The day so far
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Vote-a-rama is under way in the Senate on Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that would enact his domestic tax and spending agenda – and add an estimated $3.3tn to the national debt over the next decade. The final vote on passage could come as late as the early hours of tomorrow morning. Trump has been meeting with Senate majority leader John Thune and House speaker Mike Johnson in an effort to pressure Republicans to back the bill and meet Trump’s imposed 4 July deadline. But it’ll be tight for the GOP. They can only afford to lose three votes for the legislation to pass and two senators have already expressed they’re firm no’s – Rand Paul and Thom Tillis, who today said he won’t be seeking re-election – while several key moderate holdouts have kept their cards close to their chests today.
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Trump is due to sign an executive order terminating US sanctions on Syria, following through on his decision in May to unwind the measures to help Syria rebuild after 14 devastating years of civil war. Some sanctions on former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and other individuals will remain in place including those on Assad’s associates, human rights abusers, drug traffickers, people linked to chemical weapons activities, the Islamic State and ISIS affiliates and proxies for Iran.
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Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said late last night that trade talks with the US had resumed after Canada rescinded its plan to tax US technology firms. Today, White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett confirmed that the United States would restart trade negotiations with Canada immediately. Trump had abruptly called off trade talks on Friday amid a dispute over the levy and threatened new tariffs on Canadian goods over the tax, which would’ve come into effect today.
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The Trump administration sued the city of Los Angeles over policies limiting city cooperation with federal immigration authorities, continuing a confrontation over Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation efforts in the largely Democratic city. The lawsuit, filed by the justice department, alleges that policies barring city resources from aiding in immigration enforcement operations or collecting information about individuals’ citizenship status violate federal law.
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The Trump administration informed Harvard University that its investigation found that the university violated federal civil rights law over its treatment of Jewish and Israeli students, putting its federal funding further at risk.
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Trump will host Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on 7 July, Axios is reporting, citing an Israeli official. Israel’s strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer will also meet with officials at the White House this week for talks on Iran and a new push for a ceasefire in Gaza. Israel’s ongoing and relentless bombardment on Gaza killed at least another 38 civilians today.
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Trump wrote to Fed chair Jerome Powell again urging him to lower interest rates. Attacking Powell and members of the Fed board of governors, who he accused of failing to do their jobs, the president said today that he believes interest rates should be lowered to about 1%. Powell and the Fed have stated many times that they take independent economic decisions.
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Trump will travel tomorrow to the opening of the new – and highly controversial – immigrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”.
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EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič has said he will fly to Washington tomorrow for trade talks. “We are absolutely focusing on … a positive outcome,” he told reporters.
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Trump has suggested there won’t be a trade deal with Japan, saying that Japan would be the recipient of a letter related to trade, following pledges by his administration to send letters to countries outlining tariffs they would need to pay to the UA.
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The Trump administration appealed a federal judge’s decision to strike down an executive order targeting law firm Perkins Coie over its past legal work for Hillary Clinton and others.
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The US has revoked visas for members of Britain’s Bob Vylan punk-rap duo after they led anti-IDF chants during their set at the Glastonbury music festival over the weekend that the state department and the BBC, which broadcast the event, said were antisemitic. The state department did not immediately give more details as to the names of those who had visas revoked and what kind of visas they were. Bob Vylan is scheduled to play some concerts in the US in November.
Key events
Republican senators have told reporters they remained optimistic they could vote on the final passage of the bill before sunrise, the New York Times is reporting.
It says the “vote-a-rama” has dragged into its 14th hour and the halls of the Capitol are muted, with little apparent action on the floor.
Ten minutes earlier it reported:
After several hours of plodding, minimal progress, the Senate’s vote marathon on amendments to the Republicans’ domestic policy bill has started moving a little faster: Leaders announced coming votes on 10 more proposals, mostly Democratic offerings with little chance of passing.
Republican senators have tried to remain diplomatic and avoid hitting back at Elon Musk, even as the former top Trump adviser has attacked them on social media, the Associated Press is reporting.
Republican senator Jim Justice said:
At the end of the day, you know, we should be thankful for the work that he did. But I’m sure Elon’s got a real ego, and sometimes egos can really clash.
