Which Republican senators voted against Trump’s agenda bill and why
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(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s tax cut and spending bill came down to the wire as Senate Republican leaders scrambled to get all GOP members on board before the final vote Tuesday.
In the end, three long-serving GOP members, Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted against, forcing Vice President JD Vance to break a 50-50 tie.
Each of the three has explained their reasons for bucking the president.
Susan Collins
One of the mostly closely watched as the vote neared was Collins, who had been on the fence due to the bill’s proposed Medicaid cuts.
“Approximately 400,000 Mainers – nearly a third of the state’s population – depend on this program,” she said in a statement after voting no. “A dramatic reduction in future Medicaid funding, an estimated $5.9 billion in Maine over the next 10 years, could threaten not only Mainers’ access to health care, but also the very existence of several of our state’s rural hospitals.”
Collins added that the bill had “additional problems.”
“The tax credits that energy entrepreneurs have relied on should have been gradually phased out so as not to waste the work that has already been put into these innovative new projects and prevent them from being completed,” she said.
Thom Tillis
Tillis has been extremely vocal in his opposition sine the weekend, drawing attention for a passionate floor speech citing Medicaid provisions he claimed would hurt his North Carolina constituents.
During a closed-door GOP conference meeting two weeks ago, Tillis is reported to have made the point that Medicaid coverage for more than 600,000 North Carolinians would be at risk under the Senate’s proposal and asked his colleagues to consider how the policy would affect their own states — even providing state-specific data on a handout.
“I just encouraged other members to go to their states and just measure how … take a look at the proposed cuts and tell me whether or not you can absorb it in the normal course of business, and in many cases, you’re gonna find that you can’t,” Tillis told reporters at the Capitol last week.
Trump lashed out against Tillis on his social media platform and to the press and threatened to field primary challengers. Tillis announced on Saturday that he would not seek reelection.
Rand Paul
Paul, a staunch advocate for keeping spending and the debt ceiling in check, posted on X that he wanted the bill to include a 90% reduction in the ceiling.
“No earmarks. No handouts. Just real fiscal reform. I wasn’t looking for favors. I wasn’t horse-trading. I was fighting for the American people and against our out-of-control debt,” he said.
“Bottom line: I offered my vote for fiscal sanity. Congress chose to sell out taxpayers instead. Only once the bill is released, we will know what the true price was,” Paul added.
(THE HAGUE, Netherlands) — President Donald Trump departed early Tuesday for the NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands, just days after he made the decision to launch strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and hours after he announced a ceasefire in the Israel-Iran conflict. It will be the first time Trump will face European U.S. allies since returning to the White House in January.
On his way to the summit, Trump questioned a core tenant of the alliance as he refused to commit to Article 5 — the agreement of collective defense among NATO nations.
“Are you committed to Article 5 of NATO,” Trump was pointedly asked.
“Depends on your definition. There’s numerous definitions of Article Five. You know that, right?” Trump claimed.
“But I’m committed to being their friends,” he added. “You know, I’ve become friends with many of those leaders, and I’m committed to helping them.”
He was later asked to clarify those comments given the eyebrows it’s sure to raise among other nations.
“Are you still committed to mutual defense?” he was asked.
“I’m committed to saving lives,” Trump said. “I’m committed to life and safety, and I’m going to give you an exact definition when I get there. I just don’t want to do it on the back of an airplane.” On the eve of Trump’s departure, Iran carried out retaliatory strikes at a U.S. base in Qatar. Trump said Monday that 13 of those missiles were intercepted and a 14th was off target.
“I am pleased to report that NO Americans were harmed, and hardly any damage was done,” Trump posted on social media, adding that Iran gave the U.S. “early notice.”
Then hours later, Trump posted on his social media platform that the two countries had agreed to a ceasefire that would end hostilities.
“This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn’t, and never will!” Trump posted early Monday evening.
But as left the White House, Trump told ABC News on Tuesday he is “not happy” with either Israel or Iran after the opening hours of a nascent ceasefire between the two combatants were marred by reported exchanges.
Trump said Iran and Israel both “violated” the ceasefire.
“Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and dropped a boat load of bombs the likes of which I’ve never seen before,” Trump said. “The biggest load that we’ve seen, I’m not happy with Israel.”
“OK, when I say now you have 12 hours, you don’t go out in the first hour and just drop everything you have on them,” the president added. “So, I’m not happy with him. I’m not happy with Iran either.”
Trump said he was “unhappy if Israel is going out this morning because of one rocket that didn’t land, that was shot perhaps by mistake, but didn’t land,” referring to Israeli allegations — denied by Tehran — that Iran fired missiles toward Israel on Tuesday after the ceasefire came into effect.
The conflict will undoubtedly loom large over this summit just as it did with the G7 summit in Canada last week — which Trump left early to monitor the growing crisis between Israel and Iran back at the White House.
The trip will be brief. Trump is expected to leave the White House early Tuesday morning and return to the U.S. on Wednesday evening. Upon his arrival in the Netherlands on Tuesday night, Trump will head straight into the pomp and circumstance. He will attend a formal dinner at the Netherlands Royal Palace alongside the King and Queen of the Netherlands. He will also take a NATO family photo that evening.
