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Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said late last night that trade talks with the US had resumed after Canada rescinded its plan to tax US technology firms.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
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.”
Richest Americans will save nearly $100,000 a year from tax bill, research says
Researchers at Yale University have calculated that the highest income Americans will save tens of thousands of dollars under Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”.
The top 10% of taxpayers would save $10,000 a year under the budget bill – while the top 0.1% of taxpayers would save nearly $100,000 a year, according to the Yale Budget Lab.
“Changes to taxes and Medicaid and SNAP spending proposed by the Senate budget reconciliation bill would result in a decline of 2.9 percent (about $700) in income for the bottom quintile, but an increase of 1.9 percent (about $30,000) for the top 1 percent,” the report found.
The State Department has approved a $510m arms sale to Israel, including more than 7,000 bomb guidance kits, the Associated Press reports.
“The United States is committed to the security of Israel, and it is vital to U.S. national interests to assist Israel to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability,” the department said in a statement. “This proposed sale is consistent with those objectives.”
Donald 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 reversed policies put in place by the Biden administration regarding Cuba. The president’s memo directs the federal government to enforce a statutory ban on US tourism to Cuba and continue an economic embargo on the island nation.
Elon Musk denounces tax bill, calling ‘for new political party that cares about the people’
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 Donald Trump’s candidacy, is denouncing Republican efforts to pass the president’s budget bill.
“It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” Musk wrote. “Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.”
Musk added that “every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history” will “lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”
Early in his presidency, Trump granted Musk oversight of a newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, but the duo’s friendship imploded in a widely publicized social media feud concerning the Republican spending bill earlier this month.
Senate majority leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson did not meet with Donald Trump today, the Associated Press reports. The news comes just hours after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the president met with the two about efforts to pass the “big, beautiful bill”.
A spokesman for Thune said the Republican senator was overseeing the “vote-a-rama” and had no plans to visit the White House.
“Teams are obviously in close contact/coordination, as always,” the spokesman, Ryan Wrasse, said in a social media post, “but we’re continuing to move through vote-a-rama in the Senate as we work to move this bill one step closer to the president’s desk.”
The day so far
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Trump will travel tomorrow to the opening of the new – and highly controversial – immigrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
Trump to host Netanyahu at the White House on 7 July – Axios
Donald Trump will host Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on 7 July, Axios is reporting, citing an Israeli official.
‘It’s not what we agreed to’: GOP fiscal hawks in House decry Senate version of Trump tax bill that would balloon deficit
The Freedom Caucus – the ultraconservative blog in the House of Representatives – has said that the legislation currently being voted on in the Senate is “not what we agreed to”, underscoring conservative discontent in the House with the direction of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”.
In a post on X, lawmakers said:
The House budget framework was clear: no new deficit spending in the One Big Beautiful Bill.
The Senate’s version adds $651bn to the deficit — and that’s before interest costs, which nearly double the total.
That’s not fiscal responsibility. It’s not what we agreed to.
The Senate must make major changes and should at least be in the ballpark of compliance with the agreed upon House budget framework.
Republicans must do better.
The Senate’s version of the legislation would add at least $3.3tn to the national debt over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
That could pose major problems in the House, which approved a cheaper version last month by a single vote and has to give final approval to the bill.
Here is my colleague Chris Stein’s report on Senate Republicans’ effort for a final push of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” through the chamber, which the president has demanded be ready for his signature by Friday.
With vote-a-rama well underway, the final vote on passage could come as late as the early hours of tomorrow morning, according to Politico. It’ll be tight for the GOP, which can only afford to lose three votes for the legislation to pass – and two senators have already expressed they’re firm no’s.
Trump suggests there won’t be a trade deal with Japan
Donald 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 United States.
“I have great respect for Japan, they won’t take our RICE, and yet they have a massive rice shortage,” he said in a Truth Social post. “We’ll just be sending them a letter, and we love having them as a Trading Partner for many years to come.”
Trump did not say what terms would be outlined in the letter. He has previously said he will be sending letters to trading partners to establish tariff rates ahead of the 8 July expiration on the pause on his “reciprocal” tariffs.
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