Republicans Triumph as House Passes Trump’s Megabill

Summary

WSJ What’s News: Republicans Triumph as House Passes Trump’s Megabill

Release Date: July 3, 2025
Host: Alex Osola
Produced by: The Wall Street Journal

---

1. House Passes President Trump’s Comprehensive Tax and Spending Bill

In a closely contested session that extended overnight, the U.S. House of Representatives approved President Donald Trump's expansive tax and spending legislation with a narrow vote of 218 to 214 (00:33). This significant legislative victory underscores President Trump's influence within the Republican Party, ensuring alignment among GOP lawmakers. Alex Osola highlights the bill's passage as a "major second term victory for President Trump" (00:46).

Key Provisions of the Bill:

• Tax Policy: The bill solidifies President Trump's 2017 tax cuts, making current income tax rates permanent. It introduces new tax breaks for both individuals and businesses while discontinuing clean energy tax incentives (02:03).
• Spending Allocations: Substantial funds are directed toward military enhancements, border security, and immigration enforcement for the next decade.
• Fiscal Impact: The Congressional Budget Office projects that the bill will increase the national deficit by approximately $3.4 trillion through 2034 and includes a $5 trillion elevation of the debt ceiling (02:03).

Impact on Individuals: Jasmine Lee, WSJ reporter, explains that while many Americans will continue to experience unchanged income tax rates, the bill introduces specific tax benefits such as enhanced deductions for tipped income and an increased cap on state and local tax deductions. Conversely, it also entails reductions in certain social benefits, including food aid, SNAP, and Medicaid, with most tax changes slated to take effect within the next year (03:06).

---

2. Robust June Jobs Report Defies Economic Slowdown Concerns

The Labor Department released June employment data showing an addition of 147,000 jobs, surpassing the anticipated 110,000 (04:21). The unemployment rate decreased to 4.1% from 4.2%, indicating a resilient labor market. Wall Street Journal investing columnist Spencer Jacob analyzed these figures, contrasting them with the ADP report, which suggested weaker private sector job growth of 74,000 (04:49).

Economic Implications: Jacob notes that the strong official jobs numbers have led to increased stock market performance and higher bond yields, diminishing the likelihood of Federal Reserve rate cuts in the near term. He states, "This big number was surprisingly benign," reflecting optimism in the employment sector despite mixed signals from other economic indicators (05:30).

Federal Reserve's Stance: Given the robust employment data and pending inflationary effects from recent tariffs, the Federal Reserve is adopting a cautious approach, opting to "wait and see" before making additional rate adjustments (05:39).

---

3. Stock Markets Reach New Highs Amid Strong Economic Data

Following the positive June jobs report, major U.S. stock indices surged, achieving new records despite the short trading day before Independence Day. The S&P 500 increased by approximately 0.8%, marking its seventh record close of the year. Similarly, the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nasdaq rose by about 0.8% and 1%, respectively, with the Nasdaq hitting its fourth all-time high (06:34).

---

4. Diplomatic Tensions: Trump and Putin Discuss Ukraine Conflict

President Trump engaged in a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, marking their first dialogue since the U.S. halted weapon shipments to Ukraine. According to a Kremlin briefing, Trump urged Putin to "quickly end the war in Ukraine," but Putin declined to comply (07:58). The White House has yet to release an official summary of the discussion. This phone call follows recent critical remarks by Trump regarding Putin's role in the ongoing Ukraine conflict. Additionally, Trump is scheduled to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the following day (07:58).

---

5. Harvard University Faces Significant Budget Shortfall Amid Federal Policy Shifts

Harvard University is projected to encounter a budget deficit of approximately $1 billion annually if President Trump's policies come to fruition. This assessment is based on the Wall Street Journal's analysis, which considers the potential loss of federal research funding, reductions in federal student aid, decreased international student enrollment, and an increase in the annual endowment tax to 8% (08:24).

