January, 02 2013, 02:14pm EDT

Empty Courtrooms in Obama's First Term: A Slow Start on Judicial Nominations Magnified Many Times Over By Republican Obstruction
WASHINGTON
As the U.S. Senate departs for the year, it leaves behind unfinished business: four long-pending circuit court nominations and 70 unfilled vacancies in the federal courts, with another 20 upcoming vacancies already announced.
President Obama ends his first term with more federal judicial vacancies than when he began. There are a number of reasons for this failure to efficiently fill seats in the federal courts, including the president's slow start in making nominations in the early years of his first term. But that slow start was magnified many times over by Senate Republicans' extreme intransigence, leading to a historic vacancy crisis in our federal courts that has persisted long after the White House picked up its pace on nominations. In an effort to keep the courts dominated by George W. Bush-nominated conservatives and to stall the president's agenda wherever possible, Senate Republicans have stymied the nomination and confirmation of federal judicial nominees at every step in the process and at an unprecedented scale.
The result was that almost every one of President Obama's first-term judicial nominees was delayed in the Judiciary Committee, and once approved by the Committee, waited an average of three times as long for a confirmation vote from the full Senate as did President Bush's first-term nominees.
That persistent obstruction led to record vacancy levels in the federal courts. The 55 vacancies at the start of Obama's presidency jumped to 90 over the course of his first year in office, and they have rarely gone below that number since. Notably, the president also ends his first term without confirming a single judge to the enormously influential Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, four of whose 11 seats are now vacant.
There were, of course, bright spots in the past four years of judicial nominations. Two extraordinarily qualified women earned seats on the Supreme Court. Sonia Sotomayor became the nation's first Latina Supreme Court justice, and Elena Kagan brought the total number of women on the Court to three for the first time in history.
President Obama also brought unprecedented diversity to the lower federal courts. 41 percent of President Obama's confirmed judicial nominees have been women - the highest percentage in history - and he has now put more women on the federal bench in four years than President Bush did in eight. President Obama has also nominated a higher percentage of African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans than any previous president, ensuring that our federal courts are beginning to reflect the country they serve. In addition, President Obama has put more openly LGBT people on the federal bench than all of his predecessors combined.
But this effort to bring talented, fair-minded Americans with a diversity of backgrounds to the federal bench has been hampered by a consistent and needless slow-walking of nominees in the U.S. Senate. This memo outlines the obstruction tactics that have resulted in a persistently high vacancy rate in the federal courts and needless delays for Americans seeking justice.
Abuse of the Filibuster and Filibuster Equivalents
The most well-known tool of Senate obstruction - the filibuster - has been abused to a new level by the Senate GOP in the last two Congresses. In 2005, many Senate Republicans loudly proclaimed that it was unconstitutional - not just a bad idea, but actually a violation of the United States Constitution - for Democratic senators to filibuster a small number of George W. Bush's circuit court nominees on the well-documented grounds that they were dangerously out of the mainstream. A few others joined the bipartisan "Gang of 14," agreeing that filibusters of judicial nominations were only appropriate under undefined "extraordinary circumstances." After January 20, 2009, they threw their claimed principles to the wind and made clear just what constitutes "extraordinary circumstances" in their book: being nominated by a Democratic president.
The Senate GOP expanded the use of filibusters to stall the confirmation of consensus circuit court nominees. Of the ten circuit court nominations on which Democrats have had to file cloture in order to break GOP obstruction, half had cleared the Judiciary Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support, and half went on to be confirmed with similarly overwhelming bipartisan support. In one typical example, Republicans filibustered the nomination of Adalberto Jordan of Florida to sit on the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, blocking a vote for four months after he was approved unanimously by the Judiciary Committee. (In contrast, the average confirmed circuit court nominee during President Bush's first term waited only a month for a floor vote.) Jordan, who had the strong support of Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, would become the first Cuban American to sit on the Eleventh Circuit. Once the filibuster was broken 89-5, he was confirmed in a 94-5 vote. No apologies or explanations for the filibuster were ever given.
Notably, the Senate GOP has been willing to filibuster even noncontroversial district court nominees, who historically have faced little partisan resistance on their way to trial court positions. The majority party had to move to end a filibuster of one district court nominee during the Clinton administration and one during the George W. Bush administration. In contrast, in just four years of President Obama's administration, the majority has been forced to file twenty cloture petitions to end filibusters of district court nominees, almost all of whom were eventually confirmed unanimously or near-unanimously.
