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      How do we celebrate the 4th of July when American freedom is disappearing? | Deborah Archer, Song Richardson and Susan Sturm

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      The Fourth of July celebration of freedom rings hollow this year. The contradictions built into a national commemoration of our triumph over autocracy feel newly personal and perilous – especially to those who have, until now, felt relatively secure in the federal government’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law.But the contradiction is far from new. Black, brown and Indigenous communities have always seen the gap between the ideals of American democracy and the lived reality of exclusion. Frederick Douglass’s 1852 address What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? demanded that Americans confront the hypocrisy of celebrating liberty while millions were enslaved. Today, those contradictions persist in enduring racial disparities and policies that perpetuate segregation, second-class citizenship and selective protection of rights.And just as the nation seemed to be inching toward reckoning and repair, we are now witnessing a dangerous backslide. Our federal government is increasingly hostile to even the mention of race and racism, actively dismantling protections that were hard-won over decades. Each day brings new signs of an anti-democratic campaign –eroding civil rights, stoking racial division and weaponizing law to silence dissent and disempower communities. This inversion of democracy – where power flows upward, not outward – is bold and widespread.The chilling effects of federal overreach touch everyone. People of all races, backgrounds and positions have lost jobs, funding, and trust in institutions once seen as pillars of democracy. The backlash has laid bare a truth long familiar to marginalized communities: that America’s stated ideals often fail to match its realities.Still, despair is not a strategy. Democracy is not a spectator sport. It is built – and rebuilt – by people who show up in their communities, workplaces, schools and congregations, determined to make freedom real. The most powerful response we see is not top-down, but grassroots: people choosing to act, even in small ways, to defend democracy from where they stand.We write as three legal professionals – of different racial identities, vantage points, and approaches to justice – but united in our understanding of the urgency of this moment to ask a question that may feel counterintuitive to those trained in the law: What can people do to advance democracy and equity outside of the courts?First, we must not retreat. Rather, we must overcome our disillusionment, disheartenment and exhaustion and recognize our linked fate across race, class, generation and geography. Authoritarianism thrives on disengagement and disconnection.One way to remain connected and energized is recognizing that this moment of transition is also an opportunity to transform our democracy. We can envision the future we want, untethered from the limitations of the current moment. Then, from the vantage point of this future, assuming it has been achieved, we can ask ourselves what we did today to make that vision a reality. This perspective avoids asking “what should we do”, which limits us to thinking within our current circumstances, instead asking “what did we do”, which allows us to think beyond our current challenges and limitations and instead create new opportunities and possibilities.From the vantage point of the future, we can ask: where can I connect today? Where can I act today? What kind of change agent am I willing to be today to create the future I envision?Here are some ideas:We can engage those directly affected by injustice in the decisions that shape their lives. We must pay attention to who is thriving – and who isn’t – in our institutions, and do the hard work of reimagining our institutions and systems. That is democracy in action.One model comes from two Columbia Law students engaging high schoolers in Harlem and Queens to learn how local government works – a first step toward civic participation and transformation. Another comes from the artist-activist Tonika Johnson’s Folded Map project, which paired Black South Side Chicago residents with their white North Side “map twins” to explore stark neighborhood inequities. The project fostered real relationships, cross-racial learning and grassroots coalitions, while exposing the systemic racism behind dramatic disparities in infrastructure and investment.There is work happening under the radar, too. On campuses where formal DEI efforts have been banned or gutted, faculty and staff are creating informal coalitions to sustain equity-focused collaboration and resist institutional amnesia. In several states, even court systems are taking action, building partnerships between judges, lawyers and communities to address racial disparities in access to justice.Sometimes the opportunity for transformation comes in a policy window. In Indianapolis, the state’s plan to rebuild a major highway became a chance for the Rethink Coalition to shift the conversation – from road engineering to community renewal. Their vision? A process and outcome centered on repairing the harm done to historically Black neighborhoods when the highway was first built. But what made that vision powerful was not just the idea, it was the strategy. Rethink helped put tools, data and technical expertise directly into the hands of community members so they could fully engage in reshaping the project. By democratizing access to planning knowledge, they ensured that residents were not just consulted, but empowered to lead. That’s what it means to build toward the future now.This is the kind of work that keeps us grounded in radical hope – a belief in the possibility of transformation against the odds. It is the practice of democracy, not just its theory. And it’s available to all of us.As the attacks grow louder, more coordinated, more entrenched, we must be even more committed to acting where we are – with whoever we can – to not only defend the fragile, unfinished project of building a multiracial democracy, but to take the time to dream about what our more robust democracy would look like, and then to take the next best step in that direction, undeterred by the current moment.If enough of us engage – across differences and at every level – these efforts can add up to a reimagined nation. One that finally lives up to its promises. One that, someday soon, we can celebrate without contradiction.

