What's In and Out of Trump's Megabill
The true costs of the bill. Will it pass the Senate tonight? Plus: Latest on DOJ stripping Americans of citizenship. Which official wanted to tell courts, "F— you?" And News That Doesn't Suck.
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Today the US Senate is wrestling with Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.” Despite holdups and holdouts, enough arms will likely get twisted to push this through — possibly on Tuesday morning. Then it must be reconciled with the House’s version before another vote in that chamber. Guess who’s trying to torpedo the whole thing? Elon Musk is posting furiously on X, calling it a “debt slavery bill,” branding Republicans “the Porky Pig Party,” and declaring it’s “time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.”
Meanwhile, Politico reports that House GOP members are panicking over the increased Medicaid cuts the Senate tacked on. Remember: House members face voters every two years and catch the rage first, while senators get six-year terms to duck and cover. Though the midterm elections also make House members more vulnerable to Trump’s threats.
The 940-page behemoth took 16 hours to read aloud after Democrats demanded the full reading to slow passage. Just before we went to press, news broke that the Senate bill will include language that would defund Planned Parenthood; the Senate parliamentarian is leaving it in. I know what you’re thinking: wetlands and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are protected, but women’s bodies are expendable? Officially, the Senate parliamentarian makes decisions based on the chamber’s rules, not on personal politics.
In today’s newsletter: What’s in the bill and the Republican who broke ranks. Also, the administration is making it easier to strip Americans of their citizenship; Trump’s latest attack in his war on Harvard; and some News That Doesn’t Suck.
Here Are Your Headlines:
Calculating Costs: Senate Republicans are in the countdown to (what they hope will be) their final vote on the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” and lawmakers are working their way through the various proposed amendments. If they pass the bill as is, it will add almost $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, according to a new estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, or CBO. These massive numbers can be hard to comprehend — our brains literally aren’t built for them — so we’ve pulled out a few of the most important provisions to give you a better sense of what, exactly, Senate Republicans are pushing to spend our money on. If you’d like to see the cost of every proposed part of the bill, see here.
Immigration: About $45 billion is earmarked for expanding the immigration detention network, more than ten times the current funding level of $3.4 billion. Border czar Tom Homan wants to see 100,000 people in detention, a little over double the number of people in detention as of June. That’s roughly the same size as the entire population of Boulder, Colorado, and close to the number of Japanese people interred during World War 2. The majority of those detained are non-criminals, some with legal papers.
Context: $45 billion is more than the entire 2026 budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. What if, instead of detaining people, that $45 billion was used to house people? With $45 billion, you could effectively end homelessness for the next five years. Or cover tuition and fees for 130,000 public college students for a year; fund more than 17,000 new teachers’ salaries at $75,000/year; or provide free school lunch to millions of kids.
But Wait: $45 billion is only what’s earmarked for expanding detention. Another $45 billion will go to building the border wall. Then there’s $31 billion for immigration enforcement — hiring, training, legal resources, transportation, and so on. Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection are meant to get $12 billion each. Then there’s $6.2 billion for border surveillance technology. With that $151.2 billion, we could end homelessness for a generation.
Who Gets the Money: Private, for-profit companies house almost 90% of people in US immigration custody. These companies have spent tens of millions over the last few months reopening old prisons and jails; the Trump administration, meanwhile, eliminated three internal watchdog agencies tasked with overseeing immigration detention, dismissing them as “roadblocks” to immigration enforcement. The result is bad news for immigrants and US citizens caught up in the chaos — and great news for investors in private prison companies. The largest, Geo Group, contributed over $1 million to Trump’s reelection and has over $1 billion in contracts with the administration. They’re estimated to make an additional $400 million annually thanks to increased immigration enforcement. Its shares leaped 42% the day after Trump won the election. One of Geo Group’s registered lobbyists in 2019, tasked with “promoting the use of public-private partnerships in correctional services,” was none other than current Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Mass Surveillance: The Trump administration is already funneling tens of millions of dollars to private tech companies like Palantir, which has reportedly been tasked with building software to provide the government “near real-time visibility” of migrants. Increased surveillance of immigrants is already bleeding into wider surveillance of Americans; Palantir has reportedly integrated its tech in at least four federal agencies, and is being tapped to compile data on Americans. A group of ex-employees condemned the company’s actions last month, and several protestors were arrested for demonstrating outside the company’s New York office last week.
Food Assistance: Two million children would receive substantially less or no food assistance, according to the CBO. This bill would create more bureaucracy and hurdles to receiving food assistance for 6 million adults. They’re calling these “work requirements.” The CBO estimates this would cut 3.2 million off the program altogether.
Healthcare: You maybe have heard that it would also mean almost 12 million Americans lose health insurance coverage by 2034. How big is that? It’s roughly the population of Ohio, the nation’s seventh-most populous state. If all these Americans losing health care were represented in the House, they’d have about 15 representatives — more than Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota, Delaware, Rhode Island, Montana, Maine, Idaho, and Hawaii combined. That’s a lot of people.
