Fight in Congress
Battling the Trump/Republican Billionaire Tax Giveaway
On May 22, House Republicans passed the centerpiece of the Trump legislative agenda—a tax giveaway for the ultra-rich that Trump calls his “Big, Beautiful Bill.” He’s right that this bill is big, but you can’t call it beautiful unless you're a billionaire. For anyone else, it’s downright ugly.
Their big, ugly bill doubles down on Trump’s 2017 tax giveaway for the uber-rich and mega-corporations and mostly puts those tax breaks on the national credit card, blowing up the national debt by trillions of dollars, which could drive up interest rates. The latest score from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says deficits would rise by about $3 trillion in the next decade. When the government borrows so much money, interest rates can rise for everyone—leaving Americans to face higher interest costs on mortgages and car loans.
While much of their plan is unpaid for, Republicans are bankrolling the rest of the bill’s high costs by slashing Medicaid, food and nutrition (SNAP), and other programs that help tens of millions of American families get by. According to a preliminary analysis, the Trump/Republican plan would cut over $800 billion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act as well as another $300 billion from SNAP. The size of these cuts, which will devastate working families living paycheck to paycheck, roughly equals the size of this bill’s aggregate tax giveaways for people with incomes above $500,000 a year. According to an analysis by the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the bill would effectively cost 40% of American families an average of $870 in its first year, while those in the top 0.1% would gain, on average, $389,000.
If the GOP gets their way, almost 16 million people would lose their health insurance altogether. Families will face decisions like whether they can afford to pay medical bills or heating bills. Seniors will get kicked out of nursing homes. People with disabilities will lose services that help them live independently and thrive in their communities. Every day, more Marylanders contact my office to share how these Medicaid cuts will devastate their families and lives. I recently joined a vigil to protect Medicaid where I shared the story of Mary, a mother in Carroll County whose adult son is battling colon cancer. Mary wrote to me, “If they take his Medicaid away, it will be a death sentence.”
Republicans are also taking an axe to SNAP, which helps low-income families pay for groceries, and they are slashing the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps Americans afford their utility bills. 40 million Americans will get less food assistance every month, and energy bills will increase by double digits for low-income families.
These cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and LIHEAP will hit millions of families all at once, forcing them to face higher costs at the grocery store and increased energy bills, all while they are stripped of affordable health insurance. What’s more, some Americans risk losing their jobs to this bill: it threatens 800,000 good-paying jobs in the clean energy economy, including more than 2,500 in Maryland.
The Trump/Republican bill also targets patriotic federal employees, who are already reeling from the onslaught of chaos and harm caused by Elon Musk and DOGE. Specifically, the bill cuts their pay through a sleight of hand. New federal employees would have to pay extra out of their salary to receive retirement benefits and civil service protections that all civil servants previously received—and should receive—by default.
Over the past few months, we’ve been pushing back against this big betrayal with every tool we’ve got. Still, House Republicans fell in line with Trump and passed the bill by a one-vote margin. While Senate Republicans have indicated that they will not adopt the House version as-is, they’ve said their changes will be small. The House bill also contains several non-budget provisions that are both harmful and will, I believe, fail to meet the requirements of the reconciliation process, the procedural mechanism that allows Senate Republicans to pass this bill despite unanimous Democratic opposition. This includes a provision to block federal courts from enforcing contempt citations—effectively limiting our courts’ ability to hold Trump and his Administration in contempt—and another that places a 10-year moratorium on states putting guardrails on artificial intelligence.
Defeating what even Elon Musk (looks like he got at least a temporary dose of truth serum!) rightly calls an “abomination” will not be easy. We must continue to wage an all-out campaign against it. Americans across the country are already mobilizing to stop this bill, and I am confident that the more they learn about it, the more they will oppose it.
I take heart from the fact that, eight years ago, we blocked the Trump/Republican effort to destroy the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Then, as now, they tried to use the reconciliation process, but we defeated that effort by just one vote in the United States Senate. That victory came after a massive groundswell of nationwide activism—countless postcards, protests, and more. Every bit of effort counted then, and every bit of effort will count now.
Stopping the Cash for Collusion Scheme in El Salvador
Right now, Donald Trump is using your taxpayer dollars to pay the Bukele-run government of El Salvador to lock up U.S. residents in infamous prisons without any due process. This is a conspiracy to deprive individuals living in America of their constitutional rights. That was made abundantly clear from the conversation I had with Salvadoran Vice President, Félix Ulloa—video of which I recently released here. That’s why Senator Tim Kaine and I used a special Senate procedure to force a vote on a resolution we introduced to require the Trump Administration to release a report on their compliance with federal court orders related to the deportation of people to El Salvador and to provide information on the human rights situation there. I argued on the Senate floor that the Senate should, at a minimum, require the executive branch to provide the American public with facts and information regarding the use of their taxpayer dollars.
