By DARLENE SUPERVILLE and NICHOLAS RICCARDI
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed his bundle of tax breaks and spending cuts into legislation Friday in entrance of Fourth of July picnickers after his cajoling produced virtually unanimous Republican help in Congress for the home precedence that would cement his second-term legacy.
Flanked by Republican legislators and members of his Cupboard, Trump signed the multitrillion-dollar laws at a desk on the White Home driveway, then banged down a gavel gifted to him by Home Speaker Mike Johnson that was used in the course of the invoice’s remaining passage Thursday.
In opposition to odds that at instances appeared unbelievable, Trump achieved his purpose of celebrating a historic — and divisive — legislative victory in time for the nation’s birthday, which additionally was his self-imposed deadline for Congress to ship the laws to his desk. Fighter jets and stealth bombers streaked by the sky over the annual White Home Fourth of July picnic.
“America’s winning, winning, winning like never before,” Trump mentioned, noting final month’s bombing marketing campaign in opposition to Iran’s nuclear program, which he mentioned the flyover was meant to honor. “Promises made, promises kept, and we’ve kept them.”
The White Home was hung with purple, white and blue bunting for the Independence Day festivities. The U.S. Marine Band performed patriotic marches — and, in a typical Trumpian contact, tunes by Eighties pop icons Chaka Khan and Huey Lewis. There have been three separate flyovers.
Trump spoke for a comparatively transient 22 minutes earlier than signing the invoice, however was clearly energized because the laws’s passage topped a current successful streak for his administration. That included the Iran marketing campaign and a collection of U.S. Supreme Courtroom rulingshe’s fought for.
After darkish, chants of “USA, USA” rose from the picnic crowd on the South Garden when Trump and the primary woman, Melania, appeared on the Truman Balcony to observe the fireworks. They had been leaving afterward to spend the weekend at their house in New Jersey.
The finances laws is the president’s highest-profile win but. It contains key marketing campaign pledges like no tax on suggestions or Social Safety earnings. Trump, who spent an uncommon period of time thanking particular person Republican lawmakers who shepherded the measure by Congress, contended “our country is going to be a rocket ship, economically,” due to the laws.
Massive cuts to Medicaid and meals stamps
Critics assailed the bundle as a giveaway to the wealthy that can rob tens of millions extra lower-income individuals of their medical health insurance, meals help and monetary stability.
“Today, Donald Trump signed into law the worst job-killing bill in American history. It will rip health care from 17 million workers to pay for massive tax giveaways to the wealthy and big corporations, amounting to the country’s largest money grab from the working class to the ultra-rich,” AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler mentioned in a press release. “Every member of Congress who voted for this devastating bill picked the pockets of working people to hand billionaires a $5 trillion gift.”
The laws extends Trump’s 2017 multitrillion-dollar tax cuts and cuts Medicaid and meals stamps by $1.2 trillion. It offers for a large improve in immigration enforcement. Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper tasks that almost 12 million extra individuals will lose medical health insurance underneath the legislation.
The laws handed the Home on a largely party-line vote Thursday, culminating a monthslong push by the GOP to cram most of its legislative priorities right into a single finances invoice that could possibly be enacted with out Senate Democrats with the ability to block it indefinitely by filibustering.
It handed by a single vote within the Senate, the place North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis introduced he wouldn’t run for reelection after incurring Trump’s wrath in opposing it. Vance needed to forged the tie-breaking vote.
Within the Home, the place two Republicans voted in opposition to it, one, conservative maverick Tom Massie of Kentucky, has additionally grow to be a goal of Trump’s well-funded political operation. No Democrats voted for the invoice.
The laws quantities to a repudiation of the agendas of the previous two Democratic presidents, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, in rolling again Obama’s Medicaid growth underneath his signature well being legislation and Biden’s tax credit for renewable vitality.
The Congressional Finances Workplace estimates the bundle will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the last decade and 11.8 million extra individuals will go with out well being protection.
Democrats vow to make invoice a midterm challenge
Democratic Nationwide Committee Chair Ken Martin on Friday known as the invoice “devastating” and mentioned in a press release that Trump’s signature on the laws “sealed the fate of the Republican Party, cementing them as the party for billionaires and special interests — not working families.”
He predicted Republicans would lose their majority in Congress over it. “This was a full betrayal of the American people,” Martin mentioned.
Trump complained Friday about Democrats opposing the invoice, “and we knew that because their hatred of either the country or me or both is so great they didn’t vote at all and it’s terrible.”
He mentioned their “standard line” is to say Republican laws is “dangerous” or “everybody’s going to die” and “we can’t let them get away with it.” Along with his invoice, Trump mentioned, “it’s actually just the opposite, everybody’s going to live.”
“And I just want you to know, if you see anything negative put out by Democrats, it’s all a con job,” Trump mentioned, defending a bundle that now’s legislation.
Talking in Iowa on Thursday evening, Trump mentioned Democrats “hate Trump — but I hate them, too.”
The bundle is definite to be a flashpoint in subsequent 12 months’s midterm elections, and Democrats are making formidable plans for rallies, voter registration drives, assault adverts, bus excursions and even a multiday vigil, all supposed to spotlight probably the most controversial parts.
Upon his return to Washington early Friday, Trump described the bundle as “very popular,” although polling means that public opinion is combined at greatest.
For instance, a Washington Submit/Ipsos ballot discovered that majorities of U.S. adults help rising the annual little one tax credit score and eliminating taxes on earnings from suggestions, and about half help work necessities for some adults who obtain Medicaid.
However the ballot discovered majorities oppose decreasing federal funding for meals help to low-income households and spending about $45 billion to construct and keep migrant detention facilities. About 60% mentioned it was “unacceptable” that the invoice is predicted to extend the $36 trillion U.S. debt by greater than $3 trillion over the subsequent decade.
Initially Printed: July 4, 2025 at 12:01 PM EDT