Votarama: Republicans have so far beat back Democratic challenges to the “Big Beautiful Bill’s” cuts to Medicaid and food benefits, among other things. But the bill’s overall passage sits on a razor’s edge. At least six Republican senators are unsure about it; just four defections would kill it.
Better Late Than Never: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) did the almost unthinkable: he broke with President Trump and spoke out against the bill yesterday evening. In impassioned remarks from the floor he said that he will not support the bill because it will “devastate” his constituents and “ betray the promise Donald Trump made” to not cut Medicaid. Trump fired back threatening to back a primary challenger to “talker and complainer” Tillis, so Tillis announced he’s not seeking reelection. Standing up to Trump cost him.
Free Tax Cuts! Republicans are using a bizarre, alternative accounting method to pretend the bill is less costly than it really is. Get this: they claim certain tax cuts won’t add to our debt because they are simply extending existing tax cuts. (Try using this with your bank!) Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) yesterday accused the GOP of trying to “blow up the Senate rulebook and sidestep nonpartisan scorekeepers.” (To hear more from Sen. Padilla, watch my interview with him here.)
Elon Musk is threatening to back primary challengers to Republicans who vote for the “Big Beautiful Bill.” He’s calling out certain GOP House members by name. Liberal outlets quote him calling a yes vote “political suicide,” while right leaning outlets call the threat “incendiary.” Want to read more about the divides in the GOP over this bill? Check out Ground News. Their app and website gather stories from sources around the country and across the political spectrum. They give each source a bias rating and factuality score, so you know how to evaluate the sources you’re reading. Ground News is offering the News Not Noise community 40% off their all-access vantage subscription plan. To subscribe, go to GroundNews.com/NNN.
Denaturalization: This one’s hard to wrap your head around, but we’ll try together. The Justice Department is directing attorneys to prioritize stripping Americans who commit certain crimes of their US citizenship. That means the administration wants to use our justice system to revoke the citizenship of people who commit non-criminal offenses. Experts are worried the administration is “trying to create a second class of US citizens” — those at risk of being denaturalized and those not. In 1967, the Supreme Court ruled that denaturalization is “inconsistent with the American form of democracy,” according to one expert. Nonetheless, it’s legal.
Charged Charges: The Trump administration concluded today that Harvard mistreated Jewish and Israeli students and this violated federal civil rights law. “Harvard’s commitment to racial hierarchies … has enabled anti-Semitism to fester,” administration officials argued. They accused the university of “inaction.” A Harvard spokesperson said the university “strongly disagrees with the government’s findings,” and the university argues it has taken numerous steps to ensure it is “combating antisemitism and anti-Israel bias.”
Wider Picture: According to federal investigators, a “majority” of Jewish students reported discrimination or bias against them, and one-quarter felt physically threatened. I know from conversations I’ve had that many Jewish students felt unsafe or unwelcome on parts of campus — even when they espoused no views on Israel/Gaza — and felt the university did not handle it well. Harvard was not unique in this regard, and yet it is singled out by the administration. Perhaps the administration’s accusations should be considered in the context of its ongoing battle against Harvard? After the university refused to accede to a shocking list of demands, Trump cut billions in funding and is attempting to stop Harvard from enrolling international students. This new report comes with the threat of pulling all federal funding, plus federal student aid, which Politico describes as “one of the most severe consequences a university can face.” Is the Trump administration really concerned with antisemitism, or is it using the Civil Rights Act to crack down on an organization that won’t submit to demands that have nothing to do with civil rights? About 70% of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division lawyers have left since Trump took office. Meantime, the Trump administration has multiple ties to antisemitic extremists. It has also cut funding for programs and agencies working to prevent antisemitism, including on college campuses, even as hate crimes against Jewish people are on the rise.
Ignoring Orders: The government lawyer who told a court that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported to El Salvador has filed a shocking whistleblower complaint. He alleges that senior Trump Justice Department officials planned to deport people to El Salvador in defiance of court orders; he quotes Trump official Emil Bove allegedly saying they’d tell the courts “fuck you.” The whistleblower, Erez Rueveni, alleges he was wrongly sidelined, fired, and disparaged by the administration. It’s a doozy of a complaint. You can read it here.
New Ownership: Trump claimed yesterday that a group of “very wealthy people” are going to buy TikTok. He did not reveal who these people were, and said China’s president Xi Jinping would “probably” agree to the sale. Want to share your best guess — or biggest fear?
Peace Process: Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly agreed on a plan to end the war in Gaza within two weeks. Trump said on Friday he thought a ceasefire could be reached “within the next week.” Qatar, which is working to mediate a truce, similarly said on Friday that there is currently a “window of opportunity” to reach a peace deal.
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