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Dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, President Donald Trump’s signature policy bill would slash taxes, largely benefitting the wealthiest Americans.

To pay for it, federal spending would be reduced, including on Medicaid, food stamps and student loans. Supporters say the bill could jumpstart economic growth and create jobs.

Critics, including some Republicans, say millions of Americans would pay the price. And the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would actually add an estimated $3.3 trillion to debt over a decade.

Why did Canada scrap its digital tax on US tech companies?

Plus, Nigeria’s tax reform.

After nearly 29 hours of debate, the United States House of Representatives have passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, an enormous tax cut and spending package that represents a pillar of President Donald Trump’s agenda.

The lower house of the US Congress voted by a margin of 218 to 214 in favour of the bill on Thursday.

All 212 Democratic members of the House opposed the bill. They were joined by Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who broke from the Republican majority.

After the bill’s passage, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, the top Republican, applauded his fellow party members.

“I believed in this vision. I believed in the group. I believe in America,” Johnson said to applause.

The bill now heads to the White House for Trump to sign it into law. The Republican president had called on his fellow party members to pass the legislation before July 4, the country’s Independence Day.

As a result of the new legislation, the US will lift its debt ceiling — the amount the federal government is allowed to borrow — by $5 trillion.

The bill also pours tens of billions of dollars into immigration enforcement, one of Trump’s top priorities, and it will also cement the 2017 tax cuts that Trump championed during his first term as president.

To pay for those expenditures, the bill scales back social initiatives like Medicaid — government health insurance for low-income households — and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bill will increase the number of people without health insurance by 17 million over the next 10 years.

It also projected that the country’s deficit — the amount of money the US owes — would climb by about $3.3 trillion over the same period.

Democratic lawmakers had slammed the bill as a massive redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, noting that the tax cuts will mainly benefit the wealthiest earners.

Republican supporters like Trump have countered that the bill will fuel growth and cut waste and fraud in programmes like Medicaid.

Yet, not all conservatives initially backed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” as it wound its way through the chambers of Congress. There were several Republican holdouts who feared how the Medicaid cuts would impact low-income and rural communities, and some fiscal conservatives objected to the increase in the national debt.

“FOR REPUBLICANS, THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE,” Trump said in a social media post on Wednesday night. “RIDICULOUS!!!”

Even Trump’s erstwhile ally, billionaire Elon Musk, has publicly opposed the bill over provisions he described as “pork”.

A record-breaking speech

In the lead-up to Thursday’s vote, Democrats attempted to stall, with the stated aim of allowing voters more time to contact their local representatives in protest.

The face of that effort was Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who exercised a privilege known as the “magic minute” that allows party leaders to speak as long as they want from the House floor.

Jeffries stretched that privilege into an hours-long appeal to Republicans to stand up against what he described as Trump’s harmful policies. He started at around 4:53am local time (8:53 GMT) and ended past 1:39pm (17:39 GMT).

It was the longest speech ever delivered on the House floor, approximately eight hours and 44 minutes.

“I’m here to take my sweet time on behalf of the American people,” Jeffries told the House, his voice wavering at points during the speech.

He directed his remarks to the speaker of the House, a leadership role normally occupied by Johnson.

“Donald Trump’s deadline may be Independence Day. That ain’t my deadline,” Jeffries said. “You know why, Mr Speaker? We don’t work for Donald Trump. We work for the American people.”

Jeffries warned that the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which he dubbed the “One Big Ugly Bill”, “hurts everyday Americans and rewards billionaires with massive tax breaks”. The legislation, he added, was simply reckless.

He called his colleagues across the aisle to “show John McCain-level courage”, dropping a reference to the late Republican senator from Arizona, known for standing up to Trump on the question of healthcare.

McCain has often been cited as a symbol of bipartisanship in Congress, and Jeffries urged his Republican colleagues to reach across the aisle.

“We acknowledged the election of President Donald Trump, offered to work with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle whenever and wherever possible in order to make life better for the American people,” Jeffries said.

“But the route, Mr Speaker, that has been taken by House Republicans is to go it alone and to try to jam this One Big Ugly Bill — filled with extreme right-wing policy priorities — down the throats of the American people.”

In a poll last week from Quinnipiac University, for example, just 29 percent of respondents indicated they were in favour of the legislation, while 55 percent were against it.

Jeffries later added, “We’re not here to bend the knee to any wannabe king,” comparing resistance to Trump to the US’s revolutionary war era. When he finally said he would yield back the floor, Democrats exploded into applause, chanting his name: “Hakeem! Hakeem! Hakeem!”

Republicans rally in final stretch

In order to reach Thursday’s vote, the House had remained in session overnight, as part of a marathon session.

But in the minutes before the dramatic vote took place, Speaker Johnson himself briefly spoke to the House, rallying Republicans to show a unified front.

He also took a jab at Jeffries’s record-breaking speech, “It takes a lot longer to build a lie than to tell the simple truth.”

“We’ve waited long enough. Some of us have literally been up for days now,” Johnson continued. “With this One Big Beautiful Bill, we are going to make this country stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before, and every American is going to benefit from that.”

He added that the “One Big Beautiful Bill” would make programmes like Medicaid “stronger with our reforms”.

Trump himself celebrated the victory as he left for an appearance in Iowa. “Biggest tax cut in history, great for security, great on the southern border, immigration is covered. We covered just about everything,” he said. “It’s the biggest bill ever signed of its kind.”

Still, at the final hurdle, two Republicans did break away from their party caucus to vote against the “One Big Beautiful Bill”.

One of the nay-votes, Representative Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, released a statement saying he had previously voted to “strengthen Medicaid”. The Senate version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, he argued, did the opposite.

“The original House language was written in a way that protected our community; the Senate amendments fell short of our standard,” Fitzpatrick wrote.

“I believe in, and will always fight for, policies that are thoughtful, compassionate, and good for our community.”

Massie, meanwhile, had been a consistent holdout from the start. His sticking point, he said on social media, was the increase to the national debt.

“I voted No on final passage because it will significantly increase U.S. budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates,” he wrote.

A months-long process

It has been a long road for Republicans to reach Thursday’s vote, stretching back months. The House first passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” on May 22, in another overnight vote.

In that May vote, the legislation passed by the narrowest of margins, with 215 voting in favour and 214 against. Representatives Massie and Warren Davidson of Ohio joined a unified Democratic front in voting against the bill at that time, and Maryland’s Andy Harris voted “present”. Two more Republicans missed the vote entirely.

That propelled the bill to the Senate, where it faced another uphill battle. The 100-seat chamber has 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats and left-leaning independents.

To avoid facing a Democratic filibuster, Republicans subjected the “One Big Beautiful Bill” to the Byrd Rule, which allows legislation to pass with a simple majority.

But in order to comply with the Byrd Rule, Republicans had to strike provisions that had little to no budget impact or increased the deficit outside of a 10-year window.

Still, the revised Senate version of the bill faced a nail-biter of a vote. On July 1, after another all-nighter, the vote was 50 to 50, with three Republicans siding with the Democrats. Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaker to advance the bill.

Democrats did, however, notch a small symbolic victory, with Senator Chuck Schumer knocking the name “One Big Beautiful Bill” off the final piece of legislation.

It was the Senate’s version of the bill that the House voted on Thursday. At least one Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, has expressed distaste for the legislation since voting for its passage.

“It is the people of Alaska that I worry about the most, especially when it comes to the potential loss of social safety net programs — Medicaid coverage and SNAP benefits — that our most vulnerable populations rely on,” she wrote in a statement earlier this week.

“Let’s not kid ourselves. This has been an awful process — a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline that has tested every limit of this institution.”

The bill is expected to be signed into law on July 4 at 5pm US Eastern time (21:00 GMT) at a White House ceremony.

WASHINGTON — There’s no filibuster in the House, but Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries essentially conducted one anyway.

Jeffries held the House floor for more than eight hours Thursday, taking his “sweet time” with a marathon floor speech that delayed passage of Republicans’ massive tax and spending cuts legislation and gave his minority party a lengthy spotlight to excoriate what he called an “immoral” bill.

As Democratic leader, Jeffries can speak for as long as he wants during debate on legislation — hence its nickname on Capitol Hill, the “magic minute,” that lasts as long as leaders are speaking.

He began the speech at 4:53 a.m. EDT and finished at 1:37 p.m. EDT, 8 hours, 44 minutes later, breaking the record set by then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) in 2021, when he was the GOP leader. McCarthy spoke for 8 hours, 32 minutes when he angrily criticized Democrats’ “Build Back Better” legislation, breaking a record set by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), when she spoke about immigration for 8 hours, 7 minutes in 2018.

“I feel an obligation, Mr. Speaker, to stand on this House floor and take my sweet time,” Jeffries said as he opened.

The speech pushed a final vote on Republican President Trump’s tax bill, initially expected in the early morning, into the daylight hours. The New York Democrat used the time to criticize the bill’s healthcare and food aid cuts, tax breaks for the wealthy and rollbacks to renewable energy programs, among other parts of the bill that Democrats decry.

He also killed time by riffing on hip-hop, King George III and his own life story, among other diversions. He called out Republicans who have voiced concerns about the bill, read stories from people concerned about their health care from those GOP lawmakers’ districts and praised his own members, some of whom sat behind him and cheered, clapped, laughed and joined hands.

“This reckless Republican budget is an immoral document, and that is why I stand here on the floor of the House of Representatives with my colleagues in the House Democratic caucus to stand up and push back against it with everything we have,” Jeffries said.

He ended the speech in the cadence of a Sunday sermon, with most of the Democratic caucus in a tight huddle around him. One colleague called out, “Bring it home, Hakeem!”

“We don’t work for President Donald Trump,” Jeffries said, as a handful of Republicans across the aisle sat silent and occasionally snickered at the leader as he kept talking.

He invoked the late John Lewis, a civil rights activist in the 1960s and longtime Democratic congressman from Georgia. “Get into good trouble, necessary trouble,” Jeffries said. “We’re going to press on until victory is won.”

Jeffries sneaked small bites of food and drank liquids to boost his energy, but did not leave the chamber or his podium. The speech would be over if he did.

