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      US supreme court blocks Florida from enforcing anti-immigration law

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      The US supreme court maintained on Wednesday a judicial block on a Republican-crafted Florida law that makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants in the United States to enter the state.The justices denied a request by state officials to lift an order by the Florida-based US district judge Kathleen Williams that barred them from carrying out arrests and prosecutions under the law while a legal challenge plays out in lower courts. Williams ruled that Florida’s law conflicted with the federal government’s authority over immigration policy.The law, signed by the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, in February and backed by the Trump administration, made it a felony for some undocumented migrants to enter Florida, while also imposing pre-trial jail time without bond.“This denial reaffirms a bedrock principle that dates back 150 years: States may not regulate immigration,” said Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “It is past time for states to get the message.”After Williams blocked the law, Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, a Republican, and other state officials filed the emergency request on 17 June asking the supreme court to halt the judge’s order. Williams had found that the Florida law was probably unconstitutional for encroaching on the federal government’s exclusive authority over US immigration policy.The state’s request to the justices was backed by America First Legal, a conservative group co-founded by Stephen Miller, a senior aide to Donald Trump and a key architect of the administration’s hardline immigration policies.Florida’s immigration measure, called SB 4-C, was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and signed into law by DeSantis. It made Florida one of at least seven states to pass such laws in recent years, according to court filings.The American Civil Liberties Union in April sued in federal court to challenge the law, arguing that the state should not be able to “enforce its own state immigration system outside of federal supervision and control”. Williams agreed.The law imposed mandatory minimum sentences for undocumented adult immigrants who are convicted of entering Florida after arriving in the United States without following federal immigration law. Florida officials contend that the state measure complies with – rather than conflicts with – federal law.Sentences for violations begin at nine months’ imprisonment for first offenders and reach up to five years for certain undocumented immigrants in the country who have felony records and enter Florida after having been deported or ordered by a federal judge to be removed from the United States.The state law exempts undocumented immigrants in the country who were given certain authorization by the federal government to remain in the United States. Florida’s immigration crackdown makes no exceptions, however, for those seeking humanitarian protection or with pending applications for immigration relief, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued in federal court to challenge the law.The ACLU filed a class-action suit on behalf of two undocumented immigrants who reside in Florida, an immigration advocacy group called the Florida Immigrant Coalition and the non-profit group Farmworker Association of Florida, whose members include immigrants in the United States illegally who travel in and out of Florida seasonally to harvest crops. Some of the arguments in the lawsuit included claims that it violates the federal “commerce clause”, which bars states from blocking commerce between states.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBacardi Jackson, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, in a statement issued after the challenge was filed said that Florida’s law “is not just unconstitutional – it’s cruel and dangerous”.Williams issued a preliminary injunction in April that barred Florida officials from enforcing the measure.The Atlanta-based 11th US circuit court of appeals in June upheld the judge’s ruling, prompting the Florida officials to make an emergency request to the supreme court.In a filing on 7 July, the state of Florida pointed to a brief filed by the Trump administration in the appeals case, in support of SB 4-C. “That decision is wrong and should be reversed,” administration lawyers wrote at the time.On the same day that Florida’s attorney general filed the state’s supreme court request, Williams found him in civil contempt of court for failing to follow her order to direct all state law enforcement officers not to enforce the immigration measure while it remained blocked by the judge. Williams said that Uthmeier only informed the state law enforcement agencies about her order and later instructed them to arrest people anyway. Williams ordered Uthmeier to provide an update to the court every two weeks on any enforcement of the law.Other states have tried to pass similar laws, including Texas, Oklahoma, Idaho and Iowa, which have attempted to make entering their jurisdictions, while undocumented, a state crime. More

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      Zelenskyy to replace Ukraine’s envoy to US in diplomatic shuffle

