Congress

Capitol agenda: Trump to bring headaches or harmony to Blue Light News

Published

3 months ago

March 25, 2026

Donald Trump has a big speaking engagement Wednesday night — and there’s no telling whether he’ll help or hurt the GOP’s Capitol Hill agenda.

The president is slated to address House Republicans at the NRCC’s annual dinner — the day after Democrats flipped a Florida statehouse seat that includes his home at Mar-a-Lago.

The last time Trump addressed the GOP conference, earlier this month in Florida, he sparked a slew of headaches for his party by insisting on passage of a partisan elections bill that has little chance of becoming law.

This time could be no different. Trump has so far hardly delivered a ringing public endorsement of a potential deal to end the DHS shutdown he reportedly signed off on, and which congressional Republican leaders need him to back if it has a chance of passing in the coming days. He also has yet to intervene in a standoff between the two chambers over a housing affordability package Republicans want to use as a centerpiece of their midterm messaging.

Here’s what we’ll be listening for:

— DHS deal or no deal?: Trump could make or break a potential agreement to end the DHS shutdown, which got a cool reception Tuesday on Capitol Hill across the board even ahead of Democrats’ expected counteroffer Wednesday.

Part of the proposal Republicans brokered with the White House includes attempts to morph sections of the SAVE America Act into a party-line budget reconciliation bill. But many conservatives see that a cop out from having to pass the full GOP elections overhaul bill, which does not currently have the votes to overcome the Senate filibuster. The House Freedom Caucus called it “gaslighting.”

Republicans are also getting a reality check on whether pursuing another reconciliation effort is even feasible. While Republicans are vowing to plow ahead, many predict the treacherous process will ultimately fail.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a Budget Committee member who chairs the Republican Steering Committee, predicted it would be “very difficult” to get the votes for reconciliation and compared it to a “pipe dream.”

— Housing stalemate: For weeks, Republicans have wanted the president to help resolve the impasse between the House and Senate over their competing housing proposals.

The stalemate doesn’t appear close to resolution, especially if Trump continues to stay out of the fight. House Republicans on Tuesday shot down one idea the Senate floated to get the House to accept its legislation. It would have attached a slate of community bank deregulatory bills to a separate cryptocurrency package.

“So our good stuff for their bad stuff — not sure I buy that,” said Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), who serves as vice chair of House Financial Services.

Despite Trump insisting earlier that Republicans don’t need to show they’re committed to lowering costs of everyday goods and services to win elections in November, plenty of GOP lawmakers worry about the political price of failing to enact a unified vision for making housing more affordable.

What else we’re watching:

— No polymarket for politicians?: Reps. Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.) and Adrian Smith (R-Neb.) will introduce bipartisan legislation Wednesday morning to prohibit members of Congress, the president, the vice president and others in the executive branch from trading in certain prediction markets, according to bill text shared exclusively with Blue Light News.

The Preventing Real-time Exploitation and Deceptive Insider Congressional Trading Act, or PREDICT Act, would also extend to dependents and spouses of lawmakers, senior congressional staff, political appointees and senior executive branch employees, including special government employees.

— Bipartisan energy in tax policy: The House Ways and Means Committee will mark up five bills with cross-party appeal Wednesday morning as Hill taxwriters consider what policies might be included in a year-end bipartisan tax package. Among the items on a docket is a measure that would allow taxpayers to temporarily write off disaster-related losses without itemizing their deductions.

Katherine Tully-McManus, Jennifer Scholtes, Jordain Carney, Meredith Lee Hill, Jasper Goodman and Bernie Becker contributed to this report.

Congress

Hegseth to brief House Republicans on White House goals for party-line package

Published

36 minutes ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is scheduled to give a classified briefing Wednesday to a group of House Republicans about the administration’s goals for military funding and another party-line reconciliation bill, according to three people granted anonymity to describe a private meeting.

The gathering will take place during the Republican Study Committee’s weekly lunch and be held in the House SCIF, underscoring the potentially sensitive nature of Hegseth’s planned presentation.

Lawmakers are expected to also press Hegseth on the agreement the Trump administration has reached with Iran to end the war.

Congress

Turek leads Hinson in Iowa Senate poll of likely general election voters

Published

6 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Iowa Democratic Senate nominee Josh Turek has a narrow lead over GOP rival Ashley Hinson in a new internal poll of likely general-election voters.

Turek leads Hinson 47 percent to 45 percent in the poll, conducted by Global Strategy Group from June 8-11 among 1,000 likely general election voters. The poll shows that Republicans have a 10-point edge in voter registration (42 percent to 32 percent) and an electorate that voted for Trump by 9 points (50 percent for Trump to 41 percent for Kamala Harris).

