Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., walks back onto the Senate floor after speaking to reporters at the U.S. Capitol Building on June 30, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans were closing in Monday on passing their version of the “big beautiful” tax break and spending cut bill that President Donald Trump wants to make law by a self-imposed July Fourth deadline.

But the chamber’s Democrats first kicked off a marathon of amendment votes, forcing their GOP colleagues to go on the record on tough issues, including cuts to health and food safety net programs. As of early evening, Democrats had not prevailed on any votes.

The tactic is used by the opposition party during massive budget reconciliation fights to draw attention to specific issues even as their amendments are likely to fail.

Democrats decried numerous measures in the mega-bill, including new work reporting requirements for Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people and people with disabilities.

Loud opposition has also swelled as legislative proposals shift significant costs of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to states for the first time.

“I say to our colleagues, ‘Vote for families over billionaires,’” Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said on the Senate floor.

The heart of the nearly 1,000-page legislation extends and expands the 2017 tax law to keep individual income tax rates at the same level and makes permanent some tax breaks on business investments and research and development costs.

The bill would also put in motion some of Trump’s campaign promises, including no tax on qualifying tips, overtime or car loan interest, but only for a few years.

The tax cuts are estimated to cost nearly $4.5 trillion over 10 years, and a provision in the bill raises the nation’s borrowing limit to $5 trillion as the United States faces record levels of debt.

Overall, the Senate bill is projected to add $3.25 trillion to deficits during the next decade, according to the latest calculation from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Here are some key votes so far:

Planned Parenthood 

Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray tried to remove language from the bill that would block Medicaid payments from going to Planned Parenthood for one year unless the organization stops performing abortions.

Federal law already bars funding from going toward abortions, with limited exceptions, but GOP lawmakers have proposed blocking any other funding from going to the organization, effectively blocking Medicaid patients from going to Planned Parenthood for other types of health care.

Murray said the proposal would have a detrimental impact on health care for lower-income women and called it a “long-sought goal of anti-choice extremists.”

“Republicans’ bill will cut millions of women off from birth control, cancer screenings, essential preventive health care — care that they will not be able to afford anywhere else,” Murray said. “And it will shutter some 200 health care clinics in our country.”

Mississippi Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith opposed efforts to remove the policy change and raised a budget point of order, which was not waived following a 49-51 vote. Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski voted with Democrats.

“There was a time when protecting American tax dollars from supporting the abortion industry was an uncontroversial, nonpartisan effort that we could all get behind,” Hyde-Smith said.

Medicaid for undocumented immigrants

Senators from both political parties crossed the aisle over whether the federal government should reduce how much a state is given for its Medicaid program if that state uses its own taxpayer dollars to enroll immigrants living in the country without proper documentation.

The provision was included in an earlier version of the bill, but the Senate parliamentarian ruled it didn’t comply with the complex rules for moving a budget reconciliation bill.

The vote was 56-44, but since it was on waiving a budget point of order, at least 60 senators had to agree to set aside the rules and move forward with the amendment, so the vote failed.

Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, and Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia voted with GOP senators. Maine’s Collins voted with most of the chamber’s Democrats against moving forward.

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn asked for the vote, saying he believes the policy change would reduce undocumented immigration.

“Border patrol talks about push and pull factors,” Cornyn said. “One of the pull factors for illegal immigration is the knowledge that people will be able to receive various benefits once they make it into the country.”

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., opposed Cornyn’s attempt to get the language back in the bill, saying the policy change would financially harm states that expanded Medicaid under the 2010 health care law for simple mistakes.

“What this amendment says is that if one person, despite state law, through a bureaucratic mistake, is receiving funds, then the whole state pays the price and has their rate on expanded Medicaid changed from 90% to 80%,” Merkley said, referring to the percentage paid by the federal government.

Reduction in funding for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

An amendment to stop a nearly 50% reduction in funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was blocked by Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who chairs the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat who championed the CFPB after the 2008 financial collapse, attempted to bring the amendment to the floor saying the agency “is the financial watchdog to keep people from getting cheated on credit cards and mortgages and Venmo and payday loans and a zillion other transactions.”

“When this financial cop can’t do its job there is no one else in the federal government to pick up the slack,” Warren said.

Scott blocked her using a budget point of order, saying the reduction still provides “ample funding” for the agency. Democrats tried to waive that procedural tactic, but failed following a 47-53 vote.

An original provision to completely zero out the budget for the CFPB was not included because it did not meet the reconciliation process’ parameters.

Medicaid hospitals and maternal mortality

Senators voted 48-52 to reject Delaware Democratic Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester’s proposals to send the legislation back to committee to remove language cutting certain funding for Medicaid, which she said would negatively impact “vital hospital services, especially labor and delivery rooms.”

“Today, Medicaid is the single largest payer of maternity care in the United States, covering 40% of births nationwide and nearly half of the births in our rural communities,” Blunt Rochester said. “Obstetric units, particularly in rural hospitals, are closing at alarming rates, actually creating maternity deserts.”

No Republicans spoke in opposition to the proposal, though Maine’s Collins voted in support. 

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

New Mexico Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján offered a motion to commit the bill back to committee in order to remove all changes related to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. It was rejected following a 49-51 vote, though Alaska Republican Sens. Dan Sullivan and Murkowski voted in favor.

“I’m offering my colleagues the opportunity to step away from these devastating cuts, to show our fellow Americans that in this country we care for our friends, family and neighbors who need support,” Luján said.

Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., opposed the proposals, saying that SNAP is “on an unsustainable path wrought with mismanagement and waste.”

“This program has devolved into viewing success as enrolling more individuals to be dependent on government assistance,” Boozman said. “SNAP is long overdue for change.”

Medicaid work requirements

Senators voted 48-52 to reject a proposal from Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons that would have sent the bill back to committee to remove language requiring Medicaid enrollees to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month. Alaska’s Murkowski was the only member of her party to vote in favor of the effort.

Democrats have expressed concern for weeks that some people would lose access to Medicaid if they forgot to complete paperwork proving that time commitment or didn’t understand how to show the government they met the new requirement.

“It is cruel and dishonest to bury patients, kids and seniors in paperwork and then blame them when they lose their health care, all to further rig our tax code for the very wealthiest,” Coons said.

Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall urged opposition to the proposal, saying that working helps people.

“My question is, don’t you think a job brings value, that it brings dignity?” Marshall said. “Do you not think it brings purpose and meaning to life?”

Rural hospitals and Medicaid

Maine’s Collins and Alaska’s Murkowski both voted for a proposal from Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey that would have removed parts of the bill changing Medicaid.

But even with some bipartisan support, the changes were rejected on a 49-51 vote that would have technically sent the bill back to committee for three days to implement the changes.

“My Republican colleagues’ so-called Medicaid cuts replacement fund is like giving aspirin to a cancer patient,” Markey said. “It is not enough. It is pathetically inadequate to deal with the health care crisis Republicans are creating here today on the Senate floor. No billionaire tax break or Donald Trump pat-on-the-back is worth the risk of people’s lives.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, spoke out against the proposal, saying that rural hospitals have long had financial challenges and that it was clearly “intended to derail this very bill.”

“Unfortunately for far too long some rural hospitals have struggled to achieve financial stability, even with a wide-range of targeted payment enhances,” Crapo said. “These issues pre-date the consideration of the reforms that we are including in the legislation today.” 

 

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. 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.”

 

'Trump Accounts' included in the tax and spending cut bill would be available to U.S. citizens born between 2025 and 2028, and whose parent, or parents, if legally married, already have Social Security numbers. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Tucked in the “one big beautiful bill” is a proposal for tax-advantaged “Trump Accounts,” each seeded with $1,000 from the government for certain babies born in the United States over the next few years.

But financial experts and advocates for low-income children are not overly impressed.

The idea is not new and has been likened to other “baby bonds” programs aimed at reducing the growing wealth gap, like state-run trust funds in California and Connecticut. Democrats in Congress have introduced a bill to create a similar federal program. 

The White House has touted the proposal in the tax and spending cut measure as “pro-family” and one that “will afford a generation of children the chance to experience the miracle of compounded growth.”

At a June 9 event to promote the “Trump Accounts” featuring CEOs of top American companies, President Donald Trump promised the pilot program will make it possible for “countless American children to have a strong start in life at no cost to the American taxpayer.”

Speaking at the same event, top House Republican tax writer Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri said “every child born under this policy will have a better shot at a future. It does not matter if they live on a city block or on a county road, this will make a significant difference to their lives.”

Critics say the accounts, as proposed, would mostly benefit children born to wealthier families.

They also say the restricted-access accounts, and the one-time government contribution of $1,000, will not help in the face of cuts to food and health programs for low-income people written into the massive budget reconciliation bill, titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”

How ‘Trump Accounts’ would work

The investment savings accounts would be available to U.S. citizens born between 2025 and 2028, and whose parent, or parents, if legally married, already have Social Security numbers.

Each year, from a child’s birth to age 18, family and friends, parents’ employers, churches and other private foundations, could contribute up to a combined $5,000 annually to the investment account that will track a stock index and gain interest accordingly.

Deposits into the account are taxed. Later on, withdrawals would be subject to the long-term capital gains tax — a tax on the profit made from selling an asset, or investment, that a person has held for longer than a year.

After reaching 18, the account beneficiary could access half the account’s value only for qualified expenses that include higher education, vocational training, the purchase of a first home, and costs associated with an enterprise for which the beneficiary has received a small business loan or small farm loan.

The beneficiary could access the remaining half of the account after age 25. At age 31, the account loses its status as a “Trump Account” and any remaining balance is taxed as income.

Drawbacks seen

The Urban Institute warns that the proposed structure of the account will mostly benefit wealthy families who already have the resources to grow the funds.

The bottom 80% of households, by income, only hold half as much cash on hand as the top 20% of households, according to the left-leaning think tank’s nationwide financial health data.

Additionally, because of penalties for early withdrawals, lower-income families would be incentivized to save in less restrictive accounts, according to the think tank’s May 27 analysis.

The institute recommends the government provide more contributions based on income level, beyond just the one-time $1,000, and lessen the penalties for accessing cash for catastrophic events.

A 2023 Democratic legislative proposal put forth by Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts aimed to create an account that would target the benefit to children from lower-income households.

Their plan suggests accounts be initially seeded with $1,000, and then children would receive up to an additional $2,000 annually based on their family’s income level.

According to Booker’s and Pressley’s plan, a child from a family of four that brings in less than $25,100 in annual income would have an estimated $46,200 in investment savings by the time they turn 18.

Under the Trump Account proposal, a child’s one-time $1,000 deposit from the government would grow to roughly $5,000 by age 18 if no other contributions were ever made, according to the Urban Institute.

Child tax credits

Brendan Duke, senior director for federal fiscal policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the GOP proposal “wasn’t particularly well thought through.”

“It’s this question of whether it makes more sense to give every family $1,000 that they can’t access in those really important years, or whether you should have expanded the child tax credit,” Duke said.

Duke criticized lawmakers’ proposals that do not expand the child tax credit to the lowest-income families in the massive GOP budget reconciliation package.

