July 2, 2025 - All Down to The House

What might be the last step for the MAGA murder budget, plus sending a message to institutions giving in to Trump and more

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LAST CHANCE TO STOP THE MAGA MURDER BUDGET

After a long night of amendment votes, Republican leadership offered enough special giveaways to get Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski on board with the MAGA murder budget and passed it through the Senate on a 50-50 vote with Vice President J.D. Vance breaking the tie. Maine’s Susan Collins, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis joined every single Democrat in opposition.

Democrats were able to secure improvements during the Byrd rule challenges and the vote-a-rama. They kept the ban on Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care and attack on health coverage for the undocumented out of the final bill, along with the effort to strip judges of their power to hold officials accountable for contempt of court and the ban on state and local level regulation of artificial intelligence. We also pared back some of the blows to solar and wind power projects. But this bill remains a disaster that will pour $171 billion into the detention camp archipelago, cut taxes for the wealthy and powerful, and pay for it by gutting our health care and food assistance, blowing up the national debt and burdening green energy (check out this summary from the Congressional Progressive Caucus). The Medicaid cuts in particular are even deeper than the House version. As Huffington Post’s Jen Bendery put it, it is an assault on American life.

The murder budget now heads back to the House of Representatives, where Republicans hope to begin procedural votes as soon as 9 AM this morning with an aim of passing it by the end of the day. Flight cancellations due to severe weather have kept many members of Congress from returning to D.C., which may cause the vote to slip until tomorrow.

The House has the option of either passing the bill as is and sending it straight to Trump’s desk or making further changes and sending it back to the Senate or to conference. Leadership is whipping members to finish the job this round – Democrats have proposed more than 400 amendments, but it’s not clear the GOP will allow any from either party to come up for votes.

Numerous House Republicans have expressed fury about the bill and about its debt impact in particular. They can only afford to lose three if everyone votes. (Both Warren Davidson (R-OH) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) voted no on the bill initially, and supposed moderate Don Bacon (R-NE) having expressed more reservations since announcing his retirement.) Of course, we’ve been here before with many of the same right-wingers currently up in arms, and it seems likely that they’ll fall in line.

That being said: given the enormous consequences of this bill, we are going to keep pushing until this is done, one way or the other. Here’s some steps we can take today:

• Reach out to our senators to thank or condemn them for their votes on this bill. Let those who voted yay let them know we will be holding them accountable. And with Democrats, let’s remind them again we will be expecting them to be just as ruthless as the GOP was during this process in fixing what the Republicans have broken and moving our country forward.

• Contact our House members and make sure they know we’re demanding they vote no on the bill. We can find language at 5Calls or here – and as

  Ariella Elm
  flagged, Rep. Maxwell Frost is encouraging us to fax them if we can. (House offices use fax machines as copy machines, and can’t turn them off as easily as they can their phones.)

  • With our Democratic reps, let’s urge them to stall this vote as much as they possibly can.

• Activists around the country are still calling into key districts to drive even more calls to our reps we can join:

  • 1AM and 5PM with Medicaid Defenders/SEIU, sign up here

  • 4PM-9PM ET with People’s Action, sign up here

  • 5:30PM-10:30PM ET with Together for CA Health, sign up here

  • 5:30PM-10:15PM ET with Grassroots Democrats HQ and Chop Wood, Carry Water, sign up here

  • 6PM-7:30PM ET with Activate America, sign up here

  • 6PM-8PM ET with MoveOn, sign up here

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PARAMOUNT MUST KNOW THE CONSEQUENCES OF COLLABORATION

Over the fierce objection of their own journalists, CBS News’ parent company Paramount has chosen to settle with Donald Trump over his nonsense lawsuit attacking 60 Minutes’ coverage of the campaign. This is part of a wave of Republican efforts to intimidate news outlets from reporting on Trump accurately, and a genuine threat to freedom of the press. Paramount has chosen to meekly submit, offering a $16 million bribe to Trump’s presidential library. They are preparing for a $8.4 billion merger with Skydance Media which will require approval from the Federal Communications Commission, and there has long been speculation their executives feared the deal would be blocked in retribution if they fought out this case.

We need to give these corporations more reasons not to fold beyond the good of the nation. They were worried about the consequences if they stand up to Trump, and they need to know they’ll pay a price for complying, too.

Let’s reach out to CBS and Paramount and let them know they have lost our trust in their brands (see list) and our viewership of their programs. We can submit messages on their websites here and here and find Paramount’s mailing address and phone number here. More directly, if we are subscribers to Paramount’s on-demand streaming service Paramount Plus, we can cancel here.

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THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA MUST, TOO

Paramount is far from the only institution choosing flight over fight. The University of Pennsylvania has given in to Trump’s transphobic bullying, agreeing to block trans women from their sports teams and erase the memory of swimmer Lia Thomas, who has long been a scapegoat of the right.

We just barely stopped Congress from cutting off transgender people from gender-affirming care. It is remarkably clear that this campaign is part of a broad effort to drive our trans loved ones from public life, and we should be standing shoulder to shoulder with those being targeted instead of abandoning them.

Let’s contact the president and board of trustees for UPenn to let them know they are complicit with a dangerous and ongoing war on a marginalized group, and they are actively contributing to making them less safe. If we are connected with the school, let’s let them know it will impact our future involvement. (And we can also contact any other college or university we have ties with to push them to choose a different path, and to publicly reiterate their commitment to doing so.)

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CIVIL RIGHTS IMPERILED, GOOD TROUBLE LIVES ON

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who gave us the groundbreaking 1619 Project, warns in her latest New York Times essay that Republicans are systematically destroying the civil rights laws and institutions that brought America so much closer to that elusive “more perfect union.” Hannah-Jones connects the dots on racial injustice like no one else. Here’s a gift link to this important essay. Let’s read it and share. And let’s honor the work of the Civil Rights generation that gave our country civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and so much more by attending the Good Trouble Lives On national day of action on July 17th. We can find or host an event near us, click here.

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KEEPING AN EYE ON…

• Actions to help turn Virginia blue here

• Public comments on proposed rule making it easier to fire federal workers due tomorrow

• Free America Weekend actions with Women’s March scheduled for Independence Day, host info here

• Labor Day mass actions September 1st, host toolkit and registration links here

• Find protests near us daily via

  K. Starling
  ’s We The People Dissent