Closing summary
Our live coverage is ending now. In the meantime, you can find all of our live US politics coverage here. Here is a summary of the key developments from today:
The Senate passed Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending megabill by the narrowest of margins – 51-50 – with vice-president JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote after three Republicans – Thom Tillis, Rand Paul and Susan Collins – voted no. While the bill has cleared a major hurdle, it’s by no means guaranteed that Trump’s self-imposed 4 July deadline will be met, with a number of Republicans in the House – which passed its version of the bill last month also by a single vote – already vocalising opposition to the Senate’s changes.
Trump announced on his social media platform that Israel has agreed to a 60-day ceasefire in its war in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept the terms of the agreement. The news comes as Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is scheduled to visit the White House on 7 July.
Trump toured “Alligator Alcatraz”, a controversial new migrant detention jail in the remote Florida Everglades, and celebrated the harsh conditions that people sent there would experience. Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, said detainees could arrive at the rapidly constructed facility as soon as tomorrow. Trump later revisited his idea of “renovating and rebuilding Alcatraz”, with a view to reopening the infamous island prison in San Francisco, which has been closed for over 60 years.
The Pentagon has halted shipments of air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine over concerns that US stockpiles are too low. On Sunday, Moscow fired more than 500 aerial weapons at Ukraine overnight, in a barrage that Kyiv described as the biggest air attack so far of the three-year war.
USAID will officially stop implementing foreign aid starting today, secretary of state Marco Rubio said. He added that the US’s assistance in the future will be targeted and limited, focusing on trade rather than aid.
The Trump administration raised the possibility of stripping Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral candidate for New York City, of his US citizenship over his vocal support for Palestinian rights. Democrat senator Chris Murphy slammed the idea as “racist bullshit”.
A federal judge has ruled that mass layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services were likely unlawful. US district judge Melissa DuBose ordered the Trump administration to halt its efforts to downsize and restructure the health agency, granting a preliminary injunction that will block the administration from finalizing or continuing layoffs it began in March. In another court ruling today, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to release nearly $13m in funding it had promised Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty to continue reporting in countries with restricted press freedoms.
Updated
Sixteen states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration today for ending more than $1bn in mental health grants designed to support students after mass shootings, the Washington Post reports.
The Trump administration ended the grants beginning under a series of policy moves targeting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, saying schools had misused the funds when they hired mental health providers from diverse backgrounds.
In the lawsuit, the states contend that the education department sent “boilerplate notices to Plaintiffs claiming that their grants conflicted with the Trump Administration’s priorities and would not be continued”.
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