‘Music to my ears’: Trump welcomes Senate passage of ‘big, beautiful bill’
Donald Trump said the Senate’s passage of his tax and spending bill was “music to my ears”.
While holding a roundtable discussion at the highly controversial new migrant detention facility in Florida dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”, a reporter broke the news to the president. He replied.
Wow, music to my ears.
I was also wondering how we’re doing, because I know this is primetime, it shows that I care about you.
Trump also commended his vice-president, JD Vance, who cast the tie-breaking vote.
He’s doing a good job.
Asked what was his message to GOP holdouts in the House who aren’t satisfied with the Senate’s changes to the measure, Trump said:
It tells you there’s something for everyone. … It’s a great bill. There is something for everyone, and I think it’s going to go very nicely in the House. Actually, I think it will be easier in the House than it was in the Senate.
Key events
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US halts some missile shipments to Ukraine over low stockpiles – Politico
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Pro-Palestinian Georgetown student can remain free, US appeals court rules
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Trump and Musk’s feud blows up again with threats of Doge and deportation
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Trump team threatens to prosecute CNN over reporting on Ice-tracking app
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Trump administration raises possibility of stripping Zohran Mamdani of US citizenship
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Schumer forces name change of Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ moments before Senate approval
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Private prison firms looking at renovating and rebuilding Alcatraz, says Trump
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USAID ends operations as state department abandons aid for trade
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AOC says ‘Vance was the deciding vote to cut Medicaid across the country’
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Trump’s tax bill – explained
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Collins cites Medicaid cuts as ‘primary’ reason for her no vote
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‘Music to my ears’: Trump welcomes Senate passage of ‘big, beautiful bill’
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‘Your kids, your job, and your elderly relatives don’t matter’: DNC chair slams GOP passage of Trump’s bill
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House GOP leaders reaffirm commitment to pass Trump’s bill by 4 July
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Bill heads to back to House where GOP wafer-thin majority faces high-stakes vote
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Senate narrowly passes ‘big, beautiful bill’ after JD Vance casts tie-breaking vote
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‘Anybody would be better than Jay Powell,’ says Trump as he keeps up attacks on Fed chair over interest rates
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First detainees at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ expected tomorrow, says DeSantis
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Trump again implies Doge should ‘look at Musk’ and says former buddy ‘should not play that game with me’
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‘Alligator Alcatraz’ will encourage people to ‘deport on their own’, says DeSantis, as he urges other states to create similar facilities
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Trump praises ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ in Florida Everglades
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Trump wavers on 4 July deadline for tax and spending bill
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Trump says ‘Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon’
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‘Vote-a-rama’ sets new record for longest in Senate history after 45 consecutive votes
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Stanford University will cut $140m from its budget, citing ‘federal policy changes’
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AI regulation ban struck from bill with 99-1 vote
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US Senate strikes AI regulation ban from Trump megabill
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Trump officials create searchable national citizenship database
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Musk vows to unseat lawmakers who support Trump’s bill and threatens forming an ‘America Party’ if it passes
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What are some key elements contained within the budget bill?
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Democrats vow to bring ‘amendment after amendment to the floor’
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US Senate votes on amendments to Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’
US halts some missile shipments to Ukraine over low stockpiles – Politico
The Pentagon has halted some shipments of air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine over concerns that US stockpiles are too low, Politico is reporting, citing people familiar with the issue.
“The decision was made in early June to withhold some aid promised to Kyiv under former president Joe Biden but it is only taking effect now as Ukraine is beating back some of the largest Russian barrages of missiles and drones at civilian targets in Kyiv and elsewhere,” the report added.
On Sunday, Moscow fired more than 500 aerial weapons at Ukraine overnight, in a barrage that Kyiv described as the biggest air attack so far of the three-year war. You can find all our coverage of Ukraine here.
Pro-Palestinian Georgetown student can remain free, US appeals court rules
A pro-Palestinian Georgetown University student from India, detained by Donald Trump’s administration but then released on a judge’s order, can remain free while fighting deportation efforts, a US appeals court has ruled.
A three-judge panel of the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US circuit court of appeals ruled 2-1 against the administration’s request that Badar Khan Suri be returned to immigration detention. The 4th circuit said it found no grounds to overturn the decision by US district judge Patricia Tolliver Giles to order Suri’s release.
“To allow the government to undermine habeas jurisdiction by moving detainees without notice or accountability reduces the writ of habeas corpus to a game of jurisdictional hide-and-seek,” judge James Andrew Wynn wrote on Tuesday.
