U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., talks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, June 28, 2025. Hawley said he will vote for the budget reconciliation measure after a rural hospital fund was added. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted mostly along party lines late Saturday night to move forward with Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” that President Donald Trump wants on his desk in less than a week, after a dramatic three-hour pause when several GOP senators withheld their votes.

Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina  and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against moving forward with the sweeping tax break and spending cuts package that contains many of the GOP’s campaign promises. All Democrats were opposed. Vice President JD Vance came to the Capitol in case a tie-breaking vote was required, but in the end was not needed.

Tillis, who is up for reelection in 2026, had told reporters earlier that he would vote “no” on what is called a motion to proceed and on final passage. 

He said in a statement the legislation would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina and force the state to make “painful decisions” about Medicaid. Trump in a post on social media later threatened to find primary candidates to challenge Tillis.

The 51-49 vote doesn’t guarantee the bill will make it through a final passage vote but does make it significantly more likely, even with Republicans’ narrow 53-47 majority.

The procedural vote kicked off a maximum of 20 hours of floor debate on the bill, with half of that time controlled by Democrats and the other half by Republicans — though Democrats after the motion to proceed vote forced a reading of the giant bill expected to take as long as 15 hours. That would mean floor debate would not begin until sometime Sunday.

Unlike regular bills, budget reconciliation packages are not subject to the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, so as long as at least 50 Republicans support the package, and Vance casts the tie-breaking vote if needed, the measure will go back to the House.

The vote on the motion to proceed that began at about 7:30 p.m. Eastern was held open for more than three hours, with the votes of four senators in suspense — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mike Lee of Utah, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Rick Scott of Florida. All four eventually voted aye and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson switched his vote to aye after earlier voting against the measure.

Lee, however, just before the vote was over, announced he had pulled from the bill an extremely controversial proposal to sell some public lands that was opposed by other lawmakers from the West. He said because of the process being used for the bill, he was unable to obtain enforceable safeguards to ensure the land would be sold to American families and not China or foreign interests.

The latest version of the measure had set up the Interior Department to sell at least 600,000 acres of public land and up to 1.2 million acres of public land within 10 years, advocates said.

Critics, including hunters, anglers and other Western state constituents, have ripped the measure as a “land grab,” as put by Jennifer Rokala, executive director for the Center for Western Priorities.

A summary of the provisions by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee said the Bureau of Land Management “must sell a minimum of 0.25% and a maximum of 0.50% of their estate for housing and associated community needs. This will increase the supply of housing and decrease housing costs for millions of American families.”

Golfing with Trump

Senate GOP leaders released new bill text just before midnight Friday that satisfied rural state lawmakers’ worries about financial threats to rural hospitals posed by cuts in Medicaid. The bill also addresses concerns by Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska about access to food assistance for their constituents despite new restrictions on a USDA program for low-income people.

As talks continued on Capitol Hill Saturday afternoon, a handful of Senate Republicans, including Missouri’s Eric Schmitt and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, were on the golf course with Trump, according to the White House. Graham said on social media that Kentucky’s Paul also played.

Senate Democrats said a fresh financial analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the preliminary Senate text would result in $930 billion in cuts to Medicaid, the joint federal-state low-income health insurance and disability assistance program.

The CBO score was not yet publicly available but Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Finance, pointed to it and slammed the Medicaid provisions as “cruel” in a statement Saturday afternoon. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, also cited the preliminary analysis, pointing to the nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts.

Collins promises amendments

Senate Republicans planned to take their negotiations to the floor and push for amendments after the procedural vote that triggered official debate on the bill, which in its current public version runs 940 pages.

GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who voiced concerns throughout negotiations about rural hospitals and health cuts that would harm low-income individuals, said her vote on the motion to proceed “does not predict my vote on final passage.”

“I will be filing a number of amendments,” she told reporters as she headed into a closed-door working lunch before the Senate convened at 2 p.m. Eastern.

While Sen. Tim Sheehy wrote on social media Saturday afternoon that he was a “no” on the motion to proceed because of a provision to sell off federal public lands, the Montana Republican changed his mind nearly an hour later and declared he would propose an amendment to strip the provision — which was later removed by its sponsor.

GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma painted somewhat of a rosier picture of the mood in the Senate, telling reporters “we’re good.”

“We won’t bring it to the floor if we don’t have the votes,” said Mullin, who was the lead negotiator with House Republicans on state and local tax deductions, or SALT — a sticking point for Republicans who represent high-tax blue states like New York and California.

The lawmakers settled on a $40,000 deduction through 2029 for taxpayers who earn up to $500,000 annually. The level then reverts to $10,000, the current limit under the 2017 tax law.

Medicaid turmoil

Proposed changes to Medicaid have been strongly resisted by rural medical providers who say they are already financially strapped.

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley told reporters Saturday he would be a “yes” on both the motion to proceed vote and the final bill based on the new rural hospital “transformation program” Senate leadership included in the bill overnight. The measure has yet to be finalized.

The bill’s new version includes $25 billion in a stabilization fund for rural hospitals from 2028 through 2032. The amount is frontloaded to give more of the funds in the first two years.

Critics warn that amount will not fill the financial gaps that rural medical providers will face from losing a sizable portion of federal funding via Medicaid cuts.

While Hawley called the fund a “win” for Missouri over the next several years, he said his party needs to do some “soul searching” over the “unhappy episode” of wrangling over Medicaid cuts.

“If you want to be a working-class party, you’ve got to deliver for working-class people. You cannot take away health care for working people,” he said.

Senators had not yet agreed on other Medicaid provisions as of Saturday afternoon, including a phase-down of the provider tax rate from 6% to a possible 3.5% that’s become hugely controversial.

States use a combination of general revenues, provider tax revenues and in some cases local contributions to fund their Medicaid programs.

Advocates warn that it’s not a guarantee states would be able to backfill the lost revenue, and if they can’t, provider rate cuts and losses of benefits for patients could be on the horizon.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the House version’s provider tax changes — not as deep as the current Senate proposal — could lead to 400,000 people losing Medicaid benefits.

A full and final financial score for the Senate bill is not yet out as the several provisions remain up in the air.

Hawley also praised the inclusion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act fund, or RECA, that revives payments for survivors and victims who suffered cancer as a result of U.S. atomic bomb testing and radioactive waste dumps.

Clean energy tax credits

In what clean power advocates dubbed a “midnight dumping,” Senate GOP leadership added language to accelerate the phase out of clean energy tax credits that were enacted under Democrats’ own massive mega-bill in 2022 titled the “Inflation Reduction Act.”

The language, which wasn’t yet finalized by Senate GOP tax writers as of 6 p.m. Eastern Saturday, tightened restrictions on foreign components in wind and solar projects — and added a new tax on those that don’t comply.

Senators largely targeted wind and solar credits, ending them for projects not plugged into the electricity grid by 2028. Additionally credits for wind turbine manufacturers would terminate in 2028.

Other tax credits would be phased out at a faster pace, including those for the production of critical minerals, though a credit for metallurgical coal, used in steelmaking, was added in.

Clean energy industry manufacturers and small businesses had hoped Senate Republicans would ease up rollbacks in the House version.

Kurt Neutgens, president and chief technology officer of Orange EV, told States Newsroom in an interview Friday that any further rollbacks would amount to “cutting our legs out from underneath us.”

Neutgens, whose Kansas City, Kansas-based company manufactures heavy duty electric trucks and chargers, was watching for changes to credits to the commercial clean vehicles credit. New Senate GOP text would terminate the credit in September of this year.

Jason Grumet, president of the Clean Power Association, said in a statement Saturday that imposing new taxes on the industry “will strand hundreds of billions of dollars in current investments, threaten energy security, and undermine growth in domestic manufacturing and land hardest on rural communities who would have been the greatest beneficiaries of clean energy investment.”

Alaska carve-outs

Proposed cuts to federal food assistance remained largely unchanged in the new text released Friday night except for a few carve-outs for Alaska.

If the bill were enacted as written, Alaska’s state government could request a waiver for its citizens from stricter work reporting requirements that critics say will result in some SNAP recipients losing their food benefits.

GOP lawmakers also slightly shifted the timeline for when states will have to begin shouldering SNAP costs — the first time states will be on the hook for the federal food assistance outside of administrative costs.

States would be required to pick up a portion of the costs depending on their “payment error rate” — meaning how accurate states are at determining who needs SNAP, including both overpayments and underpayments.

States that have error rates at 6% or above would responsible for up to 15% of the food program’s cost. According to SNAP error rate data for 2023, the latest available, only seven states had an error rate below 6%.

The new text delays the cost-sharing for states until 2028 and allows states to choose the lesser of their two error rates in either 2025 or 2026.

Starting in 2029, states will be required to use their error rate from three years prior to the current year.

The new text includes the option for Alaska and Hawaii to waive their cost share burden for up to two years if their governments implement an improvement plan. In 2023, Alaska had the highest payment error rate of all states, reaching just above 60%. 

Advocates for low-income families worry the cost, which will amount to billions for most state governments, will incentivize states to tighten eligibility requirements for the program, or even drop SNAP altogether.

The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates the cuts will affect up to 40 million people who receive basic SNAP assistance, including 16 million children and 8 million seniors.

The Senate bill would also increase a state’s share of administrative costs for the program to 75%, up from the previous 50% cost-sharing responsibility with the federal government.

Despite inaccurate public statements from Republicans as recently as in a bill summary released overnight, the bill does nothing to limit food assistance to immigrants without documentation because SNAP was never available to them.

SNAP benefits will remain available to legal permanent residents, and Republicans loosened some language to allow certain immigrants from Cuba or Haiti to access the program.

But if the bill passes, federal food assistance will not be available to refugees and asylees who are already in the U.S. — for example, people from Afghanistan, Ukraine and other war-torn places.

Education revisions

Republicans on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions revised or scrapped several measures that the parliamentarian deemed to not comply with the “Byrd Bath,” a Senate process named for the late Sen. Robert Byrd, according to a summary and new bill text out Friday.

Under the revised text, for any loans made starting July 1, 2026, borrowers will have only two repayment plan options: a standard repayment plan and an income-driven repayment plan. The original proposal would have applied these restrictions to existing borrowers, but the parliamentarian struck that down.

Republicans also nixed a proposal that opened up the Pell Grant — a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college — to institutions that are not accredited.

The new plan also scraps a restriction that barred payments made by students enrolled in a medical or dental internship or residency program from counting toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

‘Even worse than any draft’

Senate Democrats remain united in opposition to the bill and are expected to slow down final passage by introducing numerous amendments on the floor during what is called the vote-a-rama.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer continued to rally against the package during remarks on the Senate floor Saturday afternoon, saying it’s “hard to believe this bill is worse — even worse — than any draft we’ve seen this far.”

The New York Democrat said “it’s worse on health care, it’s worse on SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), it’s worse on the deficit.”

Schumer added that “if Republicans proceed, Senate Democrats will hold them to account.”

“We’ll gear up for another night of vote-a-rama very soon. We’ll expose this bill piece by piece. We will show how it cuts health care, raises costs, rewards the ultra rich.”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities condemned the cuts to safety net programs as “all in service to tax cuts that are heavily skewed toward the wealthy and corporations.”

