Congress
Lawmakers to Bondi: DOJ funding cuts threaten national security
Attorney General Pam Bondi came under bipartisan pressure Monday from lawmakers who argued that proposed funding cuts to the Justice Department, including the FBI, are unwise as the conflict between the U.S. and Iran intensifies.
During Bondi’s first congressional testimony since her confirmation hearings, House members said the threat of attacks in the U.S. had risen significantly in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites and Iran’s apparent retaliation with a missile attack Monday on a U.S. base in Qatar.
“When the DOJ submitted their budget, the United States was a nation at peace, and now we’re a nation at war,” Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) said. “I want us to, as much as we can, get ahead of it to give you the resources, the instruments that you need to go out and make sure that we’re preventing things from happening, not waiting until after the fact.”
Bondi was testifying before a House Appropriations subcommittee on DOJ’s budget request proposing $33.6 billion for fiscal year 2026 — a $2.5 billion or roughly 7% decrease compared to the current year. About one-third of the total request would support programs directed at reducing violent crime. The difference in funding year over year would also represent a reduction of about 5,000 positions.
However, Gonzales noted that Trump’s budget reduces DOJ funding for national security, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, threat screening and efforts to counter weapons of mass destruction.
“Those are the programs that we need more resources [for], more manpower,” he said.
Bondi, who used part of her opening statement to urge Americans to “pray for our troops in Qatar,” was noncommittal about any budget changes related to the intensifying conflict between the U.S. and Iran.
Of course, you can always do more with more, but we’re doing more with less,” the attorney general said. “It’s a frightening time in which we live right now but President Trump is committed to keeping all Americans safe.”
Bondi also said the FBI is on guard against potential Iranian sleeper cells in the U.S., including Iranian citizens who entered the U.S. via the border with Mexico during the Biden administration.
“We are on high alert, and everyone is looking at that very closely,” she said, without elaborating.
Democratic Reps. Glenn Ivey of Maryland and Frank Mrvan of Indiana similarly urged Bondi to take another look at her department’s budget request in light of escalating tensions with Iran.
“Taking FBI agents off the street now … there isn’t a worse possible time you could do it,” Ivey said.
Mrvan said the U.S. needs to be bracing for potential Iranian attacks on banking systems and the electric grid. “That is a new threat,” he said.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misspelled Tony Gonzales’ surname.
House Republicans have advanced a bill that would prohibit members of Congress and their family members from trading on certain Washington-focused prediction markets.
The House Administration Committee’s GOP members on Wednesday voted along party lines in favor of the legislation, which proposes to bar lawmakers, their spouses and their dependent children from participating on prediction markets that are based on the outcome of elections or government actions.
It marks the latest in Capitol Hill’s efforts to curb the threat of insider trading on the prediction markets — a risk that has burst into the spotlight in recent months after a series of well-timed trades around the capture of then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Google’s search results and the Iran war. Earlier this year, the Senate banned its members and their staffs from trading on the prediction markets altogether, effective immediately.
And yet, the House Administration Committee vote also revealed a fracture within the House over how far to go in clamping down on lawmakers’ use of the prediction markets. Democrats opposed the bill, saying it didn’t go far enough, while Republicans supported it.
Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, who is the committee’s top Democrat, argued that the legislation is “so filled with loopholes that it looks more like a sieve than a bill.” Instead of passing such a bill, he said the House should follow the Senate’s lead and approve a new and broader resolution aimed at prediction market use among members and their staffs.
“The Senate did it in a matter of minutes — no six-month grace period, no procedurally laborious process,” Morelle said. “They just went to the floor with a two-page resolution and banned it all unanimously. We should do the same.”
House Administration Chair Bryan Steil, who introduced the bill, hit back at his Democratic counterpart’s concerns by questioning why members’ families shouldn’t be allowed to bet on sports through the prediction markets — but can through sportsbooks or casinos.
The Wisconsin Republican pointed to a hypothetical scenario where a member’s child is at college and bets on a sporting event through a prediction market platform. That situation, he said, could be covered by a broader prohibition.
Steil, rather, said his bill is aimed at addressing public policy- and election-focused markets.
“Lawmakers elect to serve the American people, not to enrich themselves by wagering on outcomes from the decisions they make,” he said. “We have a real opportunity to restore trust in Congress by taking necessary steps to eliminate even the appearance of impropriety.”
House Republican leaders canceled plans to advance a procedural measure Wednesday that would set up passage of two fiscal 2027 appropriations bills and other legislation this week, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the decision ahead of a public announcement.
The decision comes amid pressure from GOP hard-liners to prioritize passage of the SAVE America Act, a Republican elections bill that has stalled in the Senate — and after President Donald Trump refused to sign a high-profile bipartisan housing bill passed Tuesday, also in a bid to get the elections bill moving.
Speaker Mike Johnson and other leaders are expected to keep members in Washington for now while they determine next steps, the people said.
Hours after Democratic socialist candidates swept to victory in New York primary races, Republicans celebrated those victories as a boon for their own party as it struggles against headwinds from the Iran war and cost of living issues ahead of the November midterms.
Inside a closed-door House GOP meeting Wednesday morning, the head of the Republican campaign arm said the victories of candidates backed by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani offered an opportunity for GOP House candidates to draw a sharp contrast.
Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina said “Democrats have a Bolshevik revolution going on in their primaries,” according to three people in the room granted anonymity to discuss the private event.
Speaker Mike Johnson also delivered remarks to Republicans setting the stakes of the election after the “radical” left-wing wins and urging Republicans to dig in and raise money to defeat Democrats this fall. He received a standing ovation, the people in the room said.
Hudson said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will take the socialists’ wins as a sign he needs to navigate further to the left. There will be no cooperation with Republicans, he added.
Other Republicans publicly seized on the left-wing triumphs Wednesday, including Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio — who said “the lesson is clear: if Republicans don’t act now, we will lose this country as we know it.”
“We need to be clear about what we stand for,” he wrote on X. “Closed borders, secure elections, economic prosperity for all Americans, and, most of all, proudly protecting the American way of life against socialism.”
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