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      Trump Faces the Biggest Test Yet of His Second-Term Political Power

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      If President Trump gets his domestic policy bill over the finish line, it will be a vivid demonstration of his continuing hold over the Republican Party.President Trump has gotten almost everything he has wanted from the Republican-controlled Congress since he took office in January.G.O.P. lawmakers approved his nominees, sometimes despite their doubts. They ceded their power over how federal dollars are distributed, impinging on constitutional authority. And they have cheered his overhaul of the federal bureaucracy, even as he has bypassed the legislative body’s oversight of federal agencies.But now, Mr. Trump is pressuring Republicans to fall in line behind his sprawling domestic policy bill, even though it has elements that could put their party’s hold on Congress in greater peril in next year’s midterm elections. Fiscal hawks are appalled by estimates that the bill would add at least $3.3 trillion to the country’s ballooning debt, while moderate Republicans are concerned about the steep cuts to the safety net.Yet Mr. Trump is still getting his way — at least so far. The Senate narrowly passed the bill Tuesday, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie. The bill now heads back to the House, where the president can only lose three votes, and where anger among both moderates and conservatives about changes made by the Senate is running high.Getting the bill through the House may be the biggest test yet of Mr. Trump’s second-term political power. If he gets the bill over the finish line, it will be another legislative victory and a vivid demonstration of his continuing hold over the party.The process of driving the legislation forward has exposed deep divisions among congressional Republicans, as well as concern about the huge political risks of supporting the bill. In the end, fear of crossing Mr. Trump kept defections in the Senate to a barely manageable level.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Taking From the Poor and Giving to the Rich Is Not Populism

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      “I love the poorly educated,” President Trump declared during the 2016 campaign. His intense support for the “big, beautiful” $4.5 trillion tax-and-spending bill now before Congress shows that he has a unique way of demonstrating his affection.Republicans are on the verge of enacting Trump’s upwardly distributive fiscal policy measure, which has become an extreme test of the loyalty of his more downscale MAGA supporters, who not only oppose the bill but stand to bear the brunt of its negative consequences.In its current form, which is changing by the hour, the measure, known popularly as B.B.B., would provide the upper classes, including Trump’s allies and donor base — corporations and the rich — with tax cuts worth approximately $4.45 trillion over 10 years. The measure would offset the cost with the largest reductions in safety net programs in recent decades, if not all time, for those on the lower tiers of the income distribution.This pared-back social spending would adversely affect a large bloc of rural and exurban Republicans who played a crucial role in putting their party in control of the House and Senate, and Trump in the White House.“You can very safely say,” Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, told The Washington Post, that “this is the biggest cut to programs for low-income Americans ever.”Many of the details of the legislation remain in flux as the Senate continues to vote on amendments. If the Senate approves the legislation, the House and the Senate will still have to come to agreement on a final version for the measure to become law.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Colin Allred Will Run Again for Senate in Texas

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      After losing to Ted Cruz last year, Mr. Allred is planning his second statewide run and looking for a stronger political climate for Democrats.Former Representative Colin Allred, a former professional football player who last year ran a well-regarded but losing campaign against Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, said on Tuesday that he would make another run for the Senate in 2026.Mr. Allred, a Democrat who served three terms in the House, did not hide from his 2024 loss as he announced his second statewide campaign in a video. He spoke of entering the National Football League as an undrafted free agent and then being cut after his first workouts, before trying again and catching on as a linebacker with the Tennessee Titans.“Today I’m announcing my candidacy for the United States Senate, because you deserve someone who will fight for you,” Mr. Allred said in the video. “I get it. Real change might feel impossible, but I’m not giving up.”Though Mr. Allred lost to Mr. Cruz last year by 8.5 percentage points, Democrats have renewed optimism about Texas in 2026. There is an expectation that the contest will look more like the 2018 race, when Beto O’Rourke came within 2.6 points of Mr. Cruz. Mr. Allred is a proven fund-raiser who has already financed an expensive campaign in a state with four major media markets.And Texas Republicans have just begun their own primary battle, with Ken Paxton, the state’s far-right attorney general, who in 2023 was impeached, and subsequently acquitted, by the State Legislature, challenging Senator John Cornyn, the four-term incumbent.President Trump notably has not endorsed anyone in the Republican Senate race. Mr. Paxton has long been one of the president’s fiercest supporters, while Mr. Cornyn has been viewed with suspicion by his party’s base voters.Mr. Allred will not have the Democratic primary to himself. Last week, Terry Virts, a former astronaut, announced his campaign with a video that took an unusual — for a Democrat — shot at Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader.“Trump’s chaos must be stopped,” Mr. Virts said in his introduction video, before showing a clip of Mr. Schumer speaking at a rally in Washington. “But leadership is M.I.A.”Mr. Allred, like Democrats across the country in 2024, was dragged down by the lackluster electoral performance of Vice President Kamala Harris. He received nearly 200,000 more votes than Ms. Harris and had a particularly strong showing relative to her in the Rio Grande Valley, a largely Hispanic part of the state along the Mexican border that swung heavily toward Mr. Trump. More

