Not tired of winning: Trump on a roll, for now
The 79-year-old's victory on his "One Big, Beautiful" bill is the latest in a series of consequential successes at home and abroad in the past two weeks.
From US airstrikes that led to an Iran-Israel ceasefire, to a NATO spending deal and a massive Supreme Court win, they have underscored Trump's growing power.
The Republican will now take a victory lap wrapped up in the US flag after Congress passed the tax and spending bill that embodies the political goals of his second term.
He will sign it at an Independence Day event at the White House on Friday featuring a flyover by a B-2 stealth bomber, the type of aircraft used in the US raids on Iranian nuclear sites.
"It's going to be a HOT TRUMP SUMMER," the White House said on social media.
After the bill passed, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Dan Scavino, posted a video of Trump telling a campaign rally during his first presidential run in 2016 that "we're going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you'll say, 'Please, please. It's too much winning."
- 'Work just beginning' -
The author of the book "Trump: The Art of the Deal" has bragged of several in recent weeks, but the bill is arguably the biggest.
It honors many of the pledges he made in the 2024 election with its tax cuts and funding for his mass migrant deportation program.
It also showed his ability to get his Republican party to fall in line despite bruising infighting -- and a major row with his billionaire former ally Elon Musk.
But more importantly for a man who openly wants to join the pantheon of US presidents whose faces are carved into Mount Rushmore, it promises to consolidate his legacy.
The bill seals Trump's hard-line US domestic policy into law -- in contrast to the rash of presidential executive orders he has signed that can be overturned by his successors.
Yet Trump still faces a series of challenges.
They start with selling a bill that polls show is deeply unpopular among Americans due to its huge cuts to welfare and tax breaks for the rich.
"The president needs to lead the effort to go out and explain it, he has the biggest megaphone in America," Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff under president George W. Bush, told Fox News.
Rove added that it would have a "huge impact" on the US midterm elections in 2026, as Democrats pounce on it and people realize that they are losing healthcare coverage.
"The work is just beginning."
Trump was talking about the bill at a campaign-style rally in Iowa on Thursday that was also kicking off celebrations for America's 250th anniversary year.
- 'Win after win' -
Trump's winning streak has meanwhile fueled the self-belief of a man who said he had been "saved by God to make America great again" after he survived an assassination attempt last year.
But the next prizes could be far harder to obtain.
After the Iran-Israel ceasefire, Trump has stepped up his search for a deal to end to the brutal war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
He will host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday in push him -- but peace has proven cruelly elusive in the 22-month conflict.
Trump's election campaign promise to end Russia's war in Ukraine within 24 hours has also stalled, despite him having his sixth call with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier on Thursday.
The US president is meanwhile due to reimpose steep tariffs on dozens of economies next week.
He has insisted that countries will either bow to him and reach a deal or face sweeping levies, but global markets remain gripped by uncertainty.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt however insisted that Trump would do what he had promised.
"Despite the doubters and the Panicans, President Trump has delivered win after win for the American people," Leavitt told reporters.
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SBS Australia
15 minutes ago
- SBS Australia
Russia hits Ukraine with largest drone attack of the war after Putin-Trump call
Russia has pummelled Kyiv with the largest drone attack of the war, injuring at least 23 people and damaging buildings across the capital only hours after US President Donald Trump spoke with Russia's Vladimir Putin. Air raid sirens, the whine of kamikaze drones and booming detonations reverberated from early evening until dawn as Russia launched what Ukraine's air force said was a total of 539 drones and 11 missiles. Residents huddled with families in underground metro stations for shelter. Acrid smoke hung over the city centre. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is due to speak to Trump later on Friday about the war and a US pause in some deliveries of air defence missiles, called the attack "deliberately massive and cynical". "Notably, the first air raid alerts in our cities and regions yesterday began to blare almost simultaneously with media reports discussing a phone call between President Trump and Putin," Zelenskyy said on X. LISTEN TO SBS News 05/06/2025 05:27 English "Yet again, Russia is showing it has no intention of ending the war and terror," he said, calling for increased pressure on Russia and more air defence equipment. Kyiv officials said the attack damaged about 40 apartment blocks, passenger railway infrastructure, five schools and kindergartens, cafes and many cars in six of Kyiv's 10 districts. Poland said the consular section of its embassy was damaged in central Kyiv, adding that staff were unharmed. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that 14 of the injured were hospitalised. Ukraine's state-owned railway Ukrzaliznytsia, the country's largest carrier, said on Telegram that the attack on Kyiv forced them to divert a number of passenger trains, causing delays. Damage was recorded on both sides of the wide Dnipro River bisecting the city and falling drone debris set a medical facility on fire in the leafy Holosiivskyi district, Klitschko said. Russian air strikes on Kyiv have intensified in recent weeks and included some of the deadliest assaults of the war on the city of three million people. 