President Donald Trump has made clear that any Republican member of Congress who opposes his sprawling tax-and-spending package dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” will face his wrath. He launched a campaign to primary Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and suggested he would do the same against Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, before Tillis announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection.

Now, however, another powerful political kingmaker has vowed to challenge any Republican who supports the bill.

“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!” tech billionaire and former close ally of Trump Elon Musk posted on X. “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”

Musk spent more than $250 million to help elect Trump in 2024 but said in May that he had “done enough” and was going to do “a lot less in the future.” He added at the time, however, “if I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it.”

Musk posted his warning, among many posts on the topic, on Monday night as Senators continued to vote on a series of amendments to the megabill, which estimates say will add trillions to the national deficit and lead to cuts to Medicaid.

Reigniting a once-regretted feud with the President and Republicans that exploded after Musk left a temporary government role in the Administration in May, Musk reiterated a prior idea he’d floated of starting a new political party.

“It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” he posted on X. “Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.” In another post, he said that if the bill actually passes, the “America Party will be formed the next day” to provide “an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.”

When former Rep. Justin Amash, who left the Republican Party in 2019 and opted not to run for reelection in 2020 amid criticisms of Trump, asked Musk to support his friend and fellow libertarian-minded conservative Massie, whom Trump has set his sights on ousting from the House, Musk responded “I will.”

“The establishment is working to primary him because he’s a genuine fiscal conservative and opposes the Big, Bloated Scam,” Amash said of Massie.

Trump took to his own Truth Social platform Monday night to lash out at Musk, suggesting that the wealthiest man in the world, who is also the CEO of electric-car company Tesla and space-technology company SpaceX, is self-interested.

“Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate,” Trump posted, referring to policies that incentivize—though don’t require—the manufacture and purchase of electric vehicles. “It is ridiculous, and was always a major part of my campaign. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one. Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE,” Trump added. Musk’s companies are estimated to receive about $38 billion in government contracts and subsidies. “Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this?” Trump added, referencing the Department of Government Efficiency that Musk spearheaded. “BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!”

Musk previously dismissed Trump when the President made a similar claim about the former White House adviser’s priorities. “Whatever. Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!),” he posted on X in early June.

Over the weekend, however, Musk posted that “A massive strategic error is being made right now to damage solar/battery that will leave America extremely vulnerable in the future.” The bill threatens to end billions of dollars in green-energy tax credits, which some say could decimate the country’s wind and solar industries. 

Musk reposted on Monday a post by Tillis, the Republican Senator who announced on Sunday that he planned to retire at the end of his term and would be free from expected deference to party leaders, which backed Musk. “Folks, @ElonMusk is 100% right, and he understands this issue better than anyone,” Tillis posted. “We should take his warnings seriously. We can’t let Communist China become the long-term winner.”

Still, Musk insisted that his main focus is the national deficit. “All I’m asking is that we don’t bankrupt America,” he posted as Senators continued to vote on amendments early Tuesday.

The White House has maintained that the bill “actually reduces the debt burden on future generations,” claiming that it “will unleash robust, real economic growth and restore fiscal sanity in America.”

But a new estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released on Sunday showed that the Senate version of the bill would add nearly $3.3 trillion to the deficit over a decade.

The Trump Administration is suing Los Angeles over sanctuary city policies that limit the city’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, claiming that they led to “lawlessness” when thousands of people took to the streets earlier this month to protest the President’s mass-deportation operation.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a lawsuit against the city on Monday, alleging that L.A.’s sanctuary city policies are “illegal” and “interfere with and discriminate against the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law.”

“The practical upshot of Los Angeles’ refusal to cooperate with federal immigration authorities has, since June 6, 2025, been lawlessness, rioting, looting, and vandalism,” the DOJ alleges in the suit. “The situation became so dire that the Federal Government deployed the California National Guard and United States Marines to quell the chaos.”

Trump’s efforts to conduct mass deportations have sparked pushback from voters, politicians, and courts across the country. Earlier this month, thousands of people in L.A. protested Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids targeting undocumented immigrants in the city. The demonstrations were largely peaceful, but some escalated amid clashes with law enforcement officers. Trump mobilized National Guard troops to quell the protests against the wishes of Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom—a rare and controversial exercise of presidential power that prompted Newsom to sue Trump. In a statement about the suit, Newsom accused the President of “intentionally causing chaos, terrorizing communities, and endangering the principles of our great democracy.”

In a press release announcing the Trump Administration’s lawsuit against L.A. on Monday, Attorney General Pamela Bondi blamed L.A.’s sanctuary city policies as “the driving cause” of the “chaos” during the anti-ICE protests in the city earlier this month.

“Jurisdictions like Los Angeles that flout federal law by prioritizing illegal aliens over American citizens are undermining law enforcement at every level—it ends under President Trump,” she said in the press release.

Here’s what to know about the situation.

What are L.A.’s sanctuary city policies?

On Nov. 19, the L.A. City Council voted unanimously to establish L.A. as a sanctuary city, barring any municipal resources—such as property or personnel—from being used for immigration enforcement purposes.

According to a city councilmember’s press release at the time, the policy “prohibits the direct and indirect sharing of data with federal immigration authorities,” which it called “an important gap to close in our city’s protections for immigrants.”

More than 1.35 million immigrants live in L.A., making up more than 34% of the city’s population, according to the press release.

“More than one out of three people who live in Los Angeles, including my own parents, are immigrants. One in ten are undocumented,” L.A. Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez said in the press release. “We refuse to stand by and let Donald Trump deport our neighbors, family, friends, and coworkers.”

What other cities are sanctuary cities?

Many other cities across the country are sanctuary cities, including Chicago, New York, and San Francisco. Roughly a dozen states have put similar policies in place, as have a number of counties.

While there is no legal or universal definition of what a sanctuary city is, jurisdictions that adopt such policies typically restrict the extent to which the local government can share information or cooperate with federal immigration enforcement agents.

Read More: What Are Sanctuary Cities and Why Is Trump Targeting Them?

How has the Trump Administration sought to crack down on sanctuary cities?

Trump’s Administration has targeted sanctuary cities since his second term began. On his first day back in office, Trump signed an Executive Order directing the Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to ensure that sanctuary jurisdictions “do not receive access to Federal funds.” More than a dozen cities and counties sued the Trump Administration and, in April, a federal judge blocked the Administration from denying sanctuary jurisdictions federal dollars.

In February, the DOJ sued the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago, alleging that their sanctuary city policies are interfering with federal immigration enforcement efforts. The Trump Administration has also sued four cities in New Jersey over their sanctuary policies.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in May posted what it referred to as a “comprehensive list” of dozens of jurisdictions that DHS said had such policies in place, accusing them of “deliberately obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws and endangering American citizens” and demanding that they “review and revise their policies to align with federal immigration laws.”

