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Big beautiful bottleneck: Trump's high-stakes week at home and abroad

President Trump takes part in a news conference on Friday's Supreme Court rulings in the briefing room at the White House.
Joe Raedle
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President Trump takes part in a news conference on Friday's Supreme Court rulings in the briefing room at the White House.

For President Trump, it's been — to borrow a phrase — one big, beautiful week.

A favorable Supreme Court ruling on Friday prompted Trump to hold an impromptu press conference, capping off a high-stakes few days for his presidency.

"It's a really big day," he concluded. "We've had a big week. We've had a lot of victories this week."

While he touted victories, several matters remain unresolved. What happens over the next 10 days or so, domestically and abroad, could come to define Trump's presidency.

"The president is doing peace deals, tax deals, trade deals," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Capitol Hill earlier this week. "So he's done a peace deal. I think we'll have the tax deal done by July 4, and then we can finish with the trade deals."

Hogan Gidley, who served in the first Trump administration and is now a senior adviser to the House speaker, said he couldn't think of a time from the first term that was as momentous as what's happening now.

"Every day, it's just a heart monitor in a hospital. It's like, up and down, up and down all day long," Gidley said. "And I can't come up with a time that was as pressure-filled in the previous administration as we're dealing with right now, although I'm sure there were plenty."

Here are the wins and challenges for Trump this week:

Win: Supreme Court ruling on nationwide injunctions. 

The Supreme Court issued a ruling on Friday that makes it much more difficult for opponents of the administration to put a quick stop to executive actions they say are illegal.

The ruling stemmed from a case about Trump's executive order calling for an end to birthright citizenship in the U.S. While the justices did not rule on whether the order is constitutional, they did say that the nationwide pause on it — known as an injunction — was an overreach by lower courts.

"This morning the Supreme Court has delivered a monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law," Trump said in the White House briefing room Friday.

Trump has faced more than two dozen nationwide injunctions against executive actions on everything from ending birthright citizenship, to halting refugee resettlement and freezing federal funding. Now he says the way has been cleared for his administration to push ahead.

Trump and others in his administration argue that lower court judges have been wrongly blocking the president and therefore the will of the American people.

With this decision, the balance of power is now tilted in the president's favor.

More wins: NATO commitments and the Israel-Iran ceasefire

Through the week, the Trump administration had ample praise for the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and the ceasefire between Iran and Israel that followed.

The president is not budging from his early assertion that Iran's nuclear program was totally obliterated, and Friday he said he doesn't believe Iran will go back to trying to build nuclear weapons. That, however, is far from certain. Assessments of what was actually destroyed are still underway.

President Trump during a news conference on the second day of the NATO summit on June 25 in The Hague.
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President Trump during a news conference on the second day of the NATO summit on June 25 in The Hague.

A more unqualified win is what happened at the NATO summit, which Trump attended in the Hague earlier this week. Member states agreed to spend more money on defense, something Trump has long pushed for.

His longstanding skepticism about the alliance seemed to melt away as a result. It doesn't hurt that at one point the NATO secretary general seemed to awkwardly and perhaps accidentally refer to Trump as "daddy" — a moment the Trump White House seemed unable to let go.

Challenge: Unfinished trade deals

When Trump punted on his so-called reciprocal tariffs earlier this year, he set a July 8 deadline to get dozens of trade deals done. So far, just one agreement is signed, sealed and delivered, and many more are in limbo.

He announced in a post on Truth Social on Friday that he was halting all trade negotiations with Canada over its new digital services tax, which would affect major U.S. technology companies.

He also said this week that the U.S. had reached a deal with China, but that turned out to be a step forward on a framework, rather than a finalized agreement.

Members of his Cabinet have said for months that deals with other countries such as India, South Korea and Japan were just around the corner.

As July 8 draws closer, Trump is wavering. This traffic jam of negotiations is a problem he created, and with a stroke of his pen, he could change it.

It's hard to tell whether this is strategic uncertainty or just plain old uncertainty.

Chris Whipple, an expert on White House chiefs of staff, said Trump is reactive and instinctive, which drove his success on the campaign trail. But now, he said, the crises are piling up.

"You know, it does feel like kind of a defining moment," Whipple said. "One thing that's clear, six months in, is that shock and awe, so-called, is just not an effective formula for governance."

Challenge: The fate of the "One Big Beautiful Bill"

The House has passed Trump's major tax and policy bill, but there have been speed bumps in the Senate. That process is ongoing, and it's not clear whether it will pass or whether that version can pass in the House.

Trump wants a bill signing celebration to coincide with Independence Day. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has said it would be epic. But planning the wedding before the engagement can be dicey, and it's hard to say at this moment whether Trump will get the party he wants on the date he wants it.

President Trump delivers remarks as he hosts a "One, Big, Beautiful" event in the East Room of the White House on Thursday.
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
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President Trump delivers remarks as he hosts a "One, Big, Beautiful" event in the East Room of the White House on Thursday.

As a reminder, he calls it the "one big beautiful bill" because it essentially combines his entire legislative agenda into a single package. Trump has a lot riding on this legislation, not just tax cuts and promises he made like no tax on tips, but also funding for immigration enforcement that he needs in order to keep his pledge of mass deportations.

Gidley said every Republican in Congress understands the gravity of this moment.

"If they cannot deliver on the very thing that put them in office, there's going to be a big problem with their chances of reelection," he said.

Trump was supposed to travel to his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. Instead, he is staying in D.C. to monitor action on Capitol Hill and to twist arms when needed.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Tamara Keith has been a White House correspondent for NPR since 2014 and co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast, the top political news podcast in America. Keith has chronicled the Trump administration from day one, putting this unorthodox presidency in context for NPR listeners, from early morning tweets to executive orders and investigations. She covered the final two years of the Obama presidency, and during the 2016 presidential campaign she was assigned to cover Hillary Clinton. In 2018, Keith was elected to serve on the board of the White House Correspondents' Association.