And now, here’s Abby…

“A big beautiful bust” is how not one, but two grumpy Republican sources described Trump’s landmark tax and spending bill to me, separately and unsolicited, on Monday morning. The current legislation, after all, would be offset in part by cutting Medicaid, while adding an estimated $3 trillion to the deficit. After the bill passed the House by a single vote, more than one Republican publicly admitted that they hadn’t read it, which some G.O.P. sources told me was a preferable explanation to endorsing some of its more unsavory provisions. Worse, Senate Republicans are now working to rewrite large chunks of the bill, potentially rendering moot the political capital burned by House members who took uncomfortable votes to get it across the line. Oh, and Elon Musk called the bill a “disgusting abomination.” Now, as the Senate moves toward its self-imposed deadline to pass its own version by July 4, there is growing anxiety and frustration in the House over what condition the Big Beautiful Bill will be in when it returns to them. Privately, some Republicans have mixed opinions on the merits of what is certainly the biggest and possibly the only major piece of legislation that will come out of Capitol Hill before the midterms. Some Republicans view this bill as the capstone of their Hill careers. Others genuinely hate it, but will probably end up voting for it anyway. The problem is that the bill’s Republican objectors all seem to despise the legislation for different reasons. The Freedom Caucus can’t stand the bill’s deficit spending and want deeper spending cuts. That position is at odds with many rural members, who worry about the impact of proposed Medicaid cuts on their local hospitals. Beyond that, the bill is so expansive that more obscure provisions—such as one that limits the power of judges to hold people in contempt—have caught members off guard. Then, of course, there’s the SALT problem. A not-insignificant group of House Republicans from high-tax blue states insisted on raising the cap on the state and local tax deduction to $40,000 as a condition for their support, but the Senate—which has no Republican members from high-tax blue states—is likely to gut those provisions. That’s music to the ears of the many red-staters who loathe the provision with an incandescent passion, but it leaves Speaker Mike Johnson in a tough spot. Republicans can lose only two or three votes when the BBB returns to the House, which puts the screws to the SALT Caucus members: Unlike in 2017, when then-Speaker Paul Ryan had a large-enough margin to give those members a hall pass to vote their conscience, there can be no defectors this time around, especially if gleeful contrarian Thomas Massie continues to vote nay. Alas, the Republican House majority happens to run through SALT-affected districts, so the G.O.P. would face the prospect of either tanking its signature bill now, or forcing vulnerable Republican members in California, New Jersey, and New York to take a vote that could cost them reelection in 2026. Some Republican sources insist the SALT Caucus will fold. “They’re the ones that are going to have to settle,” a senior Republican aide told me. “They say they’re going to vote no, but they never do.” A super-wired Republican consultant agreed. There would be “a very painful fight between chambers and geographic wings of the party,” this person said, but ultimately, pro-SALT Republicans would face insurmountable pressure from their colleagues. “You’re going to destroy the entire party and stop every one of these things [in the bill] from happening because there’s one thing you don’t like? Good luck.” But an operative who’s close to the SALT Caucus insisted to me that their Republican spines are only continuing to stiffen. “This is probably the strongest they’ve ever been,” this person said, “because I don’t think they’re particularly in love with the BBB anyway.” The vulnerable New York Republican Mike Lawler, for instance, whose district is D+1, has promised to vote no if “the Senate changes the SALT deduction in any way.” New Jersey’s Tom Kean Jr. also said in March that his vote would be contingent on “SALT restoration.” SALT Caucus co-chairs Andrew Garbarino of New York and Young Kim of California called a previous $30,000 deduction cap “a slap in the face to the hardworking taxpayers we represent.” And yet, there’s a widespread conviction that this bill will pass because it must—both to increase the debt ceiling, which is necessary to avoid a future fight, and to extend the 2017 tax cuts, without which rates for most Americans will go up. The contradictions embody this political moment in the G.O.P.: “We are back to Trumpworld, where the only thing that matters is what Trump wants,” another Republican consultant told me. “Logic doesn’t work.”

Meanwhile, as the highly acrimonious, predictably operatic, and perhaps always-inevitable Trump-Musk divorce continues to drag out, many rank-and-file congressional Republicans worry they could get caught wide-eyed in the middle of the drama. Most members are doing the easy thing and lying low. But there are nascent concerns that members might one day be caught between the world’s richest man—who, if crossed, has the financial firepower to fund a hellacious primary challenge—and the world’s most powerful man, who is also the party’s unquestioned leader. When I called a few Republicans on the Hill to take the temperature, one senior House Republican aide told me, in no uncertain terms, that standing firmly by Trump was a “no-brainer,” at least in the short term. For one thing, while the president has his fair share of detractors in the party, he remains far more popular than Musk, who aggravated both voters and large swaths of D.C. over the past several months while running DOGE. But mostly, Trump has conditioned these members into compliance over the past 10 years, and this brawl is no different. More than a handful of Republicans expressed concern that members would be stuck in the middle of a proxy war between Trump and Musk in next year’s primaries. But it’s worth remembering that Musk invested most heavily in the presidential contest last year, and that he was hardly a donor of major consequence in downballot races, even if he did help a few candidates get over the line. Musk could end up giving cover to a Massie-type willing to bring down the BBB, but few Republicans I spoke with are worried about this scenario. Even if Elon decides to fund challenges to members voting in favor of the bill, he would need political expertise from the consultant class, which has no interest in burning bridges with Trumpworld by working with Trump’s ex. In the end, what might be more consequential is the absence of Musk’s money. It’ll matter at least “a little,” a prominent G.O.P. consultant told me, comparing that scenario to the financial void after a blue-chip donor dies. “You say, ‘Okay that’s a problem. We now have to find a certain amount of money to fill the hole,’” the consultant added.

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