Congress

GOP leaders cancel Friday votes as House agenda hangs in balance

Published

3 hours ago

June 25, 2026

House Republican leaders have canceled planned Friday votes as GOP hard-liners continue threatening to block legislative action over an elections bill that is stalled in the Senate, according to a notice sent to members Thursday.

Members are expected to leave town after a 1 p.m. vote Thursday, and it’s possible they might not return Monday as planned: Speaker Mike Johnson is hoping to discuss the legislative agenda with President Donald Trump at an afternoon meeting in hopes of brokering a solution that will allow the House to resume voting next week.

If not, the House could join the Senate on an extended recess, not returning till mid-July, two people granted anonymity to describe internal conversations said.

Congress

Raskin launches discharge effort to formally block ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund’

Published

4 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is launching a campaign to force a floor vote on legislation that would formally block the Trump administration’s $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

The so-called No Carte Blanche Act — a tongue-in-cheek nod to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — also would also explicitly bar payouts from the Judgement Fund, a pre-existing account for settlements with the United States, to people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

While Blanche, who will sit for a confirmation hearing July 15 to run the Justice Department in a more permanent capacity, recently told lawmakers that the administration was abandoning the effort amid bipartisan backlash, he has refused to put that pledge in a written declaration to Congress.

“This is why Congress must act to comprehensively shut down this shameful shakedown once and for all,” Raskin, of Maryland, said in a statement. “The people’s representatives must decide whether to uphold the rule of law and protect taxpayer dollars—or stand aside as this unprecedented corruption spins out of control.”

Raskin is attempting to compel a floor vote on his bill through a discharge petition, where 218 signatures in support will require Speaker Mike Johnson to bring the measure up for a vote. It’s a maneuver members of both parties have deployed with success in recent months due to the GOP’s slim majority — and it’s possible it could work this time, too, with a small number of House Republicans on record opposing the fund.

It would likely face an uphill battle getting the necessary 60 votes in the Senate to become law, however: An earlier attempt from Democrats to block the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” from going into effect failed in a 50-49 vote.

The fund was created out of a settlement from President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the federal government over the leak of his tax returns. While it was purportedly intended to provide financial compensation to individuals deemed victims of “lawfare,” critics worried it was designed to reward Trump’s allies.

Also as part of the settlement agreement, Trump, his family and businesses would be freed from any current audits of their taxes. Raskin’s legislation would also block that provision.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Johnson tries to clean up Trump’s Hill mess

Published

6 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s obsession with the SAVE America Act has hurled Congress into indefinite gridlock.

Senators are gone until July 13 after starting their Independence Day recess a few days early.

Now House Republican lawmakers are looking toward Speaker Mike Johnson, who will Thursday head to the White House to try to convince the president to salvage the GOP’s legislative agenda.

The president’s insistence Congress pass the controversial election security legislation has ground both chambers to a halt.

The deadlock threatens to derail a host of other legislative efforts Republicans and the White House hoped to complete in the coming weeks, including a sweeping reconciliation bill filled with potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in Iran war military funding, billions of dollars in relief for farmers, fiscal 2027 funding bills and the annual defense policy bill.

“I’d like to celebrate victories, not come up with reasons why we failed,” Sen. Kevin Cramer said in an interview, joining other Republicans in venting frustration after Trump scrapped a planned signing of a major housing affordability bill Wednesday.

“We’ve demonstrated a lot of dysfunction lately,” he said.

Wednesday’s explosive lunch with Trump and GOP senators probably didn’t help.

“The president came to the Capitol to do what he thinks Senate Republican leadership can’t do: flip votes on SAVE and nuking the filibuster,” a senior Senate GOP aide told Jordain.

“He left with the same number of votes that existed when he arrived — possibly fewer.”

Now eyes are on Johnson, who has lost control of the floor as hard-liners demand the Senate pass the elections overhaul.

He’s keeping the House in session ahead of his 2 p.m. Trump meeting in hopes of salvaging plans to put several bills on the floor this week — including a pair of fiscal 2027 spending measures.

But if Johnson and Trump can’t reach a compromise, GOP leadership may cancel all votes for the remainder of the week and next week, too.

That would further imperil their plans for another party-line reconciliation bill and the $88 billion supplement funding request the White House transmitted Wednesday.

