Supreme Court declines to hear dispute over Montana abortion consent law
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(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Thursday declined to take up a dispute over a Montana law that would have required notarized parental consent for a minor to receive an abortion.
State lawmakers have argued that parents have a constitutional right to make decisions concerning the care, custody and control of their children.
Planned Parenthood of Montana, in challenging the law, argued that minors have a constitutional right to privacy that cannot be infringed.
The Montana Supreme Court struck down the law on state constitutional grounds. The U.S. Supreme Court now leaves that decision in place.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said they agreed with the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case, saying it “provides a poor vehicle” for addressing the constitutional question about the rights of parents, which they suggested they are open to resolving in a future case.
(WASHINGTON) –House Republicans approved the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” encompassing President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda early Thursday. But clearing the House is just the first hurdle for the bill, which will also have to pass muster with a Senate Republican conference that is already telegraphing that changes to it are coming.
Trump is pushing for swift action on his megabill, urging senators in a post on X to act “as soon as possible” after the narrow victory in the House.
“We can celebrate this pass in the House for a couple of hours, but now it’s time for the Senate to get to work,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during Thursday’s White House press briefing. “The president has great relationship with … Senate Majority Leader [John] Thune, and of course, so many friends on the Senate side of the Hill. And he’s expecting them to get busy on this bill and send it to his desk as soon as possible.”
Senate Republicans say they’re clear-eyed about wanting to pass Trump’s legislative agenda into law as swiftly as they can, but have every intention of modifying the bill to leave their own distinct mark on the package and working to change things they object to.
Majority Leader Thune said Wednesday that “there are things that we need to adjust or modify or change,” adding that Speaker Mike Johnson “fully understands and accepts that.”
Chief among the issues GOP senators have raised about the bill is that it adds trillions of dollars to the national debt.
“[The] House bill is going to add about $4 trillion to the debt ceiling. The Senate bill adds $5 trillion. There’s nothing fiscally conservative about expanding the debt ceiling more than we’ve ever done it before,” Republican Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday. “This will be the greatest increase in the debt ceiling ever, and the GOP owns this now … the deficit this year will be $2.2 trillion the GOP owns that now too.”
Some Senate Republicans are calling for steeper spending cuts so that raising the debt limit would not be part of this bill.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, a notable fiscal hawk, has also signaled strongly that he would not support the bill in its current form, given that it raises the deficit.
“It’s so far off the mark. It’s so bad. I’ve been trying to interject reality. I’ve been trying to interject facts and figures,” Ron Johnson told reporters on Wednesday afternoon at the Capitol, as the House was still advancing the bill through the Rules Committee.
“Currently the fiscal situation is not even in the conversation in the House debate. We’re missing the forest talking about twigs and leaves. Medicaid, that’s, that’s a tree. That’s a big enough issue. But all this, all this, all these little tweaks they’re trying to make to get the deal completely ignores the elf in the room.. which says, on average, I mean, current [Congressional Budget Office] estimate, on average, we’ll have a $2.2 trillion deficit, per year,” Sen. Johnson added.
A few GOP Senators seemed more supportive of the bill, but noted there was significant work needed to be done in order to pass through the upper chamber.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said “a lot of it looks pretty good,” adding that it’s a “good start.”
“Still, I think there’s some opportunities for more efficiency, some more savings, and we have to look at the specifics of some of the renewable investment tax credits and production tax credits, and I think that even if we’re going to revise them, we’ve got to make sure that businesses who believe the government was setting this as a priority don’t have a lot of stranded costs,” he added.
If the bill is retooled by the Senate, it risks a complicated path for the speaker down the road when the bill goes back to the House. Republicans have set a Fourth of July deadline for both chambers to pass the bill and get it to Trump’s desk.
Passing this massive package through the Senate is also no cakewalk for Thune, who will only be able to afford to lose three of his members if it comes up for a vote on the Senate floor.
The House-passed bill includes new tax cuts, cuts to social safety net programs and changes to the food assistance program, SNAP — all of which have led Democrats to lambaste the legislation for creating benefits for some of the richest Americans and cuts for some of the poorest.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed the bill in a post on X Thursday morning.
“This is not one big, beautiful bill. It’s ugly,” Schumer said. “There’s nothing beautiful about stripping away people’s healthcare, forcing kids to go hungry, denying communities the resources they need, and increasing poverty.”
Democratic Sen. Patty Murray called the bill a “scam” in a post on X, urging all Republicans to vote no.
“House Republicans don’t want you to know they just passed a bill that makes health care MORE expensive and kicks MILLIONS off Medicaid, all to pass tax cuts for billionaires & giant corporations,” Murray wrote. “We need to make sure America knows. And we need to kill this bill in the Senate.”
