Senate passes Big Beautiful Bill
The US Senate passed President Trump’s mega bill with the help of Vice President Vance.
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NEWS BRIEFS
Five news stories we didn’t want you to miss.
1 - Senate passes Big Beautiful Bill
The US Senate has passed President Trump’s Mega Bill with the help of Vice President Vance. Now it is on to the House for final passage.
https://apnews.com/article/congress-tax-cuts-trump-big-bill-bf3f94471b13db3e5d50f0cd1f8fe793
Fox News has more here:
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is excited:
2 - Trump and the End of Iran De-escalation
GOOD READ: This article from The Dispatch by retired lieutenant general, former U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster titled "Trump Ends the Folly of De-escalation," argues that previous U.S. administrations, from Carter to Biden, repeatedly failed in their Iran policy by attempting de-escalation and conciliation, which only emboldened the Iranian regime. McMaster writes that President Trump's "maximum pressure" strategy and military strikes, such as the killing of Qassem Suleimani and recent attacks on nuclear facilities, as a departure from these ineffective policies.
3 - Lia Thomas is stripped of swimming titles
The University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) has agreed to a resolution with the Trump administration's Department of Education, which entails stripping Lia Thomas of all titles earned while competing in women's sports and issuing an apology for past Title IX violations.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon says the Trump administration should take a victory lap:
4 - Paramount Settles Trump's "60 Minutes" Lawsuit
Paramount Global has agreed to a $16 million settlement with President Trump over a defamation lawsuit concerning a "60 Minutes" interview. This payment will be spent on Trump's future presidential library, but the settlement came without an apology.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/02/media/cbs-trump-60-minutes-paramount-settlement
CBS alum Maria Shriver isn’t happy.
https://x.com/mariashriver/status/1940277278896005294
Axios has a breakdown:
https://www.axios.com/2025/07/02/trump-paramount-cbs-harris-interview-lawsuit-settlement
As does Rusty Weiss over at RedState:
Who smartly notes that portions of the funds are designated for Trump's future presidential library and to promote conservative causes. The agreement also mandates a "Trump Rule", requiring CBS to release complete, unedited transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates, which aims to ensure media transparency.
5 - Mamdani: NYC's New Marxist Mayor?
Jonathan Turley, analyzes Mamdani's past statements, particularly his reference to "seizing the means of production," to argue that he exhibits characteristics of a "hardcore Marxist" rather than merely a "socialist." His piece also critiques PolitiFact's assessment of Mamdani as not being a communist and highlights how Mamdani's platform, including city-run grocery stores and free services, aligns with more radical ideologies.
President Trump sees Mamdani for who he is, and has a plan if Mamdani tries to block ICE from doing its job:
The corruption and politicization of our government
These days, the federal bureaucracy is so corrupted with partisanship and the two-tiered system of justice is so obvious that polls show most Americans no longer have any trust in our institutions to apply laws and regulations fairly and impartially. Even more shocking, a Rassmussen survey last year found that 46% of Americans believed “there is a group of politicized thugs at the top of the FBI who are using the FBI…as Joe Biden’s personal Gestapo.” That included 64% of Republicans and even 30% of Democrats. Good to remember at a time when leftists are accusing ICE and the FBI of being Trump’s Gestapo when all they’re doing now is enforcing the laws on actual lawbreakers.
When a federal agency once revered as heroic crime fighters is viewed by many Americans as the equivalent of Hitler’s goon squad, you know something went seriously off the rails. How did this happen?
We would argue that you could trace it back to the IRS scandal during the Obama Administration, famously painted as “scandal-free” by a fawning media that spent eight years studiously ignoring its many scandals. After Obama began raising taxes and increasing debt, grassroots opposition started forming under the name of the “Tea Party” movement, inspired by the patriots who launched the Boston Tea Party.
These groups were very effective in helping the Republicans win back control of the House in 2010 and were increasing and expanding their efforts in the lead-up to Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012. (We’ll also note that despite Biden’s DOJ treating conservative activists as terrorists, you never heard of violence or riots at Tea Party rallies – they even left parts cleaner than they found them. ) Obviously, Democrats believed they were TOO effective. But they didn’t fully trust their usual tactic of having their lapdogs in the media mock Tea Party members as dumb rubes and smear them as racists (no matter how many black people you could see at Tea Party rallies.) They needed to undermine the movement more effectively.
