Congress

Capitol agenda: GOP’s health revolt heads to the Senate

Published

7 months ago

December 11, 2025

House Republicans just showed how divided they are over health care. Thursday’s Senate votes could expose the party’s strife even further.

Senate Republicans know both parties’ health care proposals are doomed Thursday. But as Democrats prepare to unite behind a three-year extension of expiring Obamacare subsidies, Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson can’t get Republicans on the same page.

— In the Senate: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is the only definite GOP defector on Thursday’s vote on a framework by Sens. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) that would expand health savings accounts rather than extend the enhanced Obamacare tax credits.

But a handful of Republicans have not yet said how they would vote, including Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. And Florida Sen. Rick Scott — who has a competing proposal of his own — said he’s still reviewing the Crapo-Cassidy bill.

Thune is already messaging around Thursday’s near-certain failure and suggesting it’ll spur more serious negotiations.

“When we get through this exercise this week the question is, ‘Are there enough Democrats who want to fix the problem?’” he told reporters Wednesday. “I think there’s a path forward. … Obviously we don’t have a lot of time to do this, but I think there are ways in which you could, where there’s a will.”

— In the House: At least 10 Republicans on Wednesday signed a bipartisan discharge petition authored by Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) and Jared Golden (D-Maine) that would extend the enhanced tax credits for two years while imposing new eligibility requirements. Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) also moved Wednesday to file a discharge petition on their own proposal that would extend subsidies for a year with new guardrails.

Both efforts are direct challenges to House leaders who appear determined to let the subsidies lapse. But they would likely need all House Democrats — and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is pushing a measure to compel a vote on a three-year extension. Asked if he would support Fitzpatrick’s bill Wednesday night, Jeffries said he had not had the opportunity to look at it yet.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told Blue Light News he’s “not a fan of discharge petitions,” adding that the extension framework being proposed in the Fitzpatrick-Golden bill is one of many that has split the GOP conference.

But Golden and other centrists are urging leaders not to brush off brewing discontent.

“Leadership, no matter who they are, in both parties, House and Senate, should pay attention to what’s going on with discharge petitions,” Golden said.

— From the White House: Meanwhile, lawmakers are getting mixed signals about whether President Donald Trump wants Republicans to utilize the filibuster-skirting process of reconciliation to advance a party-line package to address affordability concerns, including health care.

Asked Wednesday if he wants to see another megabill move through Blue Light News next year, Trump told reporters “we don’t need it.” But hours later, White House deputy chief of staff James Blair told Semafor the administration “would love to do” another reconciliation bill.

“That’s really a partisan tool, and then obviously there’s bipartisan pathways too,” Blair said. “Which one opens up is largely contingent on whether or not the Democrats want to work on anything.”

What else we’re watching:

— Will Cuellar get his gavel back?: Rep. Henry Cuellar’s (D-Texas) fate as an appropriations leader will be decided Thursday when House Democratic appropriators vote in a secret ballot on whether the recently-pardoned lawmaker will resume his former subcommittee chair role. Some Democrats are uneasy with allowing a colleague who’s been accused of bribery regain control over more than $60 billion in annual spending as the top Democrat overseeing Homeland Security funding.

— National Guard deployments in the spotlight: Pentagon officials will be in the hot seat during a 9:30 a.m. Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops to cities like Washington and Los Angeles. The president has said the deployments were necessary to fight crime or crack down on protests; Democrats contend the administration is illegally wielding troops against blue cities.

Meredith Lee Hill, Mia McCarthy, Nicholas Wu and Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate Ethics dismisses allegations against Ruben Gallego

Published

3 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate Ethics Committee has dismissed allegations of misconduct levied against Sen. Ruben Gallego, who stood accused by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of “campaign finance violations and inappropriate conduct of a sexual nature.”

The charges came following the resignation of the Arizona Democrat’s longtime friend, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), who was forced to step down amid accusations of serious sexual misconduct. Luna, a Florida Republican, sought to implicate Gallego by claiming in an interview on CBS that a woman would come forward about an “incident that occurred between the two of them at the same time and the event was sexual in nature allegedly.”

But in a letter to Gallego sent Monday — which he shared in a public news release — the notoriously inactive Ethics Committee cited Gallego’s “prompt contact with the Committee following media reports of the allegations and appreciated your full cooperation with the Committee throughout the investigation.”

Gallego has maintained he was unaware of the allegations against Swalwell and said in a statement he was a victim of “right-wing conspiracies peddled by far-right activists like Anna Paulina Luna, the White House, and their allies.”