And this is just obstruction that ended in cloture votes. Because scheduling a vote in the Senate requires unanimous consent, Senate Republicans have been able to quietly delay votes on judicial nominees for months without stating a reason. These quiet delays - which effectively amount to filibusters but are not formally recorded as such - have led to a tremendous and damaging slowing of the confirmation process. President Obama's circuit court nominees have, on average, been forced to wait 135 days between committee approval and a vote from the full Senate. In contrast, President Bush's first-term circuit court nominees waited an average of just 37 days for a Senate vote. Similarly, President Obama's district court nominees have waited an average of 103 days for a Senate vote, in contrast to just 35 days for Bush's first-term nominees.
Three of the four currently pending circuit court nominees have been held up by this type of silent filibuster: the GOP has simply refused to allow confirmation votes for Patty Shwartz (Third Circuit, waiting for a vote since March), Richard Taranto (Federal Circuit, also waiting since March), and William Kayatta (First Circuit, waiting since April). The fourth - Robert Bacharach - has been waiting "only" since June. Republicans defeated a cloture petition to end the filibuster of Bacharach's nomination, even after his home-state Republican senator Tom Coburn said that such a move would be "stupid." Not one of these nominees is opposed by their home state senators. In fact, two - Maine's Kayatta and Oklahoma's Bacharach - come from states where those supportive senators are both Republicans. All four nominees have received the highest possible evaluation of their qualifications by the ABA. They simply are not controversial. Their "problem" is that they are mainstream jurists nominated by President Obama.
Creative Obstruction
Filibusters and obstruction tactics on the Senate floor are the most visible types of Senate gridlock, but the GOP's obstruction of President Obama's first term judicial nominees went much deeper.
It started with the very process of finding potential nominees. President Obama has consulted extensively with home state senators to find qualified federal judicial nominees. But despite these efforts, a number of nominees are stuck in the Judiciary Committee awaiting hearings because the nominee's home-state senators have refused to give their permission for the nomination to go forward. In committee jargon, these senators have not signed the "blue slip" signaling a formal go-ahead.
For instance, the people of Georgia can thank their own senators for two long-open district court vacancies. In January 2011, President Obama nominated Linda T. Walker and V. Natasha Perdew Silas to fill two officially-designated emergency vacancies in Georgia's Northern District. Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss opposed Silas but never said why. Nevertheless, that was enough to keep her from even getting a hearing before the Judiciary Committee. And since Silas's nomination was linked to Walker's, the Georgia senators' machinations wrecked both nominations. Similarly, without giving a reason, Isakson and Chambliss have not submitted their blue slips for the undoubtedly qualified Jill Pryor for a Georgia-designated Eleventh Circuit seat, leaving her nomination in limbo for 10 months and counting.
In 2011, freshman Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson refused to submit his blue slips when President Obama renominated a circuit and district court nominee who had not gotten votes in 2010. These were nominees who had been recommended by a bipartisan commission, and no other newly elected senator that year blocked similar renominations in their state. As with Georgia's district court nominations, these were returned to the White House, and the seats remain vacant and without nominees.
This summer Louisiana Sen. David Vitter blocked the committee from considering the nomination of Shelly Dick to a district court seat she'd been nominated to back in April, unilaterally deciding that the Judiciary Committee should not consider her nomination because it was too close to the presidential election. After Obama's victory, Vitter relented, presenting her to the committee with his full support last month (but too late to be confirmed in 2012, as she should have been). In Nevada, Sen. Dean Heller has blocked a committee hearing on Elissa Cadish for reasons widely condemned as ludicrous: before the Supreme Court's 2008 gun control decision in Heller, she correctly described to a newspaper what was then the state of Second Amendment law.
Unfortunately, even once nominees had a chance to testify before the Judiciary Committee, they were not free from stalling tactics. Ranking Member Chuck Grassley, like Ranking Member Jeff Sessions before him, took advantage of a rule allowing the minority party to postpone committee votes on nominees to stall all but five of the nominees the committee considered - a full 97% of the nominees that have come before the committee for a vote. These nominations were delayed anywhere between one and six weeks before heading to further delays on the Senate floor.
Empty Excuses
In attempting to defend the indefensible, Senate Republicans have been flaunting faulty statistics and nonsensical comparisons. Criticized last month for his consistent use of stalling tactics, Sen. Grassley claimed that the Senate had confirmed more nominees in President Obama's first term than in a "similar period" in Bush's presidency. The "similar period" he referred to was in fact a "dissimilar period" - he cherry-picked numbers in order to compare President Obama's first term with George W. Bush's second term, in which the Senate confirmed fewer nominees simply because there were fewer vacancies to fill. And in any event, Bush's second-term confirmed nominees, just like his first, got a floor vote on average far more quickly than Obama's.
