US approves funding for flood relief in Pakistan: First on ABC
A woman wades through flood waters at a flood-hit area on the outskirts of Multan, Pakistan on Sept. 2, 2025. (Photo by Str/Xinhua via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The State Department has approved funding to address the fallout from deadly flooding in Pakistan, marking the first assistance of its kind to be authorized under the second Trump administration.
“The United States stands with the people of Pakistan, whose lives have been uprooted by widespread, catastrophic flooding. On September 5, the U.S. Department of State approved a monetary response to deliver food, shelter, and other forms of lifesaving disaster relief to impacted communities,” a press release first seen by ABC News said.
“We are poised to coordinate with the Government of Pakistan and trusted relief organizations on the ground to deliver aid to the most affected areas,” a State Department spokesperson said.
The State Department has not revealed how much money it has devoted to flood recovery efforts.
The U.S. military’s Central Command also delivered an initial shipment of “urgent, life-saving assistance to Pakistan” in the immediate aftermath of the floods, according to a previously issued release.
The Trump administration has previously come under fire for making dramatic cuts to foreign assistance, including shuttering USAID—the agency that would normally be charged with coordinating the U.S. response to a natural disaster in a foreign country.
Jeremy Lewin, a senior official performing the duties of Under Secretary for Foreign Assistance, Humanitarian Affairs, and Religious Freedom at the department, touted the assistance for Pakistan as a success story for the Trump administration’s approach.
“Our rapid support for the United States’ close ally Pakistan offers yet another example of the efficiency and effectiveness of the State Department’s new integrated America First foreign assistance capabilities,” Lewin told ABC News.
“Within 72 hours, the Department was able to deploy U.S. government disaster response personnel, program new assistance to assist more than 300,000 affected people, and coordinate military deliveries of critical aid supplies,” he added.
Pakistan has experienced a series of deadly floods through the summer monsoon season, but a fresh deluge of heavy rain in early September intensified the humanitarian crisis.
According to Pakistan officials, more than 1.3 million have been displaced by the devastating floods and hundreds have been killed.
“As Americans, we understand this devastation and will be contributing lifesaving disaster relief that will deliver food and shelter to impacted communities across Pakistan,” said Bethany Poulos Morrison, the State Department’s senior official for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.
(WASHINGTON) — Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — a staunch deficit hawk has been critical of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and immigration bill — signaled Monday that he would back the bill when it comes to a vote.
On Saturday Johnson flipped his vote to support a motion to move the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to the Senate floor only after huddling with Republican leaders about further reductions to the federal debt.
CNN’s Jake Tapper prompted Johnson to say he was a yes vote on the bill, to which the senator corrected him, saying he was “a yes on the motion to proceed” and “hopefully” add a provision that would prevent new enrollees in Medicaid expansion states from receiving Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) if they are are not disabled and don’t have dependent children.
Johnson then pivoted to signal his support for the final bill, which will come to a floor vote when an ongoing vote-a-rama wraps up.
“This is about as good as we can get. I don’t like it. I would like to get a lot more. But at some point in time you have to recognize reality. And if we don’t pass this bill, we have a massive $4 trillion tax increase,” Johnson said.
The FMAP amendment, led by fellow conservative holdout Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, had not yet been considered Monday evening.
The Senate plowed ahead toward a final vote on the bill as Republicans rush to get it across the finish line by July 4, with lawmakers voting on amendments through the night into Tuesday morning.
The self-imposed deadline by Trump meant a rare weekend session for lawmakers, one filled with partisan drama and some GOP infighting.
On Monday morning, senators began the “vote-a-rama” — a series of votes on proposed amendments to the megabill.
There is no limit to the number of amendments lawmakers can seek. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the chamber’s top Democrat, promised his party would bring amendment after amendment during the marathon session. Democrats forced a reading of the 940-page bill over the weekend, which took nearly 16 hours. “Every senator will soon have an opportunity to reject this nonsense and vote for common-sense budgeting. Americans will be watching,” Schumer said on Monday as he slammed Trump’s bill as a break for billionaires that will hurt working-class families.