Suri, 41, was arrested in Virginia in March and then moved by the US government to Texas, where he was released in May after the ruling by Giles. Suri is a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown’s Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, part of the Jesuit university’s School of Foreign Service.
The Trump administration has attempted to deport foreign pro-Palestinian student protesters while accusing them of being antisemitic, threats to American foreign policy and extremist sympathizers.
Suri has denied the federal government’s allegations that he spread Palestinian militant propaganda and antisemitism on social media.
Protesters, including some Jewish groups, have said the US government has conflated criticism of Israel’s military assault in Gaza with antisemitism and advocacy for Palestinian rights with support for extremism.
Human rights advocates have raised free speech and due process concerns over the administration’s actions toward these students.
Other pro-Palestinian students who were arrested by the government and subsequently released under judicial orders include Columbia University students Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk.
Suri’s wife, Mapheze Saleh, is a US citizen. Saleh is from Gaza, according to the Georgetown University website, which said she has written for Al Jazeera and Palestinian media outlets and worked with the foreign ministry in Gaza. Saleh was not arrested.
Trump and Musk’s feud blows up again with threats of Doge and deportation
Nick Robins-Early
Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s feud reignited this week with the former political allies trading sharp public threats of retribution. The blowup, centered around Musk’s opposition to Trump’s signature tax bill as it moves through Congress, ends a period of rapprochement between two of the world’s most powerful men.
Musk posted escalating attacks against the sweeping tax and spending bill – which passed through the Senate earlier today by a single vote, with three Republicans voting no – on his social media platform X late last night, calling the legislation “insane” and vowing to form a new political party if it passed.
In response, Trump claimed he could “look into” deporting the South Africa-born billionaire, while also suggesting he could cut government subsidies for Musk’s companies or set the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) on its former leader.
“Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn’t that be terrible?” Trump asked reporters earlier today.
He was later asked by a reporter if he was concerned about his on-again off-again buddy ripping into the bill again and if he was worried Republicans would be swayed by the tech billionaire and his money. The president replied:
I think what’s going to happen is Doge is going to look at Musk, and if Doge looks at Musk we’re going to save a fortune.
Trump added:
I don’t think he should be playing that game with me.
Musk’s attempt to derail the tax bill was a major factor in his falling out with the president last month, and the Tesla CEO’s renewed offensive comes at a sensitive time as Trump seeks to shepherd the legislation through Congress before his self-imposed 4 July deadline.
The fight could test Musk’s political influence over the Republican party as he seeks to peel away votes for the bill, as well as further deteriorate his once-close relationship with Trump.
Trump team threatens to prosecute CNN over reporting on Ice-tracking app
Edward Helmore
Donald Trump and administration officials have threatened CNN over what they said was its promotion of a new app that allows users to track and try to avoid Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents.
Speaking to reporters in Florida on a trip to visit a new Ice detention center in the Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”, the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said her department and the Department of Justice were looking at prosecuting CNN over its reporting on the app, called IceBlock.
“We’re working with Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them,” Noem said, “because what they’re doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities and operations. We’re going to actually go after them and prosecute them. What they’re doing is illegal.”
Trump joined in, saying the news network – a frequent target of his ire – should also be prosecuted for what he said were “false reports on the attack on Iran”, referring to the leak of a Pentagon assessment that suggested US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and had probably only set the program back by months.
CNN defended its reporting of the app through a spokesperson, saying:
This is an app that is publicly available to any iPhone user who wants to download it. There is nothing illegal about reporting the existence of this or any other app, nor does such reporting constitute promotion or other endorsement of the app by CNN.
Noem’s comments came hours after Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, also criticized the news outlet for its reporting on the IceBlock app.
“It’s disgusting,” Homan said during an appearance on the rightwing commentator Benny Johnson’s internet show. “I can’t believe we live in a world where the men and women in law enforcement are the bad guys. It’s already a dangerous job.”
Homan had been asked about the app, which was created to report sightings of Ice agents in any given area. Software developer Joshua Aaron recently told CNN that he had launched the app “when I saw what was happening in this country”.
“I wanted to do something to fight back,” Aaron said, telling the network that the administration’s deportation efforts were, to him, reminiscent of Nazi Germany. “We’re literally watching history repeat itself,” Aaron said.
Homan also suggested CNN was complicit in putting federal law enforcement in danger.
“This is horrendous that a national media outlet would be out there trying to forecast law enforcement operations,” he said. “I think DoJ needs to look at this. They’re crossing that line.”
He added: “We need to send a strong message that we need to protect the law enforcement officers.”