'No progress at all' in Trump-Putin talk Trump said the call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday resulted in no progress at all on efforts to end the war, while the Kremlin reiterated that Moscow would keep pushing to solve the conflict's "root causes". "I'm very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don't think he's there, and I'm very disappointed," Trump said. "I'm just saying I don't think he's looking to stop, and that's too bad. "I didn't make any progress with him at all," Trump told reporters. A decision by Washington this week to halt some shipments of critical weapons to Ukraine prompted warnings by Kyiv that the move would weaken its ability to defend against intensifying air strikes and battlefield advances. Russian strikes on Kyiv have intensified and included some of the deadliest assaults on the city. Source: AP / Ukrainian Emergency Service On Friday, Zelenskyy called for increased pressure on Moscow to change its "dumb, destructive behaviour". "For every such strike against people and human life, they must feel appropriate sanctions and other blows to their economy, their revenues, and their infrastructure," he said. Ukraine's Air Force said that it destroyed 478 of the air weapons Russia launched overnight. However, air strikes were recorded in eight locations across the country with nine missiles and 63 drones, it said. Social media videos showed people running to seek shelter, firefighters fighting blazes in the dark and ruined buildings with windows and facades blown out. Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Thousands of civilians have died in the conflict, the vast majority of them Ukrainian. Many more soldiers are believed to have died on the front lines, although neither side releases military casualty figures. Late on Thursday, Russian shelling killed five people in and near the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a key target under Russian attack for months, Ukraine said.
Sydney Morning Herald
26 minutes ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
‘Going to be a reckoning': The ticking time bomb in Trump's big beautiful bill
New York: Celebrated historian Sir Niall Ferguson calls it 'Ferguson's Law' – a rule of thumb under which 'any great power that spends more on debt servicing than on defence risks ceasing to be a great power'. In a February paper for the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he is a senior fellow, Ferguson explained that in 2024, for the first time in nearly a century, the United States spent a bigger share of gross domestic product paying interest on its debt (3.1 per cent) than it did on defence (3 per cent). And on present assumptions, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects net interest payments will account for nearly double the defence budget by 2050. 'This unpleasant fiscal arithmetic poses a clear and present danger not merely to the US economy, but also to the position of the United States as the world's dominant military power,' Ferguson says. 'It must be a matter of urgent concern for American policymakers to restore an appropriate relationship between spending on debt service and spending on national security.' Enter Donald Trump and his One Big Beautiful Bill. A grab bag of Trump's policy priorities, the bill bounced its way through Congress this week to arrive at the president's desk for signing on Friday, Independence Day (Saturday AEST), in a highly symbolic display of his sway over the Republican Party and indeed the country. Loading It caps an extraordinary two weeks in which Trump bombed Iran, dominated a NATO summit, shepherded a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, won a significant and highly consequential victory in the US Supreme Court, opened a detention centre nicknamed 'Alligator Alcatraz' and, now, will ink his signature piece of legislation. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), which is its official title, has at its centre the permanent extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts for individuals and businesses, which were due to expire at the end of this year. According to the nonpartisan CBO, those tax cuts contribute the lion's share to a total increase in the budget deficit of $US3.25 trillion ($4.95 trillion) over the next 10 years – $US3.94 trillion including interest. The libertarian Cato Institute think tank, which advocates limited government, said that under what it called 'realistic assumptions' about economic growth, extensions of tax giveaways or delays to spending reform, the bill could actually add more than $US6 trillion to the national debt. Big, beautiful, bonkers? 'The debt burdens in this bill are unwelcome and dangerous,' says Judge Block, a senior fellow at the New York-based Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. 'It's one of the more expensive pieces of legislation in modern memory.' The Trump administration, and many Republicans, see it differently. In their view, the bill actually reduces debt as it contains savings measures while mostly rolling over existing tax policy. Otherwise, Americans would be hit with an enormous tax increase. The CBO, on the other hand, bases its calculations off existing law, under which taxes revert to their pre-2017 levels. Block said Republicans could largely justify the 2017 Trump tax cuts because they were paired with significant simplifications of the tax code. That is not the case this time, he said, though there were positive aspects to the OBBB, such as immediate tax write-offs for research and development. 'To a large extent, most of the debt here is coming from giveaways such as the overtime credit, the tax on tips deduction,' he said. 