The U.S. Senate passed its final version of President Donald Trump's 2026 budget legislation that has become known as the "big, beautiful bill."
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) voted against the bill, telling the press that she's put out a statement and would not speak about her vote to the press, reported Punchbowl News. The vote was 50-50, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) had said she was voting no, but changed her mind after, at the last minute, "The Senate parliamentarian knocked out a handwritten parenthetical notation in the new Murkowski-focused provision that created a special preference for an Alaska rural hospital fund," Democrats told Punchbowl's Andrew Desiderio.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also voted against it.
President Donald Trump suggested that it wasn't "easy" to be Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend.
During a visit to a detention facility in Florida on Tuesday, Trump introduced Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to Real America's Voice reporter Brian Glenn by noting the correspondent was dating Greene.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) used a photo opportunity with President Donald Trump to share his plan to move undocumented migrants through Alligator Alcatraz and other Florida detention facilities as quickly as possible.
Trump traveled to Ochopee, Florida, Tuesday to tour the detention facility comprising heavy-duty tents and FEMA trailers that are expected to detain up to 5,000 migrants awaiting deportation.
"I know Secretary [Kristi] Noem and her team have said, as soon as the president departs, we'll be open to start receiving folks. And, so, we'll see what the tempo is," DeSantis told the press.
"One of the things I think that is exciting about this is, we're offering up our National Guard and other folks in Florida to be deputized to be immigration judges. We're working with the Department of Justice for the approvals. I'm sure Pam [Bondi] will approve," DeSantis said as Trump nodded his head and said, "Yep."
DeSantis didn't elaborate on who the other "folks" would be.
DeSantis continued, "But then...I'll have a National Guard judge advocate here. Someone has a notice to appear, Biden would tell them to come back in three years and appear. Now, you'll be able to appear in like a day or two. So, they're not going to be detained, hopefully, for all that long."
DeSantis praised recent Supreme Court ruling that he said will allow Trump "to be able to exercise Article II the way the founders intended." The ruling allowed the administration to deport detainees to countries they are not citizens of.
"But you still have bureaucracy. So, we want to cut through that so that we have an efficient operation between Florida and DHS to get the removal of these illegals done."
Associated Press White House reporter Chris Megerian was quick to fact-check President Donald Trump after he issued instructions Tuesday on how to escape alligators.
Trump was speaking before heading to the Florida Everglades Tuesday morning to tour an immigrant detention facility built in the hostile swamps about an hour west of Miami.
Known colloquially as "Alligator Alcatraz," the facility is in an area of the state known for alligators, pythons, mosquitoes, hurricanes and heat. Metal frames hold up the tents that will house the immigrants, Florida Capitol correspondent Jason Delgado showed in photos.
As Trump left the White House for the trip, Fox News' Peter Doocy asked him about the idea of "Alligator Alcatraz," and if it was meant to be surrounded by danger.
"Is the idea that if some illegal immigrants escape, they get eaten by an alligator or a snake?" asked Doocy.
"I guess that’s the concept," Trump said about the facility. "This is not a nice business. I guess that is the concept."
"Don’t run in a straight line,” he added. "Run like this," Trump continued, making a zig-zag motion with his hand.
"And you know what, your chances go up by 1 percent. Not a good thing," said Trump.
Megerian noted, "If you happen to find yourself being chased by an alligator, don't follow President Trump's advice to run in a zigzag. Just run straight."
He posted a link to Ask IFAS, which collects peer-reviewed research. The post stated that running in a zig-zag to escape is a myth.
"This is a common misconception. First, it is rare for an alligator to pursue a human because humans are too large to be suitable prey. However, if an alligator does make an aggressive charge, run fast and straight (away from the alligator, of course). They usually do not run very far. But remember, they are most likely to charge at you if you are near their nest," said the report.
Melanie D'Arrigo, the ED of the New York Health Campaign, posted the video of Trump's comments on X, noting that he was laughing about "alligators possibly eating the people who try to escape from indefinite detention in his concentration camp."
In recent speeches, the president has been a big booster of AI, in addition an executive order designed to “sustain and enhance America’s dominance in AI.”