“None of this harm has anything to do with fiscal responsibility: our deficits and debts would soar under this bill,” said Sharon Parrott, the think tank’s president, in a statement Saturday.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan watchdog, released a new analysis Saturday finding the Senate version will add roughly $4 trillion to the national deficit over 10 years.

“If you thought the House bill borrowed too much — and it did — the Senate manages to make things even worse,” CRFB’s president Maya MacGuineas said in a statement.

House action

Senate Republicans have spent more than a month rewriting the bills that make up the measure in order to meet the strict rules for moving a budget reconciliation package and to earn support from enough Republicans to actually pass the legislation.

The lawmakers have been struggling to maintain spending cuts passed by House Republicans that will pay for the nearly $4 trillion price tag for extending and expanding the 2017 tax cuts.

The House voted 215-214 to approve its 11-bill version of the package in May. Many of that chamber’s GOP lawmakers hoped the Senate wouldn’t change much, though that hasn’t been the case.

The Senate has modified numerous proposals, including those addressing tax law; Medicaid; and SNAP. The Senate bill also raises the country’s debt limit by $5 trillion, a full $1 trillion more than the House version.

The revisions have led to concerns among both centrist House GOP lawmakers and far-right members of the party, muddying the waters around whether Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., can cobble together the votes needed to clear the package for Trump’s signature.

Republicans hold a 220-212 majority in the House, so leaders there can only lose four members if all of the chamber’s lawmakers are present and voting.

Trump has encouraged Congress to approve the legislation before the Fourth of July, but with time running short and some tempers rising over how the legislation will impact the country’s deficits, that might not be possible.

“The Great Republicans in the U.S. Senate are working all weekend to finish our ‘ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’,” Trump posted on social media Friday.

“The House of Representatives must be ready to send it to my desk before July 4th — We can get it done,” he added. “It will be a wonderful Celebration for our Country, which is right now, ‘The Hottest Country anywhere in the World’ — And to think, just last year, we were a laughingstock. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee's Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., talks with ranking Democrat Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin on June 3, 2025 before Education Secretary Linda McMahon testified to the panel about President Donald Trump's budget request for the Education Department.  The proposal includes a reduction in the maximum Pell Grant award. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump wants to cut nearly $1,700 from the maximum Pell Grant award as part of his fiscal 2026 budget request — a move that would leave the subsidy for low-income students at its lowest level in more than a decade.

The proposal would have a devastating effect on college affordability and drive up costs for states because they’d have to fill in the missing federal dollars, education advocates and experts say.

The request — part of the president’s wish list for appropriations in fiscal 2026 — faces steep odds in Congress, where key members of both parties responded to the proposal with alarm.

“I don’t want to cut the Pell Grant,” U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican and chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, told States Newsroom.

“I’m concerned about that — I’m hoping that we’ll get that resolved,” she said.

Opposition from Capito, whose panel writes the annual bill to fund the Education Department, makes Trump’s wish unlikely to make its way into the upcoming legislation.

The Pell Grant is a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college and is the foundation of federal student aid in the United States.

Catherine Brown, senior policy and advocacy director at the National College Attainment Network, said the cut would be “absolutely devastating,” noting that “college is already out of reach for millions upon millions of low-income students.”

Funding gap

The Pell Grant program is seeing a projected budget shortfall of $2.7 billion heading into the next fiscal year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The administration has cited the shortfall as a reason to decrease the maximum award.

The request calls for reducing the maximum Pell Grant for the 2026-2027 award year from $7,395 to $5,710. The last time the maximum award stood below this level was during the 2013-2014 award year, at $5,645. 

Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget request includes $12 billion in total cuts to the Education Department as he and his administration seek to dismantle the agency and dramatically reshape the federal role in education.

Democrats: Cut would be ‘crazy’

Democrats have raised strong opposition, while even the Republican chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees Education Department funding was noncommittal about pursuing Pell Grant cuts.

“We want to make sure that (Pell Grants are) serving the people they need to,” Rep. Robert Aderholt of Alabama said when asked about any concerns he has on the proposed cut.

Aderholt said he’s hearing “a lot” from his constituents about the proposed reduction, and that it’s “certainly something we’re going to look at.”

Meanwhile, the leading Democrats on the House and Senate education spending panels were quick to blast the proposed cut.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the full House Appropriations Committee and the education spending subcommittee, called the nearly $1,700 reduction “crazy.”

“People are not going to be able to do it, and that’s the tragedy of what they’re doing here is dismantling all of the constructs that are there to provide people particularly with public education and a pathway to success,” the Connecticut Democrat said.

“You take away Federal Work-Study, you lower the Pell Grant, that says to me, you want to destroy public education,” DeLauro said.

The budget request proposes slashing $980 million of Federal Work-Study funding and requiring employers to pay 75% of students’ hourly wages, with the government contributing 25%.

The program gives part-time employment to students with financial need in order to help cover the cost of college. 

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, ranking member of the Senate subcommittee, said she “strongly” opposes the proposed reduction.

The Wisconsin Democrat said she also recognizes that “there’s a looming shortfall in Pell funding that we need to address.”

“I am hopeful that we’ll be able to work together to do that,” Baldwin said.

Advocates, experts weigh in

Higher education advocates and experts are also sounding the alarm on the proposed reduction, both over the harm to low-income students’ access to higher education and the impact on states and colleges.

“This would just much further exacerbate that gap and drive millions of students out of pursuing post-secondary education or set them on a different path,” Brown, with the National College Attainment Network, said.

Katharine Meyer, a governance studies fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, described the proposed decline as “truly unprecedented.”

She added that when the Pell Grant is smaller, states have to spend more on higher education, creating a challenge for state officials potentially grappling with other cuts in federal support in the budget reconciliation package Republicans are scrambling to pass.

“States don’t necessarily have the flexibility to spend more money when they have budgets that they need to balance, and they’re facing other federal constraints, including potentially having to take on additional health care costs depending on what happens with health care negotiations in budget reconciliation,” she said.

Capito also said she thought a reduction to Pell Grants would ripple out to the state level.

At the institutional level, Meyer pointed out that if a state has a smaller bucket to allocate for higher education but wants to prioritize financial aid, it would “come at the cost of” the money appropriated to universities.

“Then institutions are not going to be able to spend as much on their operating funds,” she said. “They’re not going to be able to do capital improvement campaigns, which are often very necessary.”

Ties to reconciliation bill

House Republicans have also proposed major changes to Pell Grant eligibility as part of GOP lawmakers’ separate “big, beautiful bill.” The legislative package would slash billions of dollars in federal programs to offset the cost of other parts of Trump’s agenda, including extending the 2017 tax cuts and boosting border security funding.

GOP lawmakers are using the complex reconciliation process to move a package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber and avoid the Senate’s 60-vote threshold that generally requires bipartisanship.

The House narrowly passed its version of the reconciliation package in late May. That measure included a provision that would raise the minimum number of credit hours to qualify for the maximum Pell Grant award from 12 per semester to 15. The move would save $7.1 billion in federal spending over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office estimated.

That new eligibility requirement is not included in the draft proposal for the reconciliation package that Republicans on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions released in June. 

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on May 7, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Republicans cannot exempt gun silencers, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns from being classified as firearms under a federal gun regulation law from the 1930s, according to the Senate parliamentarian’s latest ruling on the “big, beautiful bill.”

The provision addressing silencers, also called suppressors, was added to the House’s version of the bill by Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde. The Senate Finance Committee expanded it, adding in the other two classifications.

Also out of the bill is a sweeping private school voucher program that would have extended billions a year in tax credits to parents who move their children out of public schools.

The rulings mean those sections now will be dropped from the Senate version of the tax and spending cut measure, or rewritten in a way that meets the rules. 

Friday morning’s disclosure of the latest parliamentary ruling came as the Senate continues to struggle with the massive legislation, which GOP leaders in Congress want to pass in time for a self-imposed Fourth of July deadline for President Donald Trump’s signature.

The Senate will likely stay in session throughout the weekend and possibly into early next week to finish negotiations on provisions and release the final text, take a procedural vote, debate the bill, hold a marathon amendment voting session and then vote on final passage.

The House, which is scheduled to be in recess all next week for the holiday, is expected to return to Capitol Hill about two days after the Senate approves the bill to clear the legislation for Trump’s signature.

Gun silencer debate in House

Clyde said during floor debate in May that because silencers were included in the National Firearms Act, they were also subject to a $200 tax that he argued violates people’s Second Amendment rights.

“Under the law, they are firearms and therefore are protected by another law enacted in 1791 called the Second Amendment of our beloved Constitution,” Clyde said. “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and neither shall it be taxed.”

Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost spoke out against the House provision during floor debate, saying that during mass shootings, “silencers make it harder to identify and respond to the source of the gunshots.

“Earlier, I put forth an amendment to strip this tax cut for the gun lobby, and House Republicans wouldn’t even let it come up for a vote.”

Frost said that during 2023, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “recovered over 400 silencers from violent crime scenes. For this reason, silencers have been highly regulated for nearly 100 years.”

Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., released a statement Friday following the parliamentarian’s ruling, saying it eliminated Republicans’ “scheme to eliminate background checks, registrations and other safety measures that apply to easily-concealed firearms and gun silencers.”

“It’s no surprise that Republicans will jump at any opportunity to please the gun lobby by rolling back gun safety measures, but that kind of policy does not belong in a reconciliation bill,” Wyden wrote.

Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the committee has been going back and forth with the parliamentarian on how to rework other provisions deemed noncompliant to get them into the final bill.

A summary of the provision from Crapo’s office says it would have resulted “in the elimination of the transfer and manufacturing tax on these devices” and preempted “certain state or local licensing or registration requirements which are determined by reference to the National Firearms Act by treating anyone who acquires or possesses these rifles, shotguns, or other weapons in compliance with federal statute to be in compliance with the state or local registration or licensing requirements.”

Private school vouchers scrapped

The parliamentarian struck down the private school voucher program tucked into the Senate Finance Committee’s portion of the package, marking a significant blow to Trump’s and congressional Republicans’ school choice push.

The umbrella term “school choice” centers on alternative programs to a student’s assigned public school. Though advocates say school choice programs are necessary for parents dissatisfied with their local public schools, critics argue these efforts drain critical funds and resources from school districts.

The committee proposed $4 billion a year in tax credits beginning in 2027 for people donating to organizations that provide private and religious school scholarships.

The tax credit provision mirrored a bill that GOP lawmakers — Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana along with Reps. Adrian Smith of Nebraska and Burgess Owens of Utah — reintroduced in their respective chambers earlier this year.

Immigration

Several provisions to reshape how immigrants apply for asylum were struck down by the parliamentarian Friday.

Those provisions would have required a $1,000 fee for an immigrant to apply for asylum – something that is currently free to people fleeing harm or persecution – and imposed a $5,000 fee for someone to sponsor an unaccompanied minor.

Some of the provisions would have added extra fees to immigration courts, which are already facing a historic backlog of millions of cases, for a mandatory $100 fee to continue a case.

The parliamentarian also struck out a policy that would have extended quick deportations, known as expedited removal, to immigrants arrested for a crime regardless of legal status.

