Trump signs “big, beautiful bill” in July Fourth ceremony at White House

Washington — President Trump brought pomp and circumstance to his signing of the “big, beautiful bill” on Friday, with an Independence Day ceremony at the White House that included a B-2 bomber flyover. 

Some Republican members of Congress who voted to pass the legislation attended the event in which the president put his signature on his sweeping domestic policy bill. They stood around Mr. Trump with their thumbs up as he signed the bill. 

The final bill hasn’t appeased all Republicans, but the president and Congress managed to pass it ahead of their self-imposed July Fourth deadline. 

“What we’ve done is put everything into one bill,” Mr. Trump said. “I liked it because we had so much in there that no matter who you are, there was something in that bill that would make your congressman or your senator or your congresswoman, much more importantly, raise their hand and support it.”

The president praised Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, for their work in holding the conference together to get the bill over the finish line. 

“Those two are a team that is not going to be beat,” Mr. Trump said. 

The president watched coverage of the bill’s passage from the White House on Thursday. Mr. Trump took a victory lap during a speech in Iowa Thursday night, calling the first five months of his second term “a declaration of independence from a, really, national decline.” 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the legislation “an encapsulation of all of the policies that the president campaigned on and the American people voted on,” and said it’s a “victorious day for the American people.” 

Following days of handwringing and negotiations, and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries breaking the record for the longest speech on the House floor, the House passed the legislation Thursday afternoon in a 218-214 vote. Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Thomas Massie voted against the legislation, and no Democrats voted for it. GOP leadership and the White House spoke with Republican holdouts for hours to advance the bill early Thursday morning. 

A senior Trump White House official told reporters on a press call Thursday that the president was “deeply” involved in the process of the bill, and through “late-night phone calls,” helped move the bill forward in Congress. Vice President JD Vance was also closely involved, the official said. 

Mr. Trump also spent part of Friday’s event honoring the military members involved in the U.S. strikes against some of Iran’s nuclear facilities last month.

What’s in the “big, beautiful bill”?

• The current $2,000 child tax credit, which would return to a pre-2017 level of $1,000 in 2026, will permanently increase to $2,200. 

• The legislation includes tougher restrictions on Medicaid, which provides government-sponsored health care for low-income and disabled Americans. The bill imposes work requirements for some able-bodied adults and more frequent eligibility checks. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill will result in 11.8 million Americans losing health coverage under Medicaid over the next decade.

• The bill would allow many tipped workers to deduct up to $25,000 of their tips and overtime from their taxes. That provision expires in 2028.

• The bill would make changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, expanding work requirements and requiring state governments with higher payment error rates to cover some of the program’s costs.

• The legislation also includes more than $46.5 billion for border wall construction and related expenses, $45 billion to expand detention capacity for immigrants in custody and about $30 billion in funding for hiring, training and other resources for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

• The package also includes an increase to the cap on the state and local tax deduction, raising it from $10,000 to $40,000. After five years, it would return to $10,000.

• The bill would largely terminate numerous tax incentives from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act for clean energy, electric vehicles and energy efficiency programs that benefited consumers. 

• The legislation would raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, going beyond the $4 trillion outlined in the initial House-passed bill. Congress faces a deadline to address the debt limit later this summer.