With that in mind, the Post's Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Stephen Henriques and Steven Tian decided to test the technology to see how Trump's statements hold up when compared to reported facts.
Setting the stage, the report notes, "To counter any inadvertent bias or systemic failures, we asked each of five leading AI models — OpenAI’s ChatGPT; Anthropic’s Claude; X/xAI’s Grok (owned by Elon Musk); Google’s Gemini; and Perplexity — to verify the president’s most oft-repeated claims or assertions," while pointing out each platform is independent from the others.
"Artificial intelligence discredited all the Trump claims we presented, fact-checking the president with startling accuracy and objective rigor," the report notes before adding, "Across all questions, AI model responses disproving Trump’s claims or rejecting his assertions were always in the majority (i.e., 3 out of 5 responses or greater). All five models generated consistent responses firmly denying the claims in 16 of the 20 questions."
As an example, the AI platforms were asked the touchy question: "Will Trump’s current tariff policies be inflationary?"
Both Grok and ChatGPT came to the same conclusion with Grok, on Elon Musk's X, replying, "Trump’s 2025 tariff policies are likely to be inflationary, with estimates suggesting a 1-2.3% rise in consumer prices, equivalent to $1,200-$3,800 per household in 2025."
The platforms also came back with answers unfavorable to Trump on his cryptocurrency involvement (Grok: "Trump’s cryptocurrency investments … present a strong case for a conflict of interest due to his administration’s pro-crypto policies, personal financial gains, and events like the $TRUMP gala, which suggest access-selling) and the even touchier question of "Is Trump right that the media is 'dishonest' or 'tells lies'?"
Examples like that led to the following summation: "How would Trump respond to the near-unanimous denial of his claims by the five AI models? Probably the way he always reacts to unfavorable news — by discrediting the dissent. But would he disavow the technology he is decisively promoting? Or, is there something fundamentally wrong with the accuracy of these AI models that is not widely realized?"
"The simple truth our analysis points to is this: Either the president is wrong, or the technology is a failure. We leave it to you to choose," the Post report concluded.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) stunned MAGA influencer Steve Bannon by revealing there were "whispers" that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) could be planning to pass a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open in the coming weeks.
During a Tuesday interview, Bannon asked Greene if Johnson had the votes in the House to "rubber stamp" President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill after the Senate approves it.
"I cannot imagine. No, no!" Greene exclaimed. "I can't imagine they have the votes. There's no way that Johnson has the votes in the House for this."
The lawmaker argued that specific provisions in the bill — such as funding for border security — must pass.
"And I want to tell everyone clearly, I want to tell everyone clearly, that this bill is maybe the only true victory once we get it right, once we can get it to a good point," she explained. "It may be our only real victory this Congress because there are whispers, and the whispers are getting louder and louder in the House that we are being told that they're going to give us another CR on September 30th."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" Bannon interrupted. "What's that whisper about what?"
"Yeah, the CR, CR. So, government funding has to be done," Greene confirmed.
"Oh, my God!" Bannon gasped.
"Yeah, it's, that's absolutely, that's a non-starter. They're just the non-starter. And Steve, that should make everyone furious," Greene said.
Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk ramped up his ongoing feud with Steve Bannon Tuesday after asserting that President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist would be “going back to prison.”
“Bannon is going back to prison,” Musk wrote on X, responding to a comment suggesting Bannon wanted the United States government to “nationalize” the billionaire's space technology company. “This time for a long time.”
The feud between Musk and Bannon kicked off in June after Bannon called for the Trump administration to launch a probe into Musk’s immigration status, suggesting the South African native may have overstayed his visa in the United States. Bannon has also called for a probe into Musk’s alleged drug use, with The New York Times reporting Musk to have used “ketamine often, sometimes daily, and mixing it with other drugs” back in May.
Bannon has also been critical of Musk’s brief tenure leading the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the federal task force established to reduce government waste.