A Second-Term Focus on the Courts
One of the Senate's key duties is to ensure the health of the nation's judicial branch. But the Republican minority has increasingly ignored its duty to "advise and consent," instead using judicial nominees as pawns in politically-motivated gridlock. This has resulted in a vacancy crisis that has left federal courts across the country understaffed and unable to provide swift access to individuals and businesses seeking their day in court. It has also meant that the right-wing ideology that President Bush required in his judicial nominees continues to dominate the federal courts.
Elections have consequences. The American people once again decisively chose President Obama as the person we want to be choosing our federal judges. He has made an effort to name fair jurists with broad bases of support and diverse backgrounds. Senate Republicans have a responsibility to take their "advise and consent" duties seriously, considering nominees on their merits and moving the confirmation process as efficiently as possible in order to ensure a court system that works for the Americans who depend on it.
President Obama has signaled that he will make judicial nominations a priority in his second term. The Senate must do better in the next four years to ensure that Americans have a federal court system that works.
People For the American Way works to build a democratic society that implements the ideals of freedom, equality, opportunity and justice for all. We encourage civic participation, defend fundamental rights, and fight to dismantle systemic barriers to equitable opportunity. We fight against right-wing extremism and the injustice it fosters.
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Supreme Court OKs Trump 'Third Country' Deportation of Men Held in Desert Shipping Container
Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in a dissent to a previous ruling on the case that the decision exposes "thousands to the risk of torture or death."
Jul 03, 2025
The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the Trump administration to send eight men deported from the United States and currently in limbo on a U.S. military base in Djibouti to South Sudan, where only one of the deportees is from, under a policy of fast-tracking deportations to third countries.
In an apparent 7-2 unsigned decision, with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting, the high court lifted an order from U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy blocking the deportation of the men—who are originally from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, South Korea, South Sudan, and Vietnam—to war-torn South Sudan, one of the world's most dangerous countries.
NEW: The U.S. Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to send people subject to deportation to countries they have no connection with that are so dangerous the Trump administration advises Americans not to travel there. The case involves eight men the Trump regime wants to send to South Sudan.
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— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) July 3, 2025 at 2:29 PM
The men, who have all been convicted of serious crimes in the United States, have been detained for six weeks at Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. They have been nearly constantly shackled and are under constant guard in a shipping container. The container reportedly is equipped with air conditioning.
Neither the United States nor South Sudan has explained what will happen to the men upon their arrival in the East African nation.
Last month, the Supreme Court temporarily lifted Murphy's preliminary injunction, which had enabled migrants to file claims of persecution before their deportation to counties where they have no ties in a highly controversial process called third-country removal.
Dissenting in that ruling, Sotomayor wrote that the ruling exposes "thousands to the risk of torture or death."
The administration then accused Murphy of defying the high court's ruling by insisting that the eight men still could not be sent to South Sudan and asked the justices for the clarification that came with Thursday's decision.
"They're now subject to imminent deportation to war torn South Sudan, a place where they have no ties and where it is possible, if not probable, that they will be arrested and detained upon arrival," Trina Realmuto, an attorney for the men, told Politico Thursday. "This ruling is condoning lawlessness."
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Outrage Pours in After House GOP Approves 'One of the Most Catastrophic Bills Passed in Modern History'
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar called the Republican budget package "one of the most cruel, immoral pieces of legislation that Congress has ever voted on."
Jul 03, 2025
House Republicans on Thursday put the final stamp of approval on budget legislation that will inflict devastating cuts on Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, clean energy initiatives, and other programs to help finance another round of tax breaks for the rich—an unparalleled upward transfer of wealth that's expected to have cascading effects across the United States for years to come.
The sprawling legislation passed in a mostly party-line vote, with just two House Republicans—Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)—joining every Democrat in opposition to the bill, which now heads to President Donald Trump's desk.
Following the 218-214 vote, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) called the reconciliation package "one of the most cruel, immoral pieces of legislation that Congress has ever voted on."
"Not only did this bill get worse from the last time the House voted on it, it will be remembered as one of the most catastrophic bills passed in modern history," said Omar.
The following is a sample of reactions from lawmakers and advocacy groups decrying the legislation's attacks on healthcare, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, reproductive rights, the climate, and more.
