Evening Edition: A 'Big Beautiful Bill' Heads To President Trump's Desk
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I'm Stuart Vonney. I'm Martha McCallum. I'm Jason Chaffetz. And this is the Fox News Rundown.

Thursday, July 3rd, 2025. I'm John Saucier. President Trump has a little something extra to celebrate over this upcoming Independence Day holiday. His tax cut and spending package has passed House revisions and he's going to be

and he's planning to sign it into law tomorrow afternoon. Big win in Washington for Republicans who may not have gotten everything that everybody wanted, but at least they got this done. Notable that they didn't change this legislation. Instead, they were able to talk to the president about what they can do over the next few months to try and

accomplish some of the things that they believe should have been accomplished in this legislation. But the bottom line is it speaks to the clout. It speaks to the pressure that this president can apply on rank and file Republicans. This is a Fox News Rundown Evening Edition. The big, beautiful bill is passed and House Republicans were pumped.

It took a little while as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries set a new record for longest House speech delaying the vote. And it's all designed to put a happy smile on the face of billionaires that is inconsistent with the Declaration of Independence and what we should be celebrating on July 4th. But in the end, it did pass. House Speaker Mike Johnson. On this vote, the yeas are 218, the nays are 214. The motion is adopted.

President Trump wanted this on his desk by Friday. He had to do some extra work to get that done. But in the end, the spending package will next become law. What this one big beautiful bill does is makes good on an awful lot of the domestic agenda that President Trump

and these Republican members of Congress ran on last year. Our guest today is Fox News radio correspondent Jared Halpern based in Washington, D.C. So this is, in their view, making good on these campaign pledges. It is something that they will intend to run on now in the midterm elections. There is certainly some symbolism for President Trump having this done before Independence Day. In fact, the White House telling us this afternoon that President Trump

will sign this legislation at 5 p.m. on July 4th, just a couple of hours before the fireworks and the flyovers get underway here at the White House. Perfect timing then. Jared, you reported, and a number of other people also did, that President Trump was very involved in trying to whip up

the votes for this bill, especially in this final House package. What exactly does this mean? How much work did the president put in the last second? And you can add the speaker in there as well, Mike Johnson. Yeah, listen, I think a lot of work and it speaks to the power that President Trump has over the Republican Party.

These were not concessions made to these holdouts. There were a number of holdouts from the Freedom Caucus. They did not think that this bill went far enough in cutting spending. They did not think it went far enough in reducing the deficit. They did not like a lot of aspects of what came out of the Senate.

They voted for this bill without anything new going into it or with anything coming out of it. In other words, there were no changes made over the last several days that they had been demanding. They still ended up voting for it largely. And in large measure, it is because of the influence that President Trump has. He still remains the most popular figure amongst the Republican base.

These were conservative members of Congress that represent very conservative districts that overwhelmingly voted for President Trump. That makes a big difference when you are trying to twist arms and lobby these votes in the 11th hour. And you saw that play out in the overnight hours, the early mornings. There had been meetings here all day yesterday at the White House. Members of Congress from different factions of the Republican base.

coming in, working things out with the president, with his staff, huddling with Speaker Johnson. And there was some thought that they may need to make some changes. And that certainly would have made this July 4th deadline impossible because it would have had to go back to the Senate. Notable that they didn't change this legislation. Instead, they were able to talk to the president about what they can do over the next few months to try and accomplish some of the things that they believe should have been accomplished in this legislation. But the

bottom line is it speaks to the clout. It speaks to the pressure that this president can apply on rank and file Republicans. Democrats did what they could to denounce this piece of legislation, Jared. And there was kind of a last minute, if you want to call it that last eight hours pitched by the House.

Almost nine hours, yeah. Right. I mean, it was outrageous. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries standing up to oppose this bill and gave a really, really long speech. Can you talk about what exactly that was? I know this broke a record from Kevin McCarthy earlier.

It did. So there is not a filibuster in the Senate. The House moves much more efficiently than the Senate. There are not a lot of delay tactics that a minority party can employ in the House of Representatives. But there's a big one that you can employ if you are the leader of one of the two parties. In this case, Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, said,

is allowed to speak for one minute on any legislation, but it is an untimed minute. We call it on Capitol Hill a magic minute because you can speak for as long as you want. And he used his magic minute to speak for nearly nine hours. He started before dawn, started right before five o'clock in the morning,

here in Washington and spoke into the early afternoon, breaking a previous record that was set by former Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who spoke for about eight and a half hours. Also, by the way, in a last ditch effort to try and delay a Democratic reconciliation bill, the Build Back Better bill that was

went through Congress in the first part of President Biden's term. And so it doesn't do much, obviously, to change hearts and minds. It was not ever expected that, you know, he'd finish after nine hours and Republicans were going to say, you know what, that Hakeem Jeffries is right. I'm going to change my mind. But it does set up that, you know,

Democrats can say we didn't go down without a fight. We tried to the very last second to oppose this legislation. One of the things that Akeem Jeffries talked an awful lot about over the nine hours was what Democrats are now calling Project 2026. They believe that this is legislation that was going to be very unpopular, especially the Medicaid portions. And we can talk a little bit about that. But

It is something that Democrats, like Republicans, are eager to run on. This vote that we saw happen this afternoon in the House of Representatives really does set up the opening salvos here of the 2026 midterm elections.