What else we’re watching:

— JOHNSON’S PITCH FOR RECON 3.0 FALLS SHORT: 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 Trump’s doomed elections bill. So far, their pitch is falling short. Members who attended a meeting with House Budget Republicans Wednesday argued the REAL ID grant program Johnson proposed was no substitute for enacting the full SAVE America Act. And fiscal hawks on the panel warned they would oppose any budget resolution unless it’s paid for on a yearly basis, and without budgeting gimmicks.

— TRUMP’S $88B ASK FOR IRAN WAR, FARM AID: The White House sent Congress Wednesday a much-awaited request for emergency funding to cover military operations in Iran, farm assistance and disaster assistance. But the proposal could complicate House Republicans’ pursuit of a third party-line spending package, which was supposed to be centered around $350 billion in defense funding that Democrats wouldn’t support. The request for tens of billions of dollars in extra war spending comes as the House Appropriations panel Wednesday advanced a $1.1 trillion base budget plan for the Pentagon. Taken together, the three efforts represent a record-breaking roughly $1.5 trillion military budget, about a 50 percent hike from this year’s level.

Jordain Carney, Mia McCarthy, Meredith Lee Hill, Connor O’Brien and Grace Yarrow contributed to this report.

Congress

The Dems already had AOC. Now they have DAC.

Published

8 hours ago

June 25, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — After thrashing incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, Darializa Avila Chevalier is poised to become Republicans’ next priority punching bag.

Also known as DAC, Avila Chevalier has said she’s skeptical of deportation, borders and prisons, tweeted about using the American flag as a napkin, and expressed sympathy for Russia during its invasion of Ukraine. Those public remarks, and many more, already have GOP politicians and operatives in full-on attack mode. They have also left some Democrats worried that Republicans have found a potent new foil for the midterms.

The path she’s taking bears an uncanny resemblance to another democratic socialist firebrand who’s moderated her rhetoric and positions substantially since ascending to Congress eight years ago.

Like DAC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unseated another long-term incumbent to get to the House — and also instantly became a boogeyman for the right.

But as Ocasio-Cortez continues to moderate with an eye toward the mainstream, Avila Chevalier is storming onto the national political scene with a similar anti-establishment bent — and a very different dogma. And Republicans are trying to make her and her future democratic socialist colleagues a tool in their arsenal to defend the House this year.

“This is a very real problem in which the Democratic Party has been taken over by socialists,” said Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, who represents a suburban New York House seat that’s one of the most vulnerable in the country. “This is not something they’re going to be able to just run and hide from.”

Avila Chevalier, a doctoral student in sociology, helped organize the 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University that sent the campus into chaos and provided a national platform for the left’s discontent over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

On the trail, Avila Chevalier said her old tweets don’t represent her current views and that she’s focused on lowering the cost of living in her district, shifting the focus to “babies, not bombs.”

Her past comments, though, have made some in the Democratic Party uneasy, despite her apologies and assertions she’s changed (she also affirmed during the campaign that she still believes all deportations are wrong, including of undocumented immigrants convicted of serious crimes like murder and rape). And while there are parallels to Ocasio-Cortez in terms of their shared rise to prominence, many view the newcomer as a few steps farther left than the four-term incumbent, who’s frequently floated as a contender for senator and president.

Liam Kerr, co-founder of centrist Democratic group WelcomePAC, told Blue Light News that Ocasio-Cortez and Avila Chevalier are both products of a broader wave of insurgent Democrats that has risen since the election of President Donald Trump.

“If AOC was this Tea Party’s Ted Cruz, yes, DAC is this Tea Party’s MTG,” he said, referring to former Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. “It’s less substance and more about a sense that this person is unhinged and indefensible.”

Ocasio-Cortez’s team declined to comment for this article. In a social media post, Ocasio-Cortez congratulated the congressional primary winners, writing that she looks “forward to working together as a delegation as we fight for working families across New York.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks with reporters outside the U.S. Capitol on June 9, 2026.

In a statement, Avila Chevalier’s campaign manager Ilona Duverge said: “We didn’t just run a campaign for better leadership in this district. We reminded people what the Democratic Party could be. After 2024, the lesson is simple: listen to your base. Working people don’t want scapegoats. They want a party that actually fights for them.”

In the waning days of the campaign, City & State dubbed Avila Chevalier “like AOC, but to the left.” When asked in a recent interview what her reaction was when she saw that, she downplayed the comparison.

“I think my reaction has been the same to all the comparisons I have gotten to anyone in political office right now,” she said. “Early on it was like, ‘Oh, are you going to be the next Zohran Mamdani?’ And I was like, ‘I’m going to be the Darializa Avila Chevalier.’ That is who I have always been. And that’s who I will be.”

