Senate narrowly passes ‘big, beautiful bill’ after JD Vance casts tie-breaking vote
Chris Stein
The Senate has just passed Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill after more than 24 hours of negotiations.
The vote was 50-50 and vice-president JD Vance was in the chamber to cast the tie-breaking vote. Republicans Thom Tillis, Rand Paul and Susan Collins voted no, along with all Democrats.
Key events
House GOP leaders reaffirm commitment to pass Trump’s bill by 4 July
House GOP leaders said they will “immediately” consider the Senate’s reconciliation bill, adding they’ll send it to the president by the self-imposed 4 July deadline.
“The House will work quickly to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill that enacts President Trump’s full America First agenda by the Fourth of July,” said the statement from speaker Mike Johnson, majority leader Steve Scalise, majority whip Tom Emmer and conference chair Lisa McClain. “The American people gave us a clear mandate, and after four years of Democrat failure, we intend to deliver without delay.”
With the battle in the House to come next, several Republicans in that chamber have said they don’t support the version that has emerged from the Senate, which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates will add $800bn more to the national debt than the House’s version.
As I reported yesterday, the House Freedom Caucus, a group of hardline conservatives who repeatedly threatened to withhold their support for the tax bill, is pushing for deeper spending cuts than what the Senate has offered.
“The Senate’s version adds $651bn to the deficit — and that’s before interest costs, which nearly double the total,” the caucus posted online yesterday. “That’s not fiscal responsibility. It’s not what we agreed to.”
On the other side of the GOP divide, a group of more moderate House Republicans, especially those who represent lower-income areas, object to the steeper Medicaid cuts in the Senate’s plan, fearing that a crackdown on a funding mechanism for the health program could lead to service cutbacks in rural areas.
“I will not support a final bill that eliminates vital funding streams our hospitals rely on,” representative David Valadao, a California Republican, said during the weekend debate.
They have also struggled to agree on a tax break for state and local tax (Salt) payments that is a top priority for a handful of House Republicans from high-tax states including New York, New Jersey and California.
Still, House Republicans are likely to face enormous pressure to fall in line from Trump in the days to come. And so far, his party has largely toed the line, with few willing to defy the president.
As we’ve reported, only three of the Senate’s 53 Republicans joined with Democrats to vote against the package, which passed 51-50 after vice-president JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote.
Three was the maximum number of votes the GOP could afford to lose in order to get the bill through the chamber.
The vote in the House, where Republicans also hold a very narrow 220-212 majority, is likely to be close as well. When the bill first passed through the lower chamber in May, it did so by only a single vote.
The bill, which would enshrine many of Trump’s top priorities into law while adding $3.3tn to the national debt, will now head back to the House for final approval.
Trump earlier indicated some flexibility on his 4 July deadline for the bill to land on his desk.
Senate narrowly passes ‘big, beautiful bill’ after JD Vance casts tie-breaking vote
Chris Stein
The Senate has just passed Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill after more than 24 hours of negotiations.
The vote was 50-50 and vice-president JD Vance was in the chamber to cast the tie-breaking vote. Republicans Thom Tillis, Rand Paul and Susan Collins voted no, along with all Democrats.
Donald Trump is now holding a press conference on “Alligator Alcatraz”. I’ll bring you all the key lines here.
‘Anybody would be better than Jay Powell,’ says Trump as he keeps up attacks on Fed chair over interest rates
Asked if he intends to announce his pick for the next Fed chair, Trump gestures to Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem to imply they would both be good candidates, before adding:
Anybody would be better than Jay Powell.
He’s costing us a fortune because he keeps the rate way up.
Trump has repeatedly personally attacked and called on Jerome Powell to lower interest rates, to which the Fed has said it takes independent economic decisions.
First detainees at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ expected tomorrow, says DeSantis
After touring the detention facility, Trump is asked by a reporter when the first person will be “checking in to their room” (it is not a hotel and there are no rooms), DeSantis replies: “Tomorrow.”
Noem adds, “hopefully within the next 24 hours”.
DeSantis says there will be a security sweep first and then the facility will be “ready to receive” people, gesturing towards Noem whom he says “has people in the queue”.
Trump again implies Doge should ‘look at Musk’ and says former buddy ‘should not play that game with me’
Asked if he was concerned about Elon Musk ripping in his “big, beautiful bill” again and if he was worried Republicans would be swayed by the tech billionaire and his money, Trump replied:
No, I don’t think so.
I think what’s going to happen is Doge is going to look at Musk, and if Doge looks at Musk we’re going to save a fortune.
Before walking off, he added of Musk:
I don’t think he should be playing that game with me.
Musk, Trump’s on-again off-again buddy, has been sharply critical of the “big, beautiful bill”, and has threatened to launch a new political party, as well as launching primary challenges to Republican senators, if the Senate passes it.