Leavitt criticized Democrats as being “out of touch” with Americans.
“Every single Democrat in the House of Representatives who voted against all of these common sense and massively popular policies,” Leavitt said during Thursday’s White House press briefing. “The Democrat Party has never been more radical and out of touch with the needs of the American people.”
The Senate will also have to contend with the rules governing what can be included in such a package. Making sure that the bill passes muster with the Senate parliamentarian could lead to additional changes to the bill that Mike Johnson will eventually have to sell to his conference in the House.
As Trump now prepares to negotiate with Senators, Leavitt told ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce that she was not aware if those conversations had started already.
What did GOP holdouts get?
Speaker Johnson had to work with his right flank to get the megabill passed in the House, which he managed to do by one vote. So what changed to get those more than a dozen holdouts on board?
Not much, several hard-liners told ABC News.
After laboring for days to push for steeper spending cuts and repeatedly railing against the spending that added to the bloated national deficit, many of the holdouts caved.
“The Freedom Caucus was instrumental, and we held it out as long as we could to get the cuts, as long as we could. We couldn’t do it any longer. We live to fight another day,” Republican Rep. Ralph Norman, a key holdout, told reporters.
Norman says there was no specific deal struck between Trump, the speaker and the hard-line holdouts — even after a high-stakes, last-ditch meeting at the White House Wednesday.
Chair of the House Freedom Caucus, Andy Harris, wouldn’t give the bill his vote. He voted “present.”
Republican Rep. Keith Self, another hard-liner, told ABC News that he waited until the last minute to vote yes on the bill. He didn’t fully support the bill, but didn’t want to be the one to tank it.
“We got something … I would have preferred to go further too, to be honest with you, but we did what we could, and we fought the good fight,” Self said.
That number of “more than a dozen” holdouts also included Republicans from states like New York and California, pushing for a higher cap on the state and local tax deduction. Speaker Johnson raised that cap from its proposed $30,000 to $40,000, and increasing 1% a year thereafter. That was enough to get their support.
But, for the spending hawks, it’s unclear how they can characterize this as a win.
Leavitt said Thursday that she believes that Trump would want to see the two Republican representatives who voted no on the bill — Reps. Thomas Massie and Warren Davidson — should be primaried.
“I don’t think he likes to see grandstanders in Congress. What’s the alternative? I would ask those members of Congress. Did they want to see a tax hike? Did they want to see our country go bankrupt? That’s the alternative by them trying to vote no,” Leavitt said.
ABC News’ Sarah Beth Hensley contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Leading voices in President Donald Trump’s MAGA base who had been critical for days of the president and administration’s handling of the Epstein files are now rallying to Trump’s defense following a story in the Wall Street Journal, and are celebrating the administration’s move to release grand jury testimony, potentially cooling the backlash among his supporters.
The administration angered many of Trump’s supporters when it announced last week that it would not release any additional files on Jeffrey Epstein, the wealthy financier and convicted sex offender who died by suicide in jail in 2019, after earlier promising to do so.
Prior to joining the administration, Trump boosters like Kash Patel and Dan Bongino had stoked conspiracy theories about an Epstein “client list” that allegedly included the names of wealthy Democratic elites. But elevated to leadership positions in the FBI, both Patel and Bongino signed off on a memo stating that no such list existed — angering some of Trump’s most vocal supporters.
That changed on Thursday, when the Wall Street Journal published a letter it alleged Trump had sent Epstein in 2003 for his 50th birthday. ABC News has not been able to confirm the existence of the letter.
Trump, who had been friendly with Epstein for around 15 years before they had a falling out in 2004, denied to the Journal that he had written the letter, and on Friday filed a defamation lawsuit against the paper claiming damages of not less than $10 billion.
Leading Trump supporters rallied to the president’s side.
Following the Journal article, MAGA voices who had been some of Trump’s most vocal critics over the last week, including Megyn Kelly, Charlie Kirk, Jack Posobiec, Laura Loomer, Benny Johnson and even Elon Musk rushed to defend the president.
Posobiec, a MAGA podcaster who had been one of the loudest voices pushing the Epstein issue, told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, “We’re so back. Everyone is firing on all cylinders. The MAGA movement is completely united behind this fight.”
“We have to be on offensive all the time,” Bannon told his online audience, saying of Trump, “They tried to actually destroy him.”
Trump also announced Thursday that he was asking Attorney General Pam Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval” in regard to the Epstein case — prompting accolades from supporters who had been pushing for the release of more Epstein material.
Johnson, another MAGA podcaster, tweeted “victory” in response to the news.
Kirk, on his show, urged his viewers to “thank President Trump” for pushing his administration to release the testimony.
