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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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      Trump’s tax-and-spending bill passes Congress in major win for president

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      The US House of Representatives passed Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill on Thursday, handing the president the first major legislative victory of his second term and sending to his desk wide-ranging legislation expected to supercharge immigration enforcement and slash federal safety net programs.The 218-214 vote came after weeks of wrangling over the measure that Trump demanded be ready for his signature by Friday, the Independence Day holiday. Written by his Republican allies in Congress and unanimously rejected by Democrats, the bill traveled an uncertain road to passage that saw multiple all-night votes in the House and Senate and negotiations that lasted until the final hours before passage. Ultimately, Republicans who had objected to its cost and contents folded, and the bill passed with just two GOP defections: Thomas Massie, a rightwing Kentucky lawmaker, and Brian Fitzpatrick, who represents a Pennsylvania district that voted for Kamala Harris in last year’s election.“We’ve waited long enough, some of us have literally been up for days now, but this day – this day – is a hugely important one in the history of our nation,” the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, said, just before voting began.“With one big, beautiful bill, we are going to make this country stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before, and every American is going to benefit from that.”The legislation is expected to speed up and expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations, and will probably make Trump’s longstanding desire for a wall along the border with Mexico a reality.It also strikes a blow against the US government’s efforts to fight the climate crisis by phasing out tax incentives created under Joe Biden that were intended to spur investments in electric cars, wind and solar power and other green energy technologies.The bill’s centerpiece is a permanent extension of tax cuts made in 2017, during Trump’s first term, as well as the creation of new, temporary exemptions for tips, overtime pay and car loan interest that the president promised voters during last year’s campaign.The government will lose trillions of dollars in revenue from those provisions, and to offset their costs, Republicans approved an array of cuts to Medicaid, the federal program providing health insurance coverage to poor and disabled Americans, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap).Those changes are expected to cost millions of people their benefits, but the bill remains expensive, with the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) saying it will add $3.3tn to the country’s debt through 2034.Massie explained his decision to vote against the bill in a post on X, writing that “it will significantly increase U.S. budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates”.Fitzpatrick issued a statement saying “it was the Senate’s amendments to Medicaid, in addition to several other Senate provisions, that altered the analysis” for his district and made him vote no.Democrats blasted the proposal as “one big, ugly bill” that dismantles anti-poverty programs to fund tax breaks for the wealthy. Analyses have shown that high earners benefited most from Trump’s tax policies.The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, made a last-ditch effort to halt the bill’s passage by delivering a floor speech that lasted eight hours and 44 minutes, the longest ever.“This is extraordinary. This assault on everyday Americans, assault on children, veterans, seniors, people with disabilities. It’s incredible to me, all of this in this one, big, ugly bill,” Jeffries said.“Ripping food out of the mouths of vulnerable Americans – that’s extraordinary that that’s what we’re doing, extraordinary. And all of this is being done, this unprecedented assault on everyday Americans, is being unleashed on the American people, Mr Speaker, on the most vulnerable among us, all of this is being done to provide massive tax breaks to billionaire donors. Shame on this institution. If this bill passes, that’s not America. We’re better than this.”Trump has described the bill as crucial to the success of his second term, and congressional Republicans made its passage their top priority. It was a tall task – the GOP won small majorities in both the House and Senate in last November’s election, and could afford no more than three defections in either chamber.The party’s lawmakers broadly support Trump but were divided on a host of other issues. There were lawmakers who wanted big spending cuts, rapid phase-outs of green energy incentives and an expanded deduction that would mostly benefit taxpayers in Democratic-led states. Their demands butted against others who sought to moderate the bill, but over the course of weeks, Republicans leaders managed to forge a compromise.Trump appears to have also offered some concessions to hard-line holdouts from the Republican House freedom caucus at a meeting at the White House on Wednesday and in subsequent discussions, as his advisers rushed to ensure the bill passed without returning to the Senate.The details of Trump’s concessions – possibly coming in the form of executive actions at a later date – were not immediately clear, and House freedom caucus chair Andy Harris declined to describe their discussions with Trump.