Senate Republicans on Saturday took a crucial step toward passing their sweeping domestic policy bill, voting 51-49 to start debate on the legislation.

Two GOP senators — Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — joined Democrats to oppose advancing the cornerstone of President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda. But several others came around after hours of last-ditch negotiations to keep the bill moving forward.

The vote came after a daylong scramble by GOP leaders to win over several Republican senators who were viewed as undecided or had vowed to block debate over their opposition to pieces of the bill — including an extended negotiating session that unfolded with various senators while the vote was underway.

Now the chamber is on track to pass the bill sometime Monday. Democrats are forcing Senate clerks to first read the legislation out loud, which is expected to happen overnight, before a maximum 20 hours of debate plus a marathon series of amendment votes.

“Fifty-three members will never agree on every detail of legislation, let’s face it. But Republicans are united in our commitment to what we’re doing in this bill,” Majority Leader John Thune said shortly before the vote. “It’s time to get this legislation across the finish line.”

Trump personally intervened Friday and Saturday to shore up the whip count. He reached out to Tillis on Friday night, according to a person granted anonymity to disclose private conversations. Tillis later confirmed the call, telling reporters he told Trump he could not support the bill because of the Medicaid language. Trump later attacked Tillis publicly and called for him to face a Republican primary challenger.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Sen. Rick Scott of Florida were at the White House shortly before the Senate’s vote. Johnson initially voted no, then went into a long stretch of negotiations with Thune, Vance and others alongside Sens. Mike Lee of Utah, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Rick Scott of Florida. In the end, they emerged and voted to advance the bill just after 11 p.m.

By Saturday afternoon, it was clear to GOP senators that Vice President JD Vance would need to be on standby for what would be a nailbiter. He interceded after the vote was called to win over Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, and then went to work on the other holdouts.

While enough GOP senators have voted to start debating the bill, it’s not yet assured there will be enough to pass it. Pieces of the bill remain in flux — not only due to Senate concerns, but also lingering opposition from some House Republicans. Several key issues, including the state-and-local-tax deduction and key Medicaid language, were addressed in updated text released late Friday night. But negotiations continues as leaders in both chambers work to ensure the Senate product can be passed in the House without changes and sent immediately to Trump’s desk.

Already GOP leaders have agreed to delay implementation of changes to a key Medicaid provision — a new cap on medical provider taxes, which most states use to fund their Medicaid programs — and have increased a rural hospital assistance fund from $15 billion to $25 billion.

Those changes were sufficient to win over Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who announced Saturday he would support the bill. But it wasn’t enough to sway holdouts in both chambers concerned that the health care language could lead to hospital closures in their states and districts.

While Sen. Susan Collins of Maine supported starting debate, she described herself as “leaning against” final passage if the Medicaid provisions don’t change before a final vote. Collins said she planned to offer several amendments reflecting her concerns.

“It is the majority leader’s prerogative to determine which bills to bring to the floor,” she told reporters. “That does not mean in any way that I’m satisfied with the provisions in this bill.”

Tillis told reporters that he would be a “no” on the final vote, barring dramatic changes to the Medicaid provisions.

“It would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities,” he said in a statement. “This will force the state to make painful decisions like eliminating Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands in the expansion population, and even reducing critical services for those in the traditional Medicaid population.”

Johnson, Paul and Scott had each raised sharp concerns about the bill’s fiscal impacts, arguing it needed to cut more government spending. Paul, in particular, was deadset against its inclusion of a $5 trillion hike to the federal debt ceiling.

GOP leaders had more success putting out another fire: Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) warned shortly before the vote that he would not support opening debate because of a provision in the bill providing for the sale of public lands. About 40 minutes after delivering that ultimatum, he said in an X post he would instead seek to amend the bill and remove the provision.

Republicans also made changes in the draft text released overnight to more aggressively phase out clean-energy tax credits established under former President Joe Biden in a bid to win over House conservatives. That prompted new attacks on the bill from Elon Musk, the erstwhile Trump ally, who called the megabill “utter madness” and “political suicide for the Republican Party.”

Democrats are expected to use the marathon amendment process, known as vote-a-rama, to try to water down the bill’s changes to the energy provisions, as well as Medicaid, federal food assistance and other key social safety net items.But first Democrats want to slow things down. By forcing clerks to read the 940-page bill aloud — a process that is typically waived — they hope to win more time to draw attention to the bill’s most unpopular provisions.