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      With Tillis Out, North Carolina’s Senate Race Will Draw Parties’ Firepower

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      A popular former Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, is expected to announce a bid this summer. The Republicans are banking on an endorsement by President Trump to clear their field.The announcement this past weekend from Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina that he will not seek re-election is renewing the focus on a Senate race that was poised to be one of the two top contests on the 2026 midterm map.For months, Democrats were eager to run against Mr. Tillis, who was being squeezed from both the political left and right as he sought to navigate life as a battleground-state senator with President Trump in the White House.Officials in both parties acknowledged that Mr. Tillis was in a weakened political state. He won his last re-election in 2020 only after his Democratic opponent was engulfed in an extramarital sexting scandal, and he has long had an arms-length relationship with the Trump base of his party.In recent months, several North Carolina Republicans have inquired about either mounting a primary challenge to Mr. Tillis or seeking the nomination with the expectation that the senator would not run again.Democrats, for the most part, have yielded to their expected front-runner, former Gov. Roy Cooper, who left office at the start of this year. During his farewell address to the state in December, he pointedly declared: “I’m not done.”Here are four key questions about North Carolina’s Senate race.Will former Gov. Roy Cooper run?Mr. Cooper is by far the most popular Democrat in North Carolina. He is undefeated as a statewide candidate, having won four elections as attorney general and two as governor. In 2012, Republicans did not even bother to put up a candidate against Mr. Cooper.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump May Get His ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ but the G.O.P. Will Pay a Price

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      And so will many voters.There will be many short- and long-term consequences if Republicans succeed in passing President Trump’s signature policy bill, as they aim to do before the July 4 holiday, David Leonhardt, the director of the Times editorial board, tells the national politics writer Michelle Cottle in this episode of “The Opinions.”Trump May Get His ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ but the G.O.P. Will Pay a PriceAnd so will many voters.Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.Michelle Cottle: I’m Michelle Cottle and I cover national politics for Times Opinion. So with the July 4 weekend looming, I thought we’d talk about a different kind of fireworks: that is, President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” and as always, I hope the air quotes there are audible for everybody.But that bill looks like it is on track for passage. From Medicaid cuts to tax breaks for the rich, it is a lot. Thankfully with me to talk about this is David Leonhardt, the fearless director of the New York Times editorial board, who has some very pointed thoughts on the matter. So let’s just get to it. David, welcome.David Leonhardt: Thank you, Michelle. It’s great to be talking with you.Cottle: I’m so excited, but warning to all: We are recording on Monday midday and even as we speak, the Senate is brawling its way through to a final vote. So the situation is fluid and could change the details by the time you all hear this.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Republicans in Congress Who Are Opting to Self-Deport From Washington