Democrats used the early hours of the vote-a-rama to force votes highlighting cuts the megabill makes to Medicaid, SNAP and rural hospitals and to hammer Republicans on the tax cuts they say the measure gives to the wealthiest Americans.
The Senate voted down, 47-53, an amendment led by Schumer that he said would have undone “the travesty that is at the core of the Republican bill.”
“Their bill the so-called big beautiful bill, which is really a big, ugly betrayal, cuts taxes for billionaires by taking away health care for millions of people. So what my amendment simply says, if people’s health care costs go up, the billionaire tax cuts vanish,” Schumer said.
Democratic Sen. Ed Markey’s effort to strip provisions that would negatively impact rural hospitals due to cuts to Medicaid also failed, but did receive the support of two Republicans: Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine.
The two moderate Republicans, who both have a history of voting across party lines, have raised concerns about how cuts to Medicaid and SNAP would hit their constituents. In total, Murkowski supported five Democratic-led measures in the ongoing vote-a-rama and Collins supported four.
Collins proposed her own amendment that aimed to increase the amount of money in the rural hospital relief fund. It failed by a vote of 22-78, with Collins subsequently criticizing what she called the “hypocritical approach” of the Democrats that voted against it.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture committee, argued that the SNAP provisions in the bill creates “chaos for state budgets and hardship for families” and violate budget rules. Her motion related to SNAP was waived by Republicans.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune defended the bill as delivering Trump’s campaign promises to eliminate tax on tips and overtime pay while boosting spending for defense and border security.
“It’s been a long debate,” Thune said in his own floor remarks ahead of the votes on amendments. “I know people are weary. But at the end of the day, we want to get this done so that this country is safer and stronger and more prosperous, not only for today but for future generations of Americans.”
So far, Republicans have defeated all Democratic efforts to modify or reconsider the bill — but the session ran into Tuesday morning.
As he walked off the floor in the early hours of Tuesday, Thune was asked if he could pull the bill back or if he may be forced to hold a final passage vote on the bill, even if he knows it will fail.
“Those are options I don’t want to have to worry about,” Thune replied.
Senate Finance Committee chairman Mike Crapo, a Republican, argued against several of the Democratic amendments.
“The reality is, the reforms we are putting into place are to try to reign in control of wasteful and fraudulent and abusive spending that actually diverts resources away from the people who these programs really deserve to receive,” Crapo said of Schumer’s amendment on Medicaid.
The vote-a-rama is the last hurdle before a vote on final passage of the bill in the Senate.
There is little room for error in the Republican-controlled chamber. A procedural vote on Saturday night to open debate on the bill narrowly passed in a 51-49 vote after two Republican defections.
GOP Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted against advancing the bill. Tillis railed against the changes to Medicaid in the bill, saying it would hurt his constituents and would represent a betrayal of Trump’s promise not to touch the entitlement program upon which millions of people rely for health care coverage. Tillis’ opposition drew Trump’s ire, with the president threatening to support a primary challenger to the two-term senator. Tillis then suddenly announced he would not seek reelection, saying later he texted Trump on Saturday night suggesting he “probably needed to start looking for a replacement.”
“I respect President Trump. I support the majority of his agenda, but I don’t bow to anybody. When the people of North Carolina are at risk. And this bill puts them at risk,” Tillis said.
As of early Tuesday morning, the GOP leadership were still pushing for sufficient support.
One of the main targets was Murkowski, whose indecision came after reports that the Senate parliamentarian may have ruled some carve out provisions meant for her home state of Alaska’s Medicaid recipients out of order.
Also under pressure were Scott and Sen. Mike Lee, who were yet to receive a vote on their amendment that strips back additional funding for Medicaid. Collins had also not yet said which way she would vote.
Paul, meanwhile, offered an amendment that would significantly reduce the amount of money attributed to raise to the federal debt limit. The current bill raises the debt limit by $5 trillion dollars. Paul’s amendment would raise it by only $500 billion.
What’s next for OBBB in the House?
If the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passes in the Senate, it will have to go back to the House for members to consider the changes made to the bill.
House Republican leaders say Wednesday is the earliest chance for a megabill vote.