“We are exposing these sanctuary politicians who harbor criminal illegal aliens and defy federal law. President Trump and I will always put the safety of the American people first. Sanctuary politicians are on notice: comply with federal law,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement at the time.

The list was removed from the department’s official website days later, after local officials across the country questioned their jurisdictions’ inclusions and criticized the department for a lack of transparency in the process, according to NPR.

An iPhone app that alerts users about nearby sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity is gaining traction amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. And it’s proving to be a controversial platform, with ICE speaking out against it on Monday.

ICEBlock allows its users—of which there are over 30,000, according to the app’s developer—to upload sightings of ICE activity. They can pinpoint the location on a map, and offer additional information about what they witnessed. Other users, within a five-mile radius, should then receive a push alert notifying them of the sighting. “See something, tap something,” ICEBlock’s slogan instructs.

There are also measures in place to prevent spamming activity. Users can only post a sighting within a five-mile radius of their location once every five minutes.

“In recent years, ICE has faced criticism for alleged civil rights abuses and failures to adhere to constitutional principles and due process, making it crucial for communities to stay informed about its operations,” reads a statement on the app’s website.

Joshua Aaron, ICEBlock’s developer, describes the app as a grassroots, community-driven initiative in a conversation with TIME conducted over Signal.

“When I saw what was going on in this country, I just really felt like I had to do something,” Aaron says, referencing the ICE raids that have taken place following Trump’s return to the White House. As of June, over 100,000 people have reportedly been arrested by ICE during Trump’s second term.

Growing up in a Jewish household, Aaron says he has had the opportunity to speak to Holocaust survivors and learn about the history of Nazi Germany. He argues that the current political climate, noting instances of “authoritarianism” and “fascism,” is akin to watching “history repeat itself.”

“The app is 100% anonymous and free for anybody who wants to use it. We don’t collect user data. We don’t even capture user data. That’s extremely important,” Aaron says, recognizing the privacy concerns people may have. As such, the app is not available on Android because it “requires a device ID in order to send push notifications, which requires a user account and a password.”

Read More: Legal Immigration Pathways Are Disappearing

But ICE is concerned about the potential safety implications for its agents.

In response to a request for comment, ICE referred TIME to a statement from acting director Todd Lyons, who called the app “sickening,” saying it “paints a target on federal law enforcement officers’ backs” and “incites violence.”

Aaron says he hopes the app, which became available to iPhone users in April, is used as a tool to avoid interactions with ICE agents, rather than users directly involving themselves in potential altercations.

“The app is to inform, not obstruct. This is to have people avoid having that confrontation in the first place,” Aaron says, responding to concerns that people might use the app in order to locate and confront ICE agents.

This sentiment is also supported by a warning issued to ICEBlock users, which reads: “Please note that the use of this app is for information and notification purposes only. It is not to be used for the purposes of inciting violence or interfering with law enforcement.”

Since returning to the White House, Trump has remade the country’s immigration policies, including through ICE raids in major cities. Recent raids in Los Angeles sparked mass protests. Trump responded by deploying the California National Guard, and later the Marines, without the request of state Gov. Gavin Newsom, prompting much criticism and a legal battle. A court ultimately ruled that Trump was allowed to keep control of the National Guard in L.A.

Aaron noticed a dramatic spike in users during the recent upset in L.A.

“Before [the protests started], there were around 2,500 users, and I was thrilled. Then I logged on two days later, and there were over 20,000 users, and the app went to number 32 for ‘Social Networking’ in the App Store,” he says.

Protests opposing ICE raids rapidly spread across the U.S., with people taking to the streets in cities such as New York, Chicago, and San Antonio. Aaron says he has not kept a record of where users downloaded the app or registered the sightings, in order to protect user privacy.

The app is available in 14 languages, including Arabic, Spanish, Hindi, and Nepali, each added after the development team conducted research on immigrant communities, seeking out the most commonly used languages aside from English.

Amid the upset over ICEBlock, Aaron says his ultimate goal is to look out for the community. “When I see things like ICE outside of elementary schools, that’s what we are trying to push back against, because you need to do more. You need to protect your neighbors,” he says.

Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income Americans that provides coverage for more than 70 million people, faces its biggest overhaul in decades under President Donald Trump’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill,” a massive tax and spending package now being considered by the Senate that would slash its funding. 

Both the House and Senate versions of the bill, which is still undergoing changes as the upper chamber votes on amendments, would reduce funding for the program by hundreds of billions of dollars, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Nearly 12 million adults could lose health insurance because of the proposed cuts in the Senate’s revised bill over the next decade, the CBO estimated in a Saturday report. Much of the cuts are expected to come through imposing new administrative requirements on enrollees, or risk losing their coverage.

The White House has rejected the CBO’s findings, insisting that the cuts to the program will only reduce fraud and waste. “President Trump pledged to protect and preserve Medicaid, and that’s exactly what The One, Big, Beautiful accomplishes by kicking illegal immigrants off the program, implementing commonsense work requirements, and enforcing basic eligibility verification to combat fraud,” White House spokesman Kush Desai wrote to TIME.

The House narrowly passed the bill in May, and lawmakers are now working in an effort to pass the proposed legislation by a July 4 deadline imposed by Trump. The proposed Medicaid cuts have been contentious among Republicans, some of whom have been wary of their potential impact. Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican of North Carolina, has vowed to vote against the bill unless his concerns over the cuts are addressed.

Read more: Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Faces Opposition From Musk and Some Republicans as the Senate Narrowly Votes to Advance It

Here’s what to know about Medicaid. 

What is Medicaid? 

Medicaid was created following the passage of the 1965 Social Security Amendments under President Lyndon B. Johnson, according to the National Archives. The law established both Medicare, which generally provides health insurance coverage for Americans aged 65 and older, and Medicaid, which serves low-income people. 

Medicaid is financed jointly by state and federal governments and accounts for about a sixth of health care spending in the U.S. It’s a hugely popular program among Americans: More than 80% have a positive view of Medicaid, according to a survey conducted earlier this month by nonpartisan research organization KFF. 

The Affordable Care Act enabled states to expand Medicaid eligibility to include non-elderly adults whose income was up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level—a national median of $44,367 for a family of four this year. Forty states and Washington, D.C., have so far adopted the expansion, 90% of which is funded by the federal government. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress allocated additional Medicaid funds so recipients could maintain “continuous coverage,” requiring states to keep most people enrolled in the program regardless of income in exchange for the enhanced federal funding. Continuous enrollment concluded at the end of March 2023, and an “unwinding” process began.

Some states have alternative names for Medicaid, such as DenaliCare in Alaska, KanCare in Kansas, and SoonerCare in Oklahoma. 

How many people are enrolled in Medicaid? 