While the House version temporarily expands the credit to $2,500 per child, up from $2,000, and the Senate version permanently expands the credit by a more modest amount of $2,200, neither version expands income or refundability parameters that would benefit the poorest families.

The CBPP estimates that 17 million children are left out of the credit because of the restrictions.

Existing savings vehicles

Another criticism of the Trump Accounts is that they provide a redundant option among the several existing tax-preferred savings vehicles for Americans, including 529 education investment savings accounts, Roth and Traditional IRAs and Health Savings Accounts.

The Tax Foundation’s Alex Muresianu said the account is “a move toward complexity rather than simplification.”

“We already have plenty of savings accounts with specific purposes, and a lot of different strings attached,” said Muresianu, senior policy analyst with the right-leaning foundation.

“We don’t really need another targeted account for a specific purpose, rather than a more easily accessible account with fewer conditions.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana speaks to reporters about the Republican budget reconciliation package at a weekly press conference on Tuesday, June 24, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans were scrambling Tuesday to restructure several proposals in the “big, beautiful bill” that don’t meet their chamber’s strict rules for passing a reconciliation package, while GOP lawmakers on the other side of the Capitol warned those changes may doom its passage in the House.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he and several others are working on a way to bolster rural hospitals, which could experience financial strain as a result of the various changes to Medicaid and other health care programs in the package.

“We are working on a solution for rural hospitals and that’s something that’s been in the works now for several days in response to a number of concerns that our colleagues have mentioned in ensuring that the impact on rural hospitals be lessened, be mitigated,” Thune said. “And I think we’re making good headway on that solution.”

Thune said GOP lawmakers shouldn’t let the “perfect be the enemy of the good,” though he predicted there “could be” two or three Republicans who vote against the package.

“We’ve got a lot of very independent-thinking senators who have reasons and things that they’d like to have in this bill that, in their view, would make it stronger,” Thune said. “But at the end of the day this is a process whereby not everybody is going to get what they want. And we have to get to 51 in the United States Senate.”

More objections to Medicaid cuts

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who has been vocal about Medicaid changes and rural hospitals, said he had “no details whatsoever” about the rural hospital fund or how it would work if it’s added to the bill.

But he said he’s not going to support a bill that takes away working people’s health care.

“We’ve got 1.3 million people on Medicaid in Missouri, hundreds of thousands of kids. That’s 21% of my population. Most of these people are working people. They’re on Medicaid, not because they’re sitting around at home; they’re on Medicaid because they don’t have a job that gives them health care and they cannot afford to buy it on the exchange,” Hawley said. “They don’t want to be, but it’s their only option. And I just think it’s wrong to take away health care coverage from those folks. Now if they’re not working, then sure, they should be.”

Senate Republican Policy Committee Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said she had a “lengthy discussion” with her home state’s hospital association earlier in the day.

“This has a lot of impacts and we want to make sure we have a lot of rural hospitals. That’s why this rural hospital fund idea is developing,” Capito said. “I don’t think anything is set yet but that is an issue. I think Medicaid, we need to preserve it for the people it’s intended for and get rid of the people who don’t deserve it and don’t qualify and are bilking the system.”

Capito said she hadn’t yet formed an opinion on the rural hospital fund since there isn’t yet a formal proposal written down.

Public lands

In one major development, the Senate parliamentarian ruled Monday that a controversial provision championed by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee to mandate the sale of at least 2 million acres of public lands in 11 Western states did not comply with the chamber’s rules for reconciliation.

Lee, a Utah Republican, has said the provision would free up land to build new housing. But Democrats and some Republicans from the affected states strongly opposed it.

Lee said on social media Monday evening that he was working to rewrite the proposal to comply with reconciliation rules. A spokesperson for his office did not return a message seeking comment Tuesday morning.

SNAP cost-sharing under debate

In another turn of events, Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., earlier Tuesday had announced the panel successfully reworked a provision that would transfer some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to state governments.

But a spokesperson for the panel said later that the parliamentarian actually has not yet made a ruling. The spokesperson said “we’ve gotten some clarification from leadership and it’s steering in the direction it would be compliant but not official.”

Boozman earlier had said his proposal would improve SNAP. “Our commonsense approach encourages states to adopt better practices, reduce error rates, be better stewards of taxpayer dollars, and prioritize the resources for those who truly need it,” Boozman wrote in a statement.

The new language, if accepted, would give states the option of selecting fiscal year 2025 or 2026 as the year that the federal government uses to determine its payment error rate for SNAP, which will then impact how much of the cost the state has to cover starting in fiscal year 2028. Afterward, a state’s payment error rate will be calculated using the last three fiscal years.

Any state with an error rate higher than 6% will have to cover a certain percentage of the cost of the nutrition program for lower income households.

Rushing toward deadline

The internal debates among lawmakers about how to rewrite major pieces of the tax and spending cuts package have led to a rushed feeling among Republican leaders, who have repeatedly promised to approve the final bill before the Fourth of July — an exceedingly tight timeline.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said during a press conference shortly after a closed-door House GOP conference meeting Tuesday that he’s hopeful the final bill that comes out of the Senate won’t make too many changes to what the House approved earlier this year.

“I remain very optimistic that there’s not going to be a wide chasm between the two products — what the Senate produces and what we produce,” Johnson said. “We all know what the touchpoints are and the areas of greatest concern.”

Republicans, he said, know they need to focus on preserving a fragile compromise on the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, that helps offset the cost of living in some higher-tax states like California, New Jersey and New York.

A deal Johnson brokered with GOP lawmakers in the SALT Caucus has been significantly rewritten in the Senate, but is expected to move back toward the House version, though not entirely.

Johnson also mentioned GOP efforts to roll back certain clean-energy provisions that Democrats approved and President Joe Biden signed into law in their signature climate change, health care and tax package, called the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, in 2022.

“We’ve got to get the SALT negotiation number right. We’ve got to make sure the IRA subsidies are handled in an appropriate manner,” Johnson said. “Look, you’ve got a number of provisions.”

Johnson said he expects the Senate to vote on its final bill by Friday or Saturday and that he’s told House lawmakers to “keep your schedules flexible” on being in Washington, D.C., for a final House vote. 

Trump goads Republicans

President Donald Trump sought to spur quick approval of a final bill, posting on social media that GOP lawmakers should get the package to him as soon as possible.

“To my friends in the Senate, lock yourself in a room if you must, don’t go home, and GET THE DEAL DONE THIS WEEK. Work with the House so they can pick it up, and pass it, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote Tuesday. “NO ONE GOES ON VACATION UNTIL IT’S DONE. Everyone, most importantly the American People, will be much better off thanks to our work together. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin said there are concerns among his fellow Republicans about all of the provisions that must be removed or significantly reworked to meet the complex rules for moving a reconciliation bill through that chamber.

“Every time something comes out that we’re using as a pay for, it takes the deficit reduction down. And they’ve taken out nearly $300 billion so far. We’ve got to make that up,” Mullin said after leaving the closed-door House GOP meeting. “The Senate can’t come in below the House version as far as deficit reduction. So that makes it difficult.”

Mullin, who has been acting as his chamber’s top negotiator with SALT Republicans in the House, told reporters he expects the deduction for state and local taxes to remain at the $40,000 level negotiated in the House. But said the Senate will likely rewrite the $500,000 income ceiling to qualify for the tax deduction.

“I think 40 is a number we’re going to land on,” Mullin said. “It’s the income threshold that’s in negotiations.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said “most of us would like to make it zero.”

“I hate the idea of $40,000 but if that’s what it takes to pass the bill, I probably could do it. I would like to maybe find some other tweaks to it, somehow, like changing the income levels,” he said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters he expects a resolution on SALT in the next 24 to 48 hours.

“I had a very successful lunch meeting with the senators. I think that we are on track,” Bessent said.

The ‘red line’ in the House

New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler told reporters following the closed-door meeting that Senate leaders shouldn’t assume whatever they pass will be accepted by the House.

“I’ve been very clear about where my red line is. So, you know, we’ll let this process play out,” Lawler said. “I think the Senate should recognize the only number that matters is 218, and 50 plus 1. That’s it. And how do you get there?”

Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, so leadership cannot lose more than four votes and still approve the package, given that Democrats are universally opposed.

In the House, GOP leaders have 220 seats and need nearly every one of their members to support whatever the Senate sends back across the Capitol for it to make it to the president’s desk before their self-imposed deadline.

In addition to the SALT tax compromise, Lawler said he has concerns about how the Senate has changed other provisions, including those addressing Medicaid, the state-federal health program for lower income people.

“Yeah, there are a number of concerns about decisions that they’re making,” Lawler said. “And obviously, the bill on their side is not final, so we’ll see where it goes.”

Missouri Republican Rep. Jason Smith, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee that crafted the tax provisions in the reconciliation bill, stood by the House’s version of the Opportunity Zone Tax Incentives. The House version extends the incentive from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for a year, while the Senate’s version makes it permanent.

The Opportunity Zone Tax Incentive was pushed by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott during the first Trump administration, which aimed to create tax cuts for businesses and real estate to invest in low-income communities, but it had mixed results.

“The tax bill that we’re going to deliver is gonna deliver for working families, small businesses and farmers,” Smith said.

Thumbs down from one House Republican

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., posted on social media that he doesn’t support how the Senate has changed the bill and that he would seek to block it from becoming law. 

“The currently proposed Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill weakens key House priorities—it doesn’t do enough to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid, it backtracks on Green New Scam elimination included in the House bill, and it greatly increases the deficit – taking us even further from a balanced budget.

“If the Senate tries to jam the House with this version, I won’t vote ‘present.’ I’ll vote NO.”

Rattlesnakes and the Senate

West Virginia Republican Sen. Jim Justice told reporters that it’s important for the Senate to take its time in its changes to the reconciliation package and that GOP lawmakers need to be patient.

“If you’re walking through the woods and you look right over there at that wall and there’s a rattlesnake all curled up there and everything, what do you do?” Justice asked. “Most people just jump and take off runnin’, well … rattlesnakes run in pairs and if you just jump left or right or behind, that one can hurt you right there.”

Rattlesnakes are typically solitary creatures, but new research has shown that rattlesnakes are more social than previously thought.

Justice said the best course of action when dealing with a rattlesnake, or two, is to stand still for a moment.

“Look to the left, look to the right, look behind you, and then decide which way you’re going,” he said. “That’s what I think we need to do (in the Senate).”

U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump stand together at the end of the U.S Army parade on June 14, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Saturday celebrated his 79th birthday reviewing a parade of tanks, armament and marching soldiers gathered in the nation’s capital for the Army’s 250th anniversary celebration, amid heightened political tensions across the country and anti-Trump “No Kings” protests.

The nearly 90-minute parade cycled through the Army’s history, beginning with soldiers marching in Revolutionary War uniforms and ending with symbols of the Army’s future, including small robots carrying the U.S. Army flag and new West Point cadets about to be sworn in.

Massive tactical vehicles rolled down Constitution Avenue one after another. Sherman tanks used by the military in World War II were followed by early 2000s-era howitzers and HIMARS, or High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, that can launch newly developed precision missiles that reach up to 310 miles away, according to the Army.

HIMARS were among the weaponry the U.S. provided to Ukraine’s forces under President Joe Biden.

