Congress
Blanche makes little headway with GOP critics of ‘anti-weaponization’ fund
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche struggled Thursday to quash GOP concerns over a newly announced $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund.
Blanche met privately with Senate Republicans as the administration and GOP leaders try to defuse a controversy that is complicating their push to quickly advance an immigration enforcement bill.
GOP leaders believe they have enough members who would support a proposal targeting the fund that it would ultimately be added into the filibuster-skirting bill, as POLITICO first reported Wednesday.
Asked if the briefing changed her mind, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a critic of the fund, told reporters, “No.”
Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) — who have also been critical of the fund — declined to comment. But two people granted anonymity to describe the meeting said the meeting did not go well for the administration and that Blanche was not persuasive.
Money for the fund isn’t included in the GOP’s immigration enforcement bill. But because the bill involves Justice Department funding and the Senate Judiciary Committee is involved in the bill, senators have a path to add language related to the fund into the bill with only 51 votes. Republicans did discuss possible guardrails they could put on the fund during the meeting.
Republicans have not yet finalized the bill they plan to put on the Senate floor, raising the possibility that the chamber could punt action until after a weeklong Memorial Day recess. Senate leaders could have attendance issues if they try to keep members in town past Friday afternoon.
Asked if they could still vote on the bill this week, Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) told reporters, “That’s being discussed.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) told reporters after leaving the meeting that leaders would likely decide “within the next hour or so” about whether to send members home and reconvene after the recess.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune declined to comment on the fund or on the ability to pass a bill this week as he left the meeting.
Congress
‘Use your majority’: In the unlikely event of a Supreme Court vacancy, Republicans are ready to act
Senate Republicans are unlikely to get a Supreme Court vacancy this year. They’re privately prepared for one, just in case.
A Democratic midterm triumph would carry massive implications for the final years of President Donald Trump’s presidency, including the prospect that the Senate could essentially shut down confirmations of his favored nominees. That’s a nightmare scenario for Republicans, who have viewed their reshaping of the federal judiciary as a crown jewel of Trump’s legacy.
The two oldest Supreme Court justices — 78-year-old Clarence Thomas and 76-year-old Samuel Alito — are both Republican appointees and reliable Trump allies, and key Senate Republicans said in recent interviews with Blue Light News they would support filling a high-court slot this year if one opens up.
“We would proceed quickly with such a vacancy,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
Signs that Republicans will need to spring into action are scarce. Alito told Bloomberg News in an interview published Tuesday that he would “stick around” at least until the court’s current term ends early next summer. Thomas, meanwhile, hasn’t publicly addressed his retirement plans in years and has otherwise given no signs of imminent plans to quit.
But if the GOP loses control of the Senate in the midterms, both men would face a mountain of pressure to consider stepping down, given the stakes. Democrats remain bitter over the Republican blockade of President Barack Obama’s final Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, and could block a fourth Trump justice.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in an interview over the summer that part of his pitch to recruit candidates was “two words that make a huge difference: Supreme Court.” Speaking to reporters last week, Schumer indicated that Democrats would use their majority to block judicial nominees they view as too extreme.
“One of the reasons we need to make sure that we do everything we can to take back the Senate is [to] not let Trump put such horrible justices, MAGA justices, on the Supreme Court and the lower courts,” he said.
A post-Nov. 3 announcement would be the first time since the 1922 retirement of Mahlon Pitney that a Supreme Court justice announced his or her departure in the lame-duck period after a midterm election, according to the Congressional Research Service.
Such an announcement would kick off a chaotic sprint on Capitol Hill, giving Republicans just five scheduled session weeks to cobble together 50 votes for a Trump nominee.
Those in a position to act said recently they would certainly try — and there is recent precedent for doing it quickly: Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed just 38 days after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s September 2020 death.
Like Thune, Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said “of course” Senate Republicans would try to fill a post-election vacancy.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a frequent Trump critic who could single-handedly bottle up a nominee in the Judiciary Committee, said he would “absolutely” support filling an end-of-year vacancy.
“You’ve got to use your majority position to take that vote,” he said.
But Tillis was among many in the GOP who doubt senators will have a slot to fill. “I can’t think of anything other than health,” he said, that would cause a justice to quickly step down.
Thune said that if a justice had plans to retire, “They would have done it already.”
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, another potentially pivotal vote, also left the door open to a post-election confirmation. The only Senate Republican running this year in a state won by Kamala Harris, Collins pointed to her longstanding position that “as long as it’s not close to a presidential election that we should proceed to consider nominees.”
