Thomas Massie again one of two Republican 'no' votes on Trump's 'big, beautiful bill'
House Resolution 1, also labeled the "One Big, Beautiful Bill," is a massive piece of legislation that preserves tax cuts passed during Trump's first administration while also investing billions in border security and the U.S. military.
It passed the House on a 218-214 vote July 3 and now heads to Trump's desk to be signed into law.
Have thoughts to share? Send us a letter to the editor
Massie, who has been a stark opponent of the legislation, was one of two Republican "no" votes, along with U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pennsylvania.
Earlier, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was one of three Republicans to oppose the bill, which passed through the Senate on a 51-50 vote July 1, after Vice President JD Vance cast a tie-breaking vote.
Massie had consistently spoken against the bill, saying he didn't believe it cut the federal deficit enough. His criticisms on the measure caught attention of Trump, who has targeted Massie in his upcoming May 2026 primary.
While the bill has drawn massive support from Republicans, it drew heavy opposition from Democrats for its cuts to the Medicaid program and other measures.
The rest of Kentucky's Republican federal delegation, including U.S. Reps. Hal Rogers, James Comer, Andy Barr and Brett Guthrie, voted in favor of the bill. U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey, the lone Democratic representative from the Bluegrass State, voted "no."
More: Proposed censure of Thomas Massie hints at divide in Kentucky GOP amid Trump feud
"This Republican budget is a slap in the face to Kentucky and all of rural America," McGarvey said in a statement. "It will kick millions of Americans off their health insurance, take food away from Kentucky families, kids, and seniors, and add trillions to the national debt. All so that Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos pay even less in taxes."
Barr, however, in a statement argued the bill will help Kentuckians.
'Today, Kentucky families, workers, and small businesses got a historic tax cut — jet fuel for our economy and a boost for Kentuckians still recovering after four years of Bidenflation," Barr said. "This is the latest and greatest chapter of the Trump economic comeback — and the theme is promises made, promises kept."
This story could be updated.
Reach reporter Hannah Pinski at hpinski@courier-journal.com or follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, at @hannahpinski.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Massie again votes 'no' on Trump's 'big, beautiful bill'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Entrepreneur
a few seconds ago
- Entrepreneur
This is How Modern Tech Wizards Are Training
Get 3,000 hours of intense IT training and one year to complete it for only $50. Disclosure: Our goal is to feature products and services that we think you'll find interesting and useful. If you purchase them, Entrepreneur may get a small share of the revenue from the sale from our commerce partners. If you're trying to move forward in your IT career, it helps to have training that fits your schedule and actually prepares you for the work. Instead of juggling individual courses or paying for each certification separately, try the Vision Training System 365 Training Pass to get one full year of unlimited access to a massive catalog of on-demand IT training. It's only $49.99 (reg. $299) right now. One year of intense tech training The platform includes more than 3,000 hours of lessons, covering certifications such as CompTIA A+, Network+, and Security+, plus Cisco CCNA, Microsoft Azure, AWS, and more. Everything is taught by experienced instructors and designed to prepare you for real exams and real-world challenges. Whether you're focused on cybersecurity, cloud systems, or project management, the content is already organized into learning paths to help you work through it efficiently. Because it's all online, you can study whenever and wherever you want. The courses work on phones, laptops, and tablets, so you can make progress in short windows between other responsibilities. You also get access to practice tests, so you're not walking into an exam blind. For current professionals, this can be a way to stay current or expand into new areas without leaving your job. For beginners, it's an affordable way to get up to speed on the skills hiring managers are looking for. And for business owners, it's a resource that could be shared with team members who need to grow into IT roles. The value is in the flexibility. You pay one price, and for 12 months, you've got a full IT training library at your fingertips. If you've been putting off certification or trying to find a structured way to learn more, this is a practical solution that's easy to start and stick with. Unlock a full year of IT training. Get the Vision Training Systems 365 Training Pass while it's still on sale for $49.99. Vision Training Systems 365 Training Pass: 1-Year Subscription See Deal StackSocial prices subject to change
