Vice President JD Vance, who once cast himself as a champion of rural America and working-class families, emerged late Monday to defend President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” as it floundered during a Senate vote-a-rama—amid critics’ accusations of pork and prejudice. The margin is expected to be so close that Vance is now at the U.S. Capitol to be on hand to cast the deciding vote if necessary.

“The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving those migrants generous benefits. The OBBB fixes this problem. And therefore it must pass,” VP Vance wrote on social media.

Experts have said, and critics have noted, that immigrants actually reduce the federal deficit by about $1 trillion each decade, because of the work they perform and the taxes they pay. Few undocumented immigrants are able to access federal social safety net benefits.

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But it was this tweet that seemed to attract the most pushback:

“Everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”

Critics blasted the vice president.

“Here is the vice president of the U.S. saying Trump’s signature bill that kicks ~17M people off of health care, takes food away from poor children, adds $4T to the debt + kills the clean energy industry only really matters because it helps ICE detain and deport brown people,” explained HuffPost reporter Jennifer Bendery.

“Thousands of projected deaths per year is ‘immaterial,'” wrote Vox senior correspondent and editor Dylan Scott.

“Expert calculate that the Big Ugly Bill will kill 51,000 people EACH YEAR,” observed Adam Cohen, vice chair, Lawyers for Good Government. “The CBO determined it will cause 11.8 million Americans to lose Medicaid,” he added.

“Unions charge it will cost millions of jobs,” he continued, “And it will literally take food from hungry kids But-to JD Vance This is immaterial.”

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“JD the argument you’re making is that cutting millions of Americans from Medicaid the next few years will be obviated by enforcing on immigration more. If a certain number of unauthorized people are kicked out, that won’t get people more health insurance. It’s not minutiae,” warned journalist Zaid Jilani.

“The CBO projects that the immigration provisions cost taxpayers more than $125 billion,” noted attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “Meanwhile, Medicaid alone is being cut by nearly $1,000,000,000,000 ($1 trillion), with millions of Americans losing access to healthcare. So impoverish the country for mass deportations?”

“People are rightly noting that kicking millions off of Medicaid is not ‘minutiae’, but the premise is wrong here too,” noted Ernie Tedeschi, former Chief Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisors. “Of the reasons to deport undocumented immigrants, federal fiscal health is one of the worst ones. CBO found they *lower* deficits by ~$1T over the next 10 years.”

Economist Tony Annett wrote: “This awful man scapegoats immigrants to defend the largest upward redistribution in history.”

“No, deportations are removing net taxpayers,” warned David J. Bier, Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. “The GOP is living in an anti-immigrant delusion. Even if you ended all benefits to noncitizens and kept their taxes (my favored approach), it wouldn’t come anywhere close to ending the budget deficit. The threat is population decline!”

“I’ve warned about the nativist mind virus for many years,” Bier later wrote. “They’d destroy the economy, bankrupt the government, shred the Constitution, trample our freedoms, and imprison their own people to get what they want: not just mass deportation, but something more like ethnic cleansing.”

Crain’s Detroit senior reporter Dustin P. Walsh called Vance’s remarks “demonstrably wrong.”

“There is countless evidence illegal immigrants actually boost coffers. You can have philosophical arguments about legal process, etc. but a fiscal argument is just inaccurate,” Walsh added.

The Bulwark’s Tim Miller asked: “If the only thing that matters is the mass deportations…why don’t you just do a bill funding mass deportations?”

“This is what hitting the panic button looks like,” observed Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy.

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This article has been updated with additional comments.

Image via Shutterstock

Billionaire Elon Musk is threatening to target members of Congress for defeat if they support President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill” after campaigning on promises to cut government spending. Although Musk did not specifically name a party, no Democrat is expected to back the budget measure.

“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame!” Musk wrote late Monday afternoon, as the Senate began voting on the legislation. “And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”

Musk’s threat comes after his numerous attacks on the bill—which is critical to Trump’s agenda—based largely on its massive increases to the federal debt.

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“It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!” Musk declared one hour earlier. “Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.”

New York magazine’s Intelligencer reported on Monday that Musk is “not done” fighting Trump.

“How can you call yourself the Freedom Caucus if you vote for a DEBT SLAVERY bill with the biggest debt ceiling increase in history?” Musk also wrote, lashing out at the far-right caucus, and mentioning two Members by name: U.S. Reps. Andy Harris of Maryland, the group’s chairman, and Chip Roy of Texas.

On Saturday, Musk had warned, “The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country! Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.”

“Polls show that this bill is political suicide for the Republican Party,” he also warned.

New York magazine noted that “Trump, presumably, isn’t thrilled about Musk’s last-minute attempt to sink his signature legislative package. But so far he’s refrained from hitting back.”

READ MORE: Despite Bill’s $1T Cut Trump Official Insists ‘We’re Not Taking Away Anybody’s Medicaid’

Image via Reuters

Fox News host Maria Bartiromo is facing criticism for calling President Donald Trump’s latest reversal on undocumented immigrant workers “big news,” after the President floated creating “temporary passes.”

Earlier this month, Trump announced ICE would back off from detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants working on farms and in hotels, only to announce just days later an apparent reversal to that policy, by declaring he would enact “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”

Bartiromo, in a White House interview on Sunday (video below), told Trump that he had “said, let’s ease up on, you know, taking in people that are working hardworking, like, in farms and hotels,” while ignoring his statement from days later.

“I don’t back away,” Trump insisted. “What I do, I cherish our farmers, and when we go into a farm and we take away people that have been working there for 15 and 20 years who who are good, who possibly came in incorrectly, and what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna do something for farmers where we can let the farmers sort of be in charge.”

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“The farmer knows, he’s not gonna hire a murderer, but, you know, when you go into a farmer and he’s had somebody working with him for nine years doing this kind of work, which is hard work to do, and a lot of people aren’t gonna do it, and you end up destroying a farmer because you took all the people away,” Trump explained. “It’s a problem.”

Trump announced the White House is “gonna work it so that,” there is “some kind of a temporary pass, where people pay taxes, with a farmer can have a little control as opposed to you walk in and take everybody away.”

On social media, Bartiromo trumpeted: “Big news on the border from my interview @realDonaldTrump is working on a ‘temporary pass’ for workers on farms and in hotels where they pay taxes but it’s up to the farmer for a temporary pass even if they came into the country ‘incorrectly.'”

What Trump described sounds similar to the existing H-2A temporary visa program for agricultural workers.

“The H-2A program allows U.S. employers or U.S. agents who meet specific regulatory requirements to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary agricultural jobs,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).

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Critics mocked the Fox News host.

“So a work permit?” snarked U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ).

“They just invented the work visa,” mocked retired intelligence officer Travis Akers.

“But wait,” urged former Fox News contributor Julie Roginsky, “we were told Americans would be doing these jobs and that everyone who came into this country illegally would be deported. What could have possibly changed?”

“Donald Trump has no idea what his immigration policy is,” noted Democratic strategist Max Burns.

“Stunning incoherence on his signature policy issue,” observed Gregg Nunziata, executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law.

Watch the video below or at this link.

Watch Part 2 of @MariaBartiromo‘s interview with @POTUS where they discuss the OBBB, the border, the future of the Fed, the Biden autopen scandal, and ending the war in the Congo pic.twitter.com/Jz9zkmS3e8

— SundayMorningFutures (@SundayFutures) June 29, 2025

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