Congress
Capitol agenda: Trump confirmations split Senate Dems
Senate Majority Leader John Thune is staring down a confirmation backlog of more than 130 nominees — with President Donald Trump pressing hard for progress this week. Democrats could theoretically help expedite a pre-recess flurry of confirmations, but without more details from Republicans, they are so far holding out.
“There are some that are bipartisan — like, Tim Kaine and I have a great Eastern District of Virginia [U.S.] attorney nominee,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) told Blue Light News Monday evening. “But [Republicans] also should go and release some of the funds that have already been appropriated that they and [Russ] Vought are holding on to. There has to be some exchange.”
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) managed to get her own deal during a committee vote last week. The Trump administration committed to distributing $75 million in “lifesaving” global assistance in exchange for the Foreign Relations ranking member’s vote to advance Mike Waltz’s UN ambassador nomination.
Thune’s hoping to strike a deal to fast-track dozens of confirmations through a mix of roll call votes, voice votes and/or unanimous consent requests. But Democrats could force him to file cloture on each nominee, which would in turn force Thune to keep the Senate in session into the weekend — and potentially beyond.
Democratic leaders are keeping all options on the table as they await a proposal from Republicans, one person granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations told Blue Light News. Some Democratic senators like Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin aren’t ruling out confirming a tranche of Trump nominees — though they say it depends who they are.
Other Democrats are opposed to any dealmaking at all: “Just to try to help them advance getting more people in office?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told Blue Light News. “Why would we do that?”
The unspoken truth: Many Democratic senators want to start their summer break just as badly as their Republican colleagues do.
What else we’re watching:
— Appropriations status: The wheels could be coming off Thune’s plans to assemble an initial “minibus” of fiscal 2026 spending bills. Thune acknowledged to Blue Light News that he is still “trying to work off some holds” from senators objecting to bundling the various bills. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) became the latest headache, citing language in the agriculture bill that he said would “destroy” the hemp industry.
— Guardrails on TSA facial recognition: Industry lobbying is threatening the smooth advancement of a bill that would put guardrails on the Transportation Security Administration’s use of facial recognition technology as Senate Commerce prepares to take up the bill Wednesday. It’s causing some consternation among Republicans, who had planned for a straightforward markup of the strongly bipartisan bill sponsored by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and several committee Republicans.
— Bove’s confirmation vote: A third whistleblower met with the staff for Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley on Monday to testify against Emil Bove, Trump’s contentious nominee for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Republicans are expected to confirm Bove this week despite the new allegations but haven’t officially locked in a time for the final vote.
Jordain Carney and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.
Senate Republicans hoped to use a closed-door lunch to clear the air with President Donald Trump. Instead, the president vented his frustrations with the senators for more than an hour, leaving them no closer to detente.
The meeting came at an explosive moment, with GOP lawmakers increasingly frustrated by Trump’s mercurial treatment of congressional Republican priorities. Just hours before arriving on Capitol Hill, Trump delivered his latest rug-pull — announcing he would refuse to sign a major housing bill that leaders were already touting after big bipartisan majorities passed it this week.
But senators said Trump arrived determined to prosecute his internal grudges against the Republican lawmakers who have opposed him at times — particularly those who have expressed misgivings about the Iran war and who are refusing to comply with the president’s demands for swift passage of a controversial elections bill.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) described Trump as “mad as a murder hornet” about the Iran vote, while Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) described the scene as “very much like a hospital board meeting, when a bunch of doctors are yelling at each other.”
Marshall added that “at the end of the day, we’ll figure out a way to get along.”
Another GOP senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, called the lunch “very intense.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), deploying some go-to congressional lingo for heated encounters, called it “spirited,” “frank” and “candid.”
Trump and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) sparred at length over the Iran war, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the private interaction. Trump also railed over Tuesday’s successful war powers vote, lambasting Cassidy and three other GOP senators who voted for the resolution.
Cassidy acknowledged the two had a heated exchange to reporters after the lunch. After Trump questioned why Republicans would vote against him on the war, Cassidy said he told the president that the conflict was not going as well as senators were being told.
“The president said something negative about me. I received it as attempting to bully me from asking a question that I think the American people need to know, and I’m not going to be bullied,” said Cassidy, who recently lost his campaign for renomination after Trump endorsed against him.
Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) also confirmed the exchange between Trump and Cassidy. He said the two “harbor bad feelings” and urged them both to move on.
The meeting also failed to reveal a way forward on Trump’s No. 1 priority, the elections bill known as the SAVE America Act.
Trump cited the need to pass the legislation in his stunning decision Wednesday morning to cancel a signing ceremony for the long-stalled housing bill. A rostrum had been erected in Statuary Hall for the occasion, and House GOP leaders were promoting its benefits at a news conference when the presidential U-turn occurred.
Senators said Trump largely reiterated his publicly stated positions on the housing bill, the GOP election bill and his demand that they eliminate the 60-vote legislative filibuster.
“He believes that the SAVE America act ought to be in front of the housing bill,” Justice said.
Sen. Rand Paul said there had been “a thorough airing” of the elections bill during the meeting, but added it’s unclear “if there is a solution.”
The announcement only served to further exasperate the Senate GOP ahead of the lunch, which had been arranged by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a MAGA loyalist who acted without the foreknowledge of Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
Underscoring the mood going into the meeting, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said, “I would advise them to only use plastic utensils today.”
Republicans had hoped the housing bill would give them a long-sought legislative victory that would get the party on the same page and give them a foothold to argue that they are responding to Americans’ affordability concerns heading into the midterms.