Bannon was indicted in 2020 on charges off fraud and money laundering related to the “We Build the Wall” campaign, a fundraiser dedicated to crowdfunding funds to build Trump’s proposed border wall on America's southern border. While he would go on to receive a full pardon from Trump in early 2021, Bannon was indicted and found guilty in 2022 of criminal contempt of Congress after defying a January 6 subpoena, receiving a four-month federal prison sentence.
Musk and Trump have fallen out recently after the billionaire repeatedly bashed Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. On Monday, he vowed to see Republicans supportive of the bill “lose their primary (election) next year” on Monday in a social media post, something Bannon has pushed back on.
“This was the guy that told the president he was going to cut two trillion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse, but then he backed it off to one trillion,” Bannon said Monday, speaking on his podcast War Room. “I don’t know, folks, I know some of you fanboys said we got $160 billion, but we haven’t seen the $160 billion. What we do have is a $9 billion rescission, and all of that is programmatic.”
Billionaire and former DOGE administrator Elon Musk warned that President Donald Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill could be "dangerous in [the] future" and allow "abuses of power" by the commander-in-chief.
On Tuesday, Musk wrote on his X platform about a poll regarding Trump's spending bill.
"Removal of funding for enforcement of federal contempt of court orders is the actual crux of this spending bill," he opined. "This is nominally aimed at removal of illegal immigrants, but obviously also enables many other abuses of power by the President."
"Should this be allowed?" he asked.
At the time of publication, 63.4% of respondents agreed with Musk that the provision should not be allowed. Another 36.4% said it should be allowed.
"It can be very dangerous in future," one person replied to Musk.
A group of hackers affiliated with Iran claims to have made off with a vast trove of emails from Trump administration staffers, The Daily Beast reported on Tuesday morning.
"The hackers, who use the online pseudonym 'Robert,' told Reuters they had around 100 gigabytes of emails taken from the accounts of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Trump lawyer Lindsey Halligan, longtime Trump ally and political consultant Roger Stone, and Stormy Daniels, the porn star whom the president paid to keep quiet about an alleged affair ahead of the 2016 election," reported Ewan Palmer, adding that Robert may be planning to sell this data to undisclosed buyers.
Reuters has reportedly authenticated some of the compromised data, which includes "details of a financial arrangement between Trump and attorneys representing former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — now Trump’s health secretary — as well as settlement negotiations between Trump and Daniels."
Trump's hush payments to Daniels, and efforts to mislabel them in financial records, formed the basis of Trump's felony conviction in New York last year, which ultimately led to no substantial sentence for Trump but remains on the books. It was the first time a former president had ever been convicted of a crime.
The administration responded swiftly to the allegations, with FBI Director Kash Patel saying, “The FBI takes all threats against the president, his staff, and our cybersecurity with the utmost seriousness,” and cybersecurity public affairs chief Marci McCarthy saying, “This so-called cyber ‘attack’ is nothing more than digital propaganda, and the targets are no coincidence. This is a calculated smear campaign meant to damage President Trump and discredit honorable public servants who serve our country with distinction."
This is not the first time Iran has been implicated in political cybersecurity breaches. Reporting last year indicated that Iran sought to interfere in the 2024 election against the Trump campaign, hacking into its computer systems.
Before departing for Florida on Tuesday, President Donald Trump poked fun at migrants who might try to escape the quickly constructed detention facility in the Everglades that's been dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz."
CNN's Isabel Rosales reported from the site, saying it took "a week and one day" for ICE officials to transform an airport in Ochopee, Florida, into a tent city ready to house some 5,000 detainees awaiting deportation.
"This location here in the Everglades is just under 50 miles west of Trump's resort in Miami," Rosales said, adding that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) claimed, "Not much security is needed thanks to the pythons and gators that are surrounding this facility."
Trump told reporters outside the White House Tuesday, "This is not a nice business. I guess that's the concept. You know, snakes are fast, but alligators are — but we're going to teach them how to run away from an alligator, okay?
"If they escape prison, how to run away. Don't run in a straight line. Run like this!" Trump exclaimed, using his hand to indicate a weaving pattern.
"And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%, okay? Not a good thing," he said with a chuckle.
