Republicans Sneak Terrifying Gun Law Change Into Trump’s Budget Bill

Republicans narrowly passed Donald Trump’s sweeping budget reconciliation bill through the House Wednesday night, including a last-minute provision that would not require gun owners to register the purchase of silencers.

Georgia Representative Andrew Clyde had already ensured the elimination of a $200 transfer tax on gun silencers. But during negotiations Wednesday, he was able to add another provision altogether removing silencers from the regulatory purview of the National Firearms Act, which imposes taxes on the manufacture, distribution, and import of weapons, according to Politico.

The last-minute addition would strike another $200 tax on the manufacture of gun silencers. But by removing silencers from the purview of the National Firearms Act, lawmakers said that the change also had eliminated the NFA’s registration requirement with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives.

“The question I have is, this was not in the bill that we were marking up. So, whose vote was bought with this provision that silencers will no longer need to be registered with the ATF or subject to background check purchasers?” asked Colorado Representative Joe Neguse on the House floor Wednesday night.

“What member was on the fence about this bill, and then went to Republican leadership and said, ‘I know you’re eliminating the tax on silencers but if you can just eliminate all regulation on silencers, I will vote for this bill?’”

Georgia Representative Austin Scott claimed that silencers’ exception from ATF registry did not mean that purchasers would not be subject to background checks. Scott, who argued in support of the provision, seemed confused about what it was actually about. He said it was about suppressors, rather than silencers—but that was incorrect.

When a person attempts to buy a firearm, they must complete an ATF form, and the seller then relays information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation website. The NICS staff then performs a check to see whether the buyer has a criminal record or is in any way ineligible to purchase the firearm.

If the purchaser is not required to fill out a form with the ATF to purchase a silencer, it’s not clear how a background check would still be completed.

“Quite frankly, what is in the reconciliation bill does more to support assassins than it does American families,” said Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern.

There was some laughter in the hall.

“Yeah, well you know what? Talk to law enforcement, talk to people who have been victims of gun violence,” McGovern continued. “I know you think it’s funny, but I don’t.”

House Republicans managed to pass their draconian budget bill, which promises to make massive cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and food assistance, early Thursday morning by a narrow one-vote margin that was only possible due the deaths of three Democrats in this current Congress. 

The latest Democrat to pass away was 75-year-old Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia, who died on Wednesday after battling esophageal cancer. In March, Representative Raul Grijalva of Arizona passed away at the age of 77 due to complications from cancer treatments. Representative Sylvester Turner of Texas, 70, a House freshman, died six days earlier. (Turner replaced Sheila Lee Jackson, who also died in office in July.)  

Had any of these three Democrats, who all are from safe Democratic districts, taken their health into consideration and decided not to run in 2024, such an egregious bill would have failed to pass. Do Democrats have an age problem? The party has been reluctant to give younger rising stars more prominent leadership positions, mostly notably when Connolly, whose condition was publicly known, was chosen to be the leading Democrat on the House Oversight Committee over the much younger Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

In 2024, Democrats failed to connect with younger people and lost many of their votes, and this year, Americans of all ages have been urging the party to put up a vigorous fight against the Trump administration’s attacks on the country’s institutions. Are older politicians in their seventies and eighties up for that battle? 

The last eight members of Congress to have died in office were Democrats, with seven of them being over the age of 70 with significant health concerns. Six Democrats died in the last year alone. Democrats in Congress should decide whether they are physically and mentally up to the task of stopping the Republican effort to tear down America’s institutions—or make way for those who are.

Over a dozen officials within the Trump administration conveniently sold off their shares just days before their president crippled the stock market with his sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs, according to ProPublica.

Attorney General Pam Bondi sold up to $5 million in her Trump Media shares on Liberation Day. One State Department official sold $50,000 in shares two days before. A White House lawyer sold off shares in nine different companies in February, the day before Trump announced tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sold shares in nearly 36 companies on February 11, two days before Trump teased his Liberation Day reciprocal tariffs. In each of the more than dozen instances, someone high up within the Trump administration sold off large amounts of their stock market shares right before Trump tanked the stock market, and some even bought a similar amount of shares back at much lower prices shortly after. 

