By PAUL WISEMAN, Associated Press Economics Writer

The steady slowdown in U.S. hiring likely continued in June as President Donald Trump’s trade wars, federal hiring freeze and immigration crackdown weighed on the American job market.

When the Labor Department on Thursday releases job numbers for last month, they’re expected to show that businesses, government agencies and nonprofits added 117,500 jobs in June, down from 139,000 in May, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.

The unemployment rate is expected to have ticked up to 4.3%, which would be the highest since October 2021 but still low enough to suggest that most American workers continue to enjoy job security.

FILE – Katy Frank, a former computer scientist at the NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab, who lost her job Thursday, protests outside the John D. Dingell Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Detroit, Friday, Feb. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

The U.S. job market has cooled considerably from red-hot days of 2021-2023 when the economy bounced back with unexpected strength from COVID-19 lockdowns and companies were desperate for workers. So far this year employers have added an average 124,000 jobs a month, down from 168,000 in 2024 and an average 400,000 from 2021 through 2023.

Hiring decelerated after the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023. But the economy did not collapse, defying widespread predictions that the higher borrowing costs would cause a recession. Companies kept hiring, just at a more modest pace.

But the job market increasingly looks under strain. A survey released Wednesday by the payroll processor ADP found that private companies cut 33,000 jobs last month. “Though layoffs continue to be rare, a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers led to job losses last month,” said ADP chief economist Nela Richardson. (The ADP numbers frequently differ from the Labor Department’s official job count.)

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Employers are now contending with fallout from Trump’s policies, especially his aggressive use of import taxes – tariffs.

Mainstream economists say that tariffs raise prices for businesses and consumers alike and make the economy less efficient by reducing competition. They also invite retaliatory tariffs from other countries, hurting U.S. exporters.

The erratic way that Trump has rolled out his tariffs — announcing and then suspending them, then coming up with new ones — has left businesses bewildered.

Manufacturers responding to a survey released this week by the Institute for Supply Management complained that they and their customers were reluctant to make decisions until they understood where Trump’s tariffs would end up. “That whiplash has to stop and it has to stay stopped,” said Susan Spence, chair of the ISM’s manufacturing survey committee.

Trump’s assault on the federal bureaucracy could also show up in June’s job report. Nancy Vanden Houten, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, expects federal jobs dropped by 20,000 last month, “reflecting a hiring freeze, voluntary quits and retirements.’’ For now, she wrote in a commentary Wednesday, court rulings “have put massive federal layoffs on hold.’’

The president’s deportations — and the threat of them — also are likely to start having an impact on the job market by driving immigrants out of the job market. In May, the U.S. labor force — those working and looking for work — fell by 625,000, the biggest drop in a year and a half.

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Airstrikes and shootings killed 94 Palestinians in Gaza overnight, including 45 who were attempting to get much-needed humanitarian aid, hospitals and the Health Ministry said Thursday.

Israel’s military did not immediately comment on the strikes.

Israeli soldiers drive near the border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Five people were killed while outside sites associated with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the newly-created, secretive American organization backed by Israel to feed the Gaza Strip’s population, while 40 others were killed waiting for aid in other locations across the Gaza Strip.

Dozens of people were killed in airstrikes that pounded the Strip Wednesday night and Thursday morning, including 15 people killed in strikes that hit tents in the sprawling Muwasi zone, where many displaced Palestinians are sheltering. A separate strike on a school in Gaza City sheltering displaced people also killed 15 people.

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Gaza’s Health Ministry said the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza has passed 57,000, including 223 missing people who have been declared dead, since the war began on Oct. 7, 2023. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants in its death count but says that more than half of the dead are women and children.

The deaths come as Israel and Hamas inch closer to a possible ceasefire that would end the 21-month war.

Trump said Tuesday that Israel had agreed on terms for a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza and urged Hamas to accept the deal before conditions worsen. But Hamas’ response, which emphasized its demand that the war end, raised questions about whether the latest offer could materialize into an actual pause in fighting.

The Israeli military blames Hamas for the civilian casualties because it operates from populated areas. The military said it targeted Hamas militants and rocket launchers in northern Gaza that launched rockets toward Israel on Wednesday.

The war began when Hamas-led terrorists attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages.

The war has left the coastal Palestinian territory in ruins, with much of the urban landscape flattened in the fighting. More than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population has been displaced, often multiple times. And the war has sparked a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, leaving hundreds of thousands of people hungry.

By LISA MASCARO, MARY CLARE JALONICK and LEAH ASKARINAM, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are ready to vote on President Donald Trump’s $4.5 trillion tax breaks and spending cuts bill early Thursday, up all night as GOP leaders and the president himself worked to persuade skeptical holdouts to drop their opposition by his Fourth of July deadline.

Final debates began in the predawn hours after another chaotic day, and night, at the Capitol. House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted the House would meet the holiday deadline after the Senate approved Trump’s signature domestic policy package on the narrowest vote.

