Congress
Capitol agenda: Thune tries a new shutdown strategy
Senate Democrats’ next tough decision? Whether to play ball with Republicans on full-year appropriations bills or hold out to maintain leverage in the shutdown fight.
GOP leaders are unleashing a new strategy in hopes of creating some movement amid the standoff. Majority Leader John Thune teed up a Thursday procedural vote on the House-passed Defense spending bill as his Republican colleagues try to expedite a House conference on the three-bill package the Senate passed in August.
Whether this is a pressure tactic or a trust-building exercise depends on whom you ask.
“If the Democrats can see the regular appropriations process running more smoothly, that might encourage them,” Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) told Blue Light News on Tuesday.
But Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who leads the agriculture subcommittee, told reporters this was a put-up-or-shut-up moment after weeks of sparring over the House’s posture on spending: “We’re thinking: OK, fine, then let’s go forward and see if they object and they’re just using it as an excuse.”
This much is clear: If Democrats refuse to help advance the full-year bills, Republicans plan to cast them as obstructionists. And if they agree, Republicans will argue that undercuts their shutdown stance.
“If we can show that we can move the appropriations bills, there’s absolutely no justification or rationale for a government shutdown,” Collins told Blue Light News.
The dilemma threatens to split Senate Democrats who have mostly presented a united front during the shutdown.
Democratic appropriators could be tempted to cooperate on bipartisan legislation they traditionally support. But the party would risk softening its push for GOP commitments on extending Obamacare subsidies and spending federal money as appropriated.
Senate Appropriations Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said she recently told Speaker Mike Johnson that only a leadership-level negotiation on a broader list of outstanding items, including health care, could break the impasse and end the shutdown.
But it could be tempting to at least make progress on the full-year bills while the shutdown drags on. As Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) told Blue Light News, those are “two separate issues.”
“Since we’re here, let’s go ahead and get started on it,” he said. “I like the idea of using our time wisely.”
What else we’re watching:
— Johnson’s shutdown presser: The speaker will host a news conference with other House GOP leaders and Main Street Caucus Chair Mike Flood (R-Neb.), Vice Chair Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) and military veterans Reps. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) and Zach Nunn (R-Iowa) on the House steps at 10 a.m.
— House Democrats’ shutdown programming: Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will host a news conference with House Democrats on the House steps at 11:30 a.m. before their caucus meeting at noon. House Democratic leaders and their Steering and Policy Committee co-chairs will hold a forum on rising health care costs in the Capitol Visitor Center at 3 p.m.
— Possible Russia sanctions vote, Zelenskyy meeting: Thune left the door open Tuesday to voting on a long-stalled Russia sanctions bill as soon as this month. It comes as Trump is expected to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House on Friday where the two will discuss supplying Ukraine with weapons. Senators are also working to set up a bipartisan meeting with Zelenskyy later this week.
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
Sen. Ron Johnson blocked the Senate from passing a bill Wednesday to restore $810 million in federal funding President Donald Trump nixed Friday without Congress’ consent and stop him from using the controversial budget tactic again.
Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Patty Murray of Washington asked on the Senate floor to swiftly pass a measure that would nullify Trump’s latest move to unilaterally cancel money Congress appropriated and prevent similar attempts by blocking the president from sending requests to claw back federal dollars less than 90 days before the cash expires.
While objecting to passing the bill, Johnson said he supports the president doing “whatever it takes” to reduce federal spending.
“Personally, I wish it was a lot larger,” the Wisconsin Republican, who chairs the Budget Committee, said of the sum Trump canceled Friday. “That money doesn’t have to be spent, and it shouldn’t be spent.”
Merkley, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, argued that Trump’s move is akin to exercising “a line-item veto” and taking “a wrecking ball” to the vision of the country’s founding fathers.
While Johnson objected to passing the bill, several prominent Republican lawmakers have slammed the Trump administration’s latest move to cancel federal funding and are discussing ways to head off another attempt.