“The Army keeps us free,” Trump said in brief remarks at the conclusion of the parade, after Vice President J.D. Vance introduced him. “Every other country celebrates their victories, it’s about time America did too. That’s what we’re doing tonight.”

But tragedy and deep conflict marked the hours and days leading to the event. Early Saturday, a Minnesota Democratic state lawmaker and her husband were assassinated in their home in an “act of political violence,” said Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, while another legislator and his wife were shot and gravely wounded.

Late Friday, dozens of veterans breached barricades around the U.S. Capitol in protest of the Army parade. On Thursday, a Democratic U.S. senator from California was handcuffed and forcibly removed from a press conference with the head of Homeland Security.

Last weekend, multi-day protests erupted in Los Angeles after immigration raids swept across several Home Depots, typically where undocumented day laborers search for work, as Trump’s mass deportations continue to be carried out.

And the president is in a legal standoff with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, after Trump ordered more than 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to be sent to LA without Newsom’s consent and Newsom sued. The Guard troops remained in LA Saturday after a federal appeals court froze a lower court’s order directing Trump to return command to Newsom.

The city saw a large protest Saturday afternoon, according to local media reports. A curfew of 8 p.m. Pacific time remained in effect, Mayor Karen Bass’ office said in a morning press release.

And on Saturday night, the Salt Lake City Police Department said it was investigating a shooting that occurred during a “No Kings” protest and officials urged people to disperse the demonstration.

‘Yeah, I wanna be there’

In Washington, spectators from across the country began lining barriers along the Army parade route hours before the event’s start.

Scott Aiken, 59, of Athens, Georgia, drove 10 hours for the parade. Aiken, who told States Newsroom he voted for Trump in the last three presidential elections, said he wanted to support the anniversary of the Army.

“My father was in the Army, and my wife’s father was in the Army, and we’re a supportive military family. And when I heard the parade was going to happen, I thought, ‘Yeah, I wanna be there.’ So we drove up from Athens on Thursday, and did the Capitol tour yesterday, and here we are.”

When asked about the timing of Trump’s birthday, Aiken said “whether it’s on his birthday or not, I don’t care. That’s not the purpose of this.”

Members of Trump’s Cabinet and other allies on social media posted well wishes and greetings. “Wishing a very happy birthday to our incredible President Donald J. Trump!” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem posted on X. Trump said on his social media site, Truth Social, “President Putin called this morning to very nicely wish me a Happy Birthday, but to more importantly, talk about Iran,” referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin and a recent attack by Israel on Iran’s military leaders.

Not everyone at the parade was wishing Trump well. Angelica Zetino, 24, and Shoshauna Brooks, 27, from Rockville and Gaithersburg, Maryland, stood out among the crowd as they carried signs protesting Trump’s administration, particularly recent immigration raids.

The pair began their morning at a “No Kings” protest in Rockville before heading to D.C.

“They (the administration) just want to put on a show, which is OK, but we’re here to support the people that can’t have a voice for themselves,” Brooks said.

Tom Moore, 57, of the District of Columbia,, took issue with Trump’s words this week that any parade protesters would be met with force. 

“That’s not acceptable. He didn’t say violent protesters. I wasn’t planning on coming down here before that,” said Moore.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on June 10 that any protests at the military parade “will be met with very heavy force.”

Rallies opposing Trump

Throughout Saturday, protests unfolded across the U.S. bearing the theme “No Kings” to decry Trump’s military display on his own birthday and the mass immigration arrests.

The “No Kings” national organizers said in a press release that as of 2 p.m. Eastern, protesters had rallied at more than 1,500 sites across the country, with 600 more events scheduled through the rest of the day. “No Kings” was organized by liberal groups and labor unions including Indivisible, the American Federation of Teachers, American Civil Liberties Union, Public Citizen, MoveOn, 50501, Interfaith Alliance, Stand Up America, Common Defense, Human Rights Campaign and League of Conservation Voters.

Approximately 60 protesters were arrested outside the U.S. Capitol Friday evening, according to the U.S. Capitol Police. Veterans for Peace, a group that organized the demonstration, posted photos of the arrests and of several demonstrators wearing “Veterans Against Fascists” t-shirts.

Police said 75 people peacefully demonstrated outside of the U.S. Supreme Court.

“A short time later, approximately 60 people from the group left the Supreme Court so as a precaution, our officers began establishing a perimeter,” a police spokesperson told States Newsroom in an email. “A few people pushed the bike rack down and illegally crossed the police line while running towards the Rotunda Steps. Our officers immediately blocked the group and began making arrests.”

Among those arrested was an elderly Vietnam veteran using a walker, Capitol Police confirmed.

Two mules and a dog

A trickle of red “Make America Great Again” hats and apparel displaying support for the Army intermingled as supporters shuffled into the parade grounds Saturday afternoon.

The parade featured soldiers from every division, 150 vehicles, 50 aircraft, 34 horses, two mules and one dog, at a price tag in the tens of millions of dollars, according to the Army.

Among the vehicles and equipment that rolled down Constitution Avenue between 15th and 23rd streets were Abrams tanks, first used in 1991 for Operation Desert Storm; and 9,500-pound titanium M777 lightweight Howitzers that fire 105-pound shells up to 24 miles and are currently in use on Ukraine’s battlefields.

Military aircraft that could be seen above Washington in ceremonial flyovers, from AH-64 Apaches, UH-60 Blackhawks and CH-47 Chinooks. Army Golden Knights parachuted down to the White House South Lawn, red smoke in their wake, to present Trump with a folded flag. The president has never served in the military.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser expressed concern in the weeks leading up to the parade about the heavy tactical vehicles causing damage to the city’s streets. The Army Corps of Engineers had installed large steel plates ahead of the event to reinforce the roads.

The parade coincided with the Army’s 250th birthday celebration festival, which has been in the works for a year.

The parade appears to have been a late addition to the festivities. According to documentation obtained by local D.C. news outlet WTOP, America250 applied on March 31 for a permit for the parade. A May 21 press release about the parade from America250, which describes itself as a “nonprofit supporting organization to the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission,” celebrated Trump’s role in the event.

Trump wanted a military parade during his first term, but the idea was dismissed because of cost, NBC reported at the time.

The last time the U.S. staged a celebratory military parade was in 1991 under former President George H.W. Bush to recognize the victory in the first Gulf War.

Immigration enforcement and military 

The big Army celebration early in Trump’s second term came as the president has intertwined the U.S. military with his immigration policy, as shown in LA and elsewhere.

In his first days in office, Trump signed five executive orders that laid out the use of military forces within the U.S. borders and extended other executive powers to speed up the president’s immigration crackdown.

He’s directed the Department of Defense to use a naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to detain migrants. Military planes have been used in deportations – rather than standard commercial airplanes.

In April, he signed a proclamation creating a military buffer zone that stretches across Arizona, California and New Mexico just north of the U.S.-Mexico border. It means any migrant crossing into the United States would be trespassing on a military base, therefore allowing active-duty troops to hold them until U.S. Border Patrol agents arrive.

National and military experts have raised concerns that giving control over the Roosevelt Reservation to the military could violate the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law that generally prohibits the military from being used in domestic law enforcement. A statutory exception in the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, is the Insurrection Act of 1807.

Trump has considered invoking the Insurrection Act, but has stopped short. The Insurrection Act is an existing presidential authority that would grant the president access to use all federal military forces, more than 1 million members.

The Insurrection Act has only been invoked 30 times, and is typically focused on an area of great civil unrest that has overwhelmed law enforcement.

The last time a president used it was 1992, during the Los Angeles riots, after four white police officers were acquitted in the brutal beating of Black motorist Rodney King.

In calling in the National Guard in LA last week, Trump cited a rarely used statute known as the protective power –  10 U.S.C. 12406 – to use National Guard troops to protect federal personnel and property, but not for broad law enforcement functions.

From left to right, Chase Christie, development director for Alaska Solar LLC, Josh Craft, managing partner of Wasilla, Alaska-based Crafty Energy LLC, and Josh Shipley, owner of Alternative Power Enterprises in Ridgeway, Colorado, at the Holiday Inn Express on C Street SW in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, June 11, 2025, after meeting with staff of U.S. senators about preserving clean energy tax credits in the Republican budget reconciliation bill. (Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Small business owners and community leaders from rural regions in Western states including Alaska, Colorado, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, South Dakota and Utah pressed lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week to preserve clean energy tax credits on the chopping block in the Republicans’ “one big beautiful” mega-bill, now in the Senate.

The suite of investment, production and residential tax credits enacted and expanded under the Democrats’ own big budget reconciliation bill in 2022, titled the “Inflation Reduction Act,” incentivized homeowners, car buyers, energy producers and manufacturers to invest in types of energy beyond fossil fuels, with the aim of reducing the effects of climate change.

The credits have spurred hundreds of billions in investment dollars in advanced manufacturing and production since 2022, and contributed to job creation, largely in states that elected President Donald Trump to a second term.

Small business operators and community leaders from rural and mountainous areas of the United States that have benefited from the boom in alternative energy sources say the campaign to end the tax credits will also cause job losses and cut options for consumers.

Solar projects in Alaska

Chase Christie, director of development for Alaska Solar LLC, said his company installs four to five large-scale solar projects per year in remote Alaskan villages and also fits and services smaller residential solar installations.

“They take a lot of planning, a lot of logistics,” Christie told States Newsroom in an interview Wednesday.

“For going into a remote village where there’s tundra, we might need to go there in the dead of winter so we can work on frozen ground,” he added. “Other places we won’t go until summer. So we have these large gaps in between these larger projects, and a company like ours absolutely relies on the residential installations to keep our workforce going.”

Christie, who met Tuesday with staffers for Alaska’s Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, said in January he let a handful of workers go and paused most new hiring.

“Our workforce is roughly half of what it usually is just because we’re not sure which direction things are going to go,” he said.

Christie was among a dozen small energy business owners, municipal government officials and nonprofit employees focused on energy options for low-income households who States Newsroom spoke to Wednesday.

A spokesperson for Sullivan said in a statement: “Senator Sullivan supports energy projects that lower costs for Alaska. The Senator and his team have been meeting with a number of Alaskans about energy tax credits. As we wait for text from the Senate Finance Committee, the Senator is working with his colleagues to ensure that the bill strikes the right balance between promoting stable and predictable tax policy, advancing projects that benefit Alaska, and addressing the need to reduce the federal deficit.”

Murkowski’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Elimination of tax credits

Senators are hashing out language for the massive Republican agenda bill that will extend and expand the 2017 tax law, costing roughly $3.8 trillion, and cut spending in other areas to offset the price tag.

A contingent of House Republicans, who have dubbed the tax credits the “green new scam,” won on accelerating the expiration of the energy tax credits and tightening restrictions on eligibility as a way to pay for individual and corporate tax cuts that Trump campaigned on.

The language in a section of the House bill, passed 215-214 on May 22, titled “Working Families Over Elites,” terminates the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Tax Credit, worth up to $3,200 for homeowners who make energy upgrades to their property.

Among the slate of other affected IRA tax credits, the House bill also speeds up the expiration of the Clean Electricity Investment Tax Credit, a credit dating back decades that was updated in 2022.

