About 8-in-10 Americans, 79%, say immigration is “a good thing” for the country today, up sharply from 64% a year ago and a high point in a nearly 25-year trend. In contrast, only two in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing, down from 32% last year.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill” proposed by President Trump is making waves in the fiscal landscape, not just for its broad reforms but for its potential to dismantle the IRS Direct File program. This initiative, which has gained traction in the Senate and awaits a final vote in the House of Representatives, could see the end of a service that has simplified tax filing for countless Americans.
Launched as a pilot program, the IRS Direct File was designed to offer a free, online tax filing option directly with the IRS. Initially available in 12 states, it expanded to 13 more by 2025, with plans for further growth. Despite its popularity among taxpayers, the program has faced criticism from some Republicans who view it as redundant and wasteful.
Federal investment in the program reached approximately $75 million, with $41 million spent in the year ending April 2025. Despite this, a study by the Urban Institute in December 2024 found that three-quarters of surveyed taxpayers were interested in using Direct File. This highlights a strong public desire for expanded free filing options and a simplified tax process.
Democratic strategist Julie Roginsky is losing her patience with people trying to give President Donald Trump an “out” to blame others for what some view as bad policies in his “big, beautiful” budget legislation.
Speaking to MSNBC’s Chris Jansing on Monday, Roginsky said, “Why Republicans are killing healthcare for millions doesn’t really matter. What really matters is what they’re doing.”
“They’re cutting health care to about 12 million Americans in the next several years. They’re shutting down rural hospitals. They’re getting rid of the social safety net. They’re ballooning the deficit to the point that it will imperil Medicare, Social Security and so on,” she said. “They’re getting rid of food assistance. They’re getting rid of every single aspect of the safety net and the social net that Donald Trump promised to keep. And don’t forget, he promised that he would not touch Medicaid, and he promised he wouldn’t touch Medicare. And he’s touching both of those.”
Jansing asked if Roginsky thought Trump knows what’s going on, implying he’s being lied to about what’s in the bill.
“Why do we keep treating him like a moron who can’t read?” ranted Roginsky.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a Republican-led challenge to a federal campaign finance law provision that limits how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates. The case, which centers on free speech claims, involves Vice President JD Vance, who was a U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio when the lawsuit was initiated.
The justices took up an appeal from Vance and two Republican committees, contesting a lower court’s decision that upheld the spending limits. The challengers argue the restrictions violate constitutional protections by capping party spending influenced by input from supported candidates.
DNC Chair Ken Martin, DSCC Chair Kirsten Gillibrand, and DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene said in a statement: “We refuse to sit on the sidelines as Trump’s DOJ and the Republican Party attempt to throw out longstanding election laws for their own benefit. Republicans know their grassroots support is drying up across the country, and they want to drown out the will of the voters.
https://www.newsweek.com/supreme-court-jd-vance-campaign-finance-ohio-case-2092657
A flock of Ice agents, some masked, some sporting military-operator fashion for show, smooshed the New York City comptroller, Brad Lander, up against a wall and handcuffed him in the hallway of a federal courthouse in early June, shuffling the mild-mannered politician into an elevator like the Sandman hustling an act off the stage 10 miles north at Harlem’s Apollo Theater.
Like at the Apollo, Lander’s arrest was a show. News reporters and cellphone camera-wielding bystanders crowded the hall to watch the burly federal officers rumple a 55-year-old auditor asking for a warrant.
“I’m not obstructing. I’m standing here in this hallway asking for a judicial warrant,” Lander said. “You don’t have the authority to arrest US citizens.”
“This is an urgent moment for the rule of law in the United States of America and it is important to step up,” Lander told the Guardian after the arrest. “And I think the dividing line for Democrats right now is not between progressives and moderates. It’s between fighters and folders. We have to find nonviolent but insistent ways of standing up for democracy and the rule of law.”
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“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part,” Mario Savio, a student leader in the free speech movement, a campaign of civil disobedience against restrictive policies on student political activity, said 60 years ago during a campus protest. “You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.”
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Hannah Dugan, a Wisconsin judge, allowed a man to leave through the back doors of her courtroom, allegedly in response to the presence of immigration officers waiting to arrest him. FBI agents subsequently arrested Dugan in her Milwaukee courtroom on 25 April, charging her with obstruction.
The FBI director, Kash Patel, posted comments about her arrest on X almost immediately, and eventually posted a photograph of her arrest, handcuffed and walking toward a police cruiser, with the comment: “No one is above the law.” Digitally altered photographs of Dugan appearing to be in tears in a mugshot proliferated on social media. Trump himself reposted an image from the Libs of TikTok website of Dugan wearing a Covid-19 mask on the day of her arrest.