A Tax Giveaway to the Ultra-Rich and Corporations at the Expense of Working People
People take part in a protest against the Republican tax bill in Los Angeles, California on December 4, 2017. Democrats and many economists warn that the GOP tax plan gives large tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy and will hurt middle class families. (Photo by Ronen Tivony/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
April Verrett, president of SEIU:
What the Republicans just did. It's outrageous, it's despicable, it's immoral, itss anti-American. But SEIU members won't forget. We will never forget that children will go hungry because of what they've done.
We will never forget that people will suffer because of what they've done. And why? For the biggest steal of taxpayer money, of working people’s money – not just poor people, but senior citizens. Every American will feel the repercussions of this horrible bill, but we won't forget and we will get our just due.
Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution:
"Republicans have passed the most dangerous legislation of our lifetimes. This bill hands billionaires and corporations a trillion-dollar tax break, paid for by ripping health care from 17 million people, gutting funding for rural hospitals, slashing clean energy investments, and cutting food assistance for millions of children.
"This reckless sellout to the billionaire class will trigger the largest transfer of wealth from working- and middle-class Americans to the ultra-wealthy in our nation’s history. This isn't just bad policy — it's a moral failure that will cost an untold number of lives. Every lawmaker who voted for this shameful legislation must be held accountable at the ballot box."
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen:
"Trump and Congressional Republicans have certainly delivered for the billionaire class.
"There are 800 billionaires in the United States and 12 100-billionaires. They don’t need any financial help. But that’s precisely what Trump and Congressional Republicans have done, with a monstrosity of a bill that may constitute the single biggest upward transfer of wealth in American history."
Amy Hanauer, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy:
This abominable bill will make history—in appalling ways. Never before has legislation taken so much from struggling families to give so much to the richest. It makes the biggest cuts to food aid for hungry families, executes the largest cuts to health care ever, adds trillions to the national debt – all to give $117 billion to the richest 1 percent in a single year. It’s no wonder that this bill is also extremely unpopular. Historians – and voters – will look back at this as a dark day in U.S. history.
David Kass, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness:
This bill represents a massive transfer of wealth from the working class to the top 1%. It enacts the largest Medicaid and SNAP cuts in history while adding over $3 trillion to the national debt. Furthermore it makes the tax code more complex with new special interest tax breaks and handouts to the ultra wealthy. In the coming years, Democrats must prioritize repealing and replacing these disastrous policies to protect American families from rising costs and loss of healthcare coverage. We need to create a truly fair tax system and an economy that works for all Americans, not just the wealthy few.
A Historic Blow to Medicaid, SNAP, Social Security, and other Anti-Poverty Programs
Care workers with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) participate in a living cemetery protest to denounce the impact to patients, families and workers if Republicans cut Medicaid, healthcare and SNAP to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy at the US Capitol June 23, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for SEIU)
Bishop William Barber, co-founder Repairers of the Breach:
Today, Congress passed one of the most morally-bankrupt pieces of legislation in our nation’s history. This big ugly bill is the largest cut to healthcare and food assistance for children in our nation’s history, and it funds a war on immigrant communities. All the while, the bill gives tax breaks to the wealthiest among us—on the backs of our most vulnerable neighbors.
By passing this bill, lawmakers have officially codified the deaths of thousands of people. It’s policy murder in plain sight.”
Many of the people who passed this bill also consistently profess to be led by religious values. There is no religion that supports the degradation of humans. Policymakers can’t just claim their religious values in one breath, and then turn around and approve legislation that’s guaranteed to kill people.
The passage of this bill is deadly, but it is not a defeat. We must meet it with a resurrection. We will organize voters in every impacted community to push legislators who voted for this bill out of office and build a movement together that can reconstruct our democracy.
Americans for Tax Fairness:
Today, President Trump and his billionaire-backed Republican-controlled Congress successfully passed their reconciliation bill, passing the largest cuts in Medicaid and SNAP history while slashing billions from other essential programs to fund massive tax giveaways for billionaires and large corporations. The bill will raise average Americans’ costs by causing 17 million Americans to lose their health insurance and 2 million to lose access to food assistance. Throughout the opaque legislative process, the Republican majority in both houses didn’t hold a single hearing on their legislative proposals, and forced their members to vote under the cover of night and during weekend sessions, reflecting the GOP majority’s pattern of minimizing public attention to a wildly unpopular legislative package.Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans:
Today, the House turned its back on the very people they were elected to serve. This bill isn't about lowering prices or helping everyday Americans — it’s about lining the pockets of billionaires and big corporations while ripping away essential health care and support from seniors, people with disabilities, and working families.
Congressional Republicans have just voted for tax giveaways for the wealthy while throwing millions of people off of Medicaid, slashing half a trillion dollars from Medicare, and driving hundreds of nursing homes and local hospitals into crisis. All of this will make it harder for older Americans to get the health care they need at a price they can afford.
