Why Mike Johnson Already Has a Huge Obstacle in Passing Trump’s Budget

The president’s “big, beautiful bill” is slated to be fast-tracked through the House—but before debate has even started, Republicans fear that they don’t have the votes.

Whether conservative lawmakers agree or disagree with the contents of the spending package is currently not the problem, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson. Instead, it’s whether representatives will actually be in attendance for the vote.

“I am worried about flights,” Johnson told Politico Wednesday morning. “We don’t know if we have a full House. So that’s what we’re working on.”

Elected representatives coming from the South could be contending with a tropical system expected to hit over the next few days, while Washington deals with the fallout of severe thunderstorm advisories on Tuesday.

Several lawmakers have already posted on social media that their flights back to Washington have been delayed or canceled in light of the weather. That fueled a rumor that the stormy weather could push back the vote into Wednesday night or even Thursday, reported Politico, though that possibly contradicts a scheduling alert issued by Majority Whip Tom Emmer that arranged for the first votes to begin by 11 a.m. on Wednesday.

“We’re monitoring the weather closely; we have to figure that out,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday, adding that he wasn’t sure if a Wednesday morning vote would be possible. “There’s a lot of delays right now, so that’s part of the problem.”

Trump’s signature agenda item narrowly passed through the Senate Tuesday when Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote, advancing a bill that strips Medicaid from millions of Americans and is also projected to add trillions to the national deficit.

Republicans in both chambers have been highly critical of Trump’s exorbitantly expensive legislation. In the wake of the Senate vote, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed that “there’s no way” the bill would pass the House, adding that the fight over its details is “far from over.”

Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo seemed shocked as she received the tumbling job numbers live on her show, as the impacts of President Trump’s second term begin to take root within the economy.

“Of course, President Trump is talking about this [big, beautiful] bill leading to growth in the economy, we are waiting any moment now to get the jobs numbers for the month of May. The expectations call for the ADP numbers to be up ninety-five thousand for the month of June, rather,” Bartiromo said on Wednesday. Then her eyes widened.

“Right now [we’re] seeing the number actually, uh, show a decline in jobs, uh, down thirty-three thousand on ADP.” She promptly changed the subject to the Golden Dome missile defense system, something Trump insists we need and which his budget bill funds.

While the ADP report released Wednesday precedes the government’s official jobs report, these numbers directly contradict Trump’s narrative that we currently have a robust economy. According to the report, the private sector lost 33,000 jobs in June—the first monthly job loss in over two years. Most of the roles lost were in business services, health, and education.

These unexpected losses could be caused by a number of Trump’s policy decisions, from his sweeping tariffs to mass deportations. Regardless, the numbers do not inspire faith in Trump’s ability to avoid a full-blown recession.

Donald Trump’s latest threat to illegally deport U.S. citizens is bone-chilling.

Speaking at a press conference Tuesday at “Alligator Alcatraz,” the Trump administration’s premier wetland-themed concentration camp, Trump once again raised his “controversial” (read: illegal) plot to widen the net of targets in his massive deportation scheme.

“They’re not new to our country, they’re old to our country, many of them were born in our country,” Trump said. “I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too, if you want to know the truth. So maybe that’ll be the next job that we’ll work on together.”

Authoritarianism scholar Ruth Ben-Ghiat shared her disturbance at Trump’s latest comment, by recalling what he said just a few months ago. “‘The Homegrowns Will Be Next,’ is one of the more chilling authoritarian phrases I have heard. This is also why they want to increase ICE’s budget so much,” she wrote on X.

Trump had promised that “homegrowns are next” during fellow authoritarian Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s visit to the White House earlier this year.

Trump’s behemoth budget bill that was passed in the Senate Tuesday would increase ICE’s annual budget for detentions from $3.4 billion to $45 billion until the end of 2029, with an additional $14.4 billion for transportation and $8 billion for hiring, placing ICE’s budget on par with supplemental bills used to fund wars.