Trump administration raises possibility of stripping Zohran Mamdani of US citizenship
Robert Tait
The Trump administration has raised the possibility of stripping Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral candidate for New York City, of his US citizenship as part of a crackdown against foreign-born citizens convicted of certain offences.
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, appeared to pave the way for an investigation into Mamdani’s status after Andy Ogles, a rightwing Republican congressman for Tennessee, called for his citizenship to be revoked on the grounds that he may have concealed his support for “terrorism” during the naturalization process.
Mamdani, 33, who was born in Uganda to ethnic Indian parents, became a US citizen in 2018 and has attracted widespread media attention – and controversy – over his vocal support for Palestinian rights.
It follows a chorus of Islamophobic attacks on his Muslim faith following his victory in last week’s New York mayoral primary, when he finished first, 12 percentage points ahead of Andrew Cuomo, the former New York state governor and favored candidate of the Democratic establishment.
It also comes after the Trump administration instructed attorneys to prioritize denaturalizing foreign-born US citizens who had committed specified crimes. A justice department memo instructs lawyers to institute proceedings against naturalized citizens who ares suspected of having “illegally procured” naturalization or having done so by “concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation”.
Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator for Connecticut who has become one of the Trump administration’s most effective critics, called the demand to denaturalize Mamdani “racist bullshit”. He wrote:
Trump will stop at nothing to protect billionaires and price gouging corporations, even racist bullshit like this. Zohran won because he ran a campaign laser focused on putting power back in the hands of working people. And that’s a threat to the Mar-a-Lago crowd.
Schumer forces name change of Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ moments before Senate approval
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer got the name of Trump’s sweeping tax and spending package struck off moments before it passed through the upper chamber, meaning it will no longer be called the “one big, beautiful bill”.
Schumer argued the title of the megabill violated Section 313 B1A of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, or what’s commonly referred to as the “Byrd Rule”.
“This is not a ‘big, beautiful bill’ at all. That’s why I moved down the floor to strike the title. It is now called ‘the act’. That’s what it’s called. But it is really the ‘big ugly betrayal’, and the American people know it,” Schumer told reporters.
“This vote will haunt our Republican colleagues for years to come. Because of this bill, tens of millions will lose health insurance. Millions of jobs will disappear. People will get sick and die, kids will go hungry and the debt will explode to levels we have never seen.”
“This bill is so irredeemable that one Republican literally chose to retire rather than vote yes and decimate his own state,” Schumer added, referring to senator Thom Tillis, who announced yesterday he would not be seeking re-election after clashing with Trump over his opposition.
Private prison firms looking at renovating and rebuilding Alcatraz, says Trump
Donald Trump has revisited his idea of “renovating and rebuilding Alcatraz”, which a view to reopening the infamous island prison in San Francisco, which has been closed for over 60 years.
He wrote on his Truth Social platform:
I saw a picture of ALCATRAZ looking so foreboding, and I said, “We’re going to look into renovating and rebuilding the famous ALCATRAZ Prison sitting high on the Bay, surrounded by sharks. What a symbol it is, and will be!” Conceptual work started six months ago, and various prison development firms are looking at doing it with us. Still a little early, but lots of promise!
Federal prison officials visited Alcatraz last month after Trump’s earlier announcement of plans to reopen the island facility.
David Smith, the superintendent of the Golden Gate national recreation area (GGNRA), told the San Francisco Chronicle last month that officials with the Federal Bureau of Prisons were planning to return for further structural assessments. “They have been out here. They’ll be coming out again to do assessments of the structure,” he told the news outlet.
Alcatraz has been closed since 1963, when then attorney general Robert F Kennedy ordered its shutdown amid high operating costs, limited space and multiple escape attempts.
Although California lawmakers have dismissed the Alcatraz proposal as a “distraction” and not a serious plan, Trump’s update is further evidence that his administration is actively working – with the help of private prison companies – to reopen this and other facilities, some of which are already back in operation.
It follows Trump’s visit to a newly opened immigrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”, today, during which he praised governor Ron DeSantis and encouraged other red states to open similar facilities.
USAID ends operations as state department abandons aid for trade
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) will officially stop implementing foreign aid starting today, secretary of state Marco Rubio said, adding that America’s assistance in the future will be targeted and limited.
In a statement marking the transfer of USAID to the state department as part of Trump’s unprecedented push to shrink the federal government, Rubio said the US was abandoning what he called a charity-based model and would focus on empowering countries to grow sustainably.
“We will favor those nations that have demonstrated both the ability and willingness to help themselves and will target our resources to areas where they can have a multiplier effect and catalyze durable private sector, including American companies, and global investment,” he wrote.