Disturbingly, however, Republicans blocked our resolution in a party-line vote. They chose to bury their heads in the sand rather than expose the ugly reality of the Trump-Bukele scheme. But I'm not done fighting for the truth and the Constitution.
Trump Is Enriching Himself As He Undermines American Interests Abroad
A few weeks ago, Donald Trump traveled to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar where, instead of focusing on American foreign policy priorities, he spent his time selling out important American interests as he and his family cut deals to personally enrich themselves. A week before President Trump arrived in the UAE, his son Eric Trump went there to get $2 billion from a UAE government-backed fund for the Trump family’s new stablecoin venture, World Liberty Financial’s USD1. Then, when President Trump arrived, he signed an agreement giving the UAE access to the crown jewels of American AI and semiconductor technology. That same week, Trump also authorized the sale of advanced US weaponry to the UAE, even as the UAE continues to supply weapons to a murderous militia group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which the US government has determined is committing genocide in Sudan.
Meanwhile, as Eric Trump worked to make Trump hotel deals in Qatar, President Trump solicited a jumbo jet from Qatar’s government to use as his new Air Force One (and potentially later for his presidential library) and approved a large arms sale. While Trump was cutting these financial deals in the Gulf states, he said and did virtually nothing about the humanitarian disaster in Gaza and the need to release all of the hostages. Candidate Trump said he would swiftly end the war in Gaza and bring back all the hostages. He has done neither.
The spectacle of an American president and his family enriching themselves while giving away cutting-edge American technology, selling advanced weapons to a country abetting the genocide in Sudan, and breaking promises on the war in Gaza is a national embarrassment. The presidency should not be sold to the highest bidder, and American foreign policy decisions shouldn’t be made on a pay-to-play basis. Congress must step in. That’s why Senator Chris Murphy and I filed joint resolutions of disapproval against impending arms sales to both the UAE and Qatar. These bills, if enacted, would block these arms sales from moving forward. These are just a few of the efforts we’re pursuing in the Congress to stop Trump’s naked corruption. The world’s greatest military and economic superpower should not be turned into a grift machine for Donald Trump.
Trump’s corruption abroad and his shredding of the Constitution at home has been enabled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Recently, in a Senate hearing, I confronted Rubio directly about his complicity in dismantling the Constitution and abandoning the fight for human rights as part of our foreign policy.
Advancing and Protecting Vital Maryland Priorities
Maryland is ground zero for many of Trump’s illegal efforts to hollow out the federal government and rip away services from working families. That also means that federal Team Maryland is the tip of the spear in our efforts to fight back. Every day, I’m working with our federal delegation to fight back against Trump's reckless actions that are hurting our communities.
Earlier this year, the Trump Administration halted classes at the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, Maryland, which provides lifesaving training to firefighters from around the country. The decision to abruptly cancel these classes made no sense, and it endangered our communities and those who protect them. So, I worked with Representative McClain Delaney and Senator Alsobrooks to get classes restored. On May 8, I pressed Homeland Security Secretary Noem for answers and secured a commitment for funding to resume—and now it has. While the good work done by the men and women at the National Fire Academy never should have been halted, I’m glad to see the Administration has heeded our calls to lift this senseless ban. Classes have now restarted in Emmitsburg.
Unfortunately, attacking the Fire Academy is just one of the ways that Trump is endangering Marylanders’ safety. In April, the Administration completely canceled FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) Grant program, taking away $1 billion that had been promised to help Chesapeake Bay watershed communities like Crisfield and South Baltimore and halting low-interest loans to prevent flooding in places like Ellicott City. Every day we don’t effectively prepare for new floods and storms is another day that people’s lives and livelihoods are put at risk. That’s why I led a bipartisan effort with 85 Democratic and Republican colleagues to demand that Trump swiftly restore BRIC and let FEMA do its job: saving lives. We will keep up this fight.
In addition to cancelling FEMA’s BRIC program, the Trump Administration has also denied FEMA support to communities across the country that have been hard-hit by natural disasters, and I am keeping a close watch on their response to Western Maryland’s severe flooding. The State of Maryland submitted a request to FEMA to complete Joint Preliminary Damage Assessments in the impacted areas of Western Maryland. That damage assessment is currently underway. In the meantime, as discussed more below, I was pleased to get a commitment from the head of the Small Business Administration (SBA) that they would quickly use their own authorities to provide low-cost SBA loans to homeowners and businesses that suffered large losses in the flooding, and they have since followed through.