Medicaid enrollment has stood at around 20% of the total U.S. population for the last several years, the Pew Research Center reports.

Some 71.3 million low-income people in the U.S. were enrolled in the program in March 2025, more than half of whom were adults, according to a report from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The figure was notably higher in recent years: Roughly 100 million people were enrolled in Medicaid at some point in 2023, according to a December 2024 report by The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission. The numbers have declined following the end of continuous enrollment, however, as states have resumed disenrolling people from the program.

Read more: Medicaid Expansions Saved Tens of Thousands of Lives, Study Finds

The proportion of people enrolled in the program varies significantly between states. More than 30% of residents in Louisiana and New Mexico are covered by Medicaid, according to KFF, compared to just 12% in Wyoming and North Dakota. 

Who is eligible for Medicaid? 

The federal government sets broad eligibility requirements for Medicaid. It requires states to cover some groups when they fall below certain income levels, including pregnant women, families with children, disabled people, and most children in foster care. 

But since the program is state-administered, Medicaid qualifications vary on a state-by-state basis. For instance, some immigrants may be eligible for coverage in states such as New Jersey or New York. One of the provisions in the Senate version of Trump’s tax and spending bill was intended to cut federal funding to states that use Medicaid to provide health care to undocumented immigrants. However, that part of the bill is in limbo after the Senate parliamentarian found that the measure did not comply with Senate rules.   

Are Medicaid recipients required to work? 

Current regulations in most states do not require Medicaid recipients to work. In Georgia, however, applicants are required to prove that they completed at least 80 hours of work or volunteer services to receive coverage.  Because of this verification system, a ProPublica report found that Georgia enrolled only a fraction of Medicaid-eligible people: some 7,500 of the estimated 250,000 eligible residents. 

Attempts to implement work requirements in Arkansas were struck down by a federal court in 2019. A federal judge blocked similar requirements in Kentucky from taking effect the previous year, and Governor Andy Beshear halted efforts to impose them in 2019 shortly after taking office.

Idaho, Kentucky, and Indiana have adopted legislation to impose work requirements this year, according to KFF. Other states are weighing imposing similar measures. And potential work requirements are being considered on a federal level in Trump’s “One, Big, Beautiful Bill.” The package would require Medicaid recipients from ages 19 to 64 to verify that they work at least 80 hours a month, or are training for a new job, studying, or volunteering. People’s work status would be checked twice a year.  

Most working-age adults on Medicaid are employed, or have a disability or caregiving responsibilities, according to KFF. 

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina understood he was going to lose either way. If he rejected President Donald Trump’s catch-all domestic policy bill, he was all but doomed to lose a primary. If he backed the bill, which he viewed as not good policy, he expected the backlash would ensure he faced very, very long odds at winning his state in a general election.

In the end, Tillis announced he wouldn’t appear on either ballot, opening the door for the Republican to do what he had long played footsie with: fully breaking with the MAGA wing of his party, giving him the freedom to no longer having to rubberstamp everything coming from the Trump White House. On Sunday, a day after he opposed a procedural vote on Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, Tillis said he would leave Washington when his term ends, forgoing a third turn on the Senate ferris wheel.

Trump, naturally, cheered. A troublesome conscientious vote against the President’s worst impulses was soon to be vanquished come January of 2027. But so, too, was a vote helping keep Republicans in the majority. With 53 Republicans in the 100-person chamber, the GOP has little room for error. While the 2026 battlefield favors Republicans, Tillis never won statewide by more than 2 points, and Democrats have long nursed optimism that they might claw back the Republican-leaning state. Trump traded a relatively safe incumbent centrist for a wide-open race in a state that in 2008 voted for Barack Obama and for Jimmy Carter in 1976.

As a former state House Speaker, Tillis understands the art of the compromise. He worked with Democrats on a proposal to provide a pathway to citizenship for some migrants and a framework for expanded background checks on guns. He also knows bad politics when it’s on his desk, and he had zero confidence that Trump’s pending legislation was anything but that. He explained as much in a speech Saturday night that is one for the history books. 

“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there anymore?” Tillis asked, noting the cuts packed into the domestic bill would cost his state tens of billions. Even the best-case model put the cost to North Carolina at $26 billion.

Read more: Why the House’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Reads Like a Republican Oppo File

Tillis had already been mulling whether he wanted to even seek a third term. He had been promised every help from the official Senate campaign committee and Majority Leader John Thune’s favored super PAC. But Trump was vowing a primary challenge if Tillis didn’t back a bill Tillis viewed as disastrous for his state. Rather than force a conflict between Thune and the White House, Tillis chose to walk away. Trump wanted him gone; let him find out the prospects of holding the state without a non-Tillis Senator on the ballot. 

Trump took it as a sign of his power. But he would be wise to realize how he may be undermining himself. Already, two of the 53 Senate Republicans—Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the other—are on the record voting against moving ahead with this iteration of his megabill. Behind the scenes, others are voicing concern and trying to tweak here and there, to varying degrees of success. And, for the most part, this big lift is about as easy as it’s going to get in this Congress in Trump’s second term. 

Tillis is a true Republican, to be sure. But he also knows where things can go off the rails in short order. He was briefly seen as someone who could derail Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s nomination but fell in line at the eleventh hour. Since then, he has been emboldened to speak his mind, coming out against Ed Martin for the top federal prosecutor gig in Washington because of his support and defense of the rioters who sent Tillis and colleagues fleeing during the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Tillis warned his colleagues in a closed-door meeting last week that supporting this domestic legislation would be an anchor that dragged down all of them if it went ahead.

Trump and his team are racing with strong headwinds to get the ambitious bill across the finish line by a self-imposed July 4 deadline. The House has already passed a version of it but would need to vote again on the changes implemented in the Senate. The Senate was going through a vote-a-rama on Monday, and the House was expected to pick it back up on Wednesday. Still, House conservatives are wary of the Senate version because it does not, to their mind, make sufficient cuts to spending. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are slow to warm to the deep cuts that would hit red-state constituents hard in programs serving the poor and elderly.

It’s why Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson met with Trump at the White House on Monday morning. They were due back Monday afternoon, the White House said. To put it plainly: this bill is far from a safe glidepath to passage, and even the slightest bit of throat clearing could send it spiraling. Tillis’ bold stance might be a domino his party cannot afford. 

Folks like Tillis—and former dealmaking savants like Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, and Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona—often stand to break the logjam in the Senate. They irk their colleagues but have the cache to be speed bumps that, in hindsight, often were worth the slowdown. But for that to work, there has to be an understanding in the White House that sometimes home-state sentiment needs to take precedent over national agendas. Manchin bedeviled then-President Joe Biden to no end but ultimately got his way. McCain held the same role over his one-time rival George W. Bush. Ten years later, during Trump’s first term, the Arizona Republican famously killed a GOP plan to repeal Obamacare.