The credit is available to taxpayers who invest in “energy property,” including solar installations to provide electricity and heat, fuel cells, small wind turbines, geothermal pumps, and other electricity-producing technologies. 

House Republicans wrote provisions to eliminate the credit for facilities placed into service after 2028 and end eligibility for projects that don’t begin construction within 60 days of the bill’s enactment.

The credit is worth up to 30% of the cost of the project, plus two bonus credits up to 10% each if the project includes mostly domestically produced material and if it’s located in an “energy community,” meaning a place where a coal plant has closed or where unemployment reaches a certain threshold.

The bill also repeals a taxpayer’s ability to transfer the tax credits as a way to finance a project, and introduces restrictions on foreign-made components that industry professionals say essentially makes the credit unworkable.

Critics point to the cost of the tax credits.

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated, as of June 4, the elimination of the clean energy investment and production tax credits will save roughly $249 billion over the next decade.

Alex Muresianu, senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation, a right-of-center think tank that advocates for lower taxes, said Thursday in a new analysis that “The final House bill makes impressive cuts to the IRA green energy tax credits, but it does so in part by introducing more complexity.”

The group is advocating for senators to reduce the tax credit rates and make clearer complicated language, like the provision around “foreign entities of concern.”

Keeping on the heat during a Montana winter

But Logan Smith, weatherization program manager for the Human Resource Development Council in central Montana, argues the credits have been a lifeline for lower-income rural residents.

“If I can get solar panels on each of the clients’ homes, that means that their power is going to stay on in the middle of winter,” Smith said. “Because every winter we plan for losing power for about a week, that’s just something we grew up with. … But if we have solar panels, the power stays on, the heat stays on.”

Ralph Waters, owner of SBS Solar in Missoula, Montana, became emotional when talking about how an early termination of the tax credits could slow his business and result in having to lay off half his workforce.

He criticized the politicization of the tax incentives.

“Montana is deeply red, but it’s also a very practical place. And so green energy renewables becomes a taboo phrase somehow,” Waters said. “The practical energy needs are undeniable, and so if we can get past our disagreements about the phraseology and realize that it’s electrons, watts, and amps. And it’s cheaper.”

The offices of Montana GOP Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S. Army soldiers work on an assortment of M1 Alpha a3 Abrams tanks, stryker armored vehicles, and M2 Bradley fighting vehicles at West Potomac Park along the Potomac River on June 11, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Tanks and other heavy military equipment have arrived in the nation's capital for a military parade in honor of the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary, which coincides with President Donald Trump's birthday and Flag Day. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — More than 100 heavy-duty military vehicles and weapons systems will parade down Constitution Avenue in the nation’s capital Saturday, just days after President Donald Trump ordered troops to Los Angeles to quell mostly nonviolent protests against deportations.

The display, on the date of the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary and Trump’s 79th birthday, will feature roughly 6,700 soldiers from every division, 150 vehicles, 50 aircraft, 34 horses, two mules and one dog, at a price tag in the tens of millions of dollars, according to the Army.

The evening parade of Army vehicles and aircraft flyovers — plans for which came to light in early May — will occur as protests against the administration’s immigration raids spread through major U.S. cities.

Trump ordered 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles Sunday after demonstrations opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests erupted Friday, some turning violent over the weekend in downtown LA, a suburb and a portion of a freeway.

Trump ordered another 2,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to LA Monday, despite numerous reports that protests remained peaceful.

Saturday’s parade in D.C. has drawn criticism for the cost and optics, as Republicans on Capitol Hill seek ways to cut safety net programs, and as Trump deployed troops to LA, defying the state’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Trump told reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office that any protests at the Army parade “will be met with very heavy force.”

When pressed Wednesday by a reporter following up on Trump’s comment, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “Of course the president supports peaceful protest. What a stupid question.”

Mass “No Kings” protests organized by a coalition of liberal national groups and labor unions are planned across the United States Saturday, but deliberately not in D.C. Some actions from separate organizations are expected to crop up in the nation’s capital, though details are sparse.

Army equipment stored in Maryland

Tanks and fighting vehicles were transported into the District of Columbia Tuesday night on flatbed trucks, as shown in video circulating online. The equipment rolled in over the weekend by rail from Texas and had been staged at the CSX rail yard in Jessup, Maryland, according to the Army.

A festival to celebrate the Army’s founding in 1775 has been in the works for more than a year and will feature a wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetery as well as a fitness competition, military equipment exhibits, food trucks and appearances by professional NFL players on the National Mall. 

But details of a parade only emerged in April and were confirmed in early May by The Associated Press.

According to a March 31 application obtained by WTOP News, America250.org applied for a permit for the parade along the National Mall, as well as nighttime fireworks and concert “featuring well known performers, likely from the country music world.” 

A press release for the event from America250, described as the “nonprofit supporting organization to the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission,” celebrates Trump and his role. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. Army has been restored to strength and readiness,” it says. “His America First agenda has delivered historic pay raises for service members, rebuilt military stockpiles, invested in cutting-edge technologies, and ensured our soldiers have the tools and support they need to win on any battlefield.” The pay raises were part of last year’s defense policy bill, before Trump’s presidency.

The festival and the parade will cost an estimated $25 million to $45 million, according to Army spokesperson Heather Hagan, though the price tag for the parade alone was not specified. The Army did not respond to a question about where the funds originated.

It is not the first time Trump has wanted a military parade. He had planned one in the nation’s capital in 2018 but it was called off due to the cost, NBC reported at the time.

Big crowds and lots of fencing

Matt McCool, of the U.S. Secret Service Washington field office, said for this parade, officials are expecting an “enormous turnout.” The agency is leading local, state and federal law enforcement during the National Special Security Event, the sixth for D.C. this year. They are nationally or internationally significant events expected to be attended by high-level officials and large numbers of people.

Just over 18 miles of anti-scale fencing and 17 miles of “bike rack”-style fencing has been erected as a security perimeter surrounding the parade route. Members of the public wishing to see the parade will have to pass through one of the 175 metal detectors at three security checkpoints.

McCool, special agent in charge of the Washington office, said the Secret Service has been planning security since April 22, “which is shorter than normal,” and that the agency is prepared for protests.

“We are paying attention obviously to what is happening (in Los Angeles) and we’ll be ready for that if it were to occur here,” McCool said Monday during a press conference.

Troops bunking in federal office buildings

The parade will include troops from the National Guard and Army Reserve, Special Operations Command, United States Military Academy and Reserve Officer Training Corps, and it will feature period uniforms and equipment reflecting the Revolutionary War to the modern forces.

Young enlistees sent to Washington to march in the parade toured the D.C. sites near the U.S. Capitol Wednesday.

Not every state sent Guard members. But the New York National Guard will participate, and will house roughly 460 New York and Massachusetts National Guard soldiers in an empty Department of Agriculture office building and an unused General Services Administration warehouse until June 15, according to a press release.

The troops were bused to Washington on Wednesday, and the trip cost — including meals ready-to-eat for breakfast and lunch, a hot dinner and a $69 per diem — will be covered by the Army.

Golden Knights to give Trump a gift

Flyovers will also occur during the parade featuring AH-64 Apaches, UH-60 Blackhawks and CH-47 Chinooks.

The Army Golden Knights parachute team is expected to land on the White House South Lawn and present Trump with a folded flag, according to media reports. Trump is expected to deliver remarks, according to the America250 organization. The White House did not respond to questions about the day’s timeline.

Among the vehicles and equipment rolling down Constitution Avenue between 15th and 23th streets will be Abrams tanks, first used in 1991 for Operation Desert Storm; High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, used to launch multiple rockets at precise aim from far distances; and 9,500-pound titanium M777 lightweight Howitzers that fire 105-pound shells up to 24 miles and are currently in use on Ukraine’s battlefields.

The Army Corps of Engineers released footage of 18-by-16-foot metal plates installed on D.C. streets to reinforce the roads prior to the massive vehicles driving over them.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said in early June that she “remains concerned” about damage to the city’s streets.

“But I gotta think that the Army is among the most qualified logistics moving agencies in the world. They have moved equipment in more precarious situations, so we’re relying on their expertise. But what I can tell D.C. residents is that we will try to keep our road network usable, and if we have to fix something we will seek reimbursement from the Feds,” Bowser told reporters at a June 3 press conference. 

Left to right, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth attend a Cabinet meeting at the White House on April 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs can go forward while the administration fights to overturn a lower court’s trade decision that ruled the global import taxes unlawful, according to a U.S. appeals court order late Tuesday.

The two cases filed by a handful of private businesses and a dozen Democratic state attorneys general will be consolidated and heard by a full panel of active circuit court judges in July, according to the four-page order from the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit.

Democratic state attorneys general who brought the suit represent Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon.

The court “concludes that these cases present issues of exceptional importance warranting expedited en banc consideration of the merits in the first instance,” according to the order.

A hearing is scheduled for July 31 in Washington, D.C.

Trump rocked global markets when he imposed the wide-reaching levies on nearly every country on April 2 under an unprecedented use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. The president walked them back just seven days later, announcing a 90-day pause on staggering tariffs that reached nearly 50% on some major U.S. trading partners.

The U.S. Court of International Trade struck down Trump’s emergency tariffs May 28. The following day, the appeals court temporarily restored the tariffs. 

A worker installs a solar panel on a roof. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —  Clean energy manufacturers and advocates say they’re perplexed how the repeal of tax credits in President Donald Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” will keep their domestic production lines humming across the United States, particularly in states that elected him to the Oval Office.

While some Republicans have labeled the billions in tax credits a “green new scam,” statistics reviewed by States Newsroom show the jobs and benefits would boost predominantly GOP-leaning states and congressional districts. Now the industry is already slowing amid Trump’s back-and-forth tariff policy and mixed messaging on energy and manufacturing.

Trump vowed in early April that he would “supercharge our domestic industrial base.”

“Jobs and factories will come roaring back to our country, and you see it happening already,” he told a crowd in the White House Rose Garden while unveiling his new trade policy.

But as a way to pay for the $3.9 trillion price tag of extending and expanding the 2017 corporate and individual tax cuts, U.S. House Republicans found billions of dollars in savings by slashing over a dozen clean energy tax credits enacted in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act under President Joe Biden.

Critics say the mega-bill, which passed the GOP-led House on May 22 in a 215-214 vote, would effectively strip away the Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit and other incentives.

They have bolstered the production of batteries and solar components in numerous states — top among them North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, South Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Texas, Nevada, Illinois and Oklahoma, according to the Clean Investment Monitor, a joint project by the Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

U.S. senators are now negotiating the massive budget reconciliation legislation.

Kevin Doffling, CEO and founder of Project Vanguard, an organization that connects veterans to clean energy jobs, warned pulling the plug on the clean energy tax credits will stifle progress the U.S. has made against other countries, namely China.

“We’re just going to see a huge pullback from investments inside of advanced manufacturing here in the U.S., and then we’ll go source it from other places, instead of doing it here,” Doffling said on a May 28 press call pressing for senators to protect the tax credits.

Doffling’s organization works in several states, including Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Minnesota, Washington and Utah.