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      Volodymyr Zelenskyy is replacing Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, who has been heavily criticised by leading Republicans, as part a diplomatic reshuffle designed to strengthen ties with the Trump administration.Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, confirmed on Wednesday that Oksana Markarova will be recalled from Washington after four years in the job. He described her as “extremely effective, charismatic and one of our most successful ambassadors”.He indicated that several top ambassadors to G7 and G20 countries would also be moved, telling Ukrainian radio “Every diplomat has a rotation cycle”.The diplomatic shake-up comes at a critical moment in the war. Russian troops have been attacking across the 600-mile frontline and in recent weeks the speed of their gains has increased, with the Kremlin spokesperson declaring: “We are advancing.”Russian combat units are for the first time close to crossing into Dnipropetrovsk oblast.Late on Tuesday and early on Wednesday, Russia carried out its biggest aerial attack since the start of its full-scale invasion in February 2022. It involved a record 728 Shahed-type drones, as well as 13 cruise and ballistic missiles. Most were shot down.The US House of Representatives speaker, Mike Johnson, is among the Republican figures who have criticised Markarova, accusing her of supporting the Democratic party and its candidate Kamala Harris in the run-up to last November’s presidential election.View image in fullscreenIn February she was pictured with her head in her hand during Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s disastrous meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office.There were calls for her dismissal after Zelenskyy visited a shell factory in Pennsylvania last September. Markarova organised the visit and did not invite a single Republican, Johnson said at the time.Ukrainian officials deny any bias but acknowledge the ambassador previously had good relations with the Biden administration and was close to Victoria Nuland, the then undersecretary of state for political affairs.Zelenskyy and Trump discussed Markarova’s departure during a phone call last Friday which Ukraine’s president hailed as their most constructive to date.On Tuesday, Trump expressed growing frustration with Vladimir Putin and announced US weapons deliveries to Kyiv would be restarted. His announcement followed a week-long pause, apparently ordered by Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of defense.The shipment includes Patriot interceptor missiles and other precision munitions. It is unclear how many will be transferred. The US news website Axios reported 10 missiles would be delivered – a tiny amount at a time when Moscow has dramatically escalated its bombardment of Ukrainian cities.The overnight raid was directed at the northwestern city of Lutsk. At least six civilians were killed and 39 injured in several other regions of the country, including Kharkiv and Donetsk in the north-east and east, and Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the south.A one-year-old boy, Dmytro, died in the village of Pravdyne in Kherson oblast when the Russians hit his house with drones, the local administration reported. The boy had been staying with his great-grandmother.One possible successor to Markarova in Washington is said to be Ihor Zhovkva, the deputy head of the office of Ukraine’s president. Zhovka’s immediate boss is Andriy Yermak, who is widely seen as the most influential person in Ukrainian politics after Zelenskyy.Other names include the finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko, and Olha Stefanishyna, who is deputy prime minister for Europe and Euro-Atlantic integration, as well as minister of justice.There is growing optimism in Kyiv that Trump’s pivot earlier this year towards Russia has been halted, if not quite reversed. One former Ukrainian official credited Jonathan Powell, the UK’s national security adviser and a veteran negotiator, with the transformation.Powell has played an important role in repairing Zelenskyy’s fraught relations with Washington after the Oval Office bust-up.He advised Ukraine’s government to avoid confronting the US president and to take his words as truth. The approach – described as “strategic patience” – was beginning to pay off, the official suggested.Zelenskyy has agreed to US proposals for a 30-day ceasefire, repeatedly praised Trump’s leadership, and signed a deal giving American investors access to Ukraine’s valuable natural resources.On Wednesday he met Pope Leo in Rome before a two-day international conference, organised to help Ukraine’s postwar recovery. Zelenskyy said they had discussed the return of Ukrainian children and civilians who had been abducted by Russia and the Vatican’s offer to facilitate peace negotiations.Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is due to attend the conference. In a recent call with Trump, Merz reportedly offered to buy Patriot anti-defence batteries from the US and to send them to Ukraine.Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, is also due in Rome and is likely to hold talks on weapons deliveries with Rustem Umerov, Ukraine’s defence minister. More

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      US supreme court clears way for Trump officials to resume mass government firings