But with Tillis heading toward the exit, he no longer needs the White House to hold his flank. Trump seems eager to move on. What Trump may not understand is this: a reliable Republican vote from North Carolina in the end may be a more valuable chit than anything that serves his ego. It’s now up to his allies like Thune and Johnson to urge him to stop picking fights with his nominal friends. The Democrats certainly are going to be no help on this act.

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Get on board the Trump train or get out. That’s been President Donald Trump’s message to Republicans in Congress since his first term. Some of his biggest intraparty critics, like former Rep. Liz Cheney, put up a fight and lost. Others, like former Sen. Mitt Romney, chose not to run for reelection.

As Trump picks new fights in his second term with insufficiently loyal Republican lawmakers, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina has become the latest to announce that he plans to leave of his own volition.

“Great News!” Trump reacted on his Truth Social platform after Tillis announced in a statement that he does not plan to run for reelection in 2026.

“In Washington over the last few years, it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species,” Tillis said. “When people see independent thinking on the other side, they cheer. But when those very same people see independent thinking coming from their side, they scorn, ostracize, and even censure them.”

Tillis, 64, said he hadn’t been “excited” about running for another term for some time, and he had reportedly been leaning against running but had given himself until the end of the summer to decide. His decision, however, was apparently made easier after Trump launched a multi-post social-media tirade against the Senator after Tillis voted on Saturday against advancing the President’s massive tax-and-spending legislative priority, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB).

Trump accused Tillis of grandstanding “in order to get some publicity for himself, for a possible, but very difficult Re-Election.” He added that he would be “meeting with” potential candidates to run against Tillis in a primary race. “Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER!” Trump said.

“It’s not a hard choice,” Tillis said of his decision to retire from the Senate at the end of his term, saying that he wishes to spend more time with his family instead of “spending another six years navigating the political theatre and partisan gridlock in Washington.”

Here’s what to know.

Who is Thom Tillis?

Tillis was born in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1960. His working-class family, including three boys all named Thomas after their father and three girls, moved frequently when he was a child, and he graduated from high school in Nashville, Tenn., in 1978, voted by his peers as “most likely to succeed.”

He initially joined the Air Force but was honorably discharged before he could go to basic training, after a car accident severely injured his hand. He instead worked various jobs, eventually working his way to a position at accounting and consulting firm PriceWaterhouse (and later IBM after it acquired PriceWaterhouse), while attending night school at several institutions to earn a bachelor’s degree.

In 1998, Tillis moved with his wife and children to North Carolina, and he entered politics in his hometown of Cornelius in 2002, after pushing for a bike trail and being asked to join the parks and recreation advisory board. In 2003, he was elected a town commissioner, and in 2006, he ran and won the Republican primary for a state General Assembly seat, and he ran unopposed in the general election that year and unopposed in three subsequent reelection bids in 2008, 2010, and 2012.

Tillis, who had earned a reputation as pro-business and moderate, was elected Speaker of the state House in 2011, after Republicans won control of the chamber for the first time since 1998.

In 2014, after helping to shepherd conservative legislation in North Carolina’s capital, he set his sights on Washington, D.C., running against and ultimately defeating then-incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan. He narrowly won reelection in 2020 after Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham was caught in a sex scandal.

How did Tillis and Trump fall out?

As a Senator, in terms of leadership and ideology, Tillis has been firmly in the middle of the pack in his party, according to the independent government transparency and accountability tracker GovTrack.

Among other things, he’s known for opposing abortion and advocating for corporate tax cuts. And he’s supported every conservative Supreme Court justice nomination before him. But he’s also been unafraid to cross party lines on issues including gun control and immigration.

Tillis has also been known to occasionally butt heads with Trump.

In 2016, when Trump had become the presumptive GOP nominee for President, Tillis called on Republicans to support Trump. “We have to recognize that more than anything else, we have to unite,” he said at the time. “At the end of the day, we’re all Republicans.” He would later criticize Trump’s controversial comments on an Access Hollywood tape as “indefensible” and said Trump should “apologize to women everywhere,” though he continued to back the candidate.

In 2017, he supported the appointment of Robert Mueller as a special counsel to investigate Trump and later co-sponsored a bill with Delaware Democrat Sen. Chris Coons to protect Mueller from interference by the President. Pushing back against criticism from other Republicans, he told Politico in 2018 that he wanted to take a stand against “situational ethics” in which politicians change their stances based on who is occupying the White House. “Courage is when you know you’re going to do something that’s going to anger your base,” he said.

In 2019, Tillis wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post to criticize Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to divert funds to border control. “I cannot justify providing the executive with more ways to bypass Congress,” Tillis wrote at the time, citing conservatives’ past opposition to former President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration. “There is no intellectual honesty in now turning around and arguing that there’s an imaginary asterisk attached to executive overreach—that it’s acceptable for my party but not thy party.” (A few weeks later, however, he backed down and supported the emergency declaration.)

Trump went on to endorse Tillis ahead of his challenging reelection contest in 2020, saying that the Senator “really stepped up to the plate,” and Tillis voted against Trump’s impeachment that year, saying it was “motivated by partisan politics and a desire to remove the President from office instead of allowing the American people to decide his fate at the ballot box in November.” 

In 2021, following the Capitol riot, Tillis voted against Trump’s second impeachment on charges of incitement of insurrection, though he would later call Jan. 6 “a dark day in American history” and said that many involved needed to be held accountable and “go to prison.”

At the start of Trump’s second term, Tillis called Trump’s blanket pardon of Jan. 6 participants “a bad idea.” 

Tillis also dashed Trump’s nomination of Ed Martin to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Martin previously made inflammatory comments about the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and had come to the rioters’ defense. Tillis’ opposition effectively killed Martin’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee, earning the ire of Trump’s MAGA base.  

Tillis drew further criticism from the right when he scrutinized the nomination of Pete Hegseth to become Defense Secretary, though he ended up supporting Hegseth’s confirmation, which passed on a tiebreaker vote by Vice President J.D. Vance.

Tillis and Trump’s relationship finally broke over the controversial tax-and-spending package, which is estimated to add trillions of dollars to the national debt and lead to significant Medicaid cuts.

“I did my homework on behalf of North Carolinians, and I cannot support this bill in its current form,” Tillis said in a statement on June 28. “It would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities.”

After Tillis and fellow Republican Sen. Rand Paul voted with Democrats against a procedural advancement of the bill, which narrowly passed, Trump lashed out on social media against the pair. He previously launched a similar campaign against Republican holdout in the House Thomas Massie.

Why does Tillis’ retirement matter?

Whereas Massie will likely face a difficult primary challenge supported by Trump that will focus on his opposition to the OBBB, by not running for reelection, Tillis will face no electoral repercussions for remaining outspoken against the bill.