“Our way is to plow through and get it done,” Johnson said, emerging in the middle of the night from a series of closed-door meetings. “We will meet our July 4th deadline.”

The outcome would be a milestone for the president and his party, a longshot effort to compile a long list of GOP priorities into what they call his “one big beautiful bill,” an 800-plus page package. With Democrats unified in opposition, the bill will become a defining measure of Trump’s return to the White House, with the sweep of Republican control of Congress.

Tax breaks and safety net cuts

At it core, the package’s priority is $4.5 trillion in tax breaks enacted in Trump’s first term, in 2017, that would expire if Congress failed to act, along with new ones. This includes allowing workers to deduct tips and overtime pay, and a $6,000 deduction for most older adults earning less than $75,000 a year.

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There’s also a hefty investment, some $350 billion, in national security and Trump’s deportation agenda and to help develop the “Golden Dome” defensive system over the U.S.

To help offset the costs of lost tax revenue, the package includes $1.2 trillion in cutbacks to the Medicaid health care and food stamps, largely by imposing new work requirements, including for some parents and older people, and a massive rollback of green energy investments.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will add $3.3 trillion to the deficit over the decade and 11.8 million more people will go without health coverage.

“This was a generational opportunity to deliver the most comprehensive and consequential set of conservative reforms in modern history, and that’s exactly what we’re doing,” said Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, the House Budget Committee chairman.

Democrats united against ‘ugly bill’

Democrats unified against the bill as a tax giveaway to the rich paid for on the backs of the most vulnerable in society, what they called “trickle down cruelty.”

“Have you no shame?” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. “Have the moral courage to oppose this bill.”

Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., center, speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol, Wednesday, July 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries invoked the powerful history of the nation’s Independence Day holiday, and asked: “What does any of that have to do with this one, big ugly bill?”

He read for nearly two hours from a binder of letters, written by people across the country explaining how the health care programs have helped their families — and how devastating cuts would hurt.

Hauling the package this far in Congress has been difficult rom the start. Republicans have struggled mightily with the bill nearly every step of the way in the House and Senate, often succeeding only by the narrowest of margins: just one vote. In the Senate, Vice President JD Vance broke the tie vote. The slim 220-212 majority in the House leaves Republicans little room for defections.

Political costs of saying no

But few GOP lawmakers have been fully satisfied with the final product. Several more moderate Republicans had reservations about the cuts to Medicaid health care and the loss of green energy credits that could derail solar, wind and other renewable projects in their districts.

At the same time, conservatives, including those from the House Freedom Caucus, held out for steeper reductions. Republicans had warned the Senate against making changes to the House-passed bill, but senators put their own stamp on the final draft.

The House ground to a standstill Wednesday as a handful of holdouts refused to move so quickly. A morning roll call dragged for about seven hours, while an evening vote stalled for more than five, and Trump himself worked the phones and lashed out on social media.

“What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove???” Trump railed in a post-midnight vote.

Johnson, who has pulled close to Trump, relied on White House officials — including Cabinet secretaries, lawyers and others — to work skeptical Republicans through the details. Lawmakers were being told the administration could provide executive actions, projects or other provisions they needed in their districts back home.

“The president’s message was, ‘We’re on a roll,’” said Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C. “He wants to see this.”

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, speaks to reporters following his White House meeting as Republicans work to push President Donald Trump’s signature bill of tax breaks and spending cuts across the finish line even as conservative and moderate GOP holdouts slow that effort, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

And the alternative, of bucking the president on his signature second-term package, carried grave political risks.

Trump has publicly threatened to campaign against the defectors. One House Republican who has staked out opposition to the bill, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, is being targeted by Trump’s well-funded political operation.

And Senate Republican Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who had been on the receiving end of Trump’s lashings, announced he would not seek reelection shortly before voting against the bill.

Rollback of past presidential agendas

In many ways, the package is a repudiation of the agendas of the last two Democratic presidents, a chiseling away at the Medicaid expansion from Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and a pullback of Joe Biden’s climate change strategies in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Democrats have described the bill in dire terms, warning that cuts to Medicaid, which some 80 million Americans rely on, would result in lives lost. Food stamps that help feed more than 40 million people would “rip food from the mouths of hungry children, hungry veterans and hungry seniors,” Jeffries said.

Republicans say the tax breaks will prevent a tax hike on households and grow the economy. They maintain they are trying to rightsize the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, the disabled and children, and root out what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse.

The Tax Policy Center, which provides nonpartisan analysis of tax and budget policy, projected the bill would result next year in a $150 tax break for the lowest quintile of Americans, a $1,750 tax cut for the middle quintile and a $10,950 tax cut for the top quintile. That’s compared with what they would face if the 2017 tax cuts expired.

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Joey Cappelletti and Matt Brown contributed.

On Tuesday, Republican Senator Thom Tillis became one of only three GOP senators to cast a vote against President Donald Trump’s budget bill. Ultimately, his vote was mostly symbolic — the measure passed on a 51-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaker.