Expedited removal is a deportation tool used to swiftly remove an immigrant near a U.S. border without appearing before an immigration judge. The Trump administration has already expanded its use of expedited removal to include the interior of the U.S., rather than just at borders such as Mexico and Canada.

State and local tax

Senate Republicans were still wrangling Friday afternoon over the amount of state and local taxes, or SALT, that taxpayers can deduct from their federal tax bills. House Republicans who represent high-tax blue states are pressuring their counterparts in the Senate to agree on a $40,000 deduction cap for taxpayers who earn up to $500,000 annually.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent briefly stepped out of closed-door negotiations to brief reporters, telling them a deal was “very, very close.”

The handful of House Republicans who represent blue states, including New York and California, carry a lot of leverage over final passage of the bill because of the party’s razor-thin margin in the House.

Reconciliation process

Republicans are moving their sweeping tax and spending cuts bill through Congress using a special process called budget reconciliation that comes with complex rules in the Senate.

The chamber’s parliamentarian combs through the bill, hears from Republicans and from Democrats before determining whether each provision has an impact on spending, revenue, or the debt limit.

There are several other aspects to the Byrd rule, named for former West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, including that a provision cannot have a “merely incidental” impact on the federal ledger. Reconciliation bills also cannot touch Social Security.

The parliamentarian has ruled several other provisions in the GOP mega-bill don’t comply with the guardrails for a reconciliation bill, though some committees have been able to rework certain policy changes to fit.

Republicans chose to move the bill through reconciliation because it allows them to get around the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which typically forces bipartisan negotiations on major legislation. 

The process is time-consuming and opaque, but Republican leaders in Congress are still pushing forward with their self-imposed Fourth of July goal.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., left, listens as Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, speaks to reporters outside of the West Wing of the White House on June 4, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  after a meeting with President Donald Trump. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday told his supporters to call members of Congress and lobby them to support the “big, beautiful bill,” a crucial push with just days to go before a self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.

Trump’s plea follows several tumultuous days on Capitol Hill as GOP leaders struggled to find consensus on multiple policy disagreements, especially after the parliamentarian ruled core elements of the package don’t meet the complex rules for moving a budget reconciliation bill.

Trump during an event in the White House’s East Room that was attended by several GOP lawmakers also cautioned Republicans against voting down the tax and spending cut package.

“We don’t want to have grandstanders,” Trump said. “Not good people. They know who I’m talking about. I call them out. But we don’t need grandstanders. We have to get our country back and bring it back strong.”

Some Republican senators remain optimistic they can work through the weekend and that the House votes will come together next week, despite growing opposition from members in that chamber.

Sen. Eric Schmitt said he doesn’t think the parliamentarian’s rulings will delay the votes “outside the weekend window, which has been the goal all the time.”

“We’re probably voting into the weekend, though. That’s probably my guess — Saturday and I suppose even Sunday — but, that’s the goal, I don’t think that materially changes too much,” the Missouri Republican said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., however, appeared a bit less definite, telling reporters in the afternoon that he didn’t know when the chamber would take the procedural vote that kicks off floor consideration.

“I’ll get back to you on that,” he said.

Medicaid provisions tossed

Earlier Thursday, Senate Republicans suffered a significant setback when the parliamentarian ruled several changes to Medicaid in the bill don’t comply with the rules, which means billions of dollars in savings are no longer available for the GOP to offset the cost of tax cuts.

Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo. R-Idaho, must rework or completely eliminate nine changes the committee proposed to the health care programs, though more of the panel’s proposals are still under review.

Republicans can no longer reduce the amount of federal matching funds for state governments that use their own tax dollars to provide Medicaid coverage for immigrants in the country without proper documentation.

The GOP bill cannot bar gender-affirming care for Medicaid patients.

And Republicans need to change or scrap a proposal to reduce states’ Medicaid provider tax credits, an issue that is relatively in the weeds of health care policy but has sharply divided the GOP and drawn fierce opposition from states.

The changes or eliminations will have a major impact on how much in savings the GOP tax and spending cut bill will generate during the next decade and will likely make the overall package’s deficit impact higher than before. The legislation is intended to extend the 2017 tax cuts and make spending reductions.

The ruling might make it more difficult for Trump and GOP leaders in Congress to get the votes needed to pass the bill at all, let alone before their self-imposed Fourth of July timeline. Senate GOP leaders had said they wanted to begin procedural votes as soon as Friday.

The measure already had been stuck on Wednesday amid growing disputes over how Medicaid changes will impact rural hospitals and far more.

Democrats to continue scrutinizing bill

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who released the parliamentarian’s rulings, wrote in a statement that Democrats will continue to advocate for removing dozens of proposals from the bill that they believe don’t meet reconciliation rules.

“Republicans are scrambling to rewrite parts of this bill to continue advancing their families lose, and billionaires win agenda, but Democrats stand ready to fully scrutinize any changes and ensure the Byrd Rule is enforced,” Merkley wrote.

A staffer, who was granted anonymity to discuss the chairman’s plans, said the Finance Committee will “rework certain provisions to address the Byrd guidance and be compliant with reconciliation.”

The Byrd rule, named for former West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, includes several guardrails for reconciliation bills.

Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote in a statement that the parliamentarian’s ruling will lead to “more than $250 billion in health care cuts removed from the Republicans’ big bad bill.

“Democrats fought and won, striking health care cuts from this bill that would hurt Americans’ walking on an economic tightrope. This bill is rotten to its core, and I’ll keep fighting the cuts in this morally bankrupt bill until the end.”

The parliamentarian is still deciding whether several health provisions meet reconciliation rules, including language that would block all Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood, effectively blocking Medicaid patients from visiting the organization for routine health services.

Federal law already bars funding for abortions with exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the pregnant patient.

The parliamentarian will also decide later whether Republicans’ bill can block the Department of Health and Human Services from implementing a Biden-era rule that would require nursing homes to have a nurse working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Higher ed provisions axed

The parliamentarian also struck down several attempts from congressional Republicans to overhaul the higher education system.

GOP lawmakers cannot streamline student loan repayment options for current borrowers to just a standard repayment plan or an income-driven repayment plan, making such restrictions apply to only new borrowers.

Republicans have to nix a proposal that opened up the Pell Grant — a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college — to institutions that are for-profit and not accredited.

The parliamentarian scrapped a proposal that would have barred payments made by students enrolled in a medical or dental internship or residency program from counting toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

The federal program eliminates remaining debt for borrowers when meeting certain requirements, including working for a qualified employer within the government or nonprofit sector.

The parliamentarian rejected GOP lawmakers’ proposal to end federal student aid eligibility for certain immigrants who are not U.S. citizens.

‘Too many Medicaid cuts’

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said the parliamentarian’s ruling on the Medicaid provider tax rate will give lawmakers “a chance to get it right.”

“This is a chance for the Senate to fix a problem that they created and not defund rural hospitals,” Hawley said, later adding he supports the House language that would freeze the rate at 6% instead of decreasing it to 3.5% over several years. 

Hawley said hours before Trump’s event that he expects the president to get more involved in negotiations now that he’s back from a NATO conference in Europe and said Trump was in a “terrific mood” during a recent phone call.

“I think he wants this done. But he wants it done well. And he does not want this to be a Medicaid cuts bill,” Hawley said. “He made that very clear to me. He said this is a tax cut bill, it’s not a Medicaid cuts bill. I think he’s tired of hearing about all these Medicaid cuts, you know. As am I. It’s because there are too many Medicaid cuts.”

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy early Thursday night called on leaders to put the House’s language regarding Medicaid back into the bill, wiping out changes made by the Finance Committee.

“My position is that cuts, and especially drastic cuts, to Medicaid have to be avoided. The Senate bill cuts Medicaid too much,” the influential chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee wrote in a social media post. “I agree with President Trump, the House version is better.”

SNAP cuts

The Agriculture Committee also is reworking parts of its bill, some being closely watched by states, to meet the rules that govern reconciliation.

Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., said he expects to hear from the parliamentarian before the end of Thursday about whether a revised state cost share provision for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that’s based on error rate payments will be in the final bill.

“It was thrown out the first time, so we actually gave her revised text. If she rules the revised text is fine, then we’ll release it,” Boozman said.

The committee released a statement later in the day announcing the parliamentarian had cleared the revised state cost share for SNAP that’s based on a state’s error payment rate.

States that have SNAP error payment rates higher than 6% will have to contribute some of the cost of the program. The updated proposal will give states the option of choosing between fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026 to determine their match, which will begin during fiscal 2028. After that, a state’s match will be determined by its error payment rate for the last three fiscal years. 

State and local tax, ‘revenge tax’

Senate Republicans also remained stuck on finding a deduction level for state and local tax, or SALT, that passes muster with House Republicans who represent high-tax blue states.

The House version would allow taxpayers making under $500,000 to deduct up to $40,000 in SALT from their federal tax bill. Both the $40,000 cap and the $500,000 income threshold will increase annually at 1% until hitting a ceiling of $44,000 and $552,000. The deduction cap phases down for higher earners.

Senate Republicans and the White House sought to lower the income threshold but were shot down Thursday by House Republicans, according to multiple reports.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, the lead negotiator on SALT for Senate Republicans, said he remained optimistic.

“We’re gonna be in a good spot. We’re gonna find a landing spot,” Mullin said.

A Senate Finance Committee spokesperson declined to comment on current negotiations, including any proposed income level changes.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also weighed in on another tax provision: the so-called “revenge tax” on investments from countries whose trade policies the president views as unfair to U.S. businesses.

Bessent asked lawmakers to remove the up to 20% tax from the mega-bill following an agreement made with G7 partners, he wrote on social media.

“This understanding with our G7 partners provides greater certainty and stability for the global economy and will enhance growth and investment in the United States and beyond,” Bessent said.

The retaliation tax would have raised roughly $116 billion over 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Timing on votes

Republican lawmakers don’t have much time left to rework all of the ineligible provisions, clear them with the parliamentarian, read through final bill text, slog through a marathon amendment voting session in the Senate and then move the bill through the House before their self-imposed deadline.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing before Trump’s event that the president is “adamant” Congress must pass the “big, beautiful bill” within the next week, despite the latest ruling.  

“We expect that bill to be on the president’s desk for signature by July Fourth. I know there was a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian this morning,” Leavitt said. “Look, this is part of the process, this is part of the inner workings of the United States Senate. But the president is adamant about seeing this bill on his desk here at the White House by Independence Day.” 

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks to reporters at the Capitol as lawmakers work on the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" on June 25, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans appeared deeply divided Wednesday over how to establish a fund for rural hospitals to offset the budget impacts of Medicaid cuts in the “big, beautiful bill.”

The hospitals, which are generally already hurting financially, rely heavily on Medicaid, a state-federal partnership that provides health insurance for low-income households and for some people with disabilities.

GOP senators haven’t yet reached agreement on how to structure the fund, or on dozens of other unresolved provisions in the sweeping package, even though leaders hope to begin voting as soon as Friday. Still up in the air were agreements on major provisions of the measure involving the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food aid program for low-income people and a proposed selloff of certain public lands.

Republican leaders continued to project optimism. “We’re well on our way to getting this bill passed this week,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said during a floor speech, continuing to press ahead toward a self-imposed Fourth of July deadline. 

