See the changes the Senate made on GOP tax and spend bill
The Senate made several substantive changes to the House version of the GOP spending bill that the White House has decreed to be a must-pass.
The modifications created a bill that had just enough support to pass the Senate with a tie breaking vote by Vice President JD Vance. House leaders have said they are unhappy with the changes but will ultimately have to accept them if they want to meet the July 4 deadline set by President Donald Trump.
Here are some of the changes the Senate made to the bill:
Not making it easier to ignore court rulings
Senate Republicans removed a provision in the House version of the bill that would have restricted judges' ability to hold people accountable for violating court orders.
In recent months some judges have considered contempt rulings against the Trump administration for ignoring court orders that restricted the administration's actions.
The legislation would bar judges from enforcing such contempt rulings if they didn't first order a bond, which is commonly set at zero or not ordered in cases when people are claiming the government did something unconstitutional.
Democrats say it's an attempt to limit the power of the courts, while Republicans say it was an incentive to stop frivolous lawsuits by requiring plaintiffs to pay in.
Who is eligible for the child tax credit?
The Senate version allows mixed-status immigration status families to quality for the child tax credit for American citizen children.
Currently, children with Social Security numbers, the vast majority of whom are American citizens or legal permanent residents, are eligible for the Child Tax Credit, even if their parents lack Social Security numbers, according to the Center for Migration Studies.
The Senate version, requires at least one parent to have a Social Security number to qualify. The House version required both parents to have valid Social Security numbers to qualify, which would have kept millions of children from getting the benefit. The Center for Migration Studies estimated this would have impacted 4.5 million citizen and legal permanent resident children.
A ban on regulating AI
Senate Republicans stripped out a provision in the House bill that would have blocked states from creating new regulations to shape how artificial intelligence is used or developed for the next 10 years.
It would have also blocked dozens of states from enforcing AI regulations and oversight structures already in place. There is now no federal AI regulation to take the place of state policies, which are likely to vary across the country.
Tax-free gym memberships
Senators removed a portion of the bill qualifying sports and fitness expenses as qualified medical care, which would have allowed people to pay for them tax-free through a Health Savings Account.
The benefit, worth $500 for an individual or $1,000 per couple, could not have been used at "a private club" owned by members, or a facility that offers golf, hunting, sailing or riding facilities. The health and fitness part of the business also couldn't be "incidental to its overall function and purpose."
Purple Heart benefits
Senators also removed a provision that would have created a new income tax credit for some people who earned a Purple Heart – the decoration for service members who were wounded or killed in action.
Purple Heart recipients who lost a portion of their Social Security disability benefits because they got a job could have also gotten a higher Earned Income Tax Credit to make up those lost Social Security benefits.
Pell grants
The Senate also pulled out a change to the Pell Grant program, which provides federal aid to low-income students to attend colleges and universities. Right now, students are considered full time and qualify for the maximum amount of aid if they take 12 credits a semester.
The House version of the bill would have changed that to 15 credits a semester, which the National College Attainment Network estimated would result in a nearly $1,500 cut in benefits for students who can't increase their courseload because of work or caretaking responsibilities. The Senate left the 12-credit requirement intact.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Workers living in fear of ICE raids in Los Angeles are hiding ‘like Anne Frank'
Ongoing raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Los Angeles have reportedly driven members of the city's Latino population into hiding, with one man claiming: 'It's like Anne Frank.' A month after protests erupted in opposition to ICE's actions in L.A. – leading President Donald Trump to send in the National Guard and active-duty Marines to maintain order over the wishes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass – a climate of 'insanity and terror' abides, according to The Wrap. The report quotes anecdotal evidence from locals who say that Latino residents, both documented and undocumented, are preferring to absent themselves from work and stay indoors. Doing otherwise would mean risking detention by armed agents in combat gear, who have been storming homes, businesses and even medical clinics with 'faces obscured, no warrants and no identification' over the last month. The Department of Homeland Security reports that over 1,600 immigrants were detained in southern California in the two weeks leading up to June 25, equating to 101 arrests per day in support of Trump's roundup of illegal migrants, the Republican having promised the biggest mass deportation push in American history on the campaign trail last year. Among those cited in the report is a local father who is struggling for childcare because his nanny is too scared to come to work and owners of car washes, grocery stores and restaurants across the city who say they have been forced to stay closed to protect their work forces, whom they feel are being arbitrarily targeted. 'People are staying home. It does feel very scary out there right now,' immigration attorney Jaclyn Granet said. 'It's incredibly disturbing to witness as a human and also as an immigrant attorney, who works with foreign talent. I support the idea that America is better when we have a global community within our borders. 'It really feels like this program of mass ICE raids and mass detention is extremely short-sighted… If you're raiding the farms, the restaurants – how long does it take until a restaurant has to close, or we don't have this crop or that crop?' She added: 'Do I think that this level of force is necessary? Absolutely not. That is part of the chaos and scare tactics meant to be communicated through these raids. Part of Trump's plan is to create chaos.' Residents have been routinely posting videos of clashes between agents and citizens to social media, seeking to document what they regard as scenes of harassment and intimidation unfolding in their neighborhoods. With tensions running high, Cynthia Gonzalez, the vice mayor of Cudahy, a city southeast of L.A., faced calls to resign last week for challenging the notorious 18th Street and Florencia gangs to help local residents stand up to ICE, which she referred to in an Instagram video as 'the biggest gang there is.' Gonzalez subsequently issued a statement via her attorney stating that she 'in no way encouraged anyone to engage in violence.'