Moving away from fossil fuels

The suite of tax credits enacted under the IRA incentivized homeowners, car buyers, energy producers and manufacturers to invest in types of energy beyond fossil fuels, with the aim of a reduction in the effects of climate change.

For example, the IRA’s Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit is awarded per unit produced and sold, and in some cases the capacity of energy output. 

Battery cell manufacturers can earn up to $35 per battery cell multiplied by potential kilowatt hours. In the case of solar, the credit offers producers 7 cents per solar module multiplied by wattage output. For mining operations extracting critical minerals, such as lithium, companies can receive a 10% tax break on the costs of production.

Most credits phase out by 2032 under the Biden-era law, except those for critical mineral mining, which continue.

A group of House Republicans, who have dubbed the tax credits the “green new scam” — echoing Trump’s rhetoric — pushed to accelerate the expiration in the final version of the mega-bill, even for critical mineral mining and production. The federal government classifies critical minerals as crucial to national security.

The House-passed bill also severely tightens language around foreign components, titled “foreign entities of concern,” making the credit practically unusable as many parts of the clean energy manufacturing supply chain are global, industry professionals say.

The legislation also repeals “transferability,” which allows companies with little or no tax liability to sell the credits.

For example, a critical mineral mining company would not turn a profit during an initial phase and could sell the credits to offset the cost of operations.

Schneider Electric, a global corporation with a U.S. base in Massachusetts, has facilitated 18 transfer deals worth $1.7 billion in tax credits for U.S. companies since 2023. In a statement, Schneider said the deals “reflect growing market interest in flexible financing mechanisms that directly fund renewable projects.”

Silfab Solar, which recently built a solar cell manufacturing and module assembly plant in Fort Mill, South Carolina, announced in mid-May the sale of $110 million in Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credits to help fund its expansion. The company already runs a solar manufacturing site in Burlington, Washington.

Investment soared

Spurred by the Advanced Manufacturing and Production Credit, known as 45X, actual investment in clean energy manufacturing since August 2022 reached $115 billion in April, up from $21 billion over the same length of time prior to the IRA, the Clean Investment Monitor found.

Of the 380 clean technology production facilities announced since the third quarter of 2022, 161 are now operational, according to CIM data.

The credit spurred a “sea change” in U.S. clean energy manufacturing, said Mike Williams, senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress and former deputy director of the BlueGreen Alliance, which advocates for the joining of labor and environmental organizations.

Despite solar technology’s roots in the U.S., the nation “didn’t even have a toe” in solar manufacturing, Williams said. Other countries, most notably Germany and then China, have dominated the industry.

“But after the Inflation Reduction Act passed, all of a sudden we see panel manufacturing, we see parts and components manufacturing, absolutely exploding. Plants have announced and started construction in Georgia, in Oklahoma,” Williams said in an interview with States Newsroom.

Active manufacturing of solar components, advanced batteries and wind turbines and vessels is concentrated in rural areas. Most are located in states that went red in the 2024 presidential election, according to the Clean Power America Association’s May 2025 State of Clean Energy Manufacturing in America report.

The renewable energy policy group estimated the industry supports 122,000 full-time manufacturing jobs across the U.S.

Active solar manufacturing sites and expansions are clustered in Texas, Ohio and Alabama, according to data from the association. Should major project announcements in Georgia pull through, the state would surpass Alabama for third place.

Advanced battery manufacturing spans 38 states, with the largest concentrations in California, Michigan and North Carolina.

But various parts of the battery production process stretch throughout the country — for example, battery cell production in Nevada and Tennessee and module production in Utah. Other supporting hardware is made in South Carolina, Arizona and Texas.

Lithium, a critical mineral for battery production, is currently mined in Nevada and California. And investors are eyeing other spots in the U.S., namely Alaska, to mine and produce graphite, another critical mineral.

China largely dominates the world’s critical mineral supply chain, according to U.S. Geological Survey data for 2024.

When accounting for the full suite of clean energy tax credits that were enacted in 2022 — including residential, electric vehicles and clean electricity credits — just over 312,900 new jobs are linked to the industry, the bulk in Republican-led congressional districts, according to the advocacy group Climate Power’s 2024 report on clean energy employment.

Troy Van Beek, CEO and founder of the Iowa-based solar company Ideal Energy, said his business weathered the pandemic and has been able to add jobs, but is now facing uncertainty again.

“​​We’re getting our feet under us and really starting to operate. I went from 20-some jobs to over 60 jobs, and those are good-paying jobs for people and their families. So we need that stability in the industry,” said Van Beek, who spoke on the call with Doffling.

“What troubles me is the rocking of the boat to such a degree that we can’t get anything done, and that’s been very difficult to deal with,” he said.

Industry slowdown

The industry has seen a pullback since January and the beginning of the Trump presidency.

Six announced projects representing $6.9 billion in investment were canceled in the first quarter of 2025, according to the Clean Investment Monitor’s latest State of U.S. Clean Energy Supply Chains report. While investment in clean energy overall continues to grow, the beginning of 2025 shows a slowdown from where the industry was a year ago.

Van Beek, whose solar company provides construction and installation among others services, said recent talks to strike a deal with a solar manufacturer collapsed after threats to the tax credits.

“We had worked an entire year on putting together (a deal) with one of the leading manufacturers in the world that has U.S. manufacturing to actually have joint ventures and work with them on projects,” Van Beek said. “And when this came up, that deal came to a screeching halt.”

Van Beek did not name the company on the call and did not respond to a request for a follow-up interview.

Several companies declined States Newsroom’s requests for comment while senators negotiate the bill.

Spencer Pederson of the National Electrical Manufacturers Association said the unpredictability is interrupting how operators are planning for the coming years.

“Whether large or small, just the business certainty and the ability to plan out your business is disrupted when you have any type of tax mechanism that is abruptly halted when you’re doing business planning at five- or 10-year intervals,” said Pederson, the association’s senior vice president of public affairs.

Too expensive, Republicans say

Some House Republicans, led by Rep. Jen Kiggans of Virginia, urged party colleagues to protect the clean energy tax credits — for example by removing the “overly prescriptive” restrictions on foreign entities of concern and keeping in place transferability of tax credits.

Kiggans wrote to House Republican tax writers in mid-May that “the last thing any of us want is to provoke an energy crisis or cause higher energy bills for working families.”

Her co-signers included Don Bacon of Nebraska, Mark Amodei of Nevada, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, Gabe Evans and Jeff Hurd of Colorado, Dave Joyce of Ohio and Dan Newhouse of Washington, who all eventually voted for the final bill.

Far-right House members won on not only shortening the lifespan of the credits, but also on keeping the restrictive foreign entity language and on repealing a company’s ability to transfer credits.

The right-leaning National Taxpayers Union hailed the “commonsense changes” championed by the far-right House Freedom Caucus, under the leadership of Maryland Rep. Andy Harris.

The organization, which favors cutting government spending and lowering taxes, pointed to the cost. According to the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the credits as of 2022 were valued at roughly $384.9 billion over ten years.

“The longer these subsidies remain in law, the more expensive they will become and the harder it will be for Congress to remove them. Now it’s up to the Senate to support the Green New Deal Rollbacks,” Thomas Aiello, NTU’s senior director of government affairs, wrote in the days following the House vote.

Hope in the Senate?

But representatives from multinational corporations to mid-size businesses and sizable trade associations are now looking to the U.S. Senate to restore measures that they say created a boom time for investment, production and new energy on the grid.

Jeannie Salo, chief public policy officer at Schneider Electric, said in a statement to States Newsroom that “The Senate should restore and extend the timelines for key energy and manufacturing credits and their transferability to ensure the nation continues to attract key investments and projects that will power the U.S. economy and help make energy more affordable.”

Pederson said the restrictions on foreign components and company ties are “particularly restrictive coming out of the House.”

“So we’re hoping to work with the Senate Finance Committee and some of the members of the Senate who have indicated some willingness to make the foreign entity of concern language a little bit more workable,” Pederson said.

Doffling believes senators have a “longer term vision” of the nation’s energy strategy than House members who face reelection every two years.

“They see what’s happening not just in their district, but in the entire state that they represent,” Doffling said.

The House bill just sets the U.S. “further behind,” he added. “This bill is all about going backwards in time and hoping for the best.”

“I wish they could look at the numbers and understand the economic impacts it’s gonna have. … But somehow we’re talking about the fact of hamstringing a whole entire industry itself over verbiage of the word ‘clean.’”

New Nissan cars are driven onto a rail car to be transported from an automobile processing terminal located at the Port of Los Angeles on April 3, 2024, in Wilmington, California.  Tariffs are being levied by President Donald Trump on most foreign vehicles and auto parts.  (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s tariffs would decrease the deficit over the next decade but overall shrink the U.S. economy and raise costs for consumers, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis released Wednesday.

Tariffs are paid to the U.S. government by domestic companies and purchasers who buy goods from abroad.

The nonpartisan CBO found that tariffs would reduce the nation’s primary deficit by $2.5 trillion from now until 2035, plus an additional $500 million saved from avoiding even more mounting interest payments on the U.S. debt.

But the office also found that tariffs would slow down the U.S. economy over the same time, in part by affecting behavior in the private sector.

For example, businesses may pull back from investment and growth when faced with higher costs. The CBO, the official financial scorekeeper for Congress, estimates that Trump’s tariffs, as they stand now, would lower the U.S. gross domestic product, or the total value of a country’s goods and services, on average by 0.6% per year through 2035. 

In addition to increasing costs on supplies and other assets businesses use in production, the tariffs are expected to raise prices on consumer goods in the next couple years. The CBO projects the price index used to measure personal consumption will be 0.9% higher by the end of 2026.

While lower-income households spend a higher percentage of their income on consumer goods, the CBO projects that prices will increase the most on goods like home appliances and vehicles more likely to be purchased by higher earners.

The eight-page analysis only takes into account the effects of Trump’s tariffs as of May 13. These include the following taxes calculated on the value of imports: a baseline 10% on goods from most countries; a base of 30% on all goods from China and Hong Kong; 25% on most foreign vehicles and auto parts; 25% on steel and aluminum; and 25% on certain goods from Canada and Mexico.

The CBO released the figures in response to a request from U.S. Senate Democrats wanting to know the cost of the administration’s import taxes.

The report did not take into account any tariff changes after May 13, including Trump’s doubling to 50% the import taxes on steel and aluminum. The report also did not factor in changes that could result from a May 29 trade court decision striking down most of Trump’s tariffs — though an appeals court swiftly left them in place while the case plays out. 

Then-U.S. Rep. Billy Long speaks during a press conference on Feb. 22, 2022, in Jefferson City, Missouri. (Madeline Carter/Missouri Independent)

WASHINGTON — Republican U.S. Senate tax writers voted Tuesday to move Missouri Republican former Congressman Billy Long one step closer to taking the reins at the Internal Revenue Service, despite protests from Democrats over his alleged involvement with a company that peddled fake tribal tax credits.

Members of the Senate Committee on Finance advanced Long’s nomination along party lines, 14-13, to the full Senate as the revenue collection agency faces the possibility of a more complex tax code as congressional Republicans are poised to extend and expand President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.

Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo said Tuesday that Long presented a “vision to transform the IRS through systems modernization, a renewed focus on efficiency and a much-needed change in IRS culture” during his May confirmation hearing. 

