Closing summary
We will shortly be continuing our coverage of the debate in a new live blog, so here is a summary of the day’s events so far:
The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives on Thursday advanced President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax-cut and spending bill, a procedural step setting the stage for possible passage of the legislation in a vote expected later in the day, reports Reuters. The House voted 219-213 to move forward.
Flanked by nearly every member of his caucus, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, of New York delivered a pointed message: With all Democrats voting “no,” they only need to flip four Republicans to prevent the bill from passing, reports the Associated Press (AP). Jeffries invoked the “courage” of the late Sen. John McCain giving a thumbs-down to the GOP effort to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, and singled out Republicans from districts expected to be highly competitive in 2026, including two from Pennsylvania.
However, Jeffries has been talking for almost three hours now and has vowed to “take my sweet time” telling the stories of Americans who will be affected negatively by what he calls Donald Trump’s “one big, ugly bill”.
The chamber began taking procedural votes on the bill earlier in the day, but in a sign of the measure’s challenges one was kept open for more than seven hours, making it the longest vote in the history of the House of Representatives.
Trump has demanded the legislation – known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – be on his desk by Friday 4 July and spent much of Wednesday holding meetings and phone calls with skeptical Republican lawmakers. As the rule stalled, he wrote on Truth Social: “FOR REPUBLICANS, THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE. RIDICULOUS!!!”
For the bill to pass it must approve the version passed by the Senate on Tuesday when vice-president JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote after an all-night session. Johnson has acknowledged the bill “went a little further than many of us would have preferred” in its changes, particularly to Medicaid.
Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson said as he headed to the House floor for the rule vote: “We’re in a good place right now. This is the legislative process, this is exactly how I think the framers intended for it to work.” But after voting against the motion, Keith Self, a conservative Texas congressman, blasted the bill as having failed to save enough money, curb green energy incentives or crack down on transgender rights.
The bill in its current form would add $3.3tn to the US budget deficit through 2034, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates.
Last November, Donald Trump made a solemn vow to all Americans: “Every citizen, I will fight for you, your family and your future every single day.” Eight months later, Trump is vigorously backing many policies that will mean pain for millions.
Trump has pushed to enact the Republican budget bill, which would make significant cuts to Medicaid, Obamacare, and food assistance, and would do the greatest damage to those Americans struggling hardest to make ends meet – the 30% of the US population that lives in households earning under $50,000 a year.
Even as Trump and Republican lawmakers are rushing to cut over $1.4tn in health and food assistance for non-affluent Americans, Trump continues to pressure Congress to extend over $3tn in tax cuts that disproportionately help the wealthy and corporations.
Trump has embraced these Robin-Hood-in-reverse policies, even though it was voters earning less than $50,000 a year who delivered victory to him last November. They favored him over Kamala Harris by 50% to 48%, according to exit polls, while Trump and Harris tied among voters earning $50,000 or more a year.
Several social policy experts said Trump has engaged in hypocrisy at best and betrayal at worst when it comes to the working-class and blue-collar Americans he promised to fight for. Speaking about the Republicans’ “big, beautiful” budget bill, Sharon Parrott, president of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said: “Who’s getting hit, who’s bearing the cost? It’s people with low and middle incomes, people that the president and many Republican policymakers promised to serve and support in the last election.”
Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries says he is halfway through telling stories of the American people in relation to Medicaid.
He says:
It appears that I am about halfway through the stories as it relates to Medicaid but the extraordinary thing about this bill is that it represents such an unprecedented assault on the American people.
There are stories that need to be told as it relates to the attack on nutritional assistance for the American people. And I will tell those stories. Stories that need to be told as it relates to the attack on farmers in this country. And I will tell those stories.
He goes on to say the bill also represents an attack on small businesses and veterans, who should be able to “live with the dignity and respect that they have earned”.
Elsewhere, US president Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy are expected to discuss the abrupt halt in some key US weapons deliveries to Kyiv in a call on Friday, the Financial Times reported on Thursday.
Zelenskyy would also raise potential future arms sales, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the planning.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the report.
Jeffries says he will 'take my sweet time'
Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries has told the House that he intends to “take my sweet time” telling the stories of the American people who rely on Medicaid.
He says he will keep on reading out letters from people who will be affected by the bill.
Addressing the House, he says:
It had been my hope, Mr Speaker, that we would be able to have a passionate debate of passionate support and passionate opposition and connection with this bill, that hundreds of members of both sides of this aisle had participated in.
Instead we have a limited debate… and because that debate was so limited, I feel the obligation, Mr Speaker, to stand on this House floor and take my sweet time to tell the stories of the American people.
And that’s exactly what I intend to do; take my sweet time on behalf of the American people.
He goes on to list the people he is standing up for and that he plans to “take [my] sweet time” to the applause and cheers from the benches behind him. He highlighted to time (“just gone 6am”) and remember that news agencies were reporting a vote was expected at around 5.30am ET.
Jeffries resumes reading out letters from American people he says will be affected negatively by the president’s bill.
Updated
In the latest Guardian Politics Weekly America podcast, Jonathan Freedland is joined by Eleanor Mueller of Semafor to look at the potential fallout from Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending bill – financially and politically.
You can listen to the full episode here.
Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries is reading out correspondence from people who rely on Medicaid and highlighting its importance in their lives.
In response to ‘Gwendoline from Arizona’, he says:
Let me speak directly… her Representative might not be fighting on your behalf. As House Democrats, we are here to say; we agree.
Medicaid matters and it must be preserved. It must be preserved because Medicaid matters to millions of people all across this great country.
To children, to seniors, to people with disabilities, to women, to families, to people in every corner of the United States of America.
Bill an 'abomination' that will 'reward billionaires', says Jeffries
Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has spoken in “strong opposition of Donald Trump’s one big ugly bill”. Jeffries argued that the bill, that he described as an “abomination”, would gut Medicaid and “rip food from the mouth of children, seniors and veterans”. Instead, he said, it would “reward billionaires with massive tax breaks”.
Jeffries continued:
Every single Democrat stands in strong opposition to this bill because we are standing up for the American people.
He questioned why, if the Republicans were so proud of the bill, the debate had begun in the early hours. Many of his comments were followed by applause.
Jeffries said the bill would “hurt everyday Americans” and “people in America will die unncessary deaths”. He added:
That is outrageous, that is disgusting. That is not what we should be doing here in the United States House of Representatives.
Updated
Here are some of the images from the last 24 hours in Washington DC:
It is 4.46am in Washington DC. A final vote is expected at about 5.30 am, according to reports. We will bring updates as soon as they come in.
For the moment, the final debate is taking place and can be followed via the live stream at the top of this blog.
Updated
Flanked by nearly every member of his caucus, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, of New York delivered a pointed message: With all Democrats voting “no,” they only need to flip four Republicans to prevent the bill from passing, reports the Associated Press (AP).
Jeffries invoked the “courage” of the late Sen. John McCain giving a thumbs-down to the GOP effort to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, and singled out Republicans from districts expected to be highly competitive in 2026, including two from Pennsylvania.
“Why would Rob Bresnahan vote for this bill? Why would Scott Perry vote for this bill?” Jeffries asked.
Democrats have described the bill in dire terms, warning that Medicaid cuts would result in lives lost and food stamp cuts would be “literally ripping the food out of the mouths of children, veterans and seniors,” Jeffries said on Monday.
Republicans say they are trying to right-size the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, disabled people and children, and root out what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse.
The package includes new 80-hour-a-month work requirements for many adults receiving Medicaid and applies existing work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to more beneficiaries. States will also pick up more of the cost for food benefits.
The driving force behind the bill, however, is the tax cuts. Many expire at the end of this year if Congress doesn’t act.
The Tax Policy Center, which provides nonpartisan analysis of tax and budget policy, projected the bill would result next year in a $150 tax break for the lowest quintile of Americans, a $1,750 tax cut for the middle quintile and a $10,950 tax cut for the top quintile. That’s compared with what they would face if the 2017 tax cuts expired.
With a narrow 220-212 majority, Republicans can afford no more than three defections to get a final bill passed, reports Reuters.
Democrats are united in opposition to the bill, saying that its tax breaks disproportionately benefit the wealthy while cutting services that lower- and middle-income Americans rely on. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that almost 12 million people could lose health insurance as a result of the bill.
“This bill is catastrophic. It is not policy, it is punishment,” Democratic representative Jim McGovern said in debate on the House floor.
Republicans in Congress have struggled to stay united in recent years, but they also have not defied Donald Trump since he returned to the White House in January.
