Congress

Hill Republicans want Trump to solve their internal problems

Published

4 months ago

April 29, 2026

House infighting is threatening to sink the GOP agenda on Capitol Hill. Now Republicans are hoping their most effective whip — President Donald Trump — is ready to come off the sidelines.

The push for the White House to take a more active role comes as the GOP finds itself stalemated on several fronts with no sign that they will be able to navigate a way forward without Trump’s direct intervention.

The House floor was effectively closed for business Tuesday as days of internal negotiations failed to produce a deal among competing GOP factions, allowing Speaker Mike Johnson to extend a soon-to-expire surveillance law or pass the much-anticipated farm bill.

Meanwhile, there’s growing frustration among Senate Republicans and Trump allies that the House hasn’t yet taken up their bill funding most of the Department of Homeland Security after Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Instead, in a bid to satisfy his own members, Johnson wants to make small changes to the bill, which would further drag out the partial shutdown that is already on day 74.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who is careful to avoid telling the House what to do, was uncharacteristically direct Tuesday with his frustration over the other chamber’s refusal to pass a DHS bill senators have already twice passed unanimously. He suggested Trump needed to intervene.

“We’re trying as best we can to coordinate strategy with the House, but … it’s going to take, obviously, I think the involvement of the White House to bust some of these things loose,” Thune said.

He said to House Republicans who are still criticizing the Senate’s plan, “I guess my question is, what was the alternative? That’s what I said to them at the time. I mean, tell me, give me a better option.”

Republicans on the House Rules Committee agreed Tuesday night to tee up the votes on the spy-powers extension and the farm bill, among other measures, but there’s no guarantee the rest of the House GOP will fall in line Wednesday on the floor.

Trump hasn’t been completely on the sidelines as the House has floundered. He sent a Truth Social message Monday encouraging the House to support a separate budget plan aimed at providing immigration enforcement funding — part of a two-track plan to end the shutdown. His budget office issued a memo Tuesday evening urging support of the Senate-passed legislation funding the rest of the department, which could run out of money to pass employees as soon as next week.

Separately, White House deputies tried earlier this month to pressure House GOP hard-liners to back down in the fight over extending a spy law targeting foreigners abroad known as Section 702.

What’s missing in the minds of some Republican lawmakers is the type of sustained, one-on-one arm-twisting that Trump deployed on House Republicans last year on several occasions — including to push through the GOP’s tax-cuts-focused megabill and to get Johnson elected speaker.

Trump has instead been focused in recent days on the state visit from King Charles III of the United Kingdom, not to mention the military campaign in Iran he launched two months ago alongside Israel.

“Mike’s clearly having to wrestle with his House members, and it’s not his fault,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “He’s good, but he can’t work miracles. And I think the president’s going to have to step in.”

A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Thune’s call for more presidential involvement on Capitol Hill.

One House Republican, who has been in touch with Trump officials and was granted anonymity to describe behind-the-scenes conversations, said the White House wants “DHS fixed this week.” But so far Trump’s arm’s-length overtures haven’t worked with House hard-liners who want to expand the scope of the party-line immigration enforcement bill to encompass other conservative priorities.

Johnson has taken steps to assuage the holdouts. He has offered to attach a key hard-right priority — a permanent ban on the creation of a government-sponsored digital currency — to the spy-law extension before sending it to the Senate. The speaker is separately seeking to appease a group of farm-state members by attaching a year-round ethanol fuel measure to the bill authorizing agriculture programs.

Thune, in an interview, shot down the idea that a Section 702 renewal with a digital currency ban attached could pass the Senate, calling it a “bad idea” that is “not happening.”

Underscoring Johnson’s dilemma, the comments sparked a public rebuke from one of the conservative hard-liners, Missouri Rep. Eric Burlison, who said, “I don’t care what Thune thinks.”

Plenty of Republicans — both centrists and conservatives — are growing frustrated that Johnson isn’t just putting the Senate-approved DHS funding bill, the other part of the party’s two-part plan, on the floor. The bill includes funding for Secret Service paychecks, among other key security-related matters.“This is batshit,” another House Republican said about Johnson’s plan to push through several other bills this week but not yet the DHS fix.

House GOP leaders want to put a reworked DHS funding bill on the House floor Thursday — but only after they clear the separate budget resolution Wednesday.

Scores of conservatives have threatened to tank the Senate-passed bill unless the speaker strips out language that explicitly zeroes out funding for agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But many Republicans believe those holdouts would quickly cave — and end the record-long DHS shutdown — if Trump would simply apply some pressure.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said in an interview Trump should get more personally involved in pushing House Republicans on both the DHS legislation and the surveillance bill. Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), meanwhile, said in a statement it was “absurd” DHS was still shut down and that it is “beyond time to open the government.”

Thune said Tuesday he also believed House Republicans should “just pass the bill” as GOP leaders discussed whether they could “massage” the contentious ICE funding language to the hard-liners’ liking without threatening its rapid passage in the Senate.

According to two administration officials and a person close to the White House who were granted anonymity to candidly describe the situation, there is little optimism inside DHS that the shutdown will end quickly.

“That is really leading people to question why we even do [our jobs] anymore if Congress can’t do their jobs,” one of the administration officials said.

Within DHS, the feeling is “we all know what the end result is going to be, so just do it — make it happen,” the person close to the White House said. “Instead it continues to drag on and drag on.”

Congress

How Talarico is countering Trump’s midterms convention

Published

3 days ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

James Talarico is planning to counterprogram President Donald Trump’s GOP midterms convention in Dallas with a focus on affordability.

The idea from the Texas Democratic Senate candidate and seminarian: host a statewide “Love Thy Neighbor” food drive to offer a contrast with Republicans coming to town and highlight the high cost of groceries, according to plans shared first with Blue Light News.

