LIVE UPDATES: US House passes the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’

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Here’s where things stand on Thursday 3 July 2025:

• US President Donald Trump’s signature legislation, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, has cleared the US House of Representatives, with a largely party-line vote of 218 to 214.
• Only two Republicans joined with the House’s 212 Democrats to oppose the bill: Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
• The legislation has faced criticism that it will add $3.3 trillion to the national debt and will cut social safety-net programmes such as Medicaid.
• Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has set a record for the longest House-floor speech, as he protested the “One Big Beautiful Bill” as reckless.

California Governor Gavin Newsom slams ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

While Republicans celebrate the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, California Governor Gavin Newsom is among the Democrats voicing fears over its ramifications.

“This bill is a tragedy for the American people, and a complete moral failure,” Newsom wrote in a statement.

“The President and his MAGA enablers are ripping care from cancer patients, meals from children, and money from working families – just to give tax breaks to the ultra-rich.”

Newsom has long clashed with the Republican president, who once mused about arresting the Democratic governor over differences in their immigration policies.

ACLU says bill opens door to ‘prolonged detention of children and families’

The American Civil Liberties Union has drawn attention to a provision of the bill that would gut standards for child protection while in US immigration custody.

Those protections were established in the 1997 Flores settlement, a legal settlement with the US that prohibits the prolonged immigration detention of children.

The language in the bill would undercut those protections by “explicitly eliminating restrictions on how long the government can jail a child”, according to an analysis by the National Immigration Law Center.

The bill includes nearly $45bn for detention and family immigration jails and nearly $80bn for internal immigration enforcement.

Supreme Court announces new case for 2025 term

The Supreme Court has agreed Thursday to hear a case over state restrictions on which school sport teams transgender students can join.

Just two weeks after upholding a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, the justices said they will review lower-court rulings in favour 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 sport competitions. Some policies have been blocked in court.

Trump, meanwhile, has made banning transgender athletes from women’s sports a priority of his administration, threatening to withhold federal funding from education institutions that allow their participation.

The Supreme Court will begin its new term in October.

But as it looks ahead to resuming its hearings, the court also decided against hearing a bid from Montana to revive a law that requires parental consent for minors to obtain an abortion.

A lower court’s ruling had invalidated the law under a state constitutional provision that protects an individual’s right to privacy.

Johnson holds news conference after House vote

Republicans have taken a victory lap at a news conference after the House passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, praising their party’s unity.

Johnson, who led the Republicans’ efforts, said the bill would go far in reversing what the House speaker said he considered harms done under former President Joe Biden.

“ Everything was an absolute disaster under the Biden-Harris radical, woke, progressive Democrat regime. And we took the best effort that we could in one big, beautiful bill to fix as much of it as we could,” Johnson said.

He also played up his ties to the evangelical Christian movement in his remarks, crediting his faith with helping his efforts.

“ We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Johnson said, quoting the Declaration of Independence. “We recognise, we boldly proclaim the self-evident truth: that our rights do not come from the government. They come from God himself. He’s the one that gave us our rights.”

He also described Republican control of both chambers of Congress and the White House as “ this great blessing of unified government”.

Republican says he voted ‘no’ over fiscal concerns

Representative Tom Massie of Kentucky has also explained why he was one of only two House Republicans to vote against the Trump-backed bill.

In a post on the social media platform X, Massie warned that the bill “will significantly increase US budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates”.

It was a concern that Massie initially shared with several fiscal hawks, but they eventually yielded to party pressure and voted for the legislation.

ICE raids will ‘only get worse’ after Trump’s signature bill passed

Joanna Kuebler, the chief of programmes at the America’s Voice advocacy group, has warned that “turbocharging mass deportation endangers our economy, our families, our communities, and our history as a nation of immigrants”.

In a statement, Kuebler said that Americans are already “recoiling against the harm done by this administration’s deportation agenda”.

Her remarks came after the passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” which is slated to funnel more money to immigration enforcement.

“Sadly, we fear it will get all the worse with the new and unprecedented infusion of tens of billions of dollars for Stephen Miller to fully scale the personal mass deportation crusade he’s dreamed about since his teenage years,” she said, referring to Trump’s adviser and the architect of his immigration policy,

She added that “Stephen Miller’s and MAGA’s dreams are most Americans’ nightmares”.

Trump to sign bill on July 4

The White House has said Trump will sign the bill at 5pm ET (21:00 GMT) on Friday. The president has long said he wishes to sign his signature piece of legislation on July 4, the country’s Independence Day.

Trump today launched a yearlong celebration of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, which took place on July 4, 1776.

Working Families Party says Republicans will pay at ballot box

Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the progressive organisation, says the group will soon release a list of Republicans it will seek to unseat in the midterm elections next year.

Political observers have said Trump’s bill could result in a major backlash for vulnerable Republicans, particularly in areas most affected by cuts to Medicaid and food assistance. Several analyses have found that tax breaks in the bill will likely be cancelled out by cuts to the social safety programmes for low-income Americans.

“This bill makes one thing clear: The Republican Party is not the party of the working class. In fact, they seem determined to destroy working-class families,” Mitchell said.

“We deserve leaders who will fight for us – not obey the commands of their wealthiest donors,” Mitchell said.

Bill will increase national debt ‘significantly’

John Diamond, director of the Center for Tax and Budget Policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute, told Al Jazeera there was little doubt that the bill “would increase the debt significantly”.