“Members are advised that votes are now expected in the House as early as 9 a.m. Wednesday, July 2. Please stay tuned to future updates for additional information regarding this week’s schedule,” a notice from Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s office said.
Speaker Mike Johnson expressed optimism that the Senate’s version of the One Big Beautiful Bill will pass in the GOP-led House despite opposition from moderates and conservatives.
“We’re going to pass this bill one way or the other,” Johnson said leaving the Capitol Monday evening. “And I have prevailed upon my Senate colleagues to please, please, please, put it as close to the House product as possible. I have been very consistent from the very beginning.
Johnson did not rule out passing the Senate version as is and said, “there’s still a lot of amendments, and a lot of game to play.”
Asked if GOP House leaders would make changes to what the Senate sends over, Johnson said, “We’ll see what the final product is. I am very hopeful as always. We will get this job done. We’ll see what happens.”
The speaker did not respond to a question about passing the bill by the Fourth of July deadline.
Republican leaders have told members they will receive 48 hours notice before a vote is called and will have 72 hours to review the bill text.
The House passed the Trump megabill by just one vote back in May. The Senate version of the bill will face an uphill battle in the House, given the GOP’s razor-thin majority.
California moderate Republican Rep. David Valadao said he will vote no given the Medicaid changes in the Senate bill. Several conservatives, including Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Josh Breechen of Oklahoma and Eric Burlison of Missouri have also expressed opposition to the Senate’s version of the bill.
Johnson and other Republican leaders worked through the weekend to lock down the votes even as several lawmakers have expressed opposition to the Senate’s version, which is still not finalized. Johnson can only afford to lose three defections if all members are voting and present.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Trump was working “hand in hand” with Johnson and Thune, and that the two leaders had met with him at the White House earlier Monday.
“Republicans need to stay tough and unified during the home stretch, and we are counting on them to get the job done,” Leavitt said during the White House briefing.
But sources familiar with the matter told ABC News Thune and Johnson have not met with President Trump at the White House, and as of now the two leaders have no current plans to meet with the president on Monday as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” progresses in the Senate.
A spokesman for Thune said he is preoccupied as the Senate moves through amendments to the megabill.
“Teams are obviously in close contact/coordination, as always, but we’re continuing to move through vote-a-rama in the Senate as we work to move this bill one step closer to the president’s desk,” the spokesman said in a post on X.
Speaker Johnson is in Washington working through House members’ concerns as the Senate works through the bill, including several provisions that could spell problems later in the week if the bill is sent back to the House.
ABC News’ John Parkinson contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans are expected to spend the week rushing to try to deliver President Donald Trump a package that formalizes some of the cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency by striking $9.4 billion from the previously approved federal budget.
Congress has until the end of the week to send the bill to Trump’s desk, but the path forward for the rescissions package remains a bit murky ahead of a series of critical votes on it this week.
The package, which narrowly passed the House in May, would cull back funding from Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, and would also formalize many of the cuts to U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a foreign aid arm of the government that was heavily targeted by DOGE earlier this year.
Unlike many bills in the Senate, Republicans can pass the package with a simple majority of votes. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on Monday that he “hopes” to hold two procedural votes on Tuesday that would advance the White House’s rescissions package and then move forward with an amendment process to shore up GOP support for the bill ahead of its final vote.
But at present, there are a few vocal opponents of the package who have made clear that they want to see major changes implemented. And some Senate Republicans are raising alarm bells about cuts that make up the bedrock of the package.
A number of Republicans that represent states with rural communities — such as Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mike Rounds of South Dakota — have expressed concerns about cuts to public broadcasting that could affect the ability of certain communities to access emergency alerts.
Sen. Susan Collins, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, has been the most vocally skeptical Republicans of the whole package, in part because of the cuts to public broadcasting.
“There is a lot of what the Corporation for Public Broadcasting does that I support, such as the 70 percent of the money that goes to the emergency fund to local stations. They maintain the emergency alert systems. They do public programming,” Collins said to reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday.