Enter the Obama IRS.
With their numbers growing, many of these Tea Party groups applied to the IRS for tax-exempt nonprofit status. This should have been a relatively quick paperwork-shuffling task, yet the application process stretched on for month after month. Tea Party group leaders were subjected to outrageous demands for unrelated financial records and lists of their donors, which was none of the government’s business.
This warfare-by-government-paperwork dragged on until after the election, preventing many of these groups from engaging in legitimate democratic activities such as voter registration drives. When Democrats cry about how opposed they are to “election interference” and making it harder to vote, remember that they are pioneers in the field.
The IRS official in charge of this process was Lois Lerner, who was called before a House Committee to explain herself. She issued a long statement declaring her innocence of any wrongdoing, then immediately took the Fifth and refused to answer questions. One could argue that by making that statement, she forfeited her right to invoke the Fifth Amendment, but we’ve learned only too well in recent years that laws don’t apply to well-connected Democrats (let’s hope that’s another “norm” that Trump shatters.) This was when we were just learning of powerful Democrats’ immunity to prosecution and people were still surprised.
When Obama was pressed on this scandal by Bill O’Reilly, he insisted that there was “not even a smidgeon of corruption” at the IRS. It took the election of Trump and new Attorney General Jeff Sessions to perform a real investigation. In 2017, Sessions issued a statement finding that the IRS’ use of political criteria “was wrong and should never have occurred. It is improper for the IRS to single out groups for different treatment based on their names or ideological positions. Any entitlement to tax exemption should be based on the activities of the organization and whether they fulfill requirements of the law, not the policy positions adopted by members or the name chosen to reflect those views. There is no excuse for this conduct. Hundreds of organizations were affected by these actions, and they deserve an apology from the IRS.”
In fact, these groups deserved far more than an apology. Their fundamental right to engage in a political campaign to help determine their own leaders had been undermined for partisan reasons by a federal agency that was supposed to remain impartial. The people responsible for that outrage also deserved punishment, but did they get it? Are you kidding?
Obama was reelected, nobody from the IRS was indicted, and Lois Lerner retired with her full pension. The fact that the people whose rights she helped deny have to pay taxes to fund her pension only added insult to injury.
The IRS scandal was a major example of the corruption of a federal agency, but Obama’s opponents were prevented from exercising their right to participate in the election, so it worked. As former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid smirked when questioned about spreading the lie that Mitt Romney didn’t pay his income taxes for 10 years, “I don’t regret that at all. Romney didn’t win, did he?” At the time, that was so shameless that even the Huffington Post ran an article condemning him.
But the Democrats at the top shared Reid’s “values,” and to them, the IRS scandal wasn’t something to be ashamed of, it was a future blueprint for every federal agency under their control. Under Biden, the DOJ and FBI still proclaimed their impartiality, but they no longer even bothered hiding their biases or corruption. Democrats who disrupted government proceedings were hailed as heroes who speak truth to power, while Republicans who did the same were thrown in federal prison for years, sometimes after enduring horrific conditions while waiting to find out what they were going to be charged with.
If you dared disagree with that Administration’s radical policies, you were a “domestic terrorist” and a target, and that included traditional Catholics, concerned parents who spoke up at school board meetings, grandmothers praying outside abortion clinics and your great-uncle who liked to wear his red MAGA cap. All “threats to our democracy.”
And all this thick tangle of corruption grew from letting them get away with the IRS scandal during the “scandal-free” Obama Administration. This is why Trump now has such a monumental task ahead in reforming these agencies and removing the embedded leftwing activists. It shows that you need to yank weeds out by the roots when they first appear and not let them grow long enough to spread their seeds.
Keep yanking those weeds out by the roots POTUST. Also drain that swamp. Happy 4th. MAGA
WHEN will there be charges and actual arrest of the crazies? I hope the big bill is just a step to begin fixing the many things. I understand just like the tariffs, sometimes you have to have a loan in order to get things back together. At this point has any of the DOGE fraud money actually found it's way back into the American economy?