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President Trump is hours away from what he hopes will be Senate passage of the biggest legislative victory of his term, even as hurdles loom.
The final vote will be a nail-biter.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), targeted by Trump in his primary because of his dug-in opposition, criticized his party’s bill and Senate partisanship on Sunday before announcing he will not seek reelection next year.
The president, who backs competing Senate and House versions, has wooed and pressured GOP lawmakers for months to extend expiring 2017 tax cuts and increase defense and immigration spending this year as the playbook for 2026 midterm victories.
But some of the policies in the 940-page bill and its price tag worry some House and Senate conservatives. Democrats are united against it.
The marathon Senate process to consider amendments to the bill, known as vote-a-rama, begins at 9 a.m. and is expected to stretch well into the afternoon or evening. It’s unclear when senators could hold a final vote.
If it clears the upper chamber, the legislation would then need to pass several procedural steps in the House before coming up for a vote. GOP leaders say a House vote could begin as early as Wednesday morning.
“ONE GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL, is moving along nicely! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump posted on Truth Social after 2 a.m. ET.
All eyes will be on a handful of GOP senators who can make or break the bill.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said Saturday he resolved his Medicaid worries and supports the Senate version of the legislation. Joined by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the last three holdouts — Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) — secured a commitment from Republican leaders to back a proposal from Scott to reduce the rate at which the federal government reimburses states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act for new enrollees, according to Johnson.
“We just have their commitment that they’re going to do everything in their power to make sure this passes,” Johnson said, according to The Washington Post.
But such a provision could threaten the support of GOP Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), who have their own concerns about Medicaid changes. Murkowski is under pressure from lawmakers in her state to reject the bill.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who asserts his party is on the wrong path with a package estimated to raise the debt by $4 trillion over a decade, has said he opposes the measure.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has a three-vote margin and is eager to keep his GOP colleagues in line after Saturday’s arm-twistingly narrow 51-49 vote to proceed.
Trump wants to sign a measure into law by Friday, July 4.
Republicans in both chambers have battled for months over their promises to constituents and misgivings about slashing Medicaid.
Tillis warned his Senate colleagues that cutting Medicaid will hurt red states and come back to bite GOP candidates in next year’s midterms, wielding detailed data and charts to make this case. The approximately $800 billion in federal spending cuts to Medicaid are intended to help offset the price of extending tax cuts, which are estimated to add trillions of dollars to the federal debt.
▪ North Carolina newsline: Here’s who is and isn’t running for Tillis’s seat as of Sunday.
MAGIC ASTERISKS: GOP senators have charged forward with a controversial accounting measure for the tax portion of the bill, as Democrats accuse them of fanciful budget math.
The GOP favors an accounting move called “current policy” to assert that the expensive 2017 tax cuts, now in effect, should not count as additional spending when extended, even though those tax breaks are set to expire at the end of the year.
Republicans want Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to determine the baseline, effectively circumventing the Senate parliamentarian, who determines what can proceed through the special budgetary rules Republicans are using to avoid a Democratic filibuster.
▪ The Hill: Senate Republicans declined Sunday to meet with the parliamentarian on whether the Trump tax cuts add to annual deficits.
Senate Republicans maintain that Democrats have done the same in the past while in the majority, while Democrats argue Republicans are using the accounting move in a way never before used.
“The only way for Republicans to pass this horribly destructive bill, which is based on budget math as fake as Donald Trump’s tan, was to go nuclear and hide it behind a bunch of procedural jargon,” Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement late Sunday.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a former Budget Committee chair, also blasted her GOP colleagues during a weekend floor speech, arguing “current policy” math is a gambit to mask the costs of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, which add trillions of dollars to projected deficits.
▪ The Hill: CBO says tax piece of GOP megabill could violate Senate Byrd Rule
▪ The Associated Press: Republican Senate tax bill would add $3.3 trillion to the US debt load, CBO says
From the sidelines, former Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk, who broke with Trump in the spring, blasted Senate Republicans for slashing alternative energy incentives from the Senate measure as it heads to a final vote.
The billionaire Tesla CEO said the Senate’s approach “will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!” He called it “utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”
Meanwhile, GOP senators reached a Sunday agreement to change a provision in the Senate measure that originally would have barred for 10 years state legislation over artificial intelligence (AI).
SMART TAKE with BLAKE BURMAN
As Republican senators worked through the weekend on the One Big Beautiful Bill, President Trump sent a warning to fiscal conservatives.
“Don’t go too crazy! We will make it all up, times 10, with GROWTH, more than ever before,” he wrote on Truth Social about spending cuts.
Republicans promised growth in 2017 as well when they were selling the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). We can now look back at the numbers: GDP hit 3 percent in 2018 and 2.6 percent in 2019, before COVID-19 rocked the economy in 2020.
