National News

Democrats are already plotting to go on the offense over House Republicans' vote to pass President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill."

According to Punchbowl News' Max Cohen, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has already circulated a memo stating that the GOP's vote “will cost them their majority next year,” and that “No matter what happens in the Senate with respect to budget reconciliation, House Republicans have already sealed their political fate.”

This aligns with exclusive Raw Story reporting that Democrats are already strategizing on how to make Republicans pay for their vote.

The GOP's counterparts at the National Republican Congressional Committee, meanwhile, are doing their best to flip the script, attacking Democrats who opposed the legislation as voting for “tax hikes, handouts to illegal immigrants, and open border chaos.”

EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade

The Republican bill, which came together haphazardly after weeks of impasse and faction-fighting, cuts hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid, food assistance, and green energy programs, along with a number of other items like ending the IRS' free tax filing service, prohibiting states from enforcing artificial intelligence regulations for a decade, and sharply limiting the ability of federal courts to civilly sanction Trump administration officials for contempt.

Ultimately, a number of House Republicans who held out over various issues, like Medicaid cuts being either too harsh or not harsh enough, or for a more generous state and local tax deduction, either accepted various compromises or relented.

It now goes to the Senate, where, although the GOP is eager to pass it, it is all but certain to face major revisions from Senate Republicans and intense opposition from Democrats who could use procedural hurdles to strip a number of its provisions out.

MAGA world melted down Thursday over the University of Florida's newest hire — and one close Trump ally even demanded Gov. Ron DeSantis intervene.

Santa Ono was the sole finalist for the presidency of the university and is poised to be hired for the gig. His official appointment is pending confirmation by the Florida Board of Governors, but the university's Board of Trustees has unanimously recommended him for the position.

But Ono's selection was not without resistance from both sides of the aisle.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade

The left has is criticized Ono for shutting down the University of Michigan’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and for his handling of pro-Palestinian protests, Florida Politics noted Thursday.

On the right, he's angered prominent MAGA die-hards, including Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA, both close Trump allies.

“UF needs to go back and figure out somebody else,” Donalds said, according to the outlet, blasting Ono over a speech he made two years ago praising DEI.

"Under no circumstances should this lunatic be allowed to be the President of the University of Florida. Governor DeSantis, who has been great on education, must intervene immediately," Kirk wrote on X on Thursday afternoon.

"Santa Ono, finalist for the University of Florida presidency, promised students that he would 'strive to make sharing [his] pronouns part of regular introductory greetings' and start 'centering the voices' of 'Two-Spirit, transgender, and non-binary people.' Full woke," chided Christopher Rufo, a writer and activist who's self-described mission is to "overthrow the left-wing ideological regime that has dominated American life for a generation."

Libs of TikTok wrote on X, "He says it makes him very happy that students have become political activists to fight systemic racism and campus should be a place for creating cultural change to behaviors and laws to fight racism. He wants to turn students into BLM activists. How is this happening"

Resistance to Ono forced the university to respond on Thursday, with Mori Hosseini, chair of the Board of Trustees, and Trustee Vice Chair Rahul Patel telling the university community in an email that a "handful of external voices have sought to question Dr. Ono’s alignment with Florida’s vision for higher education."

"Dr. Ono is not shifting his views to fit Florida. He has been evolving his perspective over time — before UF ever approached him about this role,” the email said. “He brings a decisive break from the progressive orthodoxy that has gripped too many elite campuses — one that UF has resisted and risen above. He recognized the toll that ideological excess was taking — on campus culture, academic standards, and institutional trust — and made a clear and courageous choice: enough is enough.”

Hosseini and Patel called Ono the "right person to accelerate UF’s upward trajectory and help make it the undisputed leader among America’s public universities."

In response to the email, Rufo called the defense of Ono "absurd—he has a decade of statements in support of BLM, DEI, trans, and climate radicalism."

The Supreme Court's right-wing majority handed Trump a sudden "shadow docket" win on Thursday, granting him, at least temporarily, the power to fire independent agency heads at the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board.

The ruling, the majority emphasized, does not overturn the landmark 1935 Humphrey's Executor v. United States ruling that allowed Congress to bar the president from firing the heads of independent, multi-member agencies without cause — but, wrote The Economist's Supreme Court reporter Steven Mazie, the liberal dissent angrily pointed out that in practice, that's exactly what they're doing.

"The dissent is biting," wrote Mazie, analyzing the minority opinion of Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. "Lambastes the majority for all but overruling a 90 year-old precedent on the emergency docket. Calls the move extraordinary. And says the majority’s reasoning is 'unedifying' and favors the 'President over our precedent'."

The ruling also quoted Alexander Hamilton in cautioning the courts to set out a consistent precedent, which the majority is not doing.

EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade

"Our Humphrey’s decision remains good law, and it forecloses both the President’s firings and the Court’s decision to award emergency relief," wrote Kagan. "Our emergency docket, while fit for some things, should not be used to overrule or revise existing law. We consider emergency applications 'on a short fuse without benefit of full briefing and oral argument'; and we resolve them with out fully (or at all) stating our reasons" — directly quoting Justice Amy Coney Barrett criticizing the shadow docket in a separate case.

"The court has been sitting on this application for weeks," Mazie wrote. "The extremely unsatisfying reasoning, which justice Kagan expertly exposes, shows how stymied they were, allowing Trump to take the law into his own hands without formally acknowledging the change."

"If this disingenuous, mealy mouthed order doesn’t convert everyone to being a legal realist, I don’t know what will," Mazie concluded.