Weekly News Roundup - 7/4/25

America turns 249, and it's feeling it

This is the 27th Weekly News Roundup of 2025. The archive for all weekly news roundups is here.

These weekly dispatches are designed for those who may not have time to do more than glance at the headlines, or those who want to stay informed without becoming obsessed by politics and news. These roundups are a targeted way to get a sense of the shape of the past week on the national level. Without such a map, we can be disoriented, not knowing where we have been over the past several days, or where we may be going.

But by spending concentrated, limited time thinking about the big picture, we can devote more of our time to where “agency and justice begin and end,” as Karen Swallow Prior put it: “on the ground, bodily, in community and real relationships, in flesh and blood.”

Quotes of the Week

The good life, the fulfilled life, may be and often is unhappy by the standards of happiness studies. - Alasdair MacIntyre

America is at a low point. Many of the things that made me fall in love with this country are at present conspicuous by their absence. There’s every reason to think that things could get even worse in the next months and years. But just as the night is darkest before dawn, so too today’s barren cultural landscape may just create the empty space for a genuine renewal. And if there’s one thing that all who love America should remember, it’s that this country is too wild and too vast, too vibrant and too whimsical, to count it out prematurely. - Yascha Mounk

We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. - Abraham Lincoln

The America I love is not a stretch of soil or a place where the people of my blood lived and died. It’s a set of impudent and improbable goals: the rule of law and equality before it, liberty, freedom of speech and conscience, decency. We have always fallen short of them and always will, but we wrote them down and decided to dedicate ourselves to pursuing them. That’s worth something.The people I despise, and who despise me, believe America’s values and goals are blood, soil, swagger, and an insipid and arrogant conformity. They are the values of bullies and their sycophants. They may prevail. There’s no promise they will not. - Ken White

The level of blatant disregard we just witnessed for our nation’s fiscal condition and budget process is a failure of responsible governing. These are the very same lawmakers who for years have bemoaned the nation’s massive debt, voting to put another $4 trillion on the credit card. - Maya MacGuineas

Positive Christian action does not grow out of distortions or half-truths. Such errors lead rather to false militance, to unrealistic standards for American public life today, and to romanticized visions about the heights from which we have fallen. - Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch and George Mardsen

I anticipate with pleasing expectation that retreat in which I promise myself to realize, without alloy, the sweet enjoyment of partaking, in the midst of my fellow-citizens, the benign influence of good laws under a free government, the ever-favorite object of my heart, and the happy reward, as I trust, of our mutual cares, labors, and dangers. - George Washington

Big Stories This Week

• Republicans pushed a massive spending package through Congress that "extends President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, making current income-tax rates permanent, and adds some new breaks," according to The Wall Street Journal. "It boosts spending on defense and border security by hundreds of billions of dollars. Those increases are partially offset by cuts to spending on healthcare programs, nutrition assistance and clean-energy tax credits." The legislation will add between $3 trillion to $4 trillion over the next decade to the national debt, which already stands at $37 trillion. It also provides money to hire 10,000 new ICE officers, with a goal of deporting 1 million people from the country each year. "The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law and 3 million more would not qualify for food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits," according to the AP. The bill also rolls back tax credits designed to boost alternative energy. "This bill will make your home hotter, your air-conditioning bill higher, your clean energy job scarcer, America’s auto industry weaker and China happier," writes Thomas Friedman. "As for Trump’s goal of making America globally energy dominant during his term of office, his bill just made that impossible." Steven Rattner, a former Treasury Department adviser, says that "the legislation will be far more beneficial for the wealthiest, at the expense of those farther down the economic ladder." Elon Musk says the bill is “utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future."

Week in Review

Friday, June 27

• The Justice Department fires at least three prosecutors who were involved in the January 6 cases.

• A federal judge strikes down another Trump executive order targeting a major law firm that refused to submit to his demands to do pro bono work for the government. The firm's victory in court means that all four major firms that have rejected Trump's attempts at coercion have had their cases upheld in court.

• The Senate votes 53-to-47 to reject a measure that would reassert the power of Congress to authorize acts of war.

Saturday, June 28

• The Senate clears a procedural hurdle and works through the weekend to try to pass President Trump's spending package to meet his July 4 deadline.

