(NEXSTAR) — For more than seven hours, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) used his “magic minute” to argue against President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which House Republicans advanced early Thursday morning.

Republican holdouts in the House were persuaded to vote in favor of the bill, giving way to final debates in the predawn hours.

While the House was wrapping up those debates, Jeffries took to the mic to use his “magic minute.” He began delivering his address at 5 a.m. ET and, as of 10:30 a.m. ET, he was still speaking out against the massive bill and vowing to take his “sweet time.”

It’s not exactly like the record-setting filibuster Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) employed earlier this year to decry the then-pending spending cuts that were expected to be added to the GOP tax bill. There, Booker could take questions from his fellow Democrats while refusing to yield the floor — which he ultimately held for more than 25 hours.

The “magic minute” is similar, though. The House tradition allows for a leader, like Jeffries, to turn his 60 seconds of speaking time into an even longer period after debate on a bill has ended, The New York Times explains.

It’s unclear how long Jeffries is expected to use his “magic minute” on Thursday. If he’s eyeing the record, currently held by former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), he’ll need to speak beyond 1:26 p.m. ET.

However long Jeffries speaks, it’s unlikely to stop the massive bill from making it through the House. It is a narrow margin — Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) can lose only three votes, assuming all members are present — but the bill is still expected to pass.

The outcome would be a milestone for the president and his party, a longshot effort to compile a long list of GOP priorities into what they call his “one big beautiful bill,” an 800-plus page package. With Democrats unified in opposition, the bill will become a defining measure of Trump’s return to the White House, with the sweep of Republican control of Congress.

Jeffries and other Democrats have encouraged Republicans to reconsider and vote against it. As Jeffries spoke Thursday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called for voters to call their representatives and urge them to kill the bill.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a move that many said was long overdue, on Thursday God formally notified House Speaker Mike Johnson that he was going to Hell.

In a rare public statement, the Almighty said that Johnson’s role in shepherding Donald J. Trump’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” through the House was the “last straw” that sealed the Speaker’s eternal damnation.

“What do you do with someone who cuts Medicaid when 40 percent of his own constituents rely on it?” God asked. “You send his ass to Hell, that’s what.”

The Heavenly Father also questioned the bill’s allocation of $45 billion for a border wall, since the rest of the bill makes the U.S. someplace no one in their right mind would immigrate to.

Expectations heading into this week showed projections of about 110,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in June. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the totals exceeded those expectations. CNBC News reported:

Job growth proved better than expected in June, as the labor market showed surprising resilience in the wake of President Donald Trump’s calls for interest rate cuts. Nonfarm payrolls increased a seasonally adjusted 147,000 for the month, higher than the estimate for 110,000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. The unemployment rate fell to 4.1%, against a forecast for a slight increase to 4.3%.

There’s nothing especially wrong with the preliminary topline totals from June — 147,000 jobs is a mediocre number, though hardly a disaster — but as is always the case, context is everything.

Over the first six months of 2025, the latest data suggests the economy has added 782,000 jobs. That said, over the first six months of 2024 — when Donald Trump said the economy was terrible — the total was 985,000 jobs, and over the first six months of 2023, the U.S. economy added 1.53 million jobs.

In fact, if we exclude 2020, when the pandemic wreaked havoc on the economy, the first six months of this year show the slowest job growth in the United States since 2010, when the economy was still trying to recover from the Great Recession.

In other words, the White House and its allies are likely to celebrate the new not-that-bad data as terrific news, but the question the president and his team ought to face is simple: “Why has American job growth slowed this year to a 15-year low?”

A federal judge in the District of Columbia on Wednesday barred the Trump administration from expelling asylum seekers from the United States, dealing a blow to the administration’s efforts to curtail crossings at the U.S. southern border.

In a 128-page decision, U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss invalidated a proclamation that President Donald Trump signed on his first day in office that declared an “invasion” on the border and invoked emergency presidential powers to deport migrants without allowing them to apply for asylum. Migrants and advocacy groups sued in February, saying federal law allows people to apply for the humanitarian protection no matter how they entered the United States.

Moss stayed his ruling for 14 days pending a likely appeal from the Trump administration. But he wrote that the executive branch cannot create an “alternative immigration system” that tramples on existing federal law.

