Boondoggle
Week of June 27-July 3, 2025
Welcome to TRACKING THE CRISIS, a weekly round-up from The Democracy Collaborative tracking the administrative, legislative, and other actions of the Trump Administration as well as the many forms of legal and movement response from across a broad range of social, political, and economic actors. TDC is providing this service for collective informational purposes, as a tool for understanding the times during a period of disorientingly rapid flux and change in the U.S. political economy. TDC should not be understood as endorsing or otherwise any of the specific content of the information round-up.
TRUMP TRACKER: Administration actions
Budget bill passes Senate and House, heading for Trump’s desk on July 4. The GOP’s highly controversial budget megabill passed both chambers of Congress this week as Trump and Republican leadership whipped the remaining holdouts to get the bill through the Senate and House by narrow margins. The Senate passed a procedural vote to begin floor debate late Saturday, June 28, after a vociferous objection from Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina over the inclusion of more than $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts that resulted in both public and private confrontations with the president. Tillis, after refusing to budge on his ‘no’ vote, announced he would not be seeking re-election in 2026. The Senate held its ‘vote-a-rama’ session for over 24 hours on Sunday and Monday, making its way through 209 proposed amendments. By Monday night, Sen. Lisa Murkowski remained as the lone holdout vote with the bill looking to head toward a narrow defeat. But after discussions with Senate Majority Leader Thune, Finance Chair Mike Crapo, and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, Murkowski emerged around 4 A.M. Tuesday to make an ‘agonizing’ ‘yes’ vote after striking a deal on carve-outs for Alaska and four other states. On Tuesday, July 1, the Senate passed the bill by the narrowest of margins, 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. The Washington Post breaks down the vote, with all Democrats and two Republicans in dissent; as the New York Times weighs the political consequences of the vote for GOP senators. The bill passed back to the House of Representatives with some GOP House members reportedly incensed by the Senate changes. Despite their threats to stymie the bill, the GOP holdouts eventually caved after a day of closed door meetings on Capitol Hill and the White House, with all but one Republican voting to advance the bill to a floor vote at around 3:30 AM Thursday morning. Senate Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries used the ‘Magic Minute’ rule, which allows party leadership to speak for as long as they want on the floor before a vote, as a type of filibuster, delaying the vote for nearly nine hours and breaking the House record for floor speeches. Ultimately, Jeffries’ attempt was unsuccessful, as Speaker Johnson and the GOP passed the bill minutes later by 218-214, a greater margin than the original House bill. All but two Republicans voted for the bill, following a familiar pattern of caving to party consensus after making deals with the Trump Administration on contentious issues and, apparently, getting some free Trump merchandise. Another GOP dissenter, Rep. Don Bacon, also announced he would not seek re-election after the vote. The bill, which Trump plans to sign in a lavish signing ceremony on Friday, July 4, is estimated by the CBO to add $3.4 trillion to the federal deficit, and is considered by critics to be a ‘reverse Robin Hood’ bill that costs poorer U.S. households at least $1,600 per year while benefiting the richest 130,000 households by at least $300,000 per year.
Major impacts of the budget bill threaten healthcare, social services for millions of middle- and working-class Americans while giving ICE a $170 billion boost. Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ budget bill, despite now being passed by both houses of Congress, is deeply unpopular among voters across the political spectrum and is, in the words of some critics, the “worst bill in history.” The bill was slammed by Democrats after the vote as one of the “most catastrophic bills passed in modern history,” with the Washington Center for Equitable Growth showing how it is one of the most regressive bills passed in the last 40 years. The New York Times provides a full breakdown of the bill and its impacts on social spending, healthcare, and tax cuts for the rich that will greatly increase wealth inequality; and shows in ten charts how the ‘beautiful’ bill will result in ugly impacts to the majority of the U.S. population.
The biggest blow in the bill is the over $1 trillion of cuts to Medicaid and ACA benefits, which are estimated to throw at least 17 million people off of healthcare and dramatically curtail funding for healthcare services especially in rural areas. Senator Ed Markey’s office released a report this week showing how over 330 rural hospitals will be at risk of closing due to the bill’s cuts to Medicaid and provider taxes. The bill will also cut critical SNAP benefits to millions of Americans, cutting off food assistance to up to 20% of the 42 million Americans currently dependent on the program, including 2 million children. Axios provides a map of where SNAP cuts will hit the hardest, including several red states. The New York Times provides further detail on how the poorest quintiles of the U.S. population will suffer declines in quality of life under the bill, despite small tax breaks for tips and increases in the child tax credit; especially over time, as deferred benefit cuts take effect. Talking Points Memo notes how, like previous Trump Administration funding decisions, states would be expected to cover shortfalls in social spending, which will be a struggle given the magnitude of the historic cuts.
