Congress

Trump’s agenda is about to hit a make-or-break moment

Published

1 year ago

January 27, 2025

House Republicans are heading to President Donald Trump’s Miami-area resort for their annual policy retreat. They’re not going there for the weather.

Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP members have major decisions to make over the coming days that will determine whether Trump and Republicans can deliver on their sweeping legislative agenda before the 2026 midterms. They’re already running behind.

The biggest task for the gathering at Trump National Doral: Finalize a budget blueprint plan for the massive, party-line bill they’re planning, touching energy, border security and tax policy.

But to do that, Republicans need to decide what will go in that package — with the price tag of Trump’s priorities reaching $10 trillion over 10 years — versus what might be included in a separate, bipartisan government funding bill that will be negotiated with Democrats over the next seven weeks. The fate of a necessary debt ceiling increase is top of mind.

Johnson has been carefully collecting member feedback for weeks while privately debating a host of options with GOP leaders. But House Republicans are growing impatient and want to know the game plan.

“We need to have a sense of urgency with the debt ceiling coming,” said Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.), a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus. “I hope there’s options at this point.”

The House Budget Committee is set to meet and take up the fiscal blueprint for the GOP agenda when lawmakers return to Washington next week. Adopting an identical blueprint in the House and Senate is a prerequisite for unlocking the budget reconciliation process that allows Republicans to sidestep a filibuster by Democrats.

Johnson last week indicated he’s planning to present more detailed plans to GOP members and discuss the reconciliation package, government funding for fiscal 2025, a debt-limit hike, California wildfire aid, border security money “and more” — including a potential bipartisan deal with Democrats that could encompass multiple parts of that puzzle.

“We’re looking at all options,” Johnson said of a larger funding deal with Democrats, adding that no decisions have been made.

But many Republicans are skeptical they’ll leave the retreat with concrete plans in hand. Some GOP members initially planned to skip the gathering, opting instead for an official trip to Africa, but those plans ended up getting canceled, according to two people granted anonymity to talk about planning for the closed-door event.

The planned retreat discussions have been tailored to show attending members the possibilities for the way forward and to take their temperatures on potential spending cuts, according to three Republicans with direct knowledge of the planning. Leaders will have to carefully balance sometimes competing interests from various GOP factions.

Johnson looks on during a press conference Wednesday at Republican National Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill.

Committee chairs will present their proposals for the reconciliation package and answer member questions during a series of breakout sessions Tuesday.

The reconciliation process will be the subject of a plenary session hosted by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and chairs on Wednesday morning. They’re set to then pile into buses and head back to the airport just before noon Wednesday.

“In my world, there’s some, ‘All right, this can be part of reconciliation, this can’t be part.’ And then once you get what the doable is, then you start figuring out what the legislative language is,” said Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.).

Republicans can expect to get a message of urgency Monday night, when Trump himself will address them at his resort.

“That will certainly be a highlight for us,” said Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), head of the party campaign committee, adding that Trump’s “fun to be around” and that retreats generally allow Republicans to “get together away from all the chaos” in Washington.

But he acknowledged it’s not just another GOP gathering.

“This one is particularly important because we have to hammer out what our plan is on reconciliation,” Hudson said. “So I’m hopeful we can get to a point where we can all agree and get ready to get back here and go to work.”

Beyond being a team-building exercise, party retreats can also serve as an early-warning system for potential threats to the agenda.

Eight years ago, Republicans gathered in Philadelphia to plot out their plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a more conservative alternative. In one contentious closed-door session — one that was secretly recorded and leaked to media outlets — members expressed serious trepidations about how leaders were planning to go about it.

Seven months later, the push for the health care overhaul imploded when the party could not unite around a plan. Leaders ended up having to abandon it and move on to a package of tax cuts — one they now have to renew.

This year, there aren’t the same sort of fundamental objections to core agenda items. But there are serious disagreements that members have to work through — most of them over how to pay for the massive bill.

For example, Republicans on the Armed Services Committee are deeply opposed to Guthrie’s proposal to restore the spectrum auction authority of the Federal Communications Commission as they try to balance the promise of advanced wireless technology and the needs of the military. Guthrie said he planned to use the retreat to work through the impasse. And there are some members — especially on Johnson’s right flank — who are expecting trillions of dollars in spending cuts. They’re also wary that his plan for one huge bill comes at the cost of delays and the risk the entire package could blow up.

“I was kind of in favor, honestly, of doing two separate bills. I think that would have been the way to play this,” Moore said, adding he just wants a “good game plan” out of the retreat.

Centrists are also relaying their concerns to GOP leaders about some committees’ plans to target pieces of the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that provides food aid benefits for more than 40 million low-income Americans.

Republicans are discussing enacting Medicaid work requirements for the first time and adding additional SNAP work requirements for parents with children over 7 years old.

Those proposals are relatively more palatable for GOP lawmakers in competitive districts than the massive cuts to current benefits some conservatives would prefer. But they’re still politically divisive and could provide Democrats major campaign fodder in blue and purple districts ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Congress

Senate, House reach deal on housing bill, Senate to start votes Tuesday

Published

26 minutes ago

June 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday the chamber will move forward with its first procedural vote on updated bipartisan housing affordability legislation. The movement comes after the leaders of the Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committees announced bicameral agreement on the long-awaited bill.

The text of the revised 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act was released Tuesday and contains most of the House-passed housing language, including the House’s version of a provision to restrict large institutional investors from buying single-family homes. Six Senate bills stripped from the House-passed package were also added back onto the bill with “meaningful changes” to address House concerns, according to a note the Senate Banking Committee circulated with the bill text that was obtained by Blue Light News.

