulled off or not’ but I’m glad they did. I haven’t read the whole thing but a lot of stuff that’s tied America down might be getting undone.”Troy Rector, 53, a government contractor, acknowledged the divisiveness of the bill: “There were some things in there that, no matter which side you’re on as far as politics, a lot of people aren’t going to be happy about. But the majority of the bill is going to help all of America.”Michelle Coon, 57, a psychotherapist, added: “I had mixed feelings on the BBB but I am glad that it passed so that we continue to have the tax cuts. I used to be in social work and I would see people who are undocumented get lots of free health care that I and other Americans weren’t getting. That was very difficult to see so the idea that they might pull some of that back would be good.” More

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      House passes Trump’s major tax-and-spending bill, sending it to president to sign into law – live updates

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      House Republicans passed Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” in a 218-214 vote that was almost entirely along party lines on Thursday. The bill next goes to the president for his signature. The White House has said Trump is expected to sign the bill on Friday at 5pm EST.

      The Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, prolonged the vote with a record-setting speech in which he decried provisions in the bill that would slash social safety net programs in order to offset the cost of making Trump’s tax cuts permanent.

      Only two House Republicans voted against the measure, for different reasons that showed the ideological span of the party’s wafer-thin majority. Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie, a libertarian-leaning fiscal hawk who has drawn Trump’s wrath for opposing his agenda, and Pennsylvania congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, who was opposed to the Medicaid cuts.

      Democrats led by Jeffries assailed the bill as “an all-out assault on the American people”. Meanwhile, Democratic groups were vowing to hammer Republicans for their support of a bill that projections say would lead millions of Americans to lose their health insurance.
      Donald Trump, who is on his way to Iowa for a rally, just told reporters that, just weeks after the military parade on his birthday, he is staging an air show with advanced air force bombers at the White House on Friday to celebrate his signing into law the massive tax-and-spending package that passed the House on Thursday.“We’re going to have B-2s and F-22s and F-35s flying right over the White House”, Trump said. “So we’ll be signing with those beautiful planes flying right over our heads.”The Fourth of July bill signing comes on the sixth anniversary of Trump’s 2019 independence day speech, in which the president claimed, according to the official transcript, that, during the war of 1812, the US army “took over the airports; it did everything it had to do”.The US supreme court on Thursday granted a Trump administration request to pause a lower court’s order that had blocked the Department of Homeland Security from deporting eight migrants to politically unstable South Sudan, clearing the way for the men with no ties to that nation to be moved from a military base in Djibouti where they have been held for weeks.Last month, the court had put on hold an injunction issued in April by a US district court judge in Boston, Brian Murphy, which requiring migrants set for removal to so-called “third countries” where they have no ties to get a chance to argue that they are at risk of torture there, while a legal challenge plays out.By a vote of 7-2, with the liberal justice Elena Kagan joining the court’s six conservatives, the court granted the administration’s request to clarify that its decision also extended to Murphy’s separate ruling in May that the administration had violated his injunction in attempting to send a group of migrants to South Sudan.The US state department has urged Americans to avoid the African nation “due to crime, kidnapping and armed conflict.”In her concurring opinion, Kagan wrote: “I continue to believe that this Court should not have stayed the District Court’s April 18 order enjoining the Government from deporting non-citizens to third countries without notice or a meaningful opportunity to be heard.”“But”, she added, “a majority of this Court saw things differently, and I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this Court has stayed.”Two liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the decision.“What the Government wants to do, concretely, is send the eight noncitizens it illegally removed from the United States from Djibouti to South Sudan, where they will be turned over to the local authorities without regard for the likelihood that they will face torture or death”, Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, which was joined by Jackson.“Today’s order clarifies only one thing: Other litigants must follow the rules, but the administration has the Supreme Court on speed dial”, she added.Among the Democrats expressing dismay at the passage of Trump’s tax-and-spending bill are the party’s two previous nominees who ran against him for president, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.“Republicans in Congress have voted to devastate millions of people across our nation — kicking Americans off their health care, shuttering hospitals, eliminating food assistance, and raising costs”, Harris said in a social media post on Thursday. “This is Project 2025 in action”, she added, reminding voters that cuts to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits were both part of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for Trump’s second term that she had railed against during her abbreviated campaign for the presidency last year.“The Republican budget bill is not only reckless — it’s cruel”, Biden posted about 30 minutes before Harris. “It slashes Medicaid and takes away health care from millions of Americans. It closes rural hospitals and cuts food assistance for our veterans and seniors. It jacks up energy bills. And it could trigger deep cuts to Medicare while driving up the deficit by $4 trillion. All of this to give a massive tax break to billionaires. Working people deserve better.”

      House Republicans passed Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” in a 218-214 vote that was almost entirely along party lines on Thursday. The bill next goes to the president for his signature. The White House has said Trump is expected to sign the bill on Friday at 5pm EST.

      The Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, prolonged the vote with a record-setting speech in which he decried provisions in the bill that would slash social safety net programs in order to offset the cost of making Trump’s tax cuts permanent.