Any changes made by the House would require another Senate vote, which would make it all but impossible to meet the 4 July deadline.
The legislation contains most of Trump’s top domestic priorities, from tax cuts to immigration enforcement. The bill would extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, cut health and food safety net programs, fund Trump’s immigration crackdown, and zero out many green-energy incentives. It also includes a $5tn increase in the nation’s debt ceiling, which lawmakers must address in the coming months or risk a devastating default.
The Medicaid cuts have also raised concerns among some Republicans, prompting the Senate to set aside more money for rural hospitals.
Now that the House has voted to advance the bill, a final debate on the floor has begun. You can follow it via the live stream video at the top of the blog.
The debate will be followed by a final vote on the bill.
Updated
US House Republicans advance Trump tax-cut bill opening way for debate
The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives on Thursday advanced President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax-cut and spending bill, a procedural step setting the stage for possible passage of the legislation in a vote expected later in the day, reports Reuters.
The House voted 219-213 to move forward.
Another update on Scott Perry by way of Fox News’s Chad Pergram and Dan Scully on X:
Johnson on GOP PA Rep Perry on leaving DC to go back to PA. The House is waiting for him to return to the Capitol: It’s a two hour drive home, so he went home to get a change of clothes and all of that. So it’s very practical reason for it.
While we wait for updates, here is a handy explainer of what is in Donald Trump’s major tax bill:
According to multiple reports, Republican Scott Perry returned home to Pennsylvania and the holdouts are unwilling to vote until he returns, as they want to vote as a bloc.
Donald Trump spoke to holdouts by phone early this morning, Fox confirms.
According to the NYT, speaker Mike Johnson said the delay is partly due to members wanting additional time to go through the changes made in the Senate. The publication reports that Johnson told reporters just after 1.30am on Thursday:
It will have all been worth it in the end. And we will meet our July 4 deadline, which everybody mocked when I said it.
House speaker Mike Johnson has said they are “about to get those votes right now” and he expects final vote “by early morning”, reports Chad Pergram, senior congressional correspondent for Fox News.
On the holdouts, Johnson reportedly said: “We’re about to get those votes right now.”
Summary
It’s passed 2am in Washington DC and Donald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill has been hanging in the balance as Republican leaders struggle to muster sufficient votes in the US House of Representatives.
House speaker Mike Johnson said he was “absolutely confident we are going to land this plane” but lawmakers were blocking the approval of a procedural rule that is necessary to begin debate on the bill and set the stage for its passage.
Johnson said he would keep the procedural vote open for “as long as it takes” and the vote was still open as the clock struck midnight with five Republicans and all Democrats voting against it.
Eight GOP lawmakers had yet to cast their votes, and that group contains several of the bill’s detractors. Enough Republicans have already voted to block it but Johnson has been hoping to change their minds.
In other key developments:
Trump has demanded the legislation – known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – be on his desk by Friday 4 July and spent much of Wednesday holding meetings and phone calls with skeptical Republican lawmakers. As the rule stalled, he wrote on Truth Social: “FOR REPUBLICANS, THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE. RIDICULOUS!!!”
The chamber began taking procedural votes on the bill earlier in the day, but in a sign of the measure’s challenges one was kept open for more than seven hours, making it the longest vote in the history of the House of Representatives.
For the bill to pass it must approve the version passed by the Senate on Tuesday when vice-president JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote after an all-night session. Johnson has acknowledged the bill “went a little further than many of us would have preferred” in its changes, particularly to Medicaid.
Johnson said as he headed to the House floor for the rule vote: “We’re in a good place right now. This is the legislative process, this is exactly how I think the framers intended for it to work.” But after voting against the motion, Keith Self, a conservative Texas congressman, blasted the bill as having failed to save enough money, curb green energy incentives or crack down on transgender rights.
The bill in its current form would add $3.3tn to the US budget deficit through 2034, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates.
Updated
Reports are emerging in US media that House speaker Mike Johnson is saying Republicans now have enough votes the clear the key procedural hurdle now under way as well as to pass Donald Trump’s signature megabill.
We’ll bring you more on this as soon as it comes to light.
Updated
The White House continues to exert pressure on Republican lawmakers to advance the bill to a vote.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s powerful White House deputy chief of staff, has said America is “on the verge” of enacting Trump’s agenda. In a late-night post online, he listed the president’s achievements and urged House Republicans to “honor destiny’s call”.
Honor the mandate. Honor the moment. Stand with Trump. Bring it home. Deliver the win.
Rand Paul, one of three Senate Republicans to break with his party and vote against the bill in the upper house on Tuesday, has said he spoke to House Republicans and encouraged them to “add ‘real savings’ to [the] Big Not So Beautiful Bill”.
Reaffirmed that I can vote to allow a larger increase in debt ceiling if House attaches immediate REAL spending cuts.
Paul has been an ongoing critic of the bill’s impact on the budget deficit and national debt, but his vote on Tuesday wasn’t enough to stop if being passed through the Senate.
Spoke today with House Conservatives, encouraging them to add “real savings” to Big Not So Beautiful Bill. Reaffirmed that I can vote to allow a larger increase in debt ceiling if House attaches immediate REAL spending cuts.
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 3, 2025
In other Trump news, the president will be in Iowa on Thursday to kick off a year of patriotic festivities leading up to next year’s 250th anniversary of American independence.
Organisers see the coming year of festivities – which start on 3 July – as a way to help unite a polarised country and bridge partisan divides, the Associated Press reports.
But a recent Gallup poll showed 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.
More US adults also disapprove than approve of how the Republican president is doing his job, according to a June AP-NORC poll.
The event at the Iowa state fairgrounds in Des Moines will feature “dazzling” displays of Americana and American history, musical performances and a fireworks show to cap the night, said US ambassador Monica Crowley, Trump’s liaison to the organising group, America250.
As a candidate, Trump proposed a “great American state fair” in Iowa, but it will take place next year in Washington instead.
Donald Trump is continuing to post on social media as his signature legislation struggles to pass a procedural vote in the House.
The president just said on Truth Social:
FOR REPUBLICANS, THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE. RIDICULOUS!!!
Updated
Donald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill is hanging in the balance as Republicans struggle to muster sufficient votes in the US House of Representatives.
House speaker Mike Johnson is determined to pass the bill as soon as possible but has been frustrated by lawmakers who object to its provisions and overall cost. They have blocked House Republicans from approving a rule that is necessary to begin debate on the measure and set the stage for its passage.
As our just-updated full report says, the vote was still open as the clock struck midnight on Thursday in Washington DC, with five Republicans and all Democrats voting against it. Eight GOP lawmakers had yet to cast their votes, though that group contains several of the bill’s detractors.
Enough Republicans have already voted to block it but Johnson is hoping to change their minds and says he will keep the vote open for “as long as it takes to make sure we got everybody here and accounted for and all the questions answered”.
Trump has demanded the legislation – known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act – be on his desk by Friday, the Independence Day holiday, and spent much of Wednesday holding meetings and phone calls with sceptical Republican lawmakers.
Those and all the other key developments are in the full report here:
Updated
Five Republicans have joined with the Democrats to vote against a procedure that would open the measure up for debate and set the stage for the bill’s eventual passage. The Republican leadership can only afford three no votes, but voting remains open and it’s thought speaker Mike Johnson is seeking to persuade some of those no’s to change their position.
In the past hour, Republican Thomas Massie switched his vote to “no” from a “yes”. According to the New York Times, Massie – who has consistently voted against the bill over his deficit concerns – changed his vote because “if this ends up being the only vote on the domestic policy bill, he does not want to be on the record supporting it”.
Updated
Trump warns Republicans against not passing bill
It’s past midnight in Washington but Donald Trump is clearly still tuned in to the progress of his signature bill as it struggles to pass a procedural vote in the House.
The president has just posted to Truth Social, excoriating his Republican colleagues and warning that their failure to pass the bill will cost them votes.
Largest Tax Cuts in History and a Booming Economy vs. Biggest Tax Increase in History, and a Failed Economy. What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove??? MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!”
Updated
It is now a few minutes past midnight in Washington and the procedural vote that would open final debate on the tax-and-spending bill has been going for two-and-a-half hours.
A reminder, Donald Trump set a deadline of 4 July to pass the bill into law.
Earlier on Wednesday the House broke the record for the chamber’s longest vote in history, with more than seven hours of voting. The current vote still has some way to go to beat that record.