Senate aides estimate reading could take about 15 hours, pushing final passage from Sunday into Monday unless Democrats unexpectedly yield back a significant amount of their debate time.

“Senate Republicans are scrambling to pass a radical bill, released to the public in the dead of night, praying the American people don’t realize what’s it,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. “If Senate Republicans won’t tell the American people what’s in this bill, then Democrats are going to force this chamber to read it from start to finish.”

Senate Republicans are moving toward an initial vote Saturday afternoon on their latest version of President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending bill. But the changes made to the bill overnight may not be enough to satisfy enough senators, let alone conservatives in the House.

Senate leaders got a jolt of momentum midday Saturday when Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) said they will vote to open debate. Hawley said he’ll vote for final passage, while Collins told reporters she’s “leaning against” backing the bill without major changes.

But the measure, which contains most of Trump’s domestic agenda, is far from on a glidepath.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) appeared unmoved on Saturday, doubling down on his pledge to vote against moving forward with the bill and “no” on final passage. Tillis is one of the most vulnerable Senate Republicans heading into 2026 and is against the hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid cuts his party is proposing. The president has personally reached out to Tillis to try to work him on the bill, a person granted anonymity to disclose private conversations told POLITICO.

If at least two other Republicans join Tillis to oppose the procedural vote Saturday afternoon, Senate leadership would have to rely on Vice President JD Vance to break a tie to move forward to debate the bill. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) all have concerns that could drive them to vote against moving forward.

Johnson and Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who have raised issues with the bill because of its impact on the national debt, met with the president on Saturday shortly before the vote, according to Lee.

Republicans huddled behind closed doors for lunch on Saturday ahead of a tentatively scheduled 4 p.m. procedural vote.

“We won’t bring it to the floor if we don’t have the votes,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said. “I think it’d be better to have the vice president close. I don’t know if we’re going to need him.”

If the procedural vote clears a simple majority threshold, the Senate will move on to debating the bill before launching a “vote-a-rama,” consideration of unlimited amendments that can be brought to the floor. Only after that concludes is a final vote on passage possible.

The President threw his support behind the revamped Senate measure on Saturday, along with a reminder that he wants the bill on his desk by July 4.

“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises, and failure to pass this bill would be the ultimate betrayal,” the White House said in a statement of administration policy.

Even with scores of changes to the bill overnight, Collins is still not satisfied. For months she has warned against the cuts to Medicaid. She told reporters Saturday afternoon that she plans to vote in favor of moving forward to debate the bill, but that is no guarantee of her support on final passage.

“That’s going to depend on whether the bill is substantially changed,” she said. She plans to offer multiple amendments during the vote-a-rama, including on Medicaid and on top income tax rates, but said without changes she is “leaning against” voting to pass the bill.

Hawley, who opposes the Medicaid cuts, said he will not be offering any amendments of his own, but will be working to dismantle the planned cuts if the bill is passed into law.

“I want to be clear, I’m going to spend the next however long, trying to make sure that the cuts that we’ve successfully delayed never take place,” Hawley told reporters when he announced he’d vote for the bill.

“I think, frankly, my party needs to do some soul searching. If you want to be a working-class party, you’ve got to deliver for working-class people. You cannot take away health care from working people.”

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) said he was still reviewing the new SNAP language and believes there could still be additional changes. POLITICO previously reported that leadership was looking at adding grants related to SNAP, or food assistance for low-income people, and aimed at Alaskans. But he praised other Alaska-specific provisions, like an increased deduction for whale hunters, a “home run.”

GOP leaders appeared to settle one major holdup on the House side, with Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) saying he supported the latest version of the state and local tax deduction in the Senate megabill — and that the group of blue-state Republicans pushing for an expanded deduction was largely on board with it, too.

But Medicaid changes were still a major hangup in the House. More than a dozen House Republican lawmakers including Reps. David Valadao were threatening to vote against the megabill if its Medicaid provisions didn’t hew more closely to the House-passed version. Many of those lawmakers have brought those concerns straight to party leadership, who are holding a call with members this afternoon.

The speaker asked members to raise their concerns privately and not on social media, according to a person who received a readout from the call. House GOP leadership didn’t take questions, the person said.

Benjamin Guggenheim contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misreported which senators met with Trump. They were Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.).