Those Republican calls to stop Trump from employing the funding maneuver are a turnabout after more than a year of resistance to taking action. Democrats have repeatedly attempted to use funding bills to defend against this kind of eleventh-hour clawback but were rebuffed by Republicans.
“Time after time, they have shot down our attempts to stop this administration from defying Congress and robbing our constituents,” said Murray, who described Trump’s latest cancellation as “theft from the American people, plain and simple.”
Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz blocked an effort from Sen. Marsha Blackburn to pass her bill on the chamber floor Wednesday afternoon that would allow people to sue over artificial intelligence “deepfakes” — the latest episode in a long-running public rift between the two Republicans over AI legislation.
Blackburn of Tennessee argued the measure, the NO FAKES Act, would guarantee protections against the “proliferation harmful AI-created deepfakes” while ensuring artists and creative work are not impeded.
“Our bill would establish clear guardrails that protect our creators in Tennessee and across the entire country, in addition to establishing a federal intellectual property right in every American’s voice and visual likeness,” she said in a floor speech.
Blackburn sought to advance the bill by unanimous consent, a process that does not require a roll call vote but does permit any single senator to show up in person to object. That person Wednesday was Cruz, who argued the bill was not ready for primetime.
The Texas lawmaker said he had free speech concerns about the legislation as currently written — for example, would the AI-generated photos and videos like the ones frequently promoted on President Donald Trump’s social media accounts be deemed out of compliance? The same could end up being true for news parody websites like The Onion, Cruz added.
Blackburn said that free speech would not be jeopardized by her proposal, and that the bill instead targets online scamming activities that would certainly be illegal if conducted offline. Cruz was not convinced.
“I am happy to work with you,” Cruz ultimately told Blackburn. “But at least as of now, I object.”
Cruz and Blackburn have been at odds on the issue for some time, dating back to when a five-year deal to block states from enacting their own AI rules and regulations collapsed during One Big Beautiful Bill Act negotiations in 2025.
While Cruz voted for the NO FAKES Act in the Senate Judiciary Committee over the summer, he was unable to help broker a larger agreement with Blackburn and the White House to include it as part of a package of bills addressing preemption of state AI regulations and kids online safety issues.
Cruz also undercut Blackburn’s efforts during an Oval Office meeting over the summer, where he told Trump the package had no chance of moving in the Senate. The president ultimately held off on an endorsement.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a NO FAKES co-sponsor, emphasized the broad support from the creative industry that lawmakers have worked to build.
“This is the most baked, ready-to-go AI-related bill there is,” Coons said as he walked onto the Senate floor Wednesday. “We’ve done hearings, we’ve done technical assistance, we’ve done markups. It’s broadly bipartisan.”
Cruz, who objected Tuesday to an attempt to pass an AI safety bill by unanimous consent, countered that his bill making it a crime to knowingly publish sexually explicit images on the internet without the subjects’ consent — real or AI-generated — is the only major AI bill to become law in the 119th Congress.
Ohio Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown said Sunday that a “technical glitch” with Facebook’s advertising platform caused around half of his campaign ads on the site to suddenly “go dark with no notice.”
“For the past 48 hours, half of our ads have been unable to reach grassroots supporters and voters,” Brown said in a post to his Substack that both detailed the snafu and served as a fundraising appeal. Brown estimated the issue was costing his campaign “thousands and thousands of dollars — and potentially thousands of votes.”
Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Facebook parent Meta, confirmed in a statement that “an error over the weekend impacted the delivery of ads for several advertisers, including the Brown campaign.”
“All of the Brown campaign’s ads have since been restored,” Stone said. “We apologize for the error.”
Neither Brown nor Stone immediately responded to followup questions about whether the Brown campaign would receive a reimbursement for the glitch.
A tally of Meta advertising data for Brown’s political account shows he has spent over a half-million dollars with the company across multiple campaigns. Brown, a former senator, is mounting a comeback against Republican Sen. Jon Husted.
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