Sunday, June 29

• Trade talks between Canada and the U.S. resume after a two-day suspension.

• A gunman in Idaho starts a blaze and then shoots at firefighters, killing two and wounding a third.

Monday, June 30

• Former President George W. Bush delivers a message of lament and criticism about Trump's dismantling of USAID on the last day of the agency. Bush focuses on PEPFAR, which distributed live-saving medication to those with HIV in Africa, and is credited with saving 25 million people from death. "Is it in our national interests that 25 million people who would have died now live? I think it is, and so do you,” Bush says in a recorded video statement. U2's lead singer Bono recites a poem of tribute to those at USAID. "They called you crooks. When you were the best of us," Bono says. And former President Barack Obama, in a recorded statement, calls the dismantling of USAID a "colossal mistake."

• "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday it is delaying by one month the planned cutoff of satellite data that helps forecasters track hurricanes," the AP reports.

• More than 70 nations meet in Spain to organize ways to help the world's poorest countries avert disaster. The U.S. does not attend.

Tuesday, July 1

• The U.S. Senate narrowly passes the president's spending package, 51-to-49, with two Republicans voting against it with all 47 Democrats.

Wednesday, July 2

• Music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs is acquitted by a jury of the most serious charges against him but found guilty of felony prostitution related offenses.

• Paramount agrees to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Trump about a 60 Minutes story featuring an interview with Kamala Harris.

Thursday, July 3

• The House passes Trump's spending bill, 218 to 214.

• President Trump says he may hold a UFC mixed martial arts fight on the grounds of the White House in 2026 to help celebrate America's 250th year of independence.

• A Supreme Court ruling clears the way for the U.S. government to deport migrants to South Sudan, a country riven by war where none of migrants have ties.

Friday, July 4

• Russia launches a massive barrage of drones and missiles on Ukraine, the largest air assault of the three-year invasion. Hours later, Ukrainian President Zelensky says he had a "very important and productive” phone call with Trump after the strikes. The Russian strikes came after Trump spoke to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Trump says after the call that he was "very disappointed" with how it went. "I don’t think he’s looking to stop (the fighting), and that’s too bad."

Interesting Reads

• 7 Humbling Excerpts From George Washington’s Farewell Address As America’s First President, by James Clark for Task & Purpose

• Independence Day, 2025, by Damon Linker for Notes from the Middleground

• ‘Agonizing': How Alaska’s pivotal Republican senator decided to vote for Donald Trump’s bill, by Mary Clare Jalonick and Becky Bohrer for The Associated Press

• How Bad Is This Bill? The Answer in 10 Charts, by Steven Rattner for The New York Times

• How Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Will Make China Great Again, by Thomas L. Friedman for The New York Times

• Amy Coney Barrett Is The Most Interesting Justice On The Court, by David Lat for Original Jurisdiction

• We can't afford to keep cutting taxes for the rich, by Noah Smith for Noahpinion

• What’s in the Trump Tax Bill Passed by the Senate? by Jasmine Li for The Wall Street Journal

• ‘Trump Has Betrayed His Working-Class Voters’: What 7 Conservatives Really Think of Trump’s Bill, by New York Times Opinion

• 10 years after Europe’s migration crisis, the fallout reverberates in Greece and beyond, by Derek Gatopoulos, Lefteris Pitarakis and Renata Brito for The Associated Press

• Trump Officials Rejected Shocking Allegations from a DOJ Whistleblower. Former Colleagues Believe Him, by Ankush Khardori for Politico

• The Social Security Crisis Is Coming, by William Galston for The Wall Street Journal

• US contractors say their colleagues are firing live ammo as Palestinians seek food in Gaza, by Julia Frankel and Sam Mednick for The Associated Press

• After decades in the US, Iranians arrested in Trump’s deportation drive, by Kim Chandler, Claire Rush and Elliot Spagat for The Associated Press

• How a GOP rift over tech regulation doomed a ban on state AI laws in Trump’s tax bill, by Ali Swenson for The Associated Press

• RFK Jr. made promises about vaccines. Here’s what he’s done as health secretary, by The Associated Press

• ‘Fresh brewed news’: Community café offers locals a chance to sip with reporters, by Mackenzie Farkus