      Only two House Republicans voted against the measure, for different reasons that showed the ideological span of the party’s wafer-thin majority. Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie, a libertarian-leaning fiscal hawk who has drawn Trump’s wrath for opposing his agenda, and Pennsylvania congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, who was opposed to the Medicaid cuts.

      Democrats led by Jeffries assailed the bill as “an all-out assault on the American people”. Meanwhile, Democratic groups were vowing to hammer Republicans for their support of a bill that projections say would lead millions of Americans to lose their health insurance.
      Maryland congressman Andy Harris, chair of the far-right House Freedom caucus, told reporters on Capitol Hill: “If winning is caving, then I guess we caved.”Harris repeatedly cited unspecified “agreements” with the Trump administration for persuading himself and other hardliners to drop their objections to the bill. He declined to divulge any details about the “agreement” brokered at the White House, telling reporters to “ask the president”.“This is a very good Republican product,” he added. “It’s going to move the president’s agenda forward. It’s going to actually seriously deal with spending and, of course, not provide a tax increase to middle-class America.”The bill is projected to add trillions to the national debt.Democrats and liberal activists have assailed the bill, warning that they will hold Republicans who voted for it accountable in next year’s midterm elections.“This budget is as cruel as it is corrupt. House Republicans just voted to gut Medicaid, kick millions off Snap, rip free school lunches from kids, and pour billions into Ice – all so their donors can rake in more tax breaks,” said Indivisible’s co-founder and co-executive director Ezra Levin. “Trump just made every single Republican more vulnerable – and while they’ll try to spin this disastrous bill, they know exactly how deep the hole they’ve dug is. But when Trump snaps his fingers, they fall in line – no matter how many families they throw under the bus. That spineless loyalty will be their downfall.”Congressman Tim Burchett, a Tennessee Republican who was one of the conservative holdouts, told reporters on Capitol Hill that Trump understands the art of a deadline.“I believe that’s why they called the vote last night, because that put everybody at the table, and they said, ‘This is the deadline,’” he said, explaining how the president and leaders eventually quelled their short-lived revolt.Major changes to the bill, which they had demanded, would have required Senate approval, which Burchett did not believe they would get again. “It would have died, it would have never it would have never passed. If it went back to the Senate, [Alaska senator Lisa] Murkowski – we would never get her vote again.”The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has told reporters that Donald Trump plans to sign the colossal tax and spending bill at 5pm EST on Friday, the Independence Day holiday. It will come as the White House is preparing to hold a Fourth of July picnic to mark the nation’s 249th birthday.At a signing ceremony on Thursday afternoon, Mike Johnson joked that he was operating on such little sleep after marathon days of voting that “I’m a danger to myself and others”.“We knew that if we won, and we believed we would, we knew that if we got unified government, we’d have to quite literally fix every area of public policy,” Johnson said. “Everything was an absolute disaster under the Biden-Harris, radical, woke, progressive Democrat regime, and we took the best effort that we could, in one big, beautiful bill, to fix as much of it as we could.”Johnson then signed the legislation that will be sent to the White House.Massie, the other Republican who has consistently opposed the bill, said he voted against it on Thursday because of the harm he believes it would do to the nation’s finances.“I voted No on final passage because it will significantly increase U.S. budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates,” he wrote on X.Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, one of only two Republicans who voted against the president’s megabill, has issued a statement explaining his decision.
      As I’ve stated throughout these negotiations, with each iteration of legislative text that was placed on the House floor, I’ve maintained a close and watchful eye on the specific details of these provisions, and determined the specific district impact, positive or negative, on our PA-1 community.
      I voted to strengthen Medicaid protections, to permanently extend middle class tax cuts, for enhanced small business tax relief, and for historic investments in our border security and our military. However, it was the Senate’s amendments to Medicaid, in addition to several other Senate provisions, that altered the analysis for our PA-1 community. The original House language was written in a way that protected our community; the Senate amendments fell short of our standard. I believe in, and will always fight for, policies that are thoughtful, compassionate, and good for our community. It is this standard that will always guide my legislative decisions.
      Fitzpatrick represents a competitive, heavily suburban Pennsylvania district.The White House is celebrating passage of the president’s domestic policy bill.Republican leaders are taking a victory lap, heaping praise on “our leader”.“They doubted us,” said Representative Lisa McLain of Michigan, the House GOP conference chair. “But here we are again! What are we? Six and zero?”“We delivered on our promises to the American people – no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, tax relief for seniors, enhanced childcare tax credits, elimination of the death tax, more Ice agents – we’re finishing the border wall and funding the golden dome.”Representative Tom Emmer, another member of leadership, repeated the Republican claim that the bill cuts only “waste, fraud and abuse” from Medicaid. According to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the bill cuts roughly $1t from Medicaid, a joint federal and state health insurance program for disabled and low-income Americans. It would result in an estimated 11.8 million people losing health insurance over the next decade.“To put it simply,” Emmer said, “this bill is President Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ agenda. Being codified into law from Minnesota to Texas and Maine to California, there are wins in this legislation for every single American.”Here’s a breakdown of what’s in the tax cut and spending bill that just passed the House, and next goes to Trump for his signature.The bill is largely the same version as the one Senate Republicans narrowly passed, with JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. Trump has imposed a 4 July deadline for the legislation to be on his desk.In a vote of 218-214, Republicans passed Trump’s megabill, sending it to the president’s desk by his self-imposed Independence Day deadline. Republicans burst into chants of “U-S-A!”In the end, two Republicans voted against the bill: Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie, a libertarian-leaning fiscal hawk who has drawn Trump’s wrath for opposing his agenda, and Pennsylvania congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, who was opposed to the Medicaid cuts.The 15-minute voting window has now closed – though that matters little. It will remain open for as long as Republican leaders believe they need.So far, two Republicans are recorded as voting against the bill, though nothing is final until the vote officially closes. One Republican – conservative Ralph Norman, has yet to vote, according to CSPAN.Passage would amount to a remarkable feat for Johnson, who has navigated, in his own words, “so many dire straits” since assuming the gavel.Johnson, once a relatively unknown congressman from Louisiana, came to power after the historic ouster of former speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was toppled by hardliners in his own party. Many expected Johnson – soft-spoken, deeply religious and lacking leadership experience – would meet a similar fate.Yet, in the months since, Johnson has surprised both his critics and colleagues by holding together one of the narrowest House majorities in modern history. He has overcome the threat of rebellion from the hard-right faction of his party and mollified moderates uneasy with aspects of the president’s agenda.One critical factor in his success so far: Trump’s support. The president’s backing has largely helped insulate Johnson from the kind of rightwing backlash.The House has officially started voting on final passage of Trump’s so-called “one big, beautiful” bill – more than 24 hours after it the reconciliation package was first brought to the floor. It is expected to narrowly pass, with all Democrats opposed.Johnson closed his remarks with a plea to members to help pass Trump’s megabill, though his cheery delivered made clear he no longer had any doubts about the outcome.“The president of the United States is waiting with his pen. The American people are waiting for this relief,” Johnson said. “We’ve heard enough talk. It’s time for action. Let’s finish the job for him, vote yes on the bill.” More

