Republican fiscal hardliners block key vote for Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ – live

US judge Paula Xinis expressed frustration on Friday that the Trump administration once again failed to provide sufficient details about its efforts bring back Kilmar Ábrego García, who was deported in error from the United States in March and sent to a prison in El Salvador.

Xinis said at a hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland, that the government had not produced information from high-level officials that adequately explained how it was complying with her order to “facilitate” the return of Maryland resident Ábrego García.

The Trump administration has argued that details sought by Ábrego García’s attorneys are confidential state secrets, but Xinis said the justice department had not shown how the doctrine would apply. She said:

You have not given me anything that I can really say: ‘Ok, I understand what of the plaintiffs’ requests or the court’s order, in the government’s view, poses a reasonable danger to diplomatic relations.’

Xinis said information provided by government officials in Ábrego García’s case so far had been “an exercise in utter frustration”.

Ábrego García’s lawyer Andrew Rossman told Xinis it was “deeply disturbing” that the administration indicated it was in compliance with the judge’s orders while “at the same time the highest officials in the government are saying the opposite”.

The hearing marks the latest court clash over Ábrego García’s deportation, amid concerns that the administration failed to comply with Xinis’ orders even after the US supreme court said it “should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken” to facilitate his return.

Ábrego García was deported to El Salvador on 15 March despite an order protecting him from removal there. His case has sparked concerns that Trump’s administration is willing to disregard the judiciary, an independent and equal branch of government.

Xinis last month ordered the administration to provide more information about what it was doing to secure Ábrego García’s return. She previously said that the administration had not given her any information of value about its efforts.

Administration officials have accused courts of interfering with the executive branch’s ability to conduct foreign policy. They have invoked the state secrets privilege, a legal doctrine that allows the government to block the disclosure of information that could harm national security interests, to conceal details about its efforts to return Ábrego García.

The US Department of Justice said in a court filing this week that Ábrego García’s lawyers have “all the information they need” to confirm that it has complied with the court’s order on his return.

Earlier we reported that five Republicans revolted during a key House budget committee vote, sinking Trump’s signature legislation.

My colleague Chris Stein notes that one of the no votes – Pennsylvania’s Lloyd Smucker – initially voted to advance the bill, then changed his vote to no at the last minute, which he said was a procedural manoeuvre to allow the bill to be reconsidered in the future.

The other four no’s came from members of the far-right Freedom Caucus joined with the Democratic minority to block the bill from proceeding, arguing the legislation does not make deep enough cuts to federal spending and to programs they dislike.

Rightwing lawmakers want to see big reductions in government spending, which has climbed in recent years as Trump and Joe Biden responded to the Covid pandemic and pursued their own economic policies.

“We’re … committed to ensuring the final package is fiscally responsible, rightsizing government and putting our fiscal future back on track. Unfortunately, the current version falls short of these goals and fails to deliver the transformative change that Americans were promise,” one of the no’s Andrew Clyde, of Georgia, said at the budget committee.

He called for deeper cuts to Medicaid, but many Republicans in both the House and Senate have signaled nervousness with dramatic funding reductions to the program that provides healthcare to lower-income and disabled Americans. Others in the GOP dislike parts of the bill that would cut green tax credits created by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

And a small group of Republicans representing districts in blue states such as New York and New Jersey are demanding an increase in the deduction for state and local taxes, saying it will provide needed relief to their constituents. But including that would drive the cost of the bill even higher, risking the ire of fiscal conservatives.

Trump says people in Gaza are starving and US will take care of situation

Jason Burke

Donald Trump has said people are starving in Gaza and the US would have the situation in the territory “taken care of” as it suffered a further wave of intense Israeli airstrikes overnight.

On the final day of his Gulf tour, the US president told reporters in Abu Dhabi:

We’re looking at Gaza. And we’re going to get that taken care of. A lot of people are starving.

Israeli officials have consistently denied that the tight blockade imposed on the devastated territory more than 10 weeks ago has caused hunger – which flies in the face of obvious evidence – and Trump’s comments will be seen as further evidence of tensions between Benjamin Netanyahu and Washington, Israel’s closest ally.

There had been widespread hope that Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates could lead to a fresh pause in hostilities or a renewal of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Instead, Israel’s raids and bombardment over the past 72 hours have raised the levels of violence higher than for several weeks, with the death toll coming close to that seen in the first days of Israel’s renewed offensive in Gaza after a fragile ceasefire collapsed in March.