Others saw it differently. Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson cast doubt on the short timeframe leaders have set to reach final agreement and move the bill through both chambers.

“We’re still discussing some pretty fundamental issues,” Johnson said. “I’m just laying out the reality of the situation. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

‘The only person up here that’s ever ran a rural hospital’

Dueling plans to establish the rural hospital fund to ease the threat of Medicaid cuts circulated among senators working to finalize the massive tax and spending cut measure, but an agreement had not surfaced by late afternoon.

Unofficial details showed Senate Republicans eyeing the inclusion of a $15 billion fund — $3 billion a year between fiscal 2027 and fiscal 2031 — to help rural hospitals, according to multiple reports.

But Sen. Roger Marshall, who sits on the Senate Committee on Finance, said he wants to increase that fund to $5 billion annually, with “half of that going to rural hospitals, and half of it going to primary care and prescription drugs and throw in physical therapy and occupational therapy, all the others as well.”

The Kansas Republican and physician said “we should probably only do it for four or five years and then regroup and see where we are.”

“I’m the only person up here that’s ever ran a rural hospital — I actually know something about them,” he added.

While Marshall said he loves “90%” of the broader bill, he said not nearly enough is being cut.

“But I can’t get the votes to do that, so it’d still be the largest cut in spending in my lifetime anyway,” he said, noting that “it’s going to be hard for the House to vote against it.”

Fund size criticized

On a midday call with reporters, Traci Gleason with the Missouri Budget Project said the stabilization fund being batted around by lawmakers “would fall well short of addressing these problems.”

“Forty-three percent of Missouri’s rural hospitals are at risk of closing, and 17% are considered to be at immediate risk,” said Gleason, who spoke during a virtual press briefing organized by the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

“Those figures don’t account for all of the other health care providers in rural communities, like federally qualified health centers and others that operate on these incredibly thin margins. So the massive cuts to Medicaid are what is creating the problem and the only real way to address it is for Congress to not make these massive cuts,” she said.

‘Problematic’ Medicaid cuts

Sen. Susan Collins was advocating for a much bigger rural hospital stabilization fund, at $100 billion.

“I don’t think that solves the entire problem,” the Maine Republican and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee said.

“The Senate cuts in Medicaid are far deeper than the House cuts, and I think that’s problematic as well.”

Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia said that the $15 billion “is better than zero.”

“You know, naturally, I’d want it to be as high as it possibly can,” he said, adding that rural hospitals are the “lifeblood” of his state.

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a loud voice against Medicaid benefit cuts, said a stabilization fund is a “good idea but we’re still going to have to address the longer term effects of this.”

When asked for a dollar figure, Hawley said “it depends on the structure of it.”

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn said he keeps hearing the Senate will take a procedural vote on Friday, though that isn’t set in stone. 

“Should be a fun weekend for all of us,” Cornyn said. “Can’t wait.”

Once the Senate votes on what is called a motion to proceed, there’s a maximum of 20 hours of floor debate before the chamber must begin its marathon amendment voting session and eventually a passage vote.

SNAP provisions

Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, said a revised version of his committee’s bill had not yet been reviewed by the parliamentarian.

The updated text alters a section restructuring the cost-share of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, a key food assistance program for low-income people.

The provision would require states for the first time to shoulder some of the cost of the program’s benefits. The amount a state owes would be determined by its error payment rate, with greater error rates requiring a higher state share.

Complex rules govern what can and can’t be included in the measure. The Senate parliamentarian ruled the language in the initial proposal did not comply with the chamber’s reconciliation rules.

The updated proposal would allow states more flexibility during the policy’s phase-in in fiscal 2028, allowing them to choose either the error rate in fiscal 2025 or fiscal 2026.

Boozman told reporters that change sought to respond to the parliamentarian’s ruling.

The parliamentarian “asked us to allow them (states) to use a different time frame — essentially gave them more time to understand what their error rate would be and to plan for it,” Boozman said. “And so we adjusted for that and I think we satisfied it.”

Lee and public lands

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee of Utah reportedly narrowed a provision that would mandate the sale of Bureau of Land Management lands. He has not publicly said where it stands with the parliamentarian.

A committee spokesman did not return messages seeking clarification Tuesday and Wednesday, but a version of the changes obtained by news media shows changes consistent with what Lee proposed Monday.

Those changes include limiting the mandated sales to only the BLM — and not U.S. Forest Service lands, as Lee had initially proposed — and lowering the percentage of the agency’s lands that must be sold to between .25% and .5%. The initial proposal required between .5% and .75%.

The updated provision would also only require lands located within 5 miles of a population center to be sold and exempts lands that are currently used for grazing or another “valid existing right that is incompatible with the development of housing,” according to a copy of the changes obtained by hunting and angling publication Outdoor Life.

The provision has sparked opposition from Western lawmakers, including a handful of conservatives.

But it also has its share of supporters. Alaska Republican Dan Sullivan told reporters he had not seen the updated text but remained supportive of the idea.

“I’ve been supportive of what Sen. Lee is trying to do,” he said. “We have a lot of public lands in Alaska that the federal government abuses. But we’re in a good discussion on that, so I need to see the update.”

 

The Downtown Children's Center in St. Louis. (Photo by Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent.) 

WASHINGTON — Republicans and Democrats on a U.S. House Education and Workforce subcommittee agreed at a Tuesday hearing that child care affordability was a problem, but proposed different solutions.

While Republicans touted a longstanding block grant and called for choice and flexibility in the child care system, Democrats pushed for more federal investments, including legislative efforts that would cap the cost of child care.

For just one child, families spend between 8.9% and 16% of the median family income on full-day care, according to Department of Labor data from 2022.

“Child care is essential to helping working parents thrive and our local economies grow,” Rep. Kevin Kiley, chair of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education, said at the panel’s hearing.

“At the same time, child care can be exceedingly expensive — the cost is only climbing,” said the California Republican, whose panel is part of the House Committee on Education and Workforce.

Kiley said the Child Care and Development Block Grant “exists to help working families access affordable child care, giving them the freedom to remain in the workforce and increase their economic opportunity, one solution to the problem of child care affordability and access.”

The grant, funded at roughly $8.75 billion in fiscal 2024, goes to states, tribes and territories to help low-income working families access child care.

Kiley noted that “choice” is a program pillar, “giving parents the freedom to make both lifestyle and economic decisions that best meet their individual family’s needs.”

Caitlin Codella Low, managing director of human capital at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank, noted that annually, “the average cost of child care exceeds $10,000 per child, and it’s more than public college tuition in most states, more than the cost of rent in all 50.”

“Employers are paying the price — child care challenges lead to higher absenteeism, lower retention and difficulty recruiting talent,” she added.

Local programs

Todd Barton, the mayor of Crawfordsville, Indiana, highlighted his community’s efforts in addressing a shortage of affordable, high-quality child care.

Barton said that shortage has “deeply affected” the community’s workforce and economic potential.

Some of those efforts include the formation of a child care task force that evolved into an early childhood coalition, a full-day summer program for school-aged children and an early learning center that Barton said has already increased the community’s child care capacity by more than 30%.

Barton said that “to sustain this scale of work, we need strong federal support,” noting that “programs like the Child Care (and) Development Block Grant and Employer-Provided Child Care Credit are essential tools that we need at our disposal.”

Dems blast cuts

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, ranking member of the subcommittee, said that “without bold and sustained federal investment, child care costs will continue to rise and the workforce that provides the care will continue to struggle.”

The Oregon Democrat blasted the proposed cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as part of congressional Republicans’ reconciliation package.

Bonamici described Medicaid and SNAP as “programs that support children, families, child care centers and the child care workforce.”

She also highlighted the Child Care for Working Families Act, which Virginia’s Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the full committee, and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, reintroduced in their respective chambers during the previous session of Congress.

Bonamici said the bill “would cap the cost of child care at 7% of income, making it affordable for all parents and also provide historic investments in the child care workforce, including higher pay, better benefits and improved training opportunities.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has made sweeping cuts within the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families.

The administration reportedly closed down at least five Office of Head Start regional offices earlier this year.

Ruth Friedman, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, said “we are already seeing very bad impacts from those closings.”

She added that “local programs are not getting the support and the answers they need, grants are coming slowly to them, which is very, very problematic in Head Start, because they really work month-to-month with their budget and lost an enormous amount of expertise on the local needs those programs serve.”

Rep. Summer Lee also called for more federal investment in child care, saying “existing programs are, quite frankly, not cutting it.”

“We know that for every dollar we invest in early childhood education, we save substantially more on services that children won’t need as they grow up,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said.

She called for passage of the Scott-Murray bill, as well as a measure that would guarantee universal child care access.

“This is why we need to pass the Democrats’ legislation like the Child Care for Every Community Act and Child Care for Working Families Act, which I’m looking forward to introducing with Ranking Member Scott in the near future.” 

From left, U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, both Minnesota Democrats. (Courtesy photos.)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith honored Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, during remarks on the Senate floor.

The Minnesota Democratic senators on Tuesday reflected on Melissa’s leadership, devotion to her community and many contributions to her state.

The Hortmans were killed over the weekend in what has been called a political assassination. Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also shot and are on a path to recovery.

Authorities have arrested Vance Boelter, who is accused of killing the Hortmans and shooting and injuring the Hoffmans. He faces both federal and state charges.

“Melissa is someone that I wish the whole Senate and the whole nation knew,” Klobuchar said. “We treasured her in Minnesota. She was the epitome of what you want in a public servant. She went into it for all the right reasons.”

Klobuchar said Melissa “knew no limits in terms of trying to get people together, trying to get things done.” She described both Melissa and Mark as “great neighbors, wonderful friends and great parents for their beloved children, Sophie and Colin.”

The senior senator recited a bit of Hortman’s lengthy list of legislative accomplishments: “When a Minnesota student gets a free school lunch, that’s Melissa. When a Minnesota parent is able to take paid leave to spend those early, precious moments with a newborn, that’s Melissa. When a Minnesota voter casts a ballot without facing unfair discrimination, that’s Melissa.”

Smith, who confronted her Republican colleague U.S. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah on Monday over some tawdry tweets he posted after the killings, said Melissa Hortman was funny, straightforward, kind, smart, driven and determined.

“She did well because she worked hard at everything that she did, from her first job making burritos, to her last job leading her caucus through a deeply divided legislative session.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., center, accompanied by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., left, and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., right, speaks to reporters following a weekly Republican policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 19, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republican leaders expressed confidence Tuesday they’ll be able to tamp down opposition to various elements of the party’s “big, beautiful bill” in time to approve the measure before the Fourth of July, though they acknowledged there’s considerable work left to do. 

GOP senators from across the political spectrum have debated the broad strokes of the tax and spending cut legislation for weeks, but raised fresh concerns after the influential Finance Committee released its portion of the package, which addresses taxes and Medicaid. Some GOP senators objected to a change in Medicaid policy they said could harm rural hospitals.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said during a press conference that reducing the Medicaid provider tax rate that states can charge from the current 6% to 3.5% by 2031 represented “important reforms.”

“We think they rebalance the program in a way that provides the right incentives to cover the people who are supposed to be covered by Medicaid,” Thune said. “But we continue to hear from our members specifically on components or pieces of the bill that they would like to see modified or changed or have concerns about. And we’re working through that.”