      Deborah N Archer is the president of the ACLU, the Margaret B Hoppin professor of law at NYU Law School, and the author of Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality. L Song Richardson is the former dean and currently chancellor’s professor of law at the University of California Irvine School of Law. She previously served as president of Colorado College. Susan Sturm is the George M Jaffin professor of law and social responsibility and the founding director of the Center for Institutional and Social Change at Columbia Law School and author of What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions. More

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

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

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

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

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      Stateless Palestinian woman detained after honeymoon released from Ice jail

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      Ward Sakeik, a stateless Palestinian woman who was detained in February on the way back from her honeymoon, was released from immigration detention after more than four months of confinement.“I was overfilled with joy and a little shock,” she said at a press conference on Thursday. “I mean, it was my first time seeing a tree in five months.”She ran to her husband, who had come to pick her up. “I was like, oh my God, I can touch him without handcuffs and without a glass. It was just freedom.”Sakeik, 22, was detained in February on her way home from her honeymoon in the US Virgin Islands. Prior to her arrest, she had been complying with requirements to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement since she was nine.After she was detained, the US government tried – twice – to deport her. The first time, she was told she was being taken to the Israel border – just as Israel launched airstrikes on Iran. The second time, Sakeik was told once again she would be deported – despite a judge’s order barring her removal from her home state of Texas.Sakeik’s family is from Gaza, but she was born in Saudi Arabia, which does not grant birthright citizenship to the children of foreigners. She and her family came to the US on a tourist visa when Sakeik was eight and applied for asylum – but were denied. The family was allowed to remain in Texas as long as they complied with requirements to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.In the years that passed, Sakeik graduated high school and college at the University of Texas, Arlington, started a wedding photography business, and married her husband, 28-year-old Taahir Shaikh. She had begun the process of obtaining a green card.She and her husband had bought a home – and had begun the process of renovating it.But 10 days after her wedding, on the way back from her honeymoon, Sakeik’s life was upended. “I married the love of my life. We spent 36 hours in the house that we were renovating for six months,” she said. “After a few hours from returning from our honeymoon, I was put in a gray tracksuit and shackles.”Sakeik was joined by her husband, her attorneys and community leaders for the press conference, at a hotel in Irving, Texas, where she had previously photographed weddings. “I never thought that I would be back in this hotel giving a speech about something extremely personal,” she said.Sakeik said she was transferred between three different detention centers, and at various points faced harrowing conditions. During her first transfer, she was on a bus for 16 hours. “We were not given any water or food, and we could smell the driver eating Chick-fil-A,” she said. “We would ask for water, bang on the door for food, and he would just turn up the radio and act like he wasn’t listening to us.”Sakeik said she did not eat because she was fasting for Ramadan. Eventually, she said: “I broke my fast next to a toilet in the intake room.”At the Prairieland detention center, Sakeik said there was so much dust that “women are getting sick left and right”.“The restrooms are also very, very, very much unhygienic. The beds have rust everywhere. They’re not properly maintained. And cockroaches, grasshoppers, spiders, you name it, all over the facility. Girls would get bit.”Throughout, Sakeik was preoccupied with the worry that she would be deported. Had she been sent to Israel without documents proving her nationality, she worried she would be arrested.“I was criminalized for being stateless, something that I absolutely have no control over,” she said. “I didn’t choose to be stateless … I had no choice.”The Department of Homeland Security has claimed Sakeik was flagged because she “chose to fly over international waters and outside the US customs zone and was then flagged by CBP [Customs and Border Protection] trying to re-enter the continental US”.But the Virgin Islands are a US territory – and no passport is required to visit there.“The facts are: she is in our country illegally. She overstayed her visa and has had a final order by an immigration judge for over a decade,” said assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin.The agency did not respond to questions about why it tried to deport her despite a judge’s order barring her removal. Later, the agency amended its statement to add: “Following her American husband and her filing the appropriate legal applications for her to remain in the country and become a legal permanent resident, she was released.”Sakeik said she felt “blessed” that she had been released from detention – but also conflicted about all the women she had gotten to know during her confinement. They would often stay up late talking, share meals, and follow along with workout videos the detention facility had provided.“A lot of these women don’t have the money for lawyers or media outreach,” she said. “So if you’re watching this, I love you, and I will continue to fight for you every single day.” More