“When we looked at this entire package, the significant agreements we got with the administration in the last 24 hours made this package a much, much better package,” Harris told reporters after the vote. “The agreement is with the president. If you want to know, ask the president.”The bill is only able to affect revenue, spending and the debt limit, under the rules of budget reconciliation that allowed the GOP to avoid a filibuster by Democrats in the Senate. Under Biden, Congress’s then Democratic majority had used the same procedure to pass legislation to spur the economy’s recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and curb US carbon emissions.Trump’s bill allocates $45bn for Ice detention facilities, $14bn for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire 10,000 new agents by 2029. An additional $50bn will go towards the border wall and other fortifications.Enrollees of Medicaid and Snap will face new work requirements, and states will be forced to share part of the cost of the latter program for the first time ever. The CBO estimates the bill’s Medicaid changes could cost as many as 11.8 million people their healthcare, and the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities forecasts about 8 million people, or one in five recipients, may lose their Snap benefits.The legislation also forces changes to provider taxes, which states use to finance their share of Medicaid spending. That is expected to further increase the financial stress of hospitals in rural areas, and when the bill was in the Senate, a $50bn fund was added to support those facilities.Some in the GOP were openly nervous about the cuts to safety net programs that their constituents rely on. Thom Tillis, a senator who represents swing state North Carolina, refused to support the bill for those reasons, leading Trump to announce he would support a primary challenger when he stands for re-election next year. Tillis then made public his plans to retire, a potential boost for Democrats’ hopes of claiming his seat.“It is inescapable this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,” Tillis said on the Senate floor.“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there any more, guys?” More

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      America is over neoliberalism and neoconservatism. Trump is not | Samuel Moyn

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      The convergence of the US Senate’s passage of Donald Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” in domestic policy with his strike on Iran in foreign policy has finally resolved the meaning of his presidency. His place in history is now clear. His rise, like that of a reawakened left, indicated that America was ready to move on from its long era of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. In office, Trump has blocked the exits by doubling down on both.The first of those slurs, neoliberalism, refers to the commitment across the political spectrum to use government to protect markets and their hierarchies, rather than to moderate or undo them. The second, neoconservatism, is epitomized by a belligerent and militaristic foreign policy. The domestic policy bill now making its way through Congress, with its payoff to the rich and punishment of the poor, is a monument to neoliberalism; the Iran strike a revival of neoconservatism.Up to now, uncertainty about Trump’s place in history has prevailed, in part because he has done little and dithered so much. From before he took office, apocalyptic premonition of the doom he might bring reigned supreme. Everyone assumed that the Trump era was going to be different, disagreeing only about the exact shape of the horror. On the right, some projected their hopes for transformation on the president, anticipating a different future, wishcasting without knowing whether (or when) their leader would side with them.Now, with his bill and his bombing, Trump has confirmed beyond any doubt that he is a man of a familiar past instead. Though the damage that neoliberalism and neoconservatism wrought helped make Trump’s charlatanry a credible choice for millions, the man himself stands for the eternal return of those very same policies. Trump’s appeal to the working class and more measured rhetoric about war from the start of his political career suggested that he might renege on these two dominant creeds from the beltway “swamp”. He renewed them both instead.This is where Trump’s ultimate significance so clearly lies: in continuity, not change. He busted a lot of norms from the first in 2017. Cries of abnormalcy and authoritarianism arose before there was evidence to back them – and evidence has accumulated through both terms. Charlottesville and January 6 in the first – intimations of deeper reservoirs of hate that could come out of American woodwork, with Trump coyly pandering to the mobs – were