To add insult to injury, this bill hastens the depletion of the Social Security Trust Fund's reserves by one year. It's a slap in the face to every family who paid into Social Security and Medicare over a lifetime of work.
We will not forget how our representatives voted today. We will make sure every older American knows what is in this legislation — and who to hold accountable for this debacle.
Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US:
Today's party-line vote by House Republicans to rip healthcare away and raise grocery costs for tens of millions of Americans is as devastating as it is enraging. For months, a decisive number of House Republicans voiced their concerns, acknowledging that this bill would make people poorer and sicker, only to vote in favor of this bill. It’s a cruel betrayal and proof positive you cannot trust career politicians who will put their interests over those of their own constituents' health care and wallets.
Bobby Mukkamala, M.D., president of the American Medical Association (AMA):
Today is a sad and unnecessarily harmful day for patients and health care across the country, and its impact will reverberate for years. Care will be less accessible, and patients may simply forego seeing their physician because the lifelines of Medicaid and CHIP are severed.
This is bad for my patients in Flint, Michigan, and it is devastating for the estimated 11.8 million people who will have no health insurance coverage as a result of this bill.
The American Medical Association’s mission is promoting the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health. This bill moves us in the wrong direction. It will make it harder to access care and make patients sicker. It will make it more likely that acute, treatable illnesses will turn into life-threatening or costly chronic conditions. That is disappointing, maddening, and unacceptable.
Max Richtman, president & CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare:
In enacting President Trump’s ‘Unfair, Ugly Bill,’ House Republicans have voted to rip health coverage away from as many as 16 million Americans and food assistance from millions more. Make no mistake, the deepest cuts in history to Medicaid and SNAP will devastate older Americans who depend on both programs for health coverage, long-term care, and nutrition. 7.2 million seniors are dually enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid; 6.5 million rely on SNAP benefits to stay healthy and make ends meet. The bill could even trigger automatic cuts to Medicare down the road.
These beneficiaries are some of the most vulnerable members of our society — and Republicans have put them at risk in order to pay for another tax cut mainly for the rich. Republicans have passed this mean-spirited legislation with little regard for public opinion or well-being. Recent polling suggests that Americans who know about the bill are against it 2 to 1. No matter. Republicans are enacting a craven agenda to shower their wealthy donors with tax cuts at the expense of seniors and lower-income Americans.
This bill has rightly been called ‘downright regressive and cruel’ — and ‘the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in U.S. history.’ President Trump was planning to sign the bill on July 4th. We can’t think of anything LESS patriotic than depriving millions of Americans of health coverage to further enrich the already wealthy. This is not responsible leadership. It’s just the opposite. Make no mistake: older Americans and their advocates WILL NOT FORGET. Republicans will be held accountable — now and during the 2026 elections. If our response were boiled down to one word, it simply would be SHAME!
National Nurses United:
This is among the darkest days in the history of U.S. health care. People will suffer and die because of the cuts in this legislation to fund tax cuts for billionaires — certainly in the short term and potentially for decades to come if nothing is done. The policy goal here is clear: Take away everyday people’s health care coverage. Every politician who supports this legislation has blood on their hands and only themselves to blame when the impacts of these cuts devastate a health care system already in a near-constant state of crisis. These cuts will hurt these lawmakers’ constituents, our patients, who are already dealing with a broken health care system.
Lawmakers have effectively signed the death warrants for millions today. It will steal money from safety-net community hospitals and reproductive health care clinics, like Planned Parenthood. It will kick people off their health insurance. It will effectively punish people for getting sick or injured, making us all sicker and less healthy.
While we will only understand the larger impacts of this law as they unfold, experts have made clear that the potential is devastating: Millions will lose insurance coverage, and hundreds of hospitals will see critical hits to their funding. Meanwhile, the rich will get richer.
A Gut Punch to Environmental Protections, Clean Energy, and the Effort to Confront the Climate Crisis
Protestors hold up a sign reading "Trump Climate Disaster" as they demonstrate during a rally opposing the inauguration of the 47th US President Donald Trump, outside Downing Street on January 20, 2025 in London, England. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
Beth Lowell, Oceana vice president for the United States:
“Thriving and abundant oceans should not be bargaining chips at the Congressional table. This big, terrible bill is the worst environmental legislation in American history, unraveling safeguards and investments that Americans — and coastal economies — rely on and need. This disastrous bill would require the largest expansion of offshore oil and gas lease sales by area ever in the United States. We should be protecting our coasts and oceans, not opening the floodgates to more offshore drilling and increasing the risk of dangerous oil spills.”