Democrats were powerless to stop the huge bill, which Republicans are passing by using an obscure budget procedure that bypasses the Senate filibuster. So they were using the powers they do have, mostly to delay. In the Senate, Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York forced Senate clerks to read the bill for almost 16 hours over the weekend.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) similarly gained attention in April when he spoke for more than 25 hours on the Senate floor about the first months of Trump’s presidency and broke the record for the longest continuous Senate floor speech in the chamber’s history. Booker was assisted by fellow Democrats who gave him a break from speaking by asking him questions on the Senate floor, but Jeffries’ “magic minute” did not allow for any interaction with other members.

Republicans who were sitting on the floor when Jeffries started trickled out, leaving half the chamber empty. When the speech was over, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) called it “a bunch of hogwash.”

The speech “will not change the outcome that you will see very shortly,” Smith said.

After the bill passed, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said that Democrats “wanted to speak for hours and hours and break records because they wanted to stand in the way of history.”

Jalonick writes for the Associated Press. A.P. writers Matt Brown, Kevin Freking, Lisa Mascaro and Leah Askrinam contributed to this report.

July 3 (UPI) — The House of Representatives approved the fiscal year 2026 federal budget bill, commonly referred to as “one big, beautiful bill,” with a 218 to 214 vote on Thursday afternoon.

The measure now goes to President Donald Trump for signing, which he might do on Independence Day.

Two Republicans, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, voted against the measure. So did all House Democrats, CBS News reported.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries launched a marathon eight-hour speech on the House floor Thursday, seeking to delay a final vote, but his effort failed.

Jeffries, D-N.Y., began speaking at 4:52 a.m. EDT, describing frustration with the leaders of the House GOP, who only allowed one hour of debate over the more than 900-page bill.

Jeffries spent his speaking time telling the stories of people who will be harmed by the bill, focusing on those in Republican districts and calling out the House members who represent them.

Jeffries’ eight-hour speech set a record for the longest delivered on the House floor, USA Today reported.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., took the floor after Jeffries finished speaking to conduct the final vote after spending most of the day Wednesday negotiating with GOP House members.

Trump also met with skeptical GOP House members at the White House to work out a way to get the measure passed before the Fourth of July holiday.

Johnson said he and the president discussed having the measure, House Resolution 1, signed into law during Friday’s national holiday.

“What more appropriate time to pass the big, beautiful bill for America than on Independence Day?” He said, as reported by USA Today.

The funding bill is projected to increase the nation’s current $36 trillion deficit by another $3.4 trillion over the next decade.

It also makes income tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first term in office permanent instead of allowing them to expire this year.

The bill also gives tax breaks for income earned via tips and overtime pay, and it reduces tax breaks for clean energy projects that were created by the Biden administration.

WASHINGTON — Republicans muscled President Trump’s tax and spending cut bill through the House on Thursday, the final step necessary to get the bill to his desk by the GOP’s self-imposed deadline of July 4th.

At nearly 900 pages, the legislation is a sprawling collection of tax breaks, spending cuts and other Republican priorities, including new money for national defense and deportations.

Democrats united against the legislation, but were powerless to stop it as long as Republicans stayed united. The Senate passed the bill, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaking vote. The House passed an earlier iteration of the bill in May with just one vote to spare. It passed the final version 218-214.

Here’s what’s in the bill:

Tax cuts are the priority

Republicans say the bill is crucial because there would be a massive tax increase after December when tax breaks from Trump’s first term expire. The legislation contains about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.

The existing tax rates and brackets would become permanent under the bill, solidifying the tax cuts approved in Trump’s first term.

It temporarily would add new tax deductions on tip, overtime and auto loans. There’s also a $6,000 deduction for older adults who earn no more than $75,000 a year, a nod to his pledge to end taxes on Social Security benefits.

It would boost the $2,000 child tax credit to $2,200. Millions of families at lower income levels would not get the full credit.

A cap on state and local deductions, called SALT, would quadruple to $40,000 for five years. It’s a provision important to New York and other high tax states, though the House wanted it to last for 10 years.

There are scores of business-related tax cuts, including allowing businesses to immediately write off 100% of the cost of equipment and research. Proponents say this will boost economic growth.

The wealthiest households would see a $12,000 increase from the legislation, and the bill would cost the poorest people $1,600 a year, mainly due to reductions in Medicaid and food aid, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House’s version.

Money for deportations, a border wall and the Golden Dome

The bill would provide some $350 billion for Trump’s border and national security agenda, including for the U.S.-Mexico border wall and for 100,000 migrant detention facility beds, as he aims to fulfill his promise of the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history.

Money would go for hiring 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, with $10,000 signing bonuses and a surge of Border Patrol officers, as well. The goal is to deport some 1 million people per year.

To help pay for it, immigrants would face various new fees, including when seeking asylum protections.

For the Pentagon, the bill would provide billions for ship building, munitions systems, and quality of life measures for servicemen and women, as well as $25 billion for the development of the Golden Dome missile defense system. The Defense Department would have $1 billion for border security.

How to pay for it? Cuts to Medicaid and other programs

To help partly offset the lost tax revenue and new spending, Republicans aim to cut back on Medicaid and food assistance for people below the poverty line .

Republicans argue they are trying to right-size the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, the disabled 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 food stamps, including older people up to age 65. Parents of children 14 and older would have to meet the program’s work requirements.

There’s also a proposed new $35 co-payment that can be charged to patients using Medicaid services.

More than 71 million people rely on Medicaid, which expanded under Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and 40 million use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Most already work, according to analysts.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law and 3 million more would not qualify for food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits.

Republicans are looking to have states pick up some of the cost for SNAP benefits. Currently, the federal government funds all benefit costs. Under the bill, states beginning in 2028 will be required to contribute a set percentage of those costs if their payment error rate exceeds 6%. Payment errors include both underpayments and overpayments.

But the Senate bill temporarily delays the start date of that cost-sharing for states with the highest SNAP error rates. Alaska has the highest error rate in the nation at nearly 25%, according to Department of Agriculture data. Sen. Lisa Murkowsk (R-Alaska) had fought for the exception. She was a decisive vote in getting the bill through the Senate.

A ‘death sentence’ for clean energy?

Republicans are proposing to dramatically roll back tax breaks designed to boost clean energy projects fueled by renewable sources such as energy and wind. The tax breaks were a central component of President Biden’s 2022 landmark bill focused on addressing climate change and lowering health care costs.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) went so far as to call the GOP provisions a “death sentence for America’s wind and solar industries and an inevitable hike in utility bills.”

A tax break for people who buy new or used electric vehicles would expire on Sept. 30 of this year, instead of at the end of 2032 under current law.

Meanwhile, a tax credit for the production of critical materials will be expanded to include metallurgical coal used in steelmaking.

Trump savings accounts and so, so much more

A number of extra provisions reflect other GOP priorities.

The bill creates a new children’s savings program, called Trump Accounts, with a potential $1,000 deposit from the Treasury.

The Senate provided $40 million to establish Trump’s long-sought “National Garden of American Heroes.”

There’s a new excise tax on university endowments and a new tax on remittances, or transfers of money that people in the U.S. send abroad. The tax is equal to 1% of the transfer.

A $200 tax on gun silencers and short-barreled rifles and shotguns was eliminated.

One provision bars for one year Medicaid payments to family planning providers that provide abortions, namely Planned Parenthood.

Another section expands the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, a hard-fought provision from GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, for those impacted by nuclear development and testing.

Billions would go for the Artemis moon mission and for the exploration of Mars, while $88 million is earmarked for a pandemic response accountability committee.

Additionally, a provision would increase the nation’s debt limit, by $5 trillion, to allow continued borrowing to pay already accrued bills.

Last-minute changes

The Senate overwhelmingly revolted against a proposal meant to deter states from regulating artificial intelligence. Republican governors across the country asked for the moratorium to be removed and the Senate voted to do so with a resounding 99-1 vote.

A provision was thrown in at the final hours that will provide $10 billion annually to rural hospitals for five years, or $50 billion in total. The Senate bill had originally provided $25 billion for the program, but that number was upped to win over holdout GOP senators and a coalition of House Republicans warning that reduced Medicaid provider taxes would hurt rural hospitals.

The amended bill also stripped out a new tax on wind and solar projects that use a certain percentage of components from China.

What’s the final cost?

Altogether, the Congressional Budget Office projects that the bill would increase federal deficits over the next 10 years by nearly $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034.

Or not, depending on how one does the math.

Senate Republicans are proposing a unique strategy of not counting the existing tax breaks as a new cost because those breaks are already “current policy.” Republican senators say the Senate Budget Committee chairman has the authority to set the baseline for the preferred approach.

Under the alternative Senate GOP view, the bill would reduce deficits by almost half a trillion dollars over the coming decade, the CBO said.

Democrats say this is “magic math” that obscures the true costs of the tax breaks. Some nonpartisan groups worried about the country’s fiscal trajectory are siding with Democrats in that regard. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says Senate Republicans were employing an “accounting gimmick that would make Enron executives blush.”

Freking and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.

United States President Donald Trump has toured Florida’s Alligator Alcatraz immigration detention facility in the Everglades before it gets its first detainees.

“It’s known as Alligator Alcatraz, which is very appropriate because I looked outside and that’s not a place I want to go hiking,” Trump told the media during a livestreamed event on Tuesday. “But very soon, this facility will house some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.”

Trump campaigned for the presidency on promises to tackle immigration but faces a shortage of detention beds. The One Big Beautiful Bill, Trump’s tax and spending plan, passed the Senate during his Florida stop and includes $150bn for his deportation agenda over four years.

State officials quickly built the expected 5,000-bed facility to detain immigrants on top of a decades-old landing strip. The Department of Homeland Security pegged the one-year cost of running the facility at $450m, which it plans to pay for with money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Shelter and Services Program.

Florida officials, including former Trump rival Governor Ron DeSantis, joined the president and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for the tour. DeSantis said Noem’s team told him the facility would be opened to receive detainees after Trump’s departure.