preludes to both mass and targeted immigration roundups in this term, reminiscent of classical fascism.Yet climactically, and when it mattered most, Trump has chosen to walk in lockstep with the dead consensus in domestic and foreign policy of the past half-century – not merely among conservatives, but among many liberals. Americans do best when the rich do best of all, with the poor punished for crime and sloth: that has long been our outlook. And the country must go it alone with military force, in order to back our interests or principles or both, Americans have long presumed.Neoliberalism and neoconservatism each has more complexity than this – but, leaning into both, Trump has shown in recent weeks they are not much more complicated either. And if so, Trump is far more a politician of American continuity with the past 50 years than many originally feared (or hoped).The “beautiful” domestic policy bill is one of the morally ugliest in American history. Making Trump’s signature tax cuts from his first term permanent requires both draconian cuts to programs (Medicaid for the poor, worst of all) and piling up even more debt for future generations to figure out. It turns out that Ronald Reagan and the Democrats who followed him in lowering taxation and “reforming” welfare (including by imposing work requirements, as this bill does) were not in another world from Trump. He is in theirs. Revealingly, the main trouble that Trump faced in getting the obscenity of a bill passed – and that he still faces in the House – is convincing Republicans who claim to hate deficit spending so much to rationalize even greater cuts to welfare.On the world stage, Trump has longed for the recognition of a Nobel peace prize. But the deals he thinks will deserve it have proved elusive. In Israel/Palestine, the ceasefire he helped force has broken down and the civilian toll has worsened. In Ukraine, the considerable distance between the warring parties has meant that Trump has not managed to either antagonize or lure either to come to terms. Unlike during his first four years, his Iran intervention means that, rather than bringing peace, exacerbating war is his foreign policy legacy for now.Squandering the inclinations of his base and outraging many more lukewarm supporters sick of foreign entanglements, it was a surprise that he acted with the reckless militarism that was once American common sense. He is no doubt open to any deals that come his way – apparently thinking that Canada or Greenland should clamor to be annexed. But it was foolish in response to the early rhetoric of his second term to expect Trump to revert to expansionist war by sending troops. But in sending B-2 bombers on so escalatory a mission to Iran, he clarified his support for war – incurring risks like no other presidents have taken. If the peace he wants to brag about doesn’t materialize, he is not above a dose of coercive violence.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIronically, Trump’s warlike turn meant that a long list of his neoconservative “never Trump” scourges became “sometimes Trump” supporters overnight. Where populist Republicans have had to grit their teeth and support a neoliberal bill – so much for the working-class party they promised – it was even more spectacular that neoconservatives overcame the hatred for Trump that had helped them launder their former reputations for catastrophic warmongering.With neocon scion Bill Kristol in the lead, after the Iran strike they fawned over the man whom they had spent years castigating as irresponsible, or malignant, or both. No wonder: Trump, far from acting as an isolationist or realist, was executing one of the longest-held and longest-denied neoconservative fantasies: that bombing Iran’s nuclear program off the map would work, and might have the fringe benefit of causing the regime to fall. It remains a fantasy. But Trump’s place in history is now defined by that fantasy more than by any other foreign policy choice he has made so far.Like in his first term, when he ordered the assassination in Iraq of Iranian general and terror master Qassem Suleimani in 2020, Trump’s strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities was illegal. But as the saying goes, Trump’s escalatory and risky use of bunker-busting munitions to wipe Fordow and other sites off the map was worse than a crime; it was a mistake. At best, it elicited a face-saving attack from Iran so that it could come to the negotiating table with a nuclear program to continue in the future; at worst, it will prompt Iran to intensify its efforts to achieve the weapon. And while Israel has certainly set back Iran’s regional designs and capacity for sponsoring terror, there are no signs the regime will relent in its policies.With hopes that he might stand for restraint shredded, it is likelier that a lackey will find a place on Mount Rushmore than that Trump will get the call from Oslo he badly wants. But like the politicians whose faces are already carved in the granite of South Dakota, Trump is a man of the past – and never more clearly than in recent weeks, as America continues to look for someone to liberate it from the zombie neoliberalism and neoconservatism that still define their disastrous present and president.

