🇺🇸☕️ SLEDGEHAMMER ☙ Friday, July 4, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠🇺🇸

Happy Independence Day! OBBBA passes—Trump’s hammer drops; tariffs reboot; Ukraine spirals down the drain. At last, conservatives get the goods they were promised well before the horse and buggy.

Good morning, C&C, it’s Friday! Happy Independence Day! I’d originally planned a short, touching, patriotic holiday post, but there is just too much danged important news. Still, the Childers family will join a neighborhood 4th of July Parade at 9am, so today’s abbreviated roundup will focus on just the MOST essential items: Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill is passed and now we can find out what was in it—a giant hammer of executive power and a laundry list of things conservatives have been promised since before the horse and buggy; Trump tariffs are set to resume as the dashboard flickers back into life; and, as we all knew was going to happen, Ukraine is finally circling the drain. Bye, Felecia.

🪖 C&C ARMY POST 🪖

🪖 The people have spoken; despite my misgivings, I will soon round up what I could find out for sure about the infamous Deagle Report, and what I think about the whole thing. Meantime, I do not recommend trying to do your own research because of how much misinformation has flooded the zone. It’s an informational disaster area. Maybe on purpose.

🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍

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For an international perspective, I picked the Guardian’s story to frame our discussion. Late yesterday, the UK paper ran an article headlined, “Trump’s big bill achieved what conservatives have been trying to do for decades.” The crestfallen faces of liberal MSNBC anchors on hearing about the bill’s passage tell you everything you need to know:

They did it! Right on schedule, too. Oh, frabjous day! My authorial pen waxes poetic:

’Twas grundle-time, and Swampy beasts
Did whimper-wail in fetid bogs;
All jabberjawed were bureaucrats,
And MSM loosed spin-fog.

“Beware the OBBBA, my child!
The claws that slash! The cuts that snatch!
Beware the grift-bird’s golden hoard,
And shun the debt-born patch!”

He took his fiscal blade in hand:
Long time the libsome foe he sought—
So rested he by CBO tree,
And stood awhile, in thought.

And as in budget-thoughts he stood,
The OBBBA came, with grinding teeth,
All paper-bound and rider-crowned,
It howled: “You’ll pay beneath!”

One-two! One-two! And through and through
The trenchant pen went snicker-snack!
He left them stunned, and with their funds
He marched the budget back.

“Hast slain the porksome beast, my Prez?
Come to my arms, you MAGA boy!
O frabjous day! Great tariffs, yay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas grundle-time, and liberals wept
As spending shrank like salted slugs.
Their DEI’s de-authorized,
And busted were their debt plugs.

So.

Thank you, dear reader, for that brief indulgence. Now, on to the substance. Mind you, I have not (yet) fully read the text of the final bill. What follows are partial summaries of information assembled from credible sources. I was forced under hellish deadline pressure to rewrite this section twice, because I couldn’t locate various claims from the articles in the bill itself.

Since we’re in the fog of political war, minor points may be subject to change.

🔥 It is perhaps no better gauge of Trump 2.0’s irresistible political power than that Congressional Republicans heartily embraced the classic Trumpian name: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Or, as I prefer, the “Omnibus Bill for Budgetary Brutalism and Accountability.”

The OBBBA is many things, and the hot takes are blooming this morning like mushrooms in the dewy grass, making it all but impossible to understand exactly what just happened. Scrolling social media about the OBBBA gives one the same alarmed sensation as having just come to rest after a massive interstate multi-car pileup.

We know one thing for sure: The OBBBA checked-off a massive wish list of conservative goodness. Tax relief (tips, social security, overtime), newborn investment accounts, really defunding Planned Parenthood (finally!), ending Biden’s green subsidies, imposing welfare work requirements, and much more.

And, emerging like a hypersonic missile from the maelstrom of statutory incoming fire, I detected a larger theme: a presidential sledgehammer.