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      The US supreme court has cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume plans for mass firings of federal workers that critics warn could threaten critical government services.Extending a winning streak for the US president, the justices on Tuesday lifted a lower court order that had frozen sweeping federal layoffs known as “reductions in force” while litigation in the case proceeds.The decision could result in hundreds of thousands of job losses at the departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and other agencies.Democrats condemned the ruling. Antjuan Seawright, a party strategist, said: “I’m disappointed but I’m not shocked or surprised. This rightwing activist court has proven ruling after ruling, time after time, that they are going to sing the songs and dance to the tune of Trumpism. A lot of this is just implementation of what we saw previewed in Project 2025.”Project 2025, a plan drawn up by the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank, set out a blueprint for downsizing government. Trump has claimed that voters gave him a mandate for the effort and he tapped billionaire ally Elon Musk to lead the charge through the “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, though Musk has since departed.In February, Trump announced “a critical transformation of the federal bureaucracy” in an executive order directing agencies to prepare for a government overhaul aimed at significantly reducing the workforce and gutting offices.In its brief unsigned order on Tuesday, the supreme court said Trump’s administration was “likely to succeed on its argument that the executive order” and a memorandum implementing his order were lawful. The court said it was not assessing the legality of any specific plans for layoffs at federal agencies.Liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole member of the nine-person court to publicly dissent from the decision, which overturns San Francisco-based district judge Susan Illston’s 22 May ruling.Jackson wrote that Illston’s “temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo was no match for this court’s demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this president’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture”.She also described her colleagues as making the “wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground”.Illston had argued in her ruling that Trump had exceeded his authority in ordering the downsizing, siding with a group of unions, non-profits and local governments that challenged the administration. “As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress,” she wrote.The judge blocked the agencies from carrying out mass layoffs and limited their ability to cut or overhaul federal programmes. Illston also ordered the reinstatement of workers who had lost their jobs, though she delayed implementing this portion of her ruling while the appeals process plays out.Illston’s ruling was the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul pursued by Trump and Doge. Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, have left their jobs via deferred resignation programmes or have been placed on leave.The administration had previously challenged Illston’s order at the San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals but lost in a 2-1 ruling on 30 May. That prompted the justice department to make an emergency request to the supreme court, contending that controlling the personnel of federal agencies “lies at the heartland” of the president’s executive branch authority.The plaintiffs had urged the supreme court to deny the justice department’s request. Allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its “breakneck reorganization”, they wrote, would mean that “programs, offices and functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe supreme court’s rejection of that argument on Tuesday was welcomed by Trump allies. Pam Bondi, the attorney general, posted on the X social media platform: “Today, the Supreme Court stopped lawless lower courts from restricting President Trump’s authority over federal personnel – another Supreme Court victory thanks to @thejusticedept attorneys. Now, federal agencies can become more efficient than ever before.The state department wrote on X: “Today’s near unanimous decision from the Supreme Court further confirms that the law was on our side throughout this entire process. We will continue to move forward with our historic reorganization plan at the State Department, as announced earlier this year. This is yet another testament to President Trump’s dedication to following through on an America First agenda.”In recent months the supreme court has sided with Trump in some major cases that were acted upon on an emergency basis since he returned to office in January.It cleared the way for Trump’s administration to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face. In two cases, it let the administration end temporary legal status previously granted on humanitarian grounds to hundreds of thousands of migrants.It also allowed Trump to implement his ban on transgender people in the US military, blocked a judge’s order for the administration to rehire thousands of fired employees and twice sided with Doge. In addition, the court curbed the power of federal judges to impose nationwide rulings impeding presidential policies.On Tuesday the Democracy Forward coalition condemned the supreme court for intervening in what it called Trump’s unlawful reorganisation of the federal government. It said in a statement: “Today’s decision has dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy.“This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution.” More

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      Maga influencer and de facto national security adviser Laura Loomer holds outsized sway on Trump