      Samuel Moyn is the Kent professor of law and history at Yale University, where he also serves as head of Grace Hopper College More

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      Planned Parenthood CEO warns Trump bill will lead to $700m loss and ‘backdoor abortion ban’

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      Planned Parenthood stands to lose roughly $700m in federal funding if the US House passes Republicans’ massive spending-and-tax bill, the organization’s CEO said on Wednesday, amounting to what abortion rights supporters and opponents alike have called a “backdoor abortion ban”.“We are facing down the reality that nearly 200 health centers are at risk of closure. We’re facing a reality of the impact on shutting down almost half of abortion-providing health centers,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of Americas’s CEO, said in an interview Wednesday morning. “It does feel existential. Not just for Planned Parenthood, but for communities that are relying on access to this care.”Anti-abortion activists have longed to “defund” Planned Parenthood for decades. They are closer than ever to achieving their goal.That $700m figure represents the loss that Planned Parenthood would face from a provision in the spending bill that would impose a one-year Medicaid ban on healthcare non-profits that offer abortions and that received more than $800,000 in federal funding in 2023, as well as the funding that Planned Parenthood could lose from Title X, the nation’s largest family-planning program. In late March, the Trump administration froze tens of millions of dollars of Title X funding that had been set aside for some Planned Parenthood and other family-planning clinics.“Essentially what you are seeing is a gutting of a safety net,” said McGill Johnson, who characterized the bill as a “backdoor abortion ban” in a statement.Medicaid is the US government’s insurance program for low-income people, and about 80 million people use it. If the latest version of the spending-and-tax bill passes, nearly 12 million people are expected to lose their Medicaid coverage.Donald Trump has said that he would like the bill to be on his desk, ready for a signature, by 4 July.The provision attacking Planned Parenthood would primarily target clinics in blue states that have protected abortion rights since the overturning of Roe v Wade three years ago, because those blue states have larger numbers of people on Medicaid. Although not all Planned Parenthood clinics perform abortions, the reproductive healthcare giant provides 38% of US abortions, according to the latest data from Abortion Care Network, a membership group for independent abortion clinics.Among the clinics at risk of closure, Planned Parenthood estimated, more than 90% are in states that permit abortion. Sixty percent are located in areas that have been deemed “medically underserved”.In total, more than 1.1 million Planned Parenthood patients could lose access to care.“There’s nowhere else for folks” to go, McGill Johnson said. “The community health centers have said they cannot absorb the patients that Planned Parenthood sees. So I think that we do need to just call it a targeted attack because that’s exactly how it is.”Nationally, 11% of female Medicaid beneficiaries between the ages of 15 and 49 and who receive family-planning services go to Planned Parenthood for a range of services, according to an analysis by the non-profit KFF, which tracks healthcare policy. Those numbers rise in blue states like Washington, Oregon and Connecticut.In California, that number soars to 29%. The impact on the state would be so devastating that Nichole Ramirez, senior vice-president of communication and donor relations at Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties, called the tax-and-spending package’s provision “a direct attack on us, really”.“They haven’t been able to figure out how to ban abortion nationwide and they haven’t been able to figure out how to ban abortion in California specifically,” said Ramirez, who estimated that Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernardino counties stands to lose between $40m and $60m. Ramirez continued: “This is their way to go about banning abortion. That is the entire goal here.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a post on X, the prominent anti-abortion group Live Action reposted an image of a Planned Parenthood graphic calling the provision “backdoor abortion ban”. “They might be onto us,” Live Action wrote.The Planned Parenthood network is overseen by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, but it also consists of dozens of independent regional affiliates that operate nearly 600 clinics across the country. In June, as the spending-and-tax bill moved through Congress, Autonomy News, an outlet that focuses on threats to bodily autonomy, reported that Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s accreditation board had sent waivers out to affiliates to apply for approval to cease providing abortions in order to preserve access to Medicaid funding. