A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Later today, President Trump will host what the White House is calling the One Big, Beautiful Event. It's an effort to apply pressure to Senate Republicans to pass the massive bill containing what is essentially Trump's entire legislative agenda. But getting that bill over the finish line isn't the only challenge hanging over the president right now. Here's NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: From Air Force One, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, President Trump put out a social media post, pivoting from the fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel to domestic concerns. Now that we've made peace abroad, he wrote, we must finish the job here at home. He was talking about his big tax cuts and spending bill that is facing difficulty in the Senate. Quote, "No one goes on vacation until it's done."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Fourth of July. We're shooting for the Fourth of July. I think it's going to be the most important piece of legislation that our country has passed in many, many years.
KEITH: The bill extends and expands tax cuts from his first term. It funds immigration enforcement and boosts spending on the military. But it also includes cuts to Medicaid, the health care program for low-income and disabled Americans. And some Republicans warn it could force rural hospitals to close. There are other disagreements, too, and the Republican majority is narrow.
Hogan Gidley served in the first Trump administration and is now a senior adviser to the House speaker. He says every Republican in Congress understands the gravity of this moment.
HOGAN GIDLEY: If they cannot deliver on the very thing that put them in office, there's going to be a big problem with their chances of reelection.
KEITH: But as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pointed out during a visit to Capitol Hill earlier this week, this is far from the only momentous item on the president's plate right now.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SCOTT BESSENT: The president is doing peace deals, tax deals, trade deals. So he's done a peace deal. I think we'll have the tax deal done by July 4, and then we can finish with the trade deals.
KEITH: July 8 is the deadline Trump created when he paused his so-called reciprocal tariffs. Administration officials were talking about 90 deals in 90 days, and Bessent himself was quite confident at a White House press briefing in April.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BESSENT: I could see some announcements on India. I could see the contours of a deal with the Republic of Korea coming together, and then we've had substantial talks with the Japanese.
KEITH: That was two months ago. None of those deals have come through yet. Trump has inked just one trade deal with the U.K., and he could shift that tariff deadline again.
Chris Whipple, who's an expert on White House chiefs of staff, says Trump is reactive and instinctive, which drove his success on the campaign trail. But now the crises are piling up.
CHRIS WHIPPLE: You know, it does feel like kind of a defining moment. One thing that's clear, six months in, is that shock and awe, so-called, is just not an effective formula for governance.
KEITH: The White House and Trump allies like Gidley argue the successes are piling up, too - Operation Midnight Hammer in Iran, securing major financial commitments from NATO allies, and cracking down on illegal immigration. Gidley says presidents always have a lot to juggle.
GIDLEY: And every day, it's just a heart monitor in a hospital. It's like, up and down, up and down all day long. And I can't come up with a time that was as pressure-filled in the previous administration as we're dealing with right now, although I'm sure there were plenty.
KEITH: With so many different issues coming to a head all at once, what happens in the next two weeks could come to define Trump's second term.
Tamara Keith, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF PURE X SONG, "MAKING HISTORY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