On Wednesday, Trump will attend the NATO summit where he will participate in a NATO family photo, a photo spray at the top of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s remarks and then the first plenary session with NATO leaders. The president will then spend a few hours engaged in bilateral meetings, although it is not not yet known which leaders he plans to meet with on the sidelines of the summit. Trump will then hold a news conference where he will surely face questions about his order to strike Iranian nuclear sites and the impact of that mission. After the news conference, Trump is set to leave the Netherlands and return to the U.S.
Trump is going into the conference with a key priority: he wants the alliance to codify an increase in defense spending across all member nations, from 2% of their gross domestic product to 5%. This has been a signature issue for Trump well before the new Middle East conflict. The president has long complained that the U.S. has been subsidizing the defense of its allies — and has even gone so far as threatening that he would not come to the defense of nations not fully paying their way, a radical departure from NATO’s Article 5, which says an attack on one is an attack on all.
Trump’s criticisms go back as far as the 2017 NATO summit, when he accused his European counterparts of failing to pay what he said was their “fair share.”
Though Trump’s top advisers have signaled confidence that the 5% threshold will be agreed to by a vote at this year’s summit, some nations like Spain have other plans. Spain’s prime minister announced over the weekend that it forged an agreement that will allow it to remain in NATO without meeting the new defense spending threshold, instead contributing only 2.1% of the nation’s GDP.
Trump has a few other aims for the conference, including urging alliance members to revitalize their industrial capacities for critical minerals and weapons and bilateral meetings with world leaders to reaffirm a commitment to allies, a senior administration official said last week in a call previewing the trip.
In the time since Trump last attended a NATO summit, Russia invaded Ukraine. The war in Ukraine has raged on for more than three years and Trump has repeatedly claimed it would not have happened if he were in office. He has also blamed the war on Ukraine’s desire to join NATO. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been a featured guest at NATO summits since the war, including the one former President Joe Biden hosted in Washington last year, but it’s reported that Zelenskyy’s involvement will be limited this year — including not having a seat at the table.
This is also Trump’s first NATO summit of his second term, a reemergence in the alliance that he sharply criticized during his first term. It also comes after many NATO leaders have already returned to the White House for bilateral meetings to discuss key issues and to gain favor with Trump. Under the shadow of the growing conflict in the Middle East, world leaders will be watching closely for how Trump will enact his America First policy in his second term and how that policy will impact American alliances overseas.
ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Aïcha Elhammar, Justin Gomez and Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump has threatened the Washington Commanders football team, stating he will not facilitate a deal for the team’s new stadium to be built in Washington, D.C., if it does not revert to its former name.
“My statement on the Washington Reskins has totally blown up, but only in a very positive way. I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back to the original ‘Washington Redskins,’ and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, ‘Washington Commanders,’ I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington,” Trump wrote on his social media platform on Sunday.
In another post on Sunday, Trump called on the Commanders to “immediately” change their name.
“Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them. Times are different now than they were three or four years ago,” Trump wrote on his social media platform.
ABC News has reached out to the Commanders for comment on Trump’s demands.
Trump also said that the Cleveland Guardians baseball team should switch back to its old name, too, and called out Ohio Senate candidate Matt Dolan, who owns the team, claiming that he lost several elections because of the name change.
“The Owner of the Cleveland Baseball Team, Matt Dolan, who is very political, has lost three Elections in a row because of that ridiculous name change. What he doesn’t understand is that if he changed the name back to the Cleveland Indians, he might actually win an Election. Indians are being treated very unfairly. MAKE INDIANS GREAT AGAIN (MIGA)!,” Trump wrote on Sunday.
The Cleveland Guardians’ president of baseball operations, Chris Antonetti, said in a statement on Sunday that there have not been any plans to change the team’s name, according to The Associated Press.
“We understand there are different perspectives on the decision we made a few years ago, but obviously it’s a decision we made. We’ve got the opportunity to build a brand as the Guardians over the last four years and are excited about the future that’s in front of us,” Antonetti said.
The Guardians didn’t have any additional comment when asked by ABC News.
With the Commanders, Josh Harris, the managing partner for the team, said earlier this year that the team would not be changing its name, according to The Associated Press.
The Association on American Indian Affairs said in a statement to ABC News that Trump’s remarks on Sunday are a “distraction from the real harm this administration continues to inflict on Native Peoples” and that there is “no genuine respect for Native Nations here — only empty gestures and political theater.”
“The idea that Native Nations broadly support the use of these names and mascots is false. Hundreds, if not thousands of Native Nations, Native organizations, scholars and youth leaders have repeatedly and clearly expressed that Native ‘themed’ names and mascots are offensive and dehumanizing,” the association said in a statement on Monday.
The association went on to say that these mascots and names — like the former name for the Commanders — “reduce us to caricatures.”
