Opening summary: Senate wrangles over Trump’s ‘one big beautiful bill’ to continue
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics with senators scheduled to start voting on a potentially long list of amendments to Donald Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” beginning at 9 am EDT.
Yesterday, Republicans in the Senate Republicans pushed Trump’s sweeping tax cut and spending bill forward in a marathon weekend session even as a nonpartisan forecaster said it would add an estimated $3.3tn to the nation’s debt over a decade.
The estimate by the congressional budget office of the bill’s hit to the $36.2tn federal debt is about $800bn more than the version passed last month in the House of Representatives.
“Republicans are doing something the Senate has never, never done before, deploying fake math and accounting gimmicks to hide the true cost of the bill,” Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said as debate opened on Sunday.
The Senate only narrowly advanced the tax-cut, immigration, border and military spending bill in a procedural vote late on Saturday, voting 51-49 to open debate on the 940-page megabill.
Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, one of two Republicans who voted to block the bill, explained his position in a speech to the Senate, saying White House aides had failed to give Trump proper advice about the legislation’s Medicaid cuts.
“What do I tell 663,00 people in two years, three years, when president Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore,” Tillis said, referring to his constituents.
Tillis said he would not seek re-election next year, after Trump threatened to back a primary challenger in retribution for Tillis’ Saturday night vote against the bill.
On Sunday, Trump celebrated Tillis’ announcement as “Great News!” on Truth Social and issued a warning to fellow Republicans who have concerns over the bill. “REMEMBER, you still have to get reelected. Don’t go too crazy!” Trump wrote in a post.
Tillis’ North Carolina seat is one of the few Republican Senate seats seen as vulnerable in next year’s midterm elections.
Read the full story here:
In other news:
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Donald Trump has said he is not speaking to Iran and was not offering the country “anything”, as he claimed that America “totally obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear facilities when it struck them earlier this month. Trump’s comments, posted to Truth Social this morning, followed reports that his administration had discussed possibly helping Iran access as much as $30bn to build a civilian-energy-producing nuclear program.
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The University of Virginia received “explicit” notification from the Trump administration that the school would endure cuts to university jobs, research funding and student aid as well as visas if the institution’s president, Jim Ryan, did not resign, according to a US senator. In an interview with CBS, Virginia Democrat Mark Warner defended Ryan – who has championed diversity policies that the president opposes – and predicted Trump would similarly target other universities.
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Donald Trump said he was weighing forcing journalists who published leaked details from a US intelligence report assessing the impact of the recent American military strikes on Iran to reveal their sources. The president also claimed his administration may prosecute those reporters and sources if they don’t comply.
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The president threatened to block New York City from receiving federal funds if favoured mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, “doesn’t behave himself” should he be elected. Mamdani, meanwhile, denied that he was – as the president claimed – a communist. But he reaffirmed his commitment to raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers while saying: “I don’t think that we should have billionaires.”
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Blood-sucking ticks that trigger a bizarre allergy to meat in the people they bite are exploding in number and spreading across the US, to the extent that they could cover the entire eastern half of the country and infect millions of people, experts warn.
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Iran’s ambassador to the UN said the Islamic republic’s nuclear enrichment “will never stop” because it is permitted for “peaceful energy” purposes under the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. “The enrichment is our right,” Iravani told CBS News.
Key events
Trump administration finds Harvard violated students’ civil rights – WSJ
Donald Trump’s administration informed Harvard University that its investigation found that the university violated federal civil rights law over its treatment of Jewish and Israeli students, the Wall Street Journal is reporting, putting its federal funding further at risk.
In a letter sent to Harvard president Alan Garber today and seen by the Journal, attorneys for the administration said the investigation found that Harvard knew Jewish and Israeli students felt threatened on its campus and acted with deliberate indifference.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” the report quoted the letter as saying.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. We’ll bring you more on this as we get it.
Israel continues deadly attacks on Gaza ahead of potential White House talks on ceasefire
Israel is continuing its relentless bombardment of Gaza after tens of thousands of Palestinian people fled eastern parts of Gaza City in the north of the territory on Sunday after Israel warned of a major new offensive.
At least 25 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Monday, health authorities said in an updated toll, including 10 people killed in Zeitoun in southern Gaza City.
Two people seeking aid were also killed by Israeli fire near an aid distribution centre in southern Rafah, sources at the Nasser medical complex told Al Jazeera.
The attacks come as Israeli officials are due in Washington for a new ceasefire push by the US, which is fuelling the war by providing weapons to the Israeli military.
Israel’s strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer is expected at the White House later today for talks on Iran and Gaza, an Israeli official said.
In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet is expected to convene to discuss the next steps in its widening assault on Gaza.