While the complex provision is deep in the weeds of Medicaid policy, several GOP senators expressed concern during interviews Tuesday that changing the provider tax rate in states that expanded Medicaid coverage under the Affordable Care Act would be a problem for rural hospitals.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said he opposes that provision and wants to see GOP leaders put back in the House language that would freeze the Medicaid provider tax rate at 6%.

“We have to do something,” Hawley said. “If we pass this as it is, there’s going to be a lot of rural hospitals in Missouri that close. So that’s a big problem.”

West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice said he had “all kinds of concerns” about provisions in the Finance Committee’s portion of the “big, beautiful bill,” which the panel released Monday.

“The House side on the provider tax and everything said, freeze it,” Justice said. “Now there’s a whole lot (of) different gyrations going on with that and everything. And there’s other things that we just need to — just give us some time. We need to work our way through it.”

Justice said he didn’t plan to be a “rubber stamp” on anything and appeared to discourage GOP leaders from bringing the package to the floor next week ahead of their self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.

“I would love to get it done, like the president wants to get it done, by the Fourth of July. I would love for us to be able to do that and everything,” Justice said. “But I think, way more importantly than anything, we got to get it right.”

Other Medicaid issues

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski declined to weigh in on the changes to the Medicaid provider tax rate since her state doesn’t use it the way many others do.

“I don’t have a dog in that fight, because we don’t have provider taxes in Alaska,” Murkowski said. “We’re the only state that’s actually maybe playing by the rules.”

But Murkowski told reporters she does have issues with other ways the legislation would change Medicaid, the state-federal health program for lower income people, and expects the bill will undergo revisions before a final floor vote.

“I don’t think it’s going to stay in this form, let’s just put it that way,” Murkowski said.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said he’d vote against the package if leaders bring it to the floor next week as planned and said he expects that if they rush floor consideration, the entire bill will fail to pass.

“I hope not because my guess is it’ll fail and I don’t want to see it fail. I want this thing to succeed,” Johnson said. “Again, the ball has been in the Senate court for two weeks — two weeks. But now we’re seeing language. Now we’re finally seriously considering some of these ideas, let’s have time to seriously consider it and hopefully get them incorporated in the bill.”

The House voted mostly along party lines to approve its version of the package in late May, but Senate Republicans have been reworking the bill in the weeks since.

Among the changes in the Senate, Republicans plan to raise the country’s debt limit by $5 trillion, a full $1 trillion more than House GOP lawmakers proposed in their version.

Possible recess delay

Arkansas Sen. John Boozman said that if the Senate doesn’t vote to approve the package the week of June 23, they’ll likely stay in town the following week to debate the bill, instead of heading home for the Fourth of July week break.

But he cautioned that “the longer it hangs out, the more difficult it is” to pass.

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley declined to answer questions about whether he supports or wants to change his chamber’s newly unveiled Medicaid provisions.

“Ask me that question in a couple days because there’s still discussion going on about it,” he said.

Sen. James Lankford praised aspects of the bill, including, “long-term tax policy that’s actually permanent,” which he said is “important for individuals and for small businesses.”

“We’re doing the full expensing, making that permanent — that doesn’t change a dollar as far as the income coming into the Treasury, but very significant for our economy,” the Oklahoma Republican said.

Lankford said he also likes “the R&D tax credit piece to make sure we’re competing with China on it,” “modernization of the air traffic control system,” as well as “some dollars that are going to border security, which has been very important to me, which they have been asking for for a long time and trying to get into structural things to the border that are needed there.” 

The U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators emerged from a briefing with federal law enforcement officials Tuesday saying they’ll likely boost funding on safety and security for members and their families in an upcoming government funding bill.

The hour-long briefing by U.S. Capitol Police and the Senate sergeant-at-arms followed the weekend assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband as well as the attempted murder of a state senator and his wife.

The gunman had a list of Democratic elected officials, including members of Congress, and their home addresses, which renewed long-standing security concerns among lawmakers.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., spoke about the shootings during a floor speech shortly after the meeting, pressing for an end to political violence.

“I’m profoundly grateful to local law enforcement that the alleged shooter is in custody and I look forward to seeing him prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Thune said. “There is no place for this kind of violence in our country. None.”

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, said that California Democrat Adam Schiff and Pennsylvania Republican Dave McCormick suggested during the closed-door meeting that Congress bolster funding for member safety.

“The Capitol Police and the sergeant at arms gave a very detailed discussion of how they can protect members here, back in our states, at our homes, in our offices,” Schumer said. “The violence, threats against elected officials, including people in the Senate, has dramatically increased, and that means we need more protection. We need more money.”

The USCP and other law enforcement agencies, Schumer said, are taking some immediate steps to bolster security, though he said “there are other things that will take a little while with more resources.”

Schumer also called on political leaders to be more cautious about how they discuss policy differences.

“The rhetoric that’s encouraging violence is coming from too many powerful people in this country,” Schumer said. “And we need firm, strong denouncement of all violence and violent rhetoric — that should be from the president and from all of the elected officials.”

Minnesota Democratic Sen. Tina Smith called the meeting “very productive,” but didn’t want to elaborate.

“I’m not going to comment any more,” Smith told reporters. “I think it’s important for members’ safety that we don’t talk a lot about what is being done to keep us safe in order to keep us safe.”

Support for funding increase

Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., said she expects the panel will increase funding for USCP in the bill that covers the upcoming fiscal year.

“I believe we need to do that,” Murray said.

Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons said the current situation is “incredibly concerning, gravely concerning.”

“And I appreciate the prompt and thorough bipartisan response,” Coons said.

Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is running for governor in Alabama, said USCP will increase its security measures for members of Congress.

“They’re going to try to do as much as they can, that’s about it,” he said after the briefing. “You know, security at home and here.”

Asked whether there’s a legislative solution or anything lawmakers can do, Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Lankford told reporters “there’s a cultural solution.”

Sen. Martin Heinrich did not go into details about the meeting but said “everybody is having a very robust discussion about the sort of heightened security, dangerous environment we’re all operating in right now and what to do about that, both tactically to meet some of that threat, but also how to reduce the volatility of the environment that we’re in every day.”

The New Mexico Democrat is the ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee, which funds USCP and the sergeant at arms.

Asked about boosting USCP funding, Heinrich said this is “an obvious place that lawmakers will look,” but added that senators should be strategic about funding.

“We also just need to be smart and targeted about this,” he said. “There are a lot of things that can be done that don’t require a lot of funding that would reduce the scale of the target that is on the backs of anybody in public office these days.”

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., left, listens as Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, center, speaks to reporters outside of the West Wing of the White House on June4, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republican Leader John Thune will spend a crucial next few weeks working behind the scenes with other top GOP senators to reshape the party’s “big beautiful bill” — a balancing test accompanied in recent days by incendiary exchanges between President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk over whether the current proposals are so bad that Congress should just go back to the drawing board.

South Dakota’s Thune will need to gain support from deficit hawks, who want to see the mega-bill cut at least $2 trillion in spending, and moderates, who are closely monitoring how less federal funding for safety net programs like Medicaid and food assistance could harm their constituents and home-state institutions like rural hospitals.

Interviews by States Newsroom with Republican senators in early June showed many major elements of the package could change, including provisions that would put states on the hook for unanticipated costs. Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, for example, indicated the Senate may rewrite a proposal in the House-passed bill that would shift some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food aid to low-income people, to state governments.

“We can do whatever we want to do,” the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee chairman said when asked by States Newsroom about amending that policy.

The final deal — intended to extend the 2017 tax cuts — cannot lose more than three GOP senators and still make it back across the Capitol to the House for final approval, since all Democrats are expected to oppose the bill. Thune only needs a majority vote in the Senate for the special process being used by Republicans.

Internal debates about just how to rework the Trump-backed tax and spending cuts measure began in the first week of June during meetings on Capitol Hill and at the White House, as GOP senators began critiquing the House-passed package line-by-line to ensure it complies with their strict rules for the complex reconciliation process and their policy goals.

Republicans said during interviews that several provisions in the House version likely won’t comply with the chamber’s Byrd rule, which could force lawmakers to toss out some provisions.

Complicating all of it was the very public back-and-forth between not just Trump but GOP leaders and former White House adviser Musk over the bill, which Musk on social media labeled “a disgusting abomination” and a “big, ugly spending bill” for its effect on the deficit and debt limit. “KILL the BILL,” Musk said on X, the platform he owns. Senate leaders so far have dismissed Musk’s criticisms.

Fragile House coalition

The talks, and whatever the legislation looks like after a marathon amendment voting session expected in late June, have already raised deep concerns among House GOP lawmakers, who will have to vote on the bill again in order to send it to Trump.

The extremely narrow majorities mean House Republican leaders cannot lose more than four of their own members if all the lawmakers in that chamber vote on the party-line bill.

Any changes the Senate makes could unbalance the fragile coalition of votes Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., cobbled together last month for a 215-214 vote. But GOP senators are adamant they will amend the legislation.

Complicating matters is a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that shows the proposed changes to tax law, Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and higher education aid wouldn’t actually help to reduce deficits during the next decade but raise them by more than $2.4 trillion.

The numbers are the exact opposite for what Republicans hoped their sweeping tax and spending cuts package would accomplish.

Scrutiny begins

The first stop for the House-passed reconciliation package in the Senate appears to be the parliamentarian’s office, where staff have begun evaluating whether each provision in the current version of the bill complies with the upper chamber’s strict rules.

Boozman said staff on his panel have already begun meeting with the parliamentarian to go over the House provisions within its jurisdiction.

He expects that section of the package will have to change to comply with the strict rules that govern the reconciliation process in the Senate and to better fit that chamber’s policy goals.

“We can’t really decide exactly what we want to use in the House version until we know what’s eligible,” Boozman said. “We’ve got some other ideas too that we asked them about. But we need to know, of the ideas that we have, what would be viable options as far as being Byrd eligible.”

The Byrd rule, which is actually a law, requires reconciliation bills to address federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit. This generally bars lawmakers from using the special budget process to change policies that don’t have a significant impact on those three areas.

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is campaigning to become his home state’s next governor, said pushing some of the cost of the nutrition program to states may be problematic.

“We’re trying to send more costs to the states. Most states can’t afford that, so we want to take care of people, but we need people to go back to work,” Tuberville said. “It’s not a forever entitlement. It’s for part-time, you know, take care of yourself until you get a job, go back to work and let people that need it really, really get it.”

Rural hospitals on edge

Senate GOP leaders will have to navigate how best to reduce federal spending on Medicaid, the state-federal health program for lower-income people and some with disabilities, that is relied on by tens of millions of Americans, many of whom are loyal Republican voters.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that 7.8 million people would lose access to Medicaid during the next decade if the House’s policy changes are implemented as written.

There are also concerns among GOP lawmakers about how losing the revenue that comes with treating Medicaid patients would impact rural health care access and hospitals.

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said under no circumstances would he vote for a bill that cuts benefits to Medicaid recipients and is worried about how provisions in the House package would affect rural hospitals.

“They’re very concerned about it, rightly so,” Hawley said, referring to conversations he’s had with health care systems in his home state.