Beyond Avila Chevalier, at least eight state legislative candidates backed by either the Democratic Socialists of America or New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani won in New York on Tuesday night.

Aber Kawas, a Queens community organizer who won one of those seats, is now facing renewed scrutiny for saying the long-term effects of capitalism, racism and white supremacy and Islamophobia resulted in the 9/11 attacks.

In another House Democratic primary in the city — for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat — Mamdani’s longtime DSA ally, Assemblymember Claire Valdez, won in a blowout against Velázquez’s handpicked successor, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso. Reynoso is the former co-chair of the city Council’s progressive caucus, but he never joined the city’s DSA chapter, the political home of Valdez and Mamdani.

“Democrats have a Bolshevik revolution going on in their primaries,” Rep. Richard Hudson, the chair of the House Republicans’ campaign arm, told fellow Republicans in a closed-door House GOP meeting Wednesday, according to three people in the room, granted anonymity to discuss the event.

House Speaker Mike Johnson also said the “radical” wins Tuesday night should spur GOP lawmakers to dig in their heels and fundraise.

The ascent of Avila Chevalier and her socialist colleagues also planted the seeds for more Democratic establishment displacement. The co-leader of the city’s DSA chapter, for instance, expressed regret for not supporting a primary of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

When asked by a reporter Wednesday if he’s worried about a primary challenge in 2028 from a Mamdani-endorsed candidate, Jeffries replied: “When you ask me a serious question, I’ll give you a serious answer.”

The left’s rise also means the once-extreme Ocasio-Cortez is now on the ideological periphery of a new insurgent wave as she appears to position herself for higher office.

Ocasio-Cortez did not endorse in either Valdez or Avila Chevalier’s races. Speaking to reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday, she said her focus was on the 14 down-ballot candidates she did support: “I think I’m going to take a beat and really enjoy their success, and we’ll see what happens from there.”

Mamdani, the DSA and the left-leaning group Justice Democrats took on major roles to boost Avila Chevalier and Valdez. Mamdani’s move against Espaillat, as well as Velázquez’s successor of choice, upset Democratic power brokers.

Asked by Blue Light News on Tuesday if he believes rank-and-file DSA members are angry with Ocasio-Cortez for not endorsing in those two congressional primaries, Mamdani replied, “I think that AOC is somebody that has inspired so many across our city and our country in the fight for working people, and I think she continues to do so, and I think we’ll see that in the results.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani at the Get Out The Vote rally on June 18, 2026, with his endorsed congressional candidates.

The mayor also expressed doubt that Avila Chevalier will morph into an effective boogeyman for Republicans in swing districts.

“We’ve heard from Republicans time and again that they are going to try and make these candidates the face of the Democratic Party,” Mamdani said Wednesday morning. “To them, I say that we are ready for that because for far too long we’ve been told that it’s not possible to fight for working people and win. These candidates have shown that they can. Let the Republicans talk about that more.”

A political consultant close to senior congressional Democrats agreed that such attacks won’t work in the current economic climate.

“In normal times, we should be concerned about attacks like that. In normal times, that probably would work,” said the consultant, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “But when the economy is this bad, it’s not going to work … [The GOP’s] best bet is to try to distract and focus on a random local candidate like Darializa, but the reality is that there’s a litany of horrific things that Republicans have done under this president and that’s what voters are going to care about.”

Andrew Bard Epstein, a top adviser to both Valdez and Mamdani, felt the same way — and then took a shot at Lawler, who faces a challenge in November from Army veteran Cait Conley.

“I don’t live in the 17th District, but I would think voters there care about costs of living and stopping chaos in the world,” Epstein said, referring to Lawler’s district. “Mike Lawler has just cosigned a disastrous war with Iran, which has raised prices and destabilized the world and has left both Iranian civilians and U.S. service members dead. They are the extremists.”

Still, some moderate Democrats are concerned. Matt Bennett, co-founder of centrist group Third Way, said he’s worried Avila Chevalier will become a “lightning rod” in the way Republicans like Greene and Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert did.

“She can live all day on cable news if she feels like it, and will have a huge social media following, and everything she does will be amplified by Republicans,” he said. “There’s a real risk of her becoming a national figure, even though she will have no impact whatsoever on actual legislating.”

Meredith Lee Hill and Ali Bianco contributed to this report.