Today’s notice: It’s 6 a.m., do you know where your Big, Beautiful Bill is? Senators are feeling kind of “maybe,” but the sunrise was pretty. No post-passage presidential barnstorming planned yet. Colin Allred thinks he can actually mess with Texas Republicans this time.
The Latest
Where We’re At As of 6 a.m., Senate Majority Leader John Thune appears to still be on the hunt for that final “yes” vote on the One Big, Beautiful Bill. Sen. Thom Tillis is still a “no,” Sen. Susan Collins appears to be leaning “no,” and without a significant reduction in the debt limit increase, Sen. Rand Paul is definitely a “no.”
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That leaves us with Sen. Lisa Murkowski, wrapped in a cozy blanket overnight, who still needs convincing. Remember that Thune can lose three votes total, and if they had the votes right now, they would vote.
20+ Hours in: The Senate is still voting on amendments to the megabill, so the text could still change before we get to the final vote (assuming we do later today). But here are a few significant moments from the marathon vote-a-rama:
- The Senate stripped the Ted Cruz-backed state AI moratorium from the bill on a vote of 99-1.
- Good news/bad news for the Murkowski convincers: The parliamentarian reportedly ruled that the SNAP exemption for Alaska can stay in the bill under the Byrd Rule, but a Medicaid carve-out cannot.
- Collins’ amendment to increase rural hospital spending failed by a lot, 22-78.
Senators seem…weary at this point. Some took breaks to capture pictures of the sunrise, and the caffeine stock is waning. Thune told reporters this morning that they were “close” to wrapping this up, but close is really a relative term at this point.
Open Tabs: U.S. and Canada restart trade talks after conflict over digital services tax (The Canadian Press); Supreme Court takes up a Republican appeal to end limits on party spending in federal elections (AP); A Wild Quarter on Wall Street (WSJ)
From the White House
“People will feel the effects of these tax cuts… eventually.” That’s a senior administration official to Jasmine, hopeful the One Big, Beautiful Bill passes. There are currently no plans for Trump to barnstorm the country if the bill does pass (this could change, of course). But there will, of course, be at least one big, beautiful White House event to celebrate (again, caveat: eventually, maybe).
Democrats may be doing some celebrating of their own, but the White House is not sweating it. “This isn’t a short-term play,” the senior administration official said, brushing off Democrats who are salivating to run against social-service cuts polling has shown to be deeply unpopular.
For all the dismissal of the politics though, the White House is keeping a close eye on the vote-a-rama, with one top White House adviser making a list of amendments — SNAP and the Medicare provider tax, among others — to ensure whatever passes strikes “the right balance.”
The Big One
A Lot of Explaining to Do. There was a moment when the Senate was supposed to make this bill less of a political liability, doing its cooling-saucer thing on some of the more heated partisan flourishes in the House version.
That does not appear to be happening. The Senate bill includes deeper cuts to Medicaid. And take, for example, green energy credits, which have a progressive sheen for the “green” part but also several massive industries with many jobs attached to them and global technological competitiveness thrown in, to boot — that’s the “energy credits” part.
The House stripped them way back. Some Republican senators expressed skepticism about that, and could find themselves still voting for a bill that makes the solar and wind industries even worse off than they were coming out of the House.
Surprise! NOTUS’ Anna Kramer and Shifra Dayak report that a new tax on wind and solar power had never been publicly discussed or proposed during reconciliation negotiations. This is at least the second time this reconciliation has pulled something like this — remember when multiple House members said they didn’t know about multiple provisions they had voted for? And later regretted it?
This is a messy bill (that is still being written!) with a lot of stuff in it no one has talked about much. Politics may require Republicans to vote for it, but politics could also soon require them to explain why they did so to voters.
New on NOTUS
Callin’ Allred again: At 5 a.m. ET, former Rep. Colin Allred once again declared a run for the Democratic nomination for Senate in Texas. In last year’s general election, he drew a lot of attention in a run against Cruz that eventually ended in a sound defeat. This time, though, Democrats hope the drama on the Republican side — Sen. John Cornyn is struggling in polls against state Attorney General Ken Paxton — can give Allred a real chance.
Active servicemember families now deportable? The Trump administration appears to be breaching a precedent that dates back to the George W. Bush administration protecting the families of active-duty service members from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Republicans in Congress seemed to shrug off the concerns when approached by NOTUS, with Rep. Eli Crane saying, “If you start making carve outs, I think that’s a really slippery slope.”
Trump to visit Florida’s new detention camp site: The president is scheduled to visit the Everglades detention center colloquially known to backers as “Alligator Alcatraz” today. Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier have overseen the establishment of the site in about a week, drawing outcry from civil rights and environmental activists. The White House is all in. Karoline Leavitt: “This is an efficient and low-cost way to help carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in American history.”
More: Head of Trump’s LA Deployment Asks to Return Troops to Firefighting Duty; Conservative South Poised to Hand Trump a Big Win in ‘Alien Enemies’ Case; Trump and Paramount in ‘Advanced’ Settlement Talks to End ‘60 Minutes’ Suit
NOT US
- Kristi Noem Secretly Took a Cut of Political Donations, by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski for ProPublica
- Trump’s stifling of disaster aid leaves cities adrift, by Thomas Frank for Politico
- Sound Familiar? Democrats Lay Groundwork for a ‘Project 2029,’ by Shane Goldmacher for The New York Times
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The newsletter is produced by Tara Golshan, Kate Nocera, Brett Bachman, Andrew Burton, Kim Breen and Christopher T. Fong.
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