Trump Is Having Some Issues

President Trump said Iranian leaders cleared their plan with the U.S. to fire retaliatory strikes against an American airbase in Qatar, and even requested a specific time to attack.

“They said, ’We’re going to shoot them. Is one o’clock OK?’ I said it’s fine. And everybody was emptied off the base so they couldn’t get hurt, except for the gunners,” Mr. Trump said at a press conference in the Netherlands, where he is attending a NATO summit.

The wildly unpopular “Big Beautiful” reconciliation package continues to face challenges, though Senate Republicans still hope to bring it to the floor by this weekend.

The Senate parliamentarian’s rulings rejecting Republicans’ proposed Medicaid cuts are a major blow to GOP leadership, as they needed the savings from those cuts to help counterbalance their effort to make Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent. Republican lawmakers will now have to rewrite major sections of the budget bill, finding new cuts or leaving out provisions. They could also make the exceedingly rare decision to overrule the parliamentarian’s decision — though Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said they will not do that.

As Republicans address the parliamentarian’s ruling, several senators are still worried about the bill’s deep Medicaid cuts, specifically a proposal that would curtail provider taxes. Other senators, like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), continue to push back against the bill for not going far enough, claiming it does not cut nearly enough in spending.

Amid all the uncertainty, two key questions are looming: can Senate Republican leadership get enough of their caucus to support the megabill? And can the plan survive a House vote with the changes made by the upper chamber?