But the vote has already had consequences for the two-term lawmaker from North Carolina. On Sunday, he made the announcement that he would not be running for re-election in 2026. His decision came a day after he took to the Senate floor to declare that he couldn’t support the bill because “it would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities.”

Tillis’ retirement not only raises the stakes for what was already expected to be one of the most closely contested 2026 races for the U.S. Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 advantage, it could also topple political dominoes for congressional and state legislative races in a state almost evenly divided between Democratic, Republican and unaffiliated voters.

If Tillis had sought re-election “he probably could not campaign at Republican events without a legitimate fear of being beaten off stage,” Jonathan Felts, a North Carolina Republican consultant and Tillis supporter, told me. “The reality is, if we start with a clean slate, we’ll have a better chance of winning.”

Tillis is hardly a moderate. He is a conservative, veteran lawmaker who understands details and frequently speaks his mind. He not only knows how to build a consensus but also finds the value in it. He is exactly the kind of lawmaker the nation needs more of if we are to resolve our festering challenges.

But because of Trump’s total dominance of the Republican Party, independent thinkers like Tillis are reviled, not rewarded. How that plays out in the 2026 elections, especially in North Carolina, will be must-see TV.

The midterms are traditionally a fraught time for the party that holds the White House and the line-up of potential candidates to replace Tillis reflects those tensions.

Republicans are suggesting that Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump is a likely prospect. She grew up in Wilmington, attended North Carolina State University and served as co-chair of the Republican National Committee last year, along with another North Carolinian, Michael Whatley. But she now lives in Florida and currently anchors a weekly Fox News show.

“If Lara Trump enters, I think she clears the primary field,” said Christopher Cooper, political science professor at Western Carolina University. “Everybody else is going to want Donald Trump’s endorsement and clearly he’s going to give his endorsement to the person who shares his last name.”

But while Trump may be overwhelmingly popular among Republican primary voters, polls show his tariff and immigration policies, and the proposed Medicaid cuts, are increasingly unpopular among general-election voters.

That makes Lara Trump “a dream for Democrats … because she will not be able to separate herself from Donald Trump and all the things he just did,” said Jim Messina, Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, in an interview on MSNBC on Monday.

Democrats are urging former Governor Roy Cooper to jump into the race. He had been rumored to be considering challenging Tillis before the senator announced his exit this week, but the 67-year-old former governor and state attorney general has been taking his time deciding.

Cooper won statewide all three times Trump won the state. He left office with high approval ratings and, if he’s at the top of the ticket, he could help Democrats down the ballot, including one of the most competitive congressional seats in the nation, North Carolina’s First District now held by Democrat Don Davis.

“Roy Cooper can do a lot of good for his party if he runs,” Chris Cooper (no relation) of WCU told me. “But everyone is wondering where his heart is right now.”

Other Republican names emerging are Whatley and freshman Representative Pat Harrigan, a West Point graduate and former Green Beret. Former Representative Wiley Nickel launched a bid for the Democratic nomination three months ago.

The essence of Tillis’ warning to his party is that Trump and the MAGA wing were once again overplaying their hand.

That’s what happened in 2024, when North Carolina Republicans nominated Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson on the strength of Trump’s endorsement, despite Robinson’s sketchy history of hateful, racist and misogynistic remarks. Robinson was crushed by Democrat Josh Stein, as were other Republicans running for statewide office, even though Trump won the state.

Tillis had earned a reputation in Congress as someone willing to work across the aisle — but the Republican Party of North Carolina censured him for it. They didn’t like that he was a key negotiator of the Respect for Marriage Act, which enshrined protections for same-sex and interracial marriages in federal law. They chastised him for highlighting the flaws in Trump’s immigration policies in his first term, and for supporting funds for red flag laws, which allow courts to authorize the removal of firearms from people undergoing a diagnosed mental health crisis.

Tillis announced he wouldn’t vote for the $930 billion in Medicaid cuts in the Senate’s budget reconciliation bill because it would “betray the very promise Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office” that the bill would “not touch Medicaid.”

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the cuts to Medicaid will cause 11.8 million Americans to lose their health insurance over 10 years, either from the loss of Medicaid or from coverage losses in the Affordable Care Act, and as many as 300 rural hospitals could close.

As a former speaker of the House in the North Carolina Legislature, Tillis had done his homework. He knew that if he voted for the bill, he would be either leaving thousands of working people without health insurance or asking the conservative state Legislature to fill the massive budget gap.

“What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding’s not there anymore?” Tillis asked on the Senate floor.

In his statement on Sunday, Tillis blamed both parties for stifling compromise and middle ground and pointed to the recent departures of conservative-leaning Democratic Senators Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

“They got things done,” Tillis said. “Too many elected officials are motivated by pure raw politics who really don’t give a damn about the people they promised to represent on the campaign trail.”

Tillis’ impending departure is a signal that he doesn’t believe his party is capable of correcting course. Sadly, it appears he may be right.

Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.

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