For those watching Jeffries speech online or on TV, the rows of clapping and nodding Democrats behind the House minority speaker may give the impression that the chamber is filled with representatives attentively tuned in.
Not so.
Aside from those few rows of Democrats positioned into view for the TV cameras, the chamber, particularly the Republican side, has been mostly empty. So while Jeffries is calling out specific Republicans over their support of the bill, his main audience is people watching from home.
Police check cars arriving at the “Alligator Alcatraz,” a new migrant detention facility at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility, Wednesday, July 2, 2025, in Ochopee, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
The first group of immigrants has arrived at a new detention center deep in the Florida Everglades that officials have dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” a spokesperson for Republican state Attorney General James Uthmeier told The Associated Press.
“People are there,” Press Secretary Jae Williams said, though he didn’t immediately provide further details on the number of detainees or when they arrived.
“Next stop: back to where they came from,” Uthmeier said on the X social media platform Wednesday.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said housing immigrants in the hot, humid, mosquito-ridden Florida Everglades and naming it after the notorious federal prison known for its brutal conditions is meant to persuade people in the country illegally to leave voluntarily. Rains already flooded some of the tents during Trump’s visit this week.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is calling out 13 House Republicans who supported Trump’s big tax bill in May but later sent a letter urging the Senate to scale back some of its clean energy cuts. He urged the Republicans who signed the clean energy letter to vote against the final bill.
He also criticized Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who voted for the bill Tuesday but said it “needs more work across chambers and is not ready for the president’s desk.”
Jeffries said he was “flummoxed” that GOP lawmakers would urge members of the other chamber to fix a bill they voted for.
“That is not how the people’s business should be done in the United States Congress,’’ he said. “We have a responsibility to stand up for what is right in the chamber that we serve in.”
Melania Trump visited with sick patients at Children’s National hospital in Washington on Thursday, continuing a tradition of support by first ladies for the pediatric care center.
She also stopped by the hospital’s rooftop “healing” garden she dedicated during the first Trump administration. Decorating rocks, she drew a red heart on one and engaged a few kids with questions while they played with slime.
“Wow, that’s a big slime!” she told one child who was more focused on stretching the sticky goo.
Trump also gave each child a gift bag with a blanket and teddy bear wearing a shirt reading, “Be Best,” her campaign focused on children’s well-being. They placed small American flags and patriotically-colored pinwheels into the soil.
Then the first lady visited the hospital’s heart and kidney unit, meeting privately with a 3-year-old patient.
The Democrats lack the votes in Congress to stop Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” So Jeffries’ speech is really about framing it — today and for the 2026 midterm elections — as “an all-out assault on the American people.”
“This is personal to us,” Jeffries said as he notes the Republican measure’s impact on Americans including veterans, the working class, small-business owners, employees trying to unionize, federal workers, Medicaid beneficiaries and customers in Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges.
That list spans typical Republican and Democratic coalitions.
Republicans hold 220 seats to Democrats’ 212, with three vacancies after recent deaths of Democratic members. So Democrats would need a net gain of just three seats to make Jeffries the potential House speaker in 2027.
Jeffries has now at least twice highlighted his late father, Marland Jeffries, as he rails against the sweeping Republican budget and policy bill.
The elder Jeffries, who died in 2024 at age 85, became known somewhere along the way as “Puddin.” His son said he regrets never asking his father where the moniker originated.
Jeffries praised his father as an Air Force veteran who served in Germany, and noted that it was Democratic president Harry Truman who integrated the U.S. military so that men and women like his father could serve alongside white service members.
Jeffries has repeatedly blasted the GOP bill’s effects on veterans’ health care and benefits.
“I never thought that I’d be on the House floor saying that this is a crime scene,” Jeffries said. “It’s a crime scene, going after the health, and the safety, and the well-being of the American people.”
And as Democrats, he said, “We want no part of it.”
Jeffries seized a leader’s prerogative for unlimited debate early Thursday, and after speaking for more than five hours is still a few hours away from breaking the record for the longest House leader’s speech, set in 2021.
House Republicans, up all night, are ready to vote on Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax breaks and spending cuts bill as soon as he gives up the floor.
▶ Read more about House action on the bill
As he railed against Trump’s deportation crackdown — saying that Democrats support removing violent criminals, but the president is rounding up far too many peaceful immigrants — he cited the case of California landscaper Narciso Barranco.
