Congress

GOP leaders struggle to keep $75B immigration plan narrow

Published

2 months ago

April 15, 2026

Senate Republicans plan to forge ahead next week with the first formal steps to pass a party-line immigration enforcement bill totaling $65 billion to $75 billion.

But as GOP leaders scramble to meet President Donald Trump’s June 1 deadline to clear a bill funding ICE and Border Patrol for more than three years, they are facing competing visions within their ranks for what else should be tacked on as the party runs out of time to score more legislative wins before the midterms.

“I think this is it. This is our shot,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told reporters Tuesday, predicting that Republicans would not end up enacting a third filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation bill before Election Day.

“And that’s why you sense some frustration among a lot of the senators,” he added. “Some of which has been voiced and a lot of which it hasn’t.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune laid out the up-to $75 billion price tag for the bill to reporters Tuesday. The bill’s topline was in the range of what Republicans had been telegraphing over the past week but could spark pushback from at least one fiscal hawk — Senate Homeland Security Chair Rand Paul — because it’s higher than the roughly $50 billion it would cost to fund immigration enforcement at current levels for three years.

The worry among some senior Republicans is that expanding the scope of the bill will slow down the process and complicate the measure’s chances of passing. Instead, they want to simply fund the immigration enforcement agencies not covered under the Senate-passed measure House Republicans are still waiting to clear, two months after funding first lapsed for all of the Department of Homeland Security, which houses the immigration agencies.

“We have members who want other things. I mean, I want other things,” Thune said Tuesday afternoon. “But obviously we have a specific mission and purpose here.”

Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C) is expected to release the budget resolution as soon as this week to set the general framework for the final package.

Senate GOP leaders are encouraging Republican senators to offer their ideas as amendments during the chamber’s marathon “vote-a-rama” debate, during which lawmakers are allowed to offer as many germane amendments as they wish.

“There was some suggestion that it ought to be a little broader and everything. I think that’s where the default position is, ‘Then put it in an amendment, and we’ll see if it can pass,’” West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the No. 4 Senate Republican, told reporters Tuesday afternoon.

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said Tuesday the chamber intends to vote “next week” on approving the fiscal blueprint that will allow them to later pass the party-line immigration enforcement bill.

Thune can lose three of his own members and still win on the floor with Vice President JD Vance as the tie-breaking vote, and Republicans are cautiously optimistic they will have the votes next week.

But some fiscal hawks aren’t yet backing down from their demand that the immigration enforcement bill be paid for, which could broaden the scope of the measure as well as the number of issues where Democrats could force tricky amendment votes.

Even if Senate Republicans succeed in adopting the budget framework next week, an identical budget measure also needs to clear the House. GOP hard-liners rejected the Senate’s last attempt to end the DHS shutdown and are now demanding that Republicans use the party-line reconciliation process to fund all of the department.

Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson had been expected to hold a weekly meeting Tuesday where they would discuss the path forward on DHS funding, among other issues. But Thune said the sitdown was punted to Wednesday because of scheduling issues.

Mia McCarthy and Calen Razor contributed to this report.

Congress

Thune is ‘hopeful’ Mitch McConnell will return this week

Published

1 hour ago

June 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday he hopes his predecessor as top Republican, Mitch McConnell, returns this week from a hospitalization.

Thune said he had not yet spoken directly with the 84-year-old Kentuckian but is getting “readouts from his staff.”

Asked about McConnell’s condition or if he knew if he would be back this week, Thune told reporters, “I’m hopeful that he’ll be back this week.”

A McConnell spokesperson said Sunday that he had been admitted to the hospital but did not provide details on his condition or why he was hospitalized — a break from recent prior instances where the seven-term senator was hospitalized.

A former McConnell staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity was told the senator was doing much better Monday without any further details on what put him in the hospital.

Daniel Desrochers contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate to confirm Jay Clayton as soon as Thursday

Published

4 hours ago

June 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate could vote as soon as Thursday on Jay Clayton’s nomination to serve as director of national intelligence — a lightning speed pace that will necessitate buy-in from all 100 senators.