Trump talked for more than an hour as he deflected questions about who could lose Medicaid healthcare coverage under the tax and spending legislation, warmly responded to a suggestion to arrest former President Joe Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and repeated a frequent complaint about shower heads lacking sufficient water pressure. Noem, meanwhile, said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement had detained a “cannibal” who “started to eat himself” on an airplane.

Here is a fact check of some of Trump’s remarks:

Trump’s ‘illegal alien’ cost estimate comes from group that advocates for low immigration levels

While talking about the goal of cutting the federal budget, Trump said: “The average illegal alien costs American taxpayers an estimated $70,000.”

That is a lifetime estimate by an organisation that supports low levels of immigration. Critics have taken issue with it.

The White House quoted 2024 testimony to a committee in the House of Representatives by Steven A Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Camarota said in written testimony: “The lifetime fiscal drain (taxes paid minus costs) for each illegal immigrant is about $68,000.” He based his estimate on immigrants’ net fiscal impact by education level.

Camarota said the estimate came with caveats, including what percentage of immigrants in the US illegally were using welfare programmes and the amount of benefits they received and their use of public schools and emergency services.

Other analyses show positive economic effects from undocumented immigrants in the US.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan research arm of Congress, in a 2024 report found both costs and benefits from the Biden-era immigration increase. On net, CBO found, the impact was positive in several areas.

The CBO estimated an $8.9 trillion boost to the gross domestic product – a measurement of overall economic activity – over 10 years because of the immigration surge, which would improve wages, salaries and corporate profits. The CBO also estimated that federal deficits would decline by almost $1 trillion over 10 years because of increased tax revenues from immigrants, which the agency estimated would outweigh the costs they imposed in the form of additional federal outlays.

Separately, the libertarian Cato Institute in 2023 found “immigrants generate nearly $1 trillion (in 2024 dollars) in state, local and federal taxes, which is almost $300 billion more than they receive in government benefits, including cash assistance, entitlements, and public education.”

Michael A Clemens, a George Mason University economist, told PolitiFact that although the Center for Immigration Studies counted the use of public schools by immigrants in the US illegally as a cost, he and other economists see public school funding as having net positive benefits.

Trump repeats ‘autopen’ conspiracy theory about Biden

Trump said: “We have a lot of bad criminals that came into the country. … It was an unforced error. It was an incompetent president that allowed it to happen. It was an autopen, maybe, that allowed it to happen.”

He was referring to a conspiracy theory in pro-Trump circles that Biden was so out of the loop during his own presidency that aides were able to repeatedly forge his signature with a mechanical autopen to pursue their own policy goals.

No evidence has surfaced to indicate that a document Biden signed – whether by autopen or not – was done without his knowledge or consent. Anything Biden signed using an autopen would have been valid, legal experts say.

In March, we rated Trump’s claim that Biden’s pardons weren’t valid because they were signed with an autopen false. US presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, routinely have had subordinates sign pardons on their behalf.

Trump falsely says policy bill targets only Medicaid ‘waste, fraud and abuse’

During his visit, reporters asked Trump about the One Big Beautiful Bill – which the Senate approved mid-visit – and its effect on Medicaid. “Are you saying that the estimated 11.8 million people who could lose their health coverage, that is all waste, fraud and abuse?” a reporter asked.

Trump said: “No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying it’s going to be a very much smaller number than that, and that number will be waste, fraud and abuse.”

We rated a similar version of Trump’s statement false, finding that the Medicaid changes go beyond just waste, fraud and abuse.

The 11.8 million figure comes from a CBO analysis of the Senate-passed bill.

Although some provisions could improve the detection of beneficiaries who aren’t eligible for coverage, other provisions of the House and the Senate bills would change the healthcare programme for low-income Americans to align with Trump’s ideology and Republican priorities.

The bill incentivises states to stop using their own funds to cover people in the US illegally; it requires people to work or do another approved activity to secure benefits; and it bans Medicaid payments for gender-affirming care and to nonprofits such as Planned Parenthood that provide abortions among other services.

Other changes would impose copays and a shorter window for retroactive coverage. These would change the programme’s fiscal outlook but would not target waste, fraud or abuse.

Trump doubles estimate of immigrant arrivals under Biden

Trump said: “In the four years before I took office, Joe Biden allowed 21 million people, … illegal aliens, to invade our country.”

This campaign talking point remains false. During Biden’s tenure, immigration officials encountered immigrants illegally crossing the US border about 10 million times. When accounting for “got-aways” – people who evade border officials – the number rises to about 11.6 million.

Encounters aren’t the same as admissions. Encounters represent events, so one person who tries to cross the border twice counts as two encounters. Also, not everyone encountered is let into the country. The Homeland Security Department estimated about 4 million encounters under Biden led to expulsions or removals.

During Biden’s administration, about 3.8 million people were released into the US to await immigration court hearings, Department of Homeland Security data show.

PolitiFact staff researcher Caryn Baird and staff writer Ella Moore contributed to this article.

Masked federal agents are snatching up immigrants. It’s been less than two weeks since the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. President Trump’s long-threatened tariffs could finally kick in next week.

Given all that, most people probably aren’t focused on climate change.

But they should be. Because Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed the Senate this week and was poised to clear the House early Thursday, would do more than gut Medicaid, cut student loan relief and increase funding for deportations. It would kill federal support for solar and wind power, undoing President Biden’s historic climate law and punishing Americans with deadlier air, more lethal heat waves and higher electric bills.

I’m usually a climate optimist. But it’s hard to find reasons for hope right now.

The Senate bill would eliminate tax credits for solar and wind farms that don’t come online by the end of 2027 — a brutal deadline for projects that take years to permit, finance and construct. That would slam the brakes on new development and also jeopardize hundreds of projects already in the works — not only solar and wind farms, but also factories to build solar panels, wind turbines, lithium-ion batteries and other clean energy technologies.

Solar and wind farms that start construction by June 2026 would get tax credits no matter when they come online, a last-minute concession to the handful of Republican senators with a modicum of sense.

As if needing to counterbalance that concession, Republican leaders added lucrative tax credits for metallurgical coal, an incredibly dirty fossil fuel that’s mostly shipped to China and other countries to make steel.

The bill would also end tax credits for rooftop solar, electric vehicles and energy-efficient home upgrades — while reducing royalty rates for coal mined on public lands, and requiring more oil and gas leasing on those lands.

“The fossil fuel industry helped pay for this government, and now they’re getting their reward,” Bill McKibben, the preeminent climate author and activist, wrote in his newsletter.

That’s part of the explanation. Another part, I think, is that most voters aren’t paying close attention.

Polls consistently show that an overwhelming majority of Americans want cleaner energy, and climate action writ large. But polls also show that climate ranks low as a priority for most Americans.

Wind turbines in the California desert, seen from Highway 58.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

So when it comes time for Trump and his allies to pay for their deficit-ballooning tax cuts — which mostly benefit the rich — clean energy is an easy target. They can tell outrageous lies about solar and wind being unreliable and expensive, and many people will either believe them or not care enough to seek out the truth.

Indeed, Trump wrote on social media last month that renewable energy tax credits are a “giant SCAM.” He claimed that wind turbines “and the rest of this ‘JUNK’” are “10 times more costly than any other energy.”

That’s not even remotely true. Authoritative sources, including the investment bank Lazard, report that solar and wind are America’s cheapest sources of new electricity, even without tax credits. Those low costs help explain why solar, wind and batteries made up 94% of new power capacity in the U.S. last year. Even in Texas, they’re booming.

For now, at least. John Ketchum, president of Florida-based NextEra Energy, warned the Trump administration in March that shelving renewables and battery storage would “force electricity prices to the moon.”

Lo and behold, research firm Energy Innovation estimates the Senate bill would cause average household energy costs to increase $130 annually by 2030. The firm also predicts 760,000 lost jobs by 2030.

“Families will face higher electric bills, factories will shut down, Americans will lose their jobs, and our electric grid will grow weaker,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Assn.

The point about the grid growing weaker is key. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, one of three Republicans to vote against the bill, mentioned a global turbine shortage that’s slowing the construction of gas-fired power plants. He stated plainly what energy executives know: that renewables and batteries are needed for a reliable grid.

“What you have done is create a blip in power service,” Tillis told his colleagues.

Here’s a question: If clean energy is so cheap, and in such high demand, why does it need subsidies?

For one thing, solar and wind projects require big upfront investments, after which the fuel, be it sun or wind, is free. Gas plants are often less expensive to build, but they can subject consumers to huge utility bill swings when fuel costs soar — during geopolitical turmoil, for instance, or during climate-fueled weather disasters.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Eland solar and storage plant, located in Kern County, generates electricity for a record-low price.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Also relevant: Fossil fuel subsidies are so deeply entrenched in the U.S. tax code that they rarely make news. Coal, oil and gas benefit from tens of billions of dollars in subsidies every year, by some estimates.

And that’s without accounting for the bigger wildfires, harsher droughts, stronger storms, hotter heat waves and other harms of fossil fuel combustion, including air pollution that kills millions of people worldwide each year. Oil, gas and coal companies don’t pay those costs. Taxpayers do.

So, yes, solar and wind still need a leg up. But even under Biden’s climate law, the U.S. hasn’t been reducing heat-trapping emissions enough to help keep global warming to less-than-catastrophic levels.

And now, under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the U.S. will be moving backward instead of forward.

So if you care about the climate crisis, what can you do?

I wish I could say California was doubling down on climate leadership, like it did during Trump’s first term. Sadly, Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t prioritized clean energy as he readies a possible presidential run. Again and again, he and his appointees have yielded to the fossil fuel industry and its allies — on plastics recycling, oil refinery profits, emissions disclosures and more.

Other Golden State leaders are doing no better. This week, lawmakers passed an awful law pushed by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) that will pause new energy efficiency rules for homes until 2031. Meanwhile, a potentially transformative “climate superfund” bill — which would charge fossil fuel companies for their pollution and use the money to help Californians cope with climate disasters — is languishing in Sacramento.

The landscape is bleak. But we’re not doomed.

The planet will almost certainly warm beyond an internationally agreed upon target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. But 2 degrees is a lot better than 2.5 degrees, and way better than 3 degrees. Climate change isn’t a game we win or lose. Every bit of avoided warming means safer, healthier lives for more people.