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      After years of claiming to be the vanguard of a new “America First” isolationist movement rebelling against the neoconservative policies of the George W Bush administration that led to the bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Maga’s online influencers are cheering for another war in the Middle East.And not just any war: they are applauding Donald Trump’s high-risk decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, a move that was considered a war too far even by the Bush administration.Maga’s quick flip-flop has made it clear that Maga was never really anti-war. Maga is about xenophobia, not isolationism, and its support for Trump’s decision to bomb a Muslim country fits in with its support for his draconian campaign against immigrants.But above all, Maga is about fealty to Trump.That formula certainly helps explain why Laura Loomer, who has emerged as the most prominent Maga America First influencer in the early days of Trump’s second term, has given her full support to his Iran strike.In early April, Loomer, a 32-year-old pro-Trump online influencer widely seen as a rightwing conspiracy theorist, met with Trump and gave him a list of names of people on the staff of the national security council that she believed were not loyal enough to Trump or at least had professional backgrounds that she considered suspect. Trump fired six staffers. Later, national security adviser Mike Waltz, whom Loomer had criticized for his role in the Signalgate chat leak scandal, was ousted as well.Loomer doesn’t have a job in the government, but she has still emerged as one of Trump’s most important and most polarizing foreign policy advisers in the early days of his second administration. She has had direct access to Trump and has used it to push for ideological purges inside the administration, instilling fear and anger among national security professionals.In fact, when it comes to the national security side of the Trump administration, Loomer has been something akin to a one-woman Doge. Now the big question is how long her influence with Trump will last, or whether she will soon go out the same way as Elon Musk.Loomer’s power in the Trump administration is ill-defined. Her many critics say she has just been taking credit for moves that Trump was already planning. But Trump himself has said he takes her seriously, so it may be more accurate to describe her as Trump’s de facto national security adviser.Press reports recently suggested that Loomer’s status in the White House was waning because she had overreached, much like Musk. She has left a trail of bitter Trump aides, while there have also been reports that Trump himself has grown weary of her. But, as if to disprove the reports that she was getting frozen out, Loomer had a private meeting with JD Vance in early June.In a revealing interview on journalist Tara Palmeri’s podcast in late April, Loomer said that her White House access came directly from Trump himself, and that she maintained her relationship with the president even as his aides tried to keep her out. “Donald Trump is my biggest ally in the White House,” she said.“I don’t have delusions of grandeur, but I certainly do believe that a lot of the information I have given him has protected him and has prevented disasters from happening,” she added. “I believe that the information that I provide is valuable. And I believe that it has proven itself to be an asset to President Trump and his apparatus. I don’t know why some of the people that work for him don’t want that information around him. But I’m not going to let that stop me. I’m going to keep on uncovering information and finding ways to get it to President Trump – and informing President Trump about individuals within his inner circle that are working against his agenda.”Loomer added that “it all comes down to vetting at the end of the day”.Loomer’s close ties to Trump first became big news during the 2024 presidential campaign, when she traveled with the Republican candidate on his campaign plane despite repeated efforts by Trump aides to keep her away. The aides were particularly upset that Loomer traveled with Trump on September 11, since she had earlier gained online infamy after posting a video claiming that the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center was an “inside job”. To be sure, fears by his aides that Trump was associating with a conspiracy theorist ignored the fact that he relishes in spreading conspiracy theories far and wide. During the 2024 campaign, Trump promoted a conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio; that xenophobic lie became the hallmark of Trump’s fall campaign.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOnce Trump returned to office, Loomer began to flex her newfound power, and even professional ties to top Trump administration officials weren’t enough to protect staffers from being fired after Loomer gave her list of names to Trump. Among those fired at the NSC was Brian Walsh, who had worked on the staff of the Senate intelligence committee for Marco Rubio, now serving as both secretary of state and national security adviser, when Rubio was in the Senate.The most stunning purge attributed to Loomer came in April when Trump fired Gen Timothy Haugh, the director of the National Security Agency, along with his top deputy, after they had found their way on to Loomer’s list as well. The fact that Loomer could trigger the firing of a senior military officer in charge of the nation’s largest intelligence agency finally led to a bipartisan outcry in Washington. A group of Senate Democrats wrote to Trump saying that the firings were “inexplicable”, while Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican senator who is now a leading Trump critic, lamented that experienced military leaders were being ousted while “amateur isolationists” are in senior policy positions. The moves even troubled Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican senator and Trump loyalist who is the chair of the cybersecurity subcommittee of the Senate armed services committee. Rounds made a point of praising Haugh during a subcommittee hearing soon after his firing and noted that “men and women capable of leading the National Security Agency … are in short supply. We do not have enough of these types of leaders, and a loss of any one of them without strong justification is disappointing.”But like Musk, Loomer has been so red-hot in the early days of Trump’s second term that her fall seems almost inevitable, especially after she began to call out White House actions she didn’t like.In May, for example, she publicly criticized Trump’s decision to accept a luxury jet from Qatar.When news of the gift was first reported, Loomer posted a statement saying: “This is really going to be such a stain on the admin if this is true.” She added: “I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump. I’m so disappointed.” She later backtracked and became more supportive. But later she was critical of Trump’s decision to withdraw the nomination of billionaire Jared Isaacman to be the head of Nasa, whose nomination she had supported. “There is reason to believe that Isaacman may be facing retaliation because of his friendship with @elonmusk,” Loomer posted as the news first broke. Days later, Isaacman suggested that he also believes that his nomination was withdrawn because of his ties to Musk.Loomer has been careful to try to limit her criticism to Trump’s aides, and not to Trump himself. But it is an open question how long that distinction will make a difference for Loomer. During the Palmeri podcast, Loomer said that she is “not going to be a sycophant and sit there and pretend that every little thing is great”. She added that “there’s a lot of incompetence in the White House. There’s a lot of people in positions they shouldn’t be in and they embarrass the president on a daily basis.”That is the backdrop for Loomer’s strong support for Trump’s decision to attack Iran. Perhaps concerned that her earlier criticism was damaging her ties to Trump world, Loomer has been profuse with her praise of Trump’s Iran attack, while also defending her America First credentials. In one post, she asked “How is it not AMERICA FIRST to congratulate those who just made sure Islamists who chant ‘DEATH TO AMERICA’ … never have an opportunity to have a nuke?” She has even gone on the offensive against other rightwing influencers, including Tucker Carlson, who have dared criticize the Iran strike. “I am screenshotting everyone’s posts and I’m going to deliver them in a package to President Trump so he sees who is truly with him and who isn’t,” Loomer posted. “And I think by now everyone knows I mean it when I say I’m going to deliver something to Trump.”For Maga influencers, staying on Trump’s good side seems to matter more than issues of war and peace. More

