Congress
Capitol agenda: It’s crypto crunch time for the House
Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump are pushing to jam the House again. This time, it’s all about crypto.
The brewing clash — not unlike the megabill saga — is over how big and how quickly Hill Republicans should deliver on one of Trump’s most notable campaign pledges. In this case, it’s about Trump’s promise to make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the world.”
The Senate last month passed a bipartisan bill to boost a specific slice of the crypto universe — so-called stablecoins — but the House GOP is now wrestling with a desire to go bigger. It’s gearing up for a full-blown “crypto week” to make the case when House members return next Monday.
House Republicans, who spent years incubating crypto legislation that Senate Democrats were unwilling to touch, plan to vote on the Senate stablecoin bill and a wider-ranging “market structure” plan to overhaul securities and commodities rules impacting crypto trading.
The big hurdle for House Republicans is that Trump and Senate Republicans aren’t on board with tweaking the stablecoin bill or using it as a vehicle to take a bigger swing on crypto policy. Trump says he wants a “clean” version of the bill “lightning fast” and key GOP senators say they won’t take up a market structure overhaul until September.
Senate Republicans say it would be near-impossible to muster Democrats to pass a revised stablecoin bill.
“For me to get eight or nine Democrats to vote for something here is extraordinarily difficult to do,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.), the lead sponsor of the Senate stablecoin bill, known as the GENIUS Act.
House GOP leaders signaled last week they won’t seek to combine that legislation with their broader revamp, but they haven’t yet said whether they will make changes to the measure.
House Financial Services Chair French Hill’s sweeping market structure bill, which is the crown jewel of the House GOP’s crypto push, is also the subject of eleventh-hour negotiating among House lawmakers ahead of next week’s floor vote.
The Arkansas Republican is working to secure wide bipartisan backing that would signal its political viability to the Senate. But some Democrats who have been on board in the past are withholding support unless the bill imposes restrictions on the Trump family’s entanglements in the crypto industry.
“For me, and I suspect for some other Democrats, if we can satisfy this question of conflict of interest — meaning there’s a prohibition on the president being an issuer — a lot of us can get to ‘yes,’” said Rep. Jim Himes, a senior Connecticut Democrat on House Financial Services. “They’re working in good faith to try to get us to ‘yes.’”
What else we’re watching:
— Netanyahu on Blue Light News: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be on Capitol Hill Tuesday and meet with Speaker Mike Johnson at 11:45 a.m. Netanyahu will then have a bipartisan Senate meeting with leaders John Thune and Chuck Schumer at 4 p.m., per two people granted anonymity to discuss the plans. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries didn’t comment when we asked whether he plans to meet with Netanyahu.
— NDAA markups begin: Senate Armed Services will begin subcommittee markups of the National Defense Authorization Act at 4:30 p.m. The full panel will debate and vote on the whole package starting Wednesday at 9:45 a.m. (reminder: this could take several days).
— Rescissions updates: Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) is gearing up to offer amendments to Trump’s request to claw back $9.4 billion in already-approved funds ahead of the Senate’s July 18 deadline, and the contours of her desired tweaks are starting to take shape. Collins has already said she is strongly against the White House’s proposed cuts to foreign aid, and told Maine Public Radio that she would like to prevent drastic funding reductions to public media, too.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
The chair of the House Agriculture Committee said he’s not willing to “accept bad results” as a tradeoff for the benefits of advancements in artificial intelligence — a direct rebuttal to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“As someone who practiced health care for 28 years, I’m never willing to accept bad results. I think we just need to do our best,” Rep. G.T. Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, told reporters Monday.
He was responding to Altman’s comments to Decoded by Blue Light News that people “should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.”
Pressed further on whether he agreed with Altman’s premise, Thompson replied, “No, I think we have to work harder to prevent any bad things from happening.”
Altman’s comments come in the wake of increased panic over the risks of catastrophic destruction from AI, with many industry leaders and experts arguing that guardrails are needed on the technology to prevent it from spinning out of human control.