Thomas Kennedy with the Florida Immigrant Coalition said the Trump administration was treating migrants as "vermin."
"There's nothing about this facility, about this detention camp, that is not cruel and inhumane," he said. "The fact that we're going to have 3,000 people detained in tents in the Everglades, in the middle of the hot Florida summer, during hurricane season, right? I mean, this is a bad idea all around that needs to be opposed and stopped."
Rosales added that the facility is expected to cost around $450 million a year to run.
Trump is expected to tour the facility with DeSantis later Tuesday.
"We might have to put DOGE on Elon," he stated. "You know what DOGE is? DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon, wouldn't that be terrible?"
"He gets a lot of subsidies, but Elon is very upset that the EV mandate is going to be terminated and you know what? When you look at it, who wants –– not everybody wants an electric car! I don't want an electric car. I want to have maybe gasoline, maybe electric, maybe a hybrid, maybe someday a hydrogen. If you have a hydrogen car, it has one problem: it blows up, you know."
As the Senate staged a voting marathon on amendments to President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” ahead of the July 4 holiday, legislators, academics and physicians warned of the devastation the mega-spending package could cause people reliant on Medicaid.
At least three in four losing coverage would be due to Medicaid cuts in the bill, creating “stress and angst related to having gaps in coverage,” Adrianna McIntyre, an assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told Raw Story.
The bill's focus on kicking off undocumented migrants, in particular, is blown “way, way, way out of proportion” and “complete drivel," Peter Kowey, emeritus chief of cardiology at the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research in Pennsylvania, told Raw Story.
Undocumented patients he’s encountered more often than not have “better health insurance than citizens,” working and purchasing their own plans, he said.
Legislators from left and right spoke out about how the proposed restrictions on Medicaid would harm their constituents, from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who accused Republicans of “cruelty” for supporting the bill poised to “hurt” and “kill people,” to Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who voted against the bill for “betraying a promise” to Americans who would ultimately be pushed off Medicaid.
“Senate Republicans are doubling down on ripping health care away from people and raising costs for families to fund giant tax handouts for billionaires and giant corporations,” Warren told Raw Story in a statement.
“This ugly bill is a slap in the face for families, and I’m taking all my fight to the Senate floor to stop it.”
The Senate version of the bill proposes increased spending for border security, defense and energy, while decreasing spending on health and nutrition — with 11.8 million Americans set to lose insurance by 2034 with more than $1 trillion in Medicaid funding cut, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
If the bill passes, proposed Medicaid restrictions include work requirements for able-bodied adults and increased eligibility checks — expected to save $325 billion over a decade — and cuts to provider taxes, which states use to fund their Medicaid costs — reducing spending by nearly $191 billion in that time, according to the agency’s estimate.
Still, even with those cuts, the deficit would still grow by more than $3.3 trillion, according to the agency.
Trump urged legislators to continue steaming ahead toward his July 4 deadline, encouraging them to ignore the Senate parliamentarian who determined provider tax cuts and restrictions on care to undocumented individuals were not in compliance with Senate rules.
The White House insisted on Sunday that “there will be no cuts to Medicaid.”
“OBBB protects and strengthens Medicaid for those who rely on it — pregnant women, children, seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income families — while eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse,” it said.
“OBBB removes illegal aliens, enforces work requirements and protects Medicaid for the truly vulnerable.”
‘Buried in patients’
Kowey, who is also chair in cardiovascular research and professor of medicine and clinical pharmacology at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, said physicians “depend on a reasonable Medicaid payment,” and with less reimbursements, practices will fold.
That will make it even harder to get an appointment with physicians “literally buried with patients,” especially when there’s already a shortage of primary care providers, said Kowey, author of the forthcoming book Failure to Treat: How a Broken Healthcare System Puts Patients and Practitioners at Risk.
Plus, hospitals still need to treat "indigent" patients, whether or not they have insurance, Kowey said. More patients without Medicaid will leave hospitals to “suffer the financial consequences and close at a higher rate, and we're all going to suffer for that,” Kowey said.
