Elon Musk attacks Trump’s ‘big beautiful’ tax bill as ‘outrageous’ and says it will cause deficit to grow to $2.5tn – US politics live

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The far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has assembled a “rogues’ gallery of extremists, conspiracy theorists and C-team political operatives” to promote Donald Trump’s crackdown on non-government organisations (NGOs), a congressional watchdog has claimed.

The House of Representatives’ Delivering on Government Efficiency (Doge) subcommittee, chaired by Greene, is due to hold a hearing on Wednesday entitled “Public Funds, Private Agendas: NGOs Gone Wild”.

The subcommittee said in a press release that the hearing will “expose” the use of federal funds by NGOs to advance “radical” agendas such as “open borders and the Green New Deal scam”. It frames its work as an investigation of the alleged funneling of taxpayer dollars to politically motivated groups while “lining the pockets of their friends and allies”.

But a memo from the Congressional Integrity Project (CIP), obtained by the Guardian, condemns the hearing as “political theater”, “weaponized government oversight” and an exercise in hypocrisy, given the substantial federal funding received by Republican allies and rightwing groups.

While attacking civil society organisations for receiving federal grants, the memo says, “their own networks have systematically benefited from government contracts, subsidies, and loans worth billions of dollars”.

Donald Trump said on Wednesday that Chinese President Xi Jinping is tough and “extremely hard to make a deal with,” days after the US president accused China of violating an agreement to roll back tariffs and trade restrictions.

“I like President Xi of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had said on Monday that Trump would speak with Xi this week as the two leaders seek to iron out differences on last month’s tariff agreement in Geneva, among larger trade issues.

Higher US metals tariffs kick in as deadline for 'best offers' arrives

Washington doubled its tariffs on steel and aluminium imports on Wednesday, when president Donald Trump’s administration also expects trading partners to make “best offers” to avoid other punishing import levies from taking effect in early July.

Maroš Šefčovič, the trade negotiator for the European Union, met US trade representative Jamieson Greer in Paris on Wednesday, with the 27-nation bloc set to make its case for cutting or eliminating threatened tariffs on European imports, Reuters reported.

Late on Tuesday, Trump signed an executive proclamation that activates from Wednesday a hike in the tariffs on imported steel and aluminium to 50% from the 25% rate introduced in March.

“We started at 25 and then after studying the data more, realized that it was a big help, but more help is needed. And so that is why the 50 is starting tomorrow,” White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told a steel industry conference in Washington on Tuesday. The increase came into effect at 12.01am.

The increase applies to all trading partners except Britain, the only country so far that has struck a preliminary trade agreement with the US during a 90-day pause on a wider array of Trump tariffs. The rate for steel and aluminium imports from the UK – which does not rank among the top exporters of either metal to the US – will remain at 25% until at least 9 July.

Elon Musk calls Trump’s ‘big, beautiful’ tax bill a ‘disgusting abomination’

Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the coming hours.

We start with news that Elon Musk, the billionaire tech entrepreneur, opened a new rift with Donald Trump by denouncing the US president’s tax and spending bill as a “disgusting abomination”.

Musk’s online outburst could embolden fiscally conservative Republican senators – some of whom have already spoken out – to defy Trump as they continue crucial negotiations on Capitol Hill over the so-called “one big, beautiful bill”.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” Musk wrote on his X social media platform on Tuesday. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

Musk, who had previously voiced criticism of the proposed legislation, quipping that it could be big or beautiful but not both, added on X: “It will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion (!!!) and burden America citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”

He continued: “Congress is making America bankrupt.”

A top donor to Trump during last year’s election campaign, Musk departed the White House last week after steering its so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) with the stated mission of slashing fraud and abuse within federal departments. He has argued that the Republican bill will undermine Doge’s work and drive the US further into debt.

For the full report, see here:

In other developments:

• Republican firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene has drawn widespread criticism from Democratic colleagues for admitting that not only did she not read Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill before voting for it, but she would have voted against it had she read thoroughly. The White House gloated on social media about the arrests of the wife and five children of Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the suspected Boulder attacker, and joked about providing them with “six one-way tickets”.

• In the 48 hours since the firebomb attack in Boulder, Colorado, on a demonstration in support of Israelis held hostage in Gaza, Republicans politicized the attack, attempting to blame Democrats, including the state’s multiple Jewish leaders.

• Democrats denounced the Trump administration’s “cruel” decision to rescind health department guidance issued in the wake of the 2022 Dobbs decision, striking down the right to an abortion, that required hospitals to provide abortions to women in medical emergencies even in state’s with local bans on the procedure.

• Millions of legal immigrants may be left unable to work after the US Social Security Administration quietly instituted a rule change to stop automatically issuing them social security numbers.

• A US judge on Tuesday ruled the US Bureau of Prisons must keep providing transgender inmates gender-affirming care, despite an executive order Donald Trump signed on his first day back in office to halt funding for such care.