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      So big, so beautiful: Fox News ignores the critics and champions Trump’s bill

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      Donald Trump’s mega-bill has been widely criticized in the press. News outlets and Democrats have warned that millions of people could be stripped of their health coverage through cuts to Medicaid, that cuts to food programs would see children go hungry, and that the legislation would cause the deficit to balloon.Fox News sees it differently.“This legislation is packed with massive, huge, important wins for you, the American people,” Sean Hannity told viewers on Monday, as US senators debated the bill in Washington.“Here’s what the bill doesn’t do. It does not decrease Medicaid, Medicare, Snap or social security benefits,” Hannity continued, a claim that completely contradicted the assessment of the Congressional Budget Office, which estimates the bill will cut Medicaid across the US by 7.6 million to 10.3 million people.Hannity had more.“The big, beautiful bill also does not increase the deficit. Instead, the deficit will go down around a little shy of $2tn – that’s to begin with, according to estimates,” he said.“Because guess what? That’s what happens when you cut taxes. It stimulates the economy, creates jobs, gets people off the welfare rolls. Guess what? People are working, now they’re paying taxes.”It was unclear where Hannity got his $2tn number from, because he didn’t say. But the CBO says the bill would add at least $3.3tn to the national debt over the next nine years, while the tax cuts will benefit high earners more than others.Hannity held up Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 as an example of how the deficit will be reduced – a take that ignored that those tax cuts saw an increase of the deficit, and had to be reversed over the rest of Reagan’s presidency.Still, Hannity was sold.“The American people are on the verge of a level of prosperity they have never experienced before,” he said.Hannity’s interpretation was starkly different from the one many Americans were seeing.Even Republican senators have been dubious about the bill’s benefits, with three voting against it in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and House Republicans wavering on Wednesday.Yet, on Tuesday, Laura Ingraham largely ignored the bill – framing it only as Democrats losing a battle to “derail” the legislation before going on a minutes-long riff about a “slide in patriotism” in the US.She went on to offer complaints that there were “more foreign flags waving” in America’s streets and that leftwing politicians believe that “America can only be redeemed when she’s totally dismantled and then remade, with millions of new people from other countries”.Elsewhere, there were occasional, albeit small, concessions that the “big, beautiful bill” might not quite be the masterly piece of legislation the White House would have people believe.“It’s not perfect, but it does need to pass if we want this tax cut,” Ainsley Earhardt said on Fox & Friends at the start of the week. Her co-host Brian Kilmeade at least presented some of the negative points in an interview with Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, on Tuesday, challenging him to address the claim that “this is a tax break for the rich”. But Bessent didn’t even attempt to address that, and Kilmeade was unwilling or unable to press him further.Later that day, the theme continued. Trace Gallagher pulled up data from the Tax Foundation and the Tax Policy Center during his show, with a series of bullet points claiming that if Trump’s bill failed it would lead to tax increases for families and small business owners.Gallagher left out the part of the Tax Foundation’s analysis where the organization said the bill would reduce incomes by 0.6% and result in a nearly $3.6tn deficit increase, and ignored the Tax Policy Center’s verdict that most of the tax cuts in the bill would go “to the highest-income households”.His guests seemingly overlooked those bits, too, as they kept up the ruse.“No bill is perfect,” Elizabeth Pipko, a former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, told Gallagher, as she claimed “the Democrats seem to have forgotten that” before accusing the mainstream media, with no irony, of not accurately representing the bill.Pipko added: “I think it will pass, and I think it’ll go down in history as again another false alarm from the legacy media, from the Democrats, and another victory for President Trump.” More