Outrage also erupted over the bill’s inclusion of nearly $170 billion in increased funding for immigration enforcement, which will ‘supercharge’ mass deportations and make ICE the largest federal law enforcement agency in the history of the country, larger than many of the world’s militaries, and opens the door to build what many critics fear will be a ‘police state’ in the United States. The bill also undoes many clean-energy and infrastructure incentives implemented through the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, impacting red states and slowing economic growth. Economists blasted the bill’s massive increase to the federal debt, calling it an ‘economy killer’ for its fiscal profligacy and exacerbating inequality and instability in an already-struggling economy. Former Treasury officials slammed the bill in an op-ed for the New York Times, calling it a “path to fiscal destruction.”
Several commentators also note the potentially massive political fallout from the bill’s passage for the GOP, and speculate that the bill’s rushed process was done precisely to mask over the bill’s worst betrayals of the electorate, including cuts to Medicaid long considered a political ‘third rail’ by both parties. Many of the most deeply unpopular policies were deemed necessary to achieve Trump’s ultimate goal with the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ which is the permanent extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the rich, with additional provisions for ‘pass-through’ business taxes overwhelmingly benefiting the top 1 percent. CNN provides an explainer of the bill’s major provisions, and the Economist shows in ten charts the bill’s potential impact on the wider economy.
‘Alligator Alcatraz’ opens in Florida Everglades, drawing comparisons to a concentration camp. Less than two weeks after Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the state’s proposal to build an ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ migrant detention center in a remote section of the Everglades, an abandoned airfield was converted into a 3,000-bed detention facility in just eight days, with Florida governor Ron DeSantis using ‘emergency powers’ to authorize and finance round-the-clock construction provided by private contractors owned by prominent Republican donors. Initial images of the facility revealed cramped quarters for thousands of potential detainees, with evidence of flooding after just 1 day of operation. On Tuesday, July 1, Trump, DHS Secretary Noem, and DeSantis conducted a tour of the facility, touting more deportations as they laughed and joked outside the stark cells and ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ merchandise appeared on the Florida GOP website. Military.com reports that around 70 National Guard troops are part of the staffing of the facility. Critics, scholars of authoritarianism, and environmental and human rights advocates slammed the facility as a ‘modern-day concentration camp,’ with former U.S. ambassador Luis Moreno calling the move ‘straight-up fascist’ and former West Point graduate and podcast host Fred Wellman noted “this is fascism…exactly what every f**king dictator in history wanted.” Senator Alex Padilla noted the dangers of the Trump Administration’s insinuations toward targeting U.S. citizens as well as migrants, as MAGA pundit Laura Loomer caused outrage with her comment that Florida alligators can expect “65 million meals” (65 million Latinos live in the United States in total, citizens and non-citizens alike). Some Florida Democratic lawmakers attempted to inspect the facility citing ‘humanitarian concerns,’ but were denied entry; lawmakers reiterated concerns that children will be sent to the facility, whose harsh natural hazards led to the moniker ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ On Thursday, July 3, the first group of detainees arrived at the facility, as Alaska touted plans for a ‘Bear Alcatraz’ in their remote northern regions, and Trump announced that work had begun to re-open the original Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay. Wrongfully detained man Kilmar Abrego Garcia entered testimony this week detailing his experience of torture at the CECOT facility in El Salvador where he was held for more than two months. CBS News reports that government data released this week reveal that the majority of people detained by ICE so far have no criminal record. CNN reports on the U.S. citizens already being detained by ICE, and the New Yorker surfaces the psychological toll on immigrant communities being targeted by Trump’s mass deportation program.
Supreme Court rules against nationwide injunctions in birthright citizenship case. On Friday, June 27, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to back the Trump Administration’s request to rescind nationwide injunctions from lower courts blocking Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to undocumented migrants and foreign visitors. The decision means that the injunction no longer applies to states not covered in the original complaint absent a class-action certification, leaving the constitutional right of birthright citizenship in question for expectant mothers in different states. In a scathing dissent for the minority opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates… With the stroke of a pen, the President has made a ‘solemn mockery’ of our Constitution. Rather than stand firm, the Court gives way. Because such complicity should know no place in our system of law, I dissent.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson echoed Sotomayor’s sentiments and filed her own dissenting opinion, calling the decision an “existential threat to the rule of law.” The American Immigration Council discusses the case and how the ruling has expansive implications for Trump’s executive power. The Washington Post discusses the implications of the order and quotes legal experts who say the next 30 days will be critical for groups to contest the decision as the Trump Administration begins to test the provisions of the ruling. On Monday, June 30, the Justice Department issued a directive for stripping naturalized citizens of U.S. citizenship in criminal cases; and on Tuesday, July 1, Trump threatened democratic socialist NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a naturalized US citizen, with arrest and stripping of his citizenship if he attempts to prevent ICE arrests within the city. The SCOTUS ruling against the issuance of nationwide injunctions carries implications for other issues as well, as the judiciary has been a main bulwark against Trump’s executive actions; as the Supreme Court this week also ordered lower courts to revisit previous injunctions related to anti-trans executive orders on birth certificates and gender-affirming health care.