Three days later …
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/30/democrats-trump-resistance
Donald Trump is once again reminding Republicans where disloyalty gets you.
The president celebrated on Sunday night shortly after GOP Senator Thom Tillis announced he would not seek re-election next year. A day earlier, the North Carolina Republican had voted against advancing Trump’s signature spending package—the so-called “big, beautiful bill”—incurring the president’s wrath. Trump quickly slammed Tillis in Truth Social posts and threatened to back a primary challenger.
“Great News! “Senator” Thom Tillis will not be seeking reelection,” Trump wrote on Truth Social after Tillis bowed out.
In a follow-up post, Trump suggested that Republicans who oppose his legislative priorities could pay a political price.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-celebrates-civil-war-win-with-brutal-message-to-gop
After six months of aggressive immigration enforcement and promises to focus on deporting violent criminals, the Trump administration has arrested and detained a small fraction of the undocumented immigrants already known to Immigration and Customs Enforcement as having been convicted of sexual assault and homicide, internal ICE data obtained by NBC News shows.
The data is a tally of every person booked by ICE from Oct. 1 through May 31, part of which was during the Biden administration. It shows a total of 185,042 people arrested and booked into ICE facilities during that time; 65,041 of them have been convicted of crimes. The most common categories of crimes they committed were immigration and traffic offenses.
Almost half of the people currently in ICE custody have neither been convicted of nor charged with any crime, other ICE data shows.
The new data obtained by NBC News shows that from Oct. 1 to May 31, ICE arrested 752 people convicted of homicide and 1,693 people convicted of sexual assault, meaning that at the absolute most, the Trump administration has detained only 6% of the undocumented immigrants known to ICE to have been convicted of homicide and 11% of those known to ICE to have been convicted of sexual assault.
This month, Californians filled the streets of Los Angeles to peacefully demand justice for SEIU President David Huerta—who was violently detained by ICE during an immigration protest—and for so many hardworking immigrant families across our state. The response? Tear gas. Rubber bullets. National Guard troops unnecessarily deployed to flex federal muscle. And a United States senator literally wrestled to the ground for daring to ask basic questions.
This wasn’t just an overreaction. It was a message: fall in line—or face the consequences.
At the same time, in Washington, the Trump administration is dismantling the very systems that keep our families safe and healthy. They’re firing scientists, defunding cancer research, slashing Medicaid, and replacing trusted experts with conspiracy theorists. It’s not just policy failure. It’s a campaign of calculated neglect—and political retribution aimed at states like ours that dare to push back.
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In just six months, the Trump administration has launched a full-scale assault on these safeguards. They’ve gutted funding, laid off thousands of career scientists, and shuttered key public health teams—all while claiming these cuts are about “efficiency.”
Let’s be clear: this isn’t streamlining. It’s sabotage.
This administration didn’t just fire the experts tracking avian flu, which has now infected dozens of people in California and is spreading rapidly through livestock. They disbanded the FDA team investigating the lead-contaminated applesauce that poisoned more than 500 children. They cut NIH programs working to prevent cancer and Alzheimer’s. They even fired the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel—weeks after a measles outbreak, as pregnant women and children remain vulnerable to viruses like COVID-19—only to replace them with vaccine skeptics.
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Deporting people to countries where they might be tortured or killed? All good, according to the six GOP justices.
I always knew that Donald Trump’s unhinged cruelty toward immigrants would find aid and comfort among the Republicans on the Supreme Court. But I held out hope that his brazen violations of lower-court orders might give the Republicans pause before greenlighting Trump’s continued terror campaign against people who didn’t happen to be born here.
On Monday, that small sliver of hope was dashed. The Supreme Court issued a ruling from its emergency docket allowing Trump to send immigrants to third-party countries—even ones where they might be tortured and killed. The Republican order violates this country’s constitutional grant of due process, international human rights laws, literal treaties to which this country is a signatory, and basic human decency. In other words, it was a bog-standard Republican Supreme Court ruling.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/supreme-court-trump-deportations
CNN aired a breaking news segment featuring a guest exclaiming, “this is huge” in response to Donald Trump’s strike on Iran.
On the program, United States Representative Thomas Massie predicted Republicans will lose their majorities due to the President’s impulsive leadership.
Anchor Manu Raju introduced Massie, who advised Trump to “go back and look at the first Iraq war,” highlighting that the President at the time engaged in debate and voting with his government before any significant military action. He cited additional instances, such as Barack Obama’s 2013 desire to intervene in Syria, which Congress rejected, resulting in no action. It comes as new dementia fears were raised about Trump after viewers spotted a mysterious clue in his suit.
https://www.the-express.com/entertainment/tv/175645/cnn-donald-trump-iran-airstrike