Hamas on Monday freed Edan Alexander, the last living US citizen it held, after direct engagement with the Trump administration that left Israel sidelined.

As part of the understanding with Washington regarding Alexander’s release, Taher al-Nunu, a senior Hamas official, said the group was “awaiting and expecting the US administration to exert further pressure” on Israel “to open the crossings and allow the immediate entry of humanitarian aid”.

Israel, which claims Hamas systematically loots aid to fund its military and other operations, has put forward a plan to distribute humanitarian assistance from a series of hubs in Gaza run by private contractors and protected by Israeli troops.

The US has backed the plan, which has been described as unworkable, dangerous and potentially unlawful by aid agencies because it could lead to the mass forced transfer of populations.

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, on Thursday acknowledged the criticism and said Washington was “open to an alternative if someone has a better one”.

Lawyers for 252 Venezuelans deported by the Trump administration and imprisoned in El Salvador for two months have alleged that the migrants are victims of physical and emotional “torture”.

A law firm hired by the Venezuelan government said that it had been unable to visit the migrants in the mega-prison where they are locked up.

The lawyers are seeking “proof of life”, but say they have come up against a wall of silence from president Nayib Bukele’s administration and El Salvador’s justice system.

Grupo Ortega filed a habeas corpus petition with the supreme court on 24 March seeking an end to what it calls the “illegal detention” of the Venezuelans, but is still waiting for a ruling.

“They are treating them like common criminals,” lawyer Salvador Ríos said, after the migrants were shown dressed in prison clothing, shackled and with shaved heads.

“This is torture,” both physically and psychologically, Rios said in an interview with AFP.

The lawyers delivered a letter in early May to Bukele, a key ally of Donald Trump, requesting authorization to visit the Venezuelans, but so far without success.

AFP sought a comment from the Salvadorian presidency about the case and the lawyers’ efforts, but has not received a response.

As we reported earlier, former FBI director James Comey has said it did not occur to him that that the numbers 8647 – which he spotted spelled out in seashells on a beach, and posted on social media – could be interpreted as a call to assassinate the president, as many supporters of Donald Trump have claimed.

So what does ‘86’ really mean? My colleague Edward Helmore explains all:

US military commanders will be told to identify troops in their units who are transgender or have gender dysphoria, then send them to get medical checks in order to force them out of the service.

A senior defense official on Thursday laid out what could be a complicated and lengthy new process aimed at fulfilling Donald Trump’s directive to remove transgender service members from the US military despite years of service alongside all the other 2 million US troops.

Earlier this month, the Pentagon announced plans to remove in short order the 1,000 members of the military who openly identify as trans, and giving those who have yet to so identify openly 30 days to remove themselves.

That memo was fueled by a supreme court decision allowing the Trump administration to enforce a ban on trans military members. The defense department has said it will follow up by going through medical records to identify others who have not come forward.

The latest order to commanders relies on routine annual health checks that service members are required to undergo. Another defense official said the Pentagon had scrapped – for now – plans to go through troops’ health records to identify those with gender dysphoria.

Instead, transgender troops who do not voluntarily come forward could be outed by commanders or others aware of their medical status. Gender dysphoria occurs when a person’s biological sex does not match their gender identity.

The defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details of the new policy. The process raises comparisons to the earlier “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which at times had commanders or other troops outing gay members of the military who at the time were not allowed to serve openly.

Active-duty troops will have until 6 June to voluntarily identify themselves to the defense department, and troops in the national guard and reserve have until 7 July.

The department is offering a financial incentive to those who volunteer to leave, although some who have put their hand up point out that it is far from genuinely voluntary. They will receive roughly double the amount of separation pay of those who do not come forward.

The former US ambassador to Ukraine, who resigned from the role in April, has said that she quit the post because she disagreed with Donald Trump’s foreign policy.

Ambassador Bridget Brink, who served as ambassador to Ukraine from May 2022 until her departure last month, outlined the reasons for her departure for the first time in an op-ed published today by the Detroit Free Press.

In the piece, Brink hit out at Trump for pressuring Ukraine rather than Russia.

I respect the president’s right and responsibility to determine US foreign policy ― with proper checks and balances by US Congress.

Unfortunately, the policy since the beginning of the Trump administration has been to put pressure on the victim, Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia.

Brink, a long-serving career diplomat, said that she therefore felt it was her duty to step down. She said:

Peace at any price is not peace at all ― it is appeasement.

