Posts on Friday, July 4, 2025

Republicans muscled President Donald Trump’s tax and spending cut bill through the House on Thursday, the final step necessary to get the bill to his desk by the GOP’s self-imposed deadline of July 4th. At nearly 900 pages, the legislation is a sprawling collection of tax breaks, spending cuts and other Republican priorities, including new money for national defense and deportations. Democrats united against the legislation, but were powerless to stop it as long as Republicans stayed united. The Senate passed the bill, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaking vote. The House passed an earlier iteration of the bill in May with just one vote to spare.

U.S. immigration officials have arrested famous Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez Jr. — days after his high-profile fight with Jake Paul — for overstaying his visa and lying on a green card application, officials said Thursday. Chávez was detained in front of his home on Wednesday and will be deported to Mexico, where he faces organized crime charges, authorities said. Here’s what to know about this arrest: The 39-year-old boxer is a former middleweight champion hails from Mexico. His father, Julio César Chávez, is one of the most beloved athletes in Mexican history and a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of prisoners might be at risk of executions." — Mahmood Amiry Moghaddam, director of the Norway-based Iran Human Rights Organization, June 26, 2025. Iran... has reportedly executed 1,700 people in 2025 alone -- and it is not even August. US President Donald J. Trump deserves every credit for bombing the Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan uranium enrichment plants. However, forcing Israel to terminate its "Operation Rising Lion," just as it was finally giving the Iranian people a glimpse of hope for freedom in the course of destroying Iran's nuclear program and its key institutions of oppression, was a terrible move.

President Trump is finally getting his “big, beautiful” bill. The GOP-led House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in a 218-214 vote Thursday following 29 hours of arm-twisting and deliberation that included the longest floor speech and longest procedural vote in the body’s 236-year history. (snip) “With this bill, every major promise I made to the people of Iowa in 2024 became a promise kept,” Trump said. “We had a national decline. We were a laughing stock all over the world. We had a man as president who shouldn’t have been there,” he said.

Last September, in the waning months of the election, the NY Times published a story titled "How the False Story of a Gang ‘Takeover’ in Colorado Reached Trump." Mike Coffman, the conservative Republican mayor of Aurora, Colo., said he was at home on Tuesday night watching the presidential debate and bracing for the worst... “They’re taking over buildings,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re going in violently.” Mr. Coffman was contrite on Thursday as he told that story. After all, he had helped create the tall tale now sullying his city’s reputation.