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In today's issue:

▪ Trump’s canceled spending leaves Dems hanging

▪ President threatens to sue WSJ over Epstein story

▪ Do Democrats need to coalesce for 2026?

▪ Israel strikes Gaza’s only Catholic church

In the battle over President Trump’s spending priorities, Republicans say they’re running the table, leaving Democratic lawmakers and a tiny band of GOP critics in the dust.

Passage of Trump's gargantuan agenda otherwise known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act? Check. Cancellation this week of $9 billion in already enacted appropriations opposed by the president (the first such successful clawback since 1999)? Check. Historic passage of crypto legislation? Check. A Senate sprint to confirm controversial Trump nominees? Check.

“One year ago, our country was a dead country and now it’s the hottest country anywhere in the world,” Trump says.

The president and his allies this week celebrated accomplishments, even as the administration wrangled to resolve GOP clashes and to appease MAGA supporters during a conspicuous revolt against the Justice Department while clamoring for more information about Jeffrey Epstein.

Democrats concede Republicans are making the most of their narrow House and Senate majorities while Trump maintains a tight grip on his party and boldly tests his executive sway over the legislative branch — including his clawback of billions of dollars known as rescissions, achieved 24 hours before a statutory deadline.

The cuts will impact about $8 billion in foreign aid and promotion of democracy abroad, including through the former U.S. Agency for International Development, along with $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, including PBS and NPR. The House vote late Thursday was 216-213.

“We’re gonna downsize the scope of government,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said following the vote. “Government is too large, it does too many things and it does almost nothing well.”

Democrats may have gained little legislative traction on their side of the aisle to date, but some of their GOP colleagues have joined them in openly chafing at White House expectations.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) had to surmount major hurdles inside his conference to succeed in canceling what he described as minor spending that Trump and conservatives opposed.

“I think $9 billion is a very small amount of money — as I mentioned, one-tenth of 1 percent of all federal spending,” he told Fox News on Wednesday. “But we’ve got to look at all aspects of the federal budget and figure out where we can root out waste, fraud and abuse.”

The Speaker and the White House budget director, each eager to appease fiscal hawks, say more such cancellations of previously approved spending are ahead.

Democrats have suggested they might try to shut down the government in September to showcase their opposition to Trump’s after-the-fact budget deletions.

Some Republicans in Congress worry voters in next year’s midterm contests will punish the party in power. The history of midterm wipeouts supports their caution. The economy has been weakening, according to this year’s data. And Democratic voters appear to be more motivated than Republicans ahead of the elections, new polling shows.

Trump’s supporters approve in general of slashing federal spending and shrinking deficits, but erasing federal and state benefits and services is a political risk, according to bipartisan analysts, if average Americans don’t feel better off when they cast their ballots.

Some lawmakers from red states say they’re having second thoughts about the billions in cuts they helped enact affecting rural hospitals. Those reductions may never happen.

Trump’s job approval is underwater on issues including the economy, immigration, health care and government spending, all of which are top of mind among voters, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Roughly half of surveyed U.S. adults report the president’s second-term policies have “done more to hurt” them, the survey found.

House Ways and Means Committee member Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) this week described being called “a racist” by some colleagues because of his support for Medicaid cuts and work verification requirements included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“I think work matters in America,” he said during the Hill Nation Summit. “You create jobs so people can work, not be dependent on the government,” he added.

A few fed-up Republican senators eager in the first six months of Trump’s second term to back his agenda, whether in philosophical solidarity or fearful of political punishment, have suggested their support could be conditional, especially amid future tests of Congress’s power of the purse and if lawmakers can’t dictate how any future rescissions are carried out by the executive branch.

But as The New York Times pointed out, even GOP lawmakers who grouse have repeatedly bowed to the president.

▪ The Washington Post: The administration’s plan to shrink the size of government, in charts.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), both moderates, opposed the $9 billion rescissions bill this week. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) bucked a procedural step before voting for the final measure. He objected to what he called the administration’s insistence on “a blank check.” Collins says she will seek reelection next year. McConnell is retiring at the end of his term.

“I suspect we’re going to find out there are some things that we’re going to regret,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said Wednesday from the floor.........

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