Updated
Mike Johnson has said there is “no pressure” to speed up the House’s procedural vote and “we’re allowing these conversations to continue” as the vote is kept open.
The House speaker also told Fox News he was “absolutely confident” Trump’s bill would pass.
Johnson said it had taken a while to go through the Senate’s changes to the bill and for House members to “figure out what that means for them and their districts – and that’s part of the process”’.
So no huge pressure here, we’re allowing these conversations to continue… among those ‘no’ votes I’ve got a couple of folks that are actually offsite right now, had to attend to family affairs or events this evening, so some of them are on their way back, and then a couple of others we’re having still some conversations…
I’m absolutely confident we are going to land this plane and deliver for the American people.
Updated
Johnson will keep vote open 'as long as it takes'
Mike Johnson has told Fox News he’ll keep the vote open for “as long as it takes” as the House holds a key procedural vote on Donald Trump’s big bill.
The House speaker told the outlet:
I’ll keep it open as long as it takes to make sure we’ve got everybody here and accounted for and all the questions answered – I made that commitment to my members.
We’re in an era of Congress where we have small margins, small majorities, and that makes it by necessity a bottom-up institution – y’know, it’s not a couple leaders in a backroom like the old days where two or three people decide the agenda and it’s hoisted upon everyone else and they take orders and follow. It really is a fully participatory, deliberative body.
Passage of the procedural vote would pave the way for a final debate on the president’s tax and spending bill.
Updated
Donald Trump has said the US is poised to break all growth records as he urges Republicans to “beat” the Democrats and pass his big bill.
The president posted on his Truth Social platform:
The USA is on track to break every record on GROWTH. Go Republicans, beat the Crooked Democrats tonight! PRO-GROWTH Tax Cuts never fail. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Updated
House speaker Mike Johnson has insisted “we’re in a good place” as the House Republican leadership moves ahead with a key procedural vote on Donald Trump’s megabill, CNN is reporting.
Johnson and his leadership team are currently pressing members to back the procedural vote in a furious last-minute scramble as the vote is under way, the news outlets reports.
About 45 minutes into the vote, Johnson still has four members voting against bringing Trump’s bill to the floor — enough to sink the procedural vote and prevent a vote on final passage. That many “no” votes is also enough to tank the bill: He can afford to lose three.
The no votes are: Reps Andrew Clyde, Keith Self, Victoria Spartz and Brian Fitzpatrick – the latter a surprise to some in GOP leadership.
Johnson said earlier:
Well, it’s been a long, productive day. We’ve been talking with members from across the conference and making sure that everyone’s concerns are addressed, and their questions are answered, and it’s, it’s been a good day.
We’re in a good place right now. This is the legislative process, this is exactly how I think the framers intended for it to work. We feel very good about where we are and we’re moving forward.
CNN reported a short while ago that Republican representative Ralph Norman – who has previously said he was opposed to the Senate-passed version of Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill – now says he will back the bill in the procedural vote and final passage, after receiving assurances from Trump that his concerns will be addressed.
“It’s the right thing to do at the right time,” Norman told reporters.
This is Adam Fulton picking up our live coverage
Updated
House voting on rule to pave the way to final debate on Trump's tax-and-spending bill
After a day-long delay, the House has started a procedural vote on a rule that would open final debate on the tax-and-spending bill Donald Trump wants to sign into law, but the measure has already been voted against by enough Republicans to have it fail.
The vote is still open, but four Republicans have voted against the rule so far, which means that the measure will fail if all Democrats vote against it as well and no one changes their vote.
Updated
Trump attacks Raskin shortly after Democrat told MSNBC Trump 'might not even understand what’s in the bill'
Donald Trump is apparently whiling away the hours as the House Republican leadership tries to convince its members to vote for the tax and spending bill he wants to sign by watching television.
That seems likely because he just posted a blistering attack on Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin, calling him “a third rate Democrat politician, has no idea what is in our fantastic Tax Cut Bill, nor would he understand it if he did. This DOPE has been consistently losing to me for YEARS”.
As he has so often during Trump’s years in the White House, the president appears to be effectively using social media to type out what he is shouting at the TV. In this case, what seems to have triggered his rage is Raskin’s appearance on MSNBC in the last hour.
When the host Chris Hayes asked Raskin to comment on a report from the outlet NOTUS that Trump told House Republicans on Wednesday not to “touch” Medicaid, despite the fact that the bill includes over $900bn in Medicaid cuts, Raskin said: “There’s a lot of discussion on the floor about whether or not Trump really understands what’s in this bill or not, and whether he’s out of it.”
“The extraordinary thing about that is of course all of these people have gotten in line despite their own misgivings because Trump is leading the way, but Trump might not even understand what’s in the bill. So it’s a very dangerous moment when you think about what democracy is, and it doesn’t speak well for what has become of the Republican party”, Raskin added.
Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a member of the House Freedom Caucus of hard-line fiscal conservatives, told Lisa Desjardins of PBS Newshour within the last hour that he will not vote on the rule to move his party’s massive tax and spending bill forward on Wednesday night. “He was clear,” Desjardins reports, “he does not think that vote should happen tonight and if it does, he is not voting on it.”
Earlier on Wednesday, Donald Trump met on with the Freedom Caucus, whose members say the Senate-passed version of the bill adds too much to the federal deficit, to try to win their support.
Another member of the Freedom Caucus, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, told Laura Weiss of Punchbowl News that the caucus told Republican leaders that they will not vote for the rule on the bill tonight and are prefer to return on Thursday morning.
Trump also met with more moderate Republican House members, who have a nearly opposite objection: that cuts to health and nutrition assistance are too steep.
Despite White House access, Dr Phil's pro-Trump cable network files for bankruptcy
Merit Street Media, the new conservative cable TV network founded by Phil McGraw, aka Dr Phil, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, and sued its partner Trinity Broadcasting, one of the nation’s largest Christian broadcasters.
McGraw’s openly partisan coverage of the Trump administration has included friendly, soft-focus features on the White House border czar, Tom Homan, and “behind the scenes” reports on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids in Chicago and Los Angeles this year.
That coverage, as the Hollywood reporter observed, effectively made Dr Phil “an unofficial spokesperson for President Trump in advocating for the raids”.
McGraw was clearly stung by the criticism of his pro-Trump coverage, and devoted a recent segment of his show to defending it.
Updated
Reuters reports that House speaker Mike Johnson still hopes to convince the holdouts in his party to back Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill, telling reporters: “We’re planning on a vote today.”
With a narrow 220-212 majority, Johnson can afford no more than three defections from his ranks, and skeptics from the party’s right flank said they had more than enough votes to block the bill.
“He knows I’m a no. He knows that I don’t believe there are the votes to pass this rule the way it is,” Republican representative Andy Harris of Maryland, leader of the hardline Freedom caucus, told reporters.
Representative Lisa McClain, who chairs the House Republican Conference, told the news agency that she expects her colleagues to work through procedural votes and bring the bill to a vote before the full House on Wednesday night. “I think we’ll put it on the floor tonight. It may be 10 or 11 o’clock,” McClain said.
Updated
House Republicans echo Trump's false claim that 'we're not cutting Medicaid' as they push for more than $900bn in Medicaid cuts
When the Republican representative Gabe Evans of Colorado was confronted in the Capitol rotunda on Wednesday by Greg Casar, a progressive Democrat from Texas, about his support for a bill that cuts more than $900bn spending in Medicaid, Evans had a simple reply: “We’re not cutting Medicaid.”
In fact, according to an analysis this week by the non-partisan Penn Wharton Budget Model, the Republican tax-and-spending bill would cut Medicaid spending by more than $900bn “by imposing work requirements, restricting state-level taxes on healthcare providers that draw federal matching funds, increasing the frequency of eligibility checks, changing Medicaid eligibility requirements based on immigration status, and phasing down state-directed payments to providers under managed care organizations to be in line with Medicare rates”.
But the Republican party line, dictated by Donald Trump, is simply to deny that reality and claim that the changes to Medicaid are simply about cutting “waste, fraud and abuse”.
Trump’s repeated denials that the big tax-and-spending bill he wants to sign includes sweeping cuts to Medicaid has apparently confused even some members of his own party.
The news site NOTUS reported on Wednesday that Trump “doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp” on what is in the bill, because he told moderate Republican House members he met with in urgning them to support the legislation that the party should not touch Medicaid.
“But we’re touching Medicaid in this bill,” one member responded to Trump, three sources told the outlet.