The Washington Commanders dropped its former name in July 2020 after years of complaints over its racist connotations toward Native Americans. The team adopted the generic “Washington Football Team” two weeks later, though it was only supposed to be in place for the 2020-21 season. Then in 2022, the team revealed it’s new name would be the Washington Commanders.
A 2020 study from the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley found that at least half of more than 1,000 Native Americans surveyed were offended by Commanders’ previous team name.
In 2024, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill with unanimous consent that would allow the federal government to lease more than 170 acres of land at the site where the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium is currently located, which would allow for the possibility of a new stadium to be built. The team currently plays at the Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland.
The bill transfers the jurisdiction of the stadium site from the federal government to local D.C. authorities.
“We are extremely grateful that our elected officials have come together on a bipartisan basis to give Washington, D.C. the opportunity to decide on the future of the RFK stadium site. This bill will create an equal playing field so that all potential future locations for the home of the Washington Commanders can be fairly considered and give our franchise the opportunity to provide the best experience for all of our fans,” Harris said in a statement on Dec. 21, 2024.
ABC News’ Lauren Peller, Mark Osborne and Deena Zaru contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday unveiled plans to begin building a sophisticated new missile defense shield that could intercept threats from space, estimating the endeavor would cost some $175 billion and become operational in three years.
The project “Golden Dome,” which will be led by Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, echoes President Ronald Reagan’s failed “Star Wars” program, which was criticized for being overly ambitious and siphoning money away from other national priorities. The White House cited advancements in technology as a reason why some of Reagan’s vision was now possible.
“This design for the Golden Dome will integrate with our existing defense capabilities and should be fully operational before the end of my term,” Trump said in announcing the plan. “So we’ll have it done in about three years. Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space.”
Trump began calling for a U.S. missile defense shield similar to Israel’s Iron Dome a year ago on the campaign trail after watching Israel deflect some 300 missiles and drones amid Iran’s attacks that spring. Military officials said at the time that they hadn’t expressed a need for such a comprehensive shield to defend the U.S., while critics noted the U.S. wasn’t under threat from its neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and is buffered by two oceans.
Still, some experts say the idea of improving the nation’s ability to fend off aerial threats is long overdue.
Tom Karako, a missile defense expert, said the current U.S. system is focused mostly on the ability to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles from rogue states like North Korea. But the U.S. needs better protection when it comes to other threats like drones, cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons, he said.
“The truth is, we’re pretty vulnerable,” said Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project and a senior fellow with the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
One question, though, is how much capability the U.S. can develop in just three years, particularly considering Trump’s stated goal of developing a network of space-based interceptors.
“It’s not to say that it can’t be done sooner than perhaps some folks think, but three years is going to be pushing it for some of those things,” Karako said.
Standing beside Trump in the Oval Office was Guetlein, the Pentagon’s vice chief of space operations who will lead the project, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who said the project was possible now because technology has improved since the Reagan days.
“The technology wasn’t there. Now it is,” Hegseth said of Reagan’s “Star Wars” program. “And you’re following through to say we will protect the homeland from cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles, drones, whether they’re conventional or nuclear.”
On Capitol Hill, early indications were that Republicans would support the effort with Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, promising to include a $25 billion “down payment” in an upcoming spending bill.
Democrats, though, have questioned the steep price tag. Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the committee, noted last week the White House requested some $113 billion in its budget for next year without outlining a clear plan on what the program would achieve and when.
“That’s essentially a slush fund at this point,” said Reed, D-Rhode Island.
Trump’s talk of building “the greatest dome of them all” seemed to originate on the campaign trail. After watching Israel’s successful use of its Iron Dome, Trump’s calls for a U.S. version was met with cheers from crowds at his rallies so much that Republicans included the construction of a U.S. missile shield in its party platform ahead of the 2024 elections. In January, Trump signed an executive order calling on Hegseth to make it happen.
“The threat of attack by ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, and other advanced aerial attacks, remains the most catastrophic threat facing the United States,” Trump wrote in the Jan. 27 order.
Since then, “the Defense Department has gathered the brightest minds and best technical talent available to review a full range of options that considers current U.S. missile defense technology and cutting-edge innovation to rapidly develop and field a dependable umbrella of protection for our homeland,” Sean Parnell, chief Pentagon spokesman and Hegseth’s senior adviser, said earlier this week amid reports the Defense Department has been working on the proposal.
Still unclear is exactly how comprehensive the system would be. Also in question is whether such an ambitious program might siphon away money from other vital programs. The Air Force, for example, is in the process of replacing 400 of its intercontinental ballistic missiles built in the 1970s with new ones.
“Some U.S. technology in space such as space-based sensors and air and missile defense exist today, but all of the systems comprising the Golden Dome architecture will need to be seamlessly integrated,” Hegseth said in a statement. “Golden Dome will be fielded in phases, prioritizing defense where the threat is greatest.”
Trump’s plan appears to be on the lower end of congressional cost estimates, but dramatically sooner than thought possible. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the U.S. would need to spend anywhere from $161 billion to $542 billion over 20 years to develop and launch a network of space-based interceptors.
According to the CBO, these cost estimates are lower than they would have been years ago because of a decline in the cost of available launch services.