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Meet ICEblock: The app that lets residents know when immigration agents are in their community
A nationwide spike in immigration enforcement actions under Donald Trump's administration has been met with a surge in social media activity organizing against them. Grassroots efforts on social media platforms are sharing legal information and alerting users to real-time locations of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in neighborhoods across the country. But one developer has built a tool to specifically alert users to ICE's whereabouts, adding to a growing patchwork of social media-driven, real-time alerts on the state of Trump's anti-immigration footprint. More than 70,000 users are on ICEBlock, an anonymous crowd-sourced app that lets users report real-time ICE activity within a five-mile radius. By Tuesday morning, the app was the top social networking app in Apple's App Store, and the third most-downloaded free app overall — behind Love Island USA and ChatGPT. Later that afternoon, ICEBlock reached No. 1. 'In recent years, ICE has faced criticism for alleged civil rights abuses and failures to adhere to constitutional principles and due process, making it crucial for communities to stay informed about its operations,' according to the app's website. 'Modeled after Waze but for ICE sightings, the app ensures user privacy by storing no personal data, making it impossible to trace reports back to individual users,' the website says. ICEBlock is available in 14 languages and exclusively available on iOS devices over privacy concerns that Android could expose user information. Its slogan: 'See something, tap something.' 'When I saw what was happening in this country, I wanted to do something to fight back,' developer Joshua Aaron told CNN, adding that the administration's sweeping deportation efforts resemble systemic removals in Nazi Germany. 'We're literally watching history repeat itself.' The app 'does not condone violence of any kinds,' Aaron told The Independent. 'We state this multiple times in the app, and I have reiterated this in every interview I have given. ICEBlock serves to 'inform not obstruct' and its goal is to allow people to avoid potentially harmful encounters with ICE.' Following coverage of the app on CNN on its business and tech website, administration officials have accused the network of 'advertising' and 'promoting' it — and suggested Aaron should be criminally prosecuted. 'What they're doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities, operations, and we're going to actually go after them and prosecute them,' Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Tuesday. 'What they're doing is illegal.' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the app 'sounds like this would be an incitement of further violence against our ICE officers.' Leavitt and other administration officials have repeatedly claimed ICE agents experienced a '500 percent' increase in 'violence' against them, though the data supporting that figure is unclear. Administration officials have repeatedly threatened to prosecute anyone who reports information about ICE agents' locations. 'We haven't seen the clip. We'll take a look at it. But certainly it's unacceptable that a major network would promote such an app that is encouraging violence against law enforcement officers who are trying to keep our country safe,' she told reporters on Monday. ICE acting director Todd M. Lyons called the network's 'promotion' of the app 'reckless and irresponsible.' 'Advertising an app that basically paints a target on federal law enforcement officers' backs is sickening,' said Lyons, touting the '500 percent' figure. 'And going on live television to announce an app that lets anyone zero in on their locations is like inviting violence against them with a national megaphone,' he added. 'CNN is willfully endangering the lives of officers who put their lives on the line every day and enabling dangerous criminal aliens to evade U.S. law. Is this simply reckless 'journalism' or overt activism?' A statement from CNN noted there is nothing illegal whatsoever about writing about it or any other app. 'This is an app that is publicly available to any iPhone user who wants to download it,' the statement said. 'There is nothing illegal about reporting the existence of this or any other app, nor does such reporting constitute promotion or other endorsement of the app by CNN.' Aaron said the administration's threats have not deterred him. 'We will not be intimidated,' he told The Independent. 'As long as ICE agents have quotas, and this administration ignores people's constitutional rights, we will continue fighting back,' he said. 'No human is illegal.' Communities have long relied on social media platforms to spread the word about police sightings. Instagram and X users flag sobriety checkpoints. Drivers log speed traps on Google Maps and Waze. And Citizen, originally named Vigilante, maintains a network of police scanners and lets users upload their own real-time crime footage. Instagram stories and group chats on encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp are now full of location-specific ICE information. Thousands of people follow Reddit communities like r/ICE_raids, r/LaMigra, and r/EyesOnICE, pooling information from immigration attorneys, news outlets and advocates for real-time updates on raids and how to handle federal law enforcement interactions. Protests and marches — including 'No sleep for ICE' events where demonstrators sing, play music and bang pots and pans outside hotels where agents are staying — are organized almost exclusively through social media apps and chats. Google Maps and Waze users are reporting 'icy conditions.' And on TikTok, where users fear certain language could be blocked from users' algorithms, accounts are offering similar advice for 'staying safe on the road.' That ubiquity of social media resistance also is meeting an expansive government surveillance network that continues to grow under the Trump administration, fueled by a small army of Silicon Valley contractors. Days after Trump entered office, ICE posted several notices on the federal procurement website seeking contractors for a range of tools to expand the agency's capacity to track and surveil immigrants. Contractors are reportedly leading government-wide efforts to build advanced facial recognition software, sophisticated tracking devices, and, of course, social media screening. 