While Trump described deporting individuals who cartoonishly “whack people over the head with a baseball bat from behind and kill ’em,” it’s crucial to know that ICE’s sweeping immigration raids aren’t targeting criminals at all. In fact, seven out of 10 people arrested in the recent raids in Los Angeles had no criminal conviction, and six out of 10 people had never even been charged with a crime.

Under the Trump administration’s current policies allowing warrantless mass arrests by masked agents and inconsistent due process for detainees, expanding deportation efforts to lawful U.S. citizens would ensure that no one is ever safe from deportation.

Already, Trump’s Department of Justice is prioritizing cases to strip U.S. citizenship.

Hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs was found not guilty on major charges of sex trafficking and racketeering. He was found guilty on two lesser charges of transportation for prostitution.

Prosecutors had alleged that Combs, 55, had been engaging in sex trafficking and racketeering in regards to his so-called “freak offs,” in which they alleged he coerced former girlfriend and key witness Cassie Ventura and sex workers into long, drug-fueled, sexual encounters. Combs still faces up to 20 years in prison, or 10 years on each charge, but is acquitted from the most serious of his charges.

Combs’s defense framed Ventura as some messy, unstable lover rather than the abused woman we all watched him brutally beat on camera.

This acquittal is a shocking end to a case that was closely watched by millions of people for months. The result raises questions about the strength of the federal government’s RICO and sex-trafficking charges and the impact this ruling will have on survivors of domestic abuse and sexual violence across the country, especially those who are the victims of rich and powerful men.

“Although the jury did not find Combs guilty of sex trafficking Cassie beyond a reasonable doubt, she paved the way for a jury to find him guilty of transportation to engage in prostitution,” Ventura’s lawyers wrote in a statement after the verdict. “By coming forward with her experience, Cassie has left an indelible mark on both the entertainment industry and the fight for justice. We must repeat – with no reservation – that we believe and support our client who showed exemplary courage throughout this trial. She displayed unquestionable strength and brought attention to the realities of powerful men in our orbit and the misconduct that has persisted for decades without repercussion. This case proved that change is long overdue, and we will continue to fight on behalf of survivors.”

This story has been updated.

Even Donald Trump’s most unwavering allies are irate over the contents of the president’s spending package.

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” narrowly passed through the Senate Tuesday when Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote on the highly controversial legislation that both strips Medicaid from millions of Americans and is projected to add trillions to the national deficit.

In the wake of the vote, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene joined Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, flaming the effort as a “shit show.”

The MAGA acolyte said the battle over the bill was “far from over,” adding that she believes “there’s no way” it will pass through the House.

“It is really a dire situation. We’re on a time clock that’s been really set on us, so we have a lot of pressure,” Greene said, referring to the July 4 deadline that the president imposed on Congress to pass his key agenda item.

“And then also given the fact that there’s 435 members of Congress and it’s hard for us to get to an agreement on anything,” she continued. “So this whole thing is—I don’t know what to call it—it’s a shit show. And I’m sorry for saying that. I know we’re not supposed to say that on the air, but that’s truly what it is.”

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would extend his 2017 tax cuts for millionaires and corporations in exchange for $880 billion in cuts to social programs such as Medicaid, practically gutting the critical low-income health care option. But none of the cuts to other areas of government actually pencil out the massive tax rewrite. Instead, on Saturday, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Senate legislation would increase the deficit by more than $3.9 trillion over the next 10 years—an incredible moralistic flip-flop for a party that has claimed for decades to be focused on curtailing government spending.

Even senators who voted for the bill have already changed their tune about it. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, whose switched “no” vote Tuesday was critical to advancing the bill, said after the vote—and massive national backlash—that she expects the House to send the bill back to the Senate.

“My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet,” Murkowski told Punchbowl News.

When asked why she voted for the legislation if she didn’t align with it, Murkowski said that a vote against the bill would have been its death knell.

“Kill it and it’s gone,” she said.