He continued, “I look forward to an apology from Rep. Luna for weaponizing the ethics process while refusing to investigate historic corruption that’s making life harder for families.”

Luna, in a post on X, defended her referral to the Senate Ethics Committee.

“The good news about DC is everyone talks, and eventually the reporters come forward with your texts,” Luna wrote on social media. “Do yourself a favor and keep raising for your legal defense fund. Once a creep always a creep, and you’re gonna need it.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s state. She represents Florida.

Congress

Rubio, Witkoff to brief Congress on Iran

Published

6 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Top deputies of President Donald Trump will brief Congress on the Iran peace talks in a Monday conference call — the first time administration officials have addressed a broad group of lawmakers since Trump signed a “memorandum of understanding” with Tehran earlier this month.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, will lead the briefing for all House and Senate members at 4 p.m., according to seven people granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

Republicans and Democrats have called for more transparency about the 14-point agreement inked on June 18, which initiated a cease-fire between the two countries. Since then, the U.S. and Iran have continued to engage in hostilities.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Red, white and GOP hard-liner blues

Published

9 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Republicans finally cleared a runway this week to finish some of their top legislative priorities before the July 4 recess.

That is, unless a small band of hard-liners trip up those plans at takeoff.

Speaker Mike Johnson is hoping to move quickly to pass fiscal 2027 appropriations legislation, the annual defense policy bill and a kids online safety bill that has been years in the making. The movement comes after President Donald Trump instructed GOP hard-liners to stop holding up a procedural vote amid a protest from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna and others that the Senate hadn’t passed Trump’s election security bill.

But Luna and other hard-liners are still threatening to tank the procedural vote that could delay the defense policy bill and other measures until they get concessions on the SAVE America Act, amid other demands.

Johnson, for example, had also promised hard-liners a vote before July 4 on a sweeping GOP immigration bill introduced in the prior Congress as H.R. 2, which is highly unlikely to happen.

Johnson for his part has said the House will “pass the SAVE America Act again” by folding parts of it into a third party-line reconciliation bill. But the slimmed-down version he’d need to pursue in order to meet strict Senate rules for the budget process is already being panned by hard-liners as insufficient.

That reconciliation bill is also already delayed. House Republicans aren’t on track to meet their goal of advancing its framework before the July 4 recess as members on the Budget panel balked over how to pay for the legislation in a closed-door meeting last week.

“Time is of the essence, given how many legislative days we have,” House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie, who is sponsoring the kids online safety legislation, said in an interview last week. “If we lose a week, that would be important.”

Meanwhile, Democratic leadership is grappling with their own heated internal divisions this week. Members are split over supporting the adoption of an amendment to a fiscal 2027 spending bill from Rep. Thomas Massie that would end Israel aid and cut the overall foreign military aid program by $3.3 billion.

Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro did not instruct her colleagues on how to vote during a rare Sunday evening caucus call, two sources granted anonymity to discuss the private meeting tell Mia and Riley. Leaders did, however, criticize the amendment as poorly written.

One other item this week that could split members of each party: House lawmakers are also slated to vote on a rewritten war powers resolution from Rep. Rashida Tlaib to reign in Trump administration military actions in Lebanon. Leadership worked with Tlaib to come up with new language last month that is expected to garner more Dem support, but the resolution is still expected to fail without GOP votes.

What else we’re watching:

— SENATE GOP GETS ANTSY ABOUT NOMINATIONS: Some Republican senators are unsettled by Trump’s apparent lack of urgency in filling vacant posts, even as GOP control of the chamber beyond the midterms is increasingly in doubt. There are more than two dozen federal court vacancies. Labor secretary, FDA commissioner and scores of other open positions do not have nominees, and a senior White House official said Trump is in no rush to fill them. “We’re running short on time,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a member of Senate HELP, which oversees health, labor and other issues.

—RICK SCOTT SAYS HE’S JUST TRYING TO HELP: Fresh off his controversial Trump invite to a Senate GOP lunch last week, Sen. Rick Scott told Blue Light News in an interview he’s trying to make a mark — not trying to challenge Senate Majority Leader John Thune. Scott insists that neither his invitation to the president nor a letter he circulated afterward outlining how the Senate GOP should be preparing for the midterms should be seen as a prelude to a leadership challenge. The Florida Republican said he’s perfectly happy running the conference’s conservative Steering Committee and predicted Thune would easily secure another term as leader. What has become eminently clear in recent weeks is that Scott — after a long career in business, two terms as governor and nearly eight years as senator — just isn’t a back-bench kind of guy.

Meredith Lee Hill, Riley Rogerson, Alex Gangitano, Jordain Carney and Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.