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      Top Republicans threaten to block Trump’s spending bill if national debt is not reduced

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      Donald Trump has been warned by fiscal hawks within his own party in the US Senate that he must “get serious” about cutting government spending and reducing the national debt or else they will block the passage of his signature tax-cutting legislation known as the “big, beautiful bill”.Ron Johnson, the Republican senator from Wisconsin who rose to prominence as a fiscal hardliner with the Tea Party movement, issued the warning to the president on Sunday. Asked by CNN’s State of the Union whether his faction had the numbers to halt the bill, he replied: “I think we have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit.”Trump has invested a large portion of his political capital in the massive package. It extends the 2017 tax cuts from his first administration in return for about $1tn in benefits cuts including reductions in the health insurance scheme for low-income families, Medicaid, and to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) food stamps.The bill squeaked through US House by just one vote on Thursday. It now faces a perilous welcome in the upper legislative chamber.Sunday’s admonitions from prominent senators angered by the failure to address the budget deficit bodes ill for Trump’s agenda given the tightness of the Republicans’ congressional majorities. The Senate majority leader, John Thune, can afford to lose only three votes from among his party’s 53.Thune has indicated that changes to the bill might be needed to bring refuseniks on side. That in turn could present the House speaker, Mike Johnson, with a headache.The House will have to approve any changes made in the Senate under the process of budget reconciliation, which allows spending packages to be fast-tracked through Congress avoiding a Senate filibuster of 60 votes. The final contents of the bill will need to be blessed by both chambers, with Democrats almost certain to vote unanimously in opposition.The House speaker renewed his plea to his Senate colleagues on Sunday to go lightly with him. He encouraged them on CBS News’s Face the Nation “to make as few modifications as possible, remembering that I have a very delicate balance on our very diverse Republican caucus over in the House”.But Senate budget hawks do not appear to be in the mood for compromise. Ron Johnson estimated that the bill would add up to $4tn to the federal deficit, a calculation that is broadly in line with the latest analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).Johnson added a rare note of personal criticism of Trump from a congressional Republican. He said that while Trump might not be worried about the national debt, “I’m extremely worried about that.”He added: “We are mortgaging our children’s future. It’s wrong. It’s immoral. It has to stop.”Another key Tea Party senator, Rand Paul from Kentucky, has also been vocal over the deficit. He laid into the spending cuts contained in the big beautiful bill, telling Fox News Sunday that in his view they were “wimpy and anemic” and would “explode the debt”.Other influential Republican senators have been expressing concern about the number of Americans who would lose access to health coverage as a result of the legislation’s cuts to Medicaid. According to the CBO, almost 8 million people would be thrown off the benefit.Speaker Johnson tried to dismiss the concern, telling CBS News that 1.4 million of those vulnerable people were “illegal aliens receiving benefits” – and a further 4.8 million were able-bodied individuals choosing not to work and “gaming the system”.An analysis by the non-partisan FactCheck.org found that the claim that 1.4 million undocumented migrants were on Medicaid was false. People living in the US without immigration papers are not eligible for the federal program other than to receive emergency medical treatment.More than 1 million undocumented immigrants are in danger of losing health benefits as a result of Trump’s cuts – but this assistance is provided by states and has nothing to do with Medicaid.Any reduction in Medicaid would be politically awkward for Trump, who promised repeatedly on the campaign trail last year that he would not touch basic safety nets such as Medicaid, Medicare and social security. The president’s loyal supporters in the Maga (“Make America great again”) movement have cautioned against the move.Steve Bannon, who served as chief White House strategist in Trump’s first administration and remains a persuasive voice within the movement, recently told listeners to his War Room podcast: “You got to be careful, because a lot of Maga is on Medicaid.”Josh Hawley, the Republican US senator from Missouri, recently said that “slashing health insurance for the working poor” would be “politically suicidal”. More

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      Trump’s acceptance of Qatar jet gift is ‘definition of corruption’, senator says

