President Donald Trump said he would explore backing a primary challenger to two-term Sen. Thom Tillis Saturday — just hours after the North Carolina Republican voted against advancing the centerpiece of Trump’s legislative agena.

Trump berated Tillis in mutiple Truth Social posts, saying he was making a “big mistake” and that he would be meeting potential primary challenges as he was “looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina.”

Tillis has long expressed concerns about the impact of Medicaid changes in the bill on North Carolina and said Saturday he would not support the legislation unless changes are made. Trump did not mention the issue in his posts, but did detail Tillis’ earlier concerns with preserving some clean-energy tax breaks that Republicans are targeting.

North Carolina is the top pickup opportunity for Senate Democrats in 2026, and Tillis is a veteran of multiple tough races in the Tarheel State. In 2014, as speaker of the state House, he knocked off incumbent Kay Hagan in one of the closest Senate races of the cycle. Tillis then won narrowly in 2020 after his Democrat opponent, former state Sen. Cal Cunningham, got himself embroiled in a sexting scandal.

Tillis was already anticipating facing a strong Democratic opponent next year: Former Rep. Wiley Nickel has already announced a Senate bid, and popular former Gov. Roy Cooper is also mulling a run.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah) withdrew his controversial provision to sell public lands for development Saturday night under fierce opposition from fellow Republicans from western states.

Lee decided to back down preemptively while the Senate was taking a procedural vote on their megabill rather than risk the measure failing on the floor. Western Republicans had promised to offer an amendment to strip it out.

Five House Republicans also threatened to vote down the GOP megabill if the Senate included a provision to sell public lands.

In a statement posted to X, Lee blamed “misinformation” and the “strict constraints of the budget reconciliation process” for hampering his effort, but in reality he faced stiff opposition from western Republicans from states with large public land holdings.

“The people of Idaho have been clear—we do NOT support the sale of our public lands to the highest bidder. I am proud to help lead the effort to remove this provision from the One Big Beautiful Bill,” Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said in a post to X.

Lee had previously had to revise and narrow his proposal after the Senate parliamentarian ruled that his initial language did not comply with the strict rules governing measures that can be included in party-line reconciliation bills.

It removes a major headache for GOP leadership in both chambers as they look to get their megabill tax cut and spending bill to President Trump’s desk by July 4.

A Senate vote on advancing Republicans’ party-line domestic-policy bill has been held open for more than two hours as GOP leaders scramble for the final votes.

Vice President JD Vance arrived at the Capitol shortly after 8 p.m. to break a possible tie. Three Republican senators — Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — have already voted “no.” A fourth GOP opponent would at least temporarily sink the megabill and likely foil plans to get it to President Donald Trump’s desk by July 4.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Majority Whip John Barrasso, Finance Chair Mike Crapo and Budget Chair Lindsey Graham are meeting off the floor with Vance, Johnson and the three Republican holdouts — Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Rick Scott of Florida. The three are believed to be voting as a bloc; Lee and Scott have raised concerns about the level of spending cuts in the bill.

“We need more deficit reduction,” Lee said before the vote. Notably, he announced Saturday night he was dropping a provision to sell some public lands from the megabill amid intraparty opposition.

Thune was tight-lipped heading into the meeting saying only, “It’s a long vote.”

Earlier in the evening, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska made her fellow Republicans sweat, withholding her vote for nearly an hour while a gaggle of key leaders surrounded her on the Senate floor.

Murkowski, who had already secured major concessions for her home state, spent more than a half-hour in deep and sometimes animated conversations with Crapo, Graham, Barrasso and Thune, also talking separately to Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Curtis of Utah. At one point she held Vance’s hand while she talked with him one-on-one in the back of the chamber.

Graham could be heard loudly saying that to “start the process” would be “best.” Eventually she voted to move forward with the bill, with a big smile, but only after she retreated into the cloakroom for additional conversations with leaders and committee chairs.

Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.

The cost of Senate Republicans’ tax cuts has grown to $4.45 trillion, congressional forecasters said Saturday night.

That’s up more than $200 billion from a previous draft of the plan, and reflects numerous last-minute changes lawmakers have made as they negotiate the details of the domestic policy megabill now before the Senate.

The growing price tag could be a problem for some Republicans, especially in the House where many lawmakers have been adamant that their tax cuts cost no more than $4 trillion, unless they find more spending cuts.

Lawmakers in the two chambers have not resolved a months-long dispute over the bill’s cost, even as they push to finalize the plan, which they hope to get to President Donald Trump next week for his signature into law.

The specifics of the sweeping tax, energy, defense and immigration package are still in flux, and it’s possible lawmakers will make additional changes to bring down its cost to the Treasury.

At Republicans’ request, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation also analyzed the plan using an alternative metric known as a “current policy baseline.” By that standard, the bill costs $693 billion, up from a previous $442 billion estimate.

The biggest reason for the increased price tag are provisions demanded by blue-state Republicans in the House to ease a cap on state and local tax deductions. That’s projected to add $180 billion to the cost.

Lawmakers also expanded an initiative known as Opportunity Zones that offers a capital gains tax cut to investors who put their money in areas deemed economically underdeveloped. The cost of that initiative has grown by $34 billion compared to a previous draft of Senate Republicans’ plan.

At the same time, the estimate shows a proposed hike in a university endowment tax — ratcheted back in the latest draft of the GOP plan — is now only estimated to raise $761 million, down from the $6.7 billion House Republicans had proposed in their version of the package.

JCT only examined the tax portion of the plan. The rest will be analyzed by its sister agency, the Congressional Budget Office.

Senate Republicans stepped up their attacks on U.S. solar and wind energy projects by quietly adding a provision to their megabill that would penalize future developments with a new tax.

That new tax measure was tucked into the more than 900-page document released late Friday that also would sharply cut the tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act for solar and wind projects. Those cuts to the IRA credits were added after a late-stage push by President Donald Trump to crack down further on the incentives by requiring generation projects be placed in service by the end of 2027 to qualify.

The new excise tax is another blow to the fastest-growing sources of power production in the United States, and would be a massive setback to the wind and solar energy industries since it would apply even to projects not receiving any credits.

“It’s a kill shot. This new excise tax on wind and solar is designed to fully kill the industry,” said Adrian Deveny, founder and president of policy advisory firm Climate Vision, who helped craft the climate law as a former policy director for Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer.

Analysts at the Rhodium Group said in an email the new tax would push up the costs of wind and solar projects by 10 to 20 percent — on top of the cost increases from losing the credits.

“Combined with the likely onerous administrative reporting burden this provision puts in place, these cost increases will lead to even lower wind and solar installations. The impacts of this tax would also flow through to consumers in the form of higher electricity rates,” Rhodium said.

The provision as written appears to add an additional tax for any wind and solar project placed into service after 2027 — when its eligibility for the investment and production tax credits ends — if a certain percentage of the value of the project’s components are sourced from prohibited foreign entities, like China. It would apply to........

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