Updated
The day so far
We are following developments in the US House on Wednesday, where the razor-thin Republican majority is trying to set up a vote on the version of Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending bill passed by the Senate.
For hours now, the House has been stalled on a procedural vote, which they needed to hold because of an error the House rules committee made when it drafted the rule governing what was then called the one big beautiful bill act (OBBA).
Right now, the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and the White House are working to put pressure on a handful of Republican holdouts, to ensure that they will vote to approve the bill and get it to Trump to sign by his self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.
Here are some of the day’s main developments:
Speaker Mike Johnson said “very positive” progress had been made toward passing Trump’s megabill, but acknowledged that “we can’t make everyone 100% happy” with the final package.
Trump said that the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, “should resign immediately”, after the federal housing regulator called on Congress to investigate him for supposed “political bias”.
A federal court ruled that Trump had exceeded his authority in suspending the right to apply for asylum at the southern border by claiming there was an “invasion” across the US-Mexico border.
The Democratic representative Josh Riley of New York accused Republicans of hypocrisy during a debate on the House floor about the bill, which includes massive cuts to healthcare spending to fund tax cuts that go mostly to the wealthy. “Don’t tell me you give a shit about the middle class, when all you’re doing is shitting on the middle class,” Riley said.
The US and Vietnam struck a trade agreement that sets 20% tariffs on many of the south-east Asian country’s exports following last-minute negotiations, Trump and Vietnamese state media said.
The Trump administration asked the supreme court to remove three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, who were fired by Trump and then reinstated by a federal judge.
Updated
Trump calls on Federal Reserve chair to 'resign immediately'
Writing on his social media platform, Truth Social, Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, “should resign immediately”. The president of the United States referred to the central banker by the nickname he has assigned to him, and added three exclamation marks to his statement.
Trump also shared a news report on Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, asking Congress to investigate Powell.
In a letter released on Wednesday, Pulte called on Congress to investigate what he called Powell’s “political bias, and his deceptive Senate testimony, which is enough to be removed ‘for cause’”.
Pulte also claimed that Powell had lied about upgrades at the central bank’s headquarters.
Trump has complained repeatedly that Powell has been slow to drop interest rates, and given him the nickname “Too Late”.
On Tuesday, Powell blamed Trump’s tariffs for preventing the immediate interest rate cuts the president has demanded.
Updated
With huge cuts to health insurance coverage in the Republican bill, it is not surprising that Barack Obama, the former president, has spoken out against it and is urging Americans to call their representatives and press them to vote against it.
“More than 16 million Americans are at risk of losing their health care because Republicans in Congress are rushing to pass a bill that would cut federal funding for Medicaid and weaken the Affordable Care Act,” Obama wrote on social media. “If the House passes this bill, it will increase costs and hurt working class families for generations to come. Call your representative today and tell them to vote no on this bill.”
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Representative Derrick Van Orden, a Wisconsin Republican, made some waves earlier in the day when he took issue with a reporter who asked him whether Republicans in Congress were being “led by the nose by President Trump”.
“The president of the United States didn’t give us an assignment,” Van Orden told Kenzie Nguyen, a student journalist interning for Punchbowl News. “We’re not a bunch of little bitches around here, OK? I’m a member of Congress. I represent almost 800,000 Wisconsinites.”
Van Orden’s press office did not dispute that the representative, a former Navy Seal, had used that salty language, but scolded the reporter for not adding that he also “stated that President Trump is the leader of the GOP and House Republicans are working in close collaboration with the administration on this bill”.
Van Orden, his press office said, “looks forward to passing the One, Big, Beautiful Bill and getting it to President Trump’s desk to be signed into law”.
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Jake Sherman, the founder of Punchbowl News, which reports exhaustively on Congress, warns that even if House Republicans get the necessary votes to pass the rule, a vote on the final passage might not come until very late at night.
After the rule is passed, there still needs to be a debate, and the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, then gets “a magic minute”, a House custom that allows party leaders to speak for as long as they want to. Jeffries reportedly plans to speak for an hour, well short of the record, set in 2021 by former Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, whose “minute” lasted eight hours and 32 minutes.
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As we continue to wait for a handful of Republican holdouts to vote for, or against, the rule that would permit the massive tax-and-spending bill to be taken up by the House, Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker, is urging his members to vote for the bill passed by the Senate.
“Even though the Senate modified some of our product,” Johnson told reporters, “most of our agenda is wrapped up into this legislation. So it must pass. We have to deliver for the people. The president wants to do it.”
“I think everyone’s trying to get to yes,” he added. “And I believe we will.”
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Representative Victoria Spartz, a Ukrainian-born Indiana Republican, has taken one of the oddest possible positions by saying that she intends to vote for the bill, praising its tax cuts and spending on immigration enforcement, but will vote against the rule, which has to pass for a vote on the bill to actually take place.
Spartz explained in a radio interview on Tuesday that the version of the bill passed by the Senate exceeds by roughly half a trillion dollars a fiscal framework she and 30 other Republicans in the House support, which set a maximum amount of unfunded commitments. According to Spartz, the speaker, Mike Johnson, broke a promise to not bring any bill up for a vote that added more to the debt than the framework permits.
Spartz, who has previously compared the national debt to “a ticking time bomb”, said she is not convinced by arguments from the White House that the tax cuts will stimulate economic growth to such an extent that they will pay for themselves.
The non-partisan Penn Wharton budget model estimated on Tuesday that the Senate-passed reconciliation bill “increases primary deficits by $3.1 trillion over 10 years. The dynamic cost, including changes to the economy, is larger at $3.5 trillion. GDP falls by 0.3 in 10 years and falls by 4.6 in 30 years.”
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Here’s what Democratic representative Eric Swalwell thinks of the slowdown in voting on the tax-and-spending bill, which has been credited to discontent among rightwing Republican lawmakers.
“We aren’t delayed because moderates whose constituents will be completely screwed are holding out. We are delayed because the most extreme members who want to hurt MORE people are holding out,” he wrote on X.
Democrats do not have the numbers to stop the bill from passing the House, and Republican infighting is what is keeping it from advancing.
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A CIA review released on Wednesday found flaws in the production of a 2016 US intelligence assessment that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, “aspired” to help Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in that year’s presidential election, but it did not contest that conclusion.
The declassified, eight-page review “does not dispute the quality and credibility” of a highly classified CIA report that the assessment’s authors relied on to reach that conclusion, it said.
But the review questioned the “high confidence” level that the CIA and FBI assigned the conclusion. It should have instead been given the “moderate confidence” rating reached by the National Security Agency, the review said.
After a November 2017 meeting with Putin in Helsinki, Trump publicly rejected that US intelligence assessment, which had been made public in an unclassified version in January 2017, and said he accepted Putin’s denial that Russia had interfered in the election.
“President Putin said it’s not Russia,” Trump told reporters in Helsinki. “Let me just say, I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
At the same news conference in Helsinki, Putin was asked whether he had wanted Trump to win the 2016 election, and if he had directed any of his officials to help him do that. “Yes, I did,” Putin replied to the first part of the question, saying that he had hoped Trump would repair US-Russia ties. He avoided the second part of the question, about whether he directed anyone to help make that happen.
The CIA director, John Ratcliffe, a former representative who served as the director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term, ordered the review and its “lessons learned” section “to promote analytic objectivity and transparency”, said a CIA press release.
The CIA’s directorate of analysis, which conducted the review, “identified multiple procedural anomalies” in how the December 2016 classified assessment of Russian election interference was prepared.
They included “a highly compressed timeline ... and excessive involvement of agency heads” and “led to departures from standard practices in the drafting, coordination, and reviewing” of the report, it said.
“These departures impeded efforts to apply rigorous tradecraft, particularly to the assessment’s most contentious judgment,” it continued.
The review, however, did not overturn the judgment that Putin employed a disinformation and cyber-campaign to sway the 2016 vote to Trump over his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton. A 2018 bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report reached the same conclusion.
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There’s been some slight movement on the stalled procedural vote that is holding up the House’s consideration of Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending bill.
To recap, House Republicans managed to prevail earlier this afternoon in a different preliminary vote, but have stalled on a second one, which they only needed to hold because of an error the House rules committee made when it drafted the rule governing what was then called the one big beautiful bill act (OBBA).
For more than an hour, the vote count was tied at 212 in favor and 212 against. Over the past few minutes, two more yes votes came in, bringing the total to 214 in favor – enough for passage.