Video of Barranco has been widely circulated, showing the father of three U.S. Marines being beaten and pepper-sprayed by Border Patrol agents in Santa Ana, a city south of Los Angeles.
“This is not the way that anyone in the United States should be treated, particularly not the father of three patriotic Marines,” Jeffries said.
The administration says Barranco, who came to the U.S. from Mexico in the 1990s and does not have legal status, had swung a lawn trimmer at one of the agents who came to take him away.
A bid to deter states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade seemed on its way to passing as part of the Republican tax cut and spending bill, but was doomed by a relentless campaign by Republican governors, lawmakers, think tanks and social groups.
Activist Mike Davis urged right-wing podcaster Steve Bannon’s viewers to call their senators to reject this “AI amnesty” for “trillion-dollar Big Tech monopolists.” He said he texted with Trump directly, advising the president to stay neutral despite significant pressure from White House AI czar David Sacks, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and others.
The schism revealed the enormous influence of a segment of the Republican Party that has come to distrust Big Tech. They believe states must remain free to protect citizens against potential harms from AI, social media or emerging technologies.
▶ Read more on how protections for Big Tech’s artificial intelligence ventures got voted out of the bill
In many ways, the package is a repudiation of the agendas of the last two Democratic presidents, a chiseling away at the Medicaid expansion from Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and a pullback of Joe Biden’s climate change strategies in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Democrats have warned that lives will be lost due to the bill’s cuts to Medicaid, which some 80 million Americans rely on. Cutting food stamps that help feed more than 40 million people would “rip food from the mouths of hungry children, hungry veterans and hungry seniors,” Jeffries said.
Republicans say the tax breaks will prevent a tax hike on households and grow the economy. They maintain they are trying to rightsize the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, the disabled and children, and root out what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse.
How do we find out how our representative voted last night? I can’t find any results.
Melinda W.
Congress provides the full Senate and House vote counts for Trump’s big bill on its website. While the recent Senate vote was divided along party lines, three Republican legislators — Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — joined the naysayers. House Republicans are now gearing up for their vote on the bill.
The House Minority Leader is shifting from veterans to small business owners, continuing to highlight groups of voters that Republicans often claim are theirs.
“Small business represents the heart and soul of the American economy,” Jeffries said, pointing to entrepreneurs who could see their insurance access compromised.
The 2010 Affordable Care Act created exchanges that fostered entrepreneurship by freeing Americans from dependence on employer-based insurance. The Trump-GOP bill adds bureaucratic barriers to health care through the exchanges.
Jeffries says the GOP is pushing a “lie … that the everyday Americans who are participating in, have access to programs like the Affordable Care Act aren’t worthy.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., left, speaks in the House chamber prior to the final vote for President Donald Trump’s signature bill of tax breaks and spending cuts, at the Capitol, Thursday, July 3, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, says he and other conservatives got some “last-minute things” as they withheld support for Trump’s big tax bill. But he’s not ready, yet, to spill any detail.
“We can talk about it after the final vote,” he said.
“We’ve got to get thru a few of these last minute things out of deference to the entire team. We got some significant things that we feel pretty good about. Nothing is perfect but — All along this way we get to ‘yes,’” Roy said.
Jeffries says the GOP tax and policy bill’s effects is “an all-out assault” on veterans.
He’s quoting from veterans who he said sent lawmakers their stories of pending benefit cuts. One man, he says, is recovering from injury and “needs help … from the American people” only as a bridge to get back to work.
“I have had your backs,” Jeffries says in the veteran’s voice. It’s time for the country “to cover my back.”
▶ Read more about Democrats making veterans the face of their opposition to Trump’s budget agenda
The pause on some weapons shipments to Ukraine has come at a tough time for Kyiv: Russia’s bigger army is making a concerted battlefront push and intensifying long-range drone and missile attacks against civilians in Ukrainian cities.
Washington has been Ukraine’s biggest military backer since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, but the Trump administration has been disengaging from the war and there’s no end to the fighting in sight despite recent direct peace talks.
A Ukrainian serviceman says goodbye to Ukrainian F-16 pilot Maksym Ustymenko, during a farewell ceremony in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Thursday, July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Ukraine has raced to build up its domestic defense industry, producing increasingly sophisticated drones, and amid fraught relations with Trump, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has enlisted more European help in weapons manufacturing.
But some high-tech U.S. weapons are irreplaceable. Patriot air defense missiles are needed to fend off Russia’s frequent ballistic missile attacks, but cost $4 million each.
