Trump to sign controversial spending bill during White House 4th of July celebrations
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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is slated to use the White House’s Fourth of July celebrations as the backdrop for his final victory lap over his massive spending bill.
The president will sign the legislation, which will bring massive cuts to government benefits such as Medicaid and increase funding for immigration enforcement, during the White House’s military family picnic on Friday evening.
It is unclear what guests will attend the signing event or if the picnic’s fireworks will take place during that time.
Trump pushed Congress to pass the bill by July 4th as some Republicans held out over several issues, including the bill’s effect on the debt ceiling.
“There could be no better birthday present for America than the phenomenal victory we achieved just hours ago when Congress passed the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ to Make America Great Again,” Trump said in Iowa on Thursday, after the House passed the bill.
The White House celebrations for the Fourth of July will include several flyovers, including one featuring B-2 bombers. The president said Thursday that the flyover will occur at the same time he signs the bill; however, the White House has not confirmed the timing of that event.
Democrats criticized the president and the bill’s supporters over its cuts to services that help the poorest Americans. The bill institutes work requirements for Medicaid that some experts say will make millions of Americans uninsured, and makes cuts to the program that will result in closures of health centers in rural areas, according to health care employers.
On Thursday, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries broke the chamber’s record with an eight-hour, 44-minute speech decrying the bill.
“We wanted to make sure that the American people had an opportunity to fully and more completely understands, in the light of day, just how damaging this one big, ugly bill will be to the American people,” he said.
Photo by Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a key progressive member of the House whose district covers swaths of the Bronx and Queens, endorsed New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Thursday for the city’s upcoming Democratic mayoral primary — one day after the candidate clashed with front-runner former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other candidates on the debate stage.
“Assemblymember Mamdani has demonstrated a real ability on the ground to put together a coalition of working-class New Yorkers that is strongest to lead the pack. In the final stretch of the race, we need to get very real about that,” Ocasio-Cortez told the New York Times in an interview published on Thursday.
“In 2018, A.O.C. shocked the world and changed our politics for the better with her historic victory. On June 24, we will do the same,” Mamdani told the Times in a statement.
Mamdani, a state assemblymember and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has been steadily inching upward in the polls and fundraising. He is running on a progressive platform that includes a rent freeze for rent-stabilized apartments, eliminating fares for New York City buses and opening city-owned grocery stores. Mamdani envisions the latter two being funded by higher taxes on businesses and wealthy individuals; some have cautioned that he would need support from state government for those taxes.
Her announcement came the day after a chaotic two-hour debate punctuated by candidates shouting over an increasingly exasperated slate of moderators.
Nine Democrats who wish to be New York City’s next mayor sparred over how they’d interact with President Donald Trump, public safety, affordability and other topics.
Out of those who were onstage, Cuomo leads the pack in polling while Mamdani is slowly closing the gap in second place. The rest of the candidates have struggled to break through.
Each candidate was asked how they would work with — or charge against — Trump if elected mayor. Cuomo vowed that he is an adversary that Trump could not best.
“He can be beaten. But he has to know that he’s up against an adversary who can actually beat him. I am the last person on this stage that Mr. Trump wants to see as mayor, and that is why I should be the first choice for the people of the city to have as mayor,” Cuomo said.
Mamdani, answering the question, said, “I am Donald Trump’s worst nightmare, as a progressive Muslim immigrant who actually fights for the things that I believe in, and the difference between myself and Andrew Cuomo is that my campaign is not funded by the very billionaires who put Donald Trump in D.C. … I have to pick up the phone for the more than 20,000 New Yorkers who contributed an average donation of about $80 to break fundraising records and put our campaign in second place.”
Cuomo did not directly respond to Mamdani’s attack on the debate stage.
Some billionaires who have previously supported Trump, such as prominent hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Home Depot founder Ken Langone, have donated to an independent group, the super PAC Fix the City, that supports Cuomo. Cuomo’s campaign is not allowed to coordinate with the group. In response to reporting on Cuomo’s wealthy supporters, Fix the City spokesperson Liz Benjamin told the New York Times that “donors have supported Fix the City because they know that Andrew Cuomo has the right experience and the right plans for New York City.”
Former state assemblymember Michael Blake, while answering a question on public safety, brought up the sexual harassment allegations against Cuomo: “The people who don’t feel safe are young women, mothers and grandmothers around Andrew Cuomo, that’s the greatest threat to public safety in New York City.”
Cuomo, later asked about the allegations — and if he would do anything differently given investigations that alleged his leadership fostered a toxic work environment — told the moderators, “Let’s just make sure we have the facts. A report was done four years ago making certain allegations. I said at the time that it was political and it was false.”
He added that five district attorneys found “nothing” and he was dropped from one case.
“I said at the time that if I offended anyone, it was unintentional, but I apologize, and I say that today.”
The Republican-led House is set to vote Thursday on a bill to make the Gulf of Mexico’s name change to Gulf of America permanent.
The legislation, which was introduced by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, codifies an executive order from President Donald Trump to rename the body of water.
Its fate in the Senate is more of a challenge, given that it will need bipartisan cooperation to overcome a filibuster.
“Any reference in a law, map, regulation, document, paper or other record of the United States to the Gulf of Mexico shall be deemed to be a reference to the ‘Gulf of America,’” the bill text states.
The measure also instructs each federal agency to update each document and map in accordance with the name change that Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum will oversee.
“Codifying the rightful renaming of the Gulf of America isn’t just a priority for me and President Trump, it’s a priority for the American people. American taxpayers fund its protection, our military defends its waters, and American businesses fuel its economy,” Rep. Greene argued in a post on X.
One of Trump’s first executive orders when he started his second term was to rename the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker Mike Johnson has endorsed the bill, which is expected to clear the lower chamber in a party-line vote.
“We’ve been working around the clock to codify so much of what President Trump has been doing … to make sure that we put these into statutory law so that it can’t be reversed and erased by an upcoming administration,” Johnson said at a news conference on Tuesday.
House Democrats, including Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have criticized the measure.
“Why is the top thing that House Republicans — going to do this week on their legislative agenda renaming the Gulf of Mexico?” Jeffries said at a news conference Monday. “Because Donald Trump and House Republicans are on the run. They are on the run.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a unanimous decision in favor of a Georgia family whose home was wrongly raided by the FBI and was unable to sue for damages because of law enforcement immunity.
The court said their case can proceed under an exception in the law. Justice Neil Gorsuch delivered the opinion.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
