In the Senate, Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" in the Hot Seat

Senators narrowly voted on Saturday, June 28, to officially open debate on Donald Trump's "vast domestic policy agenda," reports The New York Times . By a vote of 51 to 49, including Republican Senators Thom Tillis and Rand Paul, who voted with Democrats in an attempt to block its consideration. Another Republican, Ron Johnson, who had announced his intention to vote against the opening motion, changed his mind after a meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance, who was present at the Capitol throughout the day.

During the morning, Donald Trump had invited Rand Paul to a round of golf before deciding to follow the negotiations between the leaders of the Republican Party, the majority in the Senate, and the holdouts from the Oval Office. According to Bloomberg , he even "threatened to find a Republican challenger for Thom Tillis's seat."

“Republican leaders kept the vote open for more than three hours in a tense atmosphere as they haggled with holdouts, both on the Senate floor and behind closed doors, to secure their support,” wrote the Washington Post . Democrats, meanwhile, demanded that the 1,000-page bill be read in full to lawmakers before debate began, “which is expected to take more than a dozen hours and likely push a final decision to Monday at the earliest,” according to the New York Times. “Republicans don’t want to tell America what’s in the bill,” said Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. “If necessary, we’ll stay here all night.”

Final passage of the bill "is far from assured," the Washington Post said, with new provisions for the Medicaid health insurance program and plans to eliminate Biden-era clean energy tax credits, among others, continuing to spark infighting among Republicans.

For Donald Trump and his supporters, the challenge is to deliver on campaign promises. Starting with the extension of tax credits passed in 2017, during Donald Trump's first term, and the billions of additional dollars allocated to defense and immigration control, while drastically reducing spending on social welfare programs.

“The Senate bill provides $4 trillion in tax cuts, slightly more than the $3.8 trillion proposed by the House of Representatives,” NPR reports . It also allocates $46.5 billion to complete the wall between the United States and Mexico, $10 billion for border security, and $5 billion for customs enforcement.

To compensate, it would require cutting more than $1 trillion from Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income people and people with disabilities, and SNAP, the poverty-relief nutrition assistance program.

One version of the bill currently being debated in the Senate “could result in the loss of Medicaid coverage for more than 10.9 million Americans by 2034,” according to estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. “The effects could be catastrophic,” warns Jennifer Tolbert, deputy director of the KFF Foundation’s Medicaid program. The “Big Beautiful Bill” also reverses Joe Biden’s renewable energy tax incentives.

Democrats point to the bill's unpopularity among the public. According to polls, some 42% of Americans oppose it, compared to 23% who support it and 34% who say they have no opinion, NPR points out.

Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina who is running for reelection in 2026, explained in a detailed statement that he opposed the budget proposal because “it would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, particularly for our hospitals and rural communities.” In the House of Representatives, where an initial version of the bill passed by just one vote, several Republican lawmakers are on the same page.

Republican Party leaders, however, hope to hold a vote by Monday. The parliamentary shuttle will then bring the "Big Beautiful Bill" back before the House of Representatives. In a statement released Saturday, the White House urged Congress to transmit the final version of the bill by July 4, the national holiday, warning that failure to pass it would constitute "a total betrayal."