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      Donald Trump’s acceptance of a $400m Boeing jet from Qatar is the “definition of corruption”, a leading Democrat said on Sunday, as several senior Republicans joined in a bipartisan fusillade of criticism and concern over the luxury gift.Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut, condemned the “flying grift” on NBC’s Meet the Press as he assailed the president’s trip to several Gulf states this week that included a stop in Qatar.“Why did he choose these three countries for his first major foreign trip? It’s not because these are our most important allies or the most important countries in the world,” he said of Trump’s visit to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.“It’s because these are the three countries willing to pay him off. Every single one of these countries is giving Trump money, the plane from Qatar, an investment in his cryptocurrency scam from the UAE, and they are asking for national security concessions in return.“This is the definition of corruption. Foreign governments putting money in the president’s pocket and then the US giving them national security concessions that hurt our own security.”Rand Paul, a Republican US senator for Kentucky, and chair of his chamber’s homeland security committee, told ABC’s This Week that the gift of the jet “at least gives the appearance of a conflict of interest”.And Mike Pence, Trump’s vice-president during his first Oval Office term, said it was “inconsistent with our security” during an appearance on Meet the Press in which he pointed out Qatar had been previously accused of financing international terrorism.Trump has insisted he would be “stupid” to refuse Qatar’s offer of the jet, which would serve as the new Air Force One before being donated to his presidential library upon his retirement.But the proposal enraged even close allies of the president, some calling it the opposite of Trump’s promise to drain the swamp – and “a stain on the administration”.Trump lashed out at critics on his Truth Social network on Saturday, claiming the gift was to the US and not personally for him.Murphy told NBC that was not true. “The plane is not a gift to the American people,” he said. “It is going directly to Donald Trump.“That library will take a decade to build, and so once he leaves the White House, until the library is built, he gets to use that plane to fly around all of his billionaire friends while his policies result in millions of Americans losing their healthcare and having to pay higher costs.”Pence said Trump should turn down the offer.“Qatar has a long history of playing both sides. They support Hamas,” he said. “They supported Al-Qaida. Qatar has actually financed pro-Hamas protests on American campuses across the US, so the very idea that we would accept an Air Force One from Qatar I think is inconsistent with our security, with our intelligence needs.“There are profound issues, the potential for intelligence gathering, the need to ensure the president is safe and secure as he travels around the world, and of course there are very real constitutional issues. The constitution prohibits public officials from accepting a present from a foreign state.“It’s just a bad idea and my hope is the president will think better of it.”Paul said he could see a way in which the gift would be acceptable – but that Trump had handled the offer poorly.“My fear is that it detracts from a largely successful trip where the president is talking about opening up and doing more trade with the Middle East,” he said.“I’ve been part of vetoing or trying to veto arms [sales] to Qatar, as well as to Saudi Arabia, over human rights abuses. So could it color the perception of the administration if they have a $400m plane to be more in favor of these things. It at least gives the appearance of a conflict of interest. I don’t think it’s worth the headache.” More

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      ‘Just wildly illegal’: top Democrats push to censure Trump’s plan to accept Qatar jet

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      Top Democrats in the US Senate are pushing for a vote on the floor of the chamber censuring Donald Trump’s reported plan to accept a $400m luxury jet from the royal family of Qatar for use as Air Force One and later as a fixture in the Trump’s personal presidential library.Four Democratic members of the Senate foreign relations committee said on Monday that they would press for a vote later this week. They said that elected officials, including the president, were not allowed to accept large gifts from foreign governments unless authorized to do so by Congress.Cory Booker from New Jersey, Brian Schatz from Hawaii, Chris Coons from Delaware and Chris Murphy from Connecticut cast the reported gift of the Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a clear conflict of interest and a serious threat to national security.“Air Force Once is more than just a plane – it’s a symbol of the presidency and of the United States itself,” the senators said in a joint statement. “No one should use public service for personal gain through foreign gifts.”News of a possible gift of the luxury jet prompted immediate scathing criticism from senior Democrats. Though the Qatari government has stressed that no final decision has yet been made, Trump appeared to confirm it on Sunday when he commented on social media that the transfer was being made “in a very public and transparent transaction”.The plan appears to be for the 13-year-old plane to be fitted out by the US military for use as Air Force One and then, when Trump leaves the White House, for it to be put on display in his presidential library – in effect being handed to Trump for his own personal use.The reported arrangement comes as Trump sets off for a tour of the Middle East, including Qatar. Another of the countries on the tour, the United Arab Emirates, has also become embroiled in controversy over potential conflicts of interest involving Trump.Last week it was revealed that an investment firm based in Abu Dhabi had injected $2bn into a stablecoin venture launched by Trump’s World Liberty Financial crypto company as an investment into the crypto exchange Binance.Senate Democrats are also gearing up to challenge Trump’s conflicts of interest under congressional rules governing the sale of military weapons to foreign countries.Murphy, the senator from Connecticut who has been at the forefront of sounding the alarm over conflicts of interest in the second Trump administration, has said he will use his powers to challenge arms sales as a way of forcing a full debate and Senate vote on both the Qatar plane and UAE stablecoin issues.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe said on social media that he would object to “any military deal with a nation that is paying off Trump personally – we can’t act like this is normal foreign policy”.He added: “UAE’s investment in Trump crypto and Qatar’s gifting of a plane is nuclear grade graft.”In an earlier post on Bluesky, Murphy described the idea of Qatar handing over the jet as being “just wildly illegal”.Trump has so far brushed aside the Democratic fury. He praised Qatar’s offer on Monday as a “great gesture” and said he would “never be one to turn down that kind of offer”. More