But the polling also shows President Donald Trump’s favorabilities underwater across the electorate, with 45 percent favorable and 52 percent unfavorable. Among registered independents, Trump is upside down 28 points.

Turek is “significantly outperforming the state’s underlying partisan dynamics,” Global Strategy Group’s Matt Canter & Ramzi Ebbini write in a memo first obtained by Blue Light News. “Republicans maintain substantial advantages in voter registration and party identification, yet Turek enters the general election ahead of Republican Ashley Hinson, with stronger personal favorability ratings, overperforming a generic Democrat, and with clear opportunities to expand his coalition as more voters become familiar with him.”

Some Republicans have acknowledged a concern about Iowa.

“There are some issues there that we got to deal with — the biggest one is trade — trade and tariffs,” said a Republican close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the obstacles.

In his early general election messaging, Turek has leaned into farmers’ frustrations.

“Josh Turek is winning this race because Iowans are sick and tired of multi-millionaire politicians like Ashley Hinson who sell out working families while they get rich,” Turek for Iowa campaign manager Brendan Koch said in a statement first shared with Blue Light News. “We will spend the next 134 days connecting with Iowans in every corner of the state and across the political spectrum to send a fighter for the working class to the U.S. Senate.”

Congress

Capitol agenda: House GOP races to make Recon 3.0 real

Published

7 hours ago

June 22, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Republicans have eight days to prove Reconciliation 3.0 might actually happen.

The House returns Tuesday with only eight legislative days before they break again for the July 4 holiday. If members want a realistic chance at fulfilling their self-imposed timeline for advancing the legislation before the end of July — when they pause work again for another five weeks — they need to move fast.

That means assembling, and then adopting, a budget resolution — the first step in unlocking the filibuster skirting power of the reconciliation process. It took Republicans months to advance such a blueprint during their two earlier reconciliation efforts this Congress.

House GOP leaders are tentatively planning another senior-level reconciliation meeting for Wednesday, according to three people involved in the talks granted anonymity to discuss private plans.

Still, the House is coming back with several other moving items to deal with this week, including promised briefings on the president’s Iran deal and a major housing affordability package GOP leadership wants to clear as soon as Wednesday.

Reconciliation talks also come as President Donald Trump is expected to join the Senate’s GOP lunch Wednesday, where he’ll likely continue pushing the chamber to pass his SAVE America Act or attach pieces of the GOP elections bill to the party-line legislation (an idea one of the bill’s biggest backers, Sen. Mike Lee, spiked Sunday).

Republicans involved with Reconciliation 3.0 discussions also warn they need to reach a final agreement on how to pay for the bill as well as what policy items will be included before GOP leaders can try to advance any budget resolution.

At this point, however, many fiscal hawks and at-risk incumbents are largely unhappy about how the discussions are coming along.

“It’s fake pay-fors for defense spending no one has fully agreed to and no meaningful reforms,” said one House Republican granted anonymity to discuss private talks.

Back on the other side of the Capitol, GOP senators have been in no rush to start working on a third party-line bill, especially as they are consumed with other political fires — like trying to confirm Jay Clayton as director of national intelligence to speed up a FISA reauthorization (more on that below).

Rep. Morgan Griffith said he was confident if the right policies are included in the House plan the Senate would then take it up — although he, too, acknowledged the challenges of a short timeline.

“If we do it right, yeah,” Griffith said. “There’s some interesting things out there that are being discussed that could make it a real possibility.”

What else we’re watching:

— OBAMA’S FEROCIOUS IRAN CRITIC SOFTER ON TRUMP DEAL: Tom Cotton, the No. 3 Senate Republican and chair of the chamber’s Intelligence panel, is not alone among GOP defense hawks in finding himself in an awkward position trying to defend Trump’s Iran deal after lambasting President Barack Obama’s a decade before. But the combination of his prior ferocity toward the Iranian regime and his current leadership responsibilities have put him into an especially tight spot.

— FIRST IN IC: DEMS WANT MORE OF JACK SMITH’S REPORT: Senate Judiciary Democrats are asking a federal court to unseal part of former special counsel Jack Smith’s report about his investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents after his first term. The request from the Senators comes as the Judiciary Committee is poised to call Smith to testify about his Biden-era cases before the end of this Congress. Republicans in the House and Senate have been investigating Smith’s work, alleging it amounted to a weaponization of the federal government against the then ex-president.

Jordain Carney and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.