University’s Response: In response to these challenges, Harvard is proactively seeking alternative funding sources. The TH Chan School of Public Health is particularly focused on securing corporate sponsorships to sustain its research laboratories. Nidhi Subaraman, WSJ science reporter, details these efforts, noting a cultural shift as scientists engage more directly with industry partners to maintain their research independence and uphold scientific integrity (09:27).

---

6. Supreme Court to Review Transgender Athlete Participation in School Sports

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear cases challenging state laws in West Virginia and Idaho that prohibit transgender women and girls from participating in female sports teams. These cases represent significant legal debates surrounding gender identity and equal participation rights. Oral arguments are scheduled for the court's upcoming term in the fall (11:16).

---

7. Ground Beef Prices Reach Record Highs Amid Supply Constraints

Ground beef prices have surged to $6.67 per pound, totaling $13.33 for two pounds—the highest since the survey began in 2013. Wall Street Journal commodities reporter Kirk Maltese attributes this rise to prolonged drought conditions affecting cattle grazing, outbreaks of diseases like New World screwworm, and increased export demand due to U.S. beef's strong performance in international markets (12:08).

Consumer Advice: Given the steep increase in beef prices, consumers are encouraged to explore alternative protein sources such as chicken or hot dogs, which have not seen similar price escalations (12:44).

---

Conclusion

Despite the challenges posed by high inflation, federal budget deficits, and international conflicts, the U.S. economy demonstrates resilience through solid job growth and rising stock markets. Political maneuvers, such as the passage of Trump's megabill and strategic diplomatic engagements, continue to shape the nation's economic and geopolitical landscape. Concurrently, institutions like Harvard navigate fiscal uncertainties by adapting to new funding paradigms, while societal debates around gender identity and sports participation reach the highest levels of the judiciary. Consumers face tangible impacts from these developments, notably in rising commodity prices affecting everyday expenses.

---

This summary was crafted using insights and quotes from the July 3, 2025 episode of WSJ What’s News, produced by The Wall Street Journal.

Transcript

[Venmo Advertiser]

With a Venmo debit card, you can Venmo more than just your friends. You can use your balance in so many ways. You can Venmo everything. Need gas? You can Venmo this. How about snacks? You can Venmo that. Your favorite band's merch? You can Venmo this or their next show? You can Venmo that. Visit Venmo Me Debit to learn more. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp bank and a pursuant to license. My Mastercard International Inc. Card may be used everywhere Mastercard is accepted. Venmo purchase restrictions apply.

[House Vote Announcer]

On this vote the yeas are 218. The nays are 214. The motion is adopted.

[Alex Osola]

After an all night session, the House passes President Trump's big, beautiful tax and spending bill. What does it mean for you? Plus US Stocks notch another closing high after the June jobs report came in. Stronger than expected and with less federal money available, Harvard has a plan to make up its budget shortfall. It's Thursday, July 3rd. I'm Alex Osola for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of what's news, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. The House narrowly passed Republicans sprawling tax and spending bill today. It's a major second term victory for President Trump and again demonstrates his power to keep GOP lawmakers in line with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries spoke for 8 hours and 44 minutes, setting a record for the longest floor speech as he read hours of stories of voters in GOP districts whom he said could be harmed by the bill. In the end, Republicans prevailed. The 218 to 214 vote now sends the measure to Trump's desk ahead of the July 4th target he set for Congress to finish the legislation. For more on the bill, I'm joined by WSJ reporter Jasmine Lee speaking with us from the U.S. capitol. Jasmine, what is in this bill that has passed?

[Jasmine Lee]

Perhaps the biggest piece of the bill is extending President Trump's 2017 tax cuts and that would essentially make current income tax rates permanent. On top of that, it adds some new tax breaks for individuals and businesses and it also directs a lot of new spending to things like border security and immigration enforcement for over the next decade. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this bill would add nearly $3.4 trillion to deficits through 2034. And this bill also includes a $5 trillion increase to the debt ceiling.

[Alex Osola]

What does this say about President Trump's policies and his priorities? Because he ran on his campaign on A number of things that he said would be included in this bill.