The Israeli prime minister has been accused of deliberately prolonging ceasefire negotiations – and blocking their progress – to ensure his own political survival by having the war continue.
You can follow our live coverage on the crisis here:
Thom Tillis won’t seek re-election after clash with Trump over ‘big beautiful bill’
Edward Helmore and Robert Mackey
Thom Tillis announced yesterday that he will not run for re-election to the US Senate next year, one day after the North Carolina Republican’s vote against Donald Trump’s signature piece of domestic legislation prompted the president to launch a barrage of threats and insults – as well as promise to support a primary challenger to defeat him in their party’s 2026 primary.
Tillis said in a statement sent to reporters:
In Washington over the last few years, it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species.
As many of my colleagues have noticed over the last year, and at times even joked about, I haven’t exactly been excited about running for another term. It’s not a hard choice, and I will not be seeking re-election.
Shortly after Tillis refused to support the “one big beautiful bill” in a procedural vote in the Senate on Saturday, Trump attacked the senator on his social media platform, Truth Social, accusing Tillis of grandstanding “in order to get some publicity for himself, for a possible, but very difficult re-election”. He also wrote that Tillis is making a “BIG MISTAKE for America, and the Wonderful People of North Carolina!”
In a subsequent post, Trump threatened Tillis by saying he would meet with potential candidates to challenge him in a Republican primary in the battleground state. “Numerous people have come forward wanting to run” against Tillis, Trump wrote Saturday night. “I will be meeting with them over the coming weeks, looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina and, so importantly, the United States of America.”
Before Tillis announced his decision Sunday to retire from the Senate, Trump continued to attack him on social media, writing: “Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER! He’s even worse than Rand ‘Fauci’ Paul!”
Tillis was one of two Senate Republicans, along with Rand Paul of Kentucky, to vote against the bill championed by the president. Dr Anthony Fauci was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during Trump’s first presidency, and once a key adviser on the Covid-19 pandemic whose support of lockdowns and vaccines made him a hate figure for Trump’s base.
Trump’s attacks came hours after Tillis said in a statement that he “cannot support” the current form of the president’s spending bill. He pointed to expected cuts to Medicaid that he said would “result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities”.
US environment agency employees say Trump administration undermining mission
Nearly 300 current and recently terminated employees of the US Environmental Protection Agency published a declaration of dissent today, outlining five major concerns about how the Trump administration’s politicization of science and severe job cuts were undermining the agency’s mission.
The declaration to administrator Lee Zeldin was sent as another expected round of staff reductions looms and as the agency undergoes a major reorganization, including the dissolution of its office of research and cancelling of billions of dollars in grants.
The reorganization will consolidate several key offices, reflecting plans to cut regulatory red tape and promote more fossil fuel energy development, as laid out in Donald Trump’s executive orders.
“Today, we stand together in dissent against the current administration’s focus on harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions, and disregard for scientific expertise,” said the 278 EPA employees who wrote and signed the letter in their personal capacities, including 174 who signed their full names.
The declaration is similar to one sent earlier this month by employees of the National Institutes of Health to its director to protest the politicization of research and disruption of scientific progress.
The EPA employees said their five main concerns are the partisan rhetoric and misinformation shared in EPA communications; disregard for the agency’s own scientific assessments; abandoning environmental justice while slashing funding; dismantling the research office; and creating a culture of fear.
They said:
Your decisions and actions will reverberate for generations to come. EPA under your leadership will not protect communities from hazardous chemicals and unsafe drinking water, but instead will increase risks to public health and safety.
Only 36% of Democrats say they’re “extremely” or “very” proud to be American, according to a new Gallup poll, reflecting a dramatic decline in national pride that’s also clear among young people, AP reported.
The findings are a stark illustration of how many – but not all – Americans have felt less of a sense of pride in their country over the past decade. The split between Democrats and Republicans, at 56 percentage points, is at its widest since 2001. That includes all four years of Republican President Donald Trump’s first term.
Only about 4 in 10 US adults who are part of Generation Z, which is defined as those born from 1997 to 2012, expressed a high level of pride in being American in Gallup surveys conducted in the past five years, on average. That’s compared with about 6 in 10 Millennials – those born between 1980 and 1996 – and at least 7 in 10 US adults in older generations.
“Each generation is less patriotic than the prior generation, and Gen Z is definitely much lower than anybody else,” said Jeffrey Jones, a senior editor at Gallup. “But even among the older generations, we see that they’re less patriotic than the ones before them, and they’ve become less patriotic over time. That’s primarily driven by Democrats within those generations.”