Pressure is building on Congress to regulate the rapidly-advancing technology, but lawmakers are divided over whether the AI industry needs federal regulation or if it’s capable of governing itself.
The executives of major AI labs and tech companies gathered at the White House last week to discuss solutions with President Donald Trump, who believes overregulating AI will have national security repercussions. The group ended up signing a “morally binding” AI accord that critics say won’t do enough to prevent a worst-case scenario.
Thompson noted Monday he believes that AI will bring “tremendous solutions,” specifically in regards to finding cures for health issues like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. But he also said AI has to be led with “principle” — comparing it to how he addressed digital assets in a bill to regulate the cryptocurrency industry, which he worked on as chair of the Agriculture Committee.
“The first principle is ‘do no harm.’ So we need to protect consumers, and that means, I think, building some guardrails — some guidelines — to do that,” Thompson said. He added that the second principle is to “foster innovation.”
“I think AI has a lot to do with that,” he added. “I don’t think AI works without RI: Real Intelligence.”
LE SUEUR, Minnesota — Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday there is no “consensus” yet on advancing a bill establishing permanent daylight saving time even as President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on Republicans to pass it.
Thune addressed the matter in a Monday interview after Trump used his Truth Social account multiple times over the weekend to rail against the legislation, known as the Sunshine Protection Act — going so far as to post the personal cell phone number of one of its GOP opponents, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
“The president feels strongly on it like he does a lot of issues,” he said. “It’s something we’re having conversations about but there’s no clear path forward or consensus on it yet.”
While Trump singled out Cotton for scrutiny, Thune made clear the opposition to the permanent daylight saving time proposal — which would lead to very late winter sunrises in some parts of the country — ran deeper than one senator.
Cotton has publicly voiced opposition to the proposal for year, citing, among other things, the fact that children in his state would be going to school in the dark for part of the year.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) voiced similar objections Monday to reporters in the Capitol, saying he was mindful of “safety concerns in the more northern and rural states where children get on the school bus in very early hours.”
Thune, who spoke during a campaign swing in Minnesota with GOP Senate nominee Michele Tafoya, has himself opposed previous daylight saving bills. He said Monday that “a lot of it depends on where you are in the country” and that “your geography probably has as much to do with your position on that as anything.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who has aligned himself closely with Trump, is among the lawmakers who have been pushing to get the bill through the Senate. He recently told POLITICO, “I’m going to make sure it gets passed this year.”
Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.
Democrats have pulled back some of their ads in North Carolina’s Senate race, days after the top Senate Republican super PAC paused its future spending in the state.
WinSenate, a group affiliated with the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC, has removed roughly $1.1 million in North Carolina ad buys this week, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. The group still has roughly $18.8 million in future reservations through Election Day.
“Senate Majority PAC is committed to seeing this race through to victory, and will continue to make spending decisions based on how to best build a strong Senate majority,” Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement.
The move, combined with the GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund’s decision to pause future spending, are a signal that both parties are shifting resources amid an ever-expanding Senate map. Democrats are increasingly confident in their North Carolina Senate nominee, Roy Cooper, as he continues to hold a sizable lead in public polling over Republican Michael Whatley — but some privately say states like Michigan and New Hampshire need more resources.
Meanwhile, multiple Republican groups, not just SLF, have retreated from the state in recent weeks, effectively deciding that it’s no longer worth the money to boost Whatley’s campaign.
The Koch-aligned Americans for Prosperity Action left North Carolina off its $22 million list of future spending across key Senate contests, and Old North Action removed $6.5 million in ad reservations last month.
The Cooper campaign, however, is still treating the race as competitive, pointing to North Carolina’s closely divided electorate and the fact that President Donald Trump won the state in each of the past three presidential elections.
“North Carolina is a truly 50/50 state and Democrats haven’t won a US Senate race in 18 years. We can’t take anything for granted or our eye off the ball,” said Morgan Jackson, a senior adviser to the Cooper campaign. “DC is broken and we’re going to continue to run this race like we’re ten points down to ensure North Carolinians get the change they desperately need.”
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