Confirming Clayton could help shore up enough votes from Democrats to extend a government surveillance program that expired last Friday over opposition to Trump’s pick for acting director, Bill Pulte.

“He will come out of the committee Thursday, at least hopefully, and then if we get consent, we can move,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview Monday about Clayton, who Trump only nominated for the job late last week.

Democrats “ought to be happy with Clayton,” said Thune, adding that he’s a “good” and “solid” pick.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, floated Sunday to CBS News that Clayton could be confirmed this week if every senator cooperates.

Senate Intelligence will hold a hearing Wednesday on Clayton’s nomination. If every member of the panel agrees, he could then get a committee vote Thursday. Confirming Clayton on the Senate floor hours later would require getting agreement from every senator to speed up the process. Opposition from a single member will punt Clayton’s confirmation to next week.

Confirming Clayton Thursday would, crucially, limit — and potentially circumvent — Pulte from becoming acting director of national intelligence, which Trump has slated to take place Friday, June 19.

The president’s decision to put Pulte in charge after Tulsi Gabbard’s departure at the helm of the Office of National Intelligence sparked bipartisan pushback, with Democrats saying they will withhold support for extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act while Pulte is in the acting role. Congress allowed the key government spy authority lapse last Friday without a deal.

Trump threw another curveball into a FISA extension over the weekend when he posted on social media that he was against reauthorizing Section 702 unless a GOP elections bill is attached. That bill, known as the SAVE America Act, does not have the votes to get through Congress.

Thune threw cold water Monday on tying the two issues together.

“Yeah, he’s, as you know, passionate about getting that done and wants to use every opportunity to take a shot at it,” Thune said of Trump and his desire to enact the elections bill.

But, Thune said, “we can’t get FISA done” if the policies are linked.

Congress

Senate eyes vote on updated housing affordability legislation

Published

6 hours ago

June 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Majority Leader John Thune is planning to put an updated version of a bipartisan housing affordability bill on the Senate floor for a vote this week, according to two people familiar with the bill dynamics and two Senate Democratic aides granted anonymity to discuss ongoing plans.

The version of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act that the Senate will vote on will include most of the House-passed language, including a provision restricting large institutional investors from buying single-family homes. The legislation would also add back Senate bills that were dropped from the House package that passed last month, the two people and the two aides said.

The Senate legislation comes after talks between Thune, Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). The updated Senate package was also discussed with the House and the White House, the aides said.

Still, it’s unclear if House leadership and the White House have signed off on the legislation.

The Senate and House have gone back and forth for months on language for a housing affordability bill as lawmakers on both sides look for a win to tout during a midterm election season dominated by cost-of-living issues.

Both chambers overwhelmingly passed their own versions of the housing bill — the Senate 89-10 in March, and the House 396-13 in May. The White House supported the Senate-passed bill and then backed the House-passed bill after it retained most of the Senate’s language on reining in private equity and other large Wall Street investors in the housing market — a top priority for President Donald Trump.

The Senate’s updated legislation would remove two of the House’s community banking deregulation bills due to budget scoring concerns, said two of the people familiar: two bills that would modify the Federal Deposit Insurance Act around failed insured depository institutions. The Senate bill also added back a provision to authorize the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program for seven years, as opposed to a permanent reauthorization in the Senate’s March legislation.

The Senate additionally re-inserted several upper-chamber priorities, including the BUILD NOW Act, which would incentivize communities to build more housing through the Community Development Block Grant program; the Rental Assistance Demonstration bill, which would raise the cap on housing authorities to convert voucher-based assistance; the Moving to Work bill, which would aim to add a new cohort of MTW public housing agencies; and the VALID Act, which would require Federal Housing Administration mortgage disclosures to include cost comparison information for veterans.

The package retains core wins for the leaders of both the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees and their members and reflects input from all four leaders of those panels, one of the people familiar said.