“If confirmed, I look forward to working with him to ensure the IRS focuses on helping American taxpayers to better understand and meet their tax responsibilities, and that it enforces the law with integrity and fairness to all,” the Idaho Republican said.

Sen. Ron Wyden, the committee’s top Democrat, slammed the nominee in remarks delivered ahead of the vote. Wyden said Long “has no tax policy experience, but he has lots of tax fraud experience.”

“When he left office, he threw in with a bunch of fly-by-night operators selling tax deals that were sketchy at best,” Wyden said.

Wyden highlighted contributions Long received to his dormant U.S. Senate campaign from officials at the Arkansas-based White River Energy Corps after revelations that Long was tied to the company and its sales of nonexistent tax credits.

The Oregon Democrat said Long’s “scandals here are too big to ignore.”

Long testified before the committee on May 20 and denied any wrongdoing.

Long, who served in the House from 2011 to 2023 and previously spent multiple years as a talk radio host, told lawmakers on the panel that he plans to get rid of “stinking thinking” at the IRS and implement a “comprehensive plan” to modernize the agency and “invest in retaining skilled members of the team.”

The agency has lost more than 11,000 employees, or 11% of its workforce, either through deferred resignations or mass firing of probationary workers since Trump began his second term, according to a May 2 report from the agency’s inspector general.

Trump announced Long as his pick for the IRS post in December. 

President Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a rally at the US Steel-Irvin Works on May 30, 2025, in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. Trump signed an order Tuesday doubling tariffs on steel and aluminum, a policy he'd announced at the Pennsylvania event. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed a directive Tuesday doubling tariffs on steel and aluminum, marking another escalation in his on-and-off policy rocking global trade.

Trump announced the increased levies to 50%, up from 25%, on steel and aluminum Friday during a visit to U.S. Steel’s Irving plant in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh. The president told the crowd he would hike the tariffs to “even further secure the steel industry in the United States.”

The increase will mark the second time since Trump’s second term began that he triggered national security duties on steel and aluminum, a major import into the U.S.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed during Tuesday’s daily press briefing that Trump would sign the directive Tuesday afternoon. The White House published the proclamation just before 5 p.m.

The move comes as the administration presses governments around the globe to strike new trade deals before a self-imposed deadline of July 9.

That’s when Trump’s staggering “liberation day” tariffs are set to kick in again, even as the U.S. International Trade Court ruled them unlawful. A federal appeals court restored Trump’s ability to impose them while the case proceeds.

The court order only applies to Trump’s tariffs triggered under a national emergency law, and not to tariffs imposed on national security grounds to protect certain industries — meaning the increase on steel and aluminum could go forth regardless.

Trump’s back-and-forth tariffs have been seen by some allies as strong-arming. Major trading partners including Canada and the European Union expressed disapproval of the significant price hike for U.S. companies that buy steel and aluminum imports from their producers.

The U.S. is the world’s largest steel importer with the bulk coming from Canada, according to figures from the U.S. International Trade Administration. The U.S. imported 26.2 million metric tons of steel in 2024 from 79 countries and territories, according to the administration.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke Friday to government officials from across the country about plans to “supercharge” Canada’s economy and shield against economic fallout from U.S. tariff rates.

Canada’s steel manufacturers warned Saturday that Trump’s tariff increase will cause “unrecoverable consequences” for the industry and urged retaliatory measures, according to a statement from the Canadian Steel Producers Association.

The EU told several media outlets Saturday the bloc is planning “countermeasures” on U.S. goods by mid-July if a trade agreement cannot be reached.

The EU and Canada threatened countermeasures in mid-March after Trump hiked import taxes on steel and aluminum to 25%. 

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

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House early Thursday approved the “big, beautiful bill” that Republican leaders spent months negotiating with centrists and far-right members of the party — two distinct factions that hold vastly different policy goals — over intense opposition from Democrats.

The 215-214 vote ships the package to the Senate, where GOP lawmakers are expected to rewrite much of it, before sending it back across the Capitol for final approval, a process likely to stretch through the summer.

President Donald Trump, who said he backed the House version, would then need to sign the legislation, which under the complicated process being used by Republicans can pass with just a majority vote in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Trump called on the Senate to pass the legislation as quickly as possible, writing in a social media post that “(t)here is no time to waste” and that the bill is “arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!”

Speaker Mike Johnson said minutes before the vote that he expects lawmakers to give the measure final approval before the Fourth of July.

“Now, look, we’re accomplishing a big thing here today, but we know this isn’t the end of the road just yet,” Johnson, R-La., said. “We’ve been working closely with Leader (John) Thune and our Senate colleagues, the Senate Republicans, to get this done and delivered to the president’s desk by our Independence Day. That’s July 4. Today proves that we can do that, and we will do that.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., argued against the legislation, saying it “undermines reproductive freedom, undermines the progress that we have made in combating the climate crisis, undermines gun safety, undermines the rule of law and the independence of the federal judiciary. It even undermines the ability of hard-working and law-abiding immigrant families to provide remittances to their loved ones, who may just happen to live abroad.”

Jeffries raised concerns with how the proposals in the bill would impact the economy and the federal government’s financial stability.

“Costs aren’t going down. They’re going up. Inflation is out of control. Insurance rates remain stubbornly high,” Jeffries said. “Our Moody’s rating, our credit rating, has been downgraded, and you’ve got people losing confidence in this economy. Republicans are crashing this economy in real time and driving us toward a recession.”

Ohio’s Warren Davidson and Kentucky’s Thomas Massie were the only Republicans to vote against passing the bill, which members debated throughout the night prior to the vote just after daylight in the nation’s capital. All Democrats, who dubbed it “one big ugly bill,” were opposed. Maryland GOP Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, voted “present.”

Massie spoke against the bill overnight, calling it “a debt bomb ticking.”

“I’d love to stand here and tell the American people: We can cut your taxes and we can increase spending, and everything’s going to be just fine. But I can’t do that because I’m here to deliver a dose of reality,” Massie said. “This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term, but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now. Where have we heard that before? How do you bind a future Congress to these promises?”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing later in the day that Trump wants Davidson and Massie to face primary challenges next year during the midterm elections.

“I believe he does,” Leavitt said. “And I don’t think he likes to see grandstanders in Congress.” 

In the works for weeks

The 1,116-page package combines 11 bills that GOP lawmakers debated and reported out of committee during the last several weeks.

The legislation would:

• Extend the 2017 tax law, including tax cuts for businesses and individuals;
• Bolster spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars;
• Rework energy permitting;
• Restructure higher education aid such as student loans and Pell Grants;
• Shift some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food aid program for low-income Americans to state governments; and
• Overhaul Medicaid, the nation’s program for health care for low-income people and some people with disabilities.

The bill would make deep cuts to Medicaid spending, reducing the program by $625 billion over 10 years under the latest estimate by the Congressional Budget Office.

The budget measure would also raise the debt limit by $4 trillion.

A new Congressional Budget Office analysis released late Tuesday showed the package tilted toward the wealthy, projecting it would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners.

Republicans hold especially thin majorities in the House and Senate, meaning that nearly every GOP lawmaker — ranging from centrists who barely won their general elections to far-right members who are more at risk of losing a primary challenge — needed to support the bill.

Balancing the demands of hundreds of lawmakers led to nearly constant talks during the last few days as Johnson struggled to secure the votes to pass the bill before his Memorial Day deadline.

Any deal Johnson made with far-right members of the party risked alienating centrist GOP lawmakers and vice versa.

An agreement finally came together Wednesday evening when GOP leaders released a 42-page amendment that made changes to various sections of the package, including the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, and Medicaid work requirements and nixed the potential sale of some public lands.

Tax cuts

House debate on the package fell largely along party lines, with Democrats contending it would benefit the wealthy at the expense of lower-income Americans, including millions who would lose access to Medicaid.

Republicans argued the legislation is necessary to avoid a tax hike at the end of the year, when the 2017 GOP law expires, and to curb government spending in the years ahead.

Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said the tax section of the package would halt a tax increase for many that would have taken place after the vast majority of the provisions in that law expire at the end of this year.

“Working families, farmers and small businesses win with this bill,” Smith said. “We expand and make permanent the small business deduction and increase the child tax credit, the standard deduction and the death tax exemption.”

The legislation would increase the tax rate for colleges and universities with substantial endowments, which would match the corporate tax rate, he said.

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Richard Neal, ranking member on that tax-writing committee, said the legislation would lead the United States to “borrow $4 trillion and with interest payments over the next 10 years, $5 trillion, to justify a tax cut for the billionaire class.”

Neal said that the wealthy would see a greater benefit from the GOP tax provisions than working-class Americans.

“If you made a million dollars last year, you’re going to get $81,000 of tax relief. If you made less than $50,000 Guess what? Not quite so lucky,” Neal said. “But you know what? $1 a day goes a long way, because that’s where the numbers land.”

Neal said Democrats would have worked with Republicans to extend the 2017 tax cuts if the GOP had capped them for those making less than $400,000 a year, with people making more than that going back to the higher rate. 

Child tax credit

The child tax credit will increase to $2,500, up from the $2,000 enacted under the 2017 tax law. The refundability portion of the credit, or the amount parents could receive in a refund check after paying their tax liability, will remain capped but will increase with inflation by $100 annually. As of now, the amount a parent could receive back per child stands at $1,700.

While Republicans hailed the increase as a win for families, critics say it continues to leave out the poorest families as the refund amount is dependent on how much a parent earns. The credit phases in at 15 cents per income dollar, one child at a time.

“The Republican bill will leave out 17 million American children who are in families that don’t earn enough to receive the full child tax credit,” Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington said Wednesday in the House Committee on Rules. Her amendment to make the tax credit fully refundable was rejected.

On the House floor Thursday morning, DelBene criticized the bill as a “big, broken promise.”

SALT

Republicans from high-tax blue states declared victory on the increase in the SALT cap, or the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted from federal taxable income. After long, drawn-out disagreement, Republicans representing districts in California, New Jersey and New York secured a bump to $40,000, up from the $10,000 cap enacted under Trump’s 2017 tax law.

However, the cap comes with an income limit of $500,000, after which it phases down. 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.

Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said during debate that he “would never support a tax bill that did not adequately lift the cap on SALT.”

“This bill does that. It increases the cap on SALT by 300%,” Lawler said. “And I would remind my Democratic colleagues, when they had full control in Washington, they lifted the cap on SALT by exactly $0, zilch, zip, nada.”

Medicaid work requirements 

Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said his panel’s bill would ensure Medicaid coverage continued for low-income families, individuals who are disabled and seniors through new work requirements and other changes.

“This bill protects coverage for those individuals by ensuring ineligible recipients do not cut the line in front of our most vulnerable Americans,” Guthrie said. “The decision by left-leaning state governments to spend taxpayer dollars on people who are ineligible for the program is indefensible. Medicaid should not cover illegal immigrants, deceased or duplicative beneficiaries, or able-bodied adults without dependents who choose not to work.”

The policy change would require those who rely on the state-federal health program, and who are between the ages of 19 and 65, to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month.