Senator Joni Ernst, who is chair of the Senate Doge caucus and is up for re-election next year, said:
I really appreciate what Elon has done with our Doge work, and we’re going to keep working on that with various rescissions packages. But at the end of the day what we also don’t want is a $4.3 trillion tax increase on American taxpayers.
Elon Musk has vowed to unseat lawmakers who support Donald Trump’s sweeping budget bill, which the tech billionaire has criticised because it would increase the country’s deficit by $3.3tn.
Musk wrote on X:
Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame! And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.
Musk later added that if “insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day”.
Maanvi Singh and agencies report that with these threats – lobbed at lawmakers over social media – the world’s richest man has launched himself back into a rift with the US president he helped prop up.
You can read the full report here:
As reported a little earlier, following Musk’s denouncement of Republican efforts to pass the budget bill, he said he would back representative Thomas Massie, a Trump critic, and pledged to found a new political party he called the “America party”.
Summary
Today So Far
Thirteen hours since voting began, the Senate still has not passed Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which would enact his domestic tax and spending agenda – and add an estimated $3.3tn to the national debt over the next decade. The vote is expected to be tight – Republicans can only afford to lose three votes for the legislation to pass and two senators have already expressed they’re firm no’s – Rand Paul and Thom Tillis.
As we await news on that front, here are the top headlines we’ve followed so far today:
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In a series of posts on social media, tech billionaire Elon Musk, who spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars in support of Trump’s candidacy, denounced Republican efforts to pass the president’s budget bill. Later, Musk pledged to found a new political party he called the “America Party” and support candidates who did not back the budget bill in future elections.
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The Senate parliamentarian found that Republicans can include a provision that would block Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood in the “big, beautiful bill”.
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Trump signed an executive order overturning sanctions on Syria today and issued a memorandum on US policy toward Cuba. The president’s executive order revokes sanctions on Syria while maintaining sanction’s on the country’s former president Bashar al-Assad. In a separate memo, Trump directed the federal government to enforce a statutory ban on US tourism to Cuba and continue an economic embargo on the island nation.
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On the US Agency for International Development’s last day, former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush delivered remarks praising staffers and The Lancet medical journal published research finding the agency had prevented more than 91 million deaths globally, including 30 million deaths among children. The Lancet added that the dismantling of USAID could result in 14 million additional deaths by 2030.
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A federal judge has ruled that Kilmar Ábrego García must remain in jail, citing fears that the Trump administration may deport him ahead of his trial if he is released. Earlier this week, the same judge ordered Ábrego García released ahead of his trial on smuggling charges. Ábrego García’s attorneys have characterized the charges as an attempt to justify the Trump administration’s mistaken deportation of Ábrego García earlier this year.
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Trump has dropped his lawsuit against pollster J Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register, according to a court filing today. Trump sued Selzer and the newspaper after it published a poll finding that Kamala Harris would win Iowa in the presidential election by three percentage points.
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Congressmembers must give the Department of Homeland Security a week’s notice before visiting immigration detention facilities, according to new department guidance. Visits on shorter notice must be approved directly by department secretary Kristi Noem. Federal law allows lawmakers and their staff to visit immigration detention facilities unnanounced to oversee the conditions inside such facilities. Meanwhile, Trump will travel tomorrow to the opening of the new – and highly controversial – immigrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”.
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The Trump administration sued the city of Los Angeles over policies limiting city cooperation with federal immigration authorities, continuing a confrontation over Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation efforts in the largely Democratic city. The lawsuit, filed by the justice department, alleges that policies barring city resources from aiding in immigration enforcement operations or collecting information about individuals’ citizenship status violate federal law.
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The Trump administration informed Harvard University that its investigation found that the university violated federal civil rights law over its treatment of Jewish and Israeli students, putting its federal funding further at risk.
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Trump will host Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on 7 July. Israel’s strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer will also meet with officials at the White House this week for talks on Iran and a new push for a ceasefire in Gaza. Israel’s ongoing and relentless bombardment on Gaza killed at least another 38 civilians today.
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Trump wrote to Fed chair Jerome Powell again urging him to lower interest rates. Attacking Powell and members of the Fed board of governors, who he accused of failing to do their jobs, the president said today that he believes interest rates should be lowered to about 1%.