Yes, the U.S. is a climate train wreck right now. But global warming is just like immigration or healthcare: Nothing will change if most of us do nothing. So don’t tune out. Don’t surrender to despair. Bring up climate when you talk to your friends and call your representatives. Make protest signs about it. Let it guide your vote.

As McKibben wrote: “Our job from here on out … is to make ourselves heard.”

“It may not work tomorrow. It may not work until we’ve gotten more decent people into office. But it’s our job, and not to be shirked,” he wrote. “And in some sad way it’s an honor: We’re the people who get to make the desperate stand for a country and a planet that works.”

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Efforts to win over holdout House Republicans extend into early hours as Trump’s tax and spending bill hits hurdles.

Republicans in the United States House of Representatives have been locked in a dramatic impasse over President Donald Trump’s signature tax and spending package, as a rebel group of lawmakers failed to support the bill that all Democratic representatives oppose.

Debate is currently under way at the House after the bill passed its last procedural hurdle in the early hours of Thursday, local Washington, DC, time. The final vote is expected in a few hours.

The standoff over the Trump administration’s flagship domestic policy package, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill, stretched into the early hours of Thursday, as the Republican leadership worked furiously to try to persuade holdouts to send the bill to Trump’s desk by a Friday, July 4 deadline, US Independence Day, while Trump railed against the rebels on social media.

“For Republicans, this should be an easy yes vote. Ridiculous!” he posted on his Truth Social platform.

“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?” he added, threatening that “MAGA is not happy, and it’s costing you votes.”

Earlier, Five Republicans voted “no” in the procedural vote to advance the legislation, while eight had yet to cast a vote.

Assuming all Democratic members cast a vote against the bill, Trump can afford to lose only three Republican votes if it is to advance to a final vote.

Centrepiece legislation

The hefty 800-page bill, the centrepiece of the president’s domestic agenda, combines sweeping tax cuts, spending hikes on defence and border security, and cuts to social safety nets into one giant package.

But it faces opposition within Trump’s Republican Party, with moderate critics expressing concern about its cuts to social safety-net programmes like Medicaid, and conservatives baulking at the trillions it is likely to add to the national debt.

Five Republicans voted against the bill: representatives Victoria Spartz of Indiana, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Keith Self of Texas, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had summoned lawmakers to Washington for a roll call vote, in a bid to capitalise on the momentum of the bill’s passage a day earlier in the Senate and win House approval ahead of the July 4 national holiday.

Lawmakers had passed the bill by a 51 to 50 vote in the Republican-controlled chamber on Tuesday, after Vice President JD Vance broke the tie.

But the risky gambit to hold the roll call vote swiftly hit hurdles, with some Republican lawmakers resisting the request to rubber stamp the Senate version of the bill so soon after it passed.

‘Bad bill to enrich those who are already rich’

Johnson said he would keep voting open “as long as it takes”, as senior Republicans attempted to persuade holdouts to support the bill.

He said he believed that the Republican holdouts were “going to come on board”, and expected to proceed to a final vote on the legislation in the early hours of Thursday morning, The New York Times reported.

As Republicans remain deadlocked, Democrats ramped up their criticisms of the policy package. In a video message posted on social media, Representative Chuy Garcia described the legislation as a “bad bill to enrich those who are already rich”.

It’s past midnight in DC and Republicans are still trying to rip healthcare and food from working families to give tax breaks to billionaires. Call your Republican representative and tell them to vote HELL NO pic.twitter.com/IfyXFdSaqs

— Congressman Chuy García (@RepChuyGarcia) July 3, 2025

So far, 217 House Representatives have voted against advancing the legislation, including five Republicans, while 207 are in favour.

Members can change their vote until voting closes, and eight Republicans have yet to vote. The bill needs 218 votes to advance.

Nine months ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom pledged to more than double the annual amount of funds allocated to California’s film and television tax credit program.

Flanked by Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, legislative leaders and union representatives, Newsom said the state “needed to make a statement and to do something that was meaningful” to stop productions from leaving the state for more lucrative incentives in other states and countries.

Though Hollywood was born in California and the entertainment business became the state’s signature industry, “the world we invented is now competing against us,” he said at the time.

On Wednesday, Newsom signed a bill that will increase the cap on California’s film and TV tax credit program to $750 million, up from $330 million. Industry workers say the boost will help stimulate production that slowed due to the pandemic, the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023, a cutback in spending by studios and streamers and the Southern California wildfires earlier this year.

“We’ve got to step up our game,” Newsom said in a speech before he signed the bill. “We put our feet up, took things for granted. We needed to do something more bold and significant.”

The bill was passed by the state legislature last week and came after intense lobbying from Hollywood.

Rebecca Rhine, Directors Guild of America executive and Entertainment Union Coalition president, credited Newsom for staying committed to the production incentive boost even after the wildfires in Southern California, federal funding cuts, the state’s budget deficit and the deployment of the National Guard in Los Angeles.

“You understand that our industry is vital to the state’s economy and cultural vibrancy, while also sustaining thousands of businesses and attracting visitors from around the world,” she said during the signing ceremony. “Now, let’s get people back to work.”

Critics of the program and taxpayer advocates have said, however, that the tax credit is a corporate giveaway that doesn’t generate as much economic effect as promised. California’s increase also comes as states like Texas and New York have also ramped up their own film and TV tax credit programs.

But the fight isn’t over yet. Lawmakers and Hollywood industry leaders are gearing up for a vote Thursday in the legislature on a separate bill that would expand the provisions of the film tax credit program, which they say is key to making production more attractive in California and must pair with the increased program cap.

That bill, AB 1138, would broaden the types of productions eligible to apply for the program, including animated films, shorts, series and certain large-scale competition shows. It would also increase the tax credit to as much as 35% of qualified expenditures for movies and TV series shot in the Greater Los Angeles area and up to 40% for productions shot outside the region.

California currently provides a 20% to 25% tax credit to offset qualified production expenses, such as money spent on film crews and building sets. Production companies can apply the credit toward any tax liabilities they have in California.

The bump to 35% puts California more in line with incentives offered by other states such as Georgia, which provides a 30% credit for productions.

“This bill is the second step,” Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur said during Wednesday’s press conference. “It’s about maximizing economic impact, prioritizing equity and turning the tide on job loss.”

Newsom also held out hope for the possibility of a federal film and TV tax incentive, which he had floated in May after President Trump called for tariffs on film produced overseas.

“We’d like to see [Trump] match the ambition that we’re advancing here today in California with the ambition to keep filmmaking all across the United States, here in the United States,” Newsom said. “I am hopeful that we, in the hands of partnership, continue to work with the administration.”

July 2 (UPI) — House members are meeting to debate U.S. President Donald Trump‘s key Senate-passed domestic policy bill, with lawmakers still aiming for a July 4 deadline to pass it.

Members went over over a key procedural vote Wednesday morning after the House Rules Committee pushed the Senate version overnight, setting the stage for a possibly dramatic and uncertain floor vote to pass Trump’s broad tax and spending bill.

On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said in a joint statement with House GOP leaders that they will “work quickly” to pass the bill and put it on Trump’s desk “in time for Independence Day.”

“Don’t let the Radical Left Democrats push you around,” Trump posted Wednesday morning on social media. “We’ve got all the cards, and we are going to use them.”

The new version of the legislation, titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” includes steeper cuts to Medicaid, a debt limit increase, rollbacks to green-energy policies, and changes to local and state tax deductions.

“All legislative tools and options are on the table,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Tuesday after the Senate vote.

It extends trillions in dollars in tax cuts, largely for the wealthiest Americans, but substantially cuts healthcare and other nutritional programs in order to partially beef-up border security and defense spending.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Trump’s Senate-passed bill would add at least $3.3 trillion to America’s debt over the next decade, which is a trillion-dollar increase from the bill’s last version.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has accused GOP lawmakers of “trying to rip away healthcare from 17 million Americans” with Medicaid cuts stemming from Republicans’ legislation.

Meanwhile, provisions stripped from the House included the sale of public land in over 10 states, a 10-year moratorium for states to regulate AI and an excise tax on the renewable energy industry.

“Every single House Democrat will vote ‘hell no’ against this one, big ugly bill,” Jeffries wrote.

On Wednesday, a GOP fiscal hawk was critical of the Senate’s new product.

It “violated both the spirit and the terms of our House agreement” in attempts to reduce the national debt, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told USA TODAY.

Any newer alterations in the House will again require Senate approval or force a committee conference of both the Senate and House to hash out a final version.

The initial version passed the House in a 215-214 vote in May and the Senate on Tuesday after a four-day “vote-a-rama” in a 51-50 vote that saw three GOP defections in the tie-breaker vote cast by Vice President JD Vance.

Meanwhile, the president is expected to meet at the White House with a handful of House Republicans to help bring his tax bill to the finish line. The hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus members also are expected to meet with Trump.

Rep. Mike Lawler, a moderate New York Republican, was seen Wednesday with other colleagues entering the West Wing, but it was not immediately clear which GOP lawmakers arrived.

It arrives in the face of what former White House adviser Elon Musk called in a June 30 X post “the biggest debt increase in history,” saying members of Congress who campaigned on spending reductions, “should hang their head in shame!” and added “they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”

“It’s unconscionable, it’s unacceptable, it’s un-American and House Democrats are committing to you that we’re going to do everything in our power to stop it,” according to Jeffries.

He called out Pennsylvania Republicans Rob Bresnahan, Scott Perry and their California House colleagues David Valadao and Young Kim, whose districts in particular will be hard hit by Trump’s medicaid cuts.

“All we need are four Republicans, just four,” added New York’s Jeffries.

The United States Senate narrowly passed President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending bill on Tuesday, following intense negotiations and a marathon voting session on amendments.

The bill, which still faces a challenging path to final approval in the House of Representatives, would impose deep cuts to popular health and nutrition programmes, among other measures, while offering $4.5 trillion in tax reductions.

The measure was approved after almost 48 hours of debate and amendment battles.

Here is what you need to know:

What is Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’?

The bill is a piece of legislation that combines tax cuts, spending hikes on defence and border security, and cuts to social safety nets into one giant package.