Manish Bapna, president of NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):
Every lawmaker who voted for this cynical measure chose tax cuts for the wealthiest over Americans' health, pocketbooks, public lands and waters -- and a safe climate. They should be ashamed.
This measure gives the wealthiest a tax break while the rest of us will pay more on our electric bills and at the pump. So much for President Trump's promise to save Americans money on their energy bills.
This Trump energy tax will cost electricity customers billions of dollars in higher bills. Drivers will need to fill up more often at the pump. And costs for things like cleaner cars, solar energy and efficient air conditioners will skyrocket.
We urgently need more clean, affordable energy, but this measure would bring the renaissance in American clean energy production to a halt and send good, domestic manufacturing jobs to our foreign rivals.
Oil executives, industrial loggers and coal CEOs can all celebrate today as they gain unprecedented access to drill, log and mine on our public lands. The rest of us will soon find no trespassing signs on lands that have belonged to all of us for more than a century.
John Noël, Greenpeace USA deputy climate program director:
This is a vote that will live in infamy. This bill is what happens when a major political party, in the grips of a personality cult, teams up with oil company CEOs, hedge fund donors, and climate deniers. All you need to do is look at who benefits from actively undercutting the clean energy industry that is creating tens of thousands of jobs across political geographies.
The megabill isn’t about reform—it's about rewarding the super rich and doling out fossil fuel industry handouts, all while dismantling the social safety nets on which millions depend for stability. It is a bet against the future.
Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club:
"This is a sad and scary day for all who work to build up our communities, care for our friends and neighbors, and wish to leave this planet in a better place for future generations. Instead of working to make life better for American families and communities, what Donald Trump and his loyalists in Congress have delivered today will mean higher energy costs for working families and small businesses, the end of life-saving health care that millions rely on, and ceding the race to build the clean energy economy of tomorrow to China. Trump and Congressional Republicans have advanced the most anti-environment, anti-job, and anti-American bill in history. The Sierra Club will not forget it. America will not forget it.
Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists:
Our country will be paying the price for these reckless policies for decades to come.
In passing this bill, lawmakers repeatedly overrode the needs and interests of their constituents. When benefits are lost, when energy prices spike, when major clean energy and clean transportation investments are canceled, when jobs are cut, when climate-exacerbated extreme weather disasters hit, people should know who they have to thank.
This bill is a damning indictment of Congress' priorities and values. Our country needs policymakers willing to confront the challenges of our time and fight for a better tomorrow, not sell out America for the benefit of a few.
An Assault on Reproductive Freedom and Health
Women hold signs during a protest against recently passed abortion ban bills at the Georgia State Capitol building, on May 21, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
Kelly Baden, vice president for public policy at the Guttmacher Institute:
The reconciliation bill is a sweeping attack on the health, rights and autonomy of millions of people across the country. It would strip health coverage from those who need it most, gut access to reproductive health care, and impose dangerous restrictions that disproportionately harm low-income communities, people of color, and those already facing systemic barriers to care."
One of the most egregious provisions in the bill would block Planned Parenthood and other providers of abortion care from receiving Medicaid reimbursement for contraceptive services and other care for an entire year. This politically motivated exclusion could force one in three Planned Parenthood health centers to close their doors, cutting off access to contraception, STI testing and treatment, cancer screenings and abortion care for countless patients. These are not just numbers—these are real people whose lives and futures are being put at risk.
On top of that, the bill’s broader Medicaid cuts represent a direct attack on the health and economic security of people with low incomes. Medicaid is not a luxury—it’s a lifeline. It ensures access to essential care, including sexual and reproductive health services, for millions of people. Slashing this program to finance tax cuts for the wealthy is not just wrong—it’s cruel.
Let’s be clear: this bill is about advancing an extreme ideological agenda that prioritizes control over compassion, and politics over public health.
Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America:
The reconciliation bill is a targeted attack on Planned Parenthood health centers and patients that cannot stand. Everyone deserves access to high-quality, affordable health care. That’s what we’ve been fighting for the last century — and we’ll never stop. We’ll be suing the Trump administration to stop this unlawful attack. See you in court.
Dr. Jamila Perritt, Physicians for Reproductive Health president and CEO:
Federal programs like Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP, as well as funding for full spectrum sexual and reproductive health care are all left at the mercy of cowardly, out of touch lawmakers who value junk science over the evidence-based practices that keep our communities safe. Limitations on these essential programs will have horrible consequences for tens of millions of people and for our entire health care landscape. In contrast of its name, this bill is one of the ugliest actions we have seen from the Trump Administration to date.