🔥 Immigration got the biggest boost. A $30 billion allocation supercharged ICE’s operational footprint, including for expedited removals, detention expansion, and interjurisdictional deputization under the INA, allowing local law enforcement officers to be deputized as federal immigration agents.

A $10 billion “State Border Security Reinforcement Fund” allows states to apply for substantial grants to fund their own enforcement activities—provided they cooperate with federal priorities. This embeds a federalism-based enforcement surge within DHS control, allowing the Executive to co-opt state forces without surrendering state supremacy.

States that don’t cooperate won’t get paid. Sorry.

Naomi Steinberg, Vice President of a large immigrant activist group, said, “The bill is essentially a slush-fund that will turbo-charge more raids, detentions, and rapid-fire deportations that defy basic due process norms. Simultaneously, it leaves refugee communities without access to support for basic needs. This is a dark day for the country, and we must bear witness to the terror this bill could bring.”

The OBBBA explicitly funds removals under the INA, encouraging mass removals without individualized hearings— a classic Trump-era policy previously halted by courts and executive discretion. This provision alone could moot many of the pending immigration lawfare cases.

The bill mandates expansion of biometric tracking for aliens at their entry, including DNA sampling, broadening the executive branch’s surveillance and identification net for both lawful and unlawful entrants.

Media is nearly at its wits’ end (which isn’t very far). NPR, yesterday:

The OBBBA also imposes a slate of mandatory fees for legal immigration challenges, significantly increasing the cost burden on noncitizens seeking to contest adverse INS rulings. For example, it sets the initial fees for challenging removal cancellations at $600, and for filing appeals at $900, but allows the Attorney General to increase the fees to any amount.

The provisions effectively erect a new financial barrier to ‘due process’ in immigration proceedings, favoring expedited enforcement by reducing the pool of illegals able or willing to appeal adverse decisions. It greatly increases the cost to activist groups for mass appeals. Best of all, part of the money goes back to DOJ for immigration enforcement cases.

There was a lot more. And, perhaps not directly related to the OBBBA, but still fun, see this AP headline (published yesterday):

That was fast! They had a chance, and funding, to self-deport. They should have taken the deal.

🔥 It will take a few days for the dust to settle and the boundaries of what just passed to become clearly known. So far, there are two main complaints about the OBBBA from the left and from ‘moderates,’ and one minor quibble, all of which are easily rebutted.

First, conservative critics complain that OBBBA blows the budget. The truth is, the bill contains a historically high level of cuts— nearly $1.5 trillion. The larger, offsetting ‘increases’ everyone is complaining about are estimates provided by the CBO, which is restricted by various rules that preclude it from accounting for things like increased tax revenues from economic growth or tariff earnings.

In other words, the CBO’s estimate is a bad guess, and the Administration adheres to its claim of a budget surplus.

Even more to the point, the American public is not yet ready for a real austerity budget. The budget hawks (I won’t name names) are, in a most cowardly fashion, actually advocating for things like trimming Social Security. There is zero political appetite for touching those kinds of electrified rails, and the so-called ‘budget hawks’ are not even volunteering to take the incoming fire.

Second, liberal critics hysterically cry that it cuts Medicare for the neediest citizens! But all anyone has to do is read the bill, and that lie is easily exposed. All the bill includes are commonsense tweaks to eligibility for welfare, like minimal work requirements for able-bodied recipients. The reason you’ll never see any actual bill language quoted by critics is because it’s simply not there.

Finally, and less meaningfully, some never-satisfied conservative critics complain that the bill didn’t go farther. But these critics misunderstand the basic process. To circumvent the Senate filibuster, the bill could only include items related to the budget. There were loads of great things in the House version, like tackling the courts once and for all, which had to be stripped out for passage in the Senate since they weren’t related to spending.

Expect other quibbles. For instance, the provision to defund Planned Parenthood (and every other group providing abortions) was great, but it only lasts one year. That sounds very temporary, especially the way time flies these days, but it leaves political room for a later extension, and you’d better bet the sides are already lining up for that fight next year.