Nonetheless, the vote has not closed, and the House chamber is mostly empty, perhaps a sign that Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders don’t want to move forward to the next step, which is voting on the rule itself, because they have not swayed enough holdout votes.
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The Congressional Black Caucus, which is composed entirely of Democrats, just held a press conference to blast the tax-and-spending policies Republicans are seeking to pass through Congress, saying they would be devastating for African Americans.
“This bill is cruel and evil. It was ugly when it first passed the House, and then the Senate Republicans made it worse. The big, ugly bill will cost people their lives,” said Illinois representative Robin Kelly.
“We know who will be most impacted: Black people: 13.3 million Black people rely on Medicaid. That includes 5.7 million children. And if that isn’t bad enough, the consequences of this bill go beyond the individual person. It will impact hospitals, which in turn affect everyone, even if you aren’t covered by Medicaid.”
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Russ Vought, the director of the White House office of management and budget, was spotted entering the Capitol as Republican leaders seek to persuade holdouts in their party to support Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending bill.
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CNN is reporting that the White House has informed House GOP leaders that Trump got the hardliner holdouts to a better place, citing a person familiar with the discussions. As we’ve been reporting, some of those members have suggested they are closer to a yes after a “productive” meeting with the president, though some details are still being ironed out.
As intense behind-the-scenes negotiations drag on and the House remains frozen, NBC News reports that GOP leaders are also telling members that at least two Republicans who are expected to support the bill have not arrived at the Capitol yet, and that is part of the reason why a vote on an amendment is being held open. One thing is for certain, though: the leadership are furiously working to get the holdouts on-side, as losing the rule vote would be a major embarrassment for the president.
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House at standstill as GOP leaders continue to try to rally holdouts, delaying rule vote
Lawmakers have been told they can leave the House floor as delays have led to a five-minute procedural vote remaining open for over an hour while GOP leaders frantically try to rally Republican holdouts to get behind the bill.
Johnson left the floor and went back to his office on the phone, according to NBC News, while the Hill reports that many of the deficit hawks in the Freedom caucus and beyond, who have threatened to tank the bill, are still in a meeting in his ceremonial office off the House floor.
With the House at a standstill, the all-important rule vote has also been delayed and we have no timing on when it might happen.
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US judge blocks Trump asylum ban at US-Mexico border, saying he exceeded his authority
A federal judge has blocked Donald Trump’s asylum ban at the US-Mexico border, saying the president exceeded his authority when he issued a proclamation declaring illegal immigration an emergency and setting aside existing legal processes.
The US district judge Randolph Moss said in a 128-page opinion that Trump’s 20 January proclamation blocking all immigrants “engaged in the invasion across the southern border” from claiming asylum or other humanitarian protections went beyond his executive power.
The ruling is a setback for Trump, whose aggressive immigration crackdown has seen the number of people caught crossing illegally plummet to record low levels.
The American Civil Liberties Union brought the challenge to Trump’s asylum ban in February, arguing it violated US laws and international treaties.
Moss said he would stay the effective date of his order for 14 days to allow the Trump administration to appeal.
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Key GOP holdout says he's 'a little closer' to voting yes after Trump-Vance meeting
Tim Burchett, of Tennessee, struck a positive note after a two-hour meeting he and other conservatives had with Donald Trump at the White House this afternoon, saying it was “very productive” and put him “a little closer” to voting yes on the president’s megabill.
He told CNN:
It puts me a little closer. We’re going to meet a little bit here and go over everything and make sure we got all our facts straight.
In a post on X, Burchett said JD Vance had also been present at the “very informative” meeting with the president and declared it was “a very good day”. He said:
The president was wonderful as always, informative, funny, told me he likes seeing me on TV, which is kind of cool.
Big day today, folks. Hopefully we get this thing worked out. The president answered all of our questions, was very informative. JD Vance was there. This was a very good day.
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'We can't make everyone 100% happy,' says Johnson as it remains unclear if he has the numbers to pass bill
Speaker Mike Johnson has said “very positive” progress has been made toward passing Donald Trump’s megabill, but acknowledged that “we can’t make everyone 100% happy” with the final package, CNN reports.
It quotes Johnson as telling reporters:
When you have a piece of legislation that is this comprehensive and with so many agenda items involved, you’re going to have lots of different priorities and preferences among people because they represent different districts and they have different interests.
But we can’t make everyone 100% happy. It’s impossible. This is a deliberative body. It’s a legislative process. By definition, all of us have to give up on our personal preferences. [I’m] never going to ask anybody to compromise core principles, but preferences must be yielded for the greater good, and that’s what I think people are recognizing and come to grips with.
It remains unclear if he has the numbers needed to pass the bill as the House prepares to take a key procedural vote to get the bill closer to final passage.
Johnson said he – and Trump – have been speaking to conservative hardliners and swing-district Republicans all day about their concerns, adding that “there’s more conversations to be held”.
We’ve had lots of great conversations. I’ve met with individuals and groups all day long, as has the president - who’s fully engaged as well - trying to convince everybody this is the very best product that we can produce. There’s more conversations to be held.
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Members of the House Freedom caucus and others are meeting in a ceremonial office off the House floor, and walking back and forth between there and the House floor, the Hill is reporting, moments before the chamber is set to vote on advancing the bill.
The Hill has this observation: “Ralph Norman, of South Carolina, and caucus chair Andy Harris, of Maryland, who had pledged to vote against the rule earlier today, are notably not answering now when asked if they’re still going to vote no.”
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Preliminary motion on bill passes through House on party lines, but unclear whether GOP has numbers for later vote
Back on the House floor, Republicans have just managed to get through the chamber a preliminary motion on the bill.
The motion, which was approved on party lines with 214 in favor and 212 against, sets the stage for another vote later in the afternoon to adopt the rule. If that is successful, the chamber will debate the bill, then vote on its final passage.
However, it remains unclear whether the GOP has the votes it needs to pass the rule.
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On their way into the Capitol, two conservative Republican lawmakers signaled optimism that the bill would get through the House.
“I think these votes will take a little, a little bit or a lot longer than usual. But that’s Washington. You guys are watching how the sausage is made, and that’s how business is run,” Nancy Mace told reporters.
Like several other lawmakers, she wound up driving from her South Carolina district to Washington DC after a flurry of thunderstorms yesterday prompted major flight delays and cancellations around the capital.
“There’s things in the bill I don’t like, but would I change the bill because I didn’t get what I wanted? I don’t think that would be good for America,” said Troy Nehls of Texas, as he smoked a cigar.
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Here are some pics from the Capitol on this dramatic day.
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House of Representatives in midst of one of the preliminary votes
The House of Representatives is in the midst of one of the preliminary votes it must take before they can vote on passing the wide-ranging tax and spending bill that is Donald Trump’s top legislative priority.
Republicans have a small majority and will need all their members present to get the bill through, particularly if they want to make Trump’s self-imposed deadline of Friday, the Independence Day holiday.
Republican lawmakers who had not arrived earlier trickled into the Capitol Wednesday afternoon, and sounded positive about their chances of getting the bill passed — though perhaps not in the next two days.
“We’re going to get it done,” said South Dakota congressman Dusty Johnson, who went on to acknowledge that “people are still getting to yes”.
Earlier in the day, he had participated in meetings with Trump and holdout Republicans, which he described as successful. “The meetings that I was in, the president, I think, closed out just about everybody,” Johnson said.
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The first African leaders’ summit of Trump’s second term will be held next week in Washington, with heads of state from Guinea-Bissau, Gabon, Mauritania, Senegal and Liberia, according to reporting from Semafor. The meeting will take place from July 9-11.
Democratic representative Josh Riley of New York accused Republicans of not caring about middle class Americans during a lengthy debate on the House floor about Trump’s controversial bill.
Riley said: “Don’t tell me you give a shit about the middle class, when all you’re doing is shitting on the middle class.”
Steve Womack then reprimanded Riley, telling him to avoid vulgar language, saying “we do have families in the…” before moving on to address someone else.
Riley: Don’t tell me you give a shit about the middle class when all you are doing is shitting on the middle class pic.twitter.com/d9xqnsrD3d
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 2, 2025
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The US and Vietnam struck a trade agreement that sets 20% tariffs on many of the Southeast Asian country’s exports following last-minute negotiations, Trump and Vietnamese state media said on Wednesday.
The rate is lower than an initial 46% levy Trump announced in April on goods from Vietnam which was due to take effect next week.
Trump said that goods from Vietnam would face a 20% tariff and that any trans-shipments from third countries would face a 40% levy. Details were scarce and it was not immediately clear how the trans-shipment provision would be implemented.
