Congress

Republicans are ignoring Trump and holding out hope for a second megabill

Published

4 months ago

February 20, 2026

President Donald Trump sent a clear message to congressional Republicans this month that there’s no need to pass another party-line megabill this year. Many, however, aren’t ready to give up yet.

Trump’s comments in a Fox Business Network interview earlier this month appeared to finally settle a long-running GOP debate over whether to pursue a follow-up to the “big, beautiful bill” enacted in July, saying “we’ve gotten everything passed that we need.”

But some lawmakers are insisting that the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process offers an unmissable opportunity for Republicans to enact major conservative policy changes ahead of the midterm elections — and that there is still a window to get it done.

Those Republicans are largely brushing off Trump’s comments, refusing to take them as a death knell for their efforts.

“One day he’s okay with it, and the next day he’s not,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who is one of the loudest evangelists for passing another party-line bill before the midterms, arguing Republicans “haven’t done a damn thing” since last year’s effort.

Those attitudes threaten to extend the will-they-or-won’t-they discussion for potentially several more months as some factions keep pressure on GOP leaders to keep hope alive.

The influential Republican Study Committee, which includes scores of House conservatives, has been holding listening sessions since last August for what could go into “Reconciliation 2.0.” It put out a framework in January outlining how such a bill could fulfill an ambitious housing, health care and energy agenda. The group is not yet abandoning the effort.

“There’s always a chance until there’s not,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), a former RSC chair and member of House GOP leadership.

Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), the RSC’s current chair, said in a statement that a second reconciliation bill would be “the perfect vehicle” to unite Republicans behind “Trump’s America First agenda in 2026.”

“This is our moment, and we intend to make the most of it,” he said.

But to many senior Republicans that amounts to false hope — and a distraction from other matters on the congressional agenda in the coming months. Hopes abound for progress on bipartisan housing, permitting and transportation bills.

It was a particularly grueling process to get the first megabill through both chambers last year — and leaders had $5 trillion worth of tax cuts to dangle in front of recalcitrant members to help push it along.

House Republicans barely passed the bill on party lines in July, and their margin has only decreased since: They can currently afford no more than one defection.

“I would love a second reconciliation bill, but I can count votes,” Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said in an interview. “And we do not have the votes for a second reconciliation.”

Speaker Mike Johnson and other House GOP leaders insist they haven’t ruled out doing a second reconciliation bill and say it’s still an active discussion, even as some senior House Republicans and GOP leadership aides privately doubt they will ever have the votes to move forward.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune also hasn’t dismissed another bill — but privately there’s a hefty dose of skepticism among senators and aides that there’s much of an appetite for another big party-line heave.

Asked about Trump’s latest comments, Thune acknowledged in an interview that there’s interest among some members. But he added that Republicans have to be “realistic” about the prospects of assembling a proposal that can garner 51 GOP votes and withstand a free-for-all of politically tricky changes from Democrats.

“We have to have a reason to do it,” Thune added.

To get another bill across the finish line during a midterm year, Republicans would likely need Trump to articulate what precisely he wants in a bill and then for the president to spend weeks, and potentially months, trying to help round up the votes.

But Trump has expressed skepticism about reconciliation, further raising the likelihood that the prospects of another bill are DOA. In addition to his recent comments, he kvetched about how little can actually get done in a reconciliation bill during a meeting with Senate Republicans last fall, instead urging Republicans to break the filibuster — a nonstarter for a significant swath of the conference.

Trump rekindled that push Thursday, telling senators in a Truth Social post to pass a GOP elections bill by insisting on a “talking filibuster” that would theoretically force Democrats to hold the floor indefinitely. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill, but many Republicans aren’t interested in skirting the chamber’s 60-vote supermajority requirement for most legislation.

The intraparty division is expected to come to a head next month at the House Republican retreat in south Florida, where a second reconciliation bill will be a topic of conversation. A previous closed-door meeting of GOP lawmakers in December grew heated, with vulnerable Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) saying it would “never” happen.

Reconciliation got a brief mention during a Senate GOP retreat earlier this month, but most of the focus was on a slate of bipartisan bills that could come up this year, as well as the need to promote last year’s megabill, according to attendees who were granted anonymity to describe the closed-door event.

But some Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee — including Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — are pushing for more. Graham has told his members that he plans to move forward with a budget resolution that would tee up a second reconciliation bill aimed at beefing up military and border spending, addressing health care costs and targeting fraud in social services.

But according to his committee members, Graham hasn’t given a strict timeline for when he’ll start moving, and there’s skepticism that it will amount to much without GOP leaders’ involvement.

“I don’t know how you move forward without the majority leader’s okay,” Kennedy said in an interview. “Senator Thune wants us to only work on bipartisan bills. I love Senator Thune like a taco, but he needs to back off the crank if he believes that. There aren’t going to be any bipartisan bills — we’re right in the middle of the midterm election. Our one shot to get something is reconciliation.”

One of the other challenges is litigating what exactly would go into a second reconciliation bill.

Senate conservatives have floated taking another crack at healthcare, but that would risk exposing deep GOP divisions just months before the midterms. Many of the party’s most unifying health care proposals were omitted from last year’s megabill because of the Senate’s strict rules governing reconciliation.

Some senior House Republicans have discussed attempting to codify Trump’s tariffs in another party-line bill. But that long-shot effort is now effectively dead after six Republicans voted this month to reject Trump’s levies on Canadian imports — with more such tariff votes to come.