Collins has also joined a number of Republicans in expressing concern about cuts in the bill to PEPFAR, a historically bipartisan and popular HIV and AIDS relief program championed by former President George W. Bush. The House-approved version of the bill would formalize $400 million in cuts to the program as part of its larger swath of cuts to USAID.
Thune said he hopes an upcoming amendment process lessens concerns among Republicans.
“We’re hearing people out, and we are obviously weighing what an amendment process on the floor … might look like,” Thune told reporters at the Capitol on Monday.
Thune said that the amount of support he’d have to pass the package would be dependent on their amendment process.
“There has been a lot of back and forth, as you might expect, over the weekend, and we’ll probably have more report on that tomorrow,” he said.
On Thursday, in a post on social media, Trump threatened to withhold his support for any Republican who votes against this package.
“It is very important that all Republicans adhere to my Recissions [sic] Bill and, in particular, DEFUND THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING (PBS and NPR), which is worse than CNN & MSDNC put together. Any Republican that votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or Endorsement. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Collins, a rare moderate Republican in the Senate, is up for reelection in 2026 and has not yet announced whether she intends to run.
Senate Republicans may attempt to modify the bill on the Senate floor to make it more palatable to holdouts, but seriously modifying or eliminating cuts implemented in any part of the package would be a blow to the cuts Republicans want to tout. Also, $9.4 billion is already a relatively small value in comparison to the trillions in spending the government does annually.
The procedural process on the Senate floor is also complicated with limited time to execute. The Senate is expected to kick things off on Tuesday with a vote to move the bill out of the Senate Appropriations Committee to the Senate floor, since the legislation was not formally advanced by the committee.
If the Senate manages to clear a number of procedural votes, they’ll also have to hold a vote-a-rama, during which lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have the opportunity to vote on an unlimited number of amendments to the package. These processes can sometimes last through the night.
If the Senate amends the package in any way, it will have to go back to the House and pass again. Under the rules governing rescissions packages like this, Congress must complete work within 40 days of a request for rescission being issued by the White House. That means Congress has until Friday to complete this whole process.
Sen. Rand Paul, one of the conference’s deficit hawks who notably voted against Trump’s megabill late last month due to spending concerns, said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he said he believes the final vote on the package will be “close.”
“I suspect it’s going to be very close. I don’t know if it will be modified in advance, but I can’t really honestly look Americans in the face and say that I’m going to be doing something about the deficit if I can’t cut $9 billion,” Paul told CBS’s Margaret Brennan.
ABC News’ Isabella Murray contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in Florida denied one of three Justice Department requests to unseal grand jury records tied to federal investigations into Epstein, according to a public order released Wednesday.
The request is one of three made by the Justice Department to judges in New York and Florida seeking to unseal records from federal investigations into Epstein.
According to the order by District Judge Robin Rosenberg, the records the department sought to unseal related to grand juries convened in West Palm Beach in 2005 and 2007 that had investigated Epstein.
Judge Rosenberg faulted the Justice Department for failing to outline sufficient arguments to justify the unsealing of the records, which are normally protected under strict secrecy rules.
Rosenberg’s opinion states her “hands are tied” given existing precedent in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals which only permits the disclosure of such grand jury materials under narrow exceptions.
She further denied a request to transfer the issue into the jurisdiction of the Southern District of New York, where two judges are separately mulling over similar motions from the department seeking to unseal grand jury records tied to Epstein and his longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the order.
Meanwhile, a federal judge in New York denied Ghislaine Maxwell’s request to review grand jury testimony related to Epstein.
“It is black-letter law that defendants generally are not entitled to access to grand jury materials,” U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer wrote.
Maxwell’s lawyers requested access to the sensitive grand jury records to determine if Maxwell would take a position on the records’ release.
Judge Engelmayer wrote that there is no “compelling necessity” for Maxwell to review the records. An objection from Maxwell into unsealing the records could further complicate the process of potentially releasing the records.
“She has not shown, or attempted to show, that the grand jury materials in her case are apt to reveal any deficiency in the proceedings leading to her indictment,” he wrote.
Judge Engelmayer noted that he plans to “expeditiously” review the transcripts himself and would consider providing an excerpt or synopsis to Maxwell’s lawyers.