Vietnam would also provide the US with more market access, with US exports to the country facing no tariffs, Trump said. That agreement appears to include US exporters of large-engine cars, according to Trump and Vietnamese state media.
The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to remove three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, who were fired by Trump and then reinstated by a federal judge.
Trump has the power to fire independent agency board members, the Justice Department argued in its filing to the high court, pointing to a May ruling by the Supreme Court that endorsed a robust view of presidential power.
The administration asked the court for an immediate order to allow the firings to go forward, over the objections of lawyers for the commissioners.
The commission helps protect consumers from dangerous products by issuing recalls, suing errant companies and more. Trump fired the three Democrats on the five-member commission in May. They were serving seven-year terms after being nominated by former president Joe Biden.
House GOP fiscal hawks demand big changes to megabill
As we’ve reported, members of the House Freedom Caucus were expected to meet with the president this morning. Earlier, caucus chairman Andy Harris earlier told CNN:
I’m still voting no on the rule. We have to get this thing right.
And Texas representative Chip Roy, among the most vocal critics of the Senate’s version of the bill, said that he and many other conservatives remain opposed to the bill and still want major changes. He told CNN:
It’s not ‘take it or leave it.’ I don’t need take-it-or-leave-it legislating. How about we send it back to him? We say, ‘Take it or leave it,’ all right? So the Senate doesn’t get to be the final say on everything.
He said he and other hardliners were in ongoing discussions with the White House about the changes they want, adding:
I think we need more spending restraint, and I think we need to fix what they did in the Senate.
Meanwhile, Kentucky representative Thomas Massie, who is not a member of the caucus but has consistently voted against the bill over his deficit concerns, said he intends to stand firm in that position. Asked by CNN if there was anything at all leadership could do to win his vote, he said:
We could go back to drawing board to a skinny bill.
He called the 4 July deadline “arbitrary”, adding:
There’s no reason to bankrupt the country because you want to go shoot off some fireworks.
'All we need are four Republicans': Jeffries urges GOP to show 'John McCain-level courage' and reject megabill
Earlier, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries called on four House Republicans to vote “hell no” on Trump’s signature tax and spending megabill (the GOP’s majority is so slim, they can only afford three no votes if the bill is to pass).
Invoking the late Republican senator John McCain’s decisive vote to sink the GOP’s 2017 effort to repeal Obamacare during Donald Trump’s first term, Jeffries said from the steps of the Capitol:
What type of party would bring a bill to the House floor that rips away Medicaid from those in need? What kind of party would bring a bill to the House floor that literally robs food from the mouths of children, veterans and seniors? And all of this is being done to provide massive tax breaks to their billionaire donors. It’s unconscionable; it’s unacceptable; it’s un-American.
All we need are four Republicans - just four - to show John-McCain-level courage.
He and other Democrats also called out several Republicans facing tough re-election contests in battleground districts next year – Scott Perry and Rob Bresnahan, both of Pennsylvania, and David Valadao and Young Kim, both of California.
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Judge blocks Kristi Noem from ending temporary protected status for Haitians
A federal judge last night blocked the Trump administration’s bid to end temporary deportation protections and work permits for approximately 521,000 Haitian immigrants before the program’s scheduled expiration date.
Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded Joe Biden’s extension of temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians through 3 February. It called for the program to end on 3 August, and last week pushed back that date to 2 September.
The US district judge Brian Cogan in Brooklyn, however, said the homeland security secretary Kristi Noem did not follow instructions and a timeline mandated by Congress to reconsider the TPS designation for Haitians.
“Secretary Noem does not have statutory or inherent authority to partially vacate a country’s TPS designation”, making her actions “unlawful”, Cogan wrote. “Plaintiffs are likely to (and, indeed, do) succeed on the merits.”
Cogan also said Haitians’ interests in being able to live and work in the United States “far outweigh” potential harm to the US government, which remains free to enforce immigration laws and terminate TPS status as prescribed by Congress.
In a statement, Tricia McLaughlin, homeland security spokesperson, said Haiti’s TPS designation had been granted following the 2010 earthquake in that country, and was never intended as a “de facto” asylum program.
“This ruling delays justice and seeks to kneecap the President’s constitutionally vested powers,” she said. “We expect a higher court to vindicate us.”
More than 1 million people, more than half of them children, are displaced within Haiti, where gang violence is prevalent despite a UN-backed security mission that began last year.
Trump administration sued for giving Medicaid data to deportation officials
The Trump administration violated federal privacy laws when it turned over Medicaid data on millions of enrollees to deportation officials, a group of 20 states allege in a lawsuit.
Last month health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s advisers ordered the release of a dataset that includes the private health information of people living in California, Illinois, Washington state and Washington DC to the Department of Homeland Security.
All allow non-US citizens to enroll in Medicaid – a jointly funded federal and state health insurance programme for lower-income individuals and underserved groups – that pay for their expenses using only state taxpayer dollars.
On Tuesday, California attorney general Rob Bonta and 19 other states’ attorneys general sued over the move. They alleged that the Trump administration’s data release infringes on federal health privacy protection laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
“This is about flouting seven decades of federal law policy and practice that have made it clear that personal healthcare data is confidential and can only be shared in certain narrow circumstances that benefit the public’s health or the Medicaid programme,” Bonta said during a press conference.
The complaint argues that if “members of our community cannot trust that the government will keep their medical history and other personal data safe, they will think twice about going to the doctor when needed”. This loss of trust will lead to “irreparable damage due to increased morbidity and mortality”.
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Trump and House GOP leaders scramble to rally holdouts ahead of critical vote on tax and spending bill
There’s nothing on Donald Trump’s schedule today, freeing him up for meetings with GOP holdouts across the ideological spectrum on the Hill and at the White House to press them to back his bill as the critical House vote looms.
Speaker Mike Johnson met with members of the House Freedom Caucus this morning, who are now at the White House to meet with Trump. Per The Hill, caucus chair Andy Harris said “nothing’s changed” after the meeting with Johnson.
“The Speaker is going to have to decide if he’s going to bring this closer to the House framework,” Harris said. As I reported on Monday, the ultraconservative bloc said that the legislation in the Senate is “not what we agreed to”, underscoring discontent among the fiscal hawks with the higher deficit spending, among other things, in the Senate’s version of the bill.
Another member of the hardline caucus told The Hill following the meeting with Johnson:
There is still a real, big problem with the rule vote if they’re not going to amend the bill and send it back.
I and a number of others are of the view that we cannot support the rule or the underlying bill… without changes.
The problems we have are real: deficits, gutting of the green new scam provisions we put in place, and other, Medicaid for illegals, etc.
Some House GOP moderates also oppose the Senate’s version of the bill on the grounds of greater cuts to social safety net programs, especially Medicaid, among other things. NBC reports that Trump is meeting with the Republican Main Street Caucus, whose members are moderate-leaning, today to discuss the bill.
CNN reports that centrists Mike Lawler of New York, David Valadao of California, Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma, Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, Dan Newhouse of Washington and Andrew Garbarino of New York were all seen arriving at the West Wing at around 10am ET.
For Lawler, for example, the biggest point of contention with Trump’s policy legislation is the state and local tax deduction (Salt).
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Trump just made a vague announcement on social media regarding trade with Vietnam. He wrote: “I just made a Trade Deal with Vietnam. Details to follow!”
House in procedural vote as Democrats attempt to derail Trump's tax-and-spending bill
The House is currently in the process of taking a procedural vote, a move necessitated by Democrats who are trying to derail the bill before it can come to a final vote.
Democrats lack the votes for the strategy to work, but with the weather affecting attendance, it will give Congress an accurate account of who is back in Washington as well as an early assessment of how much, if any Republican opposition there is to the bill.
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Speaker Mike Johnson expressed concern over attendance as he arrived in the Capitol on Wednesday morning.
“I am worried about flights,” Johnson said. “We don’t know if we have a full House, so that’s what we’re working on.”
Republicans will need every one of their 220 House members to pass the bill, but several haven’t yet made it to Washington.
Thunderstorms and heavy rain on Tuesday evening canceled flights to Washington. In addition to some Republicans, some Democrats are also opting for a road trip to Washington.
Illinois representative Raja Krishnamoorthi drove, hosting a Zoom townhall during his 14-hour drive. Representatives Chris DeLuzio of Pennsylvania and Derek Tran of California drove together after being stranded in Pittsburgh.