“This is something that we need to work on. I don’t know why we would penalize rural hospitals,” he added. “If you want to reduce health care spending, then cap the price of prescription drugs. I mean, that’s the way to do it. If you want to get major savings in the health care sector, don’t close rural hospitals, don’t take away benefits from working people. Cap the costs, cap the price that (the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) is going to pay for prescription drugs.”

West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said she’s not yet come to a decision about whether to keep, amend, or completely scrap some of the House changes to Medicaid.

“I talked to a lot of our hospitals when I was home to see what the impacts would be, because we have a very high Medicaid population,” Capito said. “I want to see it work and be preserved, but I want it to be there for future generations. And it’s just getting way out of control on the spend side. So right now, we’re looking at everything.”

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy — chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — said he doesn’t expect all of the health care provisions in the House bill make it through the “Byrd bath” with the parliamentarian. But he declined to go into detail.

“Some of it is more regulatory, that’s all I can say,” Cassidy said.

West Virginia’s Sen. Jim Justice said he is in favor of requiring some Medicaid enrollees to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month to stay on the program, a sentiment shared by many of his GOP colleagues.

“I’m good with every bit of that,” he said. 

But Justice expects the Senate will make its own changes to the package and that it will be “proud of their own pond.”

“Any frog that’s not proud of your own pond’s not much of a frog,” Justice said.

He did not go into detail on what those changes would entail.

SALT shakers

The state and local tax deduction, or SALT, represents another tightrope  for Thune, who is no fan of the changes made in the House. But he has said repeatedly this week he understands altering that language too much could mean a Senate-amended version of the bill never makes it back through the House to actually become law.

Thune said outside the White House following a June 4 meeting with Trump and others that there will very likely be changes to SALT.

“There isn’t a single Republican senator who cares much about the SALT issue,” Thune said. “It’s just not an issue that plays.” States that are most affected generally don’t elect Republicans to the Senate.

The House tax-writing panel originally proposed raising the SALT cap from $10,000 to $30,000, but Johnson had to raise that to $40,000 in order to secure votes from House Republicans who represent higher tax states like California, New Jersey and New York. The revised cap would benefit more high-income taxpayers in their states.

“In 2017, that was one of the best reforms we had in the bill,” Thune said. “But we understand it’s about 51 and 218. So we will work with our House counterparts and with the White House to try to get that issue in a place where we can deliver the votes and get the bill across the finish line.”

Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, but can rely on Vice President J.D. Vance to break a tied vote if necessary.

At least 218 House lawmakers must vote to pass bills when all 435 seats are filled. But with three vacancies at the moment, legislation can move through that chamber with 216 votes. The GOP has 220 seats at the moment, meaning Johnson can afford four defections on party-line bills.

North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven told reporters this week that he’d like to see GOP senators rework the SALT section of the bill, even if that causes challenges for Speaker Johnson’s ability to pass a final version.

“Let’s talk about SALT, for example. The House has a very large SALT number. The Senate is probably going to take a look at that,” Hoeven said. “There’ll be a lot of areas we can look at. There’ll be other things we’re going to look at. We’d like to get to $2 trillion in savings.”

Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno joined in putting his House colleagues on notice that they likely won’t get the agreement they struck with the speaker in the final version of the bill.

“I think we’re going to make common-sense changes. For example, the SALT cap, by the way, something that definitely helps very wealthy people in blue states,” Moreno said. “I think that cap, the 400% increase, is too much, so we’re going to work on tweaking that.”

Hawley, of Missouri, speaking more generally about the tax provisions, said he would like the Senate to make sure middle-class Americans benefit from the tax changes, just as much as companies.

“I want to be clear, I’m in favor of additional tax relief for working people. So my view is this corporate tax rate, which they lowered in 2017, they made that permanent back then. I know some workers that would like permanent tax relief,” Hawley said. “So I think it’s imperative that we do some addition to tax relief for workers. So I think that’s important.”

A new $4 trillion debt limit

Deficit hawks in the Senate have also voiced objections to raising the nation’s debt limit by $4 trillion, arguing that GOP leaders haven’t done enough to assuage their concerns about the nation’s fiscal trajectory.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul argued that the debt limit increase is more about next year’s midterm elections than good governance.

“​​This is really about avoiding having to talk about the debt during election times because people like to go home and talk to the Rotary or the Lions Club and tell them how they’re fiscally conservative and they’re against debt,” Paul said. “It’s embarrassing to them to have to vote to keep raising the debt. But they’re unwilling to have the courage to actually look at all spending.”

Paul suggested that House Republicans created problems by inflating some of the spending levels in their package, including to continue construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Paul is chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

“The $46.5 billion for the wall is eight times higher than the current cost of the wall. If you’re going to do 1,000 miles, you can actually do it for $6.5 billion. They want $46.5 billion,” Paul said. “We can’t be fiscally conservative until it comes to the border, and then we’re no longer fiscally conservative.”

The border wall has been a constant focus for Trump, who made it a central part of his 2016 presidential campaign, when he said repeatedly that the United States would build it and Mexico would pay for it.

South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Budget Committee, hinted during a brief interview that Congress can only cut so much spending without going near programs like Social Security, which accounted for $1.5 trillion in expenditures last year, or Medicare, which spent $865 billion. Both are normally considered untouchable.

“I think we’re going to make some changes to try to find more spending reductions. I think that’s a fair criticism of the bill, but you can’t do Social Security by law,” Graham said, referring to one of the many rules that govern the reconciliation process. “Nobody’s proposed anything in the Medicare area.”

Graham added that “trying to make the bill more fiscally responsible is a good thing, but we need to pass it.” 

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon testifies before the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee on Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (Screenshot from committee livestream)

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Linda McMahon took heat from Democrats on the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce on Wednesday over the Trump administration’s initiatives to dramatically overhaul the federal role in education and eliminate the Education Department.

Lawmakers took aim at President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget request — which includes $12 billion in spending cuts — as well as efforts to dismantle the agency and threats to yank funds for schools that use race-conscious practices across aspects of student life.

A department summary said the cut “reflects an agency that is responsibly winding down.”

Chair Tim Walberg, a Michigan Republican, praised McMahon’s efforts.

“We believe in reducing bureaucracy, trusting our educators, trusting our state and local leaders and trusting the innovators who are pushing against the barriers thrown up by the bureaucracy,” he said. “And above all, we trust our parents — this is our vision, and thankfully, we finally have an administration in place that shares this vision.”

But Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the panel, blasted the department’s priorities, including the budget proposal, which he said “would make it more difficult for students to enroll in and afford a college education by proposing reductions in funding to need-based grants such as Pell and work study.”

“At the end of the day, it is the students of this nation who will suffer under this budget proposal,” the Virginia Democrat said. “Students from low-income families and students with disabilities, English learners, international students and students of color will face more hurdles accessing equal educational opportunity.”

The budget calls for eliminating key programs administered by the Education Department for disadvantaged and low-income students, including Federal TRIO Programs and the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR UP.

The budget request also proposes a $60 million increase to expand the number of charter schools in the country and lowering nearly $1,700 from the maximum amount a student can receive annually through the Pell Grant — a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college.

A federal judge in Massachusetts in May dealt the administration a major setback to its education agenda, ordering the agency to reinstate the more than 1,300 employees gutted during a reduction in force effort, blocking the department from carrying out Trump’s order to close the department and barring the department from transferring the student loan portfolio and special education services to other federal agencies while the case challenging those policies is ongoing.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday upheld the trial judge’s order. 

DEI lesson plans

Democrats on Wednesday took aim at the administration’s efforts against diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs. The administration had sought to bar schools from using DEI practices across aspects of student life to continue to receive federal funding, an effort that multiple federal judges have blocked.

Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania said the Trump administration “has undoubtedly revived the culture of racism we haven’t seen since the Jim Crow era,” adding that “they’ve made it clear that open attacks on Black and brown and other marginalized communities is not just tolerated, but it’s encouraged.”

Asked by Lee whether a lesson plan on the Tulsa race massacre would be considered “illegal DEI,” McMahon replied: “I’d have to get back to you on that.”

Lee then asked McMahon whether she knew what the Tulsa race massacre was, to which the secretary said: “I’d like to look into it more and get back to you on it.”

McMahon was similarly noncommittal on a question about assigning school desegregation icon Ruby Bridges’ autobiography.

State flexibility

The budget proposal also calls for consolidating 18 grant programs for K-12 education and replacing them with a single formula grant program, which the administration says will give states spending flexibility.

Democrats at Wednesday’s hearing blasted the administration’s push to return education “back to the states,” noting that some states have poor records on education.

Rep. Yassamin Ansari said the education system is “absolutely failing” many students in the United States. The main cause of that, the Arizona Democrat said, was that many states have “woefully underfunded” their public education systems and not, as the administration has claimed, due to “too much” federal oversight or DEI policies.

When asked by Ansari what risk McMahon weighed for public schools and universities if federal education funding is gutted or devolved to the states, the secretary said “federal education wouldn’t necessarily be gutted” and that “there would be more money to go to the states without the bureaucracy of the Department of Education.”

Ansari rejected that claim, noting that some states, including hers, have an “abysmal track record of managing education.” She pointed to Arizona’s low rankings on public education, teacher salaries, test scores and the highest student-to-teacher ratio in the country.

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court late Wednesday upheld a lower court’s order requiring the U.S. Education Department to reinstate more than 1,300 fired employees and blocking an executive order to dismantle the department and a directive to transfer some services to other federal agencies.

The ruling from a three-judge panel in the United States Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit marks a setback for President Donald Trump’s education policy agenda that includes transferring the federal student loan portfolio and special education services out of the Education Department on the way to closing the department entirely.

The panel kept in place a preliminary injunction issued by a district court in Massachusetts requiring the administration to reverse course at least while a case  challenging its education policies is ongoing.

“What is at stake in this case, the District Court found, was whether a nearly half-century-old cabinet department would be permitted to carry out its statutorily assigned functions or prevented from doing so by a mass termination of employees aimed at implementing the effective closure of that department,” 1st Circuit Chief Judge David J. Barron wrote in the panel’s opinion.

“Given the extensive findings made by the District Court and the absence of any contrary evidence having been submitted by the appellants, we conclude that the appellants’ stay motion does not warrant our interfering with the ordinary course of appellate adjudication in the face of what the record indicates would be the apparent consequences of our doing so,” Barron wrote.

The Trump administration had immediately challenged an order in May from U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun of Massachusetts.

Joun granted a preliminary injunction in a consolidated case stemming from a pair of lawsuits from a coalition of labor and advocacy groups and a slew of Democratic attorneys general.

One of the lawsuits comes from a coalition of Democratic attorneys general in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and Wisconsin.

The other lawsuit was brought by the American Federation of Teachers, its Massachusetts chapter, AFSCME Council 93, the American Association of University Professors, the Service Employees International Union and two school districts in Massachusetts.

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. 

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon testifies at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on June 3, 2025. (Screenshot from committee livestream)

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators from both parties pressed Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Tuesday over the Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate funding for key programs administered by the Education Department for disadvantaged and low-income students.

McMahon defended those and other sweeping changes outlined in President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget request — which calls for $12 billion in spending cuts at the department — while testifying before the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies to outline the president’s proposal.