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Trump has suggested there won’t be a trade deal with Japan, saying that Japan would be the recipient of a letter related to trade, following pledges by his administration to send letters to countries outlining tariffs they would need to pay to the UA.
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The Trump administration appealed a federal judge’s decision to strike down an executive order targeting law firm Perkins Coie over its past legal work for Hillary Clinton and others.
After denouncing Republican leaders’ efforts to pass Donald Trump’s budget bill on social media earlier today, tech billionaire Elon Musk said he would back representative Thomas Massie, a Trump critic, and pledged to found a new political party he called the “America party”.
“They just pretend to be two parties. It’s just one uniparty in reality,” Musk wrote on his social media platform, sharing a graph showing national debt increasing under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day. Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE,” he wrote in a second post.
In a separate post, Musk said “I will” in response to a post asking for support for Massie’s re-election. Massie has called the Republican-backed budget a “debt bomb ticking”.
The Department of Education will not release billions of dollars in federal funding for afterschool programs, teacher trainings, support for immigrant children and English learners that it was expected to disburse 1 July, Politico reports citing unnamed officials familiar with the matter.
“The Department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities,” the education department said in written communications to states. The agency said it has not completed its review of fiscal year funding for the grant programs and will not release funds until it does.
“These funds were approved by Congress and signed into law by President Trump in March. Schools need these funds to hire key staff and educate students this summer and in the upcoming school year,” Carissa Moffat Miller, head of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said in a statement to Politico.
In private video remarks to USAID staffers on the international development agency’s last day, former presidents Barack Obama and George W Bush praised the agency and criticized the Trump administration for shuttering it.
In March, the Trump administration canceled more than 80% of all the US Agency for International Development’s programs. The secretary of state Marco Rubio ordered the remaining programs to be absorbed into the state department, with today as the listed deadline to do so.
“Your work has mattered, and will matter for generations to come,” Obama told staffers in a video, which was shared with the Associated Press. The ex-president also called Trump’s decision to dismantle the agency “a colossal mistake”.
Bush added his criticism to Trump’s cuts to the HIV and Aids prevention program PEPFAR, which has saved 25 million lives globally. “Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is,” Bush said.
In a study published in the Lancet medical journal today, researchers found that the dismantling of USAID could result in 14 million additional deaths by 2030. The study estimated that over the past two decades, USAID-funded programs have prevented more than 91 million deaths globally, including 30 million deaths among children, Reuters reports.
Here’s a selection of recent Guardian reporting on the impact of USAID cuts:
Amid posts to his social media platform today encouraging senators to pass his “big, beautiful bill”, Donald Trump paused to share another announcement: his new fragrance line.
“Trump Fragrances are here. They’re called “Victory 45-47” because they’re all about Winning, Strength, and Success — For men and women,” the president wrote.
The president’s post included an image of the fragrance bottles: a golden statue of Trump with the president’s black Sharpie signature below.
There are no major updates yet on the Senate’s “vote-a-rama” over Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” – except that we don’t expect the body to conclude its vote today.
Recent amendments to the House-backed bill are still being reviewed by the Senate parliamentarian, the New York Times reports, which has slowed voting.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told the Times Democrats would continue pushing amendments to the bill, and added “Ask Mr. Thune. He’s the one having the problems,” referring to Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s efforts to pass the bill today.
The Trump administration has sued the city of Los Angeles over its immigration policies, saying the city’s sanctuary policies discriminate against federal law enforcement.
Here’s more from our team:
Filed in the central district of California, the lawsuit says Donald Trump “campaigned and won the presidential election on a platform of deporting the millions of illegal immigrants the previous administration permitted, through its open borders policy, to enter the country unlawfully”. It is the latest in a string of lawsuits against so-called sanctuary jurisdictions – including New York, New Jersey and Colorado – that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Trump officials create searchable national citizenship database
Johana Bhuiyan
The US Department of Homeland Security has for the first time built a national citizenship database that combines information from immigration agencies and the social security administration.
The database was created in collaboration with the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) in an effort to bridge the gaps between disparate information sources to make it easier to determine whether someone is a citizen, according to NPR, which first reported the details of the database.