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      US supreme court clears way for deportation of migrants to South Sudan

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      The supreme court on Thursday cleared the way for the deportation of several immigrants who were put on a flight in May bound for South Sudan, a war-ravaged country where they have no ties.The decision comes after the court’s conservative majority found that immigration officials can quickly deport people to third countries. The majority halted an order that had allowed immigrants to challenge any removals to countries outside their homeland where they could be in danger.The court’s latest order makes clear that the South Sudan flight detoured weeks ago can now complete the trip. It reverses findings from federal Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts, who said his order on those migrants still stands even after the high court lifted his broader decision.The majority wrote that their decision on 23 June completely halted Murphy’s ruling and also rendered his decision on the South Sudan flight “unenforceable”. The court did not fully detail its legal reasoning on the underlying case, as is common on its emergency docket.Two liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, saying the ruling gives the government special treatment. “Other litigants must follow the rules, but the administration has the supreme court on speed dial,” Sotomayor wrote.Attorneys for the eight migrants have said they could face “imprisonment, torture and even death” if sent to South Sudan, where escalating political tensions have threatened to devolve into another civil war.“We know they’ll face perilous conditions, and potentially immediate detention, upon arrival,” Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said Thursday.The push comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by Trump’s Republican administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally. The Trump administration has called Murphy’s finding “a lawless act of defiance.”The White House and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.Authorities have reached agreements with other countries to house immigrants if authorities cannot quickly send them back to their homelands. The eight men sent to South Sudan in May had been convicted of serious crimes in the US.Murphy, who was nominated by Democratic president Joe Biden, did not prohibit deportations to third countries. But he found migrants must have a real chance to argue they could be in danger of torture if sent to another country. More

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      Twisted arms and late-night deals: how Trump’s sweeping policy bill was passed

