Senate kicks off vote-a-rama on ‘big, beautiful bill’ as GOP scrambles to meet 4 July deadline
The Senate resumed its final debate on the “big, beautiful bill” this morning after a marathon weekend of adjusting legislation to fit parliamentarian rulings and appease particular senators.
During the lengthy vote-a-rama, senators will be able to offer an unlimited number of amendments related to the enormous proposed legislation. Democrats will be at the heart of this, seeking to amend the huge bill that will enact Trump’s domestic agenda.
I’ll bring you any key developments here.
Key events
‘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.
Trump to sign executive order terminating sanctions on Syria
Leavitt confirms that Trump will sign an executive order terminating US sanctions on Syria – as reported earlier by CBS News – following through on his decision in May to unwind the measures to help Syria rebuild after 14 devastating years of civil war.
Leavitt adds that some sanctions on former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and other individuals will remain in place. Sanctions would remain 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, she says.
“[Trump] is committed to supporting a Syria that is stable, unified and at peace with itself and its neighbors,” Leavitt says, noting Trump’s meeting with Syria’s new president Ahmed al-Sharaa during his recent trip to the Middle East.
“This is another promise made and promise kept by this president to promote peace and stability in the region,” she adds.
Leavitt says Trump plans meetings with his trade team this week to set tariff rates for individual countries if they do not negotiate with the United States.
Leavitt confirms that Israel’s strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer will meet with officials at the White House this week.
Leavitt claims that if Zohran Mamdani is elected in New York as mayor he would “completely crush” the city.
She earlier attacked him, calling him an anti-Israel communist (Mamdani is a democratic socialist, and has been a vocal critic of the Israeli government and supporter of Palestinian rights. He actually enjoys emphatic support from many Jewish New Yorkers who have endorsed and voted for him).
For more on this, see my colleague Nesrine Malik’s latest column:
Trump ‘working hand in hand’ with Senate leader on tax bill, says Leavitt
Leavitt says the White House is “confident” the big, beautiful bill will get the votes needed in the Senate.
She says Trump has been “working hand in hand” with Senate majority leader John Thune and House speaker Mike Johnson who will meet the president again later today.
Leavitt says Trump wrote to Fed chair Jerome Powell urging him to lower interest rates.
Leavitt displays a copy of Trump’s handwritten notes to Powell on a piece of paper showing the interest rates charged by more than two dozen countries.
Trump believes interest rates should be lowered to about 1%, she says.
Leavitt confirms that Donald Trump will travel tomorrow to the opening of the new – and highly controversial – immigrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades.
White House press briefing
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is briefing reporters now. I’ll bring you all the key lines here.
Trump says interest rate should be 1% or less
Donald Trump has said that the United States’ interest rate should be 1% or less, adding that Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and members of the Fed board of governors have failed to do their jobs.
He wrote on Truth Social:
If they were doing their job properly, our country would be saving trillions of dollars in interest cost. We should be paying 1% Interest, or better!
Trump administration sues Los Angeles over sanctuary city immigration policies – NBC News
The Trump administration has sued the city of Los Angeles over its immigration policies, claiming that the city’s law discriminates against federal law enforcement by treating them differently to other law enforcement authorities, NBC News reports.
Filed in the central district of California, the lawsuit notes that Donald Trump “campaigned and won the presidential election on a platform of deporting the millions of illegal immigrants the previous administration permitted, through its open borders policy, to enter the country unlawfully”. It claims that the city’s law and policies obstruct the enforcement of immigration laws.
Attorney general Pam Bondi said in a statement:
Sanctuary policies were the driving cause of the violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement that Americans recently witnessed in Los Angeles. Jurisdictions like Los Angeles that flout federal law by prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens are undermining law enforcement at every level — it ends under President Trump.
It comes weeks after protests over the administration’s highly aggressive and hostile deportation agenda exploded in Los Angeles after Trump took the extraordinary decision to deploy the national guard and active US marines to the city. The anti-Ice protesters – along with city mayor Karen Bass and state governor Gavin Newsom – have subsequently become key targets for Trump and his allies.