Trump earlier indicated to reporters outside the White House that Musk, head of the electric car company Tesla, was upset at losing the electric vehicle mandate (a tax subsidy for those who buy one) but “could lose a lot more than that”.
“We might have to put Doge on Elon,” Trump said, referring to the government of department efficiency that Musk headed before their fallout, and which has eliminated billions of dollars in government spending.
Musk, through Tesla, and especially from government contracts to SpaceX, has been the recipient of billions himself.
Trump went on:
You know what Doge is? Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies.
Trump also seemed to very briefly admit for the first time that his strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last month did not in fact “obliterate” the sites – before swiftly insisting again that they did.
Referring to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Washington next week, Trump said:
There’s going to be a very quick celebration. We had a great hit that was an “obliteration” – now it turns out, it wasn’t an “obliteration”.
He then quickly pivots to go on a familiar tangent about how the media supposedly disrespected American soldiers (by reporting on an early DIA assessment that found the strikes had actually only set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few months).
Trump, characteristically, then pivots again to insist once more that “it was a complete and total obliteration”.
The president and his administration officials have been on a messaging blitz since the strikes, insisting that the US “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities, despite evidence to the contrary.
Asked if other states are following the model of “Alligator Alcatraz”, Trump said Louisiana, Alabama and others – notably red states, he says, “and not too many blue states, for whatever reason” – are already doing it.
He said:
The red states, Republican-run states, are doing it. The blue states don’t do very well at policing and security, unfortunately.
‘Alligator Alcatraz’ will encourage people to ‘deport on their own’, says DeSantis, as he urges other states to create similar facilities
Florida governor Ron DeSantis said the facility – and others like it, should other red states take similar steps – would act as a deterrent, saying:
You’ll have a lot of people that will deport on their own, because they don’t want to end up in an ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ or some of those other places.
So I think this is a model, but we need other states to step up.
Trump praises ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ in Florida Everglades
After touring the detention facility in Florida, Donald Trump is speaking to reporters alongside state governor Ron DeSantis and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem.
Trump said of the visit:
The trip was nice and the job they’ve done is fantastic. And this is what you need.
Asked if this is the model going forward, Trump said:
It can be.
You don’t always have land so beautiful and so secure. They have a lot of bodyguards and a lot of cops in the form of alligators, you don’t have to pay them so much. But I wouldn’t want to run through the Everglades for long. It will keep people where they’re supposed to be.
Trump wavers on 4 July deadline for tax and spending bill
As the Senate continues its record vote-a-rama session on amendments to the legislation, which has now gone beyond 24 hours, Donald Trump earlier told reporters he was open to moving the 4 July deadline he gave fellow Republicans to get behind the tax and spending bill, amid deep divisions within the party.
But he also said it would be wise for Republicans to get on board. He said he expected to get the legislation passed in the end.
“I’d love to do July 4 but I think it’s very hard to do July 4,” he told reporters outside the White House before leaving for Florida. “I would think maybe July 4, but somewhere around there.”
Even if the bill passes the Senate, the House needs to vote on it again before it lands on Trump’s desk.
The Senate “vote-a-rama” on the tax and spending bill, already a record for passing 45 consecutive votes, has now passed the 24-hour mark.
CNN is reporting that a final vote for passage could yet take place this morning, citing Wyoming Republican senator John Barrasso. The network says Lisa Murkowski of Alaska (see previous post) is indicating that a deal “is in the copy machine”.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, has indicated he is happy for the original 4 July deadlineto pass slip a bit.
The intrigue continues, and we are here to bring you all of it.
“Don’t run in a straight line. Look, like this!” Donald Trump makes a zigzag gesture to journalists at the White House as a demonstration of how immigration detainees should run away from alligators, if they escape Florida’s harsh new “Alligator Alcatraz” camp.
The president was speaking before departing for the Florida Everglades, where he will join Florida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis to tour the facility, which is opening Tuesday.
The Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is due to speak at a European Central Bank event in Portugal, a day after Trump upped the pressure on him to lower interest rates.
In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump demanded the US should have rates of 1% or less, adding that Powell and members of the Fed board of governors had failed to do their jobs.
Trump wrote:
If they were doing their job properly, our country would be saving trillions of dollars in interest cost. We should be paying 1% Interest, or better!
Donald Trump said migrants would need to know “how to run away from an alligator” to flee the new detention center he’s visiting in a remote area of the Florida Everglades.
Trump is on his way there for a walk of the facility, which the White House suggested would be especially secure given its dangerous natural surroundings. The detention center has been assembled on an isolated airstrip.
It has drawn protests over the potential impact on a delicate ecosystem and for a potentially cruel message the Republican president is trying to send to immigrants. A key selling point for the White House is the site’s remoteness.