The database is the result of an expansion of the systematic alien verification for entitlements (Save) program, made up of smaller databases within the homeland security department, and an integration with information from the Social Security Administration. The centralized repository is searchable and can be accessed by state and local election officials to look up the names of anyone trying to vote to determine if they are citizens, according to NPR. Until now, election officials had to ask potential voters for documents verifying their citizenship or rely on a hard-to-navigate patchwork of databases.
In response to a request for comment, the DHS said: “Integration with the Social Security Administration (SSA) significantly improves the service offered by Save.”
Previously, agencies involved in voting were required to use numbers issued by the DHS to look up voter registrations, which they may not have had access to but may have been more likely to possess social security numbers, according to the statement. The citizenship database may also soon integrate state department of motor vehicles (DMV) data, NPR reported.
The DHS statement also describes the motivations for the creation of the database: “Under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem, USCIS is moving quickly to eliminate benefit and voter fraud among the alien population.” Voter fraud is rare in the US, experts say; consequences include fines or jail time.
The citizenship database is one of the first results of Doge’s efforts to gain access to and merge information on Americans from agencies across the federal government, including the Internal Revenue Service, in the first few months of the Trump administration.
Thom Tillis, the Republican senator who has clashed with Donald Trump over the House-backed spending bill, said he will likely get involved in the primary race for his replacement, the Associated Press reports.
“I’ve run successful two statewide races, and I got a pretty good idea of the profile you need to win,” he said. The one candidate he said he would not support is Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s former lieutenant governor and Trump proxy.
“He would probably lose by a larger margin than he did the last time,” Tillis said.
Congressmembers must give the Department of Homeland Security a week’s notice before visiting immigration detention facilities, according to new department guidance. Visits on shorter notice must be approved directly by department secretary Kristi Noem.
Federal law allows lawmakers and their staff to visit immigration detention facilities unnanounced to oversee the conditions inside such facilities.
Police have arrested 38 people protesting against the Republican budget bill so far today, the Associated Press reports, citing US Capitol police. Those arrested were charged with crowding, obstructing and incommoding.
Donald Trump has dropped his lawsuit against pollster J Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register, according to a court filing today.
Trump sued Selzer and the newspaper after it published a poll finding that Kamala Harris would win Iowa in the presidential election by three percentage points. Trump won by 14 points.
“After losing his first attempt to send his case back to Iowa state court, and apparently recognizing that his appeal will be unsuccessful, President Trump is attempting to unilaterally dismiss his lawsuit from federal court and re-file it in Iowa state court,” Des Moines Register spokesperson Lark-Marie Anton said in a statement to Politico.
“The Des Moines Register will continue to resist President Trump’s litigation gamesmanship and believes that regardless of the forum it will be successful in defending its right under the first amendment.”
The military commander overseeing troops deployed to respond to protests in Los Angeles has asked Pete Hegseth to return 200 of those forces to wildfire fighting duty, the Associated Press reports.
US Northern Command head Gen Gregory Guillot asked Hegseth to return 200 national guard troops to Joint Task Force Rattlesnake, the California national guard unit tasked with fighting wildfires as California enters peak wildfire season.
Donald Trump ordered 4,000 California national guard troops and 800 active duty Marines deployed to Los Angeles earlier this month to respond to protests against immigration raids.
A federal judge has ruled that Kilmar Ábrego García must remain in jail, citing fears that the Trump administration may deport him ahead of his trial if he is released.
Earlier this week, the same judge ordered Ábrego García released ahead of his trial on smuggling charges. Ábrego García’s attorneys have characterized the charges as an attempt to justify the Trump administration’s mistaken deportation of Ábrego García earlier this year.
“We cannot put any faith in any representation made on this issue” by the Justice Department, Ábrego García’s attorneys wrote in a brief to the court. They added that the “irony” of their request to keep Ábrego García in custody “is not lost on anyone.”
Here’s more on the judge’s ruling last week:
Senate parliamentarian: Planned Parenthood funding block can proceed
The Senate parliamentarian has found that Republicans can include a provision that would block Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood in the “big, beautiful bill,” the New York Times and Politico report, citing Senate Democrats.
In a statement, Democratic senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley said: “Republicans will stop at nothing in their crusade to take control of women’s bodies.”