Mulvaney Says Freedom Caucus Still Has Role to Play in Trump's GOP

Mick Mulvaney, former acting White House chief of staff to President Trump, says he's still confident in the relevancy of the freedom caucus with such slim margins in congress, but isn't so optimistic about the chances of a rescissions package making its way through congress.

Donald Trump’s second presidency is turning into a white-knuckle ride — the kind that gets to its destination in double-quick time, provided there’s no accident on the way.

When a sleep-deprived Congress approved Trump’s budget megabill on Thursday, it set the capstone on five furious months back in the White House. In that time the president has thrown up a tariff wall, slammed shut the southern US border, and upended everything from foreign policy to higher education — much as he’d promised to do.

Trump’s self-titled “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the centerpiece of his second-term agenda, extends tax breaks from his earlier presidency that were set to expire. It delivers on key campaign pledges too, such as no taxes on tips and overtime, and allocates upwards of $150 billion for Trump’s crackdown on immigration — including his long-coveted border wall.

The $3.4 trillion bill will further mushroom the national debt and widen America’s income and wealth gaps, most economists reckon. Social safety nets, crucial to the working-class voters who Trump drew to the Republican Party, face the biggest cuts in decades. Still, for the president — who’s due to sign the measure into law later Friday — it equates to a win, the latest in a series over the past few weeks.

President Donald Trump vowed to push forward with his aggressive tariff regime in the coming days, stressing he would not offer additional extensions on country-specific levies set to now hit in early August while indicating he could announce substantial new rates on imports of copper and pharmaceuticals.

The posturing on social media and at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday came after traders initially shrugged off a series of letters and executive actions Trump issued Monday, pushing back the deadline for his so-called “reciprocal” tariffs while announcing the latest rates he planned for more than a dozen countries that had not succeeded in brokering quick trade agreements.

That changed Tuesday as Trump signaled a renewed determination to push ahead with his plans to heavily tax foreign imports.

Trump said he would offer no additional delays on the country-specific tariffs, despite the previous night allowing he was “not 100% firm” on his August 1 deadline.

He said he would impose a 50% rate on copper products being sent into the US, surging futures of the commodity to their largest intraday gain in data going back to at least 1988.

He also told reporters that despite progress with the European Union on a trade deal, frustration over the bloc’s taxes and fines targeting US technology firms could result in him unilaterally declaring a new tariff rate within the next two days. And just hours after saying he was close to a trade deal with India, Trump said he would still tag imports from the country with an additional 10% levy for their participation in BRICS, a collection of developing nations.

Moreover, he said, drug companies could face a tax as high as 200% on imports if they didn’t move production to the US in the next year.

“We want to have relationships, but in every case, they treated us f

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