Only six months into a second Trump term, we have seen Title X funding be stripped away, the continued criminalization of those seeking lifesaving health care like abortion, as well as politically motivated attacks on those in support of full spectrum sexual and reproductive health care. This is not a coincidence – it is intentional. This is not, nor has it ever been acceptable.
Progressive Lawmakers Weigh In
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) speaks during the Hands Off! day of action against the Trump administration and Elon Musk on April 05, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Community Change Action)
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.):
Because my Republican colleagues cowered to special interests and their billionaire donors, 17 million Americans will lose their health coverage. This passage could cause 50,000 Americans to die each year because Republicans shamefully voted to kick millions off Medicaid and failed to extend the premium tax credits in the Affordable Care Act. It will also increase healthcare costs and endanger access to care for all Americans. Rural hospitals will be forced to shut down. Nursing homes and community health centers will be gravely impacted.
This bill is the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in history. While working people will be devastated, billionaires will receive massive tax cuts. Not only are the tax cuts permanent for the ultra-wealthy, any benefit to low-income families is only temporary. It will deepen the wealth and income inequality gap.
In poll after poll, the American people are clear in their disdain for this bill. From cuts to nutrition assistance to increasing the cost of college to higher utility bills – the American people are clear-eyed in opposing it. Donald Trump and Republicans know this, which is why they rammed this bill through. Every single American will remember who chose to side with billionaires instead of working people.
This bill is morally bankrupt and an attack on working people. For those reasons, I voted NO.”
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas):
"This bill is a betrayal of working Americans. So that billionaires can buy bigger yachts, millions of working people will be unable to afford to go to the doctor, put food on the table, or keep the lights on.
For years, Washington Republicans have talked a big game about becoming the party of working people. This vote should be the final nail in the coffin of that idea. In the end, Washington Republicans will simply betray the working class people they won over in the last election. They've done what they always do: take from the working class to give to the rich.
As Democrats, we must make sure they never live that down."
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.):
"This bill is an act of violence against our communities. At a time of extreme income and wealth inequality, while 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, this budget is absolutely devastating for the working families we represent."
Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.):
"Republicans just passed one of the most harmful bills in modern history that will devastate our communities for years to come."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.):
"Republicans in the House just cheered as they voted to kick 17 million people off their healthcare."
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.):
"I don't think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ICE. This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion—making ICE bigger than the FBI, U.S. Bureau of Prisons, DEA, and others combined. It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child's play. And people are disappearing."
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.):
"Republicans have passed a bill that will be a death sentence—denying millions medical care, denying children food, and violently deporting immigrant families to destabilized countries. This is unforgivable."
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.):
"Republicans passed Trump's Big Bad Betrayal Bill to kick 17 million Americans off their healthcare for a billionaire tax cut. Cruel, horrifying, and outrageous. But we must not lose hope. Democrats will not only fight back—we'll fight forward, press on, and justice will be won."
Rep. Becca Ballint (D-Vt.):
"The House shamefully passed Trump’s big ugly, horrific, terrible bill that will leave 17 million people without health insurance. I, like every Democrat, voted HELL NO. People are going to suffer. I'm horrified that Congress would pass such a harmful piece of legislation."
"I never want to hear a Republican say they care about 'fiscal responsibility' ever again. This bill is the largest increase in our national debt in history."
Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.):
House Republicans just passed Trump's evil, Big Ugly Budget. They caved, voting to take health care away from 17 million people, slash food aid, and rob the poor to reward the ultrarich. It's the largest transfer of wealth from the working class to billionaires in history. This is a dark day in America and a shameful betrayal to those we serve. Our people deserve better and I will always fight like hell to get it. The fight continues.
Turbo-charging Trump's Mass Deportation Machine and Anti-Immigrant Agenda
California National Guard stands guard as protesters clash with law enforcement in downtown Los Angeles at the Metropolitan Detention Center due to the immigration raids roil L.A. on Sunday, June 8, 2025 in Los Angeles, CA. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Joanna Kuebler, chief of programs at America’s Voice:
Americans are already recoiling against the harm done by this administration's deportation agenda—the masked ICE agents running amok; the industries and small businesses worried about their future viability; the fear spreading in American communities and the separations tearing apart American families.
Sadly, we fear it will get all the worse with the new and unprecedented infusion of tens of billions of dollars for Stephen Miller to fully scale the personal mass deportation crusade he’s dreamed about since his teenage years. Earlier this week, Vice President JD Vance admitted that slashing Medicaid, the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the fiscal recklessness and all of the other unpopular and damaging provisions of this bill were 'immaterial' compared to the ICE and immigration enforcement money.