Fox News
2 minutes ago
- Fox News
What Musk's fracture with Trump means for GOP's future: ‘Beating heart of the Republican Party'
From "super genius" to "CRAZY," President Donald Trump has changed his tune about SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a matter of months, while the tech mogul has backpedaled his support for the Republican Party and called for a new, third American political party instead. Musk unveiled the creation of the so-called "America Party" after Trump signed into law his massive tax and domestic policy bill, which Musk staunchly opposed due to concerns that it would increase the federal deficit. "Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom," Musk said in a July 5 X post. While there is an appetite for a third party in the U.S., Musk's so-called America Party is not likely to pick up steam and the tech mogul would have better luck driving reforms in the Republican Party, according to experts. "Elon's effort will go nowhere," Republican strategist Matt Gorman said in an email to Fox News Digital. "But I don't doubt it'll make a lot of consultants rich in the process." Meanwhile, Gorman said candidates undoubtedly would prefer an endorsement from Trump over financial backing from Musk – the largest donor in the 2024 election cycle who contributed approximately $295 million to Republicans. "If given a choice between a Trump endorsement or $20 million in ads from Elon, it's not even a contest," said Gorman, who previously served as the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. "They'd take the Trump endorsement every single time." Political columnist Kristin Tate said that while Musk was helpful in driving public support from wealthy Silicon Valley Americans for Trump, it's unlikely these same tech leaders would abandon Trump and follow Musk instead. "Trump is the beating heart of the Republican Party right now," Tate said in an email to Fox News Digital. "Elon Musk would be better off trying to shape politics from within the Republican Party," Tate said. "A third party effort is doomed to fail. Most of President Trump's supporters see the effort as hostile to Trump and will not support Musk. Meanwhile, all Democrat voters have been conditioned to despise Musk, so they will not support him either." Tate said Trump and Musk should attempt to repair their relationship because "both men bring something important and unique to the GOP. "By leaving Trump, and the GOP generally, Musk will chisel off a small fraction of Republican Party voters – a fraction that will not be nearly big enough for his new party to win elections, but could be a spoiler for Democrats in elections with extremely tight margins," Tate said. Alex Keyssar, a history professor at Harvard Kennedy School of public policy, said that given dissatisfaction with the two-party system right now, it's possible that more third-party candidates could win state and local elections. But it's unclear if that would translate over to national elections because the rules governing elections and who may appear on ballots pose additional limitations for those candidates, he said. "There's a lot of popular sentiment looking for something else that is creating pressures for a third party," Keyssar told Fox News Digital. "In that sense, Elon Musk is on to something." Still, voters don't appear interested in a third party affiliated with Musk. While 49% of U.S. voters said they would consider joining a third party, 77% said they weren't on board if Musk created it, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday. Musk's relationship with Trump first started to unravel, at least publicly, in May toward the end of Musk's tenure overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Shortly after Musk's exit from DOGE, the two traded barbs over the "big, beautiful bill," where Musk said Trump wouldn't have won the 2024 election without his backing. Likewise, Trump accused Musk of going "CRAZY" over cuts to the electric vehicle credits that benefit companies like Tesla, and said Musk had been "wearing thin." Meanwhile, Trump isn't counting on Musk's political party taking off anytime soon, and told reporters July 6 that he believed another party "just adds to confusion." "Third parties have never worked, so he can have fun with it – but I think it's ridiculous," Trump said.
