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Daily Briefing: WorldPride comes to the nation's capital

Nicole Fallert   Paste BN

Good morning!🙋🏼‍♀️ I'm Nicole Fallert. I can't stop watching the "Wicked: For Good" trailer ✨

Get ready for Thursday with the news:

At WorldPride, queer community vows to be heard

“The WorldPride stage is in front of the Capitol building at a time when they are trying to silence us, put us back in the closet, make us feel ashamed, take away so many of our freedoms, pull back DEI. And we are like: 'Oh no no no! We are going to the nation’s capital; we are going to be louder than ever. You can't take this away from us. We are going to be ourselves.'”

~ Brooke Eden, a country singer/songwriter who will be performing in Washington, D.C., at WorldPride − a global festival that promotes LGBTQ+ visibility and awareness − at a historic juncture: When the queer community's rights are increasingly in hostile crosshairs.

Trump launches Senate lobbying blitz for his tax bill

President Donald Trump's second-term legislative agenda is on the line as the Senate gears up for a four-week sprint, during which they will seek to pass something that can also get through the House's narrow margins and onto the president's desk for signature into law.

It won't be easy. As in the House, the Senate has fiscal conservatives who are concerned that the bill will add to the federal deficit and moderates who have problems with the potential impact on Medicaid health coverage.

  • Deficit blues: Several senators have said they're worried about the massive price tag of the legislation. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bill would add more than $3 trillion to the federal debt over the next 10 years, adding to the country's already massive $36.2 trillion debt.
  • Musk is fanning the flames. The Tesla CEO argues the legislation's price tag undermines the work that he did leading the Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting project. 
  • Meanwhile, American health care is on the line: New analysis shows about 11 million Americans would lose health insurance coverage under Trump's bill, and experts say the uninsured might delay care and accrue more medical debt.

More news to know now

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Families scramble to find loved ones – and answers – after massive ICE raid in Florida

Family members and friends of the more than 100 construction workers detained in what was deemed Florida's largest immigration raid this year say they are having trouble locating their loved ones. Some of the laborers were sent to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Baker County, while some went to Miami's Krome Detention Center. Others were quickly flown to El Paso, Texas, and were still there awaiting removal as of June 3. And some are already in Mexico, just five days after being detained and bused away from their job site in Tallahassee. But others are still silent, and their friends and family are worried and waiting for a call.

Trump bans Harvard from admitting new international students

In an executive order issued Wednesday, President Trump declared that Harvard University's admission of international students represents a threat to the United States. In his new order, Trump listed a litany of grievances against the university, which he accuses of failing to protect Jewish students from pro-Palestinian protesters. He also noted that Harvard has long used race as a factor in admissions, which led the Supreme Court in 2023 to strike down race-based admissions policies nationwide. Trump's order applies to new students who would be arriving to study at Harvard, and asks Secretary of State Marco Rubio to consider whether to also revoke the visas of current international students

Today's talkers

Meet the million-dollar creators of the Bop house

They fly on private jets to the Super Bowl, own Porsches and Lamborghinis and rack up $4,000 dinner bills on a night out. It’s all in a month’s work at the Bop House, a content creator mansion where eight Gen Z OnlyFans creators produce content for their combined following of nearly 90 million users across social media platforms. But teenagers, particularly young girls, who see TikToks showcasing the content creators' opulent lifestyle, may get the impression that being an OnlyFans star is aspirational. While creators in the Bop House spoke openly with Paste BN about their hardships growing up — and say they're not trying to be anyone's role model.

Photo of the day: Checked!

The Edmonton Oilers started the 2025 Stanley Cup Final on Wednesday the same way they started their last run to a championship - by winning Game 1 in overtime. Check out the best moments of the final so far.

Nicole Fallert is a newsletter writer at Paste BN, sign up for the email here. Want to send Nicole a note? Shoot her an email at NFallert@usatoday.com.

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