Congress
Senate passes Trump’s megabill after pulling all-nighter
Senate Republicans narrowly passed Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” Tuesday, taking a significant step toward the president’s goal of signing the legislation later this week.
The vote was 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance breaking a tie. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina joined Democrats and voted no.
The bill is expected to be the party’s marquee legislative achievement heading into next year’s midterms. The GOP’s slim House majority is at risk, and in the Senate, Tillis’ retirement announcement this week handed Democrats a major opening.
In addition to extending the president’s 2017 tax cuts, the bill includes scaled-down versions of his campaign priorities, such as “no tax on tips,” while overhauling social safety-net programs, and providing new border and military spending. It also hikes the federal debt ceiling by $5 trillion.
“This is about extending that tax relief so the same people that benefited from it back in 2017 and for the last eight years don’t end up having a colossal, massive tax increase hitting them in the face come Jan. 1,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said.
The Tuesday morning vote followed nearly a full day of round-the-clock uncertainty over how the bill would come together, all set against a slow-moving amendment “vote-a-rama” taking place on the Senate floor.
It made for a messy ending to a months-long process. Thune, Majority Whip John Barrasso and other leaders shuttled between GOP holdouts as the votes dragged on overnight. After huddling with a band of fiscal hawks around 1 a.m., the normally chatty Thune said only that “progress is an elusive term.”
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski emerged as a particular focus of leaders’ attention. They already spent days working with her to address concerns about the bill’s impact on her state’s health care and economy — for instance, putting a expanded tax break for whaling boat captains in the bill. But some of their proposals ran into trouble from the Senate parliamentarian, leaving her vote in question until the very end.
As Republicans questioned if they would be able to win her over, Thune and key committee chairs met with Paul, thought to be their most dug-in “no” vote, to see if he might be gettable.
Now Republicans could face an even more painful headache across the Capitol: The package still needs to get through the House, which is expected to start voting as soon as Wednesday, driving Republicans right down to the wire on their self-imposed July 4 deadline.
That will be a heavy lift: Moderates are worried about changes to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits included in the Senate bill, and conservatives are up in arms that it doesn’t go far enough in cutting spending. But GOP leaders are betting they can get it through the way they did their initial draft earlier this year — by daring holdouts to vote against Donald Trump.
Many of the same provisions that are giving House Republicans heartburn also sparked GOP opposition in the Senate. Collins had warned for days that she was leaning against the bill absent her cRon Johnsonolleagues agreeing to soften a provision curtailing state provider taxes, which many states use to fund their Medicaid programs, and significantly increase a rural hospital fund.
But Collins’ amendment failed on a procedural vote. She accused Democrats of “hypocrisy” afterward for voting to sink a provision softening the bill’s blow but insisted it wouldn’t impact her final vote, adding: “I told all of you earlier in the week that I have problems with the bill.”
Tillis, meanwhile, compared the political ramifications of the Medicaid provisions to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which was followed by political wipeouts for Democrats in subsequent elections. After getting attacked by Trump, and Senate leaders doing little to try to assuage his concerns on Medicaid, he announced on Sunday he would not run for re-election. That was in part to send a sign that he wasn’t flippable on the bill, according to a person close to Tillis granted anonymity to disclose private discussions.
Paul was long viewed as most likely “no” due to his firm opposition to the debt ceiling hike embedded in the megabill. But he was only one of four fiscal hawks that leaders had been watching.
The other three — Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida — ultimately voted for the bill, as several of their colleagues suggested they would weeks ago. The effort to win over the group included multiple meetings with Trump, outreach from Vance and an 11th-hour meeting late Sunday night with top Senate Republicans, including Thune.
As part of that meeting, Thune agreed to support a Scott effort to curb how much the federal government pays to cover some Medicaid enrollees starting in 2031. In exchange, Johnson, Lee, Scott and Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming all agreed to start debate on the bill. In the end, the amendment never got a vote after several Republican senators made clear they would not support it and it could not pass.
House Republicans and some governors bet that the Senate would water down the House’s Medicaid changes when the bill came across the Capitol earlier this year. Instead, the Senate Finance Committee went further than the House by incrementally scaling back the provider tax cap in expansion states instead of just freezing it.
The Senate’s passage of the bill is the culmination of more than a year of work, dating back to early 2024, when Barrasso held a meeting between Senate Republicans and Trump campaign officials to start discussing the agenda if their party won a trifecta. Senate Finance Committee Republicans also started meeting more than a year ago to start discussing the contours of their eventual reconciliation bill, and Thune convened meetings with his members to test how policy ideas would fare across the conference.
Thune and Johnson have been in close contact for months, including regular meetings and increasingly frequent phone calls as the Senate bill inched closer to the finish line. Yet Johnson will now need to sell his own members, nervous about the political and policy implications of the bill.
Democrats are planning to use many of those same arguments that Republicans are raising internally to hammer them heading into next year’s midterm election. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is warning that “the American people will not forget what Republicans do in this chamber today.”
“We heard what our colleague from North Carolina had to say about this bill. My guess is half, maybe even more than half of the Republicans in the Senate totally agree with him,” Schumer said. “But he had the courage to speak the truth. The backbone to speak the truth. But not our other colleagues.”
