Republicans Forced to Remove Gun Deregulation From Budget Bill

The Senate parliamentarian has shot down another batch of provisions in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”—this time including one that would’ve deregulated gun silencers and certain firearms.

Being a budget reconciliation, the Senate GOP’s bill can pass with a simple majority and elude a filibuster. However, it cannot contain non-budgetary provisions, and Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has in recent days been trimming away measures that run afoul of this rule.

According to a Friday press release from Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley, newly nixed provisions include one that would have eliminated a $200 tax—as well as certain background checks—to acquire gun silencers.

The provision also appeared in the version of the bill that passed the House in May, thanks to the efforts of Republican Representative Andrew Clyde, who owns a Georgia gun shop. But the Senate’s version went further than the House’s, as it would have eliminated the abovementioned hurdles for those purchasing sawed-off rifles and shotguns as well.

Now, in order for this and other rejected provisions to pass as written, the Senate would have to accomplish the unthinkable task of overcoming the 60-vote hurdle to overcome a filibuster.

MacDonough has dealt some significant blows to the Trump agenda in recent days, as GOP lawmakers are under the gun—with their self-imposed July 4 deadline to pass Trump’s tax and spending plan fast approaching. The parliamentarian’s cuts have rankled Republicans so much that some are calling for Senate Majority Leader John Thune to overrule or fire her, though Thune has expressed no interest in doing so.

The Trump administration has been covertly seeking ways to bring Iran back to the negotiating table after Donald Trump issued airstrikes on three of the country’s nuclear facilities, pitching wildly expensive solutions to the geopolitical conflict.

A group of U.S. officials, led by special envoy Steve Witkoff, have so far suggested that the U.S. could invest $20 to $30 billion in a civilian non-enrichment nuclear program for Iran, or lift some $6 billion in sanctions against the country.

Iranian officials had previously made it clear that they were no longer interested in negotiating with U.S. leadership, citing the nation’s deception ahead of prearranged talks regarding Iran’s nuclear program that were scheduled to take place earlier this month. But Iranian leadership has apparently been in talks with the Trump administration since a ceasefire deal was struck earlier this week, reported CNN.

“The U.S. is willing to lead these talks” with Iran, the Trump administration official told CNN. “And someone is going to need to pay for the nuclear program to be built, but we will not make that commitment.”

The president’s attack, conducted Saturday without the express approval of Congress, damaged facilities in Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan. A battle damage assessment by the Pentagon’s intelligence arm determined that the missile barrage only set Iran’s nuclear program back by a few months, rather than the “years” that Trump had advertised, CNN reported earlier this week. One of the other ideas floated last week was to have U.S.-backed allies in the Gulf pay to replace the damaged Fordo facility, though it wasn’t clear if that would hand ownership of the facility over to another nation, according to CNN.

Witkoff told CNBC Wednesday that the U.S. is seeking a “comprehensive peace agreement” with Iran, but at least one Trump official told CNN anonymously that it is “entirely uncertain what will happen.”

At least 627 people have been killed in Iran since Israel first attacked on June 13, according to Iran’s health ministry. Approximately 107 people died on Monday alone, making it the deadliest single day of the conflict.

Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is so wildly unpopular that even Fox anchors have started bashing it.

Fox Business host Liz Claman highlighted some particularly unfavorable polling during an interview with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins Thursday afternoon. “These are all showing that few people favor this thing,” said Claman.

A Fox News poll taken between June 13 and June 16 found that only 38 percent of registered voters support the gargantuan spending bill, while a whopping 59 percent oppose it. Another poll from Quinnipiac earlier this month found that only 27 percent of respondents supported the bill, and 57 percent opposed it. A Pew Research poll found that only 29 percent of respondents supported it, while 49 percent opposed it.

“Here’s the thing, a lot of Americans don’t like this, even some people who voted for President Trump,” Claman said. “For this reason, Madam Secretary, they don’t understand why cuts have to come from programs like SNAP, like food stamps for the poor, and like Medicare for the poor. That is the problem. So can you make a connection between why that should be OK?”

“Well, I think it’s really important to note that the entire media apparatus has been against this bill from the beginning, but here is what President Trump was elected to do,” Rollins replied.

Rollins insisted that under Joe Biden, federal spending on food stamps had grown “unsustainable” and that the cuts were necessary to keep the program running.

In fact, the bill directs nearly $300 billion to be cut from SNAP through 2034 to help fund tax cuts skewed for the very rich. By slashing federal assistance, states will then have to decide how to close the gaps to keep the programs running. The bill also proposes expanding SNAP’s work requirement, making it more difficult for low-income families to be eligible for benefits, and locks out lawful immigrants from using the program. In an average month in 2024, SNAP helped more than 41 million people achieve a nutritional diet.

President Trump promised “no taxes” on Social Security in his stump speech for his One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The bill contains the exact opposite, and Trump’s approach to the Social Security Administration at large is only further damaging the floundering program.

“We will make the Trump tax cuts permanent, and expand the child tax credit, and deliver no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security for our great seniors,” Trump said with a collection of working-class American citizens standing behind him.

It would do the president well to be transparent about taxes on Social Security and the impact they’ll have on the elderly, especially in relation to the most significant piece of legislation of his second term.

“They couldn’t remove tax on Social Security in reconciliation, so they added a short-term standard deduction boost for seniors,” David Dayen of The American Prospect wrote on X. “People on Social Security will not get the deduction (which starts at age 65) and people not on SS will get it.”

Tens of millions of people, including many of Trump’s supporters, rely on monthly retirement, survivor, and disability checks from the Social Security Administration. Not only is the SSA predicted to run out of money a year earlier than previously thought, Trump’s policies like mass deportation are crippling the workforce that is currently paying into the program.

Trump and Elon Musk have also spread unsubstantiated claims about rampant “waste, fraud, and abuse” within the SSA, and they’re still aiming to levy massive cuts to the program while raising the retirement age and reducing benefits for high earners.

Only time will tell how much Trump’s “for the people” schtick will resonate with his supporters, especially when the current iteration of Trump’s bill further endangers the SSA while giving them nothing but crumbs.

During Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Event,” an attempt by the president to win over holdouts in the Senate and push through his tax and spending plan, his remarks meandered briefly into an alternate history of the paper clip.

Trump’s speech touted the bill, in typical Trump fashion, as “one of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of our country.”

It also briefly touched on one provision that would make interest on auto loans for American-made cars tax deductible, an idea Trump suggested he thought up himself—and which, MarketWatch reports, “you probably won’t notice … once you factor in tariffs.”

“What a great idea,” Trump said “people” told him. “It’s like the paper clip.” Trump used the same analogy when announcing the proposal in October 2024.

Here, the 79-year-old president strayed from his monotonously delivered prepared remarks to edify us with a made-up factoid: “Somebody came up with the idea of the paper clip many years ago. 1817. And he became a very rich person, and everybody looked at it and said, ‘Why the hell didn’t I think of that?’”

Trump’s guess was a little bit off, as paper clips didn’t appear in their familiar modern form until around 1892, and the invention was never patented, according to Scientific American.

But a more significant falsehood followed, as Trump went on to claim that his supposedly automaker-friendly policies accounted for his past electoral successes in Michigan, falsely stating, “I actually think we won it three times in a row” because of them. Trump lost Michigan in 2020 against Joe Biden by more than 150,000 votes.