Senate Republicans unveiled their long-awaited version of President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” but its survival is not guaranteed.

Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., revealed the stitched-together text of the colossal bill late Firday night.

The final product from the upper chamber is the culmination of a roughly month-long sprint to take the House GOP’s version of the bill and mold and change it. The colossal package includes separate pieces and parts from 10 Senate committees. With the introduction of the bill, a simple procedural hurdle must be passed in order to begin the countdown to final passage.

When that comes remains an open question. Senate Republicans left their daily lunch on Friday under the assumption that a vote could be teed up as early as noon on Saturday.

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Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told Fox News Digital that he had “strongly encouraged” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to put the bill on the floor for a vote Saturday afternoon. 

“If you’re unhappy with that, you’re welcome to fill out a hurt feelings report, and we will review it carefully later,” Kennedy said. “But in the meantime, it’s time to start voting.”

But Senate Republicans’ desire to impose their will on the package and make changes to already divisive policy tweaks in the House GOP’s offering could doom the bill and derail Thune’s ambitious timeline to get it on Trump’s desk by the July 4 deadline.

However, Thune has remained firm that lawmakers would stay on course and deliver the bill to Trump by Independence Day. 

When asked if he had the vote to move the package forward, Thune said “we’ll find out tomorrow.”

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But it wasn’t just lawmakers who nearly derailed the bill. The Senate parliamentarian, the true final arbiter of the bill, ruled that numerous GOP-authored provisions did not pass muster with Senate rules.

Any item in the “big, beautiful bill” must comport with the Byrd Rule, which governs the budget reconciliation process and allows for a party in power to ram legislation through the Senate while skirting the 60-vote filibuster threshold. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune speaks during a news conference following the weekly Senate Republican policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on June 17, 2025, in Washington. (Getty Images)

That sent lawmakers back to the drawing board on a slew of policy tweaks, including the Senate’s changes to the Medicaid provider tax rate, cost-sharing for food benefits and others. 

Republican leaders, the White House and disparate factions within the Senate and House GOP have been meeting to find middle ground on other pain points, like tweaking the caps on state and local tax (SALT) deductions.

While the controversial Medicaid provider tax rate change remained largely the same, a $25 billion rural hospital stabilization fund was included in the bill to help attract possible holdouts that have raised concerns that the rate change would shutter rural hospitals throughout the country. 

On the SALT front, there appeared to be a breakthrough on Friday. A source told Fox News that the White House and House were on board with a new plan that would keep the $40,000 cap from the House’s bill and have it reduced back down to $10,000 after five years. 

But Senate Republicans are the ones that must accept it at this stage. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., has acted as the mediator in those negotiations, and said that he was unsure if any of his colleagues “love it.” 

“But I think, as I’ve said before, I want to make sure we have enough that people can vote for than to vote against,” he said. 

Still, a laundry list of other pocket issues and concerns over just how deep spending cuts in the bill go have conservatives and moderates in the House GOP and Senate pounding their chests and vowing to vote against the bill.

Republican leaders remain adamant that they will finish the mammoth package and are gambling that some lawmakers standing against the bill will buckle under the pressure from the White House and the desire to leave Washington for a short break.

Once a motion to proceed is passed, which only requires a simple majority, then begins 20 hours of debate evenly divided between both sides of the aisle.

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House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol Building on April 1, 2025, in Washington. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Democratic lawmakers are expected to spend the entirety of their 10 allotted hours, while Republicans will likely clock in well below their limit. From there starts the “vote-a-rama” process, when lawmakers can submit a near-endless number of amendments to the bill. Democrats will likely try to extract as much pain as possible with messaging amendments that won’t actually pass but will add more and more time to the process.

Once that is complete, lawmakers will move to a final vote. If successful, the “big, beautiful bill” will again make its way back to the House, where House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., will again have to corral dissidents to support the legislation. It barely advanced last month, squeaking by on a one-vote margin. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hammered on the importance of passing Trump’s bill on time. He met with Senate Republicans during their closed-door lunch and spread the message that advancing the colossal tax package would go a long way to giving businesses more certainty in the wake of the president’s tariffs. 