The language has numerous exceptions, including for pregnant people, parents of dependent children, people who have complex medical conditions, tribal community members, those in the foster care system, people who were in foster care who are below the age of 26 and individuals released from incarceration in the last 90 days, among others.

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, ranking member on the committee that oversees major health care programs, said the Republican bill would not only cut funding for Medicaid, but also for Medicare, the program relied on by seniors and some younger people with disabilities.

“Republicans are stripping health care away from people by putting all sorts of burdensome and time-consuming road blocks in the way of people just trying to get by,” Pallone said. “The vast majority of people on Medicaid are already working. This is not about work. It’s about burying people in so much paperwork that they fall behind and lose their health coverage, and if someone loses their health coverage through Medicaid, this GOP tax scam also bans them from getting coverage through the ACA marketplace.”

While the GOP bill doesn’t directly address Medicare, he said, a federal budget law, known as the Pay-As-You-Go Act, would force spending cuts called sequestration to that health program.

“The Medicare cuts will lead to reduced access to care for seniors, longer wait times for appointments, and increased costs,” Pallone said.

States to share in food aid costs

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., pressed for support for his piece of the legislation, saying changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are needed.

“SNAP is the only state-administered welfare program that does not have a cost-share component, and while the federal government funds 100% of the benefit, states are tasked with operating it,” Thompson said. “The only problem: They aren’t operating it well.”

He also cheered several of the package’s tax provisions, saying they would benefit farmers.

“The one big, beautiful bill makes permanent and expands the Trump tax cuts. It also prevents the death tax from hitting over 2 million family farms,” Thompson said. “It locks in the small business deduction, helping 98% of American farms stay afloat.”

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Angie Craig, ranking member on the panel, wrote in a statement that the proposed changes would “make America hungrier, poorer and sicker.”

“At a time when grocery prices are going up and retirement accounts are going down, we must protect the basic needs programs that help people afford food and health care,” Craig wrote. “As a mother and someone who needed food assistance at periods in my own childhood, I condemn this attempt to snatch food off our children’s plates to fund tax breaks for large corporations.”

Border security, air traffic control, EV fees

House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., said his piece of the package would combine “critical investments in border security, national defense and modernization of America’s air traffic control system, while eliminating wasteful spending and other deficit reduction measures.”

“Specifically, this bill addresses long overdue needs in the United States Coast Guard, which for over two decades has received less than half of the capital investment necessary to effectively carry out its critical missions,” Graves said.

The transportation section of the package, he said, includes $21 billion for the Coast Guard and $12.5 billion to modernize the air traffic control systems while establishing a $250 annual fee for electric vehicles and a $100 annual fee for hybrid vehicles that would go toward the Highway Trust Fund. That account has traditionally been funded through a gas tax. 

Washington Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen, ranking member on the transportation panel, said he wanted “to continue historic funding for transportation, infrastructure, and stronger and healthier communities.”

“Unfortunately, this reconciliation package leaves very little room for those investments,”  Larsen said.

“This bill causes immediate harm by yanking money from locally selected projects that our constituents in Republican and Democratic districts alike are counting on,” he added. “And for what? To help pay for the tax cuts for the richest Americans and largest and largest corporations.”

Student loan overhaul, medical research

House Education and Workforce Committee ranking member Bobby Scott, D-Va., urged opposition to what he called the “big, bad billionaires bill,” saying it would lead to a massive reshaping of higher education aid.

“The bill not only can increase the deficit, it has 4 million students who will lose their Pell Grants, 18 million children could potentially lose their free school lunch, 13.7 million people are set to lose their health care and everybody loses when the National Institutes of Health research is cut,” Scott said.

Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., said his portion of the legislation would “generate over $20 billion in savings and new revenue for the federal government, primarily by direct royalty and lease fees from the sale of oil, gas, timber and mine resources, while curbing wasteful spending.”

“Our title reinstates onshore and offshore oil and gas lease sales, holds annual geothermal lease sales and ensures a fair process for critical mineral development nationwide,” Westerman said. “We’ve also directed the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to utilize long-term timber sale contracts.”

The Trump administration released a Statement of Administration Policy on Wednesday urging GOP lawmakers to approve the legislation, when it still appeared several members of the party might delay or even block the bill in the House. 

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act reflects the shared priorities of both Congress and the Administration,” the SAP states. “Therefore, the House of Representatives should immediately pass this bill to show the American people that they are serious about ‘promises made, promises kept.’

“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises, and failure to pass this bill would be the ultimate betrayal.”

U.S. House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, R-Md., center, speaks to reporters on Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at the U.S. Capitol. From left are Republicans Keith Self of Texas, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Chip Roy of Texas. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republican leaders released changes to their “one big beautiful bill” late Wednesday after marathon negotiations with conservatives demanding deeper cuts to safety net programs, teeing up debate and a final vote likely sometime Thursday.

The alterations, which will have to be adopted later, moved up implementation of work requirements for Medicaid by at least a couple of years and tossed out plans to sell some public lands. The new language also tightened the timeline for clean energy tax breaks and raised the ceiling for taxpayers who deduct state and local taxes.

The package of adjustments — the manager’s amendment — was incorporated into the larger reconciliation bill, which was approved by the House Rules Committee just before 11 p.m. Eastern on an 8-4 party-line vote. Far-right holdout Rep. Chip Roy of Texas was absent.

Next, the package must pass a procedural vote on the House floor before lawmakers can debate and take a final vote.

With a razor-thin margin, House Speaker Mike Johnson can only lose a handful of members on each vote. Democrats are expected to uniformly vote “no” in the procedural and final votes.

Medicaid

Republicans moved up implementation of work requirements for Medicaid enrollees from taking effect after January 1, 2029 to no later than December 31, 2026. That could mean some states will make the changes before next year’s midterm elections.

The provision would require those who rely on the state-federal health program for lower-income Americans and some people with disabilities, who are between the ages of 19 and 65, to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month.

The language has numerous exceptions, including for pregnant people, parents of dependent children, people who have complex medical conditions, tribal community members, people in the foster system, people who were in the foster system who are below the age of 26 and people released from incarceration in the last 90 days, among others.

The GOP changes also would bar Medicaid from covering gender transition procedures for anyone in the program. The bill previously barred that type of treatment for anyone below the age of 18.

Clean energy tax credits

Republicans also tightened the timeline on the termination of clean energy tax credits enacted under President Joe Biden. Hardliners focused on reducing the deficit had demanded a quicker phase-out for the credits.

The new language would accelerate phase-outs for clean energy investment tax credits to 2028, up from 2031, with special carve-outs for nuclear facilities. Companies that break ground on new facilities 60 days after the bill is enacted, if passed, will not qualify for the tax credits. The same applies to any facility placed into service after 2028.

State and local taxes

A separate contingent of Republican holdouts reached a deal with Johnson to raise the SALT cap to $40,000, up from the $10,000 lid enacted under the 2017 tax law. The SALT cap  — the amount of state and local taxes constituents can deduct from federal taxable income — is a top issue for Republicans who represent districts in high-tax blue states, including California, New Jersey and New York.

The amount of SALT taxpayers can deduct decreases for those making more than $500,000 annually. The SALT cap and the income cut-off will increase by 1% each year from 2027 until 2033.

Public lands sale

The amendment removed language that would have allowed the sale of public lands in Nevada and Utah.

The National Wildlife Federation credited Montana Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke with removing the provision.

“Thank you to Rep. Ryan Zinke and his colleagues who listened to their constituents and worked with House leaders to eliminate the provision from the budget reconciliation bill,” NWF Associate Vice President for Public Lands David Wilms said in a statement. “We urge all members of Congress to refrain from similar attacks on America’s public lands.”

Jessica Turner, president of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, wrote in a statement that “Congress avoided setting a dangerous precedent that lands can be sold anytime the U.S. Treasury needs a budget ‘pay-for’ and threatening outdoor recreation businesses and rural communities alike that need certainty, access, and long-term infrastructure.”

The Center for Biological Diversity’s Great Basin Director Patrick Donnelly wrote in a separate statement that it was “appalling that GOP leaders tried to get away with auctioning off some of our country’s most beautiful landscapes to fund tax cuts for billionaires and make developers richer. This is Gilded Age-level stuff, and I hope people remember it the next time Republicans try to pretend they care about public lands.”

A separate provision in the amendment appeared to narrow the federal authorizations energy projects could bypass by paying a $10 million fee. The section had been attacked by environmental groups as a “pay-to-play” for energy companies.

White House meeting

The changes come after Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, and far-right holdouts huddled with President Donald Trump at the White House Wednesday afternoon.

Johnson, speaking to reporters at the Capitol following the meeting, said that lawmakers had “a good discussion” and that he believes the GOP is “in a very good place.”

“I think that all of our colleagues here will really like this final product, and I think we’re going to move forward,” Johnson said.

Johnson said members of the Freedom Caucus, who previously argued the legislation doesn’t go far enough to restructure Medicaid and reduce federal spending, may end up supporting the bill, in part because Trump plans to address their other concerns through unilateral actions.

“You will see how all this is resolved. But I think we can resolve their concerns and it’ll be probably some combination of work by the president in these areas as well as here in Congress,” Johnson said. “So there may be executive orders related to some of these issues in the near future.

“And, you know, this is a commitment the president has made. He wants to go after fraud, waste and abuse.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt released a written statement saying the “meeting was productive and moved the ball in the right direction.

“The President reiterated how critical it is for the country to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill as quickly as possible.”

Complex process

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.

Reconciliation measures must address federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit in a way not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian. That means the GOP proposals must carry some sort of price tag and cannot focus simply on changing federal policy.

Republicans are using the package to extend the 2017 tax law, increase spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, overhaul American energy production, restructure higher education aid and cut spending on Medicaid.

A new Congressional Budget Office analysis released late Tuesday projected the massive reconciliation package would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners.

Freedom Caucus

Earlier Wednesday, members of the Freedom Caucus told reporters following a different meeting with Johnson that they believed negotiations were moving in the right direction, but were skeptical of trying to approve the entire package this week.

Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the group, said they wanted the legislation to go further in terms of addressing “waste, fraud and abuse” within Medicaid, though he declined to elaborate.

The Medicaid proposals in the version of the bill prior to the negotiated changes would cut $625 billion in federal spending during the next decade, under a CBO analysis. Democrats have warned the result would be millions of vulnerable people losing access to the health program for lower income people and some people with disabilities.

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy said during that same impromptu press conference that leadership and members of the Freedom Caucus had made “significant progress” toward a final agreement.

“We’re trying to deliver so that the people who are actually out there working hard can actually get the health care that they want to get, that they can get, and get it the best way possible,” Roy said. “That’s what this is all about; changing a broken system, making sure we’re saving taxpayer dollars and being able to provide a better environment for people to be able to thrive.”

Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry, who used to chair the Freedom Caucus, said that holding a House vote before Memorial Day was a made-up timeline and that if negotiations needed to last longer, they should.

“This is a completely arbitrary deadline set by people here to force people into a corner to make bad decisions,” Perry said. “It’s more important to get this right, to get it correct, than to get it fast. We are sitting at the table to do that.”

Jacob Fischler contributed to this report.