The main goal of the bill is to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2025. It would make most of these tax breaks permanent, while also boosting spending on border security, the military and energy projects.

The bill is partly funded by cutting healthcare and food programmes.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates Trump’s measure will increase the US debt by $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years. The US government currently owes its lenders $36.2 trillion.

The key aspects of the bill include:

Tax cuts

In 2017, Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which lowered taxes and increased the standard deduction for all taxpayers, but it primarily benefitted higher-income earners.

Those tax breaks are set to expire this year, but the new bill would make them permanent. It also adds some more cuts he promised during his campaign.

There is a change to the US tax code called the SALT deduction (State and Local Taxes). This lets taxpayers deduct certain state and local taxes (like income or property taxes) on their federal tax return.

Currently, people can only deduct up to $10,000 of these taxes. The new bill would raise that cap from $10,000 to $40,000 for five years.

Taxpayers would also be allowed to deduct income earned from tips and overtime, as well as interest paid on loans for buying cars made in the US.

The legislation contains about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.

Children

If the bill does not become law, the child tax credit – which is now $2,000 per child each year – will fall to $1,000, starting in 2026.

But if the Senate’s current version of the bill is approved, the credit would rise to $2,200.

Border wall and security

The bill sets aside about $350bn for Trump’s border and national security plans. This includes:

• $46bn for the US-Mexico border wall
• $45bn to fund 100,000 beds in migrant detention centres
• Billions more to hire an extra 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents by 2029 as part of Trump’s plan to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in US history.

Cuts to Medicaid and other programmes

To help offset the cost of the tax cuts and new spending, Republicans plan to scale back Medicaid and food assistance programmes for low-income families.

They say their goal is to refocus these safety net programmes on the groups they were originally meant to help, primarily pregnant women, people with disabilities and children – while also reducing what they call waste and abuse.

Medicaid helps Americans who are poor and those with disabilities, while the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps people afford groceries.

Currently, more than 71 million people depend on Medicaid, and 40 million receive benefits through SNAP. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would leave an additional 11.8 million Americans without health insurance by 2034 if it becomes law.

Clean energy tax cuts

Republicans are pushing to significantly scale back tax incentives that support clean energy projects powered by renewables like solar and wind. These tax breaks were a key part of former President Joe Biden’s landmark 2022 law, the Inflation Reduction Act, which aimed to tackle climate change and reduce healthcare costs.

A tax break for people who buy new or used electric vehicles would expire on September 30 this year if the bill passes in its current form, instead of at the end of 2032 under current law.

Debt limit

The legislation would raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, going beyond the $4 trillion outlined in the version passed by the House in May.

Who benefits most?

According to Yale University’s Budget Lab, wealthier taxpayers are likely to gain more from this bill than lower-income Americans.

They estimate that people in the lowest income bracket will see their incomes drop by 2.5 percent, mainly because of cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, while the highest earners will see their incomes rise by 2.2 percent.

Which senators voted against the bill?

Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine opposed due to deep Medicaid cuts affecting low-income families and rural healthcare.

I strongly support extending the tax relief for families and small businesses. My vote against this bill stems primarily from the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid, affecting low-income families and rural health care providers like our hospitals and nursing homes.

— Sen. Susan Collins (@SenatorCollins) July 1, 2025

Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina cited concerns over Medicaid reductions to his constituents. Tillis has announced that he will not seek re-election, amid threats from Trump that he would back a Republican challenger to Tillis.

The facts matter. The people matter. The Senate’s Medicaid approach breaks promises and will kick people off of Medicaid who truly need it. The Senate can make one simple fix to make sure that won’t happen. pic.twitter.com/zvW1AgCxBF

— Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) June 30, 2025

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky voted “no” on fiscal grounds, warning that the bill would significantly worsen the national deficit.

Throughout the Vote-a-rama, I was working all night to stop Congress from adding to our debt.

I met with @VP and I reiterated my offer to vote for the bill—if it included a 90% reduction in the debt ceiling.

No earmarks. No handouts. Just real fiscal reform.

I wasn’t looking…

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 1, 2025

Every member of the Democratic caucus, a total of 47 senators, also voted against the bill.

Who supported the bill in the Senate?

The remaining Republicans voted in favour, allowing the bill to pass 51–50, with the deciding vote cast by Vice President JD Vance.

Trump has set a July 4 deadline to pass the bill through Congress, but conceded on Tuesday that it would be “very hard to do” by that date, since the House now needs to vote on it. The House had passed an earlier version of the bill in May, but needs to look at it again due to the amendments brought by the Senate.

Notable Senator supporters include:

Senator Lisa Murkowski (representative of Alaska): Her backing was secured after Republicans agreed to Alaska-specific provisions, including delayed nutrition cuts and a new rural health fund, making her vote pivotal.

“I have an obligation to the people of the state of Alaska, and I live up to that every single day,” she told a reporter for NBC News.

Senators Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming: These fiscally conservative senators shifted from hesitation to support following amendments to the bill.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune led the push to pass the legislation.

How have lawmakers and the public reacted?

Most Republican lawmakers celebrated it as a historic achievement.

Trump also expressed delight.

“Wow, music to my ears,” Trump said after a reporter told him the news. “I was also wondering how we’re doing, because I know this is primetime, it shows that I care about you,” he added.

Thune said after the vote: “In the end, we got the job done, and we’re delighted to be able to be partners with President Trump and his agenda.”

Democrats opposed it, calling it a giveaway to the wealthy at the expense of healthcare, food aid and climate policy.

“Today’s vote will haunt our Republican colleagues for years to come,” Democrat Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech after the vote.

“Republicans covered this chamber in shame,” he added.

Today’s vote will haunt Senate Republicans for years to come.

Americans will see the damage done as hospitals close, as people are laid off, as costs go up, and as the debt increases.

Democrats will make sure Americans remember the betrayal that took place today. pic.twitter.com/WmwnZa5n9k

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 1, 2025

The US Chamber of Commerce led a coalition of more than 145 organisations supporting the bill, emphasising it would “foster capital investment, job creation, and higher wages”.

They praised the permanent tax cuts and border security funding.

However, healthcare and hospital associations have warned that millions could lose coverage, driving up emergency and unpaid care costs. Environmental groups have also voiced strong opposition.

Public opinion on the bill is in decline, too.

“Initially, [Trump] had more than 50 percent of the support. Now, it is under 50 percent, and politicians know that,” Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said, reporting from Washington, DC.

“They are aware that this could lead to a cut in Medicaid. They are aware, even though Donald Trump had promised to protect it, that this could cut nutritional programmes, particularly for poorer families in the United States.

“And although they will get tax cuts, they have managed a lot of the time to be convinced by the Democratic argument that, yes, there are tax cuts, but billionaires will do much better out of this than the ordinary American people, and that is what’s changed the opinion polls,” he added.

What happens next?

The process begins with the House Rules Committee, which will meet to mark up the bill and decide how debate and consideration will proceed on the House floor.

After the bill passes through the Rules Committee, it will move to the House floor for debate and a vote on the rule, potentially as soon as Wednesday morning.

If the House of Representatives does not accept the Senate’s version of the bill, it could make changes and send it back to the Senate for another vote.

Alternatively, both chambers could appoint members to a conference committee to work out a compromise.

Once both the House and Senate agree on the final text, and it is passed in both chambers of Congress, the bill would go to Trump to be signed into law.

This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom touched one of the third rails of California politics. He hopes the result sends a shock through the state’s homebuilding industry.

Newsom strong armed the state Legislature into passing what experts believe are the most significant reforms to the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, since the law was signed in 1970.

The changes waive CEQA for just about any proposed low- or mid-rise development in urban neighborhoods zoned for multifamily housing. No more thousand-page studies of soils, the shadows the buildings may cast and traffic they may bring. No more risk of CEQA lawsuits from angry neighbors.

Wiping away these rules shows that no matter how challenging the politics, the state will remove the barriers it has built over decades that have ended up stifling housing construction and suffocating Californians’ ability to live affordably, the governor said when signing the legislation Monday evening.

“The world we invented has been competing against us,” Newsom said. “We have got to perform.”

Californians won’t have to wait long for the effects of the reforms. They took effect with the stroke of the governor’s pen.

At least in the short term, the result may be less of an immediate impact on construction and more of a revolution in how development in California cities gets done. Numerous hurdles both within and outside of the control of local and state governments — interest rates, availability of labor, zoning, material prices and tariffs among them — still will determine if housing is built. What’s changed is that the key point of leverage outside groups have wielded, for good and for ill, over housing construction in California communities is gone.

It can be hard to understand how CEQA became, in the words of one critic, “the law that swallowed California.”

At base, all CEQA says is that proponents of a project must disclose and, if possible, lessen its environmental effects before being approved. Yet the process CEQA kicks off can take years as developers and local governments complete reams of studies, opponents sue them as inadequate and judges send everyone back to start all over again.

Time is money, and project opponents soon realized that they could use this uncertainty to their advantage. Sometimes, if their complaints fell on deaf ears at City Hall, threatening a CEQA challenge was the only way to get themselves heard and avoid harmful outcomes. But in other circumstances, the law became a powerful cudgel wielded to influence concerns that at best had a tangential relationship to the environment.

Examples are legion. The owner of a gas station in San Jose sued a nearby rival gas station that wanted to add a few more pumps. Pro-life advocates sued a proposed Planned Parenthood clinic in South San Francisco. Homeowners in Berkeley sued the University of California over its plans to increase enrollment at the state’s flagship university and the traffic and noise that might result.

Over time, CEQA negotiations became embedded in California’s development regime, known and used by all the major players. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass once recalled that as a community organizer in South L.A. in the 1990s she used CEQA to try to stop liquor stores from opening. A company owned by billionaire developer Rick Caruso, Bass’ opponent in the most recent mayoral election and normally a CEQA critic, this year filed a CEQA lawsuit challenging a major redevelopment of a television studio near a Caruso shopping mall.

For housing, the primary interest group invested in CEQA at the state level has been labor organizations representing construction workers. Their leaders have argued that if legislators grant CEQA relief to developers, which boosts their bottom lines, then workers should share in the spoils through better pay and benefits.

