THE BIG VOTE: Senate Republicans spent all night negotiating and voting on elements of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” while Vice President JD Vance was standing by to be a tie breaking vote. They’re trying to meet the President’s July 4th deadline for passing the bill.

  Fiscal conservatives unhappy that the bill will add $3.3 trillion to the national debt were pushing for further cuts to Medicaid. Moderates were trying to ease budget cuts.

  With the Democrats uniformly opposed to the bill, The Republicans can lose only three votes before the Vice President would have to step in to be the tiebreaker. So far, two Republicans, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky, have said they will not vote for the big bill.

  Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, concerned about funding cuts particularly for Medicaid, have yet to commit their votes for the bill. 

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:

— The US Justice Department sued the city of Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass and City Council members, calling LA’s sanctuary city law “illegal” and asking that it be blocked from being enforced. The lawsuit claims that by enacting an ordinance to harbor illegal immigrants, the City Council sought to “thwart the will of the American people regarding deportations.” 

  The lawsuit claims that the country is “facing a crisis of illegal immigration” and that efforts to address it “are hindered by Sanctuary Cities such as the City of Los Angeles, which refuse to cooperate or share information, even when requested, with federal immigration authorities.”

— The administration has been busy in its battles with perceived enemies of righteousness. The federal Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism sent a letter to Harvard yesterday declaring that their investigation found the school failed to combat antisemitism on campus.

  The government claimed that a majority of Jewish students felt a negative bias on campus and a quarter of them feel unsafe. The complaint also listed Jewish students who were assaulted and campus demonstrations that violated university policies, among other problems.

  The Task Force letter said: “Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government. Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.” 

  Harvard issued a statement saying that the  university “has taken substantive, proactive steps to address the root causes of antisemitism in its community.”

— The Trump administration on Monday shut down a federal website that had presented congressionally mandated reports and research on climate change. 

GUILTY: Bryan Kohberger, a former graduate student in criminology, is reported to have accepted a plea deal, agreeing to admit to the murders of four University of Idaho undergraduates and avoid the death penalty. Kohberger is accused of sneaking into the students’ off-campus house as they slept in 2023 and massacring them with a knife. He was set to go to trial in August.

   The family of Kaylee Goncalves, one of the victims, said in a Facebook post they are “beyond furious at the State of Idaho.”

    The Goncalves family had lobbied for the use of a firing squad as a means of death. “After more than two years, this is how it concludes, with a secretive deal and a hurried effort to close the case without any input from the victims’ families on the plea’s details,” the Goncalves family said in a statement.

LITTLE BOXES: The California legislature passed two bills with support from both parties that would roll back strict environmental regulations that have stalled suburban development. For more than 50 years the law called the California Environmental Quality Act has given environmentalists power to slow suburban growth as well as given neighbors and disaffected parties a powerful tool to stop projects they don’t like.

  Traditionally defenders of the law, California Democrats have realized that it makes building housing for 40 million residents nearly impossible and contributes to the affordable housing and homeless crisis.

THE WAR ROOM: Israeli forces killed at least 74 people in Gaza yesterday with airstrikes that killed 30 people at a seaside cafe and gunfire that took out another 23 Palestinians crowding for food aid, witnesses and health officials said. Two other airstrikes killed another 15.

  The café that was hit, one of the few businesses still operating, was a gathering spot for residents seeking internet access and a place to charge their phones. 

GLOWING REPORTS: Satellite images show work has begun at the top of the mountain that houses Iran’s Fordo nuclear development facility, possibly revealing that Iran has begun to investigate the extent of damage from the US bombing raid. The image shows construction equipment and a new road leading to a ventilation shaft that was struck with one of the US bunker buster bombs.

  President Trump said the facility and others were “obliterated,” but other assessments suggest that Iran could be back to refining bomb grade uranium within months. 

THE SPIN RACK: The jury in Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex-trafficking trial had been deliberating only an hour before they sent out a note saying one of the jurors was having trouble following the judge’s instructions. After discussing it with the lawyers, judge Arun Subramanian told the jury to go back to work.  — Two guests on a Disney Dream cruise ship as it returned to Florida from the Bahamas were rescued after going overboard. Witnesses said a father jumped into the water to save his young daughter after she fell from the ship.

 BELOW THE FOLD: Being a king just isn’t what it used to be. The British government has decided to take the royal train out of service to save money. King Charles and the royal family will have to travel by regular train service. 

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