[Jasmine Lee]

This bill definitely does reflect a lot of President Trump's priorities, and that includes appropriating hundreds of billions of dollars for the military, for immigration enforcement. And it also adds some tax breaks for businesses while ending clean energy tax breaks.

[Alex Osola]

How might the average person feel the impact of this bill?

[Jasmine Lee]

I would say the biggest piece of the bill is still tax related. And generally, people will see their income tax rate continue, but there are some new tax breaks for things like tipped income over time. The state and local tax deduction cap is also higher in this bill, but it also makes cuts to some benefits programs like food aid, snap, and Medicaid. Most of the tax changes in this bill take effect either this year or next year. And some of the cuts to things like health care programs, food aid programs, those come later.

[Alex Osola]

That was Wall Street Journal reporter Jasmine Lee. The Labor Department said today that the U.S. added 147,000 jobs in June. That's more than the gain of 110,000 jobs that economists expected. The unemployment rate, which is based on a separate survey of U.S. households, fell to 4.1% from 4.2%. For more on the numbers, I'm joined by WSJ investing columnist Spencer Jacob. Spencer, you wrote in a recent column that the ADP numbers that came out yesterday could potentially signal an economic slowdown, but that today's Labor Department numbers could clear that up. So what exactly do they show?

[House Vote Announcer]

They clear nothing up. That's the short answer. Yesterday's ADP number was surprisingly weak, a contraction in jobs. This was surprisingly strong relative to expectations. ADP focuses on the private sector. Now, if you look at this number and you look at private employment, it grew by 74,000, which. Which is the weakest number this year. So that is conspicuously weak. A lot of the growth came in state and local employment and things like that.

[Alex Osola]

Okay, so what do they tell us about the state of the economy, at least in the short term?

[House Vote Announcer]

Well, investors and economists tend to take this number much more seriously than the adp. For better or worse, this is the big number that everyone focuses on. And the immediate reaction was pretty clear. The stock market rose, bond yields rose, and bets that the Fed will cut rates in July fell substantially. You had about maybe 25% odds right before the number came out, and they fell to a little more than 5%. And the odds for the year as a whole in terms of how many Fed rate cuts are expected, fell from about three to about two.

[Alex Osola]

Yeah, that was going to be My next question, what's on the Fed's mind right now? Considering that they are also under pressure from President Trump to cut rates, this.

[House Vote Announcer]

Strengthens the case for let's wait and see. They already, of course, did cut rates last year a couple of times. One reason they're waiting to see is that we still haven't seen the inflationary impact of the tariffs that President Trump imposed. A lot of goods just haven't reflected that. And so they want to see what that is because they have a dual mandate, employment and inflation. The employment side of things looks pretty rosy now. The unemployment rate fell to 4.1%. It was expected to rise. So that all looks good and we'll have to wait another month for official numbers to come through. On the other hand, some other numbers like reports on hiring, layoffs, unemployment insurance, those are showing some weakness. So not out of the woods, but this big number was surprisingly benign.

[Alex Osola]

That was WSJ investing columnist Spencer Jacob. Thanks as always, Spencer.

[House Vote Announcer]

Thank you.

[Alex Osola]

The U.S. stock markets closed at 1:00pm today ahead of the Independence Day holiday. But a short trading day didn't stop markets from setting another round of records. The stronger than expected June jobs report defied expectations that uncertainty over trade and fiscal policy would hurt the labor market. Major U.S. indexes were up. The S&P 500 ended about 0.8%, up in its seventh record close this year. The Dow also rose about 0.8% while the Nasdaq gained roughly 1%, an all time closing high, its fourth this year. President Trump spoke on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin today. This was their first conversation since the US Paused a series of weapon shipments to Ukraine. According to a Kremlin briefing. On the call, Trump urged Putin to quickly end the war in Ukraine, but Putin refused. The White House has not yet released its own summary of the call. Trump has been critical of Putin in recent days and at a NATO summit last week declared that the Russian president was most responsible for continuing the three year old war with Ukraine. A Trump administration official said the president is scheduled to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tomorrow. Coming up, how Harvard is planning to shore up its finances. That's after the break.