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that a memo sent to the leadership of one California affiliate suggests that leaders there had considered ending abortion services.McGill Johnson said that there have been discussions within Planned Parenthood’s network about what it would mean to stop offering abortions. But no affiliates, to her knowledge, are moving forward with plans to stop performing the procedure.“Educating our volunteers and teams around hard decisions to stand and understand the impact of that is different than weighing and considering a stoppage of abortion,” McGill Johnson said.The budget bill and Title X funding freeze aren’t the only sources of pressure on the group. The US supreme court last week ruled in favor of South Carolina in a case involving the state’s attempt to kick Planned Parenthood out of its state Medicaid reimbursement program – a ruling that will likely give a green light to other states that also want to defund Planned Parenthood.At least one other organization that provides abortion and family-planning services, Maine Family Planning, will be affected by the provision, according to the organization’s CEO, George Hill. Maine Family Planning directly operates 18 clinics, including several that provide primary care or are in rural, medically underserved areas. If the provision takes effect, Hill estimates, the organization would lose 20% of its operating budget.“It’s dressed up as a budget provision, but it’s not,” Hill said. “They’re basically taking the rug out from under our feet.” More

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      House set to vote on Trump’s big bill as Johnson vows to ‘get it over the line’

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      Donald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill is hanging in the balance as Republicans struggle to muster sufficient votes in the US House of Representatives.A five-minute procedural vote remained open and tied for more than an hour on Wednesday as Republican leaders told members they could leave the floor, suggesting they still do not have the numbers they need.Trump, JD Vance and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, had spent much of the day trying to pressure conservatives to support the bill despite changes made by the Senate.A preliminary motion on the sweeping tax-and-spending bill did gain approval on party lines with 214 in favor and 212 against, setting the stage for another vote later on Wednesday afternoon to adopt the rule. If that is successful, the chamber will debate the bill, then vote on its final passage.But with the House at a standstill, the timing of the all-important rule vote was uncertain. “Either you vote on the rule or you go home,” said the conservative Tennessee representative Tim Burchett as he exited the Capitol.The Senate passed the bill, with Vance casting the tie-breaking vote, on Tuesday, after a record-setting all-night session. Now the chambers must reconcile their versions: the sprawling mega-bill goes back to the House, where Johnson has said the Senate “went a little further than many of us would have preferred” in its changes, particularly to Medicaid, a program that provides healthcare to low-income and disabled Americans.But the speaker vowed to “get that bill over the line”. Trump has set a Fourth of July deadline for Congress to send the bill to his desk.According to CNN, Johnson told reporters: “When you have a piece of legislation that is this comprehensive and with so many agenda items involved, you’re going to have lots of different priorities and preferences among people because they represent different districts and they have different interests.“But we can’t make everyone 100% happy. It’s impossible. This is a deliberative body. It’s a legislative process. By definition, all of us have to give up on our personal preferences. [I’m] never going to ask anybody to compromise core principles, but preferences must be yielded for the greater good, and that’s what I think people are recognizing and come to grips with.”Early on Wednesday morning, the House rules committee advanced the measure, sending it to the floor for consideration. On their way into the Capitol, two conservative Republicans signaled optimism that the bill would get through the House.Congresswoman Nancy Mace told reporters: “I think these votes will take a little bit or a lot longer than usual. But that’s Washington. You guys are watching how the sausage is made, and that’s how business is run.”Like several other members, Mace wound up driving from her South Carolina district to Washington after a flurry of thunderstorms yesterday prompted major flight delays and cancellations around the capital.Smoking a cigar, Congressman Troy Nehls of Texas said: “There’s things in the bill I don’t like, but would I change the bill because I didn’t get what I wanted? I don’t think that would be good for America.”The House approved an initial draft of the legislation in May by a single vote, overcoming Democrats’ unanimous opposition. But many fiscal conservatives are furious over cost estimates that project the Senate version would add even more to the federal deficit