Tuesday’s hearing followed the Education secretary’s testimony in front of the corresponding House panel in May. The House and Senate appropriations committees share jurisdiction over the bill to fund the department for the coming fiscal year.

McMahon said the budget request takes a “significant step” toward her and Trump’s goal “to responsibly eliminate the federal bureaucracy, cut waste and give education back to states, parents and educators.”

Senators blast move to eliminate programs

But the budget’s proposal to do away with the Federal TRIO Programs, which were funded at nearly $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2024, as well as the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR UP, which were funded at $388 million, garnered criticism from both Republicans and Democrats on the panel.

While the Federal TRIO Programs include federal outreach and student services programs to help support students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, GEAR UP aims to prepare low-income students for college.

Neither TRIO nor GEAR UP has “met most of its performance measures for a number of years” and states and localities are “best suited” to determine how to support the activities in the programs rather than the federal government, according to the summary of the department’s more detailed budget request.

Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the broader Senate Appropriations Committee, said she “strongly” disagrees with the budget’s proposal to cut the TRIO programs.

The Maine Republican, who co-chairs the Congressional TRIO Caucus, said she’s “seen the lives of countless first-generation and low-income students, not only in Maine, but across the country, who often face barriers to accessing a college education changed by the TRIO program.”

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, chair of the subcommittee, echoed Collins’ concerns about cutting TRIO and GEAR UP, and encouraged her panel to reevaluate those parts of the budget request.

The West Virginia Republican said “my state, and many of our states, but mine in particular, I think, has a lot of first-time collegegoers, a lot of students that don’t have the aspirational goals either within their family, they’re not looking at how they can achieve education or a certificate or whatever, and that’s where I think these programs have been particularly useful.” 

McMahon said that while she “absolutely” agrees that there is some effectiveness in the TRIO programs, “these programs were negotiated at very tough terms in that the Department of Education has no ability to go in and look at the accountability of TRIO programs.”

“It specifically eliminates our ability to do that, and I just think that we aren’t able to see the effectiveness across the board that we would normally look to see with our federal spending,” she said.

Sen. Jeff Merkley fired back at McMahon’s claim, noting that there are benchmarks set and annual performance reports required for grantees.

“Let me just say, your argument that there’s no studies, no accountability, is just actually wrong, and the fact that you’re coming here not even having looked at your own department’s studies of these programs in order to be informed about them is profoundly troubling,” the Oregon Democrat said.

Education Department ‘responsibly winding down’

The White House released new details on the proposed budget last week, and according to a summary, the $12 billion spending cut “reflects an agency that is responsibly winding down.”

The more detailed request includes lowering nearly $1,700 from the maximum amount a student can receive annually through the Pell Grant — a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college.

The budget proposal also calls for consolidating 18 grant programs for K-12 education and replacing them with a $2 billion formula grant that would give states spending flexibility. The document asks for a $60 million increase to expand the number of charter schools in the country.

The proposal came as Trump has sought to dramatically redefine the federal role in education.

The administration was hit with a major setback to its education agenda in May after a federal judge in Massachusetts ordered the Education Department to reinstate the more than 1,300 employees who were gutted through a reduction in force effort.

The judge also blocked the agency from carrying out Trump’s executive order calling on McMahon to facilitate the closure of her own department and barred the department from carrying out the president’s directive to transfer the student loan portfolio and special education services out of the agency.

Protestor Pat Braun carries a sign April 23, 2025, in Rapid City, South Dakota, to protest the cancellation of student visas. (Photo by Seth Tupper/South Dakota Searchlight) 

WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says his agency and the Department of Homeland Security will work to “aggressively revoke” visas for Chinese students.

Rubio’s announcement offered few details but said “under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

Chinese students comprise the second-largest group of international students in the United States, behind Indian students. 

The move is part of the Trump administration’s continuing immigration crackdown and battle with higher education.

In an ongoing scuffle with Harvard University, a reflection of the administration’s efforts to crack down on “woke” institutions and go after campuses they say are harboring antisemitism, the government moved to halt the school’s ability to enroll international students last week.

But Harvard sued over the effort, and the revocation has been temporarily blocked in court.

Under the Trump administration, the State Department has revoked visas of international students who were involved in campus protests and other activities related to Israel’s war in Gaza. Some students were detained by immigration authorities as part of that effort.

Focus on China

In his Wednesday announcement, Rubio said the State Department would also “revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.” 

At the department’s Thursday press briefing, spokesperson Tammy Bruce declined to get into specifics regarding the number of students who would be impacted or what falls within “critical fields,” as Rubio’s statement noted.

Bruce said the United States “will not tolerate the CCP’s exploitation of U.S. universities, or theft of U.S. research, intellectual property or technologies to grow its military power, conduct intelligence collection or repress voices of opposition.”

More than 277,000 Chinese students studied in the United States during the 2023-24 academic year — making up nearly one-quarter of the more than 1,126,000 total international students in that school year, according to a report from the Institute of International Education and the State Department.

However, the total number of students from China declined slightly from the 2022-23 school year, when that figure stood at more than 289,000.

In the 2023-24 academic year, Chinese students made up one-quarter or more of the total international student population within California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington state and Wisconsin.

New York University, Northeastern University in Massachusetts and Columbia University in New York hosted the highest number of international students during that academic year.

Students from South Korea, Canada, Taiwan, Vietnam and Nigeria also comprised large groups of international students in the United States during the 2023-24 school year.  

The announcement raises myriad logistical questions over how the United States would carry out the effort, as well as how officials would determine who has “connections to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Meanwhile, the State Department temporarily paused new student visa interviews earlier this week as the administration prepares to expand the screening of applicants’ activity on social media, according to multiple reports.

Proposed changes to higher education policy in congressional Republicans’ tax and spending bill could weaken protections for student borrowers, advocacy groups say.  (Photo illustration via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The massive tax and spending package U.S. House Republicans narrowly advanced last week could hinder accountability for for-profit colleges and weaken student-borrower protections, student advocates say.

The bill, now headed to the Senate, calls for sweeping changes to education policy under what GOP lawmakers deem “regulatory relief.” 

That includes eliminating a rule governing for-profit schools, removing “gainful employment” as a goal for colleges receiving federal funds and hindering consumer protections for borrowers defrauded or facing school closures.

GOP lawmakers are aiming to slash billions of dollars in federal spending to offset the cost of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, border security and defense spending through the complex budget reconciliation process, which allows Congress to skirt the Senate’s 60-vote threshold that generally requires bipartisanship. The package, which the House passed 215-214 last week, will likely undergo significant changes in the Senate.

The House Committee on Education and Workforce’s portion of the reconciliation package also includes significant changes to how student loans are repaid, cuts to federal student aid and new eligibility requirements for the Pell Grant, a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college.

Student advocates and congressional Democrats have opposed the bill, emphasizing the impact of the proposed changes on higher education affordability and access as well as the weakening of protections for defrauded borrowers and fewer guardrails to hold for-profit schools accountable. 

Kyle Southern, associate vice president for higher education quality at the Institute for College Access & Success, said the bill would “put higher education further out of reach for low-income students, students of color (and) many first-generation students.”

“It would also make it a riskier investment, because it … weakens or rolls back many critical student protections that have been put in place as guardrails to help ensure the quality of post-secondary programs across sectors,” he said.

The nonprofit advocacy group aims to advance affordability, accountability and equity in higher education.

Here’s a closer look at the bill’s key education provisions related to institutional accountability and borrower protections:

Repealing the 90/10 rule

The bill repeals the Education Department’s “90/10 rule,” which requires that at least 10% of the money for-profit institutions receive derives from non-federal sources.

The regulation initially did not apply to student veteran benefits, creating a loophole that pushed for-profit schools to target veterans in their programs.

Though Congress did eventually close the loophole in a provision of the massive COVID-19 relief package Congress passed in 2021, the current bill would slash the rule altogether.

Carrie Wofford, president of Veterans Education Success, said the 90/10 rule “stops federal funds from being used to prop up otherwise failing college companies.”

Wofford said “it’s very shocking and upsetting to all the veterans and military leaders who worked for a decade to get this done and had a bipartisan agreement and had Republican leadership completely signing off,” referencing the efforts to close the earlier loophole.

Veterans Education Success, a group which advocates for the rights of student veterans, service members and their families, wrote to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions last week urging the panel to not include the repeal of the 90/10 rule in the chamber’s version of the bill.

Gainful employment

The bill would also strike the phrase “gainful employment” from several definitions within the Higher Education Act, a law providing financial assistance for students and higher education institutions.

As the Institute for College Access & Success notes in a fact sheet, the Gainful Employment rule, an Education Department regulation, helps “ensure that career education programs receiving federal student aid prepare students for gainful employment in a recognized occupation” and aims to “protect students from low-value programs that leave graduates with unaffordable debt and poor job prospects.”

Striking the term from the definitions likely sets the stage for the Education Department to rescind the rule, according to Sarah Austin, a policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

“Presumably, what we kind of took (striking the phrase) to mean is that that would lead to them rescinding gainful employment rules because the definitions in statute were what they’ve always kind of used as showing their legal authority to regulate on gainful employment,” Austin said.

“Without those definitions in there, not only does that seem to say that they would not have these gainful employment regulations, but also would kind of stop future administrations from having any sort of gainful employment framework because the definitions are not even in the Higher Education Act anymore.”

Borrower protections

As for borrower protections, the bill would also repeal 2022 versions of the Closed School Discharge and Borrower Defense to Repayment rules, reverting to what they looked like before the Biden administration.

While the Closed School Discharge rule provides debt relief to a borrower whose school shuts down, the Borrower Defense to Repayment provision helps forgive debt for students whose institution defrauded them.

Austin said that “with the 2022 rules, there was automatic closed school discharge, so if a school closed, a borrower may be entitled to have their loans automatically discharged, not require any action on their behalf, where the prior set of rules, they would actually have to apply for the closed school discharge, so this would be reverting back to that if it was to move forward as law.”

Under the bill, the Borrower Defense to Repayment provision would fall back to a 2019 rule that then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos put into place.

Southern, of the Institute for College Access & Success, said that 2019 rule “made the process essentially so onerous and arbitrary that qualifying people would not be able to receive the relief that federal law entitles them to.”

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education must temporarily reinstate the hundreds of employees laid off earlier this year and cannot follow through on an executive order from President Donald Trump seeking to dismantle the agency, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled Thursday. 

The ruling stems from a pair of March lawsuits — one from a slew of Democratic attorneys general, another from a coalition of advocacy and labor groups — and blocks three Trump initiatives, marking a major blow to the president’s education agenda as his administration seeks to dramatically reshape the federal role in education.

The lawsuits challenge some of the administration’s most consequential education initiatives so far: a reduction in force effort at the agency that gutted more than 1,300 employees, Trump’s executive order calling on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the closure of her own department and Trump’s proposal to rehouse the student loan portfolio in the Small Business Administration and special education services in the Department of Health and Human Services.

“A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all,” U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun wrote in his 88-page memorandum and order granting a preliminary injunction.

“This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the Department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the Department becomes a shell of itself,” wrote Joun, whom former President Joe Biden appointed.

Joun’s preliminary injunction took effect immediately and will remain until the merits of the consolidated case are decided.