[State Farm Advertiser]

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Knowing you could be saving money for the things you really want, like that dream house or ride, is a great feeling. That's why the State Farm personal price plan can help you save when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state, coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.

[Alex Osola]

Foreign we're exclusively reporting that Harvard University would face a budget shortfall of about a billion dollars a year if President Trump follows through on all of his plans and threats spanning research funding, tax policy and student enrollment. That's according to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal. The Journal's estimate, based on publicly available data, is for a worst case scenario in which Harvard loses all federal research funding, federal student aid and its ability to enroll international students, and Congress hikes its annual endowment tax to 8%. That grim math helps explain why Harvard has taken steps toward negotiating with the administration after months of defiance. Still, the university is looking at other ways to fill its federal funding gap by seeking to drum up money from private sources. The TH Chan School of Public Health at Harvard is one of the schools seeking corporate funders to support its science labs. Nidhi Subaraman covers science for the Journal and joins me now. Nidhi, what is Harvard trying to do with this move?

[Nidhi Subaraman]

Harvard is really rethinking how it runs, given that a lot of its money just basically had the taps turned off. This is particularly acutely felt by their public health school, TH Chan School of Public Health, and they got 70% of their research budget from the federal government. With the administration's shifts and especially with the back and forth with Harvard, it's become clear that they're going to immediately have to figure out how to move, but also rethink whether their historic relationship with the government and funding from it is going to continue. And one of the key parts there is to reach out to companies who may be interested in the work that they're doing or in the people that they're cultivating in order to have their labs keep running.

[Alex Osola]

How different is this from what the university has done in the past for additional funding?

[Nidhi Subaraman]

Culturally, it's quite a shift for scientists to be reaching out to industry for money. Now they're actively going out to seek people who would be interested in this by using alumni who are in research and development labs or scientists who are sitting on fancy scientific advisory boards at companies to begin conversations about where they might be a nice fit. What the Chan School says is they're hoping to really preserve the independence of their scientists and negotiate agreements upfront that let them, for instance, keep their data or publish in the literature without any kind of input from their companies. They already do have some agreements with companies which spell out these terms and protect scientific integrity. And they really hope to keep that model going forward.

[Alex Osola]

That was WSJ science reporter Nidhi Sumaraban. Thanks, Nidhi.

[Nidhi Subaraman]

Thanks.

[Alex Osola]

The U.S. supreme Court has agreed to consider the constitutionality of state laws banning transgender women and girls from participating on female school sports teams. The cases arise from challenges brought by transgender student athletes against policies in West Virginia and Idaho that block individuals whose sex at birth was male from competing in women's and girls track teams. Arguments will be heard during the court's next term, starting this fall. And finally, if you're grilling up burgers this Fourth of July, that beef is going to cost you. The American Farm Bureau Federation estimates that the retail price for 2 pounds of ground beef has shot up to $13.33, or $6.67 a pound. That's the highest price recorded by the survey since it began in 2013. Wall Street Journal commodities reporter Kirk Maltese.

[Kirk Maltese]

Explains why there's been a number of drought issues that have popped up for multiple years at this point that make it hard for a rancher to allow their cattle to graze. More recently, there's problems with disease. New World screwworm is a concern that's prompted USDA to shut down the ports between Mexico and the US And US Beef is also pretty valued abroad, so there's a lot of export demand for that as well. So all this together means that ground beef is just harder to come by and it's just a simple supply demand thing at this point.

[Alex Osola]

Fortunately for barbecue lovers, other kinds of meats haven't experienced the same price hike as beef. Sounds like a good time to try some chicken or maybe a hot dog. And that's what's news for this week. We're off tomorrow and over the weekend for the Fourth of July holiday, but we'll be back with a new show Monday morning. Today's show is produced by Pierre Bienname and Anthony Banci, with supervising producer Michael Kosmides. Additional support this week from Colman Standifer. Michael Lavalle wrote our theme music, Ajaal Muslim is our development producer, Scott Salloway and Chris Inslee are our deputy editors, and Falana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. I'm Alex Osola. Thanks for listening. Sam.