‘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.
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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!
Trump has directed multiple federal agencies to explore converting the site into a detention facility for immigrants. Photograph: John G Mabanglo/EPA 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.
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.
Workers load USAID humanitarian aid into a truck at a World Food Programme (WFP) warehouse in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Turkana, Kenya, last month. Photograph: Andrew Kasuku/AP 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 big, beautiful 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 health care 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.
Susan Collins after the Senate passed Trump’s sweeping spending and tax bill. Photograph: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters ‘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.
‘Your kids, your job, and your elderly relatives don’t matter’: DNC chair slams GOP passage of Trump’s bill Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin has slammed the Republicans’ passage of their bill for Trump’s agenda, calling it “a massive scheme to steal from working folks, struggling families and even from nursing homes – all to enrich the already rich with a tax giveaway”.
Here are some extracts from Martin’s statement:
Donald Trump and Senate Republicans have sent a clear message to the American people: Your kids, your job, and your elderly relatives don’t matter.
This is one of the worst bills in the history of Congress. It’s a massive scheme to steal from working folks, struggling families, and hell, even from nursing homes – all to enrich the already rich with a tax giveaway.
The families who will be devastated by this billionaire budget scam aren’t just numbers, they are constituents that Republicans promised to represent – 17 million Americans who will lose their health care and more than 5 million Americans who will be at risk of losing their food assistance.
Billionaires don’t need more help, working families do. Democrats will stand shoulder to shoulder with working families to kick these Republicans out of their seats in 2026.
House GOP leaders reaffirm commitment to pass Trump’s bill by 4 July House GOP leaders said they will “immediately” consider the Senate’s reconciliation bill, adding they’ll send it to the president by the self-imposed 4 July deadline.
“The House will work quickly to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill that enacts President Trump’s full America First agenda by the Fourth of July,” said the statement from speaker Mike Johnson, majority leader Steve Scalise, majority whip Tom Emmer and conference chair Lisa McClain. “The American people gave us a clear mandate, and after four years of Democrat failure, we intend to deliver without delay.”
Bill heads to back to House where GOP wafer-thin majority faces high-stakes vote With the battle in the House to come next, several Republicans in that chamber have already said they don’t support the version that has emerged from the Senate, which the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates will add $800bn more to the national debt than the House’s version.
As I reported yesterday, the House Freedom Caucus, a group of hardline conservatives who repeatedly threatened to withhold their support for the tax bill, is pushing for deeper spending cuts than what the Senate has offered.
“The Senate’s version adds $651bn to the deficit – and that’s before interest costs, which nearly double the total,” the caucus posted online yesterday. “That’s not fiscal responsibility. It’s not what we agreed to.”
On the other side of the GOP divide, a group of more moderate House Republicans, especially those who represent lower-income areas, object to the steeper Medicaid cuts in the Senate’s plan, fearing that a crackdown on a funding mechanism for the health program could lead to service cutbacks in rural areas.
“I will not support a final bill that eliminates vital funding streams our hospitals rely on,” representative David Valadao, a California Republican, said during the weekend debate.
They have also struggled to agree on a tax break for state and local tax (S alt) payments that is a top priority for a handful of House Republicans from high-tax states including New York, New Jersey and California.
Still, House Republicans are likely to face enormous pressure to fall in line from Trump in the days to come. And so far, his party has largely toed the line, with few willing to defy the president.
As we’ve reported, only three of the Senate’s 53 Republicans joined with Democrats to vote against the package, which passed 51-50 after vice-president JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote.
Three was the maximum number of votes the GOP could afford to lose in order to get the bill through the chamber.
The high-stakes vote in the House, where Republicans also hold a razor-thin 220-212 majority, is likely to be close as well. When the bill first passed through the lower chamber in May, it did so by only a single vote.
The bill, which would enshrine many of Trump’s top priorities into law while adding $3.3tn to the national debt, will now head back to the House for final approval.
Trump earlier indicated some flexibility on his 4 July deadline for the bill to land on his desk.
Senate narrowly passes ‘big, beautiful bill’ after JD Vance casts tie-breaking vote
Chris Stein
The Senate has just passed Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill after more than 24 hours of negotiations.
The vote was 50-50 and vice-president JD Vance was in the chamber to cast the tie-breaking vote. Republicans Thom Tillis, Rand Paul and Susan Collins voted no, along with all Democrats.
Donald Trump is now holding a press conference on “Alligator Alcatraz”. I’ll bring you all the key lines here.
‘Anybody would be better than Jay Powell,’ says Trump as he keeps up attacks on Fed chair over interest rates Asked if he intends to announce his pick for the next Fed chair, Trump gestures to Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem to imply they would both be good candidates, before adding:
Anybody would be better than Jay Powell.
He’s costing us a fortune because he keeps the rate way up.
Trump has repeatedly personally attacked and called on Jerome Powell to lower interest rates, to which the Fed has said it takes independent economic decisions.
First detainees at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ expected tomorrow, says DeSantis After touring the detention facility, Trump is asked by a reporter when the first person will be “checking in to their room” (it is not a hotel and there are no rooms), DeSantis replies: “Tomorrow.”
Noem adds, “hopefully within the next 24 hours”.
DeSantis says there will be a security sweep first and then the facility will be “ready to receive” people, gesturing towards Noem whom he says “has people in the queue”.
Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem tour the temporary migrant detention center in Ochopee, Florida. Photograph: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters
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