I’m also continuing to advance Maryland priorities like protecting the Chesapeake Bay. In a hearing, I pressed Trump’s EPA Administrator, Lee Zeldin, on the need to fund the critical Chesapeake Bay Program—which we successfully defended against proposed elimination during the first Trump Administration. I was glad to receive his commitment to maintain this funding, and I’m pleased to report that the budget they submitted last week does so. While I secured that commitment, I am continuing to battle EPA Administrator Zeldin’s ongoing, outrageous, and illegal efforts to dismantle the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), a green energy initiative I spent years advocating for and finally passed into law as a part of the Inflation Reduction Act. The GGRF is a win-win-win—reducing energy costs for consumers, generating good-paying jobs, and reducing polluting emissions—but the Trump Administration has launched an illegal effort to dismantle it. As I pointed out in the hearing with Zeldin, the federal courts are exposing the gap between what the EPA claims in public and what they admit to in court. That’s an ongoing theme of the Trump Administration as they mislead the American people.
The fight to counter Trump’s attacks on Maryland’s federal workers continues. This Administration will stop at nothing to undermine our patriotic civil servants—the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) even fired its constituent service liaisons who pick up the phone when Members of Congress want to help a federal worker with human resources-related matters, such as obtaining earned retirement benefits, disability retirement benefits, and survivor’s benefits. In response, I led 15 Senate colleagues in a letter to OPM demanding answers on the firings, and I’ll work to ensure OPM continues functioning effectively for our federal workforce and retirees.
When Trump goes after federal workers in Maryland, the whole country suffers. That’s why I also recently joined consumer advocates to expose Trump’s attack on the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)—the Maryland-based independent agency that ensures that cribs are safe, toys don’t have lead, and so much more. The CPSC has helped save thousands of lives by helping protect families from dangerous and defective products. Now, Trump is trying to shut it down—doing the bidding of corporate interests who put profits over people. Make no mistake: this will endanger lives. That’s dangerous idiocy, not efficiency.
Fight in the Courts
As Trump faces over 250 lawsuits against his illegal actions, he’s doing everything he can to sabotage the entire legal system itself in order to prevent the courts from holding him accountable. Here are just a few updates about the ongoing battle in America’s courtrooms.
- On May 30, an appellate court preserved a May 22 order from a lower court granting a preliminary injunction halting the Trump Administration’s unconstitutional and illegal attempts to reorganize the federal government through huge reductions in force—a.k.a. Trump and DOGE’s across-the-board mass firings. The judge stated in her order, “Agencies may not conduct large-scale reorganizations and reductions in force in blatant disregard of Congress’s mandates, and a president may not initiate large-scaled executive branch reorganization without partnering with Congress.” The Administration has appealed this injunction, but this is an important ruling for our federal employees. In a similar fashion, on June 4, another appellate court preserved a lower court injunction that’s blocking Trump from dismantling the Department of Education.
- Unfortunately, on May 19, an appeals court lifted a temporary restraining order that had been stopping Trump from stripping certain federal employees’ collective bargaining rights. This clears the way for Trump to commence part of his union-busting plan while an underlying lawsuit continues.
- There are also a slew of legal efforts against Elon Musk and DOGE for sabotaging the government. Democratic state attorneys general have filed a lawsuit arguing that Musk’s appointment and the entire DOGE operation are grossly illegal violations of the Constitution’s appointments clause, and on May 27, a judge denied a motion to broadly dismiss the case, though President Trump was removed as a defendant. The lawsuit still needs to be fully heard on the merits, but it’s a critical case for preserving our checks and balances.
- On May 29, a federal trade court ruled that many of Trump’s tariffs are illegal, an encouraging ruling for millions of families and small businesses already feeling the pain of price increases. The tariffs aren’t just a disaster, they’re unconstitutional. As I have argued on the Senate Floor, the President does not have the power to wrongfully twist the law to impose a giant sales tax on the American people. An appellate court has allowed the tariffs to stay in place temporarily as it considers the merits of the case. Stay tuned.
- To avoid the requirements of due process and fair trials, the Trump Administration has also floated suspending habeas corpus, the legal procedure that gives people the right to challenge their unlawful detention. On May 22, a Maryland judge took action to protect that right by barring the Trump Administration from swiftly deporting those who challenge their detention under habeas corpus. This order will give the courts the proper opportunity to evaluate each case and aims to stop the Administration from shipping people off to foreign countries without due process or the ability of courts to intervene. It’s a shameful sign of the times when our courts need to repeat the Constitution to the executive branch, but it is very important that the U.S. District Court of Maryland did so.