Yet Stephen Miller's and MAGA's dreams are most Americans' nightmares. Turbocharging mass deportation endangers our economy, our families, our communities, and our history as a nation of immigrants.
Roots Action:
The expansion of fascism is here:
- $74.9 billion for ICE detention and removal
- $65.6 billion for CBP infrastructure, hiring, tech
- $10 billion DHS slush fund
- $3.5 billion for state enforcementAnd more!
Hamilton Nolan, independent journalist :
This bill contains enough money to build a new system of immigration detention centers far bigger than the entire federal prison system. The American Immigration Council says that it will be enough to facilitate the “daily detention of at least 116,000 non-citizens.” It will let ICE hire more field agents than the FBI. Its $170 billion in funding for Stephen Miller’s rabid campaign to purge America of brown people is comparable to the total annual funding for the United States Army.
Donald Trump envisions himself as an all-powerful leader whose will is equal to law. He is bent on revenge against his political enemies. He has installed extreme loyalists in the Justice Department, the FBI, the Defense Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and all other security departments. The courts have declined to meaningfully restrain his abuses of these departments. This budget will give him the final piece of the puzzle that he needs to achieve his fever dream: a nationwide army of masked, unaccountable armed agents empowered to snatch anyone they like off the streets, and the physical infrastructure to imprison or deport those people at will. Thousands of men with guns, unrestrained by judges or local police, who do not answer to Congress, who point guns at the press, who arrest whoever they want, for reasons they do not share, and do whatever they wish with those people. The implications of this are going to make America a much darker place.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, American Immigration Council senior fellow:
With this vote, Congress makes ICE the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency in history, with more money per year at its disposal over the next four years than the budgets of the FBI, DEA, ATF, U.S. Marshals, and Bureau of Prisons combined.
Astra Taylor, author and Strike Debt co-founder:
The debt, deportation, and death bill has passed. Congress further decimates care work to fund violence work. ICE becomes the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency ever known. It hasn’t been sold this way, but it’s a massive public jobs program for fascists.
Uzra Zeya, CEO of Human Rights First:
“As millions of Americans lose access to health insurance, this bill forks over more than $150 billion to supercharge the policies of grave harm we've seen these past six months. It will fund more disappearances of people seeking asylum in our country, more masked agents in our courtrooms and neighborhoods to detain and manhandle those following the rules to be here, and more prisons where families, including infants, can now be incarcerated indefinitely due to this Big, Ugly, Betrayal of a bill."
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'Evil and Cruel': GOP Lawmaker Shamed for Unloading Medicaid-Related Stock Before Voting to Gut Program
"Their bill will gut Medicaid and kill people, and they know it," said Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.).
Jul 03, 2025
Republican Congressman Robert Bresnahan of Pennsylvania got publicly shamed by many of his congressional colleagues on Thursday after it was revealed he unloaded a Medicaid-related stock before voting for a massive budget package that enacted historically devastating cuts to the program.
Quiver Quantitative, an investment data platform that tracks stock trades made by politicians and other prominent public figures, revealed on its X account that Bresnahan recently sold shares he'd owned in Centene Corporation, a for-profit firm that specializes in delivering healthcare exchanges for Medicaid. In the weeks since he sold his shares in the company, their value plunged by more than 40 percent.
Quiver Quantitative added that while Bresnahan claims not to manage his own stock portfolio, he does not appear to have set up a qualified blind trust that would eliminate potential conflicts of interest between his investments and his work as a member of Congress.
Regardless, many of Bresnahan's Democratic colleagues reacted with fury and disgust to revelations that the Centene shares were dropped before he voted for a bill that will slash more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) over the span of a decade.
"This Congressman literally dumped stock in a Medicaid provider company right before this bill came to the floor," wrote Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) on X. "Don't be fooled—these guys know exactly what they're doing."
"Wow," marveled Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.). "So he votes to gut Medicaid and throw 17 million people off of their healthcare and then dumps his Medicaid related stock to cover his own ass? That's just evil and cruel."
"If the Big Ugly Nasty Bill doesn't hurt Medicaid, why are Republicans selling their Medicaid-associated stocks?" asked Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.). "Their words say one thing, their actions another. Their bill will gut Medicaid and kill people, and they know it."
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) ripped Bresnahan for "protecting his stock portfolio while ripping away health care from 17 million Americans" with his vote to gut Medicaid.
"This is Washington at its worst," she added. "We need to ban Congressional stock trading."
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