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      Just a few months ago, analysts predicted that Republicans in Congress – with their narrow majorities and fractured internal dynamics – would not be able to pass Donald Trump’s landmark legislation.On Thursday, the president’s commanding influence over his party was apparent once again: the bill passed just in time for Trump’s Fourth of July deadline.But while the GOP may call the budget bill big and beautiful, the road to passing the final legislation has been particularly ugly. Arm-twisting from Trump and last-minute benefits targeting specific states cajoled holdouts, despite conservative misgivings over transformative cuts to Medicaid and the ballooning deficit.Here’s the journey of the sprawling tax-and-spending bill.The first hurdleThe initial version of the mega-bill passed by the House in May extended tax cuts from 2017.It also increased the debt limit by about $4tn, and added billions in spending on immigration enforcement while adding work requirements to Medicaid and requiring states to contribute more to Snap nutrition assistance. The Budget Lab at Yale estimated the House bill would add $2.4tn to the debt over the 2025-34 period.Several conservative Republicans balked at several aspects of the bill during long debate sessions. Mike Lawler, a congressman representing New York, wanted a larger Salt deduction – which concerns offsetting state and local taxes – while the California congressman David Valadao was concerned about the Medicaid cuts, which his district heavily relies on for healthcare.Then Trump traveled to Capitol Hill in late May to help assuage the holdouts. At his meeting with lawmakers, “he was emphatic [that] we need to quit screwing around. That was the clear message. You all have tinkered enough – it is time to land the plane,” the South Dakota congressman Dusty Johnson told reporters.“Ninety-eight per cent of that conference is ready to go. They were enthused. They were pumped up by the president, and I think with the holdouts, he did move them. I don’t know that we are there yet, but that was a hugely impactful meeting.”In the end, there were only two House Republicans who voted against the bill: Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, both of whom are fiscal hawks concerned about the federal deficit. The bill moved on to the Senate.The bill lands in the SenateThe Senate version of the budget bill passed on a 50-50 vote with JD Vance, the vice-president, breaking the tie. Until the final stages, however, all eyes were on the Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, both noted moderates, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky, both noted fiscal conservatives.The bill’s authors added tax provisions to benefit Alaska’s whaling industry to win the support of Murkowski. They also tried to add provisions protecting rural hospitals from Medicaid cuts in “non-contiguous states”, but the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the amendments would violate restrictions on what the bill could contain without triggering the 60-vote filibuster.Murkowski acquiesced after winning new tax revenues from oil and gas drilling leases for Alaska, provisions protecting clean energy tax credits, and delays on Snap changes.View image in fullscreen“Do I like this bill? No,” Murkowski said as she stared down an NBC reporter who had just relayed a comment by the Kentucky Republican Rand Paul describing her vote as “a bailout for Alaska at the expense of the rest of the country”.Other changes to the Senate bill were made in the final days of negotiations, including the striking of a 10-year federal ban on state regulation of AI. A record number of amendments were proposed.Tillis, who announced he would not run again in his politically competitive state, gave a rousing speech about the perils of Medicaid cuts and voted against the bill. Collins and Paul remained in opposition.With few other options, Democrats tried to delay the vote by requiring the entire bill to be read out loud on the floor the night before the vote.But in the end, with Murkowski’s vote, the Senate had a tie, allowing Vance to cast the deciding vote.The last mileGiven the total opposition of Democrats to the bill’s passage, Republicans in the House could lose no more than three of their own to get the bill to the finish line.On Wednesday, the last push still felt dubious. Even the procedural vote that is required to move to an actual vote was delayed for hours, as some Republicans considering holding their vote.Ralph Norman of South Carolina told C-Span after voting against the bill in committee that he opposed the Senate version’s inclusion of tax credits for renewable energy and its failure to restrict Chinese investment in American property.“We have one chance, one moment to curb the spending that has plagued this country and will take this country down if we don’t get it under control,” he said. “What I see right now, I don’t like.”Victoria Spartz of Indiana had withheld support over concerns about increases in the federal debt.“I’ll vote for the bill, since we need to make it happen for our economy & there are some good provisions in it. However, I will vote against the rule due to broken commitments by Speaker Johnson to his own members,” she wrote on X on Wednesday. “I’m on Plan C now to deal with the looming fiscal catastrophe.”Spartz referred to a promise Johnson made to fiscal conservatives that he would not bring a budget bill to a vote if it increased the debt beyond a certain amount. Spartz said this bill exceeded the agreed-upon amount by about $500bn.Shortly before midnight there were five Republicans voting no on the procedural rule. But deals were still being made – executive orders promised and other negotiations done on the floor.Once again Trump stepped in, joining the speaker, Mike Johnson, in coaxing the party members to cast their final approval. The president called several House members and posted on his Truth Social account. “What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove??? MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!” he wrote early on Thursday morning.View image in fullscreenJohnson held the vote open for seven hours, the longest vote recorded. And it worked. On Thursday morning, Norman voted yes to advance the bill.So did Andrew Clyde of Georgia, a notable second amendment rights activist in Congress, who failed in his push for an amendment to the bill to remove the registration requirement for firearms suppressors, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns from the National Firearms Act, creating a path for legal civilian use without registration and paying a federal tax.The holdouts fell into line, and the House voted early on Thursday morning 219-213 in a procedural vote to move forward.There was still a way to go. Johnson had expected to open the vote at 8am. But the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, commandeered the dais for more than eight hours – setting a record previously held by the Republican Kevin McCarthy – in a marathon stemwinder of a speech attacking the perils of the legislation and delaying the vote.But Johnson remained confident after a night of promises and threats.Massie remained the face of conservative holdouts on the bill. He has faced withering personal attacks from Trump on social media, the creation of a Super Pac to fund a primary challenge and local advertisements attacking his stance on the bill.In the end it was only Massie and Brian Fitzpatrick, a congressman in Pennsylvania who voted for Kamala Harris last year, who voted against a bill that will now rewrite the American political landscape. More