McIntyre agreed that hospitals and nursing homes “already at the financial margins” stand to close if the Medicaid restrictions pass.
“I think for a lot of folks it means that they won't be able to access health care, or they won't be confident that they can access health care because they won't know if they're going to get a bill from the hospital if they show up,” McIntyre said.
Kowey said the employment requirements in the Republican bill create unnecessary "bureaucracy" as the majority on Medicaid already work.
“These paperwork requirements largely just end up screening people out of coverage, and some of them might come back in,” McIntyre said.
“They might figure out that they've lost coverage, but they might not learn that until they show up needing care, and that could create access issues for them.”
‘Gasoline on the fire’
Veronique de Rugy, senior research fellow and chair in political economy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a libertarian research center, said the bill would not deliver on its promises for slashing the deficit, calling it “barely pro-growth.”
De Rugy, who advocates for small government and lower taxes, said cuts to Medicaid could go even further.
“If Americans want large spending — they don't want to touch Social Security. They don't want to touch Medicaid. They don't want to touch Medicare. They want all the tax credits for this green energy and this child tax credit and this and that — then they should pay more taxes,” de Rugy said.
“They can't continue financing it on the back of future generations that are going to face much higher taxes and are going to face inflation.”
The White House said the bill “delivers the largest middle- and working-class tax cut in U.S. history.”
That’s a problem if it means future generations pay the price, de Rugy said, adding: “There was a time where the Republican Party used to understand this message.”
Kowey said it was “astounding” that Republicans would propose a bill to “benefit rich people and take money away from Medicaid patients,” which might cost them reelection.
“I hope people make this connection, that the people in Washington not only don't care about you, but they're willing to throw gasoline on fire, which is basically what this legislation is doing,” Kowey said.
Amid a bruising fight with his party over the direction of President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" on tax cuts, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) announced this week he won't seek re-election, opening up what was already one of the GOP's most vulnerable seats on the map for 2026.
But now that he has been liberated from his obligations to toe the party line, he should do more than just fight to save low-income people from devastating Medicaid cuts, Myron B. Pitts wrote for The Fayetteville Observer, a local newspaper in Tillis' home state.
Rather, he argued, Tillis should find the backbone to take on Trump on all of his worst excesses.
"I can’t say I blame" Tillis for retiring, noted Pitts. "Not only would Tillis have faced a tough primary but a difficult general election, too, especially if the opponent is former Gov. Roy Cooper, as some are predicting. Even if Tillis were to ultimately vote against the tax bill, his assessment earlier this month that the unpopular legislation could lead to major electoral losses for Republicans still stands, and he might have been one of those losses."
Even so, he added, the question remains: "Will Tillis, now that he is free from reelection concerns, use the remaining part of his term to oppose the worst excesses of the Trump agenda? Or will he continue to rubber-stamp that agenda, as in the past? Will Thom Tillis go out with a bang or a sustained whimper?"
Because in recent years, he has been absent from that fight, Pitts wrote. For instance, he voted to acquit Trump in his Senate trial for January 6. "Seven Republican senators crossed the aisle to make that vote. Tillis voted 'not guilty.' He knew better. We all knew he knew better." Tillis also often backed down on the occasions he did stand up to Trump, like when he criticized Trump for declaring a state of emergency to build the border wall, only to flip and support it later.
All this stands in contrast to the bolder Tillis Pitts remembered covering when he served as North Carolina's state house speaker — and took on his state's dark history of eugenics.
"North Carolina sterilized thousands of people against their will from the 1920s to the 1970s based on a quack science that designated some people as inferior. In our state and elsewhere, the practices fell disproportionately on people who were poor, Black or an unmarried woman," he wrote.
"Tillis worked across the aisle with Democrat Larry Womble, and the state General Assembly passed in December 2015 bipartisan legislation to assist victims. Frankly, this is not the kind of compassionate effort I tend to associate with Republicans."
"Maybe Thom Tillis, the erstwhile contender, can look out for the rest of us for his last 18 months in the Senate," Pitts concluded. "If he sustains his vote against the Big Ugly Bill, that would be a good first step."