Democratic mayors sue over Trump’s efforts to restrict Obamacare signups. New Trump administration rules that give millions of people a shorter timeframe to sign up for the Affordable Care Act’s health care coverage are facing a legal challenge from Democratic mayors around the country.
The rules, rolled out last month, reverse a Biden-era effort to expand access to the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance, commonly called “Obamacare” or the ACA. The previous Democratic administration expanded the enrollment window for the coverage, which led to record enrollment.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rolled out a series of new restrictions for Obamacare late last month, just as Congress was weighing a major bill that will decrease enrollment in the healthcare program that Donald Trump has scorned for years. As many as 2 million people – nearly 10% – are expected to lose coverage from the health department’s new rules.
The mayors of Baltimore, Chicago and Columbus, Ohio, sued the federal health department on Tuesday over the rules, saying they will result in more uninsured residents and overburden city services.
“Cloaked in the pretense of government efficiency and fraud prevention, the 2025 Rule creates numerous barriers to affordable insurance coverage, negating the purpose of the ACA to extend affordable health coverage to all Americans, and instead increasing the population of underinsured and uninsured Americans,” the filing alleges.
Two liberal advocacy groups – Doctors for America and Main Street Alliance – joined in on the complaint.
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Severe weather could be a factor in Washington as House aims to vote on Trump tax bill
Severe weather is impacting air travel to Washington DC, causing disruptions for members of Congress needing to return for a crucial vote on Trump’s bill.
Thunderstorms and heavy rain forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights to Washington-area airports, including Reagan National, according to the aviation tracker FlightAware.
Many members of the House are opting to drive their cars to Washington instead, avoiding the risk of last-minute flight delays or cancellations. Representative Nancy Mace and representative Russell Fry, both Republicans from South Carolina, posted videos on social media announcing their plans to drive to the capitol.
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Trump referred to New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani as a “communist lunatic” on social media. He seemed to allude to reports that the White House is considering stripping Mamdani of his US citizenship as part of a crackdown against foreign-born citizens, saying he won’t allow him to “destroy New York”.
Trump wrote:
“As President of the United States, I’m not going to let this Communist Lunatic destroy New York. Rest assured, I hold all the levers, and have all the cards. I’ll save New York City, and make it “Hot” and “Great” again, just like I did with the Good Ol’ USA!”
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Speaking to Jen Psaki on MSNBC last night, Democratic representative Maxwell Frost of Florida said that he is hearing at least 20 House Republicans are planning to vote against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” in its current form.
Republicans can only afford three “no” votes in order for the bill to pass, assuming all Democrats vote against it.
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Trump defends tax-and-spending bill, saying it will bring 'growth' to US economy
Trump is defending his bill, which just barely passed in the Senate yesterday, on social media. He emphasized that the bill will bring “growth” to the US. It is estimated that the bill would grow the national deficit by $3.3tn through 2034, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
Trump wrote:
“Nobody wants to talk about GROWTH, which will be the primary reason that the Big, Beautiful Bill will be one of the most successful pieces of legislation ever passed. THIS GROWTH has already begun at levels never seen before. Trillions of Dollars are now being invested into the USA, more than ever before. Likewise, hundreds of Billions of Dollars in Tariffs are filling up the coffers of Treasury. The Tariff money has already arrived and is setting new records! We are growing our way out of the Sleepy Joe Biden MESS that he and the Democrats left us, and it is happening much faster than anyone thought possible.
Our Country will make a fortune this year, more than any of our competitors, but only if the Big, Beautiful Bill is PASSED! As they say, Trump’s been right about everything, and this is the easiest of them all to predict. Republicans, don’t let the Radical Left Democrats push you around. We’ve got all the cards, and we are going to use them. Last year America was a “DEAD” Nation, with no hope for the future, and now it’s the “HOTTEST NATION IN THE WORLD!” MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
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Donald Trump and administration officials have threatened CNN over what they said was its promotion of a new app that allows users to track and try to avoid Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents.
Speaking to reporters in Florida on a trip to visit a new Ice detention center in Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said her department and the Department of Justice were looking at prosecuting CNN over its reporting on the app, called IceBlock.
“We’re working with Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them,” Noem said, “because what they’re doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities and operations. We’re going to actually go after them and prosecute them. What they’re doing is illegal”.
Trump joined in, saying the news network – a frequent target of his ire – should also be prosecuted for what he said were “false reports on the attack on Iran”, referring to the leak of a Pentagon assessment that suggested US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and had probably only set the program back by months.
“They were totally obliterated,” Trump countered. “Our people have to be celebrated, [and] not come home to, ‘What do you mean we didn’t hit the targets?’”
CNN defended its reporting of the app through a spokesperson, saying: “This is an app that is publicly available to any iPhone user who wants to download it. There is nothing illegal about reporting the existence of this or any other app, nor does such reporting constitute promotion or other endorsement of the app by CNN”.
Noem’s comments came hours after Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, also criticized CNN for its reporting on the IceBlock app.
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Donald Trump on Tuesday toured “Alligator Alcatraz”, a controversial new migrant detention jail in the remote Florida Everglades, and celebrated the harsh conditions that people sent there would experience.
The president was chaperoned by Florida’s hard-right governor, Ron DeSantis, who hailed the tented camp on mosquito-infested land 50 miles west of Miami as an example for other states that supported Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
“You’ll have a lot of people that will deport on their own because they don’t want to end up in an Alligator Alcatraz, or some of these other places,” DeSantis said.
“This is a model, but we need other states to step up.”
Hundreds of protesters greeted Trump and the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, as they arrived at the hastily assembled camp. The space was previously a largely disused airstrip surrounded by swampland abundant in alligators and Burmese pythons.
Opponents say the encampment, which DeSantis said would open on Wednesday for the first of an initial intake of up to about 1,000 detainees, places unsustainable environmental demands on the fragile wetlands, and will subject those held there to cruel and demeaning treatment.
Trump made no effort to challenge that narrative as he spoke to reporters before leaving Washington DC to travel to Florida, laughing as he made zigzag motions with his hands while offering advice to anybody thinking of escaping.
“The snakes are fast, but alligators [are faster],” he said.
“We’re going to teach them how to run away from an alligator. Don’t run in a straight line, look, like this, and you know what? Your chances go up about 1%. Not a good thing.”
At a press conference following the tour, Trump was equally dismissive of concerns about conditions in the Everglades, where the daily heat index in July regularly exceeds 100F (37.8C).
“It might be as good as the real Alcatraz. A little controversial, but I couldn’t care less,” he said.
He praised the DeSantis administration for “a fantastic job” in erecting dozens of giant tents in little more than eight days, and saying the camp would “keep people where they’re supposed to be”. Ultimately, 5,000 detainees could be held there.
Johnson to quell internal House Republican revolt over Senate changes to Trump's tax bill
US House Republicans were set to vote on Donald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending bill on Wednesday, a day after it narrowly passed the Senate.
But the fate of Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill” hangs in the balance as House speaker Mike Johnson seeks to quell an internal revolt over the changes made by the Senate.
The Senate passed the bill, with JD Vance, the vice-president, casting the tie-breaking vote, on Tuesday, after a record-setting, all-night session. Now the chambers must reconcile their versions: the sprawling megabill goes back to the House, where Johnson has said the Senate “went a little further than many of us would have preferred” in its changes, particularly to Medicaid, a program that provides healthcare to low-income and disabled Americans.
But the speaker vowed to “get that bill over the line”. Trump has set a Fourth of July deadline for Congress to send the bill to his desk.
Early on Wednesday morning, the House rules committee advanced the measure, sending it to the floor for consideration.
In a Tuesday night interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Johnson said he expects to hold a House vote on Wednesday but acknowledged that travel disruptions caused by weather delays were a “wild card” that may impact attendance. In that case, he said the vote would likely take place on Thursday “at the latest”.
The House approved an initial draft of the legislation last month by a single vote, overcoming Democrats’ unanimous opposition. But many fiscal conservatives are furious over cost estimates that project the Senate version would add even more to the federal deficit than the House-passed plan.
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Donald Trump’s administration has decided to lift aid cuts for Tibetans in exile and provide $7m in financing for projects such as those supporting health and education, the leader of the Tibetan government in-exile said on Wednesday.
The Trump administration started cutting foreign aid after taking office in January as part of its America First policy, which has had an impact on programmes including those aimed at securing food supplies and preventing the spread of HIV in some of the poorest parts of the world, Reuters reported.