- That’s just one example of how the court battle over Trump’s attempts to undermine due process and conduct mass deportations has been very active in recent weeks. On May 16, in a rebuke to Trump, the Supreme Court extended its deportation freeze that is preventing Trump from deporting Venezuelans using obscure wartime emergency powers from the Alien Enemies Act. And on May 21, a federal judge said that Trump violated a court order by deporting people to South Sudan. On June 4, a judge ruled that a March deportation of more than 130 Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act likely violated due process rights and ordered the Trump Administration to let these people challenge their removal. These important court decisions are shining a light on Trump’s attempts to ignore U.S. law.
- Unfortunately, we’ve also seen setbacks on the immigration front. On May 19, the Supreme Court allowed Trump to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 350,000 Venezuelans fleeing chaos in their home country. On May 30, the Supreme Court also allowed Trump to revoke the humanitarian parole status of more than 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who were granted permission to stay for urgent humanitarian reasons. Despite these painful rulings, we had a small win on May 30, when a judge blocked the revocation of TPS for several thousand Venezuelans who were covered by the country designation that had been extended into 2026 by the Biden Administration.
- We also had an important victory against Trump’s deportation operation on May 28, when a judge ruled that Marco Rubio and the Trump Administration’s attempt to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student, is likely “unconstitutionally vague.” I could not agree more: neither Marco Rubio, nor Donald Trump, nor anyone one else in this country has the power to deport people over their political speech.
Fight in Our Communities
Beyond everything happening in Washington, I’m talking with Marylanders and working across the state to support our communities.
In good news, the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis has restored nearly all of the 381 books that it had removed from its shelves. This reversal came after I attended a meeting of the Board of Visitors, on which I serve, brought some of the books with me—including Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"—and moved to end the ban. That’s progress. We can’t stop fighting back.
Beyond the Naval Academy, I’m committed to supporting all of Maryland’s servicemembers and military installations, which are important to our country’s national security. On May 19, I joined Senator Alsobrooks, Representative Hoyer, and Representative Elfreth to visit Naval Air Station Patuxent River, a critical asset for our national security. I will continue to support naval aviation research and development, along with the educational opportunities and workforce investments that Pax has catalyzed in Southern Maryland. I was also glad to visit with the Southern Maryland Navy Alliance and tour the University System of Maryland at Southern Maryland’s SMART building, including the Matrix Lab. The researchers and students there are doing incredible work, and the collaboration between the Alliance, public-sector, and private-sector partners will help strengthen and build the region’s workforce for years to come.
To achieve any goal, from a booming economy to a strong, dynamic workforce, we need to educate the next generation. That’s why I recently spoke with parents and educators at the Maryland Head Start Association, which plays a critical role in helping our youngest children succeed. Head Start was created 60 years ago to help low-income families access early education, and since then, the program has changed the lives of over 40 million kids. Trump is trying to sully that legacy and destroy Head Start: he illegally froze and withheld billions of dollars of Head Start funding, and he has closed regional offices around the country. Thanks to ferocious advocacy from Head Start providers and families, the President has not proposed cutting Head Start in his initial proposed budget. But make no mistake, the threat has not passed. I will fight tooth and nail to protect Head Start for our kids.
I also want to address the recent antisemitic hate crimes in Boulder, Colorado and Washington, DC. As we pray for the victims and their families, we must redouble our efforts to fight antisemitism. The perpetrators must be brought to justice, and we must ensure that antisemitism and hate in all their forms have no refuge in America. I’ve long fought for increased funding to support security measures at synagogues, places of worship, community centers, and other targets for hate crimes. I know many in our communities feel unsafe, even more so following these heinous attacks. While nonprofit security measures are just one tool we have to keep our communities safe, it's one we should be fully utilizing, which is why I support significantly increasing the funding for this program.
Addressing Flooding in Western Maryland
Forty-eight hours after devastating floods hit communities in Western Maryland, I met with local leaders and emergency responders to express my support for their efforts and to assess the damage. Having seen the impact firsthand, it is clear there will be much work ahead to rebuild, and I’m committed to supporting those efforts in any way I can. That’s why, as discussed above, I pressed the head of the Small Business Administration Kelly Loeffler to provide immediate relief to Western Maryland, and I am glad the SBA has moved quickly to do so.
I encourage all Allegany and Garrett County small businesses, non-profits, homeowners, and renters who need support to apply for resources available to them through the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Disaster Assistance program. You can visit the SBA’s website here for information on how to apply for disaster loans. The deadline to file for physical damage assistance is July 21, 2025.
My heart is with everyone who has suffered damage from the devastating storms, and my sincere gratitude goes out to all the first responders whose heroic work ensured all residents’ safety. The unity and resolve of these communities shone through as neighbors and volunteers were out in full force to lend a helping hand. They remind us why we should be proud to be Marylanders and proud to be Americans. Let’s keep striving to live up to their example.
Onwards,
- Chris Van Hollen |