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      Trump withdraws embattled candidate for top federal prosecutor in DC

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      Donald Trump on Thursday said he would look for a new candidate for the role of top federal prosecutor in Washington DC, after a key Republican senator said he would not support the loyalist initially selected for the job.The president had in January appointed Ed Martin, a former Missouri Republican party chair and ardent supporter of Trump’s baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election, as interim US attorney in Washington DC, an office that oversees both felony prosecutions in the capital city as well as many national security cases.Martin had quickly made clear he intended to use the role to defend Trump, writing on social media that the office would act as “President Trumps’ [sic] lawyers” and saying he would not hire graduates of schools that practiced the diversity policies the president has vilified.Interim US attorneys must leave the role after 120 days unless they are confirmed by the Senate. Earlier this week, Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who serves on the chamber’s judiciary committee, said he would not advance Martin’s nomination, denying the GOP the votes needed to get his nomination through the committee.Speaking at the White House on Thursday, Trump called Martin “a terrific person” but said “he wasn’t getting the support from people that I thought”.He added: “He wasn’t rejected, but we felt it would be very, it would be hard. And we have somebody else that we’ll be announcing over the next two days who’s going to be great.”Tillis, who will be a prime target of Democrats in next year’s midterm elections, cited Martin’s support for Trump’s pardon of January 6 insurrectionists on his first day in office.“I have no tolerance for anybody who entered the building on January the sixth, and that’s probably where most of the friction was,” Tillis told reporters at the Capitol.“If Mr Martin were being put forth as a US attorney for any district except the district where January 6 happened, the protest happened, I’d probably support him, but not in this district.”The top judiciary committee Democrat, Dick Durbin, welcomed Martin’s withdrawal.“Mr Martin’s record made it clear that he does not have the temperament or judgment to be entrusted with the power and responsibility of being US attorney for the District of Columbia. I’m relieved to see that his nomination will be withdrawn by the White House,” Durbin said in a statement.Earlier this month, National Public Radio reported on ties between Martin and Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, a January 6 rioter whom federal prosecutors called a “Nazi sympathizer”. Martin had told the Senate “I am not close with him”, despite appearing with Hale-Cusanelli at events and praising him.Martin is known for being active on X and, shortly after Trump announced the withdrawal of his nomination, posted what appears to be a doctored photo of himself dressed as the pope.

      This story was amended on 8 May 2025 to correct that Ed Martin was appointed in January, not February. More

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      Bernie Sanders urges Paramount not to ‘capitulate’ to Trump by settling 60 Minutes suit