Meanwhile, Boston Globe, last night:

Assuming the GOP can stick the landing next year, hold the House and expand the Senate majority, expect to see OBBBA II in 2027.

I’ll update you as more reliable information emerges from the cloud of psyops and I get a chance to look more closely at the text.

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Similar to how one of the Marvel superheroes once said in the Avengers series, we are now in the Ukrainian endgame. NBC ran a story yesterday headlined, “Hegseth halted weapons for Ukraine despite military analysis that the aid wouldn’t jeopardize U.S. readiness.”

It seems that Tuesday, Kiev’s smug, annoying fake president received a polite but unpleasant denial-of-service notice. It went something like this: “We have reviewed your account’s usage statistics and have determined that, unfortunately, due to overuse, we must immediately terminate your unlimited weapons streaming service. Please make arrangements to find an alternative provider. Thank you for your patience.”

It shouldn’t have been, but it came as a shock. “The move to halt the weapons shipment,” NBC explained, “blindsided the State Department, members of Congress, officials in Kyiv and European allies.” Russia, for its part, is slowly ratcheting up pressure. Last weekend, for example, it launched its biggest missile and drone attack of the entire war.

The shipment Secretary of Defense Hegseth canceled included mostly air defense supplies, which is exactly what Ukraine might need most when facing record levels of incoming fire.

Ukraine fanatics are scrambling to reverse the decision. Two previous times, Hegseth has halted shipments, only to be ordered to restart them a few days later. We’ll see whether it sticks this time. Every time it happens, Ukraine loses ground.

Politico, two days ago:

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So much for ‘TACO.’ The New York Times ran a story this morning headlined, White House to Start Notifying Countries About Tariffs, Trump Says. The 90 day pause is up. Countries that haven’t made deals yet will find out today what the next phase looks like.

President Trump said early this morning that he is set to resume the tariffs that he initially imposed in April on dozens of countries, before he’d paused them for three months to allow time to negotiate individual deals. The 90 day hiatus runs out this Wednesday.

“So we’re going to start sending letters out to various countries starting tomorrow,” Trump said yesterday, right after the OBBBA passed. “They’ll range from maybe 60 or 70 percent tariffs to 10 and 20 percent tariffs.”

Some countries, like China, Britain, and Vietnam, have already made deals. “Talks with other world leaders,” the Times reported, “have so far yielded little, despite efforts from Japan, Malaysia, India and the European Union.”

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Bloomberg that he expected about 100 countries would end up with a minimum 10 percent rate, but that more deals were in the offing. “I think we’re going to see a lot of action over the coming days,” he said. Last week, Bessent suggested that some discussions could be further extended until September 1st.

So … in a sort of historical meter or rhyme, Liberation Day letters will go out on Independence Day. Time to talk tariff turkey. Expect fireworks.

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On July 4, 1776, as the ink dried on the Declaration of Independence, the city of New York braced for invasion. George Washington, standing under a giant elm on the Bowery, read the Declaration aloud to his troops —many shoeless, some illiterate— who roared with approval. That night, patriots tore down a statue of King George III and melted it into 42,088 bullets.

Not tourist trinkets. Bullets.

Those early patriots knew liberty wasn’t just a legal theory. Among other things, it was a fight. And when the time came, they acted, transforming dictatorial symbols into ammunition.

Today, as the dying administrative state convulses in dangerous death throes and courts hamstring the pockets of presidential power, the OBBBA’s passage feels less like budgetary legislation and more like a modern Declaration; a refusal to submit, a reckoning of authority, a sense of collective conscience, and the early shots in a long campaign to restore self-government.

Happy Independence Day!

Enjoy a fabulous Fourth of July! Don’t blow your thumbs off. You’ll need them tomorrow morning, when C&C returns with a full Weekend Edition roundup of the week’s off-the-chain essential news and commentary.

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