▶ Read more on how Ukraine is responding to the weapons pause
Workers prepare for a Fourth of July picnic at the White House in Washington on July 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Michelle Price)
Workers are already preparing for the Fourth of July picnic by beginning to grill up to 2,000 burgers Thursday morning.
The meat will be served at a Friday evening picnic for military families that the White House will host Friday evening.
What happens if a speaker continues using the “magic minute” for weeks at a time, assuming food and drink were passed to him?
Grant
Jeffries, as the House minority leader, can hold the floor for as long as he can keep talking.
Then-Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy set the record for the longest “magic minute” in 2021, speaking for more than eight hours before the House voted on President Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda. McCarthy narrowly broke Nancy Pelosi’s record, set in 2018 ahead of a vote on protecting “Dreamer” immigrants.
Earlier this year, Democrat Cory Booker set a record in the Senate for his 25-hour speech, but he had help from other Democrats who asked him questions and even took his place. But in the House, Jeffries is on his own, with no other members allowed to speak during the “magic minute.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin leads a cabinet meeting via videoconference at the Kremlin in Moscow, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
The president said in a social media post that he’ll speak with Putin at 10 a.m. Eastern time.
The call comes after the Pentagon confirmed earlier this week that it’s pausing shipment of some weapons to Ukraine amid a global review of U.S. military stockpiles.
Among the weaponry being held up for Ukraine are some air defense missiles, precision-guided artillery and other weapons. The details on the weapons in some of the paused deliveries were confirmed by a U.S. official and former national security official familiar with the matter. They both requested anonymity to discuss what is are being held up as the Pentagon has yet to provide details.
▶ Read more about the Pentagon’s pause on some weapons for Ukraine
In the state that served as the model for Obamacare, advocates and health care workers fear the Trump administration will dismantle piece-by-piece a popular program providing insurance, preventive care and life-saving medication to hundreds of thousands of people.
Provisions contained in both the Senate and House versions of the massive tax and spending cuts bill could strip health insurance from up to a quarter of the roughly 400,000 people enrolled in the Massachusetts Health Connector, according to state estimates.
FILE — A woman walks past a sign outside the Boston Children’s Hospital, Aug. 18, 2022, in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
Trump and Republicans in Congress say new documentation requirements and limitations on who can apply for tax credits to help pay for insurance are necessary to root out fraud, waste and abuse.
The changes to the Affordable Care Act and massive cuts to Medicaid and other programs would eliminate roughly $1.1 trillion in health care spending nationwide over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
▶ Read more about how the bill affects Massachusetts’ model health care system
Just two weeks after upholding a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, the Supreme Court said Thursday that justices will hear arguments in the fall about lower court rulings in favor of transgender athletes in Idaho and West Virginia.
More than two dozen states have enacted laws barring transgender women and girls from participating in certain sports competitions. Some have been blocked in court as Republicans leverage the issue as a fight for athletic fairness. The Trump administration meanwhile has filed lawsuits and launched investigations over policies allowing transgender athletes to compete freely.
This week, the University of Pennsylvania modified a trio of school records set by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas and said it would apologize to female athletes “disadvantaged” by her participation on the women’s swimming team, part of a resolution of a federal civil rights case.
Democrats say the bill is “trickle down cruelty,” a tax giveaway to the rich paid for on the backs of the most vulnerable.
“Have you no shame?” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. “Have the moral courage to oppose this bill.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is still reading from a binder of letters written by people across the country explaining how the health care programs have helped their families — and how devastating cuts would hurt.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during an event with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The budget bill includes a hefty investment, some $350 billion, in national security and Trump’s deportation agenda and to help develop the “Golden Dome” defensive system over the U.S.
To help offset the costs of lost tax revenue, the package includes $1.2 trillion in cutbacks to the Medicaid health care and food stamps, largely by imposing new work requirements, including for some parents and older people, and a massive rollback of green energy investments.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage.
“Our way is to plow through and get it done,” Mike Johnson said as he emerged in the middle of the night from a series of closed-door meetings on Trump’s signature domestic policy package.
The package’s priority is extending $4.5 trillion in tax breaks enacted in Trump’s first term, and adding some new ones, like allowing workers to deduct tips and overtime pay, and a $6,000 deduction for most older adults earning less than $75,000 a year. Democrats say these savings will be wiped out by higher costs for most Americans as safety net benefits are cut.