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      The senator Bernie Sanders and his Democratic colleagues are urging Paramount Global not to settle Donald Trump’s $20bn lawsuit against 60 Minutes, saying such a decision would “capitulate to this dangerous move to authoritarianism”.In a letter co-signed by eight senators, Sanders urged controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and Paramount Global’s board to reconsider settling with Trump for as much as $75m to end his lawsuit against CBS News over its editing of last year’s 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.Trump sued CBS News last November, alleging that the network’s interview with Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign was edited to frame her in a positive light and thus amounted to “election interference”.During the finalized interview, Harris was asked whether Benjamin Netanyahu listened to US advice. She replied of the Israeli prime minister: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States – to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”An alternative edit shown in pre-broadcast promotions showed Harris delivering a longer response.In Trump’s court filing, his lawyers alleged that “CBS and other legacy media organizations have gone into overdrive to get Kamala elected”.In Tuesday’s letter, Sanders, alongside the Democratic senators including Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Peter Welch, Chris Murphy, Jeffrey Merkley, Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey called Trump’s lawsuit “an attack on the United States Constitution and the First Amendment”.“It has absolutely no merit and it cannot stand,” they said, condemning Trump’s lawsuit as “a blatant attempt to intimidate the media and those who speak out against him”.The senators praised Paramount Global’s initial decision to file two motions to dismiss Trump’s case, which the company said “is without basis in law or fact”. However, the senators said that the company’s reported decision to settle with Trump is “unfortunately … a grave mistake”.“Rewarding Trump with tens of millions of dollars for filing this bogus lawsuit will not cause him to back down on his war against the media and a free press. It will only embolden him to shake down, extort and silence CBS and other media outlets that have the courage to report about issues that Trump may not like,” the senators wrote.“Stand up for freedom of the press and our democracy,” they added.Speaking to the Washington Post, a source familiar with the situation said that Redstone had recused herself from discussions about a potential settlement though she previously “shared her desire for some sort of resolution” with Paramount Global’s board.The senators’ letter comes as the Trump administration has escalated its attacks against US media, with the president denouncing CNN and MSNBC as “illegal” while ordering the US Agency for Global Media – the parent company of Voice of America – to be eliminated.Last week, Trump also signed an executive order seeking to cut public funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. In response to Trump’s accusations of the outlets’ having leftwing bias, NPR and PBS have both said they are looking at legal options. More

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      Top Democrat calls for investigation into ‘chaotic’ Newark airport delays

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      One of America’s most important airports continued to be hit by delays and cancellations on Monday as the Senate’s top Democrat called for an investigation into the chaotic crisis.The problems at Newark, a busy airport in New Jersey that acts as one of the main hubs for New York City and the surrounding region, have persisted since last week, causing serious issues for tens of thousands of travelers.Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who is from New York, called for an investigation into the “chaos” that the Federal Aviation Authority says has been sparked by an air traffic controller shortage and thick cloud cover.“To say that there is just minor turbulence at Newark airport and the FAA would be the understatement of the year. We’re here because the FAA is really a mess. This mess needs a real forensic look, a deep look into it,” Schumer said. “So today I am demanding a full inspector general investigation as to what went on.”Schumer added: “The chaos at Newark very well could be a harbinger if issues like these aren’t fixed, and if the FAA can’t get real solutions off the ground.”Other politicians joined in.New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, called the delays “completely and utterly unacceptable” in a post on X, and said he knows US transportation secretary Sean Duffy is “committed” to hiring more air traffic controllers.United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a letter to customers over the weekend that the technology used to manage planes at the New Jersey airport failed more than once in recent days.The flight delays, cancellations and diversions that the equipment problems caused were compounded when more than one-fifth of Newark’s traffic controllers “walked off the job”, Kirby said.Faulting the FAA’s alleged failure to address “long-simmering” challenges related to the air-traffic control system, United cut 35 daily flights from its Newark schedule starting on Saturday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuffy, the transportation secretary, last week announced a program to recruit new controllers and give existing ones incentives not to retire.The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a workers’ union, said at the time that those moves could help address staffing shortages, but it also said the system is “long overdue for technology and infrastructure upgrades”.Meanwhile, the US army is pausing helicopter flights near a Washington DC airport after two commercial planes had to abort landings last week because of an army Black Hawk helicopter that was flying to the Pentagon.The commander of the 12th Aviation Battalion directed the unit to pause helicopter flight operations around Ronald Reagan Washington national airport following Thursday’s close calls, two Army officials confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday. The pause comes after 67 people died in January when a passenger jet collided in midair with a Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan airport.Thursday’s close call involved a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 and a Republic Airways Embraer E170, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. More

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      Senate Democrats to mark Trump’s ‘100 days from hell’ with marathon speeches

