The Briefing, Vol. XIII, Issue 26
This week:
- “Big, beautiful bill” moves forward
- Huge court wins for Trump this term, but this one may be the biggest
- Thom Tillis, under fire from Trump, announces retirement
Outlook
Tax and spending bill: President Trump’s impressively named One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 advanced in the Senate over the weekend, albeit not without some drama, and may pass the Senate as soon as today. One Republican senator is now retiring as a result of his vote on the motion to proceed — more on that below.
Senators agreed to move forward by a vote of 51 to 49 after the bill had been rescued from conservative objections by a deal cut between Vice President JD Vance and conservative Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.). The deal involves the administration backing their amendment to reduce the federal government’s 90 percent match for states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare to able-bodied, childless adults. The rationale is that the feds do not reimburse Medicaid for children or the disabled at anything close to that rate.
Even so, Trump had a warning for them: “For all cost cutting Republicans, of which I am one, REMEMBER, you still have to get reelected. Don’t go too crazy!”
As we noted previously, there is simply far too much pressure on Republicans to pass this bill through the Senate and then back through the House again for them to do anything but. Without it, Trump’s 2017 tax bill will otherwise expire, resulting in a massive tax increase for people at all income levels, disproportionately harming the low end of the income scale. It would also destroy whatever momentum Trump has built up in his second term and make him fail to deliver on specific campaign promises — specifically to end taxes on tips, taxes on Social Security, and to raise the cap on the state and local tax deduction from the $10,000 level at which it was set in 2017.
Court victory: Meanwhile, Trump won a huge court victory for promoting his immigration agenda especially. It has generally been a very good Supreme Court term for conservatives, ranging from such issues as parental rights in education to online age verification laws to protecting children from transgender medical procedures to state funding for Planned Parenthood.
But the biggest win for Trump personally has to be the 6-3 ruling limiting the use of universal or nationwide injunctions by individual federal district judges, on the grounds that the statute establishing their courts does not permit such a thing in most cases.
Many items in Trump’s agenda have been held up by what can only be called judicial guerilla warfare, which invovles forum-shopping and strategic lawsuits by left-wing groups to impede policy priorities of various kinds. Although the ruling does not bar all nationwide injunctions (specifically, states can request them as part of equitable relief, and likely will do so in the specific birthright citizenship case being litigated), it will limit the cases in which this can be done.
Going forward, this ruling is likely to enable much of Trump’s energy and education policy, and more components of his mass deportation campaign, among many other things. His executive orders will largely take effect, outside of individual cases while they are being litigated.
It must be remembered that a future Democratic president may benefit from this as well. However, Republicans seem unbothered by this, if only because universal injunctions by district judges were a relatively recent innovation and had not been used nearly as often in the service of conservative goals. The court has blunted what was largely a tool of the Left.
The timing of this final case (and it was the very last one released for the Supreme Court term) was very good, if only because it cast a pall upon any Republican resistance to Trump’s agenda in Congress. To oppose him from within the Republican camp at this time feels like swimming against the tide. This perhaps contributed to the reason why only the most contrarian Republican senator of them all (Rand Paul of Kentucky), and one other, was ultimately willing to cross Trump by voting against his budget reconciliation bill.
Senate 2026
Michigan: Former House intelligence chairman and 2024 nominee Mike Rogers (R) leads in his own campaign’s poll of the primary for the open seat being vacated by Sen. Gary Peters (D). The poll is being released in order to discourage Rep. Bill Huizenga (R) from entering the race. It shows Rogers with 48 percent and a commanding lead over Huizenga, who is at just 20 percent.
Still, it is only natural that, after nearly winning his Senate race last November, Rogers should have much better name recognition than anyone else in the Republican field. No Republican has won for Senate in Michigan in more than 30 years, but the state remains as competitive in terms of partisanship as it ever was.
North Carolina: This was already going to be a big race in 2026, but events last week have resulted in its becoming the main event.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R), already under siege by Democrats, and now attacked by President Trump for his vote against Trump’s tax bill, announced that he will be retiring. Trump had promised to meet with Tillis’s potential primary opponents and endorse one of them.
This obviously changes Senate Republicans’ calculations for maintaining power. But it might not be bad for them. Tillis, a former speaker of the state House, barely survived the 2020 election, probably only because his Democratic opponent imploded in an adultery scandal. There might be other Republicans with better chances of holding the seat than Tillis had, including First Daughter-in-Law Lara Trump (R) and RNC Chairman Michael Whatley (R).
Another factor: Democrats would most like to see former Gov. Roy Cooper (D) run. He has been cool to the idea, but it is possible that Tillis’s change of mind will change his calculations as well. Former Rep. Wiley Nickel (D-N.C.) is the only Democrat formally declared as a candidate at this point.
South Carolina: Conservatives raging against the Trump administration’s strikes on Iran may have a chance to put their money where their mouth is. Former Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer (R) is now talking about mounting a primary challenge against Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), criticizing his hawkish foreign policy in a recent interview with the Washington Examiner.
It is worth noting that, as of now, the Trump administration’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear capabilities have not caused the tragic conflagration that many had warned would be inevitable. That doesn’t mean something bad can’t still happen as a result, however.