Trump Administration guts climate, worker protections as heat waves scorch U.S. Late June saw a heat domesettle over much of the United States, choking cities across the country with ongoing record-high temperatures and dangerous humidity, strainingelectrical grids, damaging roads, and burdening hospitals with surges of heat-related illness. This wave comes hot on the heels of Trump’s gutting extreme weather response and safety programs across multiple agencies, from a proposed $0 NOAA climate research budget to a push to dissolve the NIOSH by 2026. Complete elimination of the NIOSH heat team responsible for advising OSHA and other agencies on heat safety, alongside new OSHA lead David Keeling’sties to Amazon and UPS – two companies which have faced repeat backlash over heat-related workplace deaths – have many concerned for the future of outdoor workers’heat safety protections. June 15th marked the beginning of informal hearings on OSHA’s proposed heat rule, a Biden administration initiative which would require employers to implement safety plans to mitigate heat hazards; while safety experts, activists, municipalities and labor leaders have spoken in support of the proposed protections, employers and Republican leadership push to see it weakened or eliminated entirely. Meanwhile, recent NOAA cuts include the axing of the Center for Heat Resilient Communities, a program which planned to assist 15 cities with tailored mitigation strategies for extreme heat, followed by an apparent removal of the Biden administration’s National Heat Strategy from the federal Climate Program Office website, and a renewed press to shutter the Mauna Loa climate laboratoryresponsible for monitoringglobal atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
MOVEMENT TRACKER
Protests erupt at lawmakers’ offices in advance of budget votes. As Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful’ budget bill teed up its final votes in the Senate and House this week, protests erupted at lawmakers’ offices around the country in a last-ditch effort to sway votes on the bill, which decimates healthcare and social safety net spending for millions of Americans. Dozens of protestors were arrested on Capitol Hill on Monday, June 30 in actions organized by Rev. William Barber of the Poor People’s campaign; protestors brought 51 caskets to symbolize the estimated 51,000 lives that will be lost per year as a result of Medicaid cuts. Mothers and caregivers with SEIU also protested outside Senate offices this week. Faith leaders blocked the street outside the Capitol, resulting in about 25 arrests. Another group of protestors gathered outside the House of Representatives on Tuesday, June 1 in a last stand against the bill’s passage. Interfaith leaders protested in Chicago this week, joining protestors at lawmakers’ offices in Arizona, Brooklyn, NY, Bucks County, PA, Pittsburgh, Boise, Grand Junction, CO, Des Moines, Omaha, South Lake Tahoe, CA, Orange County, CA, over a dozen Congressional offices in Georgia, Newport News, VA, Saginaw, MI, and many other places. Nurses rallied in Wichita, Corpus Christi, and across Maine as doctors protested with SEIU outside the Senate.
Indigenous and environmental groups protest ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ in the Everglades. On Saturday, June 28, hundreds of protestors lined a remote highway in Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve, where construction trucks hauled materials meant for building the controversial ICE detention facility dubbed ‘Alligator Alcatraz.’ The protest was led by Seminole and Miccosukee Tribal members, on whose ancestral ceremonial grounds the facility is being built. Tribal advocate Betty Osceola, who organized the protest, said her father protested against the original airfield that was built on the site in the 1960s, and that the ICE facility desecrates a place “where we come for healing and to pray.” Environmental advocates also protested the ecological impact of the construction on the Everglades’ fragile wetlands. Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit on June 27 to block construction and operation of the facility on environmental grounds. Protests continued through Tuesday, when Trump, Noem, and DeSantis toured the facility; confrontations ensued between Miccosukee tribal members and members of the pro-Trump Proud Boys, who showed up to counter-protest.