“This bill is the result of years of work to lower costs, expand housing supply, cut red tape, protect taxpayers, and help more Americans achieve the dream of homeownership,” Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott said in a statement.

Scott negotiated the revised language with ranking member Elizabeth Warren and worked with House Financial Services ranking member Maxine Waters “to get her to good on the package,” according to the note.

House Financial Services Chair French Hill was able to support the revised bill after an additional change to the bill was made, which would authorize a controversial disaster relief program for only three years instead of the Senate-proposed seven-year sunset, according to two people familiar with the legislative negotiations.

“I appreciate the Senate including a three-year sunset on the CDBG-DR program and adopting key House priorities including nine community banking bills and the House’s language limiting institutional investors from outcompeting American families in the housing market,” Hill said in a statement.

Lawmakers from both parties view the legislation, which aims to increase homeownership and boost housing supply, as an answer to cost-of-living concerns that have dominated the midterm elections season. Despite bipartisan agreement on respective sides of the Capitol, the two chambers have gone back and forth for months, with the House voting on two different versions of the housing affordability legislation, and the Senate now preparing for a second round of votes on the bill.

Thune said Monday he was hopeful the bill could be passed this week.

Both chambers overwhelmingly passed their own versions of housing legislation — 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.

Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate thwarts move to limit Iran war as Trump pushes peace deal

Published

26 minutes ago

June 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Republicans on Tuesday knocked down another Democratic-led attempt to force an end to the Iran war despite the defection of four GOP members.

The 47-48 vote on the war powers resolution came as President Donald Trump has insisted a peace agreement with Tehran is all but signed.

Ahead of the vote, Senate Foreign Relations Chair Jim Risch (R-Idaho) slammed Democrats for forcing the vote as Trump attempted to clinch a peace plan. The unlikely passage of the war powers limits, he argued, would upend those efforts.

“If that miracle happened, do you think Iran would sign the deal that has been negotiated? Of course not,” Risch said.

Tuesday’s action came nearly a month after the chamber advanced a similar war powers measure which called for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Middle East, and two weeks after the House voted to limitTrump’s military authorities in Iran.

But absences in the Senate doomed hopes of a third rebuke for the president. Five senators — two Republicans and three Democrats — missed the vote.

GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky broke ranks to support the legislation. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat opposed.

The political fault lines in the Senate remained largely unchanged from May. The White House’s announcement of a long-term deal on Sunday failed to sway lawmakers’ opinions on the matter.

Still, many GOP lawmakers have signaled they still have plenty of questions about the “memorandum of understanding” between the two countries, and whether it ultimately could end up with an agreement similar to the nuclear pact the Obama administration struck with Iran. Trump withdrew from that agreement in his first term.

As with the Obama-era plan, many GOP lawmakers are adamant that any deal touching on Iran’s nuclear program be subject to a vote by Congress. A chief concern for many defense hawks is whether Iran would be permitted to enrich uranium to near-weapons-grade levels.

GOP leaders have dismissed the war power votes as performative and aimed at embarrassing Trump. They also said the move is unnecessary given the impending peace plan, set to be signed Friday.

The White House condemned the resolution ahead of Tuesday’s vote and threatened to veto the measure.

“The joint resolution attempts to legislate away essential Article II authority and could create immediate, material risks to U.S. forces, allies and missions,” administration officials said in a statement obtained by Blue Light News.

“In addition, the broad scope of the resolution risks creating uncertainty and operational paralysis in a crisis, while emboldening the Iranian regime and undermining the United States’ ability to speak with one voice in the midst of sensitive international negotiations,” the White House argued.

But Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who has been a leader on the resolutions, said Tuesday that news of a ceasefire extension or more permanent deal highlight the importance of Congress reasserting its role in war declarations.

“The way to get us in the mix on both continuing the war and considering if a [peace] deal is sufficient enough is to vote for a war powers resolution,” he said.

About 50,000 U.S. military personnel engaged in Middle East operations related to the war, which has been in a ceasefire since April 8. Trump over the weekend announced that U.S. and Iranian negotiators had reached a new peace deal, but details of that plan have yet to be released to Congress or the public.

Felicia Schwartz contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate Judiciary schedules confirmation hearing for Todd Blanche

Published

3 hours ago

June 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate Judiciary Committee has set a date for Todd Blanche’s two-day confirmation hearing next month, potentially putting the attorney general nominee on track to be confirmed by the full Senate as soon as before the August recess — if he can get the votes.

Blanche will appear before the committee on July 15, according to a spokesperson for Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, with outside witnesses testifying on Blanche’s nomination July 16.

With all Democrats expected to oppose Blanche, a single Republican could tank his chances of advancing in committee — and outgoing Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas are not yet committing to voting “yes.”

Tillis did say Monday he was “generally satisfied with [Blanche’s] paperwork,” which the committee made public Tuesday, but would have questions for the nominee during the confirmation hearing.

Blanche is now leading the Justice Department in an acting capacity while continuing to serve in his current confirmed role as deputy attorney general. He ensnared himself in President Donald Trump’s orbit as his personal attorney, which has prompted concerns over whether he could be unduly loyal to the president as the federal government’s top law enforcement officer.

He has since come under fire for announcing, then withdrawing, a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” — and, most recently, is being scrutinized for reports the DOJ is investigating yet another Trump political adversary, California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

In his Senate questionnaire, Blanche recalled how he left his law firm in 2023, “primarily to represent President Donald Trump” in the Stormy Daniels hush fund case out of Manhattan. He also represented Trump in the cases brought by former special counsel Jack Smith and “served as counsel to President Trump in an advising capacity in various other civil investigations and cases between 2023 and 2025.”

Blanche cited those Trump cases among his ten most significant — along with litigating the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to justify deportations and the fate of the new White House ballroom.