The Republican-led spending package is passed, and much to the delight of President Trump, he'll be able to put pen to paper on the same day we celebrate a historic American document, the Declaration of Independence. The big, beautiful bill scores a big win for President Trump, and we're talking about that with Fox News radio correspondent Jared Halperin, based in D.C. Ahead, we'll talk about how this compares to other recently passed big spending bills and what this means for the Trump 2.0 administration. It's all coming up next.

Jared, I think it's a little bit ironic, and I'm glad you brought up that Biden era spending package, the Build Back Better, this one, the big, beautiful bill, all these B's together. We love, yeah, we love... The acronyms are just flying like crazy, right? So I was wondering to myself, because you covered all those Biden era spending packages. I mean, with the Inflation Reduction Act, the Build Back Better that you mentioned earlier.

How do these compare? How does the process compare for how that's gone? How do the bills compare? What comparisons can you draw between this Trump era spending package and the Biden era spending packages, which of course we covered at length also?

The process was strikingly similar, and that is because the circumstances surrounding the Congress are strikingly similar. You had a very narrow Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate. So that was going to require an awful lot of finesse to get something with near unanimous Democratic support in both states.

In both iterations, the Senate parliamentarian, who was the same parliamentarian, by the way, in both of these processes, took stuff out, said these didn't comply with Senate rules much to the opposition of the party in power and protest from the party in power and changed the legislation.

And they both obviously faced an awful lot of criticism about what they were doing to the deficit and debt. This bill is one that the Congressional Budget Office and other sort of these accounting firms, if you want to call them that here in Congress, say is going to add as much as four trillion dollars.

To the debt. Now, Republicans say that's not true, that these tax cuts are going to generate more revenue because they are pro-business. It is going to be economic growth. It is not going to have this drain on the deficit like these CBO and other groups say it will. It was the same thing that Democrats said during their. So the process is.

was really strikingly similar, and it's because they are trying to push through major domestic policy bills by the slimmest of margins with majorities that have a lot of different factions, right? You have progressive Democrats and more moderate Democrats. You have very conservative fiscal Republicans. You have more moderate Republicans who represent swing districts. And so in that sense,

These two bills looked a lot like one another in how they had to move forward through Congress and get that presidential support. Jared, I'm thinking about the last two weeks of the Trump administration and thinking to myself, at least for this Trump 2.0 administration situation.

These were the best two weeks they had. I mean, they were able to at least stifle some of Iran's nuclear program. The president announced what he called a ceasefire about to be in place between Israel and Hamas. Now, we're still kind of waiting to see if Hamas is going to agree to that. But nevertheless, at least they're at the table there. We had the jobs report for June that came out this morning. Much better than expected. The stock market is at an all-time high right now. And then today, Republicans getting the Trump spending package passed the day before the deadline last.

The Trump administration has got to be feeling pretty good about itself right now. Yeah, listen, I think that these were big wins, a big couple of weeks here for this administration. And that is why, again, I think this July 4th deadline, while not important for the future of the bill or the legislation, was important symbolically to kind of, you know, use...

those highs to get this done. Obviously, a president has a lot more political capital, has a lot more strength politically when they are popular. And on the wave of some of these decisions by the president and decisions by the Supreme Court and other things that have really upheld his ability to deliver on what he's trying to do,

This was a window in time, and it made it harder, I think, for some of these Republicans who maybe didn't love this bill to go along with it because now is not the time, in their view, to defy a popular president or at least a president who is very popular still in your party. Jared, it's the 3rd of July tomorrow, of course, Independence Day. You're in Washington, D.C. You've been a reporter there for a long time. I'm here in our studios in New York, and I'm just curious, what's it like in the nation's capital around Independence Day?

It's great. You know, there are a lot of people from all over the country that come in. The Capitol fireworks is, in my opinion, the best in the country. Just an amazing fireworks show. There are always big celebrations, kind of the days surrounding Independence Day. The president will, as many of his predecessors have done over the last couple of decades, have a big picnic for members of the military and their families here at the White House. It's always a very nice event. There are parades here.

And we are told that there's going to be a couple of flybys tomorrow as well, including a B-2 stealth bomber, which, of course, was instrumental in those Iran strikes a couple of weeks ago. Pretty amazing stuff. Meanwhile, in New York City, we're going to have a guy down in Coney Island scarfing down 70 hot dogs in 10 minutes. I'm rooting hard for Joey Chestnuts. It's Joey Chestnuts, right? Yes, Joey Chestnuts. Joey Jaws Chestnut, of course, for the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. And he will be back.

this year so we're looking forward to that he's not retiring i heard no retirement for joey chestnut he does it for the passion jared we all know that okay jared halpern fox news radio washington dc based correspondent happy independent state jared thanks for taking the time to speak with us on the fox news rundown evening edition podcast to you as well thank you

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