Reuters notes that Brink took a public line that was supportive of Ukraine under the administration of Trump’s pro-Kyiv predecessor Joe Biden.

After Trump assumed office in January 2025 promising to quickly end the war in Ukraine, Brink’s public statements became far more neutral.

She was publicly criticised by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in April for what he described as a weak reaction to a Russian missile strike on the city of Kryvyi Rih that killed 11 adults and nine children.

Several days later, a state department spokesperson announced that Brink was stepping down.

A member of the House budget committee said the panel will “ideally” vote to advance Trump’s tax and spending megabill on Monday, The Hill reports.

Republican representative Lloyd Smucker, of Pennsylvania, who was one of the five GOP no votes, told reporters:

We’re working through some remaining issues here; there are just a few outstanding issues I think everyone will get to yes, and we’re going to l resolve this as quick as we can and hopefully have a vote, ideally on Monday, and we can advance this bill.

Smucker said the panel plowed ahead with a vote despite the reservations among hard-liners because “there were continued, ongoing discussions and we were very close to having a yes”.

We thought potentially there would be a yes on this, but it’s part of the process of working through the remaining issues.

We will feel we’re on the right path to get this done.

Representative Brandon Gill of Texas, who had been at home with his wife and newborn baby, surprisingly returned to participate in the committee vote after he was initially expected to miss it due to being on paternity leave.

But while his appearance gave House GOP leaders some added wiggle room, allowing the committee to lose two Republican votes and still pass the bill, rather than just one, it still wasn’t enough to save the bill when a whopping five of his colleagues rebelled.

Following the readout of the vote tally, House budget committee chair Jodey Arrington adjourned the hearing and told members they wouldn’t be meeting again this weekend.

The Texas Republican had earlier convened the panel by stressing the legislation’s importance to voters who elected Trump to the White House and gave the party full control of Congress last November, Reuters notes. He said:

They want common sense policies. And they want from all of us a commitment to putting America and Americans first. Let’s give the people what they voted for.

After the vote, Arrington said negotiations with the GOP holdouts, who are pushing for steeper spending cuts in the bill and raising concerns about its impact on the national deficit, will continue in the coming days and Republicans on the panel will try to regroup as soon as Monday, NBC News notes.

Reuters notes that the vote is likely a temporary – but no less humiliating and massive – setback for the bill in a Republican-controlled Congress that so far has not rejected any of Trump’s legislative requests.

But it could delay plans for a vote by the full House next week. That means it will now be more difficult for House speaker Mike Johnson to meet his self-imposed Memorial Day deadline to pass Trump’s signature “big, beautiful bill” and send it to the Senate.

Republican fiscal hawks refused to back down even after the president’s intervention earlier, with enough objecting to prevent Trump’s sweeping tax bill from advancing in a crucial House budget committee vote which, Reuters notes, could determine whether the bill is taken up by the full House of Representatives next week.

The committee voted no by 21-16. The GOP could only afford to lose two of their votes to advance the legislation. But five Republican representatives – Chip Roy, Ralph Norman, Andrew Clyde, Josh Brecheen, and Lloyd Smucker – joined all Democrats on the panel in voting against. The Hill notes that Smucker changed his vote from yes to no after it was clear the bill would not advance.

“We are writing checks we cannot cash and our children are going to pay the price. So, I am a ‘no’ on this bill unless serious reforms are made,” Roy, of Texas, told the committee.

Ralph Norman, of South Carolina, said he was “very disappointed” with the state of the measure, adding in the committee: “Sadly, I’m a hard no until we get this ironed out.”

The measure would add an estimated $3.72tn over a decade to the federal government’s existing $36.2tn debt.

All four lawmakers said they hoped to reach a deal with House speaker Mike Johnson, for whom this is a major and embarrassing setback to his self-imposed Memorial Day deadline for getting the bill to the Senate.

The Republicans are split between three factions: moderates from Democratic-led states who want to raise a federal deduction for state and local taxes (SALT); hardliners demanding that a bigger SALT deduction be offset by deeper cuts to Medicaid and the full repeal of Biden-era green energy tax credits; and other moderates determined to minimize cuts of Medicaid, upon which many of their constituents depend on for access to healthcare.

The proposed legislation would impose work requirements on Medicaid beginning in 2029. Hardliners want those expedited and have called for a sharp reduction in federal contributions to Medicaid benefits available to working-class people through the Affordable Care Act – an option vehemently opposed by Republican moderates.