'ICE is trying to turn people's faces into QR codes,' according to Will Owen, communications director with civil rights watchdog the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. 'This is a dystopian attack on immigrant communities that will tear families apart through the click of a camera lens. It will also lead to countless mismatches, since real-time facial recognition is especially error-prone.' Palantir, a tech firm founded by Trump ally Peter Thiel, is allegedly behind a government-wide surveillance system collecting information across all agencies. The Trump administration has deployed officials across federal law enforcement agencies to focus on immigration enforcement, with an alleged directive from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller to make at least 3,000 daily arrests — a quota that immigration attorneys say will almost certainly result in 'collateral' arrests that could devastate families and communities. The administration is also expanding partnerships with local police departments and jails to pursue and detain immigrants and demanding Congress earmark billions of dollars for more detention centers. More than 57,000 people are currently held in ICE custody, or roughly 140 percent more than its detention capacity. A vast majority of those immigrants do not have a criminal record, and 93 percent have not been convicted of any violent crime. The Trump administration has thus far detained an average of roughly 20,000 immigrants each month, three times as many under the same point in 2024. "When I see things like ICE outside of elementary schools, that's what we are trying to push back against, because you need to do more,' Aaron told TIME. 'You need to protect your neighbors.'
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Can Trump's exemptions for undocumented farm laborers succeed without angering MAGA?
President Donald Trump's administration is introducing a 'work program' for America's agriculture sector to allow undocumented migrants to remain in their jobs, a policy that risks angering his base. Under the scheme, farmers will be allowed to vouch for workers who have entered the country illegally, exempting them from the president's illegal immigration crackdown due to their vital economic contribution. The existing H-2A visa program, which allows employers who meet specific regulatory requirements to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill seasonal agricultural jobs on a temporary basis, will also be streamlined, according to administration officials. A key reason for granting the exemptions is that, by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)'s own estimates, approximately 40 percent of unskilled farm workers in the country lack legal status, meaning Trump's mass deportation push risks blowing a hole in a crucial industry. A farmer in California told Reuters last month that she has already lost 70 percent of her workforce, with laborers fleeing in response to the aggressive actions of Immigration and Enforcement (ICE) agents in the Golden State. Trump first outlined the policy on Thursday when he delivered a 'Salute to America' address in Washington, D.C., flanked by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. 'If a farmer's willing to vouch for these people, in some way, Kristi, I think we're going to have to just say that's going to be good, right?' he said. The subject was briefly raised at Tuesday's White House cabinet meeting, when Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer announced that her department, which is responsible for processing H-2A visas, had established a new office partnering with the DOA. The president told the gathering that the work program would 'give the farmers the protection they need,' but insisted that it should not be misinterpreted as an amnesty. That might not be enough to convince his MAGA supporters, however, many of whom remain strongly opposed to any form of amnesty for illegal immigrants on 'America First' grounds. Far-right activist Laura Loomer has already attacked Rollins on X for pushing for exceptions for farmers and Turning Point co-founder Charlie Kirk has since warned: 'If you want to break our coalition, go and push amnesty.' White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson attempted to dispel their concerns in a statement in which she said: 'President Trump remains committed to carrying out the largest mass deportation operation in history by removing dangerous, violent criminal illegal aliens from American communities and targeting the sanctuary cities that provide safe harbor to criminal illegals.' At a press conference on Tuesday, Rollins likewise insisted the program was not an amnesty and said she remained committed to securing a 100 percent American workforce for the country's farms, adding that she saw technological advances and the redeployment of able-bodied U.S. benefits recipients to the sector as a longer term solution to the over-reliance on illegal labor. 'Ultimately, the answer on this is automation, also some reform within the current governing structure,' she said. 'And then also, when you think about it, there are 34 million able-bodied adults in our Medicaid program. There are plenty of workers in America.' Rollins also pledged to end relationships with 'foreign adversaries,' such as China, by preventing their businesses from buying farmland and terminating existing contracts. Addressing the realities of the present, Iowa Farmers Union President Aaron Heley Lehman told The Daily Beast: 'The fear that some people in our communities are feeling doesn't make for a better workforce. 'There's room for a solution that will help our farms, help our communities, and be fair to workers, but it's really hard to find that space at the moment.'