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      Former CBS anchor slams Paramount settlement with Trump: ‘It was a sellout’

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      A former CBS News anchor and 60 minutes correspondent, Dan Rather, has blasted the $16m settlement between Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, and Donald Trump, calling it a “sad day for journalism”.“It’s a sad day for 60 Minutes and CBS News,” Rather, a veteran journalist who was a CBS News anchor for over 20 years, told Variety in an interview published on Wednesday. “I hope people will read the details of this and understand what it was. It was distortion by the president and a kneeling down and saying, ‘yes, sir,’ by billionaire corporate owners.”Last November, Trump sued CBS News, claiming that the network’s interview with the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, had been doctored to portray her in a favorable light – which he alleged amounted to “election interference”.Many legal experts had widely dismissed the lawsuit as “meritless” and unlikely to hold up under the first amendment, but on Wednesday Paramount announced that it had agreed to pay Trump $16m to settle the case over the interview that was broadcast on the CBS News program 60 Minutes.The settlement comes as Paramount is preparing for a $8bn merger with Skydance Media, which requires approval from the US Federal Communications Commission. Paramount has said that the lawsuit is separate from the company’s merger.A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement to the Guardian that “With this record settlement, President Donald J. Trump delivers another win for the American people as he, once again, holds the Fake News media accountable for their wrongdoing and deceit.“CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle,” the spokesperson added.According to Wednesday’s announcement, the settlement funds will not be paid to Trump directly, but instead would be allocated to Trump’s future presidential library. The settlement did not include an apology.Rather told Variety on Wednesday that in his opinion “you settle a lawsuit when you’ve done something wrong” and “60 minutes did nothing wrong, it followed accepted journalistic practices”.“Lawyers almost unanimously said the case wouldn’t stand up in court,” he said.Ultimately though, Rather said he was disappointed but not surprised by the settlement.“Big billionaire businesspeople make decisions about money,” he said. “We could always hope that they will make an exception when it comes to freedom of the press, but it wasn’t to be.“Trump knew if he put the pressure on and threatened and just held that they would fold, because there’s too much money on the table,” Rather said. “Trump is now forcing a whole news organization to pay millions of dollars for doing something protected by the constitution – which is, of course, free and independent reporting. Now, you take today’s sellout. And that’s what it was: It was a sellout to extortion by the president. Who can now say where all this ends?”He continued: “It has to do with not just journalism, but more importantly, with the country as a whole. What kind of country we’re going to have, what kind of country we’re going to be. If major news organizations continue to kneel before power and stop trying to hold the powerful accountable, then we all lose.”In his more than 60 years in journalism, Rather told Variety he had never seen the profession face the kind of challenges as those it faces today.“Journalism has had its trials and tribulations before, and it takes courage to just soldier on,” Rather said. “Keep trying, keep fighting. It takes guts to do that. And I know the people at CBS News, and particularly those at 60 Minutes, they’ll do their dead level best under these circumstances. But the question is what [is] this development and the message it sends to us. And that’s what I’m trying to concentrate on.” More