Instead, Trump’s surprise declaration, which appeared to catch even some of his own staff off guard, became the latest curveball for Senate Republicans — following a surprise request for White House ballroom security funding and the announcement of a Justice Department “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that overshadowed and delayed passage of a GOP immigration enforcement bill.
Since then, Trump also has thrown a key surveillance program into limbo and upended the confirmation plans for his own nominee for director of national intelligence.
Most persistently, he has fixated on Senate Republicans passing the SAVE America Act — including by eliminating the filibuster — even though Thune and other GOP senators have said repeatedly that there aren’t the votes to do that.
“There is a huge group of people who really appreciate what the president is doing right now and it’s the Democrat party,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said. ”And we’ve got to get our act together and stop surprising people and stop having conflicting messages.”
House GOP leaders are trying to make good on their promise to advance a long-shot, party-line package of conservative priorities by arguing it’s the only chance to pass pieces of President Donald Trump’s doomed elections bill. So far, their pitch is falling short.
Trump announced Wednesday he would not sign a major housing affordability measure until Congress passes the so-called SAVE America Act, which Speaker Mike Johnson and members of his senior leadership tried to leverage during their meeting later that same morning with Republicans on the House Budget Committee.
According to four people with direct knowledge of the closed-door discussions, however, fiscal hawks on the panel warned they would oppose any budget resolution — necessary to unlock the filibuster-skirting reconciliation process — unless it’s paid for on a yearly basis, and without budgeting gimmicks.
Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a key Budget Committee Republican, told reporters as he left the meeting that he would vote against any budget blueprint that is not fully paid for in current savings “dollar for dollar” and “year for year.”
And Rep. Erin Houchin (R-Ind.), another Budget Committee member, said that while the committees instructed to contribute policies to the reconciliation bill could include Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means, it’s “too early” to talk about what will be in the budget resolution or any timeline for consideration.
It essentially guarantees that House Republicans will fail to meet an ambitious deadline of adopting a budget resolution before the July 4 holiday, let alone passing a reconciliation bill ahead of the monthlong August recess.
A failure to proceed would be a blow to Republicans who have argued there are few other opportunities to notch conservative wins in advance of the midterms — not to mention deliver on Trump demands, from the SAVE America Act to funding his ongoing military operation in the Middle East.
Johnson has remained bullish that Republicans will be able to move ahead on “Reconciliation 3.0” — follow-ups to last summer’s tax and spending megabill and the immigration enforcement bill Congress cleared earlier this month.
He is specifically floating the possibility that Republicans could, in that next reconciliation bill, create a grant program providing money to states to encourage the adoption of REAL ID requirements in order to vote.
Johnson said he made this case directly to Trump, too, before the president ultimately canceled his scheduled ceremonial signing of the landmark housing package in protest over the lack of Hill momentum on the elections bill.
“House Republicans will pull together a reconciliation bill … that will have that,” Johnson told reporters of the grant program Wednesday. “That’s what we’re going to do.”
But members who attended the meeting Wednesday argued the REAL ID grant program was no substitute for enacting the full SAVE America Act, which has passed the House but does not have the support to move forward in the Senate.
Roy, for instance, said the grant program is “not the SAVE America Act.”
Still, House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) mirrored Johnson’s optimism Wednesday, saying he believed House Republicans could come to an agreement on viable offsets by the end of this week and perhaps on what policies to include by the end of next.
There are enough fraud-tackling initiatives that could cover the cost of any “Reconciliation 3.0” legislation in full, Arrington insisted, while also doubting the entire package would be paid for given intraparty disagreements about how deep to cut into social safety net programs.
“We know the money’s there. The question is, do we have the political will as a conference to do those things,” Arrington said. “We need everybody on the same page.”
There are other major policy disagreements, too, that show few signs of being quickly resolved.
After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth briefed members of the Republican Study Committee on Wednesday afternoon of the Pentagon’s $350 billion funding request as part of another reconciliation bill, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) suggested he would support such a cash infusion — but wanted the administration to agree to replace the brigade in Eastern Europe.
Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), meanwhile, has said he wants the funding to be audited before agreeing to vote for it.
Some Republicans are pushing for defunding Planned Parenthood to be a part of any future reconciliation package, too — a politically charged demand for vulnerable incumbents to swallow.
“When we have something, I’ll start calculating the odds, but so far they haven’t put anything together,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in an interview this week. “It’s all a pretty vague concept.”
Trump administration officials have told key Hill Republicans they should expect a request for an Iran war supplemental funding package by the end of this week.
The request is expected to be about $80 billion, according to five people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
But House GOP appropriators believe the Senate will likely add additional non-military items, such as disaster relief or farm aid. House GOP leaders are worried the push for a supplemental bill will undercut their effort to pass another party-line reconciliation bill with GOP priorities and extra defense funding.
Congress has long awaited President Donald Trump’s request to cover the cost of the military campaign in the Middle East. But the measure, which would need at least some bipartisan support to pass the Senate, will face an uphill fight to become law.
Many Democrats who oppose the war are almost certain to object to funding a conflict they disagree with and regard as illegal because Trump didn’t seek congressional approval.
The roughly $80 billion price tag, though, is significantly less than the approximately $200 billion the Trump administration was reportedly weighing in recent months.
The supplemental request would likely be dedicated to replenishing stocks of missiles fired off in the early stages of the war and cover other costs of military operations in the Middle East in recent months.
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