There is no direct proof that these officials had nonpublic information about policies that would impact the stock market before everyone else, but the administration has clearly created an environment in which the potential for insider trading is incredibly high. And even if this administration isn’t insider trading, it’s doing an awful job at keeping up appearances. Trump himself posted in April, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT,” a mere four hours before announcing a 90-day pause on most retaliatory tariffs except for those on China, yet another market-shocking announcement that caused stocks to shoot up. 

“Trump is creating giant market fluctuations with his on-again, off-again tariffs. These constant gyrations in policy provide dangerous opportunities for insider trading,” Senator Adam Schiff wrote on X at the time. “Who in the administration knew about Trump’s latest tariff flip flop ahead of time? Did anyone buy or sell  stocks, and profit at the public’s expense? I’m writing to the White House—the public has a right to know.”

While Republicans managed to pass their budget bill through the House Thursday morning, one GOP representative was not happy, calling it a “debt bomb ticking.”

Representative Thomas Massie warned his colleagues, still debating in the middle of the night, that he couldn’t vote for a bill that would cut taxes and increase spending.

“I’d love to stand here and tell the American people, we can cut your taxes and we can increase spending and everything’s going to be just fine. But I can’t do that because I’m here to deliver a dose of reality,” Massie said. “This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now.

“Where have we heard that before? How do you bind a future Congress to these promises? This bill is a debt bomb ticking,” added the Kentucky congressmen, known for his libertarian views. Massie was one of two Republican “no” votes on the bill, along with Representative Warren Davidson of Ohio. One Republican, Representative Andy Harris of Maryland, voted “present.” Every Democrat voted against the bill.

Massie hammered the bill, warning that “very soon, the government will be paying $16,000 of interest, interest alone, per U.S. family,” and that the national debt would skyrocket up to $30 trillion over the next 10 years.

“Congress can do funny math, fantasy math, if it wants,” Massie added. “But bond investors don’t.

“We’re not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic tonight. We’re putting coal in the boiler and setting a course for the iceberg,” he added, to applause from other members in the room.

In one final message, Massie laid into his colleagues and his party, saying, “If something is beautiful, you don’t do it after midnight.”

Throughout the budget reconciliation process, Massie has warned that he wouldn’t support the bill, even taking attacks from Donald Trump, who threatened to have him “voted … out of office” on Tuesday. While the GOP passed the bill without him, Trump is known for holding grudges, and could turn most of the Republican Party against Massie in the near future.

House Republicans passed Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill by just one vote early Thursday morning.

After hours of deliberation, the bill passed 215–214, an incredibly slim margin that highlights the lack of political cohesion within the GOP. Two Republican representatives—Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio—voted with the Democrats.

The bill will include even more funding for the military and more funding for Trump’s border crackdown, while slashing crucial programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and also repealing clean energy credits put in place by the Biden administration. Up to 15 million Americans will be uninsured by 2034 due to the bill’s cuts, and 7.6 million will be at risk of losing Medicaid, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

“What we’re going to do here this morning is truly historic, and it will make all the difference in the daily lives of hardworking Americans.… To put it simply, this bill gets Americans back to winning again, and it’s been a long time coming,” Speaker Mike Johnson said, in a floor speech prior to the vote.

Democrats are accusing the GOP of pushing the anti-working-class bill “under the cover of darkness.”

“Here’s what it will mean for the American people,” Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, prior to the vote. “Children will get hurt. Women will get hurt. Older Americans who rely on Medicaid for nursing home care and for home care will get hurt. People with disabilities who rely on Medicaid to survive, will get hurt. Hospitals in your districts will close. Nursing homes will shut down. And people will die.”

This story has been updated.