Republican Conference Chairwoman Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., said GOP holdouts were persuaded to vote in favor of the bill after being assured “actual tax savings would be done and we would continue to do more savings.”
“So they wanted to speak with the president and they wanted to get some assurances from the president that we’re not done. That this process is still going to continue through rescission and through other reconciliations, and obviously they got those assurances to the point where they feel that they will be voting yes on the big beautiful Bill,” McClain said on Fox News this morning.
This morning, a procedural vote was held, resulting in 219-213. Only one Republican, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, joined the Democrats in dissent.
Johnson told NBC News that he doesn’t think the GOP holdouts who eventually voted to advance the bill “caved,” but that they “genuinely needed time to digest.”
“I think a lot of them genuinely, a lot of members, genuinely needed time to digest what the Senate sent over,” Johnson said. “We didn’t have it for that long, and they deserve that amount of time to go through it and figure out the meaning and how it would be applied, and ask questions to the administration regarding that.”
“They talked to some Cabinet secretaries and even some attorneys and some agencies, and you know, they got a good grasp of what it was that they were voting on,” he added. “That’s [an] important part of the process.”
After passing the six-hour mark, Jeffries said his marathon speech against the GOP bill will continue.
“So as I conclude this section of this particular presentation, and we still got some ground to cover, we’re going to continue as House Democrats to take our sweet time on behalf of the American people, because the issues are too significant to ever walk away from,” he said.
After he referenced the Declaration of Independence, he added, “Perhaps I may even enter it into the record later on today.”
Trump is expected to hold a bill signing ceremony for his sweeping domestic policy package tomorrow — July Fourth — according to three GOP sources who have been invited to the event and plan to attend.
The House is expected to pass the package later today.
The timing of the White House event is still fluid, but is expected to be later in the day tomorrow. Trump is scheduled to return from Iowa around 1 a.m., so an early morning event is unlikely.
Trump currently has a military families picnic on his public schedule at 5 p.m. tomorrow, followed by a Fourth of July celebration with fireworks at 9 p.m.
Jeffries’ speech, which kicked off just before 5 a.m., was ongoing more than six hours later. In the speech, which cannot prevent passage of the bill but can delay it, the Democratic leader slammed the GOP bill, often referencing a series of binders as he read notes from Americans who he said would be harmed by Medicaid and SNAP benefit cuts.
Jeffries has shown no signs of slowing down, noting that he was taking his “sweet time on behalf of the American people.”
“What is contemplated in this one big, ugly bill is wrong. It’s dangerous, and it’s cruel, and cruelty should not be either the objective or the outcome of legislation that we consider here in the United States House of Representatives,” Jeffries said, arguing that it was “cruel” to cut Medicaid.
The Supreme Court turned away an appeal brought by Montana officials seeking to revive a state law that requires minors seeking abortions to obtain the consent of their parents.
The state argued that the measure, which was enacted in 2013 but never went into effect because of litigation, should be upheld based on the right of parents to make health care decisions involving their children.
The Supreme Court waded into the legal fight over state laws that ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ and women’s school and college sports, taking up cases from West Virginia and Idaho.
The court will hear cases involving two transgender students, Becky Pepper-Jackson and Lindsay Hecox, who challenged bans in their states.
Both won injunctions that allow them to continue to compete in sports. Pepper-Jackson, now 15, takes puberty blocking medication, while Hecox, a 24-year-old college student, has received testosterone suppression and estrogen treatments.
Trump said in a post to Truth Social that he would speak with Russian President Vladimir Putin at 10 a.m. today.
NBC News reported earlier this week that the Pentagon had paused weapons shipments to Ukraine amid concerns over the U.S. stockpile.
The House minority leader has opened another binder in his now more than four-hour speech.
Jeffries is at around the halfway mark to the longest House floor speech, a record held by former Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, of California.
Jeffries has spent the hours slamming the GOP bill and reading notes from people who he says will be harmed if the bill is signed into law.
The president spent most of the night working the phones with lawmakers as he tried to get his signature spending bill over the finish line, according to a senior White House official.
Currently, there is no Marine sentry outside the West Wing, indicating the president is not inside the Oval Office.
There is a celebratory vibe inside the West Wing, according to the official, as staff prepare for a long day. The president is set to meet with former Hamas hostage Edan Alexander and his family later today before heading to Iowa for a rally kicking off the one-year countdown to America’s 250th birthday.
The president and first lady Melania Trump are expected to meet today with Edan Alexander and his family in the Oval Office, the White House said.
Alexander was released in May after being held hostage by Hamas for 584 days. He is believed to be the last living U.S. citizen held captive in Gaza.
“The President and First Lady have met with many released hostages from Gaza, and they greatly look forward to meeting Edan Alexander and his family in the Oval Office tomorrow,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement yesterday.
Jeffries has been delivering floor remarks for more than three hours, using the unlimited speaking time granted to the House leaders.
After nearing the end of the binder he was reading from, he picked up another. Jeffries began his speech just before 5 a.m.
The record for the longest House floor speech is eight hours and 32 minutes, set by then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., in November 2021 in opposition to then-President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., held the record before that for an eight-hour and seven-minute speech in 2018.