'Those can't really be justified as tax simplification or a means toward economic growth, which makes their deficit-increasing aspect all the more worrying.' Introducing tax deductions for tips and overtime was a major Trump election promise, one he advertised with much fanfare in cities such as Las Vegas. There's a major catch, though: the policy expires at the end of 2028, when Trump leaves office. As Block points out, there are fairly substantial spending cuts in the bill, which Republicans have not always dared reach for in the past. The biggest is a record $US1 trillion cut to Medicaid, which provides health coverage for low-income adults and families. The CBO estimates this will lead to 11.8 million more people living without health insurance by 2034. The White House maintains there are no 'cuts' to Medicaid in the OBBB. Rather, it says the savings come from removing illegal aliens from the program, enforcing work requirements and protecting Medicaid 'for the truly vulnerable'. Medicaid was a focus of a record-breaking speech by the Democrats' leader in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, who began before dawn on Thursday local time and spoke for nearly nine hours. Languishing without the numbers in either chamber of Congress, and with Trump stamping his authority on every aspect of American life, the listless Democratic Party was hoping to send a signal to angry voters, even if it was only able to delay the inevitable, with the OBBB passing quickly after Jeffries finally sat down. '[Seventeen] million people just lost healthcare,' posted the Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom, within minutes of the bill's passage. '[Eighteen] million kids just lost school meals. Three million Americans just lost food assistance. And $US3.5 trillion was added to the deficit. All for a tax cut for Trump's billionaire donors.' Newsom called it 'the ultimate betrayal'. In New York, young hedge fund manager Spencer Hakimian was also aghast. The 26-year-old, who has built an online following of 150,000 criticising Trump over tariffs, said history had shown debt accumulation is the ruin of empires. 'You can't keep adding debt with no limit. Both parties are wrong about this, it's a complete fallacy,' he said. And it was facetious for the administration to argue that the tax cuts didn't really contribute to debt, Hakimian said. The bill lifts the debt ceiling by another $US5 trillion. 'Why would they be raising the debt limit if they weren't adding to the debt?' The feeling on Wall Street is mixed, Hakimian says, but most people are agnostic. Markets are already at all-time highs, with the US economy defying expectations, unemployment staying low and Trump's tariff threats largely petering out. That matches the assessment of The Economist 's British editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, who said the mood among New York financiers at the Aspen Ideas Festival was insouciant, and ambivalent about the debt. 'Call me a European grinch, but I felt I had arrived on planet Pangloss,' she told subscribers in a note after the 'big, beautiful, bonkers' bill passed. 'I worry that Trumponomics 2.0 is eroding the foundations of America's economy in more fundamental ways than many people are willing to admit.' Ticking time bomb Steven Hamilton, an Australian assistant professor of economics at George Washington University, says the debate over how to measure the One Big Beautiful Bill's impact on debt is moot. The point, he says, is that it presumes current policy can go on forever, and 'letting current policy go on forever is nuts'. 'Within 10 years, US debt to GDP will be approaching 130 per cent, which is well above any time in US history, well above World War II and beyond the level anyone really thinks is sustainable,' Hamilton says. 'That's with the debt we have, and what we're planning to do is increase debt by another 25 per cent over the next 10 years. What we actually needed from the bill is a serious fiscal consolidation effort.' Likewise, Block says the bill's savings measures effectively concede Congress is not going to approve any such consolidation, and will simply leave the 'dire' state of US debt in place. Loading Many analysts believe a sovereign debt crisis is a matter of when, not if. About a month ago, JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon said a crack in the bond market was 'going to happen'. Hamilton believes it is coming sooner rather than later. 'At some point in the next 10 years, there is going to be a reckoning where the music stops and the markets say, 'well, we're not going to fund this any more',' he says. 'You cannot keep going along this pathway.' A devaluing of US debt would have dire consequences for the global financial market and for Australia that would eclipse, by far, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Even if such a collapse doesn't happen on its own, says Hamilton, the US debt burden leaves it in a precarious position to deal with a crisis, such as a future pandemic, war with China, or some sort of crisis arising from the advent of artificial intelligence technology. 'There are all sorts of things we don't know,' he says. 'We're exposing ourselves to enormous risk.' Much of that risk depends on what happens to interest rates in coming years. Low rates between the GFC and the COVID-19 pandemic made US debt more affordable. That era is now over. Loading Trump has been badgering Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell for months to lower interest rates, saying it is costing the US government hundreds of billions of dollars a year in interest payments on its debt. But it is the long-term trajectory that matters, and Block says the consequences could be disastrous. 'If those interest rates continue to go up, that could be by far the most drastic threat to the American economy and America writ large,' he says. More than the threat posed by Russia or China? 'I don't think that's an exaggeration.'