This union opposition was enough in 2016 to prevent a proposal from then-Gov. Jerry Brown to limit CEQA challenges to urban housing development from even getting a vote in a legislative committee. A year later, a version of Brown’s bill passed but only because developers who wanted to take advantage were required to pay union-level wages to workers.

Just about every year since, lawmakers have engaged in this dance with labor groups. In 2022, the California Conference of Carpenters defected from the State Building and Construction Trades Council and supported a less-strict version of labor standards, which lawmakers ushered into multiple bills.

But housing construction hasn’t followed. The number of projects that have been issued permits are millions less than what Newsom promised to build on the campaign trail in 2018. Californians continue to pay record prices to house themselves, and those fleeing the state often cite the cost of living as the reason. Newsom and legislators decided they needed to do more.

“We don’t want to sit here and ram our head against the wall on the politics and then have nothing to show for it,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) at Monday’s signing ceremony.

Wicks authored legislation this year that waived CEQA rules for urban housing development without any labor requirements and was working it through the regular process. In May, Newsom grabbed Wicks’ bill and additional CEQA reform legislation and said he wanted them to pass as part of the budget. Doing so would fast-track the bills into law without the normal whittling down that happens in committee hearings.

As budget negotiations heated up, Newsom doubled down. In a rare move, he insisted on tying the approval of the state’s entire spending plan for this year to the passage of CEQA reforms. That meant legislators who otherwise would be opposed could only vote no if they were willing to torpedo the budget.

What emerged was a clean CEQA exemption for homebuilders in urban multifamily areas. Union-level wages for construction workers only are required for high-rise or low-income buildings, both of which often are paid now because of specialized labor required for taller buildings and other state and local rules for affordable construction.

CEQA doesn’t typically affect single-family home construction in established communities.

How much this is going to matter immediately for homebuilding isn’t clear. Studies are mixed on CEQA’s effects. One by UC Berkeley law professors found that fewer than 3% of housing projects in many big cities across the state over a three-year period faced any CEQA litigation. Another found tens of thousands of housing units challenged under CEQA in just one year. Still, more advocates of reform argue that it’s impossible to quantify the chilling effect that the threat of CEQA lawsuits have on development in California and how much the law has dominated the debate.

“This signals a seismic shift in Democratic politics in California from NIMBYism to abundance,” said Mott Smith, board chair of the Council of Infill Builders, a real estate trade group that advocates for urban housing. “You can touch this mythical third rail and live to see another day.”

Those who live across the street from a proposed five-story apartment building and oppose the housing will have to find a way other than a 55-year-old environmental law to stop it.

The United States Senate has passed a sweeping tax bill championed by President Donald Trump, sending the controversial legislation to the House of Representatives for what could be a final vote.

Lawmakers passed the bill by a 51-to-50 vote in the Republican controlled-chamber on Tuesday, after Vice President JD Vance broke the tie.

The successful vote ended what was a marathon 27 hours of debate in the upper chamber. Three Republicans joined with Democrats to vote against the bill, which would enshrine many of Trump’s signature policies, including his 2017 tax cuts, reductions for social safety net programmes, and increased spending on border enforcement and deportations.

Critics on both sides of the aisle have taken aim at the estimated $3.3 trillion the bill would add to the national debt.

Others have blasted reductions to programmes like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). They argue that the bill takes support away from low-income families to finance tax cuts that will primarily help the wealthy.

Trump, however, has pressed for the bill to be passed by July 4, the country’s Independence Day. The legislation — informally known as the One Big Beautiful Bill — now heads back to the House of Representatives for a Wednesday vote on the updated version.

The president found out about the Senate’s passage in the midst of a news conference in south Florida, where he was touting his crackdown on immigration.

Despite tight odds in the House of Representatives, Trump struck an optimistic tone about the upcoming vote.

“ I think it’s going to go very nicely in the House,” Trump said. “Actually, I think it will be easier in the House than it was in the Senate.”

The president also downplayed one of the most controversial provisions in the bill: cuts to Medicaid, a government health insurance programme for low-income families. About 11.8 million people are anticipated to lose their health coverage in the coming years if the bill becomes law.

“I’m saying it’s going to be a very much smaller number than that, and that number will be all waste, fraud and abuse,” Trump said.

Criticisms in the Senate

Trump was not the only Republican to be celebrating the passage of the omnibus bill. In the Senate, leading Republican John Thune touted the bill as a victory for American workers.

“It’s been a long road to get to today,” Thune said from the Senate floor. “Now we’re here, permanently extending tax relief for hard-working Americans.”

But not all Republicans were as enthused about the bill. Three party members — Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine — all voted against its passage. And even a critical vote in favour, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, appeared to express regret in the aftermath.

“Do I like this bill? No,” she told a reporter for NBC News. “I know, that in many parts of the country, there are Americans who are not going to be advantaged by this bill. I don’t like that.”

She later took to social media to criticise the haste of its passage. “Let’s not kid ourselves. This has been an awful process – a frantic rush to meet an artificial deadline that has tested every limit of this institution.”

Meanwhile, the top Democrat in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, said that Republicans had “betrayed the American people and covered the Senate in utter shame”.

“In one fell swoop, Republicans passed the biggest tax break for billionaires ever seen, paid for by ripping away healthcare from millions of people,” said Schumer.

Still, Schumer announced one symbolic victory on Tuesday, writing on the social media platform X that Trump’s name for the legislation — “One Big Beautiful Bill” — had been struck from its official title.

Republicans currently hold a trifecta in US government, with control of the Senate, the House of Representatives and the White House, giving Democrats reduced power in legislating.

But the Republicans have narrow majorities in Congress, leading to uncertainty about the bill’s fate. In the Senate, they hold 53 of the chamber’s 100 seats. In the House, where the bill heads now, they have a majority of 220 representatives to the Democrats’ 212.

‘Not fiscal responsibility’

The bill is therefore likely to face a razor-thin margin in the House. An early version that passed on May 22 did so with just one Republican vote to spare.

The House Freedom Caucus, a group of hardline conservatives, has continued to baulk at the bill’s high price tag and could push for deeper spending cuts in the coming days.

“The Senate’s version adds $651 billion to the deficit — and that’s before interest costs, which nearly double the total,” the caucus wrote in a statement on Monday.

“That’s not fiscal responsibility. It’s not what we agreed to.”

Billionaire Elon Musk, whose endorsement and funding helped propel Trump to victory in the 2024 presidential election, has also been a vocal opponent of the bill.

“What’s the point of a debt ceiling if we keep raising it?” Musk asked on social media on Tuesday. “All I’m asking is that we don’t bankrupt America.”

Musk has threatened to fund primary challenges against Republicans who support the bill and even floated on Monday launching a new political party in the US.

Trump, however, has brushed aside Musk’s criticism as a reaction to the elimination of tax credits for electric vehicles: The billionaire owns one of the most prominent manufacturers, Tesla.

The president also threatened to use the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which Musk helped to found — to strip the billionaire’s companies of their subsidies.

“DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon,” Trump said as he travelled to Florida.

Reporting from Washington, DC, Al Jazeera correspondent Alan Fisher said that public support has been slipping as a clearer picture of the bill has emerged.

“The longer this has been talked about and the more details that become public, the fewer Americans support him,” Fisher said.

Several recent polls have shown a majority of Americans oppose the bill. A survey last week from Quinnipiac University, for example, found just 29 percent of respondents were in favour of the legislation, while 55 percent were against it.

Increase to national debt

All told, the legislation in its current form would make permanent Trump’s 2017 cuts to business and personal income taxes, which are set to expire by the end of the year.

It would also give new tax breaks for income earned through tips and overtime, a policy promise Trump made during his 2024 campaign.

At the same time, the bill would provide tens of billions of dollars for Trump’s immigration crackdown, including funding to extend barriers and increase technology along the southern border. The bill would also pay for more immigration agents and build the government’s capacity to quickly detain and deport people.

Beyond cuts to electric vehicle tax breaks, the bill also guts several of former President Joe Biden’s incentives for wind and solar energy.

Faced with criticism about the knock-on effects for low-income families, Republicans have countered that the new restrictions to Medicaid and SNAP — formerly known as food stamps — would help put the programmes on a more sustainable path.

Many Republicans have also rejected the Congressional Budget Office’s assessment that the legislation would add $3.3 trillion to the country’s already $36.2 trillion debt.

Nonpartisan analysts, meanwhile, have said the increase in debt has the potential to slow economic growth, raise borrowing costs and crowd out other government spending in the years ahead.

Following a surge in arrests by armed, masked federal immigration agents in unmarked cars, some California Democrats are backing a new bill in Congress that would bar officials from covering their faces while conducting raids.

The No Masks for ICE Act, introduced by Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-New York) and co-sponsored by more than a dozen Democrats, would make it illegal for federal agents to cover their faces while conducting immigration enforcement unless the masks were required for their safety or health.

The bill would also require agents to clearly display their name and agency affiliation on their clothes during arrests and enforcement operations.

Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Burbank), who is co-sponsoring the bill, said Tuesday that the legislation would create the same level of accountability for federal agents as for uniformed police in California, who have been required by law for more than three decades to have their name or badge number visible.

“When agents are masked and anonymous, you cannot have accountability,” Friedman said. “That’s not how democracy works. That’s not how our country works.”

The bill would direct the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, to set up discipline procedures for officers who did not comply and report annually on those numbers to Congress.

A DHS spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The department has previously warned of a spike in threats and harassment against immigration agents.

The mask bill has no Republican co-sponsors, meaning its chances of getting a hearing in the GOP-controlled House are slim.

“I would think that there’s Republicans out there who are probably hearing the same thing that I’m hearing from my constituents: ‘I don’t like the idea of people jumping out of a truck, carrying very large guns with masks over their faces, and I have no idea who they are,’” Friedman said.

Friedman said she hoped that Republicans concerned about governmental overreach and the so-called “deep state” — the idea that there is a secretive, coordinated network inside the government — would support the bill too.

The proposal comes after weeks of immigration raids in Southern California conducted by masked federal agents dressed in street clothes or camouflage fatigues, driving unmarked vehicles and not displaying their names, badge numbers or agency affiliations. Social media sites have been flooded with videos of agents violently detaining people, including dragging a taco stand vendor by her arm and tossing smoke bombs into a crowd of onlookers.