Communities find new ways to resist ICE raids. This week, Slate reports on the diversity of tactics communities have been taking to protest ICE raids in their cities. As military troops were deployed in Los Angeles, a protestor broadcast the Vietnam-era words of ‘Hanoi Hannah’ attempting to shame troops into questioning why they were deployed against unarmed citizens. Protestors also have been staging all-night ‘noise demonstrations’ outside hotels accommodating ICE personnel. An Instagram account named ‘no sleep for ICE’ keeps communities updated on where ICE is being hosted in local hotels, which protestors can target with online and on-the-street actions. In Butler County, Ohio, over 200 protestors have held vigil at a local jail where ICE detainees are being held, to show them ‘they are not forgotten’; and an LA activist was arrested for distributing face shields to protestors during the confrontational protests last month. New phone apps are being developed to help the community detect, report, and respond to ICE activity; DHS secretary Kristi Noem recently denounced the app ICEBlock, which alerts users to nearby ICE presence, for facilitating ‘obstruction of justice,’ which made the app surge to #1 in iPhone downloads after her comment. Another app, ICESpy, uses face recognition to help community observers identify ICE agents who are unmasked. Teen Vogue reports that Mexican-American designer Willy Chavarria took the ICE raid issue to the international stage this week as he staged a tableau on a Paris runway reflecting the harrowing photos of detainees out of CECOT.
Polls show widespread disapproval of budget, recent Trump actions.
Budget Bill: A Washington Post poll last week showed that a plurality of Americans opposed the budget megabill, although two-thirds had not heard any details about it; when informed of the details, disapproval surged of many of the bill’s major provisions. A Quinnipiac poll showed Trump’s disapproval rating at 54%, with 53% opposing the budget megabill. A KFF healthcare poll showed that 64% of American adults oppose the megabill; and of the 60% of Republicans who had viewed the bill favorably, approval dropped by over 20 points when respondents were informed of the cuts to Medicaid services.
Alligator Alcatraz: A plurality of voters polled by YouGov on July 3 oppose the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention center opened this week in the Florida Everglades. 55% of Latinos are opposed to the facility.
Birthright Citizenship: A Yahoo/YouGov survey conducted this week showed that Americans overwhelmingly support birthright citizenship, by a two-to-one margin. Respondents also opposed Trump’s executive order challenging the constitutional right, and reject this week’s Supreme Court ruling leaving the determination of birthright citizenship to the states.
Nationalism: A Gallup poll for the week of July 4th has found that the number of Americans feeling or expressing national pride is at its lowest level in over two decades. Younger Americans, especially Gen Z, are less likely than any other group to express feelings of national pride.
Upcoming Protests.
Friday, July 4: The 50501 Movement has called for a ‘Free America’ Day of Action on Independence Day. Newsweek has published a map and list of cities holding protests this weekend. More information and a list of local actions can be found at https://action.womensmarch.com/calendars/free-america-weekend.
Saturday, July 5: Protests have been called in Pensacola, Florida to ‘Kill the [Budget] Bill’. More information can be found on the protest flyer.
Thursday, July 17: The No Kings coalition has called for a ‘Good Trouble Lives On’ Day of Action on the anniversary of John Lewis’ passing. More information and a map of local actions can be found at https://goodtroubleliveson.org/.
July 17 - July 20: The American Association of University Professors is hosting their Summer Institute for higher education activists in Atlanta, GA. More information and registration can be found on the AAUP website.
Summer 2025: Stand Up for Science has called for organizing a variety of local actions as part of its Summer Fight for Science in America. More information, an organizer toolkit and a map of local actions can be found at https://act.standupforscience.net/event_campaigns/summer-fight.
Lawsuit updates.
A federal judge this week blocked a Trump Administration policy banning migrants at the U.S.- Mexico border from seeking asylum. In his decision, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss invalidated Trump’s proclamation of an ‘invasion’ at the border that justified his use of emergency powers to deport migrants without due process or the opportunity to apply for asylum.
Twenty state Attorneys General filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration this week for releasing private Medicaid data on millions of enrollees to immigration officials last month. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said during a press conference on Tuesday, July 1 that “This is about flouting seven decades of federal law policy and practice that have made it clear that personal healthcare data is confidential and can only be shared in certain narrow circumstances that benefit the public’s health or the Medicaid program.”
Immigrant rights groups in California filed suit against the DHS this week for systematic racial profiling during ICE raids "in order to meet arbitrary arrest quotas set by the Trump administration." Plaintiff attorney Alvaro Huerta stated that "the federal government is waging a campaign of terror across Southern California, abducting community members off the streets and warehousing them in deplorable conditions away from their loved ones, all while denying them access to legal counsel."
In the wake of the Supreme Court decision limiting nationwide injunctions absent class-action certification, an immigrant rights group in Maryland has already filed an amended complaint for class-action relief in its suit against the Trump executive order limiting birthright citizenship.
