Scoop: $5 million ad blitz targets GOP senators over "big, beautiful bill"

• The two groups, Unrig Our Economy and Families Over Billionaires, will air the ads in seven states that have Republican senators up for reelection next year.
• The first ads launching on Friday will run in North Carolina, Maine and Iowa. Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) are considered potentially vulnerable.
• Ads will follow in Alaska, South Carolina, Missouri and Ohio.

The big picture: The ads focus on three main aspects of the GOP reconciliation bill that are causing heartburn for Republican moderates:

• Provisions that the Congressional Budget Office estimates would lead to 16 million people losing health insurance.
• Medicaid cuts that health care CEOs have warned could put rural hospitals at risk of closure.
• A spike in preventable deaths that the University of Pennsylvania estimates would top 50,000 a year.

Between the lines: Trump's "big, beautiful bill" can afford to lose no more than three Republican votes in the Senate.

• And GOP lawmakers are eyeing cuts to Medicare on top of Medicaid, senators said after a meeting at the White House on Wednesday.

• "The president is willing to eliminate any waste, fraud and abuse anywhere," Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who attended the meeting, told Axios, adding that it "opens up Medicare, as well."

What they're saying: Unrig Our Economy spokesperson Kobie Christian told Axios in a statement: "Republican Senators can try to minimize the effects of the Republican Tax Scam, but if they pass it, they would be putting hundreds of thousands of their constituents in danger."

• Michael Linden, campaign director of Families Over Billionaires, said in a statement: "Republican Senators can't escape how unpopular their Billionaire Tax Scam is with the American people."