The raids have coincided with an increase in people impersonating federal immigration agents. Last week, police said they arrested a Huntington Park man driving a Dodge Durango SUV equipped with red-and-blue lights and posing as a Border Patrol agent.

In Raleigh, N.C., a 37-year-old man was charged with rape, kidnapping and impersonating a law enforcement officer after police said he broke into a Motel 6, told a woman that he was an immigration officer and that he would have her deported if she didn’t have sex with him.

And in Houston, police arrested a man who they say blocked another driver’s car, pretended to be an ICE agent, conducted a fake traffic stop and stole the man’s identification and money.

Burbank Mayor Nikki Perez said Tuesday that city officials have received questions from residents like, “How can I know if the masked man detaining me is ICE or a kidnapper? And who can protect me if a man with a gun refuses to identify himself?”

Those issues came to a “boiling point” last weekend, Perez said, when a man confronted a woman at the Mystic Museum in Burbank, asked to see her documents and tried to “act as a federal immigration agent.” Staff and patrons stepped in to help, Perez said, but the incident left behind a “newfound sense of fear, an uncertainty.”

“Why is it that we hold our local law enforcement, who put their lives on the line every day, to a much higher standard than federal immigration officers?” Perez said.

The bill in the House follows a similar bill introduced in Sacramento last month by state Sen. Scott Wiener that would bar immigration agents from wearing masks, although it’s unclear whether states can legally dictate the conduct or uniforms of federal agents.

WASHINGTON — Building the border wall. Increasing detention capacity. Hiring thousands of immigration agents.

The budget bill narrowly approved by the Senate on Tuesday includes massive funding infusions — roughly $150 billion — toward immigration and border enforcement. If passed, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” will cement Trump’s hard-line legacy on immigration.

The budget bill would make Immigration and Customs Enforcement the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the federal government, exceeding its current yearly $3.4-billion detention budget many times over. It also would impose fees on immigration services that were once free or less expensive and make it easier for local law enforcement to work with federal authorities on immigration.

The 940-page Senate bill will now head back to the House, which passed its version in May, also by one vote, 215-214. The two chambers must now reconcile the two versions of the bill.

Though the legislation is still evolving, the immigration provisions in the House and Senate versions are similar and not subject to the intense debates on other issues, such as Medicaid or taxes.

Many of the funds would be available for four years, though some have longer or shorter timelines. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that, if enacted, the bill would increase the deficit by nearly $3.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

Here are key elements concerning immigration:

Border wall

• $46.5 billion toward fortifying the U.S.-Mexico border wall and interdicting migrant smugglers at sea.

This includes construction and installation of barrier sections, building access roads, and barrier-related technology, such as cameras, lights and sensors. The legislation doesn’t reference specific locations.

Trump, in his first term, repeatedly vowed that Mexico would pay for the wall. It didn’t.

Staffing

• $32 billion for immigration enforcement, including staffing of ICE and expanding so-called 287(g) agreements, in which state and local law enforcement agencies partner with federal authorities to deport immigrants.
• $7 billion for hiring Border Patrol agents, customs officers at ports of entry, air and marine agents and field support staff; retention bonuses; and vehicles.
• $3.3 billion to hire immigration judges and support staff, among other provisions.

Trump has said he wants to hire 10,000 ICE agents, as well as 3,000 Border Patrol agents.

Detention

• $45 billion to build and operate immigrant detention facilities and to transport those being deported.
• $5 billion for new Customs and Border Protection facilities and improvements to existing facilities and checkpoints. It’s unclear how this could affect California or the well-known Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 5 near San Onofre.

The bill allows for families pending a removal decision to be detained indefinitely. Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, called that a blatant violation of the so-called Flores settlement agreement, which has been in place since 1977 and limits the amount of time children can legally be detained to 20 days.

Local assistance

• $13.5 billion to reimburse states and local governments for immigration-related costs. These are divided into two pots of funding: $10 billion for the “state border security reinforcement fund” and the “Bridging Immigration-related Deficits Experienced Nationwide” or BIDEN fund. Both would fund the arrest of immigrants by local law enforcement who unlawfully entered the U.S. and committed any crime.

Altman said: “You can think of it like a gift for [Texas Gov. Greg] Abbott.”

Immigration fees

• A fee of at least $100 for those seeking asylum, down from a $1,000 fee outlined in the House bill. Applicants also would pay $100 every year the application remains pending. This is unprecedented — a fee has never before been imposed on migrants fleeing persecution.
• At least $550 ($275 on renewal) to apply for employment authorization for those with asylum applications, humanitarian parole and temporary protected status. Currently there is no fee for asylum seekers and a $470 fee for others.
• At least $500 for temporary protected status, up from $80 including biometrics.

The stated fees are minimums — the bill allows for annual increases and, for many, prohibits waivers based on financial need.

“The paradox of a fee for an employment authorization document is that you’re not allowed to work, but you need to pay for the fee,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst with the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

Altman noted that imposing a yearly fee on asylum seekers for their pending applications punishes people for the U.S. government’s own backlogged system, which is out of the applicant’s control.

Other sections exclude lawfully present immigrants, such as refugees and those granted asylum, from benefits including Medicare, Medicaid and the supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP). Another provision excludes children from the Child Tax Credit if their parent lacks a Social Security number.

Praise and scorn

Altman, whose organization has closely tracked the immigration aspects of the funding bill, said people can look at the bill two ways: big picture — as a $150-billion infusion to supercharge what the Trump administration has already started — or surgically, as a series of policy changes that will not be easy to undo “and make an already corrupt system subject to even fewer safeguards and really go after people’s most basic needs.”

Bush-Joseph had a different view. She said the funding reinforces an outdated and inflexible immigration system without fundamentally changing it.

“That’s why there’s all this money going to the border even though there aren’t a lot of people coming now,” she said.

Money alone won’t change things overnight, said Bush-Joseph. It takes time to hire people and to open detention facilities. Immigration judges will still have a massive backlog of cases. And getting foreign countries to agree to accept more deportees is tricky.

“Arresting and detaining people with private contractors doesn’t get you to an agreement from El Salvador to take five more planes per week,” she said.

During a White House event June 26, Trump urged Congress to pass the bill quickly, saying it “will be the single most important piece of border legislation to ever come across the floor of Congress.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of three senators who voted against the bill Tuesday, had called it “reckless spending,” writing on X: “I’m all for hiring new people to help secure our borders, but we don’t need it to the extent that’s in this bill, especially when our border is largely contained.”

Across the political aisle, Democrats including California Sen. Alex Padilla have slammed the bill, saying the immigration-related funding increases amount to a substantial policy change.

“You would think that maybe just for a moment, Republicans would take this reconciliation process as an opportunity to do what they said before they wanted to do and modernize our nation’s immigration system,” Padilla said last month. “But they’re not.”

Despite massive majority, Starmer could not get party fully behind signature legislation to pare down spending.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has won a key vote in Parliament on a signature plan to overhaul the country’s welfare system.

But the 335 to 260 House of Commons victory on Tuesday largely rang hollow, with Starmer forced to soften his promised cuts amid pushback from members of his own Labour Party, in what could represent a crisis for his leadership.

“Welfare reform, let’s be honest, is never easy, perhaps especially for Labour governments,” work and pensions minister Liz Kendall told Parliament on Tuesday, acknowledging the party infighting that had defined the debate.

Reporting from London, Al Jazeera’s Milena Veselinovic described the vote as a “victory in name only” for Starmer.

“His government was facing such a huge rebellion from his own Labour MPs that there was no chance that he could pass this bill in the form that it was originally laid out,” she said.

Starmer had ridden into office last year on the back of the largest parliamentary majority in UK history, currently holding 403 of 650 seats. That majority, he maintained, would help him avoid parliamentary dysfunction that had defined the body throughout years of Conservative rule.

But Starmer’s signature plan to trim down the UK’s ballooning welfare system soon ran into controversy, particularly when it came to disability benefits.

Starmer’s plan pitched raising the threshold for the benefits by requiring a higher threshold for physical or mental disability.

That prompted more than 120 Labour lawmakers to publicly say they would vote against the bill. They included Rachael Maskell, one of the leading opponents, who called the cuts “Dickensian” and said they “belong to a different era and a different party”.

In concessions to party members, the government backed down on implementing tougher eligibility rules for the payments until a wider review of the welfare system had been completed.

The government also pivoted to only have the reforms apply to future applicants, and not current claimants, as they initially sought.

While the government had at first hoped to save 5 billion pounds ($6.9bn) a year by 2030, the savings under the new plan is estimated to be closer to 2 billion pounds.

“This is a huge blow to the authority of Keir Starmer,” Al Jazeera’s Veselinovic said, “a prime minister who came into power on the back of a massive electoral landslide, who is now unable to pass what his government called flagship legislation without stripping it of nearly all its meaning.”

WASHINGTON — In a final push to prevent passage of President Trump’s signature legislation into law, Elon Musk, once his largest benefactor and later his top White House aide, threw the kitchen sink at his former boss.

The world’s richest man threatened to fund primary challenges against supporters of the bill “if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.” He threatened to fund the creation of a third party based on fiscal responsibility. And he accused the president of using the bill as a vehicle to defund the ability of courts to enforce contempt orders, making it all but impossible to hold him and his allies accountable for violating the law.

There is still a slim chance that Musk succeeds. But a Senate vote approving the bill on Tuesday brought Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” to the doorstep of passage. The only thing standing in its way now is a handful of Republican lawmakers in the House.

Trump reacted to Musk’s campaign on Tuesday with a pointed threat. The Department of Government Efficiency, a federal program Musk ran at the start of the administration that aimed to reduce federal spending, could be directed to gut Musk’s properties of federal contracts, the president warned.

“We might have to put DOGE on Elon,” Trump said. Musk owns SpaceX, an aerospace company with deep ties to NASA, as well as Tesla and the X social media platform. “You know what DOGE is? The monster that might have to go back and eat Elon — wouldn’t that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies.”