Past performance is not indicative of future results, and this bill is a different piece of legislation at a different time. However, we know how the economy, in part, responded to the TCJA. Extending those tax cuts is a backbone to the current legislation. Instead of predicting what might happen if the legislation passes, we can look to data points from the first iteration, including when it comes to growth.
Burman hosts “The Hill” weeknights, 6p/5c on NewsNation.
3 Things to Know Today
- Two firefirefighters were fatally shot and a third was wounded after responding to a brush fire in northern Idaho on Sunday. The suspect was later found dead with a firearm nearby. Authorities described the events as an intentional ambush.
- Here’s how the Supreme Court dipped its toes in Trump 2.0 during a term that ended last week. Chief Justice John Roberts, speaking to a group Saturday, did not address the court’s decision to limit the power of federal judges to block Trump policies.
- Investor Warren Buffett, who says he’ll step down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway at the end of the year, today will donate $6 billion in his company’s stock to five foundations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Trust.
Leading the Day
TARIFF PAUSE: Trump does not plan to extend a 90-day pause on tariffs on most nations beyond July 9, when the negotiating period he set expires, he told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo in an interview that aired Sunday.
The administration will notify countries that the U.S. will go ahead with steep import taxes on their goods unless they strike a deal with the U.S.
“We’ll look at how a country treats us — are they good, are they not so good — some countries we don’t care, we’ll just send a high number out,” Trump said.
After Trump said Friday that he terminated trade talks with Canada, citing a potential Canadian tax on tech companies, Ottawa on Sunday announced it will rescind the digital services tax. The Canadian government said in a statement the two countries will resume trade “negotiations with a view towards agreeing on a deal by July 21, 2025.”
▪ CNN: Trump’s trade deals are stalling out at the worst possible time.
▪ Reuters: Trump said he found a buyer for TikTok, which he described as a group of “very wealthy people” whose identities he will reveal in two weeks.
▪ The Independent: Trump left Bartiromo briefly speechless mid-interview when he suggested the U.S. is hacking China.
IRAN: The president also suggested on Fox News that reporters will be pressured to reveal their sources on stories about the U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Trump repeatedly criticized media outlets for reporting what he called “fake news” about the military strikes that suggested they did not effectively destroy the country’s nuclear programs.
Although Democrats criticize Trump for bombing Iran without congressional consent, every Democratic president in the modern era deployed U.S. military forces overseas, including in Bosnia, Syria, Libya and Yemen. The Hill’s Mike Lillis reports that history complicates some Democrats’ assertions that Trump violated the Constitution by acting on his own against targets in Iran — forcing the party to reckon with its own actions.
“Just because it was wrong then doesn’t mean it’s not wrong now,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif.), a former Air Force attorney who’s now the vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus. “The Constitution is the Constitution. And it says only Congress has the power to declare war. And it’s been a bipartisan problem, with Congress ceding way too much power to the executive branch.”
▪ The Washington Post: On an intercepted call, Iranian officials were heard saying Trump’s strike on Iran proved less devastating than expected. The White House called the intelligence insignificant.
INDEPENDENT VOTERS: Trump’s net approval among unaffiliated voters reached its lowest level of his second term on Tuesday, according to an aggregate from Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ), with his disapproval rating surpassing 60 percent for the first time since he took office.
This has accompanied a wider decline in the president’s overall approval rating throughout June. The shifts among independents could be linked to disapproval of Trump’s handling of the economy, observers say.
“Right now, the independents are the moving factor,” said Scott Tranter, director of data science for DDHQ. “He’s holding his base, and he’s staying steady not liked by Democrats, and so that’s kind of why you see it.”
VACCINES: Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has opened a new chapter of federal vaccine policy that invites questions on issues long considered to be settled and pushes anti-vaccine priorities into mainstream government guidelines.
Kennedy’s handpicked panel of vaccine advisers said last week they would launch an investigation into the cumulative effect of the childhood and adolescent vaccine schedules and consider new recommendations for shots that have long been on the market.
“What we heard in this meeting was really a false narrative that the current vaccine policies are flawed and that they need fixing,” Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Committee on Infectious Diseases, said in a press conference. “That’s completely false. These policies have saved millions of lives, trillions of dollars.”
AAP said it will no longer take part in the proceedings because they are not “credible.”
RELOCATING: The Department of Housing and Urban Development is moving out of its headquarters at the massive Weaver office building in downtown Washington and relocating to an office building in Alexandria, Va., that has been home to the National Science Foundation.
Where and When
- The Senate will begin voting on amendments at 9 a.m.
- The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 1 p.m.
- The president will sign executive orders at 2:30 p.m. in the Oval Office.
- The House will meet for a pro forma session at 2 p.m.
Zoom In
IMMIGRATION: Trump on Fox News said the White House is developing a temporary pass for immigrants who work in certain industries — the latest shift in the administration’s approach to immigration enforcement for farmworkers.