Congress
Trump apparently shares Tom Cotton’s phone number in push to make Daylight Saving Time permanent
President Donald Trump appeared to share Sen. Tom Cotton’s phone number in a Saturday morning social media post imploring the Arkansas Republican to get behind a bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent.
“Almost everybody wants “The Sunshine Protection Act” to pass, except for Tom Cotton,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”
The president has spent months personally pushing Senate Republicans to end the practice that sees Americans change their clocks twice a year, cementing more sunlight hours in the evening for all twelve months of the calendar. Cotton, whom Trump called “a friend of mine” in the Saturday post, has long argued that making daylight saving time permanent would leave children, farmers and other early risers in the dark for hours on winter mornings.
One of Trump’s key selling points on Saturday: the PGA tour.
“The PGA TOUR, as an example, needs more Daylight in the afternoon in order to finish their Tournaments,” he said, attaching a letter from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp endorsing the bill. ”Likewise, regular Golfers, Tennis Players, Hunters and, perhaps most importantly, Farmers who want more Daylight to play or work.
A Blue Light News call to the cellphone number went to voicemail. A spokesperson for Cotton did not respond to a request for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The current version of the bill was introduced in the House in January 2025 by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) leading the Senate version. The legislation would make daylight saving time permanent across most of the country, ending the twice-yearly clock changes. The legislation has been stalled in the Senate since July.
The president encouraged supporters of the bill, dubbed the “The Sunshine Protection Act,” to call Cotton to “let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”
During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, he publicly gave out the personal cellphone number of then-rival Sen. Lindsey Graham after the South Carolina Republican criticized him. Trump, who came to count on Graham as a reliable Senate ally after he won the presidency, revisited the moment during Graham’s funeral in July, acknowledging that sharing the number was something he “shouldn’t have done.”
Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.
Sen. Bernie Sanders will hit the road for Troy Jackson in Maine starting Oct. 10, the first time the progressive leader will stump for the candidate this cycle.
The Vermont independent plans to hold three rallies with Jackson, according to an itinerary shared first with Blue Light News: first in Bangor on Oct. 10th followed by Lewiston and Biddeford on Oct. 11.
The Maine swing will kick off Sanders’ travel for the final stretch of the midterms, covering ground throughout October for House and Senate candidates, POLITICO reported.
“Bernie and Troy know that working people built this country and deserve a government that fights for them,” Jackson spokesperson Dan Gottlieb told Blue Light News. “Susan Collins has had nearly 30 years to deliver, and working Mainers are still getting squeezed while she serves the billionaires and corporate interests who bankroll her campaigns. Mainers don’t need another six years of excuses.”
Sanders campaigned ahead of major wins for progressives in the primary season, speaking at more than 60 rallies since last year’s Fight the Oligarchy tour and endorsing more than 90 candidates up and down the ballot.
He’s also opening his substantial $23 million campaign war chest, POLITICO reported, and contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars toMinnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s Senate campaign and others including Angie Nixon in Florida and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison,
Sanders will return to Maine after initially backing Graham Platner’s campaign for Senate. Allegations reported by POLITICO ultimately led him to call on the Democratic nominee to drop out of the race.
Sanders had not formally endorsed Jackson since he clinched the nomination from Platner, though he previously backed Jackson’s initial run for governor.
House Financial Services Chair French Hill said he has “no concerns” about winning back his Arkansas seat in the upcoming midterm elections, but the six-term House member acknowledged the political headwinds for his party.
“I consider the atmosphere a very tough political environment right now because of President [Donald] Trump’s lack of favorability at the top, and you know people are concerned about, as I say, what it’s like to live under an inflated economy the last four years,” Hill said in an interview.
Hill is in a solidly red district, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, and said he is up against a “weaker candidate this time than I’ve had in past races.” Polling in the district, however, has shown a tighter race. The two polls done this year placed Democratic challenger Chris Jones ahead of Hill by a few percentage points. Any perceived polling victory for Jones is still well within the margin of error, and one of the polls had a Democratic sponsor.
Stephannie Lane Baker, a spokesperson for Jones, said that “of all the Republicans in Congress, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee doesn’t get to dodge responsibility for this economy. He’s in trouble, and he knows it.”
Additionally, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s PAC, Ready for the Fight, committed more than $1 million in television ads through the next five weeks for Jones’ race in Arkansas’s 2nd District, Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the PAC confirmed. Overall Democratic spending on advertising for the race was just over $1 million, primarily made up by contributions from the Ready for the Fight PAC, with Republicans spending almost $2.7 million on ad buys, according to AdImpact, an advertising tracking service.
Hill said he has addressed affordability concerns “head on” this Congress.
“My work on housing, my work on the Price Stability Act, my work to try to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, and drop the federal budget deficit as a percentage of GDP,” Hill said. “All these things can contribute to a more affordable environment for people. So I’ve tried to make that a forefront of my campaign this year.”
Hill was a key architect of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan housing affordability bill that became law in July. The Price Stability Act, which is unlikely to become law this year, would narrow the Federal Reserve’s current dual mandate of pursuing maximum employment and price stability to focus exclusively on containing inflation.
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words