FILE – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers addresses a joint session of the Legislature in the Assembly chambers during the governor’s State of the State speech at the state Capitol, Jan. 22, 2019, in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Andy Manis, File)
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed a new two-year budget in the early morning hours Thursday in a race against Congress to ensure the state gets a federal Medicaid match that it would lose under President Trump’s tax and spending cuts package.
In an extraordinarily rapid succession of events, Evers and Republican lawmakers unveiled a compromise budget deal on Tuesday, the Senate passed it Wednesday night and hours later just before 1 a.m. on Thursday the Assembly passed it. Evers signed it in his conference room minutes later.
Democrats who voted against the $111 billion spending bill said it didn’t go far enough in meeting their priorities of increasing funding for schools, child care and expanding Medicaid. But Evers, who hasn’t decided on whether he will seek a third term, hailed the compromise as the best deal that could be reached.
▶ Read more about Wisconsin’s Medicaid deal
Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego says Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski “folded like a cheap suit” on Trump’s big bill.
The newly elected Arizona senator spoke during a virtual town hall Wednesday night organized by the Alaska Democratic Party as it worked to dial up pressure on Murkowski.
Gallego decried the Alaska carveouts Murkowski secured in exchange for her vote, calling the deal the “Kodiak kicker,” while Alaska’s other Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, “didn’t even attempt to fight.”
The bill hurts working class families nationwide, Gallego said, and Sullivan and Murkowski “screwed and rigged these working class people to benefit the Uber rich.”
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Correction: A previous version of this post stated that Murkowski would face re-election next year. She is not up for re-election until 2028.
Yesterday, Trump’s public schedule was empty as the president met with House Republicans to discuss his massive tax cut and spending bill. As the bill inches closer to a vote in the House of Representatives, Trump’s schedule is a bit fuller.
- 11:30 a.m. ET — Trump will receive an intelligence briefing
- 12:45 a.m. — The president and first lady Melania Trump will meet with Edan Alexander, an American who was held hostage by Hamas
- 4:35 p.m. — He’ll leave Washington and fly to Des Moines, Iowa
- 7 p.m. — Trump will give remarks at an event celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States
The American labor market continues to show surprising resilience despite uncertainty over Trump’s economic policies. The unemployment rate ticked down 4.1% from 4.2% in May, the Labor Department said Thursday.
Hiring rose modestly from a revised 144,000 in May and beat economists expectations of fewer than 118,000 new jobs as Trump’s trade wars, the federal hiring freeze and immigration crackdown weigh on the American job market. U.S. applications for jobless aid fell to 233,000 last week as layoffs remain low.
A survey released Wednesday by the payroll processor ADP found that private companies cut 33,000 jobs last month, reflecting a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers.
The president’s deportations, meanwhile, are driving immigrants out of the U.S. labor force. Those working and looking for work fell by 625,000 in May, the biggest drop in a year and a half.
With Trump’s spending and tax cut bill nearing passage, the White House is getting creative in pitching it to Americans who haven’t been closely following the debate over the legislation.
The White House late Wednesday dropped a tongue-in-cheek video on social media that includes before and after shots of women who transform flat hair to voluminous bouffants as a narrator ticks off aspects of the bill that she says will make Americans’ lives better.
“Are you tired of government promises falling flat? Do you go through an outrageous amount of stress just trying to get by?” the narrator intones as a woman screams in frustration over her bad hair day. “Then bump it up with ‘one big, beautiful bill’ and get that relief fast and easy.”
By the end of the short video, the screaming woman and others are sporting new hairdos that are markedly more voluminous.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., speaks during a news conference after passage of the budget reconciliation package of President Donald Trump’s signature bill of big tax breaks and spending cuts, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Republican leadership spent much of the night and early morning persuading a handful of holdouts to support the Senate-approved tax cuts and spending bill. But now, House Speaker Mike Johnson appears to have the votes, and Democrats are standing in the way.
As the House wrapped up its debate over passing Trump’s agenda, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries used a tool known as the “magic minute” that allows leaders unlimited time to speak. He started his address just before 5 a.m. ET. And it’s still going.
“I’m going to take my time,” he said, before launching into a speech criticizing Republicans’ deference to Trump, reading through personal accounts of people concerned about losing their health care coverage, and recounting American history.
Eventually, Jeffries will end his speech, and Republicans will move to final passage of the bill.