“We need certainty,” he said. “With so much uncertainty, and having the bill on the president’s desk by July 4 will give us great tax certainty, and I believe, accelerate the economy in the third quarter of the year.” 

As many as 3.4 million Californians could lose their state Medi-Cal health insurance under the budget bill making its way through the U.S. Senate, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday.

Newsom said the proposed cuts to healthcare in the “one big, beautiful bill,” a cornerstone of President Trump’s second-term agenda, could force the closure of struggling rural hospitals, reduce government food assistance for those in need and drive up premiums for people who rely on Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act health insurance marketplace.

“This is devastating,” Newsom said. “I know that word is often overused in this line of work, but this is, in many ways, an understatement of how reckless and cruel and damaging this is.”

Medicaid provides health insurance for about 1 in 5 Americans and generally uses income, rather than employment, as a condition for enrollment.

Roughly 15 million Californians, more than a third of the state, are on Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid, with some of the highest percentages in rural counties that supported Trump in the November election. More than half of California children receive healthcare coverage through Medi-Cal.

The Senate is still debating its version of the bill. But the current version would require many Medicaid recipients to prove every six months that they work, volunteer or attend school at least 80 hours per month. States would be required to set up their work eligibility verification systems by the end of 2026, just after the midterm elections. States that do not set up those systems could lose federal Medicaid funding.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters last month that the aim of the policy was to encourage poor Americans to contribute and “return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working instead of playing video games all day.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated this month that the requirements would cut about $344 billion in Medicaid spending over a decade and leave 4.8 million more people uninsured.

Health policy experts warn that work requirements can lead to people who are eligible, but can’t prove it, losing their benefits.

Newsom said 5.1 million people in California would need to go through the work verification progress and about one-third would “likely” meet the requirements.

The other two-thirds would “go through the labyrinth of manual verification,” Newsom said.

He said 3 million people in California could lose coverage through the new Medicaid work requirements, and 400,000 more could lose their insurance if they were required to re-verify their eligibility every six months. Newsom said that the state’s estimate was based on the number of people who dropped off Medicaid in New Hampshire and Arkansas after those states briefly implemented their own work requirements.

Last year, California became the first state in the nation to offer healthcare to low-income undocumented immigrants. The expansion, approved by Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature, has cost the state billions and drawn sharp criticism from Republicans.

Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher (R-Yuba City), who has previously called on Newsom to walk back that coverage, said on social media Friday that Newsom and Democratic legislative leaders had “obliterated” the healthcare system.

Newsom’s budget proposal in May proposed substantial cuts to the healthcare program for undocumented immigrants, including freezing new enrollment in 2026, requiring adults to pay $100 monthly premiums and cutting full dental coverage.

Lawmakers ultimately agreed to require undocumented immigrant adults ages 19 to 59 to pay $30 monthly premiums beginning July 2027. Their plan adopts Newsom’s enrollment cap but gives people three months to reapply if their coverage lapses instead of immediately cutting off their eligibility. Democrats agreed to cut full dental coverage for adult immigrants who are undocumented, but delayed the change until July 1, 2026.

In Congress, the GOP bill could also pose a serious threat to 16 struggling hospitals in 14 rural counties, which received a $300-million lifeline in interest-free loans in 2023, Newsom said.

He said the Republican members of Congress in California who supported the bill and represent rural parts of California, including Central Valley Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) and Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), are “gutting an already vulnerable system.”

Some senators are pushing to change a requirement that would require states to freeze and cut by half the tax they impose on Medicaid providers, slashing a key source of funding for rural hospitals.

Michelle Baass, the director of the California Department of Health Care Services, said that change could be “fatal for the many rural and critical-access hospitals that are already financially strained.”

Newsom said in aggregate, the cuts could threaten California’s progress in reducing the share of residents without health insurance, which stands at about 6.4%.