Congress

Pritzker: ‘You come for my people, you come through me’

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

Gov. JB Pritzker spoke to reporters Thursday for the first time since Donald Trump’s victory, saying he expects to work with the next administration, but he issued a warning.

“You come for my people, you come through me,” Pritzker said, referring to the minority and underserved communities of Illinois who remember the “chaos, retribution and disarray radiated from the White House the last time Donald Trump occupied.”

Pritzker, who served as a surrogate to Kamala Harris’ campaign, said his administration “was not unprepared” for a Trump win.

Pritzker said his administration has worked with the Democratic-led General Assembly to take “proactive steps” to shore up abortion rights and other laws that could draw scrutiny under a Trump White House. And he said Illinois would take action if the Trump administration were to circumvent government grants that were headed to Illinois. The governor said he’s had similar conversations with fellow Democratic governors around the country.

“We have like minds about protecting certain rights and making sure that we’re going to be able to withstand four years of a Donald Trump presidency and also the areas where we might work with the administration, whatever those may be,” he said.

Pritzker’s comments weren’t as inflammatory as they were on the campaign trail, when he was known to refer to Trump as racist, homophobic and xenophobic, but they were just as pointed.

The Illinois governor who is also seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2028 said Americans should be “focused on a peaceful transition of power, even if Donald Trump didn’t afford that to his successor.”

Pritzker told reporters it was too early to offer an explanation as to why Democrats failed to win over swing-state voters, including in neighboring Wisconsin, where thousands of Illinois Democrats canvassed over the past two months on behalf of Harris’ campaign.

“I haven’t seen anybody show up with an analysis of the data. There are a lot of people with opinions, and certainly Republicans are spouting off their opinions about what Democrats have done wrong in order to lose an election,” Pritzker said. “But the reality is, it’s going to take a little while, I think, before we have real answers.”

Illinois remained a blue state after the election, but Trump even made inroads here, including in the Democratic enclave of Chicago.

Congress

House adopts budget framework for $95B party-line package

Published

34 minutes ago

July 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Republicans managed to overcome internal disagreements and approve a budget framework Wednesday — a key step toward unlocking the power to skirt the Senate filibuster and pass a $95 billion package.

The vote succeeded 216-214 after Republican leaders were able to quell frustration among members that the blueprint does not include new spending offsets. House GOP leaders hope to enact a final package that pushes fresh cash to the military, intelligence programs, farm aid and election security.

Both the House and Senate need to adopt the same budget framework in order to begin the process of drafting, then passing, the third reconciliation bill of the 119th Congress. That means the onus is now on Senate Republican leaders to build support for the party-line plan Trump administration officials want the GOP to clear before the midterms.

The White House and Pentagon’s central pitch is that the military urgently needs a cash infusion amid the Iran war — and Democrats won’t provide the votes to make that money available through the regular-order process.

“We have immediate needs within the department, some bills we’ve got to pay. This conflict costs money,” Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), a top appropriator, said in an interview this week following meetings with senior Trump administration officials. “This we have to do.”

The House’s budget resolution also would allow $10 billion to go toward election security in the form of state grants to incentivize strict voter-ID laws — a fig leaf to President Donald Trump and the many Republicans on Capitol Hill who continue to demand passage of a separate partisan election security measure that is Trump’s top legislative priority.

Senate Republican leaders are already hearing from farm-state senators and defense hawks who want to increase the amount of funding the final package would provide for the military and agriculture assistance. Fiscal hawks on that side of the Capitol are also demanding Republican leaders find offsets to blunt the deficit impact of the massive bill.

“There’s a lot of people with a lot of ideas,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the newly seated chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said in an interview. “The good news is the White House is definitely leading on this, which is going to be really important. I think most Republicans are interested in helping President Trump succeed in his agenda.”

That would require approving the budget resolution in the Senate, however, and then punting the measure back to the House for another vote — where another favorable outcome is not guaranteed.

In the House, fiscal conservatives lost a hard-fought battle over offsetting the new spending. “I’m obviously displeased about pay-fors and lack thereof,” Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas said Monday evening, before ultimately voting “yes” two days later.

To win over the skeptics, House GOP leaders made a familiar promise: that Republicans will pursue yet another party-line package that would help shrink the deficit. Speaker Mike Johnson made a personal commitment to Republicans on the House Rules Committee that he would work to advance a fourth reconciliation bill after the midterms to target fraud, waste and abuse in federal programs.

Many Republicans aren’t convinced that this outcome will ultimately come to pass.