Tillis said in his statement announcing his retirement that, over his remaining year-and-a-half remaining in office, he plans on “focusing on producing meaningful results without the distraction of raising money or campaigning for another election. I look forward to having the pure freedom to call the balls and strikes as I see fit and representing the great people of North Carolina to the best of my ability.”

And he started on Sunday night, when he took to the Senate floor to deliver a scathing rebuke of the OBBB.

“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years, or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore?” he said. Tillis compared Trump’s campaign promises not to cut Medicaid to Obama’s notorious “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it” unkept promise about the Affordable Care Act.

Tillis added: “Mr. President, we owe it to the American people and I owe it to the people of North Carolina to withhold my affirmative vote until it’s demonstrated to me that we’ve done our homework.”

Tillis’ decision to not run for reelection comes as Democrats seek to challenge Republicans’ dominance in Congress in the upcoming midterms. Former Gov. Roy Cooper is expected to present Democrats with the best chance of flipping the seat, though he has not yet officially entered what is expected to be a “blockbuster race.”

For his part, Tillis has said he still wants Republicans to win in 2026, but on social media he offered some advice to Trump about his potential replacement: “Word to the wise, let’s avoid minisoldr,” he said, using the reported username of former Trump-endorsed North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson, who was embroiled in scandal after CNN reported he’d made lewd and inflammatory comments on a pornography website, including referring to himself as a “perv” and a “Nazi.”

But Trump could get behind someone much closer to home: His daughter-in-law Lara Trump is reportedly “seriously considering” entering the race, just days after her husband Eric told the Financial Times that he could see himself running for President one day.

Canada has announced it will rescind its Digital Services Tax (DST), a levy on tech revenues generated from Canadian users, in an effort to restart trade talks with the United States. Calling the 3% tax “a direct and blatant attack” on the U.S., President Donald Trump said on Friday he would terminate all trade discussions with his country’s northern neighbor.

“Rescinding the digital services tax will allow the negotiations of a new economic and security relationship with the United States to make vital progress and reinforce our work to create jobs and build prosperity for all Canadians,” Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said in a statement Sunday night.

Champagne confirmed that negotiations between the countries will now resume, as agreed upon by Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, with a deal expected to be reached by July 21.

The news came at the eleventh hour, as the levy was due to go into effect, with a retroactive stipulation, on Monday, June 30. Official legislation is now due to be brought forward to rescind the tax completely.

Negotiations between the U.S. and Canada had broken down at the end of last week.

“We are hereby terminating ALL discussions on trade with Canada, effective immediately,” Trump said. “We will let Canada know the tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven-day period.”

Trump’s retreat from negotiations followed a long-standing back-and-forth between the two countries on trade, which kickstarted when Trump implemented the application of an additional 25% tariff on imports from Canada in February. (Energy resources from Canada received a lower 10% tariff.)

Here’s what you need to know about the increasingly tense trade talks:

What exactly led to the breakdown in negotiations of trade between the U.S. and Canada?

Trump called Canada “a very difficult country to trade with,” blaming the breakdown in progress on Canada’s DST, which was set to go into effect on Monday, June 30 before being halted by Sunday’s announcement.

The Trump Administration had urged Canada to pause or eliminate the tax, which applies to any tech company making more than $15 million from Canadian internet users. In his social media post on Friday, Trump said the U.S. had “just been informed” of the tax. The plan had, in fact, been in place since last year, but the first payments were only due to begin on June 30. The bill worked retroactively, so large tech companies such as Apple, Google, and Meta were in line to be hit with large payments.

“Here’s the irony. To me, this looks like a power play from Canada, because they’re making it retroactive… so Trump came along and said, ‘No, no more deals—watch and learn,’” James Mohs, an associate professor of accounting, finance, and taxation at the University of New Haven, told TIME over the weekend, ahead of Canada’s DST retreat. He likened the situation to two “bullies” fighting each other on the block to see “who’s the biggest.”

A June 11 letter from Republican members of the U.S. Congress had urged Trump to push Canada into pausing the tax.

“If Canada decides to move forward with this unprecedented, retroactive tax, it will set a terrible precedent that will have long-lasting impacts on global tax and trade practices,” said the 21 members of Congress, further arguing that 90% of what Canada would collect under its Digital Services Tax Act would be from U.S. companies.

Trump’s announcement of stalled talks came a week after Canada’s Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne initially said the country would not delay implementation of the tax.

“This was voted by parliament so we’re going ahead with the DST,” Champagne told reporters on June 19. “[The Digital Services Tax] is not unique to Canada, by the way. Let’s put that into context.”

It’s unclear why Champagne performed such a sharp U-turn, but it seems as though the Finance Minister was keen to get trade talks with the U.S. back on track.

“Canada’s new government will always be guided by the overall contribution of any possible agreement to the best interests of Canadian workers and businesses. Today’s announcement will support a resumption of negotiations toward the July 21, 2025, timeline,” Carney said on Sunday night.

In the Oval Office on Friday, Trump told reporters that the U.S. has “all the cards” in its relationship with Canada. “Economically, we have such power over Canada. I’d rather not use it,” he seemingly warned.

Speaking to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Friday, for an interview of which the first part aired on Sunday morning, Trump delved into his decision to stop negotiations with Canada, saying the country is “very nasty to deal with.” He stated that the talks would be paused “until such time as they drop certain taxes,” seemingly referring to the DST.

Trump also once again repeated his belief that “Canada should be the 51st state.”

Read More: Does Trump Still Plan to Annex Canada and Make It the 51st State?

Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Friday that though the Trump Administration knew of the DST, they had hoped that Carney’s new Administration would, “as a sign of good will,” pause it.

“We think it’s badly unfair to do it retroactively,” Bessent said, stating that U.S. Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer was likely going to open a 301 investigation on the tax, which would have allowed the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) to investigate any potential harm on U.S. businesses.

Colin Robertson, a former Canadian diplomat and current fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, told TIME over the weekend that Trump had “thrown a grenade into the negotiations.”

“I look at this as part of the negotiating process. Trump is unpredictable, but my guess is that there are those in the U.S. who would like to see an agreement with Canada,” he said. “I think that the interests on both sides are such that an agreement is possible and desirable—certainly [from] the Canadian side, but for the American side, also. I think they want to be able to show the rest of the world you can make a deal with your closest neighbor and ally. And if you can’t do it with Canada, who can you do it with?”

This is not dissimilar to how Trump does business, as he prioritizes gaining “as much leverage as he can” before making a deal, Robertson argued, forewarning that a retreat of some sort may lie ahead.

What was Canada’s initial response to Trump terminating trade talks?

In a brief exchange with reporters on Friday, Carney addressed questions about the breakdown in talks. 