The Kremlin said on Monday that backers of US senator Lindsey Graham’s bill, that would impose tough new sanctions on Russia and its trading partners, should ask themselves how it would affect efforts to reach a peace deal on Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was responding to a question after Graham said in an interview with ABC News on Sunday that President Donald Trump had told him the sanctions bill could be brought forward for a vote.
Peskov said Russia was aware of Graham’s stance and that it regarded him to be an “inveterate Russophobe.”
Trump threatens to cut off New York City federal funds if Mamdani ‘doesn’t behave’
Edward Helmore
Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to cut New York City off from federal funds if favored mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, “doesn’t behave himself” should he be elected.
Mamdani, meanwhile, denied that he was – as the president said – a communist. But he reaffirmed his commitment to raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers while saying: “I don’t think that we should have billionaires.”
In an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Trump argued that a Mamdani victory was “inconceivable” because he perceived the candidate to be “a pure communist”.
He added: “Let’s say this – if he does get in, I’m going to be president, and he’s going to have to do the right thing, or they’re not getting any money. He’s got to do the right thing or they’re not getting any money.”
More than $100bn flows to the city from the federal government through different entities and programs, according to the city’s comptroller last year.
Speaking Sunday with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Mamdani said, “no, I am not” a communist.
He also said that he had “already had to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I’m from, who I am – ultimately because he wants to distract from what I’m fighting for”.
Trump considers forcing journalists to reveal sources who leaked Iran report
Marina Dunbar
Donald Trump said he is weighing forcing journalists who published leaked details from a US intelligence report assessing the impact of the recent American military strikes on Iran to reveal their sources – and the president also claimed his administration may prosecute those reporters and sources if they don’t comply.
In an interview Sunday with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, Trump doubled down on his claim that the 21 June airstrikes aimed at certain Iranian facilities successfully crippled Iran’s nuclear program. He insisted the attacks destroyed key enriched uranium stockpiles, despite Iranian assertions that the material had been relocated before the strikes.
Trump dismissed the leaked intelligence assessment in question – which suggested the strikes only temporarily disrupted Iran’s nuclear development – as incomplete and biased. The report, circulated among US lawmakers and intelligence officials, concluded that the damage inflicted was significantly less than what Trump’s administration had publicly claimed.
The president has attacked both Democratic lawmakers and members of the media for sharing portions of the classified analysis. He then threatened legal consequences for those responsible.
Marina Dunbar
The University of Virginia (UVA) received “explicit” notification from the Trump administration that the school would endure cuts to university jobs, research funding and student aid as well as visas if the institution’s president, Jim Ryan, did not resign, according to a US senator.
During an interview Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, Mark Warner, a Democratic senator for Virginia, defended Ryan – who had championed diversity policies that the president opposes – and predicted that Donald Trump will similarly target other universities.
Warner said he understood that the former UVA president was told that if he “tried to fight back, hundreds of employees would lose jobs, researchers would lose funding, and hundreds of students could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld”.
“There was indication that they received the letter that if he didn’t resign on a day last week, by 5 o’clock, all these cuts would take place,” Warner added. He also said he believes this to be the “most outrageous action” that the Trump administration has taken on education since it retook office in January.
President Donald Trump is expected to attend the opening on Tuesday of a temporary migrant detention center in southern Florida dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz”, a source familiar with the matter said.
The step comes as Trump, a Republican, has sought to ramp up the detention and deportation of migrants, saying the measure was needed after millions crossed the border illegally under Democrat Joe Biden.
The center got the nickname from its remote location in the Everglades, a vast subtropical wetland teeming with alligators, crocodiles and pythons that a Florida official said this month provides natural barriers, requiring minimal security.
Trump will be accompanied by Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, who asked him to visit, said the source, who spoke on Sunday, on condition of anonymity, Reuters reported.
Canada ditches tax on tech giants in bid to restart US trade talks
Canada scrapped its digital services tax targeting U.S. technology firms late on Sunday, just hours before it was due to take effect, in a bid to advance stalled trade negotiations with the United States.
Canadian prime minister Mark Carney and US president Donald Trump will resume trade negotiations in order to agree on a deal by 21 July, Canada’s finance ministry said in a statement, Reuters reported.
Trump abruptly called off trade talks on Friday over the tax targeting US technology firms, saying that it was a “blatant attack.”
He reiterated his comments on Sunday, pledging to set a new tariff rate on Canadian goods within the next week, which threatened to push US-Canada relations back into chaos after a period of relative calm.
The breakdown in trade talks comes after the two leaders met at the G7 in mid-June and Carney said they had agreed to wrap up a new economic agreement within 30 days.
Canada’s planned digital tax was 3% of the digital services revenue a firm takes in from Canadian users above $20 million in a calendar year, and payments were to be retroactive to 2022.