Democrats, meanwhile, are prepared to hammer Republicans over their efforts through the upcoming summer recess.

“Republicans are putting forward a nearly $100 billion budget bill. But get this: not a single dollar, not one, will go toward lowering the costs that people face,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California said this week. “Instead, Republicans plan to spend tens of billions of dollars on Trump’s failed war in Iran.”

Jordain Carney and Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.

Congress

NASA’s Isaacman isn’t asking the GOP for more money

Published

2 hours ago

July 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman spoke to an influential group of House Republicans on Wednesday — but he didn’t make a pitch for more money when he walked through his agency’s ambitious plans for space.

“I’m not here asking for money,” Isaacman told GOP members during the weekly Republican Study Committee lunch, according to five people who were in the room. RSC Chair August Pfluger (R-Texas) also confirmed Isaacman’s comments while leaving the meeting Wednesday.

Isaacman’s reassurances come as NASA juggles a number of high-profile missions in the next few years, including returning humans to the moon, building a new Mars spacecraft and a lunar outpost. The NASA administrator had been set to speak to the group earlier in the year, but that meeting was canceled because of scheduling issues.

Isaacman has said in the past that the agency “does not have a topline problem” — pointing to the nearly $25 billion Congress gave the agency in 2026, plus $10 billion in the reconciliation package passed last year. He pointed to the GOP megabill as helping NASA boost its space exploration endeavors, according to three members in the room, who, like others, were granted anonymity to discuss the internal meeting.

The White House proposed a 25 percent cut to NASA’s budget in its 2027 request, but House appropriators have already released a draft bill that would restore the agency’s topline to its current level.

The Republican Study Committee, the biggest coalition in the GOP conference, has fielded previous pitches from Trump administration officials for additional funds. Rep. Brad Knott (R-N.C.), who was at the meeting, said he believed Isaacman is “the only member that came before us that has ever said we do not need any more money.”

Isaacman also gave updates on several of the upcoming NASA projects, including the Artemis program, which aims to land U.S. astronauts on the moon in 2028.

“He’s got such a vision for how to achieve space dominance, to compete with adversarial nations and the Chinese Communist Party, to bring American pride into the space race and to do it at a cost that is reasonable,” Pfluger said in an interview after the meeting.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a long time advocate for space exploration, also attended the lunch. Pfluger added that Gingrich gave credit to Isaacman and President Donald Trump for leading the charge into space.

Congress

Health Committee advances Collins’ insulin price cap over GOP objections

Published

2 hours ago

July 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Republican-led Senate Health Committee voted Wednesday to advance legislation over the objection of its chair to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for diabetes patients on private insurance.

One of the chief sponsors of the INSULIN Act is Maine Republican Susan Collins, who Democrats are banking on beating in November in order to regain control of the chamber.

Collins immediately touted the bill’s committee approval in a statement, saying that it showed how effective she is at working with Democrats. “Too many patients struggling to afford lifesaving insulin,” she said. “I will keep working across the aisle to lower costs, strengthen Maine’s health care workforce, and help better ensure that people in every part of our state can access quality, affordable care close to home.”

About 12 percent of Americans and 10 percent of Mainers have diabetes, a chronic condition marked by high blood sugar levels that damage blood vessels and nerves. Patients often need regular insulin injections to convert blood sugar into energy.

The measure was approved 17-5 with the panel’s 11 Democrats joined by six Republicans. Five Republicans voted no, including Chair Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a highly unusual outcome.

But the backing of six Republicans showed how much the GOP has shifted in the Trump era in its willingness to pressure businesses to cut prices and even use the power of government to force companies to do so.

Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire is the lead Democrat on the bill. Its 28 co-sponsors are nearly evenly divided between the parties.

If enacted — still a long shot without a House companion bill — the legislation would create the first nationwide out-of-pocket cost cap on private insurance plans for a drug that isn’t preventive medicine. But the real impact would be more muted because many insurers already charge $35 or less for insulin.

“This legislation may need more refinement and may encounter policy and procedural hurdles beyond this committee,” Cassidy said.

The committee stripped out a provision to create a pilot program to offer the capped prices to uninsured patients before a successful amendment from Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) to add it back in. All Democrats and Collins voted for Baldwin’s amendment. Uninsured patients can currently buy insulin on President Donald Trump’s direct-to-consumer site, TrumpRx, for $35 or less.

Medicare’s prescription drug program also has a $35 cap because of a provision in the Inflation Reduction Act, which a Democratic Congress and then-President Joe Biden enacted in 2022 without any Republican support.

Lauren Gardner contributed to this report.