“We will continue to conduct these complex negotiations in the best interest of Canadians,” he said, firmly.

The Canadian government also retaliated later on Friday, placing a steel quota on some imports, with a hefty 50% tariff on products that exceed that quota. The measure went into effect immediately, and is set to be reviewed in 30 days.

“This temporary trade measure will help stabilize the Canadian steel market by addressing the risk that steel originally destined for the United States is redirected to Canada,” stated the government’s press release on the measure. “The combination of tariffs imposed by the U.S. on all steel imports and global overcapacity, caused by non-market practices, has led many exporters to seek new markets.”

Robertson noted how this move was “consistent” with what Canada had promised in the past.

“I think that all fits into [how] we had promised we would take action when Trump doubled the tariff from 25% to 50%,” he said, arguing that Canada, as “the biggest steel exporter to the U.S.,” would likely lift these measures if they can get back to a trade agreement. It remains to be seen if Canada will keep this quota in place, even for the next 30 days, now that negotiations with the U.S. are set to resume. 

At the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada, on June 16, Carney had said that he and Trump were working towards finding a trade deal within 30 days, something Trump had agreed was “achievable.” And it seems his hope was well-placed, with talks now seemingly back on track. 

Goldy Hyder, CEO of Business Council of Canada, said that this back-and-forth between the two countries has only escalated the uncertainty that businesses are already struggling with. 

“[Canadian] businesses are intertwined not just with the U.S., but also with Mexico. We have smart people, we have a lot of natural resources,” Hyder told Canada’s CTV News. “We’ve grown an economy that’s working and can continue to grow, but it’s challenging because business, of course, likes predictability and certainty, and it doesn’t have a nationality that it’s attached to.”

Sharing a message to the governments of both the U.S. and Canada, Hyder urged: “Let’s not get in our own way here.”

But some experts were against Canada rescinding the tax in order to appease Trump. 

Julian Karaguesian, a former adviser to Canada’s Ministry of Finance, spoke out to CTV over the weekend, arguing that Canada, as a “natural resource superpower,” could, if backed into a corner, utilize its role as an energy producer and build out other existing trade relationships with India, China, and beyond.

“It’s not much at all,” Karaguesian said of the amount of money Canada would have gained from the tax, emphasizing that the charge was not a tariff. “The tax [was] part of our domestic policy, and every sovereign nation has a right to pursue domestic policies.”

Elon Musk has renewed his criticism of President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful, Bill,” showcasing his fierce opposition to the measure at a critical time. As Senate Republicans scrambled to advance the newly-revised 940-page proposal, Musk took to social media on Saturday to highlight his disapproval.

“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country,” Musk said to his more than 220 million followers on X. “Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past, while severely damaging industries of the future.”

Musk, the former lead of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), who had a spectacular falling out with Trump not long after leaving the White House, doubled down on his position in a series of follow-up messages.

The Tesla CEO referred to the bill as “political suicide” for the Republican party, citing poll data that showed an approval of his stance against the measure. Musk went on to say that the bill “raises the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, the biggest increase in history, putting America in the fast lane to debt slavery.”

Prior to Musk’s latest criticism of the bill, Trump had spoken about his one-time ally during a sit-down with Fox News on Friday, for a Sunday Morning Futures interview of which the first part aired on Sunday morning.

“I haven’t spoken to him much, but I think Elon is a wonderful guy. And I know he’s going to do well, always. He’s a smart guy. He actually went and campaigned with me… but he got upset, and that wasn’t appropriate,” Trump said, claiming that Musk had become unhappy over changes to the Electric Vehicle [EV] mandate.

Musk’s long-established opposition to the Big, Beautiful Bill proved to be a sticking point during his DOGE leadership, and notably became a point of contention between himself and Trump, whose presidential campaign he helped fund.

In early June, Musk said the “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.” He took things a step further by telling his millions of followers to “call your Senator, call your Congressman… kill the bill!”

Read More: The Musk-Trump Implosion Can Be Seen From Space

What is the current status of Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill?

In the midst of Musk’s public criticism, Trump’s domestic policy bill, which centers on tax and spending cuts, cleared a significant hurdle on Saturday night. The Senate delivered a 51-49 vote to take up the bill, after holding the floor open for hours to debate with holdouts and secure the numbers necessary to move forward.

Vice President J.D. Vance arrived at the Capitol ready to break a potential tie, and he reportedly held deep talks with people unsure of pledging their support to the bill.

The newly-revised bill—released just after midnight on Saturday—may have advanced, in spite of the vocal opposition it faced from some, but there is still a lot of work to be done. The measure will now be debated in the Senate, and if it passes the Senate, it will go back to the House. The timeline is incredibly tight, as Trump has expressed his desire to sign the bill on July 4th.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are currently dragging out the process by reading aloud the 940-page bill. By midday on Sunday, the Senate had finished its 12th hour and was little more than halfway through reading the proposal.

“If Senate Republicans won’t tell the American people what’s in this bill, then Democrats are going to force this chamber to read it from start to finish,” said Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.

Despite the long road ahead, in the early hours of Sunday morning, Trump celebrated the progress the bill has made thus far, saying he was “very proud” of the Republican party.

“Tonight we saw a great victory in the Senate,” Trump said, before going on to name the key people involved in advancing the measure. “I look forward to working with them to grow our economy, reduce wasteful spending, secure our border, fight for our military/veterans, ensure that our Medicaid system helps those who truly need it, protect our Second Amendment, and so much more.”

Read More: Trump Lobbies for Passage of ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Hours After Big Setback in Senate

Which Republicans opposed the bill—and what was Trump’s reaction?

Republicans Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky notably voted to block consideration of the measure.

Sen. Tillis said he could not support the bill due to his concerns over Medicaid cuts and what that would mean for people in his state. “The Senate version… contains significant changes to Medicaid that would be devastating to North Carolina, and I cannot support it,” Tillis said. “The Senate should go back to the House’s common-sense approach to Medicaid reform to enact work requirements while protecting care for those who truly need it.”

Trump took to his own social media platform, Truth Social, to air his grievances with Tillis’ oppositional stance.

“Numerous people have come forward wanting to run in the primary against Senator Thom Tillis,” he said. “I will be meeting with them over the coming weeks, looking for someone who will properly represent the great people of North Carolina and, so importantly, the United States of America.”

In a statement on Sunday, Tillis said he will not seek re-election. The two-term Senator said that he is proud of the “bipartisan victories” he’s been a part of during his tenure, but highlighted his concerns about the current political environment.

“In Washington, over the last few years, it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species,” he said via a statement. “Sometimes those bipartisan initiatives got me into trouble with my own party, but I wouldn’t have changed a single one.”