“All you need to do to see that is to look at the last section of the bill, which increases the allowable debt level by 5 trillion. And that’s because the debt is going to increase, and that’s because the bill is going to increase the debt significantly.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has projected that the country’s deficit — the amount of money the US owes — would climb by about about $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years.

Republican who voted against bill says Medicaid deciding factor

Representative Fitzpatrick, one of two Republicans who broke from the party to vote against the bill, has released a statement explaining his actions.

Fitzpatrick said he initially supported a version of the bill passed by the House in May, but that changes to Medicaid added by the Senate changed his mind.

The Senate version of the bill cut even deeper into the programme, including a change to a Medicaid provider tax used by states to pay for the programme.

“I believe in, and will always fight for, policies that are thoughtful, compassionate, and good for our community,” he said.

Final vote sees two Republicans break from party

In the end, just two Republicans – Representative Brian Fitzpatrick and Representative Thomas Massie – broke from their party to oppose the bill.

That was short of the four Democrats needed to scuttle the controversial legislation.

All 212 Democrats voted against, and 218 Republicans voted in favour, for a final breakdown of 218-214.

US recalls diplomat from Colombia in deepening rift

The Trump administration has recalled Charge d’Affaires ad interim John McNamara from the US embassy in Bogota.

It also added that it is “pursuing other measures to make clear our deep concern over the current state of our bilateral relationship”, the department said in a statement.

The rift began in January, when Colombian leader Gustavo Petro sought to block a US deportation flight from landing in the country.

Petro has been a main critic of Trump’s mass deportation campaign, which disproportionately affects residents of Latin America.

House passes threshold on Trump-backed tax, spending bill

Trump’s signature piece of legislation has passed in the House, by 218-214 votes.

The bill now goes to President Trump’s desk to sign – meeting his self-imposed deadline of July 4.

Given the public criticism several Republican legislators had expressed over the version passed by the Senate on Tuesday, Trump’s ability to get holdouts on board has been evident.

It is unclear yet whether changes have been made to the Senate version of the bill.

As with the Senate’s 27-hour vote-o-rama, the House took at least 29 hours to pass the bill, with GOP leadership and Trump cajoling a number of holdouts to get to a ‘yay’ vote.

House starts to vote on Trump’s massive tax and policy bill

After 29 hours of GOP wrangling, Democratic stalling and the longest speech in House history, lawmakers have at long last begun voting on Trump’s sweeping bill. With all 212 Democrats voting no, the Republicans can afford only three defections.

The bill initially passed the House by just one vote, and several Republican lawmakers had expressed unhappiness over changes that emerged in the Senate version of the legislation. But Trump and other Republican leaders have been meeting holdouts since Wednesday morning – and those who spoke with the news media or posted on social media appeared confident of the bill’s eventual passage.

Johnson finishes speech, paving way for final vote

Johnson has finished his address by praising provisions of the bill, hailing working and middle class tax cuts” in the bill as historic, despite analysis indicating that wealthier Americans would see the greatest benefit from the legislation.

“The hard working Americans like our waiters and our bell hops and our hair stylists, they’re going to keep 100 percent of their tips and overtime pay that is money they earned,” he said, hailing the legislation’s end to taxes on tips and overtime.

Johnson also said the bill represented “fiscal responsibility”, pushing back on concerns over the $3.3 trillion it would add to the national debt.

He also framed the cuts and new restrictions to Medicaid and SNAP in the legislation as making the programmes stronger for recipients, despite nearly 12 million people set to lose healthcare under the plan.

“The president of the United States is waiting with his pen,” Johnson said. “Vote yes on this bill”.

The chamber will now move to a full, and likely final, vote.

House speaker begins address before final vote

Mike Johnson has begun an address ahead of the final vote, saying that Trump’s election victory represented a mandate for passing the bill.

“My friends and colleagues on both sides of the aisle, we’ve waited long enough, some of us have literally been up for days,” he said.

“But this day, this day is a hugely important one in the history of our nation,” he said.

“With one big, beautiful bill, we are going to make this country stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before, and every American is going to benefit from that,” he said.

He praised Trump as “bold, visionary, fearless”.

Jeffries finishes floor speech, setting up final vote

Minutes after breaking the record for the longest House speech, Jeffries has left the floor of the chamber.

He ended the speech by invoking “some of our civil rights heroes and foot soldiers”.

“Many of us had the great honor of serving with Congressman John Lewis,” he said. “The great John Lewis said do not get lost in a sea despair”.

“Dr [Martin Luther] King said that if you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. But, at all times, press on…we’re gonna press on,” he said. “I yield back.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson is now set to give a brief address before moving to a vote on the bill, which is expected to pass along party lines.

Jeffries sets new House speech record

Jeffries has officially broken the eight-hour and 32-minute previous record for the longest House speech. The House minority leader has been speaking since 4:53am (08:53 GMT), in a bid to delay voting on the sweeping bill.

While filibusters are not allowed in the House, Jeffries has been taking advantage of his “magic minute” – a loophole that allows House leaders unlimited speaking time after debate has stopped.

Jeffries has been using his time to delay vote on the bill, which Trump and a range of party members and leadership suggest they have enough votes to pass. In his lengthy speech, Jeffries has repeatedly urged “just four” Republicans to vote against the bill, and spent hours highlighting the effects that the cuts to healthcare, food benefits, and more would have on Americans.

“We are better than this,” he urged his colleagues.

The previous record for the longest House speech was set in 2021 by California Republican Kevin McCarthy, who spoke for eight hours and 32 minutes against then-President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” bill during the COVID-19 pandemic.