than the House-passed plan.But Johnson’s wafer-thin Republican majority risks losing decisive votes from rightwing fiscal hardliners demanding steep spending cuts, moderates wary of dismantling safety-net programs and Republicans from Democratic-led states expected to make a stand on a contentious tax provision. Any one of these groups could potentially derail the bill’s passage through a chamber where the GOP can afford to lose no more than three votes.Trump celebrated the Senate’s passage of the bill as “music to my ears”. He has described the bill as crucial to his second-term agenda, and congressional Republicans made it their top priority.The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill in its current form would add $3.3tn to the US budget deficit through 2034.It will extend tax cuts enacted during the president’s first term in 2017, and includes new provisions to cut taxes on tips, overtime and interest payments for some car loans. It funds Trump’s plans for mass deportations by allocating $45bn for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, $14bn for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029.It also includes more than $50bn for the construction of new border fortifications, which will probably include a wall along the border with Mexico.To satisfy demands from fiscal conservatives for cuts to the US’s large federal budget deficit, the bill imposes new work requirements on enrollees of Medicaid. It also imposes a limit on the provider tax states use to fund their program, which could lead to reductions in services. Finally, it sunsets some incentives for green-energy technologies created by Congress under Joe Biden.In a floor speech on Wednesday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York, warned: “This bill is a deal with the devil. It explodes our national debt. It militarizes our entire economy, and it strips away healthcare and basic dignity of the American people.“For what? To give Elon Musk a tax break and billionaires, the greedy, taking of our nation. We cannot stand for it and we will not support it. You should be ashamed.”Speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi said of the policy bill: “Well, if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then you, GOP, you have a very blurred vision of what America is about.“Is it beautiful to cut off food from seniors and children? Is it beautiful to cut off 17 million people from healthcare? Is it beautiful to do this? To give tax cuts to billionaires in our country? Is it beautiful to take money from education and the rest? The list goes on and on.” More

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      Senate Republicans pass Trump’s sweeping policy bill, clearing major hurdle

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      Senate Republicans on Tuesday passed a major tax and spending bill demanded by Donald Trump, ending weeks of negotiations over the comprehensive legislation and putting it another step closer to enactment.But it remains unclear whether changes made by the chamber will be accepted by the House of Representatives, which approved an initial draft of the legislation last month by a single vote. While Republicans control both houses of Congress, factionalism in the lower chamber is particularly intense, with rightwing fiscal hardliners demanding deep spending cuts, moderates wary of dismantling safety-net programs and Republicans from Democratic-led states expected to make a stand on a contentious tax provision. Any one of these groups could potentially derail the bill’s passage through a chamber where the GOP can lose no more than three votes.The bill’s passage is nonetheless an accomplishment for Senate Republicans who faced their own divisions in getting it passed, and saw one lawmaker announce his retirement after clashing with Trump over the bill. The push to get the legislation done intensified on Saturday when the chamber voted to begin debate, then continued with amendment votes that began on Monday and stretched all night.The vote for passage came just after noon on Tuesday, and required the vice-president, JD Vance, to break a tie that resulted after three Republicans joined with all Democrats in voting against it.In a joint statement, the speaker, Mike Johnson, and the House Republican leadership said: “Republicans were elected to do exactly what this bill achieves: secure the border, make tax cuts permanent, unleash American energy dominance, restore peace through strength, cut wasteful spending, and return to a government that puts Americans first. This bill is President Trump’s agenda, and we are making it law.”The Senate majority leader, John Thune, said Republican senators and staff began laying the groundwork for this budget bill more than a year ago, planning how they would extend tax breaks if they had the votes. He said: “Since we took office in January, Republicans have been laser-focused on achieving the bill before us today. And now we’re here, passing legislation that will permanently extend tax relief for hard-working Americans.”The lower chamber will take up the measure on Wednesday, before