This new model, he added, would prioritize trade over aid and investment over assistance, adding it would put Washington in a stronger place to counter Beijing.
The Trump administration has frozen and then cut back billions of dollars of foreign aid since taking office, saying it wants to ensure US taxpayer money goes only to programs that are aligned with Trump’s “America First” policies.
The cutbacks have effectively shut down USAID, leading to the firing of thousands of its employees and contractors. That jeopardized the delivery of life-saving food and medical aid and has thrown global humanitarian relief operations into chaos.
A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from moving forward with plans to overhaul the US Department of Health and Human Services by reorganizing several of its agencies and substantially cutting their workforce.
US district judge Melissa DuBose in Providence, Rhode Island, issued an injunction at the behest of a group of Democratic-led states who challenged a plan HHS secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr announced in March to consolidate agencies and fire 10,000 of the department’s employees.
The layoffs, in addition to earlier buyout offers and firings of probationary employees, reduced the number of full-time HHS employees to 62,000 from 82,000 and left key offices unable to perform statutory functions, the states alleged.
DuBose, an appointee of former president Joe Biden, agreed, saying the states had established a likelihood of proving HHS’s action was arbitrary and capricious as well as contrary to law.
“The Executive Branch does not have the authority to order, organize, or implement wholesale changes to the structure and function of the agencies created by Congress,” she wrote.
She ordered HHS to halt mass job cuts and restructurings at the four agencies, which also included the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
“Today’s order guarantees these programs and services will remain accessible and halts the administration’s attempt to sabotage our nation’s health care system,” New York attorney general Letitia James said in a statement.
Zohran Mamdani has officially won New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary. A new vote count today under the city’s ranked choice voting system confirmed the progressive legislator’s stunning upset of Andrew Cuomo.
Mamdani declared victory last week after taking a commanding lead just hours after the polls closed. Cuomo conceded the contest on the night of the election but is contemplating whether to run in the general election on an independent ballot.
The field of candidates in the general election will also include incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, independent candidate Jim Walden and Republican Curtis Sliwa.
AOC says ‘Vance was the deciding vote to cut Medicaid across the country’
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, also known as AOC, responded to the bill’s passing on social media. She wrote on X:
“JD Vance was the deciding vote to cut Medicaid across the country. An absolute and utter betrayal of working families.”
California governor Gavin Newsom also alluded to the bill’s passing, reposting a video of Trump speaking about the governor while visiting the Florida immigration detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”. Newsom wrote:
“Trump would rather talk about alligators than his major, signature ‘big beautiful bill’ for a reason.”
The Senate’s massive budget bill that passed today will make it harder to develop wind and solar energy projects, despite removal of some contentious energy provisions, industry advocates and lawmakers say.
The US Senate dropped a proposed excise tax on solar and wind energy projects that don’t meet strict standards after last-minute negotiations with key Republican senators seeking better terms for renewables.
Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, fellow Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, whose votes were crucial to the bill’s passage, had introduced an amendment calling for removal of that tax, which caught lawmakers by surprise after it made it into the last draft text.
Trump’s tax bill – explained
What’s in Trump’s massive tax and spending bill? My colleague Chris Stein has this helpful explainer on the GOP’s sweeping legislation that will boost the wealthy, fund Trump’s border wall and risk an added $3tn to the national deficit:
Collins cites Medicaid cuts as ‘primary’ reason for her no vote
Republican senator Susan Collins, one of the three dissenters, has said that she voted against the bill “primarily” because of her concerns about cuts to Medicaid.
Collins, of Maine, said the Medicaid cuts would threaten her constituents’ access to health care and that the bill had “additional problems”, including the phasing out of energy tax credits.
In a length statement posted on X, she said:
While I continue to support the tax relief I voted for in 2017, I could not support these Medicaid changes and other issues.
She said a provision creating a fund to help rural hospitals was not “sufficient” to counterbalance other changes to the Medicaid program.
I strongly support extending the tax relief for families and small businesses. My vote against this bill stems primarily from the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid, affecting low-income families and rural healthcare providers like our hospitals and nursing homes.
I am pleased that the bill contains a special fund that I proposed to provide some assistance to our rural hospitals, but it is not sufficient to offset the other changes in the Medicaid system.
She continued:
This bill has additional problems. The tax credits that energy entrepreneurs have relied on should have been gradually phased out so as not to waste the work that has already been put into these innovative new projects and prevent them from being completed. The bill should have also retained incentives for Maine families who choose to install heat pumps and residential solar panels.
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