Asked about the possibility of codifying tariffs in a party-line package, Smith reiterated in an interview, “There’s not going to be a second reconciliation bill.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Congress

GOP leaders cancel Friday votes as House agenda hangs in balance

Published

3 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Republican leaders have canceled planned Friday votes as GOP hard-liners continue threatening to block legislative action over an elections bill that is stalled in the Senate, according to a notice sent to members Thursday.

Members are expected to leave town after a 1 p.m. vote Thursday, and it’s possible they might not return Monday as planned: Speaker Mike Johnson is hoping to discuss the legislative agenda with President Donald Trump at an afternoon meeting in hopes of brokering a solution that will allow the House to resume voting next week.

If not, the House could join the Senate on an extended recess, not returning till mid-July, two people granted anonymity to describe internal conversations said.

Congress

Raskin launches discharge effort to formally block ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’

Published

4 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is launching a campaign to force a floor vote on legislation that would formally block the Trump administration’s $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

The so-called No Carte Blanche Act — a tongue-in-cheek nod to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — also would also explicitly bar payouts from the Judgement Fund, a pre-existing account for settlements with the United States, to people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

While Blanche, who will sit for a confirmation hearing July 15 to run the Justice Department in a more permanent capacity, recently told lawmakers that the administration was abandoning the effort amid bipartisan backlash, he has refused to put that pledge in a written declaration to Congress.

“This is why Congress must act to comprehensively shut down this shameful shakedown once and for all,” Raskin, of Maryland, said in a statement. “The people’s representatives must decide whether to uphold the rule of law and protect taxpayer dollars—or stand aside as this unprecedented corruption spins out of control.”

Raskin is attempting to compel a floor vote on his bill through a discharge petition, where 218 signatures in support will require Speaker Mike Johnson to bring the measure up for a vote. It’s a maneuver members of both parties have deployed with success in recent months due to the GOP’s slim majority — and it’s possible it could work this time, too, with a small number of House Republicans on record opposing the fund.

It would likely face an uphill battle getting the necessary 60 votes in the Senate to become law, however: An earlier attempt from Democrats to block the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” from going into effect failed in a 50-49 vote.

The fund was created out of a settlement from President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the federal government over the leak of his tax returns. While it was purportedly intended to provide financial compensation to individuals deemed victims of “lawfare,” critics worried it was designed to reward Trump’s allies.

Also as part of the settlement agreement, Trump, his family and businesses would be freed from any current audits of their taxes. Raskin’s legislation would also block that provision.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Johnson tries to clean up Trump’s Hill mess

Published

7 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s obsession with the SAVE America Act has hurled Congress into indefinite gridlock.

Senators are gone until July 13 after starting their Independence Day recess a few days early.

Now House Republican lawmakers are looking toward Speaker Mike Johnson, who will Thursday head to the White House to try to convince the president to salvage the GOP’s legislative agenda.

The president’s insistence Congress pass the controversial election security legislation has ground both chambers to a halt.

The deadlock threatens to derail a host of other legislative efforts Republicans and the White House hoped to complete in the coming weeks, including a sweeping reconciliation bill filled with potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in Iran war military funding, billions of dollars in relief for farmers, fiscal 2027 funding bills and the annual defense policy bill.

“I’d like to celebrate victories, not come up with reasons why we failed,” Sen. Kevin Cramer said in an interview, joining other Republicans in venting frustration after Trump scrapped a planned signing of a major housing affordability bill Wednesday.

“We’ve demonstrated a lot of dysfunction lately,” he said.

Wednesday’s explosive lunch with Trump and GOP senators probably didn’t help.

“The president came to the Capitol to do what he thinks Senate Republican leadership can’t do: flip votes on SAVE and nuking the filibuster,” a senior Senate GOP aide told Jordain.

“He left with the same number of votes that existed when he arrived — possibly fewer.”

Now eyes are on Johnson, who has lost control of the floor as hard-liners demand the Senate pass the elections overhaul.

He’s keeping the House in session ahead of his 2 p.m. Trump meeting in hopes of salvaging plans to put several bills on the floor this week — including a pair of fiscal 2027 spending measures.

But if Johnson and Trump can’t reach a compromise, GOP leadership may cancel all votes for the remainder of the week and next week, too.

That would further imperil their plans for another party-line reconciliation bill and the $88 billion supplement funding request the White House transmitted Wednesday.

What else we’re watching:

— JOHNSON’S PITCH FOR RECON 3.0 FALLS SHORT: 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 Trump’s doomed elections bill. So far, their pitch is falling short. Members who attended a meeting with House Budget Republicans Wednesday argued the REAL ID grant program Johnson proposed was no substitute for enacting the full SAVE America Act. And fiscal hawks on the panel warned they would oppose any budget resolution unless it’s paid for on a yearly basis, and without budgeting gimmicks.

— TRUMP’S $88B ASK FOR IRAN WAR, FARM AID: The White House sent Congress Wednesday a much-awaited request for emergency funding to cover military operations in Iran, farm assistance and disaster assistance. But the proposal could complicate House Republicans’ pursuit of a third party-line spending package, which was supposed to be centered around $350 billion in defense funding that Democrats wouldn’t support. The request for tens of billions of dollars in extra war spending comes as the House Appropriations panel Wednesday advanced a $1.1 trillion base budget plan for the Pentagon. Taken together, the three efforts represent a record-breaking roughly $1.5 trillion military budget, about a 50 percent hike from this year’s level.

Jordain Carney, Mia McCarthy, Meredith Lee Hill, Connor O’Brien and Grace Yarrow contributed to this report.