“We’re working on it right now. We’re going to work it so that some kind of a temporary pass where people pay taxes, where the farmer can have a little control, as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away,” Trump said. The president referenced authorities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), going to farms and taking “away people that have been working there for 15 and 20 years, who are good, who possibly came in incorrectly.”
The move comes as the White House has waffled in recent weeks on whether to exempt certain worksites from ICE raids amid Trump’s deportation push. Business and industry leaders have pressured administration officials to ease up on raids in certain sectors, warning about adverse effects for their industries.
While Trump again flirted with a carve-out for businesses to sidestep ICE raids and manage migrant employees they see as key, the president’s reliance on the Alien Enemies Act to jettison immigrants from the U.S. will be considered by a New Orleans appeals court today. The case before one of the most conservative courts in the country is likely to be the first to reach the Supreme Court.
▪ BBC: “We can’t do without these people”: Trump’s migrant crackdown has businesses worried.
▪ The New York Times: As the Trump administration escalates its deportation campaign, Roman Catholic bishops are raising objections to the treatment of migrants.
DEPORTATION: The Trump administration agreed to release from prison Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, a three-time felon who drunkenly fired shots in a Texas community. He will be spared from deportation in exchange for his cooperation in the federal prosecution of Kilmar Abrego García, the Maryland man who was illegally deported to El Salvador this year.
Reyes cooperated with prosecutors to reduce his time in prison and avoid deportation for one year by providing the alleged evidence the Justice Department used to charge Abrego Garcia as a driver trafficking in migrants in 2016.
MICHIGAN: The U.S.’s military intervention in Iran could roil next year’s House and Senate races in Michigan, a key battleground state that saw Democratic tensions play out last cycle over the war in Gaza. But the conflict also raises questions for Republicans, who will need to win over Arab, Muslim and Jewish Americans statewide while navigating the Trump administration’s position on the broader conflict.
“The races next year should be really interesting, because in some ways, they’re going to be a referendum on some of the key questions of who the Democratic Party is and who it will become,” said Abbas Alawieh, a senior Democratic strategist who was one of the leaders of the Uncommitted National Movement last year, which sought to pressure then-President Biden over his stance on the war in Gaza.
▪ The Hill: James Walkinshaw, the former chief of staff to the late Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), clinched the Democratic nomination to fill Connolly’s seat in a deep-blue Northern Virginia district.
▪ NBC News: Trump is expected to be at the formal opening tomorrow of a controversial immigration detention center in Florida that state leaders have dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”
Elsewhere
ISRAEL: Trump is pressuring Israel to halt Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s corruption trial, threatening to suspend military assistance if what he calls a “witch hunt” continues. Netanyahu is standing trial for charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases. Trump claimed Netanyahu is “in the process of negotiating a Deal with Hamas, which will include getting the Hostages back,” and questioned how Israel could force its leader “to sit in a Courtroom all day long, over NOTHING.”
Meanwhile, the Israeli military issued broad evacuation orders for neighborhoods of Gaza City on Sunday, amid growing calls for a ceasefire from Trump.
The notifications for people to leave parts of the city, as well as other areas in northern Gaza, came as the military warned that it would intensify operations. At least 86 people were killed in Israeli attacks in the 24 hours before midday on Sunday, the Gaza Health Ministry said.
UKRAINE: Moscow launched the largest aerial assault on Ukraine overnight since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022 The Ukrainian Air Force said that one of its F-16 fighter jet pilots was killed in the attack.
In a statement on social media, the air force said Russia used 537 drones and missiles in the attack; 249 were shot down and the rest disappeared from the radar, the air force said. The strikes targeted cities throughout Ukraine. Local authorities said businesses and civilian infrastructure were hit, and 12 people were injured.
President Volodymyr Zelensky called for more support from Washington and Western allies to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses after the attack.
“Moscow will not stop as long as it has the capability to launch massive strikes,” Zelensky said on the social platform X.
Opinion
- Republicans go wobbly on work, by Phil Gramm and Michael Solon, guest essayists, The Wall Street Journal.
- Does your business have a Plan B for Trump’s tariffs? by Gene Marks, opinion contributor, The Hill.
The Closer
And finally … 🥵 When it comes to summer heat, misery doesn’t love company, but a lot of countries are sharing in the triple-digit sweat. The culprit: climate change. The phenomenon: heat domes, which trap hot, dry air like a lid to sizzle everything underneath.
Portions of the United States are suffering again this week from extreme weather and temperatures, including Washington, D.C.
And it’s Western Europe’s turn. A high-pressure system, which draws hot air from North Africa as it shifts eastward, is wilting residents and visitors in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy and Greece. In southern Spain on Saturday, it was 114.8 degrees Fahrenheit, possibly a new national record for June.
Parts of Great Britain today may see 97 degrees Fahrenheit, coinciding with the start of Wimbledon tennis, where the famous cream may bake on the strawberries.
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