“So for any of you in the audience that were a little uneasy, that were a little anxious, I think it’s morally incumbent on you to say thank you President Trump, thank you for stepping up and for doing this,” Kirk said. “Thank you President Trump, for fulfilling what you said you were going to do, because he does deserve credit.”
The Journal story appears to have redirected MAGA supporters’ criticism and unified them against a familiar target: the media. But whether the shift in support will hold is unclear. While figures like Kirk and Bannon have framed the grand jury promise as a major win, the release of the testimony itself could take time, as officials must first assess its impact on victims then win the approval of a federal judge.
And because the grand jury transcripts represent only a small fraction of the files on Epstein, it’s unclear if the contents will satisfy members of Trump’s base who have been demanding the release of all Epstein materials. The last time the administration released Epstein-related files in February, the move sparked further questions and contributed to the backlash the president and his administration are still dealing with today.
For now, though, Kirk said on his show that “it was very fun to see” the MAGA base rallying around Trump following the publication of the Journal’s story.
Seemingly to underscore the point, Kirk opened his show with a snippet of Joe Cocker’s performance of the song “With a Little Help From My Friends” — in an apparent wink and a nod to the story helping to unite the MAGA movement behind the president once again.
(WASHINGTON) — Roughly 8 million student loan borrowers will see their interest charges restart next month, the Department of Education announced Wednesday.
Borrowers on the Biden-era Saving on a Valuable Education Plan — about 7.7 million people — will have interest charges return on Aug. 1 after a yearlong pause on payments. The return to interest charges was first reported by Bloomberg.
“For years, the Biden Administration used so-called ‘loan forgiveness’ promises to win votes, but federal courts repeatedly ruled that those actions were unlawful,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon wrote in a statement released by the department Wednesday. “Since day one of the Trump Administration, we’ve focused on strengthening the student loan portfolio and simplifying repayment to better serve borrowers.”
The education department said it’s complying with a federal court injunction that blocked implementation of the SAVE Plan earlier this year. But education advocates told ABC News that this move is expected to severely impact those millions of borrowers on SAVE who could potentially enter into more debt as interest accrues in the coming weeks.
Student Borrower Protection Center Executive Director Mike Pierce called the move by the Trump administration a “betrayal” and blasted Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.
“Instead of fixing the broken student loan system, Secretary McMahon is choosing to drown millions of people in unnecessary interest charges and blaming unrelated court cases for her own mismanagement,” Pierce wrote in a statement to ABC News.
SBPC, which focuses on eliminating the burden of debt for Americans, estimates borrowers will pay $3,500 in interest a year on average, which amounts to $27 billion in total, according to an analysis obtained by ABC News.
“Every day we hear from borrowers waiting on hold with their servicer for hours, begging the government to let them out of this forbearance and help them get back on track — instead McMahon is choosing to jack up the cost of their student debt without giving them a way out. These are teachers, nurses and retail workers who trusted the government’s word, only to get sucker-punched by bills that will now cost them hundreds more every month. McMahon is turning a lifeline into a trap, and fueling one of the biggest wealth grabs from working families in modern history,” Pierce said.
The Trump administration said it will support borrowers in selecting a “new, legal repayment plan” that best fits their needs and will begin direct outreach to borrowers enrolled in the SAVE Plan, with “instructions on how to move to a legal repayment plan,” the release said.
For now, SAVE borrowers are still on a forbearance period, which postpones their payments. The SAVE Plan, dubbed the most affordable payment plan ever by the Biden administration, started after the Supreme Court struck down then-President Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness plan in 2023.
SAVE is an Income Driven Repayment (IDR) program aimed at easing the return to repayment for millions of Americans that calculates payment size based on income and family size.
The interest restart comes as President Donald Trump recently signed into law his signature domestic policy agenda, which included a provision to terminate all current student loan repayment plans — such as SAVE and other IDRs — for loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2026. They will be replaced with two separate repayment plans: a standard repayment plan and a new income-based repayment plan called the Repayment Assistance Plan, according to the text of the megabill. The repayment plans are affected by legal challenges as well, according to the Department of Education release.
The department is urging SAVE borrowers to consider enrolling in the income-based repayment plan authorized under the Higher Education Act until it can launch the Repayment Assistance Plan.
In May, some 5 million Americans with defaulted student loan payments — which means they hadn’t paid their debts for around nine months or 270 days — had their loans sent for collections for the first time since student loan payments were paused due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier this year, McMahon said she has worked to simplify the “overly complex” repayment process and said taxpayers will no longer be responsible for the “irresponsible student loan policies” of the previous administration.
“The Biden Administration misled borrowers: the executive branch does not have the constitutional authority to wipe debt away, nor do the loan balances simply disappear,” McMahon wrote in a department release this spring.
