The House Budget Committee voted down Speaker Mike Johnson’s reconciliation bill, dealing a massive blow to House Republican leadership and President Donald Trump, Punchbowl News reports.
The final tally wasn’t even close, with 16 yes votes and 21 no votes.
NBC News: “Negotiations with the GOP holdouts will continue in the coming days and Republicans on the panel will try to regroup as soon as Monday.”
David Graham: “Unemployment rates are near historical lows, and finding good help is hard. Perhaps that’s why Donald Trump keeps turning to the same group of officials to fill multiple positions.”
“The government has a term for this: dual-hatting. Or rather, a term exists for what Blanche, Vought, and Patel are doing. Rubio is breaking new ground in both semantics and government. Some dual-hat roles exist by design. The head of the U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency are the same person, to increase agility when dealing with cybersecurity threats, though some people believe that the roles should be split.”
“In these other cases, however, Trump either can’t or won’t find someone to actually fill the role. Neither possibility is encouraging. If he can’t, at this early stage in his administration, find enough qualified people willing to do these jobs, then the rest of his term will be a continuous struggle to execute. If he simply won’t, because he would rather stick with a small circle of figures he trusts, the administration will also be beset by dysfunction, as leaders pulled in too many directions drop balls, as well as by dangerous incompetence and conflicts of interest.”
New York Times: “The Penn Wharton estimate sought to analyze the full scope of the Republican tax package, computing the effects of the tax cuts as well as the plan to pay for them by slashing federal spending on other programs, including Medicaid and food stamps. Combined, those policies could fall disproportionately on the poorest, including those near or below the poverty line, the economists found.”
“People making between about $51,000 and $17,000 could lose about $700 on average in after-tax income beginning in 2026, according to the analysis, when factoring in both wages and federal aid. That reduction would worsen over the next eight years. People reporting less than $17,000 in income would see a reduction closer to $1,000, on average, also increasing over time, a shortfall that underscores their reliance on federal benefits.”
“By contrast, the top 0.1 percent, including those with incomes over $4.3 million, would gain on average more than $389,000 in after-tax income in 2026, the data show. These earners benefit more from a Republican measure because it cuts taxes on the wealthy and makes other favorable changes, including for businesses, which may improve the value of their investments.”
“Donors are being offered a ‘dedicated VIP experience’ at several events that President Trump is planning with the U.S. military this summer,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Those who give to America250, a committee created to support what Trump envisions as a large national celebration next year for America’s 250th birthday, will be given special access to three events… Those include a military parade Trump is planning on his birthday, a ‘military readiness’ event he is leading at Fort Bragg military base with thousands of troops and an Independence Day celebration in Washington.”
“Military commanders will be told to identify troops in their units who are transgender or have gender dysphoria, then send them to get medical checks in order to force them out of the service,” the AP reports.
ProPublica: “Since Trump’s inauguration, the State Department has intervened on behalf of Starlink in Gambia and at least four other developing nations, previously unreported records and interviews show.”
“As the Trump administration has gutted foreign aid, U.S. diplomats have pressed governments to fast-track licenses for Starlink and arranged conversations between company employees and foreign leaders. In cables, U.S. officials have said that for their foreign counterparts, helping Starlink is a chance to prove their commitment to good relations with the U.S.”
“President Trump said that he thinks former FBI Director James Comey’s Instagram photo of seashells on a beach arranged to form the numbers ‘8647’ was a call for his assassination, saying that the Justice Department will deal with the repercussions,” The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.”
“Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team are taking a major gamble Friday as they power ahead with a key committee vote that — as of the start of that meeting — appeared to lack the support needed to succeed,” CNN reports.
“The fate of the vote was still unclear even as the House Budget Committee’s GOP roster entered the Capitol for the meeting, with Republican lawmakers and senior aides tight-lipped about whether leadership had struck any deals with the conservatives who — just 12 hours earlier — were vowing to tank the bill.”
President Trump urged Republicans to fall in line: “Stop talking and get it done!”
Steve Schale: “There is no playbook for navigating the post-presidency, especially in this modern era. For President Joe Biden, the story of his life has been one of getting back up: after his wife and daughter died, after two failed runs for president, after losing Beau, after navigating Hunter’s challenges, and now after leaving the presidency in a way he had not planned.”
“There is also no real playbook for a hack after the presidential run either. And like so many who love the Boss, his appearance on The View last week just didn’t feel right.”
“Ten years ago, I found myself landing in Bidenworld after opening my mouth to say a few things others were thinking. Now, out of my admiration for the Boss, I will open my mouth one last time: I like, respect, and admire Joe Biden, and I have a hunch that over time, history will treat much of his presidency well. At the same time, I wish he would stop litigating it. It isn’t helping.”
McKay Coppins: “Behind all the DOGE pyrotechnics, Vought—who serves as director of the Office of Management and Budget—is working methodically to advance a sophisticated ideological project decades in the making. If Musk is moving fast and breaking things, as the Silicon Valley dictum goes, Vought is taking the shattered pieces of the federal government and reassembling them into a radically new constitutional order.”
“Vought’s agenda includes shrinking the government, but it goes deeper than that. His vision of state power would effectively reject a century of jurisprudence and unravel the modern federal bureaucracy as we know it. A devotee of the so-called unitary executive theory, he wants to see the civil service gutted and repopulated with presidential loyalists, independent federal agencies politicized or eliminated, and absolute control of the executive branch concentrated in the Oval Office.”
New York Times: “As a young producer at CNN in the 1990s, Sam Feist spent countless hours working on ‘Crossfire,’ one of the first cable news shows to pit partisan pundits against one another. At lunch one day, the co-host Michael Kinsley mused about an alternative idea: ‘Ceasefire,’ a program where Republicans and Democrats tried to find areas of agreement.”
“Now Mr. Feist is the chief executive of C-SPAN, the low-key public affairs network beloved by political junkies. And ‘Ceasefire’ is about to become a reality.”
CNN announced it will air the Broadway play Good Night, and Good Luck starring George Clooney on Saturday, June 7.
As part of their red-carpet treatment, Saudi officials arranged for a fully operational mobile McDonald’s unit to accompany President Trump during his stay.
“House conservatives are urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to be more aggressive against President Donald Trump’s political enemies,” Punchbowl News reports.
“These Republicans want Dr. Anthony Fauci and New York Attorney General Letitia James arrested for what they view as politically targeted efforts to go after Trump.”
Washington Post: “Operatives at the National Republican Congressional Committee and consultants working on House races think vulnerable Republican House members should simplify their message and argue they are rooting out fraud and abuse inside the health-care program to ensure it serves the Americans who need it the most, instead of just weathering attacks that the Republican-backed catchall bill working its way through Congress represents dramatic cuts to Medicaid.”
Steve Bannon told Axios that President Trump’s second 100 days — ending Aug. 7 — will be pivotal in determining how much of his second-term agenda he’ll actually deliver.
Said Bannon: “What happens between now and Labor Day really defines — more than even the first 100 days of flood-the-zone — not just Trump’s second term, but Trump’s legacy.”
He added: “It’s stopping the Third World War. It’s laying out his definitive economic and financial plan, how we’re going to finance it. Plus it’s his assault on the ‘Deep State’ and the redefinition of the Article II powers. And these are all converging into one huge fucking fight.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.