“Next week, billionaire mega-donors and their puppet politicians will gather at a convention in Dallas to clink champagne glasses and toast their own corruption. They’re paying $20,000 for entry to a Billionaire Ball celebrating corrupt tariffs, billionaire tax breaks, and a new forever war that are all driving grocery costs through the roof,” Talarico said in a statement to Blue Light News. “We’ll be doing something different. We’re bringing Republicans, Democrats, and Independents together to collect groceries for our neighbors who have been screwed over by corrupt politicians.”

The campaign said it will “mobilize volunteers to collect, sort, and donate groceries for middle class Texans struggling with the high price of groceries.” The event will last from Sunday, Sept. 6 through Wednesday, Sept. 9 — the same day the GOP convention kicks off.

Talarico is also expected to field media interviews in a large warehouse near the convention.

“Texans across the political spectrum will come together to build community, show up for their neighbors, and take power back for working people,” the campaign said in a statement.

A recent poll conducted by Texas Public Opinion Research poll released last week showed Talarico leading ,his opponent Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, 48 percent to 42 percent.

Trump this week said he would campaign for Paxton soon.

Congress

‘I don’t think anyone is really comfortable’: Democrat leading on AI raises alarms at Trump, Zuckerberg call

Published

3 days ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A House Democrat trying to lead her party on artificial intelligence policy sent a warning shot Friday to tech CEOs trying to undermine efforts to regulate the fast-growing technology.

In an interview, Rep. Lori Trahan raised alarm bells over a POLITICO report detailing attempts by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to personally discourage President Donald Trump from moving ahead with plans to establish an independent AI regulator modeled after the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA.

“I don’t think anyone is really comfortable when they see tech executives who are sitting on the stage at the president’s inauguration, and have had to pay millions of dollars to this fund and that fund, calling the shots,” said the Massachusetts Democrat.

Allowing Zuckerberg to call the shots on the proposed AI commission would be tantamount to “a complete abdication of Congress,” Trahan continued. She also suggested would use her perch on the House Energy and Commerce Committee to work with other Democrats to haul in industry executives like Zuckerberg to testify, should Democrats win back the House majority in the midterms.

“Congress’ job is to do oversight and to have those hearings,” she said. “And I think we would learn a lot from those hearings so that we can put pen to paper on thoughtful proposals. So yes, there have been a number of people, myself included, who have called for those hearings, and I think we’re going to continue to do that.”

Trahan is poised to be a major player in the coming weeks and months when it comes to AI, especially if Democrats prevail in the November elections and are forced to solidify a position on the subject; the party is currently all over the map.

Unlike other Democrats who have retreated to their corners to work on partisan proposals, Trahan has gone out on a limb by crossing the aisle to broker a deal on a bipartisan AI safety bill with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) — a package that was originally met with disdain by members of both parties.

She announced this week she would opt out of a run for a place in House Democratic leadership after being widely expected to make a play in the next Congress — in part, she said, to continue working on AI issues.

But Trahan’s comments Friday illustrate the deep distrust among Democrats, herself included, over the GOP approach to AI regulation — from Republicans waffling on whether they support the proliferation of data centers to Trump’s recent call with Zuckerberg.

Her calls are consistent with left-leaning members like Rep. Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat and chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who has been at the forefront of the most aggressive proposals to crack down on top tech companies.

“The CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI say that cutting edge AI could be as dangerous as nuclear weapons,” Casar said Thursday on X in response to the Blue Light News report. “But Trump is conspiring with billionaires for this technology to be regulated like … Hollywood movies.”

Trahan said Friday that “reasonable people can disagree on what regulatory construct we come up with” governing development and use of AI.

But, she added, “what I don’t think the American people agree with is that Mark Zuckerberg and President Trump are going to figure that out on a phone call.”

Congress

House Dem election leader’s message to states: Count faster

Published

3 days ago

September 4, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Democrats’ top election leader has a message for states ahead of the midterms: count faster.

“We are, I think, nicely trying to encourage people to do their balloting as quickly as possible, and that means hiring additional staff so that it doesn’t call into question results,” Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, said in a Thursday interview with Blue Light News.

The advice is just one part of Morelle’s efforts to secure the midterm elections. He said Democrats have wargamed over 150 scenarios of how the Trump administration could attempt to interfere or complicate the November elections and its certification. He is encouraging states to have a “degree of urgency” when counting ballots to stave off Republican-led conspiracy theories about the reasons for delays.

Morelle said he is leaning on states to staff up on election officials to facilitate speedy ballot counting while emphasizing the process should still be “done properly,” “fairly” and that “we don’t want people with cast ballots not to have their ballots counted.” He is going to Los Angeles next week to deliver that message and meet with election security experts and election administrators — though he did not specify whom he is meeting with or where.

“We are trying to gently encourage people to staff up,” he said. Morelle added that if Democrats take the House majority, they’d “push for more resources for local and state administrators so they can hire additional capacity.”

Morelle has other big plans in the majority, including cracking down on dark money in politics, protecting voting rights and most notably, working on a bipartisan voter identification bill.

Asked whether he could accept some form of voter identification as part of a larger bipartisan elections package, Morelle said, “I’m personally not opposed to some form of voter ID,” adding that he has opposed multiple Republican-led proposals to tighten up identification requirements.

“I don’t know where my colleagues on the Democrat side will be, but I think voters think, ‘Okay, you show your ID for just tons of things. Is it really that much of a burden?’” he said. “And if it is, we’ll get state issued IDs or federally issued IDs to people who can’t afford it. So I do think that there’s hope for a bipartisan way forward, and I’ll be anxious to work with colleagues to do it.”