Penpa Tsering, leader of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) in India, the government in-exile, said he believed Tibetans became “collateral damage” in foreign assistance cuts and that their leadership had worked hard to restore US funding.
“I’m happy to inform you that the US government has decided to lift the termination,” Tsering told reporters in the northern Indian town of Dharamshala on the sidelines of Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday celebrations.
“We received this communication just day before yesterday.”
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Legally mandated US national climate assessments seem to have disappeared from the federal websites built to display them, making it harder for state and local governments and the public to learn what to expect in their back yards from a warming world.
Scientists said the peer-reviewed authoritative reports save money and lives. Websites for the national assessments and the US Global Change Research Program were down Monday and Tuesday with no links, notes or referrals elsewhere. The White House, which was responsible for the assessments, said the information will be housed within Nasa to comply with the law, but gave no further details.
Searches for the assessments on Nasa websites did not turn them up. Nasa did not respond to requests for information. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which coordinated the information in the assessments, did not respond to repeated inquiries.
“It’s critical for decision-makers across the country to know what the science in the National Climate Assessment is. That is the most reliable and well-reviewed source of information about climate that exists for the United States,” said Kathy Jacobs, a University of Arizona climate scientist, who coordinated the 2014 version of the report.
“It’s a sad day for the United States if it is true that the National Climate Assessment is no longer available,” Jacobs added. “This is evidence of serious tampering with the facts and with people’s access to information, and it actually may increase the risk of people being harmed by climate-related impacts.”
The Trump administration has raised the possibility of stripping Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral candidate for New York City, of his US citizenship as part of a crackdown against foreign-born citizens convicted of certain offences.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, appeared to pave the way for an investigation into Mamdani’s status after Andy Ogles, a rightwing Republican representative for Tennessee, called for his citizenship to be revoked on the grounds that he may have concealed his support for “terrorism” during the naturalization process.
Mamdani, 33, who was born in Uganda to ethnic Indian parents, became a US citizen in 2018 and has attracted widespread media attention – and controversy – over his vocal support for Palestinian rights.
Donald Trump was asked on Tuesday about Mamdani’s pledge to “stop masked” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents “from deporting our neighbors”. The US president responded: “Well, then, we’ll have to arrest him,” Axios reported.
Mamdani posted a statement on X in response. “The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported. Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let Ice terrorize our city,” he wrote.
He continued: “His statements don’t just represent an attack on our democracy but an attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadows: if you speak up, they will come for you. We will not accept this intimidation.”
Hiroshima mayor invites Trump to visit city after atomic bomb comments
Donald Trump ought to visit Hiroshima to see the effects of nuclear weapons after he compared the 1945 bombings to recent airstrikes on Iran, the Japanese city’s mayor said.
Trump had told reporters:
That hit ended the war. I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima, I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki, but that was essentially the same thing.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, mayor Kazumi Matsui said:
It seems to me that he does not fully understand the reality of the atomic bombings, which, if used, take the lives of many innocent citizens, regardless of whether they were friend or foe, and threaten the survival of the human race.
I wish that president Trump would visit the bombed area to see the reality of the atomic bombing and feel the spirit of Hiroshima, and then make statements.
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Ukraine calls US envoy to foreign ministry after some weapons deliveries halted
Ukraine called the acting US envoy to the foreign ministry on Wednesday and stressed the importance of continuing critical military aid to fight Russia’s invasion, the ministry said, after Washington halted some deliveries of ammunition and missiles to Kyiv.
In a statement, it said deputy foreign minister Mariana Betsa expressed gratitude to deputy chief of mission John Ginkel for US support, but warned that a cut-off in aid, particularly air-defence systems, would embolden Russia, Reuters reported.
“The Ukrainian side emphasised that any delay or procrastination in supporting Ukraine’s defense capabilities will only encourage the aggressor to continue the war and terror, rather than seek peace,” it said.
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A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s bid to end temporary deportation protections and work permits for approximately 521,000 Haitian immigrants before the program’s scheduled expiration date.
Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded Joe Biden’s extension of temporary protected status (TPS) for Haitians through 3 February. It called for the program to end on 3 August, and last week pushed back that date to 2 September.
The US district judge Brian Cogan in Brooklyn, however, said the homeland security secretary Kristi Noem did not follow instructions and a timeline mandated by Congress to reconsider the TPS designation for Haitians.
“Secretary Noem does not have statutory or inherent authority to partially vacate a country’s TPS designation”, making her actions “unlawful”, Cogan wrote. “Plaintiffs are likely to (and, indeed, do) succeed on the merits.”
Cogan also said Haitians’ interests in being able to live and work in the United States “far outweigh” potential harm to the US government, which remains free to enforce immigration laws and terminate TPS status as prescribed by Congress.
Paramount settles with Trump for $16m
CBS parent company Paramount on Wednesday settled a lawsuit filed by Donald Trump over an interview broadcast in October, in the latest concession by a media company to the US president, who has targeted outlets over what he describes as false or misleading coverage.
Paramount said it would pay $16m to settle the suit with the money allocated to Trump’s future presidential library, and not paid to Trump “directly or indirectly”.
“The settlement does not include a statement of apology or regret,” the company statement added.
Trump filed a $10bn lawsuit against CBS in October, alleging the network deceptively edited an interview that aired on its 60 Minutes news program with then-vice-president and presidential candidate Kamala Harris to “tip the scales in favor of the Democratic party” in the election. In an amended complaint filed in February, Trump increased his claim for damages to $20bn.
CBS aired two versions of the Harris interview in which she appears to give different answers to the same question about the Israel-Hamas war, according to the lawsuit filed in a federal court in Texas.
CBS previously said the lawsuit was “completely without merit” and had asked a judge to dismiss the case.
The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Edward A Paltzik, a lawyer representing Trump in the civil suit, could not be immediately reached for comment.
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House expected to vote on Trump's sweeping tax and spending bill after narrowly passing Senate
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics as Donald Trump’s sweeping tax cut and spending legislation is expected to head to the House after it cleared the Senate last night with the narrowest of margins.
The Senate passed the measure in a 51-50 vote with vice-president JD Vance breaking a tie after three Republicans – Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky – joined all 47 Democrats in voting against the bill.
It followed a long debate in which Republicans grappled with the so-called “one big beautiful” bill’s price tag – it is set to raise the deficit by $5 trillion – and its impact on the US healthcare system.
The vote in the House, where Republicans hold a 220-212 majority, is likely to be close.
Mike Johnson, the House speaker, said during an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Republican leadership would seek to move the legislation through the Rules Committee this morning and get it before the entire House before Friday’s holiday, unless travel plans were upset by thunderstorms that have menaced the Washington area.
“Hopefully we’re voting on this by tomorrow or Thursday at latest, depending on the weather delays and travel and all the rest – that’s the wild card that we can’t control,” Johnson said yesterday.
A White House official told reporters that Trump would be “deeply involved” in pushing House Republicans to approve the bill. “It’s a great bill. There is something for everyone,” Trump said at an event in Florida. “And I think it’s going to go very nicely in the House.”
Is Trump’s optimism misplaced? You can read our report on the bill’s progress so far and prospects for today here:
Entertainingly at least, the bill has reanimated the much-missed Musk-Trump feud, with the tech billionaire calling the legislation “insane” and suggesting he could form a new political party if it passed.
In response, Trump claimed he could “look into” deporting Musk. So stay with us for all the developments.
In other news:
Trump announced on his social media platform that Israel has agreed to a 60-day ceasefire in its war in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept the terms of the agreement. The news comes as Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is scheduled to visit the White House on 7 July.
Trump toured “Alligator Alcatraz”, a controversial new migrant detention jail in the remote Florida Everglades, and celebrated the harsh conditions that people sent there would experience. Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, said detainees could arrive at the rapidly constructed facility as soon as today. Trump later revisited his idea of “renovating and rebuilding Alcatraz”, with a view to reopening the infamous island prison in San Francisco, which has been closed for over 60 years.
The Pentagon has halted shipments of air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine over concerns that US stockpiles are too low. On Sunday, Moscow fired more than 500 aerial weapons at Ukraine overnight, in a barrage that Kyiv described as the biggest air attack so far of the three-year war.
USAID will officially stop implementing foreign aid starting today, secretary of state Marco Rubio said. He added that the US’s assistance in the future will be targeted and limited, focusing on trade rather than aid.
The Trump administration raised the possibility of stripping Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral candidate for New York City, of his US citizenship over his vocal support for Palestinian rights. Democrat senator Chris Murphy slammed the idea as “racist bullshit”.
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