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      Feeling out of step with President Trump’s G.O.P., Senator Thom Tillis and Representative Don Bacon are deciding to retire.Senator Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican, knows a thing or two about the power of health care at the ballot box.In 2011, he became the speaker of the State House in North Carolina after a wave of populist anger over the Affordable Care Act swept Republicans into office across the country. In 2014, he defeated the state’s incumbent Democratic senator as voters who saw the election as a referendum on government competence in the wake of the health care law’s messy rollout handed the Senate back to Republicans.So Tillis’s refusal to back President Trump’s signature domestic policy bill could be interpreted as a clanging alarm for a party that doesn’t want to hear it.“Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betraying a promise,” Tillis said on the Senate floor on Sunday, blaming “amateurs” in the White House for encouraging Trump to back a bill that Tillis said would kick some 663,000 people off Medicaid in North Carolina alone.Tillis had found himself squeezed between a key lesson of his career — don’t mess with voters’ health care — and President Trump’s biggest domestic priority. With Democrats eager to hold the measure’s deep Medicaid cuts against him, and Trump blasting him for wavering, Tillis decided there was only one option left: self-deportation from Washington (also known as retirement).And he’s not the only one, as congressional Republicans reckon with the fact that even a modicum of independence from Trump can be politically untenable in their branch of government.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Democrats Lay Groundwork for a ‘Project 2029’

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      The plan to write a policy agenda for the next Democratic president is at the center of a raging debate within the party: whether its biggest problem is its ideas or its difficulty in selling them.As he looks back at the defeat of former Vice President Kamala Harris last fall, the thing that keeps bothering Andrei Cherny, a onetime Democratic speechwriter and state party leader, is that he didn’t know what Ms. Harris would have done as president if she had won.The way he saw it, President Trump ran on his own ideas, but Ms. Harris only ran against Mr. Trump’s. “The oldest truism in politics is you can’t beat something with nothing,” Mr. Cherny said.Now Mr. Cherny, the co-founder of a nearly two-decade-old liberal policy journal, is organizing a group of Democratic thinkers to recreate what Mr. Trump’s allies did when he was voted out of office: draft a ready-made agenda for the next Democratic presidential nominee.They’re calling it Project 2029.The title is an unsubtle play on Project 2025, the independently produced right-wing agenda that Mr. Trump spent much of last year’s campaign distancing himself from, and much of his first few months back in power executing.The fact that Democrats turned Project 2025 into a cudgel against Mr. Trump during the campaign has not deterred Mr. Cherny and the other Democrats working with him from borrowing the tactic. They plan to roll out an agenda over the next two years, in quarterly installments, through Mr. Cherny’s publication, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. The goal is to turn it into a book — just like Project 2025 — and to rally leading Democratic presidential candidates behind those ideas during the 2028 primary season.Andrei Cherny, a onetime Democratic speechwriter and state party leader, is organizing a group of Democratic thinkers to draft a ready-made agenda for the next Democratic nominee.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Thom Tillis, Republican Senator, Won’t Seek Re-election Amid Trump’s Primary Threats

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      The day after President Trump castigated Senator Thom Tillis for opposing the bill carrying the president’s domestic agenda, the North Carolina Republican said he would not seek a third term.Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, announced on Sunday that he would not seek re-election next year, a day after President Trump threatened to back a primary challenger against him because Mr. Tillis had said he opposed the bill carrying Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda.Mr. Tillis’s departure will set off a highly competitive race in North Carolina that could be pivotal in the battle for control of the closely divided Senate. It was the latest congressional retirement to underscore the rightward shift of the G.O.P. and the reality that there is little room for any Republican to break with Mr. Trump.“In Washington over the last few years, it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species,” Mr. Tillis said in a lengthy statement on his decision.The announcement came as the Senate was wading into a debate over the large-scale tax cut and domestic policy bill that Mr. Trump has demanded be delivered to his desk by July 4. Mr. Tillis announced his decision the day after issuing a statement saying he could not in good conscience support the measure, which he said would lead to tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for his state, costing people Medicaid coverage and critical health services.He was one of just two Republicans who voted Saturday night against bringing up the bill.Mr. Tillis has been privately critical of the legislation and cautioned colleagues of the political downsides for them if they back it. In a closed-door meeting with his Republican colleagues last week, he warned that the sweeping legislation could be an albatross for the party in 2026.The president’s allies celebrated Mr. Tillis’ announcement as more proof of Mr. Trump’s political strength. “Don’t Cross Trump,” Jason Miller, who served as a top adviser for the president’s re-election campaign, wrote on social media. “The voters gave him a mandate to implement a specific agenda, and they want everyone to get behind his efforts!”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More