It would have impacted US technology firms, including Amazon, Meta, Alphabet’s Google and Apple, among others.
Iran criticises Trump as president says he is not offering country ‘anything’
Iran criticised US president Donald Trump’s shifting stance on whether to lift economic sanctions against Tehran as “games” that were not aimed at solving the problems between the two countries.
“These [statements by Trump] should be viewed more in the context of psychological and media games than as a serious expression in favour of dialogue or problem-solving,” foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei told a press conference on Monday.
Trump had said he is not speaking to Iran and was not offering the country “anything”, as he claimed that America “totally obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear facilities when it struck them earlier this month.
Trump’s comments, posted to Truth Social this morning, followed reports that his administration had discussed possibly helping Iran access as much as $30bn to build a civilian-energy-producing nuclear program.
The reported proposal would mark a major reversal in policy for Trump, who exited Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran in 2018, claiming the sanction relief and unfreezing of assets provided Tehran with “a lifeline of cash”.
Trump wrote:
Tell phony Democrat Senator Chris Coons that I am not offering Iran ANYTHING, unlike Obama, who paid them $Billions under the stupid “road to a Nuclear Weapon JCPOA (which would now be expired!), nor am I even talking to them since we totally OBLITERATED their Nuclear Facilities.
Opening summary: Senate wrangles over Trump’s ‘one big beautiful bill’ to continue
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of US politics with senators scheduled to start voting on a potentially long list of amendments to Donald Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” beginning at 9 am EDT.
Yesterday, Republicans in the Senate Republicans pushed Trump’s sweeping tax cut and spending bill forward in a marathon weekend session even as a nonpartisan forecaster said it would add an estimated $3.3tn to the nation’s debt over a decade.
The estimate by the congressional budget office of the bill’s hit to the $36.2tn federal debt is about $800bn more than the version passed last month in the House of Representatives.
“Republicans are doing something the Senate has never, never done before, deploying fake math and accounting gimmicks to hide the true cost of the bill,” Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said as debate opened on Sunday.
The Senate only narrowly advanced the tax-cut, immigration, border and military spending bill in a procedural vote late on Saturday, voting 51-49 to open debate on the 940-page megabill.
Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, one of two Republicans who voted to block the bill, explained his position in a speech to the Senate, saying White House aides had failed to give Trump proper advice about the legislation’s Medicaid cuts.
“What do I tell 663,00 people in two years, three years, when president Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore,” Tillis said, referring to his constituents.
Tillis said he would not seek re-election next year, after Trump threatened to back a primary challenger in retribution for Tillis’ Saturday night vote against the bill.
On Sunday, Trump celebrated Tillis’ announcement as “Great News!” on Truth Social and issued a warning to fellow Republicans who have concerns over the bill. “REMEMBER, you still have to get reelected. Don’t go too crazy!” Trump wrote in a post.
Tillis’ North Carolina seat is one of the few Republican Senate seats seen as vulnerable in next year’s midterm elections.
Read the full story here:
In other news:
-
Donald Trump has said he is not speaking to Iran and was not offering the country “anything”, as he claimed that America “totally obliterated” Tehran’s nuclear facilities when it struck them earlier this month. Trump’s comments, posted to Truth Social this morning, followed reports that his administration had discussed possibly helping Iran access as much as $30bn to build a civilian-energy-producing nuclear program.
-
The University of Virginia received “explicit” notification from the Trump administration that the school would endure cuts to university jobs, research funding and student aid as well as visas if the institution’s president, Jim Ryan, did not resign, according to a US senator. In an interview with CBS, Virginia Democrat Mark Warner defended Ryan – who has championed diversity policies that the president opposes – and predicted Trump would similarly target other universities.
-
Donald Trump said he was weighing forcing journalists who published leaked details from a US intelligence report assessing the impact of the recent American military strikes on Iran to reveal their sources. The president also claimed his administration may prosecute those reporters and sources if they don’t comply.
-
The president threatened to block New York City from receiving federal funds if favoured mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, “doesn’t behave himself” should he be elected. Mamdani, meanwhile, denied that he was – as the president claimed – a communist. But he reaffirmed his commitment to raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers while saying: “I don’t think that we should have billionaires.”
-
Blood-sucking ticks that trigger a bizarre allergy to meat in the people they bite are exploding in number and spreading across the US, to the extent that they could cover the entire eastern half of the country and infect millions of people, experts warn.
-
Iran’s ambassador to the UN said the Islamic republic’s nuclear enrichment “will never stop” because it is permitted for “peaceful energy” purposes under the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. “The enrichment is our right,” Iravani told CBS News.