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

WASHINGTON — As House Republicans continue to wrangle over the “one big beautiful bill,” a new analysis released late Tuesday projects the massive reconciliation package would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the lowest-earning households in the United States would see incomes decrease 2% in 2027, moving to a 4% loss in 2033, as a result of spending cuts to nutrition assistance and Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income individuals and those with disabilities.

The CBO projects resources would meanwhile increase by 4% for the highest-earning Americans in 2027, moving down to a 2% increase by 2033, according to the latest analysis.

The CBO score could change as hardline conservatives press Republican leadership for increased spending cuts to federal safety net programs as a way to pay for, at least in part, the extension and expansion of 2017 tax cuts that come with a price tag of $3.8 trillion.

Rep. Brendan Boyle, ranking member on the House Committee on the Budget, said in a statement late Tuesday that “Donald Trump and House Republicans are selling out the middle class to make the ultra-rich even richer.”

“This is what Republicans are fighting for—lining the pockets of their billionaire donors while children go hungry and families get kicked off their health care,” said the Pennsylvania Democrat.

The bill as written now would slash roughly $800 billion from Medicaid and Affordable Care Act provisions, and $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Lawmakers on the House Committee on Rules — the final stop for the 1,116-page package bill before it reaches a House floor vote — have been debating the measure since 1 a.m. Eastern Wednesday, while House Speaker Mike Johnson huddled separately with far-right deficit hawks.

Far-right members of the House Freedom Caucus remained skeptical the bill could reach the House floor by Johnson’s goal of Wednesday.

The Louisiana Republican leader also faces opposition from GOP lawmakers who represent high-tax blue states who want an even higher ceiling for the amount of state and local taxes, or SALT, their constituents can deduct from federal taxable income.

Lifting the ceiling, which lawmakers already proposed boosting from $10,000 to $30,000 for married couples filing jointly, will increase the cost of the bill.

Johnson needs nearly every GOP lawmaker to support the bill once it hits the floor as House Republicans have an extremely thin 220-213 majority.

President Donald Trump arrives with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., for a House Republican meeting at the U.S. Capitol on May 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Republicans who have yet to rally behind the party’s “big, beautiful bill” huddled in the speaker’s office Tuesday as different factions tried to hash out agreement on taxes, Medicaid and a few other outstanding issues.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters before those meetings began there were “a number of loose ends to tie up” with deficit hawks and members from high-tax states, who are pressing to raise the state and local tax deduction, also known as SALT.

“We got some hours ahead of us to work this out, and I’m very confident we will,” Johnson said. “I’m going to have a series of meetings that will begin right now in my office to try to tie up the final loose ends. This is a 1,100-page piece of legislation. We’re down to a few provisions so we are very confident, very optimistic we can get this done and stay on our timetable.”

Johnson hopes to pass the legislation this week, though he didn’t appear to have the votes as of Tuesday afternoon.

Trump pays a House call

The smaller meetings followed a closed-door huddle between all the chamber’s GOP lawmakers and President Donald Trump earlier in the day that didn’t quite have the intended effect of immediately convincing holdouts to vote for the bill.

Trump, however, appeared to declare victory before leaving the Capitol.

“I think we have unbelievable unity. I think we’re going to get everything we want,” Trump said after the morning meeting. “And I think we’re going to have a great victory.”

House Republicans have an extremely thin 220-213 majority, requiring nearly every GOP lawmaker to support the 1,116-page package in order for it to reach the Senate.

Getting SALT-y

The reconciliation bill currently proposes lifting the SALT cap from $10,000 to $30,000 for married couples filing jointly, with a phase-down for those earning $400,000 or more, but that’s not enough for Republicans from states most impacted by the aspect of tax law.

New York Republican Rep. Nick LaLota told reporters in the early afternoon that he would likely lose reelection if he can’t secure a better SALT agreement than what was on the table.

“If I do a bad deal, I would expect my constituents to throw me out,” LaLota said. “If I did a deal at $30,000, my own mother wouldn’t vote for me.”

LaLota said Republicans leaders should prioritize a deal that benefits swing voters to avoid the party losing centrist members and possibly the House majority in the 2026 midterms.

“If we win that one issue, they’ll have a much easier November of 2026. And thus we’ll be able to keep the House and do other fiscally responsible things for the next couple of cycles here, if we get this one issue right,” LaLota said. “Conversely, you get this issue wrong — you vote for a bad bill and you keep the cap low — those folks are getting thrown out of office, we lose the majority, and then we have an open border, then we have an impeached president, and then we have all the other things that America voted against.”

LaLota said later Tuesday, after GOP leaders proposed different SALT cap numbers, that there was still “no accepted deal, yet the parties are talking a little more with an understanding of each other’s position.”

“Leadership understands better what our pain threshold is,” LaLota said. “We clearly rejected the $30,000 number that’s in the Ways and Means bill.” 

He declined to say if the SALT Caucus was prepping a counteroffer for leadership, but said that staff were conducting “some research on some of the mixes of income caps and what SALT cap there would be and how much that would be valued at relative to the entire $4 trillion package.”

‘Bad faith negotiation’

Rep. Mike Lawler, a staunch supporter of raising the SALT cap for his constituents north of New York City, would not comment to reporters outside the speaker’s office about a specific dollar amount but said there’s an “improved offer” on the table.

“We’re waiting on more details. We’ll have more to say later,” Lawler said.

Speaking to Fox News in the hallway, he said, “I’m not going to sacrifice my constituents and throw them under the bus in a bad faith negotiation, which is what this has been by leadership and Jason Smith,” he said referring to the chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means.

“We need to come to an agreement. We need to provide real and lasting tax relief, and that’s what I’m fighting for, for my constituents. I respect the president … but I’ll respectfully disagree,” Lawler said.

Trump urged House Republicans Tuesday morning that raising the SALT cap benefits Democratic governors.

Conservatives still unhappy

Complicating negotiations, some far-right House Republicans remain opposed to the bill, saying it does not go far enough.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who did not support the bill during a committee vote Sunday night, told States Newsroom Tuesday afternoon that his “concerns and problems still exist.”

Roy argues the massive reconciliation deal does not reduce deficit spending enough, particularly with respect to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits.

When asked whether lawmakers were approaching an agreement, Roy said “Not sure. We’re still talking. We’ve had literally like five meetings today already.”

Thune predictions

The House passing the package this week would only be one of many steps in the long, winding process.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said during a press conference Tuesday afternoon, just after Johnson spoke during a closed-door lunch, that changes to the package are expected in the upper chamber.

Thune said one of the major questions for GOP senators is whether the legislation holds “sufficient spending reforms to get us on a more sustainable fiscal path.”

“I think most of our members are in favor of a lot of the tax policy and particularly those portions of the tax policy that are stimulative, that are pro-growth, that will create greater growth in the economy,” Thune said. “But when it comes to the spending side of the equation: This is a unique moment in time and in history where we have the House and the Senate and the White House, and an opportunity to do something meaningful about government spending.”

Thune said that GOP senators would likely make “tweaks” to the tax provisions once the House sends over a package, especially around how long certain tax policy lasts.

“They have cliffs and some shorter-term timeframes when it comes to some of the tax policies,” Thune said. “We believe that permanence is the way to create economic certainty and thereby attract and incentive capital investment in this country that creates those good-paying jobs, and gets our economy growing and expanding, and generates more government revenue.”

Former U.S. Rep. Billy Long, nominee for Internal Revenue Service commissioner, testifies before the Senate Finance Committee at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Screenshot from committee webcast)

WASHINGTON — Senators tasked with tax writing split along party lines Tuesday praising and grilling former Republican U.S. Rep. Billy Long of Missouri, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Internal Revenue Service, the agency tasked with enforcing the largest source of U.S. revenue as the country faces record debt and interest costs.

Long, who served in Congress from 2011 to 2023 and previously spent multiple years as a talk radio host, testified to the Senate Finance Committee that he plans to get rid of “stinking thinking” at the IRS and implement a “comprehensive plan” to modernize the agency and “invest in retaining skilled members of the team.”

“This does not mean a bloated agency, but an efficient one where employees have the tools they need to succeed,” Long said.

The agency has lost more than 11,000 employees, or 11% of its workforce, either through deferred resignations or mass firing of probationary workers since Trump began his second term, according to a May 2 report from the agency’s inspector general. Trump said in December he intended to nominate Long for the IRS post.

‘Top-down culture change’

Committee Chair Mike Crapo of Idaho opened the confirmation hearing expressing his confidence in Long, saying he will direct a “sea change” at the agency that will benefit taxpayers.

“President Trump called Congressman Long the ‘consummate people person.’ Congressman Long is very clear that he will make himself available to all IRS employees, no matter their seniority. Moreover, he wants to implement a top-down culture change at the agency,” Crapo said.

The confirmation hearing comes as lawmakers struggle to agree on a budget reconciliation package, which will extend and expand Trump’s 2017 tax law and in turn widen IRS responsibilities.

Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, said he trusted Long’s work ethic and told him, “We’re going to do a tax bill here in the next couple of months. To be able to get that done, as we did it in 2017, there’ll be a lot of work the IRS has to do to be able to put guidance documents out, to be able to get clear instructions of what that means.”

Nonexistent tribal tax credits

Democrats approached the hearing with skepticism.

The nearly two-hour back-and-forth with Long followed recent revelations that he accepted donations to his defunct Senate campaign shortly after Trump nominated him as the IRS commissioner. Democratic senators on the panel have also called for an investigation into Long’s work with a company that peddled nonexistent tribal tax credits.

“Bottom line, the American people have the right to know whether the future IRS commissioner is a crook,” said Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the panel’s top Democrat.

Long denies any wrongdoing.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat, pressed Long about $65,000 he allegedly received for his involvement promoting the fake tax credits for the companies Capital Edge Strategies and White River.

“Knowing that (the credits) are illegal, the IRS has said they’re illegal, how do you stand here before this committee and tell the chairman just a few minutes ago that you have no conflict of interest?” Cortez Masto asked.

Long replied that he’s in compliance with the Office of Government Ethics regarding his nomination and that he “did not have any perception whatsoever that these (credits) did not exist.”

Other Democrats on the panel questioned Long on Trump’s recent statements that he would pull Harvard University’s tax-exempt status over its refusal to comply with demands from the administration.

Wyden characterized Long as a “MAGA devotee” and said that Trump wants to use the IRS “as a cudgel to beat his adversaries into submission.”

14-page letter

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who sent Long a 14-page letter questioning his past, repeatedly asked Long about a statute prohibiting the president from ordering tax audits on specific people or businesses.

“Is it illegal for the President to instruct the IRS to remove nonprofit status from taxpayers?” Warren asked several times.

“I’m not going to have the answer that you need, I apologize,” Long said.

Senate Republicans on the panel questioned Long on how he can improve customer service for taxpayers — despite the party successfully fighting in 2023 to cut new IRS funding under President Joe Biden in 2022.

Sen. Todd Young of Indiana said the agency is “behind the curve” on technology and that its customer service issues are “out of hand.”

“If confirmed, will you commit to developing a comprehensive IRS modernization plan that prioritizes customer service, identifies critical technology infrastructure needs and ensures greater transparency and audit practices? Yes or no?” Young asked.

“Yes,” Long replied.

“Excellent,” Young said.