“I don’t know why you assume there will be one,” she added. “I haven’t heard that will happen.”
Collins knows as well as anyone the perils of taking up high-court nominations in an election year. She cited the too-close-to–Election Day rule in voting against Barrett’s nomination as she stood for reelection in 2020.
But Democrats are still hammering her decision to vote for Brett Kavanaugh a month before the 2018 midterms — even after his nomination was thrown into turmoil by allegations of sexual misconduct and assault which he denied.
Troy Jackson, Collins’ Democratic opponent, posted on X this week that Collins “cannot be trusted with voting on our next Supreme Court Justice.”
The campaign-trail sparring reflects just how partisan and contentious high-court nomination battles have grown, and plenty of senators are hoping to avoid a knock-down-drag-out fight on the heels of a similarly nasty midterm campaign.
In a sign of the battle scars left from the fights over Kavanaugh, Barrett and the most recent Supreme Court confirmee — Ketanji Brown Jackson — some lawmakers said they weren’t ready to even entertain the thought of a lame-duck confirmation sprint.
“Not a hypothetical I’m ready to talk about,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who is expected to lead Democrats on the Judiciary Committee next year.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who would be a closely watched vote, made a quick escape when she was asked about the scenario.
“Oh, gosh,” she said. “You’re giving me the chills.”
Chris Marquette contributed to this report.
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.) is jumping into the race to lead House education committee Democrats.
The Oregon Democrat officially declared she will run to be the top Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee in a Dear Colleague letter sent to members of the Democratic caucus Tuesday and shared with Blue Light News.
Bonamici’s jump into the race marks another challenger for Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), the panel’s current ranking member. Rep. Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.) is also running for the panel’s top spot.
Bonamici wrote in the letter that she is “ready to bring a fresh and collaborative approach to invigorate this Committee with a plan to champion the education and labor priorities of our Caucus. With my legal background, I’m prepared to use all of the power of Congress to hold Trump and his cronies, including Secretary Linda McMahon, accountable for the harm they have caused.”
Bonamici introduced a resolution to impeach the Education secretary because of McMahon’s efforts to dismantle the department without the approval of Congress.
Tuesday’s announcement comes after Bonamici told POLITICO last month that she was not ruling out a run for committee leadership and was having conversations about it. Her leadership run now comes as Democrats believe they will win the House majority in November.
The Oregon Democrat, who currently serves as top Democrat on the K-12 subcommittee, said the whole panel “must provide a bold and visionary approach while fighting Trump’s corruption and assault on public education, unions, and working families” if they take the majority.
BETHLEHEM, Pennsylvania — Speaker Mike Johnson defended President Donald Trump’s use of taxpayer funded political-themed ads ahead of the election, but he said it was “good” that MAGA Inc. would pay for them going forward.
Johnson said Tuesday that he’s only seen one of the Trump ads and that it “looked like a public service announcement.”
“It was talking about America’s greatness and the economy coming back, and it wasn’t a plea to vote for anybody. It was just — it was pro Americana,” Johnson told Blue Light News during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania.
But he added: “If the Super PAC’s funding them, that’s good.”
Trump said Monday that he or his aligned super PAC would pay for the series of taxpayer-funded ads featuring him in the final few weeks of the midterms. His decision came after bipartisan backlash, including from some GOP candidates like Brinker Harding in Nebraska’s 2nd District publicly broke with the president and said they shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer money.
Still, asked if Trump should refund taxpayers the money already spent on the ads, Johnson demurred. He said previous Democratic administrations have run PSAs as well, though Democrats argue these ads violate federal laws against using taxpayer money for “publicity or propaganda purposes.”
“Look, they’re making their decisions on funding campaigns and the content of all of it,” Johnson said of the president’s team.
“I’m going to tell you the president is deeply vested,” Johnson added, noting Trump was out on the campaign trail for Republicans.
Johnson spoke alongside Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R-Pa.) during a law enforcement event in the perennial bellwether of Pennsylvania’s 7th District. He called Mackenzie’s race one of the “top three in the country” and warned it would be “enormously expensive.”
He later argued that Democrats, if they win the House majority, would roll back GOP work on the economy and “empower our enemies around the world at the worst possible time.”
“That would roil the markets … if Democrats turned Congress into lawfare on steroids,” Johnson said.
Pennsylvania is the first of seven states that Johnson plans to visit this week as he continues his midterm campaign blitz.
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