a deadline Trump has imposed to have it on his desk by Friday, the Independence Day holiday. But the president has recently made comments indicating the bill could arrive later, saying at a press conference on Friday “we can go longer”, before writing on Truth Social that “the House of Representatives must be ready to send it to my desk before July 4th”.Trump has described the bill as crucial to his presidency, and congressional Republicans made it their top priority. It will extend tax cuts enacted during the president’s first term in 2017, and includes new provisions to cut taxes on tips, overtime and interest payments for some car loans. It funds Trump’s plans for mass deportations by allocating $45bn for Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, $14bn for deportation operations and billions of dollars more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029. It also includes more than $50bn for the construction of new border fortifications, which will probably include a wall along the border with Mexico.To satisfy demands from fiscal conservatives for cuts to the US’s large federal budget deficit, the bill imposes new work requirements on enrollees of Medicaid, which provides healthcare to low-income and disabled Americans. It also imposes a limit on the provider tax states use to fund their program, which could lead to reductions in services. Finally, it sunsets some incentives for green-energy technologies created by Congress under Joe Biden.Nonetheless, the bill would add $3.3tn to the US budget deficit through 2034, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-profit focused on fiscal responsibility, called the bill “a failure of responsible governing” because it will add to the federal debt and includes budget gimmicks that disguise how much debt it is adding. The group estimated it would add more than $4tn to the national debt through 2034, and said that if some “arbitrary expirations” were made permanent, they would add $5.4tn.“The Senate reconciliation bill fails almost every test of fiscal responsibility,” said Maya MacGuineas, the group’s president. “Instead of worrying about arbitrary deadlines or sparing the Senate another vote-a-rama, fiscal conservatives should stand up for what’s right and reject the Senate plan to explode our debt.”While it was formally titled the one big beautiful bill act, the Senate’s Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer, managed to get the name stricken minutes before the vote for passage, though that is not expected to change how many lawmakers refer to it. Because it was passed using the budget reconciliation procedure that requires legislation only affect spending, revenue and the debt limit, Democrats were unable to use the filibuster to block its passage in the Senate.Schumer called the bill a “big, ugly betrayal”, pointing to the millions who will lose health insurance, job losses and debt increase done in favor of tax breaks for the wealthy and corporate special interests. He also decried the process Republicans used to pass the bill, saying they pushed the rules and norms of the chamber in a way that did “grave damage” to the body.“Today’s vote will haunt our Republican colleagues for years to come as the American people see the damage that is done – as hospitals close, as people are laid off, as costs go up, as the debt increases. They will see what our colleagues have done and they will remember it, and we Democrats will make sure they remember it,” Schumer said.In the lead-up to the bill’s passage, several moderate Republicans signaled unease with its cuts to the social safety net, including North Carolina’s Thom Tillis. After saying on Saturday he would not vote for the bill, Trump publicly attacked him, and the senator announced he would not run for re-election next year, potentially improving Democrats’ chances of picking up the purple state’s seat.“It is inescapable this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,” Tillis said on Sunday. Pointing to a forecast that the bill would cost 663,000 North Carolinians their Medicaid coverage, Tillis said: “What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there any more, guys?”In addition to Tillis, Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against passage, criticizing the bill’s impact on the budget deficit and national debt. Susan Collins, who is expected to face a fierce re-election challenge next year from Democrats for her seat in Maine, also opposed it, saying the measure would “threaten not only Mainers’ access to healthcare, but also the very existence of several of our state’s rural hospitals”.The Alaska moderate Lisa Murkowski expressed similar concerns about its effect on Medicaid, but ended up voting for passage.Now that the legislation is back in the House, Johnson faces a difficult task in getting the Senate’s changes cleared by his conference’s competing factions.Moderates remain concerned about the safety-net cuts, while rightwing Republicans have railed against the bill’s expensive price tag. Last week, David Valadao, a Republican representative whose central California district has one of the highest Medicaid enrollment rates in the nation, said he would not support the measure over its funding changes to the program.On Monday, before the bill’s passage, the Democratic National Committee announced the launch of an organizing campaign to capitalize on the unpopularity of the budget plan’s provisions. Ken Martin, the chair of the DNC, shared in a press briefing that when he was growing up, his family relied on the kinds of safety-net programs that are being cut.Martin said in a statement on Tuesday that the bill helps billionaires at the expense of American families – the sort of messaging the party will rely on as it hits the road to turn out voters for the midterms and special elections.