“The Court recognizes that the Executive Branch faces enormous challenges in preventing and deterring unlawful entry into the United States and in adjudicating the overwhelming backlog of asylum claims of those who have entered the country,” Moss wrote. But he added that the Immigration and Nationality Act “provides the sole and exclusive means for removing people already present in the country.”....

Attorneys in the asylum case had sought class certification from the judge well before Friday’s birthright citizenship ruling. Still, Trump administration officials quickly attacked Moss as “a rogue district court judge” and his ruling as an attempt “to circumvent the Supreme Court.”

The Trump Regime is following the Nazi Playbook to a tee.

They have their own private Gestapo of unidentified masked marauders and are building Concentration/Death Camps nationwide to imprison the ICE Gestapo’s human bounty.

Do not be deceived. These camps are not only for black and brown immigrants. They will soon house the Trump Regimes domestic enemies.

This is only the beginning. Want to know their next move? Study the history of the Third Reich.

A new platform that encourages users to share information about sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents nearby rose to the top of the Apple App Store this week, amid criticism from Trump administration officials who say the app could put agents at risk.

ICEBlock, which launched in April, made headlines after a CNN article about it was called out by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and ICE acting Director Todd M. Lyons on Monday. Both cited concerns over agent safety in their statements about the app, stating that “agents are facing a 500% increase in assaults.”

But Joshua Aaron, ICEBlock’s Texas-based developer, called the administration’s recent criticism “another right-wing fearmongering scare tactic,” telling NBC News in a phone interview on Tuesday that his app was designed to be a resource for immigrants who are fearful they will get deported. He said he felt like he was “watching history repeat itself” when he saw things like “5-year-olds in courtrooms with no representation” and “college students being disappeared for their political opinions.”

“When I saw what was happening in this country, I really just wanted to do something to help fight back,” said Aaron, a onetime musician who spent several months working on the app. “I grew up in a Jewish household, and being part of the Jewish community, I had the chance to meet Holocaust survivors and learn the history of what happened in Nazi Germany, and the parallels that we can draw between what’s happening right now in our country and Hitler’s rise to power are undeniable.”
https://x.com/BenjaminGoggin/status/1940130458052042845

The app, which is free and gives users the ability to anonymously report ICE sightings within a five-mile radius, had approximately 95,200 users as of Monday, Aaron said. He said he has not received updated figures from Apple since the White House and ICE issued their comments on the app.

New video showed a "garden-variety South Florida summer rainstorm" flooding tents and drowning out Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) as he touted the "Alligator Alcatrez" detention facility he claimed was ready to house deportees, according to The Miami Herald.

Rain began shortly after President Donald Trump finished up his tour of the Everglades facility that the White House claimed needed little security due to pythons and alligators surrounding it, the report said.

"The water seeped into the site — the one that earlier in day the state’s top emergency chief had boasted was ready to withstand the winds of a 'high-end' Category 2 hurricane — and streamed all over electrical cables on the floor," wrote reporters Syra Ortiz Blanes, Ana Ceballos, and Alex Harris.

They quoted Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, as saying, “For those people that don’t think we’re taking that into consideration. This is Florida, by the way. We have a hurricane plan.”

But The Herald reported "that at one point the roof was shaking as the rain pounded down, drowning out Gov. Ron DeSantis’ voice as he spoke to reporters."

Spectrum News reporter Jason Delgado posted video of the flooding, and of DeSantis trying to talk over the cacophony.
https://x.com/JasonDelgadoX/status/1940041222120513689

Occasionally, Donald Trump and his team have a day — a single, 24-hour period — in which the president’s authoritarian-style vision comes into focus. Consider this unsettling timeline:

Monday, June 30, in the mid-afternoon: The president tried to “turn the screws” on Japan, one of the United States’ top trading partners, threatening to unilaterally impose new tariffs, without congressional approval, unless Japan agreed to his demands.

Monday, June 30, in the mid-afternoon: Team Trump, as part of a multifaceted offensive against Harvard University, made a highly dubious announcement that the administration believes the school violated the Civil Rights Act over antisemitism.

Monday, June 30, in the evening: Trump threatened Elon Musk, his top campaign donor and former White House adviser, saying he was prepared to have the Department of Government Efficiency re-examine the billionaire’s government contracts.

