President Donald Trump was up before dawn Wednesday and worked the phones on and off for 20 hours, cajoling reluctant House Republicans to push his domestic policy bill across the finish line.
The president started calling his staff and House members at 5 a.m. Wednesday — and didn’t stop until 1 a.m. Thursday, according to a White House official and a second person familiar with the conversations. Trump, with on-the-ground support at the Capitol from budget director Russ Vought and deputy chief of staff James Blair, took a carrot-and-stick approach to whipping votes, promising executive action that would build on the legislation and threatening to use his billion-dollar political war chest to fund primary challenges.
It worked.
The president’s sweeping domestic policy bill, which reduces taxes, boosts border funding and slashes safety net programs like Medicaid and food stamps, passed Thursday afternoon— overcoming significant opposition from moderates and conservatives in both the House and Senate with a combination of political savvy and pressure tactics.
The White House, eager to note how much more successful this effort was compared to the Obamacare repeal flop of 2017, is planning a 4th of July signing ceremony for the legislation, expected to be attended by the B-2 bombers who carried out the recent attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, according to a second White House official, granted anonymity to preview the event. The administration is also working on a bigger victory tour that will include the president, Vice President JD Vance and members of the Cabinet taking to the road and airwaves alike to tout the bill’s passage, the official said.
“Six months in, it’s become clear: Don’t cross Donald Trump. He is now established six months in that he is going to win on everything,” said Sean Spicer, who was one of Trump’s first-term press secretaries. “It’s a mentality but it is now hopefully becoming a little bit more understood. You look at Canada the other day. The Iran strike. There’s a sense that you do not want to bet against Donald Trump.”
This account is based on interviews with seven White House officials and allies, some of whom were granted anonymity to share behind-the-scenes negotiations on the bill.
Just before 9:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Trump posted to Truth Social a call to action, saying the “House is ready to vote tonight” and that “the Republican House Majority is UNITED, for the Good of our Country, delivering the Biggest Tax Cuts in History and MASSIVE Growth.”
Minutes later, House members were told they would soon move forward with a rule vote needed to advance the legislation. Both were the byproducts of an agreement between Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson that it was time to move the bill forward even as they pressed holdouts, according to the second White House official.
Trump kept close watch on the board as votes rolled in, calling senior staff for updates and asking them who he needed to call. At one point, Johnson got him on the phone with a group of holdouts, and Trump was adamant about pressing forward Wednesday night to deliver the vote, the official added.
“We called the rule because we knew we would have the votes but that we would have to grind out the right flanks,” the official said.
The White House used the threat of primaries — echoed publicly by the president on social media — to pressure holdouts into backing the measure. Last week’s announcement that Trump’s political operation has built a $1.4 billion war chest ahead of the midterm elections was “no coincidence,” the first White House official said.
The White House also used recent events — including the ceasefire between Israel and Iran, getting Canada to back off of a new tax on American technology companies and the promise of imminent trade deals — to create a sense of momentum and an image of the president as an unstoppable force, daring Republicans to get in his way. White House aides and allies said that Republican members would have looked particularly bad stalling the legislation as the president heads to Iowa Thursday evening to kick off a yearlong celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary.
But Trump and his advisers also offered carrots to GOP holdouts, including promises to the House Freedom Caucus to re-enforce what’s in the text with executive orders, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions. Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), a Freedom Caucus member, declined to disclose the nature of the commitments the White House made, saying only “we had significant concerns and so you can imagine we got significant commitments.”
The administration has committed to strictly enforce rules for wind or solar projects to qualify for the tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act.
“There are provisions in the law that will be supercharged or strengthened from administrative action,” said one of the people, who is close to both the White House and Hill Republicans.
White House aides and allies are drawing a sharp contrast between the bill’s passage and the way things played out in 2017, when Republicans failed to repeal Obamacare. In particular, they credit Blair for coordinating the White House’s political and legislative affairs teams for maneuvering the bill through.
Johnson, in a closing speech shortly before the final vote, quipped that the White House’s legislative affairs office “basically lived with us the past few weeks.”
Passage of the legislation, coupled with a positive jobs report released Thursday morning and the possibility of trade deals on the horizon has White House aides and allies optimistic about the country’s economic outlook ahead of the midterms.
The White House and its allies said passing the legislation so early in Trump’s term will give time for its economic provisions to take effect before the midterms. Republicans have bemoaned that the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the signature legislation from Trump’s first term, came too late, in December 2017, and wasn’t in full swing by the time the 2018 midterms rolled around.
“The economy’s already doing well but we could see a big propulsion in the economy now especially if he gets the trade deals done. It’s quite a renaissance,” said Steve Moore, a longtime economic adviser to Trump.
The second White House official said the White House was adamant that all of the tax cuts apply retroactively to Jan. 1, 2025, so Americans will see the impact from no taxes on tips and no taxes on Social Security when they file their tax returns in April, roughly six months before the midterms.
“We demanded that. That was a White House red line from the beginning,” the official said. “We are 14 months out of the election with the complete legislative wind at our back and no gun to our head, nothing other than what we want. Nobody has any leverage.”
The White House will center its messaging around the bill’s tax cuts, border security, child care tax credits and the child investment plan, among other measures. Aides also aren’t particularly worried about attacks from Democrats on the bill’s cuts to Medicaid, feeling confident in their message that they will be able to sell the cuts to the health insurance program for low-income Americans as curbing waste, fraud and abuse.
White House officials maintain that how Trump chooses to use his political war chest is up to him, and that he has made no final decisions. But, for now, with everyone riding high from a string of successive wins, White House allies believe it is unlikely he will devote significant time and energy to punishing those who voted no on the bill.
Chris Marquette and Ben Johansen contributed to this report.
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