“It’s a massive scheme to steal from working folks, struggling families and, hell, even from nursing homes – all to enrich the already rich with a tax giveaway,” Martin said. “Billionaires don’t need more help – working families do. Democrats will stand shoulder to shoulder with working families to kick these Republicans out of their seats in 2026.”The rightwing House Freedom caucus has also criticized the bill for its price tag. “The Senate must make major changes and should at least be in the ballpark of compliance with the agreed upon House budget framework. Republicans must do better,” they wrote on Monday, as amendments were being considered.In a Tuesday press conference, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said the bill represents the “largest cut to Medicaid in American history”. He expects his caucus will uniformly oppose the bill and will be making the case to vote it down in the rules committee and on the House floor.When asked whether House Democrats would use any procedural moves to delay passage of the bill, Jeffries said: “All procedural and legislative options are on the table.” More

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      Republican senator denounces Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ in fiery speech

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      “It is inescapable this bill will betray the promise Donald Trump made,” Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican senator, said on Sunday night, sandblasting the Senate version of the “big, beautiful bill” that is meant to codify the president’s agenda.Tillis made his speech on the Senate floor on Sunday night, a few hours after announcing he would not seek re-election in politically competitive North Carolina. Observers described it as “fiery” and “savage”. But Tillis carefully avoided direct criticism of the president as he denounced proposed cuts to Medicaid, a lack of rigor in the legislative process and the Senate’s headlong drive to an artificial deadline.Instead, in one of the most forceful Republican denunciations of the bill, Tillis attacked “amateurs” advising the president who have “no insight into how these provider tax cuts are going to be absorbed without harming people on Medicare”.Tillis’s office published an analysis concluding that the Senate budget would have a $32bn impact on the North Carolina healthcare system and threaten insurance coverage for 663,000 Medicaid expansion beneficiaries in the state – about one in 16 North Carolinians.“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there any more, guys?” Tillis said in his floor speech.It has become increasingly difficult for lawmakers in the Republican party to break ranks with the president without facing withering blowback from conservative media, “Maga” diehards and Trump himself on social media.“Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER! He’s even worse than Rand ‘Fauci’ Paul!” Trump posted on Truth Social after announcing his opposition to the bill. Trump pledged to back a primary challenger to Tillis. When Tillis subsequently announced he would not seek re-election, Trump called it “good news”, and threatened primary challenges against other Republican fiscal conservatives standing in the way of the bill’s passage.Arguments critical of conservative doctrine on healthcare would fall on deaf ears. Instead, Tillis’s rhetoric emphasized the political threat to Republican lawmakers and the president himself if the bill passed in its current form.“I’m telling the president that you have been misinformed,” he said. “You supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.”Tillis referred back to Trump’s promise not to cut Medicaid while campaigning for president.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The last time I saw a promise broken around healthcare, with respect to my friends on the other side of the aisle, is when somebody said “If you like your healthcare, you could keep it. If you like your doctor, you could keep it,” Tillis said. “We found out that wasn’t true. That made me the second Republican speaker of the House since the civil war.”Tillis signaled he would be willing to support the House version of the reconciliation bill.The procedural vote passed 51-49 Sunday. Budget reconciliation bills are not subject to cloture and the 60-vote threshold limiting debate. Trump has repeatedly pushed a 4 July deadline for passage. More