Only House leaders have unlimited speaking time on the floor.
Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
A Capitol facilities worker wheels a bin full of empty pizza boxes from Speaker Johnson’s office last night.
Trump is scheduled to travel to Des Moines, Iowa, today to deliver remarks at an event kicking off the one-year countdown to America’s 250th anniversary.
The event will take place at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, a venue Trump last visited two years ago during the Republican presidential primary.
“Iowa voted for me THREE TIMES, because they love my Policies for our Wonderful Farmers and Small Businesses, and they LOVE AMERICA! This will be a very special event, honoring our Great Country, and our Brave Heroes who fought to keep us FREE,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Tuesday.
His visit comes as he has two pending lawsuits against the state’s most-read newspaper, The Des Moines Register, and its most well-known pollster, Ann Selzer. Trump sued both of them over a poll last year that showed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris leading in Iowa shortly before Election Day. Trump ultimately won the state.
A judge yesterday rejected Trump’s attempt to dismiss his federal lawsuit against Selzer and the newspaper. Last week Trump refiled the case in Iowa state court.
House Minority Leader Jeffries has shown no signs of slowing down during his floor speech, which has now gone on for more than two hours.
Jeffries has been reading notes from people who could be affected by the bill as he continues his critique, and said he would be taking his “sweet time.”
“It appears, Mr. Speaker, that I’m about halfway through the stories as it relates to Medicaid,” he said.
Reading from a binder, Jeffries is highlighting the stories of people across the country who rely on Medicaid, and he appears to be about halfway through the binder.
A super PAC promoting Vivek Ramaswamy for governor in Ohio has raised $17 million since January — a figure that the group shared first today with NBC News.
The money collected by VPAC: Victors not Victims is separate from the $9.7 million that Ramaswamy’s campaign this week announced it has raised since launching in February.
Taken in tandem, the massive haul puts the Trump-backed Ramaswamy at a substantial financial advantage in the still-developing race. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost suspended his bid for the GOP nomination in May, after the state’s Republican Party issued an early endorsement of Ramaswamy. And rumblings that Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel might enter the primary have yet to lead to an actual campaign from the former Ohio State football coach.
Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who briefly ran against Trump for president in 2024, worked with Elon Musk earlier this year to launch Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. But Ramaswamy left before the agency was up and running to focus on the gubernatorial race.
On the Democratic side, Dr. Amy Acton, who served as Ohio’s health director during the early days of the Covid pandemic, has declared her candidacy for governor. Former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who lost a re-election battle last year, and former Rep. Tim Ryan, have also signaled their interest in the race. Both could also run in next year’s special election to fill the remainder of Vice President JD Vance’s unexpired Senate term.
“It’s already a tough hill for Democrats to climb in Ohio, but eye-popping fundraising numbers like this for Vivek will surely make Democrat heavyweights like Sherrod and Tim Ryan second-guess potential runs against him,” a Ramaswamy-aligned strategist said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., argued that the bill was “cruel” in floor remarks that began about an hour and a half ago.
“What is contemplated in this one big, ugly bill is wrong. It’s dangerous, and it’s cruel, and cruelty should not be either the objective or the outcome of legislation that we consider here in the United States House of Representatives,” Jeffries said.
“But it is cruel to take away Medicaid from the American people,” he added.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that the bill would result in 11.8 million people losing health insurance over the next decade.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., is expected to speak for roughly an hour on the floor against the Republicans’ bill.
Speaker Johnson Mike Johnson, R-La., said he expected the House will on the GOP’s domestic policy package “around 8-8:30 this morning,” if not sooner.
Asked how he was able to win over the Republican holdouts, Johnson told reporters, “There was just a lot of patience and listening to everyone’s concerns and making sure that their, their concerns were addressed.”
Johnson said he’s talked to Trump “multiple times today, tonight, this morning.”
“I mean, he was up engaged as late as 1 am. He may still be up for all I know. He doesn’t really sleep a lot,” he said.
When asked about the self-imposed July 4 deadline for passage and whether Johnson was disappointed to again be sorting out legislation overnight, he said: “I’m not disappointed. I mean, again, this is part of the process. It’s, when you’re doing a big, comprehensive piece of legislation, you’re going to expect a lot of, a lot of extra time, a lot of questions and a lot of deliberation over it. We factored that in, but we’re still going to meet the deadline.”
The House advance the Trump agenda bill on a 219-213 vote after most of the Republican holdouts flipped their votes to support the rule.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., was the only Republican to vote with all Democrats against the procedural motion.
The House is now debating the bill and will soon vote on final passage.
The House has now held the rule vote open for more than three hours.
And Trump is continuing to express his displeasure with the GOP holdouts on Truth Social: “FOR REPUBLICANS, THIS SHOULD BE AN EASY YES VOTE. RIDICULOUS!!!”
With the House rule vote to advance the GOP’s domestic policy bill nearing the three-hour mark, Trump took to Truth Social to pressure the party’s holdouts.
“What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove??? MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!” Trump wrote.
Five Republicans have now voted “no” on the procedural vote after Thomas Massie of Kentucky changed his initial vote. Eight Republicans have yet to vote.