The Verge
2 minutes ago
- The Verge
The intolerable memes of Alligator Alcatraz
Alligator Alcatraz, Florida's hastily built, $225 million-and-counting immigrant detention facility in the Everglades, is both a de facto concentration camp and a right-wing meme. President Donald Trump's most ardent supporters are willing to excuse — or are in some cases reveling in — allegations of inhumane treatment at the facility: worms in food, floors flooded with fecal water, fluorescent lights left on for 24 hours a day, and no air conditioning at night despite South Florida's relentless humidity. To them, the whole thing is a big joke, fodder for memes that activate the base even as they turn the majority of Americans off from Trump's draconian immigration enforcement. One Republican member of Congress is also selling Alligator Alcatraz merch Laura Loomer, a close confidante of Trump's, was giddy at the prospect of potential escapees dying in the act. 'The good news is, alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals if we start now,' she posted on X. (The figure refers not to the estimated number of undocumented immigrants in the country but to the United States' entire Latino population.) Conservative commentator Benny Johnson compared the facility's entrance to Jurassic Park and bragged about getting official Alligator Alcatraz merch during his visit. (Before his rightward turn, and before he was fired from BuzzFeed for plagiarism, Johnson also compared the Arab Spring to Jurassic Park. It's unclear if he's seen any other movies.) One Republican member of Congress is also selling Alligator Alcatraz merch to fund her reelection campaign. There's more merch on Etsy. Obviously, there's also a shitcoin. The memes and merch are more than a get-rich-quick scheme for enterprising nativists, though grift is obviously always part of the MAGA equation. In his second term, Trump has turned immigration enforcement into a spectator sport. Far-right influencers like Chaya Raichik, better known as Libs of TikTok, have been invited to ride-alongs with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has turned her position into a sort of cowboy cop cosplay, often appearing in public in a bulletproof vest or a ten-gallon hat (or sometimes both). The official White House X account is posting 'deportation ASMR' and Studio Ghibli-fied images of crying migrants in handcuffs. There's a real glee to it. To borrow from Adam Serwer, the cruelty is the point, but there's more to it than that. At this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, Vice President JD Vance said that voters had given Trump a mandate on immigration enforcement; Trump won the popular vote in part because the public was clamoring for mass deportations. It's true that before the 2024 election, most voters expressed disapproval with President Joe Biden's border policy and seemed open to a more hardline approach to immigration. But Trump — and the zoomers presumably running the White House's social media — either haven't realized that public opinion is no longer on his side with regard to immigration, or they simply don't care. Trump seems even less beholden to public opinion in his second term than he was in his first. Since January, he has pursued deeply unpopular policies, from tariffs to completely gutting the federal government, so relentlessly that he has even lost support from his own base. Half a year into Trump's second term, it's clear that voters agreed with some of his proposals in abstract terms — they elected him because he promised to 'do something about immigration' and 'run the government like a business' — but don't like how these policies have played out in practice. A chunk of Republican voters have turned against tariffs and Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. Still other Trump supporters have seen their friends, relatives, and spouses targeted by ICE since the president's return to office. One naturalized citizen who voted for Trump was even stopped by ICE agents while driving to work; he now believes that ICE is racially profiling Latinos. He told a local news station that he voted for Trump because he would be targeting 'criminals, not every Hispanic, Spanish-look-alike.' Trump's approval rating on immigration is now down to 41 percent, the lowest since his second term began. Voters may have trusted Trump to get 'criminals' out of the country, but they weren't necessarily expecting his administration to indiscriminately target noncitizens (and some citizens as well), deploy the National Guard to arrest immigrants and crack down on protesters in Los Angeles, or disappear hundreds of people to a Salvadoran megaprison. In a post on X, White House adviser Stephen Miller justified the decision to sic the National Guard on protesters by saying that 'America voted for mass deportations.' Recent polling suggests that Americans are no longer on board with Trump's immigration agenda. Rather than responding to this shift in voters' sentiment, the administration appears to be doubling down on its all-or-nothing approach to immigration enforcement and to its gleeful depictions of these draconian policies online. The memes create a sort of alternate reality, a virtual universe in which everyone is still on the Trump Train and all Americans are thrilled at the prospect of feeding immigrants to alligators. This echo chamber benefits from — and is amplified by — algorithmic silos. Your average voter may read about Alligator Alcatraz in the news, but they aren't necessarily seeing Benny Johnson's concentration camp selfies. The memes are in-group signaling; they engender a sense of belonging for Trump's most ardent supporters while inuring them to the cruelty of this new era. The memes are politics disjointed from polls and demagoguery free of democracy, a sign that the White House — either out of recklessness or something much worse — does not care about elections.