Trump referred to Tillis’ retirement plans as “great news.“

Sen. Paul, meanwhile, took a stance against the policy bill’s provision to raise the nation’s debt limit by $5 trillion. On Saturday evening, he shared Musk’s X post showcasing poll numbers being against the bill, and commented: “Not that we should govern by poll, but it is very clear people don’t want this extreme amount of debt and reckless spending.”

Explaining his issue with the numbers, Sen. Paul said: “How about this: Tweak the ‘Big, not so beautiful, bill’ so it doesn’t add so much to the debt? The legislation, as currently written, would pay someone like Elon Musk $1000 per child, and we know how prolific he is . . . No offense, Elon, but is that a wise use of our $$?”

Responding to Sen. Paul’s vote, Trump said: “Did Rand Paul vote ‘NO’ again tonight? What’s wrong with this guy?”

On the other end of the opposition, some hard-right Republicans held off on their votes until the last minute, angling for further spending cuts into the bill in exchange for their support. Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who had earlier in the day urged fellow Republicans not to rush through the bill before knowing exactly what it contained, dramatically changed his vote to a yes in the closing moments.

Speaking out after his last-minute change of heart, Sen. Johnson said: “Biden and the Democrats left behind enormous messes that we are trying to clean up—an open border, wars, and massive deficits. After working for weeks with POTUS and his highly capable economic team, I am convinced that he views this as a necessary first step and will support my efforts to help put America on a path to fiscal sustainability.”

President Donald Trump issued blistering remarks in response to Iran’s Supreme Leader claiming victory over Israel and, by extension, the U.S. In a loaded public message, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had also threatened to attack more U.S. Military bases, further splintering the Middle Eastern country’s relationship with the U.S.

“Look, you’re a man of great faith. A man who’s highly respected in his country. You have to tell the truth. You got beat to hell,” Trump said as he addressed the Iranian Supreme Leader during a White House press conference on Friday. Trump was asked by a reporter if the U.S. would consider bombing Iran again, if intelligence reports were to conclude that Iran could enrich uranium to a level that concerns him. “Sure, without question, absolutely,” he replied.

Trump issued an even stronger response on his social media platform, Truth Social, later in the day, and doubled down on his stance once more when he reposted his message early Saturday morning.

In the lengthy post, Trump accused Khamenei of publicly sharing a “lie” by claiming Iran achieved a victory over Israel. He reaffirmed his much debated viewpoint that the U.S. strikes “obliterated” the three key nuclear facilities it targeted on Saturday, June 21. Trump also seemingly made reference to previous reports that stated the White House turned down a plan by Israel to try and kill Khamenei.

“His country was decimated, his three evil nuclear sites were obliterated, and I knew exactly where he was sheltered, and would not let Israel, or the U.S. Armed Forces… terminate his life. I saved him from a very ugly and ignominious death,” Trump said, lamenting that Khamenei would not “thank” him for this. “During the last few days, I was working on the possible removal of sanctions, and other things, which would have given a much better chance to Iran at a full, fast, and complete recovery. The sanctions are biting! But no, instead I get hit with a statement of anger, hatred, and disgust, and immediately dropped all work on sanction relief.”

According to Congress, the U.S. sanctions on Iran “are arguably the most extensive and comprehensive set of sanctions that the United States maintains on any country.” They block Iranian government assets in the U.S., ban nearly all U.S. trade with Iran, and prohibit foreign assistance and arms sales.

Read More: How U.S. Strikes May Have Inadvertently Helped the Iranian Regime

Trump concluded his charged social media message by saying “Iran has to get back into the world order flow” or else things “will only get worse for them.”

“They are always so angry, hostile, and unhappy, and look at what it has gotten them. A burned out, blown up country with no future, a decimated military, a horrible economy, and death all around them. They have no hope, and it will only get worse! I wish the leadership of Iran would realize that you often get more with honey than you do with vinegar. Peace!”

Khamenei broke his silence on Thursday, publicly speaking out—via a pre-recorded televised address and various social media comments— for the first time since Trump announced the (admittedly fragile) cease-fire between Israel and Iran.

Read More: Shaky Israel-Iran Cease-Fire Appears to Hold After Trump Publicly Rebukes Both Countries

In his televised message, Khamenei threatened to attack more U.S. military bases should any further aggression from the U.S. side occur.

“The Islamic Republic slapped America in the face. It attacked one of the important American bases in the region,” Khamenei said, referring to his country’s air assault on Al Udeid Air Base, a U.S. airbase in Qatar. The strikes were intercepted by the U.S. (except for one that was allowed to proceed as there was no risk of contact), and no casualties were reported. The military action was retaliatory, a direct response to the U.S. strikes on nuclear facilities. 

Khamenei claimed “total victory” over Israel. But Israel, the U.S., and Iran have all claimed to have won the war that started on June 13, when Israel launched strikes on Iranian nuclear and military targets, amid growing concern over Iran’s nuclear capabilities. When the U.S. actively joined the conflict on June 21, striking three key Iranian nuclear facilities, world leaders urged de-escalation and a return to negotiations, amid fears of a far-reaching war erupting.

Read More: ‘Gravely Alarmed’ World Leaders React After U.S. Strikes Iran

Though Trump continues to say that Iran’s nuclear sites were “totally obliterated,” others have cast doubts on how effective the U.S. strikes were in setting back Iran’s nuclear program. Leaked U.S. intelligence suggested that the damage to Iran’s nuclear program may not be as severe as Trump has stated. CIA director John Ratcliffe said on Wednesday that the sites had been “severely damaged” by the U.S. strikes, and that it would take years to be rebuilt. Amid the debate, the White House has put out statements arguing Trump’s stance that the facilities were “obliterated,” labelling reports to the contrary as “fake news.”

But some Democrats left a classified meeting with lingering questions over the effectiveness of the strikes.

“There’s no doubt there was damage done to the program, but the allegations that we have obliterated their program just don’t seem to stand up to reason,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut on Thursday. “To me, it still appears that we have only set back the Iranian nuclear program by a handful of months.”

When asked about concerns of Iran having “secret nuclear sites” at Friday’s press conference, Trump said he was “not worried about it at all.”

“They’re exhausted. The last thing they’re thinking about right now is nuclear,” he told reporters. “You know what they’re thinking of? They’re thinking about tomorrow, trying to live in such a mess. The place was bombed to hell.”

Read More: Key Takeaways From the 2025 NATO Summit

Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Friday that Trump needs to retire his “disrespectful” tone towards Khamenei if he wants a deal to be struck between the U.S. and Iran.

“If President Trump is genuine about wanting a deal, he should put aside the disrespectful and unacceptable tone towards Iran’s Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, and stop hurting his millions of heartfelt followers,” he said. “The great and powerful Iranian people, who showed the world that the Israeli regime had no choice but to run to ‘Daddy’ to avoid being flattened by our missiles, do not take kindly to threats and insults.”

