LEGISLATIVE CALLS TO ACTION -- July 2, 2025

Reconciliation Bill of 2025 (Also as the Big Beautiful Bill or the Big Ugly Bill)

The Senate passed this bill this morning, July 1. It will next be reconciled in the House, where an original version passed by the smallest of margins in May. Votes in the House are tentatively planned for July 2, pending the outcome in the Senate. (MSN)

"This is the most deeply immoral piece of legislation I have ever voted on in my entire time in Congress,” said Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT).

“[W]e're debating a bill that’s going to cut healthcare for 16 million people. It's going to give a tax break to…massively wealthy people who don't need any more money. There are going to be kids who go hungry because of this bill. This is the biggest reduction in…nutrition benefits for kids in the history of the country.”

“This bill is a farce,” said Senator Angus King (I-ME). “Imagine a bunch of guys sitting around a table, saying, ‘I've got a great idea. Let's give $32,000 worth of tax breaks to a millionaire and we’ll pay for it by taking health insurance away from lower-income and middle-income people. And to top it off, how about we cut food stamps, we cut SNAP, we cut food aid to people?’... I've been in this business of public policy now for 20 years, eight years as governor, 12 years in the United States Senate. I have never seen a bill this bad. I have never seen a bill that is this irresponsible, regressive, and downright cruel.”

“This place feels to me, today, like a crime scene,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said on the floor of the Senate. “Get some of that yellow tape and put it around this chamber. This piece of legislation is corrupt. This piece of legislation is crooked. This piece of legislation is a rotten racket. This bill cooked up in back rooms, dropped at midnight, cloaked in fake numbers with huge handouts to big Republican donors. It loots our country for some of the least deserving people you could imagine. When I first got here, this chamber filled me with awe and wonderment. Today, I feel disgust.”

We now know that cutting off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood clinics will be in the bill, after it got the okay from the parliamentarian and a Democratic effort to remove it failed with only Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) crossing party lines. It seems increasingly likely that the ban on state regulation of AI will be removed, with Collins and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joining Dem efforts to strike it, and it is increasingly unlikely they will add the Medicaid expansion rollback, with Josh Hawley (R-MO) announcing his opposition. (Rogan’s list)

Coal energy will be subsidized and clean energy will be taxed. (Tim Miller, The Bulwark Podcast)

If You Live in a Republican House District

•  Flood the phones. Tell your representative that a vote for this bill is a vote to destroy lives -- and you’ll remember it. Then, send an email to drive home the point.

•  Fight back with friends. We’re stronger together, so encourage your friends and family to take action to stop the cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

  • Sign up and get access to Empower, an app that has everything you need to text your circle about the Republican tax scam: ready-to-use scripts and messages with links they can use to call their own Members of Congress.

•  Help spread the word about what’s in this bill using our social toolkit. When people know what’s in the bill, they overwhelmingly oppose it -- but a lot of people still aren’t aware of the details. You can help change that.

•  Forward this blog post. Five texts. One group chat. You never know who’s in a swing district until you ask.

Supreme Court ruling on Trump vs. Casa

On June 27 the Supreme Court delivered a major decision that limits federal judges’ power to block the president’s agenda nationwide. Stemming from a case over Trump’s order on birthright citizenship, the ruling says that individual judges cannot grant nationwide injunctions against presidential policies. 

The court granted the Trump administration request to narrow the reach of the injunctions blocking the president's executive order while proceedings move forward, but "only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief" to plaintiffs who can sue, Barrett wrote. The justices did not address the question of whether Mr. Trump's order is constitutional, and the administration has said agencies have 30 days to issue public guidance about implementation of the policy, allowing time for more challenges to be filed.

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the majority of abdicating its role in protecting the rule of law. She read portions of her dissenting opinion from the bench.

"With the stroke of a pen, the president has made a 'solemn mockery' of our Constitution," she wrote. "Rather than stand firm, the court gives way."

Universal injunctions and the birthright citizenship case

The court's ruling came in a trio of emergency appeals by the Trump administration arising out of the president's executive order seeking to end the 14th Amendment's guarantee of birthright citizenship.

But instead of swiftly deciding whether to grant the Trump administration emergency relief, the Supreme Court held arguments on whether to restrict the use of nationwide, or universal, injunctions, which are judicial orders that prevent the government from enforcing a policy anywhere in the country and against anyone, including individuals who are not involved in the litigation before them. 

"Those injunctions thwart the executive branch's crucial policies on matters ranging from border security, to international relations, to national security, to military readiness," Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote. "They repeatedly disrupt the operations of the Executive Branch up to the Cabinet level." (CBS News)

The Supreme Court's decision still allows plaintiffs challenging a policy to file class-action lawsuits and seek certification of a nationwide class.

It's a huge win for the Trump administration on the issue of these nationwide injunctions, the idea that you can't go to one federal court and, often the plaintiffs — and this was something that was a thorn in the side for both the Trump administration, the Biden administration before that, and then the Trump administration before that.

You could go to one particular district and find a federal judge that you thought might be a friendly one and block a policy or a law throughout the entire country. And so the Supreme Court today said that federal judges don't have that kind of power. (PBS News)

To thoroughly appreciate the impact of this ruling in “Trump vs Casa”, it is important to remember that “universal injunctions” allow courts to grant immediate relief that benefits not only the party who requests them but also anyone harmed by an action of the government. Individuals or organizations can go to court seeking such orders while they pursue further legal action.  One commentator rightly notes that, “In many situations, there is no other way to stop widespread illegality, especially that perpetrated by the federal government. Nationwide wrongs require a nationwide remedy.”  We no longer have this option to stop this cruel illegality. (Liberty Justice Center).