Trump's crowning moment is ammo for Dems in '26

With B-2 bombers booming above, President Trump will deliver a motherlode of campaign promises for his supporters Friday, decimate his predecessor's priorities and demonstrate his total dominance over the Republican Party.Why it matters: The MAGA mega bill is more than just an indisputable victory for the president and the party he has remade in his image.It's also a stinging defeat for Democrats — but has given them fodder for the 2026 midterms.With the stroke of his signature, Trump will undo the solar, wind and electric vehicles tax cuts that were at the core of President Biden's signature Inflation Reduction Act.Trump will sign into law some long-term GOP goals, like making business tax credits permanent, changing how Congress counts tax cuts, pouring billions into border security, and slowing the growth of Medicaid and SNAP spending.The big tax cuts will apply this year. Most of the spending cuts will hit after the midterms."It's going to make this country into a rocket ship," Trump said.Zoom out: The country will little note, nor long remember how Congress passed this bill: the all-nighters, the nail-biters and the GOP false fighters, who ultimately tapped out for Trump.But Democrats will make it their mission to ensure that voters don't forget what Trump and congressional Republicans did in the bill.The tax cuts, they say, will benefit the already-wealthy the most — and the Medicaid cuts that target the poor could devastate health care options for millions.Democrats will concede they lost on policy, but convinced they'll win — eventually — on the politics.For eight hours and 45 minutes Thursday, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries held up the GOP-led chamber's vote in favor of Trump's big bill, energizing his party (and his donors) by previewing attack lines certain to be distilled to 30-second TV ads for the 2026 campaign."This is a crime scene," he thundered from the House floor.The intrigue: Democrats will mischievously borrow some Republican lines that were dropped along the way amid GOP anxiety over the bill's impacts."The Medicaid stuff in here is bad," said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)."Garbage," declared Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) earlier this week. "It's a good bill overall," he said after voting for it.Expect those comments — along with Sen. Joni Ernst's "we are all going to die" shrug when the Iowa Republican was asked about Medicaid cuts — to be featured on local TV stations.By the numbers: In all, the tax cuts total $4.5 trillion over a decade, leading to $3.3 trillion in deficit spending, according to the Congressional Budget Office.Republicans will say the real winners are the 83% of households that would have been hit with a tax increase if Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act had expired at the end of the year.Democrats will focus on the more than $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, which is projected to put nearly 12 million Americans at risk of losing their health care and threaten rural hospitals across the country.Trump is giving his MAGA faithful $170 billion in border and immigration funds and $150 billion for defense spending.The oil and gas industry got many of its priorities.Also tucked into the bill: a rise in the nation's debt ceiling by $5 trillion.Then there are the Trumpian touches to the bill, such as no taxes on tips, a suggestion he got from a Las Vegas waitress.And for babies lucky enough to be born during Trump's second reign, there are $1,000 checks, to be placed in "Trump accounts."But Trump quietly gave up on his plans to tax carried interest as regular income, a major win for the private equity industry.The bottom line: Four score and seven days ago, the S&P 500 closed at its lowest point of Trump's presidency.Yesterday it closed at a new record high, its seventh this year.The economy — for now — appears to be shrugging off his tariffs, with the Labor Department reporting 147,000 new jobs in June, defying expectations.

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