Congress

Capitol agenda: Trump’s SOTU demands for Congress

Published

4 months ago

February 25, 2026

President Donald Trump littered his record-breaking, nearly two-hour-long State of the Union address Tuesday night with dramatic tributes to American heroes, caustic attacks on congressional Democrats and a preview of his party’s midterm campaign pitch.

But he also sprinkled in a handful of legislative demands that have uneven prospects at best on Capitol Hill. Here’s what caught our ears:

— Targeting noncitizens: Trump repeatedly railed against illegal immigration and pushed lawmakers to pass the SAVE America Act, the GOP bill that would tighten proof-of-citizenship standards for voting.

“Why would anyone not want voter ID?” Trump said at one point. “One reason — they want to cheat.”

But the bigger news might be what Trump didn’t mention: A hard-right push to use a “talking filibuster” to get the House-passed bill past Senate Democrats. In what was likely a big relief for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the president didn’t mention the filibuster at all.

Trump also called for passage of “Dalilah’s Law,” which would bar states from granting driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.

— Health care: The president pressed Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson to take the most-favored-nation drug-pricing deals he’s recently struck with pharmaceutical companies and enact them into law.

“I’m not sure it matters, because it’s going to be very hard for somebody that comes along after me to say, ‘Let’s raise drug prices by 700 or 800 percent,’” Trump said. “But John and Mike, if you don’t mind, codify it anyway.”

But the provision faces big opposition from the prescription drug industry and its allies inside the GOP.

Completely unmentioned? The expired Obamacare subsidies, which now seem like ancient history in Washington. Trump only briefly mentioned his “Great Health Care Plan” that would give money “directly to the people.”

— Stock trading: Trump drew bipartisan applause after endorsing a ban on stock trading by members of Congress. But getting a bill on Trump’s desk will be tough.

Johnson’s leadership-blessed legislation to crack down on the practice is in limbo, without enough GOP support to put it up for a vote. Democrats are pushing for a more expansive stock trading bill, which would also apply to the president and vice president.

Even if the House can pass something, the Senate is seen as even more unlikely to act.

— Crime: The president included a demand for lawmakers to pass “tough legislation to ensure violent repeat offenders are put behind bars and, more importantly, that they stay there.”

That called back to Trump’s multiple comments last summer about pursuing a sweeping crime bill, which never materialized into legislation. Rekindling the effort in an election year would be iffy at best.

— Housing: Trump renewed his request for Congress to limit large investors from purchasing single-family homes as the GOP tries to address a growing housing affordability crisis — an idea that has bipartisan support.

It comes as the House and Senate are working to reconcile competing legislative packages, and the White House push could help convince skeptical Republicans to include it in a final product.

“We want homes for people, not for corporations,” Trump said.

— Left unmentioned: There’s one area where the president conspicuously said lawmakers are free to sit on their hands: “Congressional action will not be necessary,” Trump said, to impose new global tariffs to replace the levies struck down by the Supreme Court last week in what he called a “very unfortunate” ruling.

And while Trump did discuss an expansion of a retirement savings program launched under former President Joe Biden, he did not call for new tax cuts or party-line economic measures to address rising prices — which he continued to blame on Democrats.

“Their policies created the high prices,” he said. “Our policies are rapidly ending them. We are doing really well.”

What else we’re watching:

Lawmakers are set to grill two Trump nominees Wednesday morning who have come under fire for their records and financial ties.

— Steve Pearce for BLM: Steve Pearce’s appearance in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will be the former House Republican’s first opportunity to publicly push back against accusations from Democrats and conservation groups that he’s unfit to lead the Bureau of Land Management.

The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, and Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) will almost certainly zero in on Pearce’s voting record. When Pearce was in Congress, he opposed BLM efforts to tighten rules on the oil and gas industry and supported selling some BLM and Forest Service lands.

Pearce also reported that he earned as much as $1 million last year from a business often associated with oil and gas development.

— Casey Means for ‘America’s top doctor’: Over at the Senate HELP panel, all eyes will be on how hard Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) presses Casey Means, Trump’s pick to be U.S. surgeon general, over her stance on vaccines. Cassidy has repeatedly criticized Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine policy changes, and Means has previously condemned giving the hepatitis B shot to infants.

There’s also bipartisan criticism over Means’ credentials. The wellness influencer and health-tech entrepreneur’s medical license is currently listed online as inactive, and she has promoted contested health practices such as consuming raw milk.

Scott Streater, Nico Portuondo and Amanda Friedman contributed to this report.

Congress

A frustrated Trump unloads on Senate Republicans behind closed doors

Published

57 minutes ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

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.”

Congress

House Republicans no closer to a deal on ‘Reconciliation 3.0’

Published

1 hour ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

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.”

Congress

White House tells Republicans to expect war funding request by end of week

Published

3 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

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.