A department spokesperson said the administration would immediately appeal the ruling. The agency has since filed an appeal.

Win for Democratic states

One of the cases comes from a coalition of Democratic attorneys general in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and Wisconsin.

The other lawsuit was brought by the American Federation of Teachers, its Massachusetts chapter, AFSCME Council 93, the American Association of University Professors, the Service Employees International Union and two school districts in Massachusetts.

The department’s reduction in force plan prompted concerns from education advocates and leaders over how the agency would be able to carry out its core responsibilities after roughly halving its workforce, including major cuts to key units including the Office of Federal Student Aid, Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the country, celebrated the ruling in a Thursday statement.

“Today, the court rightly rejected one of the administration’s very first illegal, and consequential, acts: abolishing the federal role in education,” Weingarten said.

“This decision is a first step to reverse this war on knowledge and the undermining of broad-based opportunity. For America to build a brighter future, we must all take more responsibility, not less, for the success of our children.”

Joun’s order also bars the agency from carrying out the president’s directive to transfer the student loan portfolio and special education services out of the agency.

Trump announced the proposal, which had no accompanying executive order, at the opening of an Oval Office appearance with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The department had told States Newsroom earlier this week that it had nothing new to share at this time regarding the proposed transfer. 

Judge ‘dramatically overstepped’

Madi Biedermann, a spokesperson for the department, said the agency “will immediately challenge this on an emergency basis.”

“Once again, a far-left Judge has dramatically overstepped his authority, based on a complaint from biased plaintiffs, and issued an injunction against the obviously lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional for the American people,” she said in a statement shared with States Newsroom.

“President Trump and the Senate-confirmed Secretary of Education clearly have the authority to make decisions about agency reorganization efforts, not an unelected Judge with a political axe to grind. This ruling is not in the best interest of American students or families.”

Thursday’s ruling came just a day after McMahon took a grilling from U.S. House Democrats over the drastic cuts and proposed changes at her department during a hearing in a panel of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations.

McMahon appeared before the lawmakers to outline Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget request, which calls for $12 billion in spending cuts at the department.

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon testifies at a hearing of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on May 21, 2025. (Screenshot from committee livestream)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon took heat from U.S. House Democrats on Wednesday over the drastic cuts and proposed changes at her federal agency in the months since President Donald Trump took office.

Democrats on a panel within the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations expressed dissatisfaction with McMahon’s education initiatives so far, as well as Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget request released earlier this month. The request calls for $12 billion in spending cuts at the department.

McMahon appeared before the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies to outline the budget request as part of the panel’s work to write the bill to fund the department for the coming fiscal year.

McMahon told the panel that the department aims to “shrink federal bureaucracy, save taxpayer money and empower states — who best know their local needs — to manage education in this country.”

“We’ve reduced a department that was overstaffed by thousands of positions, cut old contracts that were enriching private parties at taxpayer expense, suspended grants for illegal (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs and now are putting forward a budget request that reduces department funding by more than 15%,” she said.

Trump and his administration have sought to dramatically reshape the federal role in education, including an executive order calling on McMahon to facilitate the closure of her own department, the gutting of more than 1,300 employees at the agency, threats to revoke funds for schools that use DEI practices and a crackdown on “woke” higher education.

‘Disdain for public education’

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the full panel and the subcommittee, called McMahon’s actions at the department “lawless,” adding that they “reek of disdain for public education” and are “hurting the most vulnerable in our nation.” 

“Under your leadership of the department, hundreds of millions of dollars have been frozen, and entire programs have been terminated,” the Connecticut Democrat said. “Funding for vital research, protection of students’ civil rights and programs that support the recruitment and professional development of effective educators have been terminated.”

DeLauro also lambasted the budget’s proposal to consolidate 18 grant programs for K-12 education and replace them with a $2 billion formula grant that would give states spending flexibility.

A White House document summarizing major changes in the budget request said the consolidation would cut spending by more than $4.5 billion, a point DeLauro emphasized.

“Yet at the same time, you propose that we provide $4.5 billion less to educate our nation’s children overall,” she said. “A block grant is a cut — all of my colleagues here know that the states cannot afford to pick up the slack.”

In another exchange in the lengthy hearing, McMahon pushed back against New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman’s assertion that the department’s Office for Civil Rights is “being decimated.” The unit has seen significant staffing cuts as part of the department’s reduction in force effort along with the closure of several regional offices.

“Well, it isn’t being decimated,” McMahon said. “We have reduced the size of it, however, we are taking on a backlog of cases that were left over from the Biden administration and we’re working through those.”

Watson Coleman proceeded to press McMahon on why the department would reduce its resources if the agency has a backlog in addition to confronting cases that will come before it now. 

“Because we are working more efficiently in the department,” McMahon replied.

Prioritizing school choice

Meanwhile, Republicans focused largely on school choice initiatives and how McMahon and the department are prioritizing those efforts.  

The term “school choice” applies to alternative programs to a student’s assigned public school. Proponents say school choice programs are necessary for parents dissatisfied with their local public schools, though critics argue these efforts drain critical funds from school districts.

Rep. Robert Aderholt, chair of the subcommittee, said “too many schools, encouraged and facilitated by federal funding, have let things like social justice advocacy and divisive issues crowd out the focus on teaching students and the core subjects.”

“Thankfully, some states have pursued choice options for students whose traditional public schools have not served them well, including through charter schools,” the Alabama Republican said.

McMahon said increasing school choice was one of her priorities as secretary and highlighted the budget’s proposed increase of $60 million to expand the number of charter schools in the country, according to the budget request.

“The president absolutely believes, as do I, that the more choice that parents have, the better off the students are, and we’ve seen that repeatedly in different states,” she said. 

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, speaks at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats on Tuesday blasted the assault charges the Trump administration is pursuing against New Jersey U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver following a clash with law enforcement earlier this month outside an immigration detention center in Newark.

Leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus, Democratic Women’s Caucus and Congressional Progressive Caucus defended McIver at a press conference attended by dozens of Democrats outside of the U.S. Capitol, arguing that the New Jersey Democrat was simply doing her job in conducting oversight of the facility.

In a criminal complaint, McIver is charged with two counts of “assaulting, resisting, and impeding certain officers or employees,” with one charge involving a Homeland Security Investigations special agent and another surrounding an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officer.

The charges are tied to McIver’s May 9 visit to the detention center, where she was accompanied by fellow New Jersey Democrats — Reps. Rob Menendez and Bonnie Watson Coleman. The lawmakers had said they wanted to inspect the detention center.

Federal authorities say McIver assaulted two officers as she tried to prevent the arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. Alina Habba, acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, announced Monday that she would be dropping a trespassing charge against Baraka stemming from the same standoff.

‘Reprehensible political stunt’

At the Capitol press conference, Rep. Yvette Clarke, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, described the charges as a “reprehensible political stunt.”

The New York Democrat said “members of Congress have every right to conduct oversight at ICE facilities and any other federal agency, and when egregious, undeniable and vicious violations of the law and people’s freedoms are taking place, we, they, in fact, have an obligation to do so.”

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker said McIver, Menendez and Watson Coleman “stood their ground, used their voice and did their job.”

“They actually are obeying the Constitution. They are standing up to give checks and balances to this administration at a time that the Republicans in control of the House and the Senate are laying down and completely abrogating their duties to check and balance and give oversight to the president,” he added.

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone also condemned the charges on Tuesday, calling the Justice Department’s actions “outrageous.”

Ahead of a Tuesday hearing in the House Judiciary Committee on “threats to ICE operations,” Pallone led several other New Jersey Democrats in writing to the panel’s chair, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, and ranking member, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, to express their support for the three lawmakers’ oversight visit to the detention center.

The group also condemned what they see as efforts from the Justice and Homeland Security Departments to “politicize and suppress lawful Congressional oversight through acts of intimidation and threats of legal action against our colleagues.”

‘Baseless charges’

Rep. Greg Casar, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the Department of Justice “filing baseless charges against a member of Congress for simply doing her job should send a chill down the spine of every American.”

The Texas Democrat said the caucus held a meeting just before the press conference where they decided that they are “just about to go and do a lot more oversight visits at ICE facilities.”

He said the members of the caucus recognized at the meeting that President Trump “doesn’t want us conducting oversight at ICE facilities like these brave members of Congress were doing — he wants to intimidate us out of doing that.” 

A proposal in the U.S. House would allocate $5 billion a year in tax credits for people donating to organizations that provide private and religious school scholarships. (Getty photos)

WASHINGTON — A national school voucher program got a step closer to becoming law Wednesday, as school choice continues to take heat across the United States.

The proposal in the U.S. House would allocate $5 billion a year in tax credits for people donating to organizations that provide private and religious school scholarships and is baked into the Ways and Means Committee’s piece of a massive reconciliation package to fund President Donald Trump’s priorities.

The tax credit provision largely reflects the Educational Choice for Children Act — a sweeping bill that GOP Reps. Adrian Smith of Nebraska, Burgess Owens of Utah and Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana reintroduced in their respective chambers earlier this year.

The tax-writing committee advanced its measure Wednesday in a party-line vote. Republicans are using the complex reconciliation process to move the package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber, avoiding the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which would otherwise require bipartisanship.

“School choice” is an umbrella term centering on alternative programs to one’s assigned public school. While proponents have argued that school choice programs are necessary for parents dissatisfied with their local public schools, opponents say these efforts drain critical funds and resources from school districts.

At a press conference Wednesday, Rep. Elise Stefanik praised the Educational Choice for Children Act, which she cosponsored in the House.

The New York Republican said the bill is “a transformative piece of legislation that will expand educational opportunities for children across our nation.”

“For too long, students, especially those from underserved communities, have been trapped in failing school systems,” she said, adding that “school choice gives students the opportunity to succeed” and “is the great equalizer.”

$20 billion tax credit over 4 years

The tax panel’s proposal includes a $20 billion total tax credit, which would be made up of a $5 billion tax credit annually between 2026 and 2029. 

The scholarships would be available to students whose household incomes do not exceed 300 percent of the median gross income of their area.

“This is opening the door to the federal government subsidizing a secondary private system of education that gets to pick and choose who it educates and how it educates kids,” Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy at AASA, The School Superintendents Association, told States Newsroom.

The association helps to ensure every child has access to a high quality public education.

“​​I think it’s really important for folks to understand that we are opening this door for the first time to this kind of subsidy,” Pudelski said.

The provision also comes as Trump has made school choice a major part of his education agenda.

He signed an executive order in January that gave the U.S. secretary of Education two months to offer guidance on how states can use “federal formula funds to support K-12 educational choice initiatives.”

More opposition

Organizations that advocate for students with disabilities, including the National Center for Learning Disabilities, the Council for Exceptional Children, the Center for Learner Equity, and The Arc of the United States, fiercely opposed the bill, highlighting concerns that it is not sufficient in providing enforceable protections for students with disabilities and their families.

In a statement, Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said “the guarantee of rights and protections for students with disabilities using these vouchers is disingenuous at best and crooked at worst, without the other critical provisions of IDEA,” or the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

“It is quite possible that families with disabilities will use a voucher under the pretense that their child will have the same rights when in fact they do not,” Rodriguez said.