“If DOGE looks at Musk, we’re going to save a fortune,” Trump later added. “I don’t think he should be playing that game with me.”

The “Big Beautiful Bill” included several provisions that could have rankled Musk, including a phaseout of green energy tax credits passed during the Biden administration that have benefited companies like Tesla.

But Musk said his priority in the bill was not its impact on the electric vehicle market. Instead, his concern is its overall price tag — a ballooning of the federal debt over the next decades that he said fundamentally undermines his work in the administration.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the Senate version of the bill will add $4 trillion to the debt by 2034, and even more if Congress votes later on to remove a series of expiration dates built into the legislation.

Musk left the Trump administration at the end of his tenure as a special government employee in late May, honored in the Oval Office by Trump with a press conference and a custom embroidered key. But the men fell out dramatically days later, trading insults in an acrimonious public feud that included Musk taking credit for Trump’s election victory.

Even within the last few days, Trump has offered mixed messages on the state of his relationship with Musk, wishing him only the best in an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business.

By Tuesday morning, he was telling reporters that he would “take a look” at deporting Musk, a U.S. citizen.

“Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform, “and head back to South Africa.”

WASHINGTON — By a single, tiebreaking vote, Senate Republicans on Tuesday approved President Trump’s signature legislation despite several GOP defections, a major step toward passage of a bill that would expand tax cuts while cutting healthcare access to millions.

Just 50 Republicans supported the legislation, forcing Vice President JD Vance to cast the tiebreaking vote.

GOP Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine joined all Democrats in the chamber in opposition to the bill.

The legislation, called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” passed with the support of a key skeptic of its most controversial provisions: Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The bill extends tax cuts and benefits first passed in 2017 under Trump that were set to expire later this year, while creating new eligibility requirements for Medicaid and food stamps.

The House of Representatives will now have a second vote on a reconciled version of the bill. Should it pass, it will go to the president’s desk for his signature.

Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday that he would form a new political party in the United States if a Republican-leaning Congress passes President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which proposes tax breaks and funding cuts for healthcare and food programmes.

Musk has voiced criticism of the bill on multiple occasions over the past month and began suggesting the idea of the new party on social media starting early June.

Here is more about Musk’s reservations about the bill, and about his new proposed party.

What has Musk said about the America Party?

Musk has been saying that if the bill is passed, Republicans are no different from Democrats, who are often accused by conservatives of being profligate with spending taxpayers’ dollars.

The version of the bill that the Senate is discussing at the moment, if passed by both chambers of Congress, would expand the national debt by $3.3 trillion between 2025 and 2034. The current US national debt stands at more than $36 trillion.

“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,” Musk posted on his social media platform, X, on Monday.

“Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.”

In an earlier post, Musk wrote: “It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!”

The debt ceiling, set by the US Congress, determines the upper limit to the amount of money that the US Treasury can borrow. The current debt limit is $36.1 trillion.

Why does Musk oppose the bill?

Once a key aide and major campaign donor for Trump, Musk had a public online falling out with the president in June over his criticism of the bill.

On June 3, Musk wrote on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.”

Musk alleged that Trump was linked to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in a now-deleted post on X. However, Trump and Musk seemed to have reached a detente when Trump told reporters that he wished Musk well while the latter wrote on X on June 11 that he had gone “too far” in his criticism of the US president.

However, since then, Musk has argued in a series of online posts that the bill would increase the debt ceiling, “bankrupt America”, and “destroy millions of jobs in America”.

Musk owns the electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Tesla. The current version of the bill, with amendments made by the Senate, seeks to end the tax credit for purchases of EVs worth up to $7,500, starting on September 30. This could reduce the consumer demand for EVs in the US.

What is the America Party that Musk proposed?

On June 5, Musk posted a poll on his X account, asking his followers: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80 percent in the middle?”

While social media polls are known to be nonrepresentative of broader public sentiment, 5.6 million people voted on the poll, and 80.4 percent responded with “yes”. Since then, Musk has repeatedly reposted the poll result, citing it as evidence that most Americans want a new party to be formed.

“Musk believes that 80 percent of Americans are unhappy with the two major parties and are not being represented,” Natasha Lindstaedt, a professor at the Department of Government, the University of Essex, told Al Jazeera.

While that number might not reflect the wider American public, it does point to a trend in the electorate; according to a Gallup poll from 2024, 43 percent of Americans identified as independent, 28 percent identified as Republican and 28 percent identified as Democrat. In other words, more Americans identify as independent than as either Democrat or Republican.

One of Musk’s followers replied to a post on X with an image with the text “America Party”. The world’s richest man responded: “‘America Party’ has a nice ring to it. The party that actually represents America!”

How real is Musk’s threat?

Experts say Musk, whose net worth is $363bn as of Monday according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, would realistically be able to fund a third party in the US. However, it is still unclear whether he would go ahead with his plan or whether his party would have a significant effect on US elections.

“Musk certainly has the financial power to back a third party that could be very disruptive to the Republican Party, but it’s not certain if Musk will take on this risk,” Lindstaedt said.

Lindstaedt recalled how earlier this month, Musk backed down from his criticism of Trump on X. “If we take him at his word, he could spend hundreds of millions on this project,” she added.

“Musk has been ramping up his criticism of the bill lately, and he may find specific legislators [particularly from the House] would be willing to defect if their constituencies are more negatively affected by Trump’s policies,” Lindstaedt said, referring to the House of Representatives. “He will also have the attention of fiscal hawks in particular.”

Lindstaedt added that among American voters, there is a “huge appetite” for a third party.

“The bill will leave the US spending hundreds of billions just in the interest, and the more Americans understand this, the more they may want to flock to something different. US public frustration with the traditional parties is at an all-time high, and Musk may be able to capitalise on this.”

However, Thomas Gift, an associate professor of political science in the UCL School of Public Policy in London, said it was unclear whether Musk is serious and suggested that the barriers to breaking the Republican-Democrat duopoly are hard to scale for anyone.

“This is Elon Musk bluffing,” he told Al Jazeera. “He knows as well as anyone that the power of party machines behind Democrats and Republicans is too much to surmount.”

Gift added that while forming a party is possible, “winning seats in Congress or the White House is another matter entirely”.

“At best, a third party will have little impact on US elections; at worst, it will play ‘spoiler’, taking votes from one of the two parties and de facto giving it to another.”

What has Trump said about Musk?

On Monday, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, saying: “Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one.”

Trump added: “Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.”

“Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!” Trump wrote, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory body aimed at boosting government efficiency and upgrading Information Technology, that Musk formed and led at the start of Trump’s second administration, before leaving on May 30.

The United States Senate is debating President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill“, which promises sweeping tax breaks, as Republicans hope to pass it before Friday’s Independence Day holiday.

On Saturday, the Senate voted 51-49 to open debate on the latest 940-page version of the bill,  despite two Republican senators joining the Democrats to oppose the motion. Trump’s Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, and Democrats hold 47.

What’s next if the Senate passes the bill?

On May 22, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed an earlier version of the bill in a 215-214 vote.

That bill has been revised by the Senate, and both chambers of Congress must pass the same legislation for it to become law. If the Senate passes its version, then members from both chambers would work to draft compromise legislation that the House and Senate would have to vote on again. Republicans hold 220 seats and Democrats hold 212 in the House.

If the compromise bill is passed, it would advance to Trump, who is expected to sign it into law.

So, who would be some of the winners and losers if the bill – opposed by Democrats and some conservatives – becomes law?

Who would benefit from the bill?

The groups who would benefit include:

High-income households

The bill would extend tax cuts that Trump introduced during his first term. While Trump has pitched this as a gain for the American people, some will benefit more than others.

More than a third of the total cuts would go to households with an annual income of $460,000 or more. About 57 percent of the tax cuts would go to households with a yearly income of $217,000 or more.

According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the Senate bill would slash taxes on average by about $2,600 per household in 2026. “High-income households would receive much more generous tax benefits”, its analysis said.

Families with children

If the bill does not pass, the child tax credit, currently at $2,000 per child per year, would drop to $1,000 in 2026.

However, if the current version of the Senate bill passes, the child tax credit will permanently increase to $2,200. This is a smaller increase than the $2,500 in the version of the bill that the House approved.

Traditional car manufacturers

Makers of traditional petrol-driven cars could benefit from the bill because the Senate version seeks to end the tax credit for purchases of electric vehicles (EVs), worth up to $7,500, starting on September 30.

This could decrease consumer demand for EVs, levelling the playing field for cars that run on petrol or diesel.

Workers who receive tips

Tips will not be taxed if the bill passes.

Currently, workers – whether waiters or other service providers – are required to report all tips in excess of $20 a month to their employers, and those additional earnings are taxed.

This bill would end that.

Who would lose out because of the bill?

Some of the groups that would not benefit include:

Food stamp recipients

The Senate version of the bill proposes slashing the food stamps programme, called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), by $68.6bn over a decade, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Food stamps help low-income families buy food. In the 2023 fiscal year, 42.1 million people per month benefited from the programme, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Medicaid beneficiaries

The Senate version of the bill proposes federal funding cuts by $930bn to Medicaid, the largest US programme providing healthcare to low-income people. These are cuts to budget outlays by 2034.

The bill says that starting in 2026, able-bodied adults under the age of 65 will be required to work 80 hours a month to continue to receive Medicaid, with the exception of those who have dependent children.

More than 71 million low-income Americans were enrolled in Medicaid for health insurance as of March.

EV manufacturers

The EV tax credit would end on September 30 if the Senate version of the bill passes. The House version aims to phase out the tax credit by the end of 2025.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who owns the EV manufacturer Tesla, has voiced his opposition to the bill online. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” Musk wrote on X on June 3.

He doubled down on his criticism before the Senate deliberations on the bill on Saturday.

“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country,” Musk wrote on X, a platform he owns.

The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country!

Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future. https://t.co/TZ9w1g7zHF

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 28, 2025

Fiscal conservatives

Some conservatives have criticised the bill, saying it would inflate the country’s enormous debt.

The CBO estimated that the Senate version would raise the national debt by $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034. Under the House version, the CBO estimated a $2.4 trillion increase in the debt over a decade.

The current US national debt stands above $36 trillion and represents 122 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).