Lindsey Graham Dumps Cold Water on Trump-Backed Budget Bill

While House Republicans celebrated passing the president’s “big, beautiful” spending bill by a one-vote margin Thursday, caucus members in the upper chamber remained unimpressed.

Speaking with CNN’s Manu Raju later that day, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham shot down some of the cuts as “not real,” arguing that the House had done next to nothing to actually bring down federal spending.

Even a $880 billion cut into Medicaid couldn’t offset the gargantuan price tag on extending Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which are estimated to add somewhere between $3.8 trillion and $5.3 trillion to the national debt. Those numbers have ruffled feathers among congressional budget hawks, who were under the impression that the Trump administration would be sizing down spending rather than beefing it up.

America’s national debt is currently more than $36.8 trillion, as of the time of publishing.

“Some of the Freedom Caucus members are warning you guys not to water down any of their cuts, what do you say to them?” Raju asked.

Graham could only laugh.

“Well, you had your chance,” the lawmaker said with a chuckle. “Some of these cuts are not real. And we’re talking about over a decade—you know, if you do a trillion and a half, that’s like a percent and a half.”

“So don’t get high on our horse here that we’ve somehow made some major advancement of reducing spending because we didn’t,” Graham noted.

Several conservative senators have indicated they won’t vote for the bill if it includes a debt limit increase, including Senators Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, and Rick Scott. The growing coalition of budget-conscious naysayers is threatening enough to potentially keep the bill from reaching the president’s desk, as Republicans grapple with their narrow majority in the Senate.

The Trump administration doesn’t want you to trust independent analysis of their “big, beautiful” tax bill.

The bill—now headed to the Senate—proposes cutting upward of $880 billion from Medicaid in order to make a multitrillion-dollar tax cut extension for multimillionaires and corporations more palatable to the American public. Trump’s bill is estimated to add somewhere between $3.8 trillion and $5.3 trillion to the national debt.

But when pressed by Fox News Friday to explain the massive expenditure, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent simply brushed the numbers off.

“You’re referring to the [Congressional Budget Office] scoring, which is 10-year scoring and it’s D.C.-style scoring,” Bessent said, clearing his throat. “We think that we can both grow the economy and control the debt.”

“What’s important, Bill, is that the economy grows faster than the debt,” Bessent told Fox Host Bill Hemmer. “So what I would tell your viewers to focus on, is what I’m focused on, is what [former] Secretary [Janet] Yellen was focused on, is what is total debt to GDP.

“We can grow our way out of this. If we change the growth trajectory of the country, of the economy, then we will stabilize our finances and grow our way out of this,” Bessent added.

The CBO is a nonpartisan federal agency that provides prospective analytics to Congress. On Tuesday, a CBO report of the House’s reconciliation package found that—if passed—the bill would disproportionately aid the wealthiest among us, lowering household resources by 4 percent for the bottom 10 percent of America, while raising resources by 2 percent for the richest 10 percent of the country.

But America’s finances are not stabilizing, in no small part due to Donald Trump’s on-again-off-again tariff plan that has rattled U.S. markets. Last week, credit firm Moody’s was the last of the three major bond rating agencies to downgrade the nation’s score. Moody’s reported that it appears increasingly unlikely that the U.S. economy will be able to keep up with its rising debt and interest payments, throwing off what was once an unshakeable confidence in U.S. growth.

In the wake of the downgrade, Bessent once again urged investors to close their eyes and disregard the news, claiming that the lowered score was simply a “lagging indicator” of U.S. performance.

America’s national debt is currently more than $36.8 trillion, as of the time of publishing. Whether or not the deficit actually affects the economy is still in debate, but having investors believe in the health of the economy is critical.

“The government deficit isn’t a problem until investors think it is,” Callie Cox, chief market strategist at Ritholtz Wealth Management, told Axios Monday. “And they’re increasingly telling us that the deficit is a problem.”

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. inadvertently destroyed his own nominee for surgeon general by giving a rare, good piece of medical advice.  

During an interview with CNN’s Kaitlin Collins Thursday, Kennedy was asked to explain a remark he’d made that people should not take his medical advice. 

“Absolutely. People should not be taking medical advice from somebody who is not a physician,” Kennedy said. 

That’s not great news for Casey Means, the wellness influencer and author Donald Trump nominated at Kennedy’s suggestion to serve as the surgeon general. Means is not a practicing physician because she has no active medical license, and she never completed her physician residency.

Unaware of how ridiculous he sounded, Kennedy continued, muddling his point entirely. “And they should also be skeptical about any medical advice. They need to do their own research,” he said.

In one breath, Kennedy warned against taking advice from unproven sources and also urged Americans to question any actual advice they do get and seek out their own alternative, unproven medicines. As an anti-vaccine advocate, Kennedy has repeatedly championed alternative, unproven medicines. 

Harvard University is suing the Trump administration over its revocation of the school’s ability to enroll international students.

In a lawsuit filed on Friday in Boston, the university slammed the administration’s “unlawful and unwarranted action,” calling it a “blatant violation” of the law.

The school highlighted the over 6,800 visa holders from more than 100 countries that will be negatively impacted by the administration’s disdain for basic First Amendment principles.

“With the stroke of a pen, the government has sought to erase a quarter of Harvard’s student body, international students who contribute significantly to the University and its mission,” Harvard said in the suit.

Harvard said it will also be seeking a temporary restraining order against the move.

The move comes one day after the Trump administration announced it is revoking Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, which would bar all international students on F- or J- nonimmigrant visas from enrolling in the university for the 2025–2026 academic year, including those already pursuing a degree at the school.

“This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a press release full of propaganda on Thursday. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused. They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law.”

Noem claims that Harvard can avoid the ban on future foreign student enrollment by simply doxxing all of its current foreign students to the Trump administration.

Weeks after negotiating a palatable trade deal with the United Kingdom to squash the tariffs, Donald Trump wants more.

The president pitched early Friday that the U.K. should—like his administration—focus on divesting from clean energy and return to oil drilling, claiming that the switch would bring energy costs “way down.”

“Our negotiated deal with the United Kingdom is working out well for all,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I strongly recommend to them, however, that in order to get their Energy Costs down, they stop with the costly and unsightly windmills, and incentivize modernized drilling in the North Sea, where large amounts of oil lay waiting to be taken.

“A century of drilling left, with Aberdeen as the hub,” he continued. “The old fashioned tax system disincentivizes drilling, rather than the opposite. U.K.’s Energy Costs would go WAY DOWN, and fast!”

Britain has some of the highest energy prices in the world, but experts don’t point their finger at green solutions as the problem. Instead, it’s the nation’s overreliance on gas for electricity and heat that has “led to record high levels of household energy debt and a sharp slump in industrial activity,” The Guardian reported earlier this week.

Industries reliant on vast energy resources have fallen by a third in the U.K. since 2021, marking their lowest level since 1990, according to a business overview released by Britain’s Office for National Statistics on Monday. Bringing business back up will depend on solving the crisis.

“These figures are a wake-up call,” Sam Richards, the chief executive of lobbying group Britain Remade, told The Guardian. “Sky-high energy costs have gutted Britain’s industrial base, with output in sectors like steel and chemicals collapsing to record lows. If we’re serious about protecting jobs and rebuilding our manufacturing strength, we need to cut industrial electricity costs, and fast.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s interest in expanding drilling isn’t without influence. Oil and gas lobbyists were Trump’s fourth-largest source of donations during his most recent presidential campaign, handing more than $14 million to the anti-environmentalist, according to campaign filings.