News.com.au
2 hours ago
- News.com.au
‘Very disappointed': Putin launches largest attack on Ukraine since start of war after call with Trump
Russia has launched its 'largest-ever' drone and missile attack on Ukraine just hours after President Donald Trump shared a 'disappointing' phone call with his Russian counterpart, during which 'no progress' was made to end the war. The attack – Russia's largest aerial strike since the start of the three-year invasion – saw Moscow fire a record 550 drones and 11 missiles at Ukraine on Thursday night into Friday local time, according to Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said 23 people were wounded in the Russian barrage, with air alerts beginning to echo out across the country as reports of the Presidents' call emerged. 'Yet again, Russia is showing it has no intention of ending the war and terror,' Mr Zelensky wrote on social media. 'All of this is clear evidence that without truly large-scale pressure, Russia will not change its dumb, destructive behaviour,' he added, urging the US in particular to ramp up pressure on Moscow. A representative of Ukraine's air force told Ukrainian media that the attack was the largest of the Russian invasion. 'Complete disregard' Taking to social media after the attack, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha slammed Mr Putin for 'his complete disregard', saying Kyiv experienced an 'absolutely horrible and sleepless night'. 'Right after Putin spoke with President Trump. And he does it on purpose. Enough of waiting!' he wrote on X. 'Putin clearly shows his complete disregard for the United States and everyone who has called for an end to the war.' In Kyiv, AFP journalists saw dozens of residents of the capital taking shelter in a metro station. Overnight, Russia attacks have escalated over recent weeks as concerns mount in Kyiv over the continued delivery of US military aid, which is key to Ukraine's ability to fend off the drone and missile barrages. An AFP tally shows Moscow launched a record number of drones and missiles at Ukraine in June, as direct peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow appeared to stall. 'Very disappointed': Trump said he made no progress with Putin on call The strike came hours after Mr Trump said he made no progress with Mr Putin on ending the war during a phone conversation on Thursday, which left him 'very disappointed'. 'It was a pretty long call, we talked about a lot of things including Iran, and we also talked about, as you know, the war with Ukraine. And I'm not happy about that,' the US President told reporters before boarding Air Force One for a flight to Iowa. Asked if he had moved closer to a deal to end the war, Mr Trump replied: 'No, I didn't make any progress with him at all.' He later told reporters on his return to Washington from Iowa: 'I'm very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, because I don't think he's there.' 'I don't think he's looking to stop and that's too bad,' he added. Mr Trump's view of the call was unusually bleak. After most of his previous five calls with Mr Putin since returning to power in January, he has given optimistic reports of progress towards a deal. But he has shown increasing frustration with Mr Putin after an early pivot towards the Russian leader. In recent weeks, he knocked back Mr Putin's offer to mediate in the Iran-Israel conflict, telling him to focus on the Ukraine war instead. In Moscow, the Kremlin said the call lasted almost an hour and said that Putin had insisted he would not give up on Russia's goals. 'Our president said that Russia will achieve the aims it set, that is to say the elimination of the root causes that led to the current state of affairs,' Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters. 'Russia will not give up on these aims.' Moscow has long described its maximalist aims in Ukraine as getting rid of the 'root causes' of the conflict, demanding that Kyiv give up its NATO ambitions. Mr Trump's grim assessment came as US-led peace talks on ending the more than three-year-old conflict in Ukraine have stalled, and after Washington paused some weapons shipments to Kyiv. Moscow's war in Ukraine has killed hundreds of thousands of people since it invaded in February 2022, and Russia now controls large swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine.