Araghchi was referencing remarks made by NATO chief Mark Rutte who, during the NATO Summit on Wednesday, referred to Trump as the “daddy” who had to intervene in the conflict between Israel and Iran.

Amid the back-and-forth between Trump and Iran, on Saturday, thousands of mourners gathered in Tehran for the funerals of top Iranian military commanders and scientists that were killed in the Israeli strikes. According to reports, crowds chanted “death to” Israel and America.

Araghchi paid tribute to those who had been killed, and went on to tell Iranians on Saturday that the “pride of a nation is paramount,” pledging that Iran would return to “new glory and greater strength.”

As the funerals took place, Khamenei spoke out via a post on his Farsi-language social media account, sharing a message that translated to: “The Iranian nation should know that the reason for the opposition to America is that they want Iran to surrender, and this is a great insult to the Iranian nation by the Americans, and such a thing will never happen.”

The Supreme Court on Friday handed a major victory to President Donald Trump by making it harder for courts to block his executive orders nationwide, including his proposal to end automatic birthright citizenship, a signature piece of his second-term policy agenda.

In a 6-to-3 decision by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Court backed a request by the Trump Administration to limit the authority of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, a powerful tool by which Trump’s opponents have been able to halt many of his policies in recent months. The conservative majority argued that such injunctions “likely exceed” the power that Congress has granted to district judges since they go beyond providing relief to plaintiffs.

The outcome could dramatically reshape how citizenship is granted in the United States by allowing dozens of states to adopt Trump’s order that seeks to end the automatic granting of citizenship to babies born in the United States from parents who are in the country illegally. Barrett’s ruling, however, left open the possibility that Trump’s birthright policy could be blocked nationwide under lawsuits brought by state governments, or class-action litigation to challenge the order on behalf of groups of plaintiffs who would be affected by the order.

“Some say that the universal injunction ‘give[s] the Judiciary a powerful tool to check the Executive Branch,’” Barrett wrote, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh. “But federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the Executive Branch; they resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them. When a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”

Read more: Trump and Bondi Predict Supreme Court Ruling Will Unblock MAGA Agenda

Justice Sonia Sotomayor read a summary of her dissent from the bench, calling the opinion a “travesty” and warning it would “cause chaos for the families of all affected children.” Immigrant rights groups, legal advocates, and Democrats in Congress described the ruling as an abdication of the judiciary’s role to protect Americans when a President violates the Constitution, warning that it would erode long-settled legal protections for U.S.-born children of non-citizens.

While the Justices sidestepped the core constitutional question at the heart of the controversy—whether the children of undocumented immigrants born on U.S. soil are entitled to citizenship under the 14th Amendment—the ruling weakens the key legal tool that lower court judges had previously used to stall the Administration’s immigration agenda—and may open the door to new, state-by-state battles over one of the most deeply rooted principles in American law. The Supreme Court’s ruling kept Trump’s ban on hold for at least 30 days and sent a set of cases back to the lower courts to determine next steps.

Trump, who often complains about individual judges holding up his agenda, celebrated the Supreme Court’s ruling at a surprise press briefing flanked by Attorney General Pam Bondi and Solicitor General John Sauer, calling the decision a “monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers, and the rule of law.”

“This case is very important,” he said, referring to his executive order that could reshape the country’s immigration framework. “I was elected on a historic mandate, but in recent months, we’ve seen a handful of radical left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the President to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers.”

Trump’s executive order, issued on his first day back in office, called for denying citizenship to the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants and temporary visitors, a dramatic departure from more than a century of legal interpretation. The order specified that only children with at least one U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident parent would be considered citizens at birth.

Read more: How Does Birthright Citizenship in the U.S. Compare to the Rest of the World?

Law experts argue that the policy directly contradicts the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.” The Supreme Court has previously upheld this clause as conferring citizenship to nearly all children born on American soil—a position most legal scholars consider settled law since the Court’s landmark 1898 ruling in United States v. Wong Kim Ark.

Twenty-two Democratic-led states, immigrant advocacy groups, and a group of pregnant women challenged Trump’s order in federal courts in Washington state, Maryland, and Massachusetts, where judges swiftly issued preliminary injunctions blocking the policy nationwide. But the Supreme Court’s ruling means that those cases will now return to those lower courts, where those judges will have to decide how to tailor their orders to comply with the high court ruling, Barrett’s opinion said.

The majority opinion faulted the lower courts for applying their injunctions beyond the plaintiffs in the case, preventing the Trump Administration from moving forward with several policy priorities. 

“Thanks to this decision, we can now properly file to proceed with these numerous policies and those that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,” Trump said, “including birthright citizenship, ending sanctuary city funding, suspending refugee resettlement, freezing unnecessary funding, stopping federal taxpayers from paying for transgender surgeries and numerous other priorities.”

The decision follows years of mounting frustration among Republican and Democratic administrations alike, as nationwide injunctions have increasingly been used to derail executive policies before higher courts could weigh in. For Trump, whose administration has aggressively tested the bounds of executive authority on issues from immigration to civil rights, such injunctions have posed frequent obstacles.

During oral arguments, Sauer argued on behalf of the Trump Administration that nationwide injunctions are unconstitutional and that the lower counts should have only been able to block Trump’s order in relation to those who had filed lawsuits. He said only the Supreme Court could rule on the constitutionality of the executive order for the entire country, and that the Trump Administration has faced an especially high number of such rulings: federal judges have issued 40 nationwide injunctions since the start of Trump’s second term, and that 35 have come from the same five judicial districts.

The Justices appeared divided not only on the issue of injunctions but also on whether the case was the right vehicle to revisit the birthright citizenship question. Some members of the court signaled interest in eventually addressing the constitutional merits, though the Justices were not asked to do so in this case. The Justice Department did not seek a fast-track ruling on the legality of Trump’s order, focusing instead on narrowing the injunctions.

In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned that the ruling was “an existential threat to the rule of law,” while Sotomayor added that Trump’s birthright citizenship order has been deemed “patently unconstitutional” by every court that examined it. 

“The Government does not ask for complete stays of the injunctions, as it ordinarily does before this Court. Why? The answer is obvious: To get such relief, the Government would have to show that the Order is likely constitutional,” Sotomayor wrote. “So the Government instead tries its hand at a different game. It asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone.”

“The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it,” Sotomayor added. “Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along.”

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s ruling, two new class-action lawsuits challenging Trump’s birthright citizenship order were filed, including one by CASA Inc., an organization representing some of the plaintiffs, and the other by the ACLU.

“These are scary times, but we are not powerless,” says George Escobar, CASA’s Chief of Programs and Services. “We have shown in the past, and we continue to show that when we fight, we win.”