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      Democratic senators will on Tuesday mark Donald Trump’s 100th day in office with marathon floor speeches intended to highlight his administration’s failures, seizing on his divisive tariff policy and attacks on the judiciary to argue he was not joking when he mulled governing as “a dictator”.Republicans, meanwhile, praised the president’s actions over the first 100 days, though the House speaker, Mike Johnson, acknowledged “some bumps along the road” he described as the necessary byproduct of the radical changes Trump campaigned on.The 100-day milestone has given Trump’s allies and enemies alike in Congress an opportunity to reflect on his presidency, which Democrats, confined to the minority in both the Senate and House of Representatives at least through next year, argue has accomplished little besides haphazardly dismantling important federal agencies and rendering precarious a previously robust economy.“Donald Trump’s first 100 days have been 100 days from hell,” said Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader.“Donald Trump is not governing like a president of a democratic republic. He’s acting like a king, a despot, a wannabe dictator. Remember that during the campaign, he indicated that he’d be a dictator just on day one. But everything we’ve seen so far shows he wants to be a dictator for much, much longer.”Democrats are looking to regain their popular support after underperforming in November, when voters nationwide sent Trump back to the White House with Republicans in full control of Congress.Earlier this month, New Jersey’s Cory Booker spent 25 hours on the Senate floor condemning Trump in a record-breaking speech, while on Sunday, Booker and the top House Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, were out for more than 12 hours on the Capitol steps, condemning the GOP’s plans for a huge bill that will extend tax cuts and pay for mass deportations, potentially by cutting social safety net programs.The tactics have been compared to those of the civil rights and other protest movements, and on Tuesday, Schumer said Democrats would hold the Senate floor “until late tonight to mark these dismal 100 days by speaking the truth”.“What is the truth? The truth is this: no president in modern history has promised more on day one and delivered less by day 100 than Donald Trump. In record time, the president has turned a golden promise into an economic ticking timebomb. It’s getting worse every day, and he calls it progress.”Republicans have taken the opposite view of Trump’s record, promoting his moves to ban diversity initiatives in the government and elsewhere, crack down on transgender rights, block immigrants from crossing the border and attempt to step up deportations as “promises made, promises kept”.“We’re just getting started, and that’s one of the reasons that we’re so excited,” Johnson told reporters.But opinion surveys have found that Trump’s approval rating has sunk into the negative at a point earlier than his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, whose presidency wound up mired in public discontent. The plunge in popularity for a president who just over five months ago became the first Republican to win the popular vote in two decades is viewed as a consequence of his disruptive approach to implementing tariffs, and his administration’s attacks on a judiciary that has sought to temper some of his policies.“There’s some bumps along the road. I mean, we’re changing everything,” Johnson replied, when asked about the president’s approval ratings.“The last four years was an absolute unmitigated disaster, and we got to fix it all. So when you’re doing that, it’s disruptive in a way.” More

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      Dick Durbin won’t seek re-election after nearly three decades in US Senate

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      Dick Durbin, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the US Senate, announced he will not seek re-election in 2026, bringing an end to a Senate career that spans nearly three decades.The 80-year-old Illinois senator, who has served since 1996, posted on social media that he plans to leave office in 2027 when his term expires – meaning there will be an open primary for his replacement in the midterms.“I truly love being a United States Senator, but in my heart, I know it’s time to pass the torch,” Durbin said in a video statement on X.As Senate Democratic whip and ranking member on the judiciary committee, Durbin’s departure represents a significant loss of clout for Illinois. His exit will vacate one of the most powerful positions in Washington and end a career marked by his influence over national policy and directing federal funding to his home state.The veteran lawmaker cited his age as a primary factor in the decision, noting that he would be 88 by the end of a potential sixth term. The news of his retirement was first reported by WBEZ and the New York Times.“It’s time,” Durbin told WBEZ. “You observe your colleagues and watch what happens. For some of them, there’s this miraculous ageing process where they never seem to get too old.”It is not a total surprise, as speculation of his retirement began to trend in Washington earlier this month after his federal financial report showed he raised just north of $42,000 this first quarter of this year, a paltry sum for a politician interested in holding his position in the midterms.Still, Durbin’s announcement is expected to trigger intense competition among Illinois Democrats eager to take his seat. The potential list of successors includes the former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, Illinois lieutenant governor Juliana Stratton and Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, who has pooled a $19m campaign fund. Representatives Lauren Underwood and Robin Kelly are also considered possible candidates.His departure could provide an opening for Republicans to contest the seat, though Illinois has trended Democratic in recent elections. The last Republican senator from Illinois was Mark Kirk, who lost his re-election bid to Tammy Duckworth in 2016. More