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      ‘A dark day for our country’: Democrats furious over Trump bill’s passage

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      Democrats have erupted in a storm of outrage over the passage of the Donald Trump’s budget bill, delivering scathing critiques that offered signs of the attack lines the party could wield against Republicans in next year’s midterm elections.Party leaders released a wave of statements after the sweeping tax and spending bill’s passage on Thursday, revealing a fury that could peel paint off a brick outhouse.“Today, Donald Trump and the Republican party sent a message to America: if you are not a billionaire, we don’t give a damn about you,” said Ken Martin, the Democratic National Committee chair.“While the GOP continues to cash their billionaire donors’ checks, their constituents will starve, lose critical medical care, lose their jobs – and yes, some will die as a result of this bill. Democrats are mobilizing and will fight back to make sure everybody knows exactly who is responsible for one of the worst bills in our nation’s history.”The bill’s narrow passage in the House on Thursday, with no Democratic support and only two no votes from Republicans – which came from Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Brian Fitzgerald of Pennsylvania – is “not normal”, wrote congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Ocasio-Cortez highlighted the contradictions in the bill that Democrats can be expected to campaign on over the next two years, pitting its spending on immigration enforcement against the loss of social benefits for working-class Americans. She noted that Republicans voted for permanent tax breaks for billionaires while allowing a tax break on tips for people earning less than $25,000 a year to sunset in three years.She also noted that cuts to Medicaid expansion will remove tipped employees from eligibility for Medicaid and remove subsidies for insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and reduce Snap food assistance benefits.“I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did with Ice,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Bluesky. “This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion – making Ice bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, [the] DEA and others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.”Many critics referred to choice remarks made by Republicans in the run-up to the bill’s passage that displayed an indifference to their voters’ concerns.Senator Mitch McConnell was reported by Punchbowl News to have said to other Republicans in a closed-door meeting last week: “I know a lot of us are hearing from people back home about Medicaid. But they’ll get over it.”And Republican senator Joni Ernst, of Iowa, speaking at a combative town hall in Parkersburg in late May, responded to someone in the audience shouting that people will die without coverage by saying, “People are not … well, we all are going to die” – a response that drew groans.Cuts to Medicaid feature prominently in Democratic reaction to the bill.Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib described the bill as “disgusting” and “an act of violence against our communities”.She said: “Republicans should be ashamed for saying, ‘Just get over it’ because ‘We’re all going to die.’ They are responsible for the 50,000 people who will die unnecessarily every year because of this deadly budget.”“There is no sugarcoating this. This is a dark day for our country,” wrote senator Raphael Warnock.“Republicans in Washington have decided to sell out working people. As a result, millions will lose their healthcare and many millions more will see their premiums go up. Rural hospitals and nursing homes across Georgia will be forced to close. Children will be forced to go hungry so that we can give billionaires another tax cut.”But budget hawks on the left and the right have taken issue with the effects this budget will have on the already considerable national debt.“In a massive fiscal capitulation, Congress has passed the single most expensive, dishonest, and reckless budget reconciliation bill ever – and, it comes amidst an already alarming fiscal situation,” wrote Maya MacGuineas, the president of the oversight organization Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in reaction to the House’s passage of the bill.“Never before has a piece of legislation been jammed through with such disregard for our fiscal outlook, the budget process, and the impact it will have on the wellbeing of the country and future generations.”“House Republicans just voted – again – to jack up costs, gut health care, and reward the elite with tax breaks,” wrote the House Majority Pac, a Democratic fund.“They had a chance to change course, but instead they doubled down on this deeply unpopular, toxic agenda. They’ll have no one to blame but themselves when voters send them packing and deliver Democrats the House majority in 2026.”“Republicans didn’t pass this bill for the people,” wrote Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat. “They passed it to please Trump, protect the powerful and push cruelty disguised as policy.” 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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      in US Politics

      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