Tuesday, July 1, in the afternoon: The president, the White House “border czar,” and his homeland security secretary spoke publicly about having CNN “prosecuted” for airing reports the White House didn’t like.

Tuesday, July 1, in the afternoon: After vowing to block Zohran Mamdani’s agenda in New York City, Trump questioned whether the Democratic mayoral candidate is a legal citizen, said his administration is examining Mamdani’s immigration status, and mused publicly about arresting the candidate.

Tuesday, July 1, in the afternoon: After one of the president’s allies asked about arresting former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Trump directed his current DHS secretary to investigate her predecessor.

Tuesday, July 1, in the afternoon: Trump floated the possibility of deporting American citizens.

Tuesday, July 1, in the afternoon: The president announced that he would approve a Florida plan to deputize National Guard members to work as immigration judges.

Tuesday, July 1, in the afternoon: While touring a controversial detention facility for immigrants in Florida — the so-called Alligator Alcatraz — Trump publicly referred to Joe Biden as a “son of a b----” because of a baseless conspiracy theory.

Tuesday, July 1, in the afternoon: Trump, for the first time, suggested he was personally and directly involved in the scandal surrounding New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the demise of the federal corruption charges Adams was facing.

Tuesday, July 1, in the afternoon: Trump’s lawyers accepted what at least on Democratic senator described as a “bribe,” to benefit the Republican’s future library, from Paramount Global as part of a baseless lawsuit over one of the president’s conspiracy theories about CBS News and “60 Minutes.”

Tuesday, July 1, in the afternoon: As The New York Times reported, the Trump administration, for reasons that went unexplained, decided not to release nearly $7 billion in federal funding “that helps pay for after-school and summer programs, support for students learning English, teacher training and other services.” The funding was approved by Congress and scheduled to reach educators, but Team Trump decided that the money would not be available.

Individually, these developments are unsettling to those who take democracy seriously, but let’s not miss the forest for the trees: These aren’t just disconcerting stories; they’re collectively one dramatic story about a president and an administration that’s increasingly overt in his indifference to the American system and the rule of law.

Tom Homan, the White House “border czar,” for example, said this week that he believes the Justice Department “needs to look at” CNN because of its report. As The New York Times reported, he wasn’t alone.

Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, said on Tuesday that she was ‘working with the Department of Justice’ to see if the Trump administration could prosecute CNN for publishing an article about an app that allows users to send alerts about the presence of nearby immigration agents. ‘We’re going to actually go after them and prosecute them,’ Ms. Noem told reporters at an appearance with President Trump in Florida.

The DHS secretary went on to describe the reporting that the administration didn’t like as “illegal.”

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:aunpu65mdrhwfie7ynymlzeh/post/3lsvzae2w5c2i
https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1940069870667972819

......In case this isn’t obvious, let’s pause to take note of a few things. First, CNN reporting on a popular and publicly available app is perfectly legal under the First Amendment. Second, “working with” federal prosecutors to target a news organization for running a perfectly legal report is unambiguous authoritarianism.

Third, CNN’s reporting on Trump’s pre-emptive military strikes in Iran wasn’t “false” — and even if it were, it wouldn’t have been illegal. (If the White House has evidence of a media outlet getting a story wrong, it can ask for a correction. It cannot sic federal law enforcement on journalists.)

But it's also worth appreciating the larger context.

In the run-up to Election Day 2024, Trump was nearly as eager to attack the free press as he was to attack Kamala Harris. The Republican, for example, referred to journalists as “the enemy of the people,” media outlets as “evil,” and news professionals as “scum.”

But the offensive wasn’t just rhetorical. As regular readers might recall, Trump also made clear that he hoped to use governmental power to crack down on journalism he dislikes. It’s why he invested so much time and energy talking about the FCC stripping TV networks of their broadcast licenses for airing coverage he disapproves of......

And then the tactics did, in fact, get worse. The president demanded that CBS face “fines and punishment” for airing a “60 Minutes” episode he didn’t like; he tried to penalize The Associated Press over its decision to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico; and the White House has also taken steps to control press pools, in part to ensure sycophantic questions.

Those who take the First Amendment’s press freedoms for granted need to recognize the fact that Trump is eyeing the kind of crackdown on journalism that’s unheard of in any modern democracy.