Congress

Ted Cruz’s Commerce Committee devolves over migrant-related subpoena

Published

2 years ago

March 5, 2025

Members of the Senate Commerce Committee, led by Sen. Ted Cruz, clashed in a rancorous hearing Wednesday morning over the GOP’s push to subpoena documents from the Massachusetts Port Authority related to its sheltering of migrants in Boston Logan Airport.

It was an unusually testy meeting for a panel that has long prided itself on being bipartisan and subdued — and provided a preview of the type of fireworks that could become the norm with the firebrand Texas Republican wielding the gavel.

“Going back at least 20 years, the chair and ranking member of this committee typically work together and reach consensus on subpoenas being issued because there is no question the matter being investigated is improper or the party being investigated was not being cooperative,” said ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.).

Up until July, the Massachusetts Port Authority — or Massport — had permitted migrants to sleep at the airport as the state lacked the sufficient number beds at official shelters to house the flow of immigrants coming into the region. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, then prohibited the practice, but migrants have reportedly been continuing to stay there.

Jennifer Mehigan, a spokesperson for Massport, said in a statement that “no families have stayed at the airport” since Healey’s order and that it is “working closely with the Committee and appreciate their patience as we gather the documents to voluntarily comply fully with their request.”

But Cruz is unsatisfied, saying he must resort to efforts to subpoena documents as the Port Authority refused to comply with his request for information. On Wednesday, Cruz accused Massport of violating federal grant requirements.

“In recent years, the Senate has allowed our oversight muscles to atrophy. Oversight rarely occurs in our standing committees, and I believe our country is worse off for it. … It’s a front where I will continue to lead as chairman,” Cruz said. “Massport apparently believes that the Senate has no jurisdiction in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

The committee recessed before members could vote to allow for the subpoena, lacking a quorum to proceed. Members plan to return later in the day Wednesday to approve Cruz’s subpoena request, which is expected to be advanced along party lines.

Before then, Democrats fiercely objected to the exercise. They argued the issue has already been resolved, the subpoena effort was premature and Cruz has not yet exhausted all his options to get the information he is seeking. They said that Massport has promised to respond in writing to Cruz’s requests by March 10 and that the subpoena undermines the committee’s tradition of bipartisanship.

Cruz is already working to expand his own subpoena authority as committee chair to allow him to issue unilateral subpoenas without buy-in from the ranking member or even a full committee vote. It would be a major break in precedent that has given some Republicans and members of the White House pause, particularly as Cruz has promised to haul in Big Tech CEOs with whom members of the Trump administration are cozy.

In an interview, Cruz sidestepped whether he was still seeking that expansive authority, which would require a vote to change the committee rules: “We’re going to exercise subpoena power to carry out our oversight responsibilities. The committee will be vigorous on oversight.”

Back in the committee hearing room on Wednesday, Cruz and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) sparred extensively over the subpoena vote, at times raising their voices. Markey said Cruz’s investigation into his home state was a “fishing expedition.”

Cruz fired back: “Apparently the senator from Massachusetts believes it is a fishing expedition to want to know and if violent criminal illegal aliens threaten or actually committed acts of violence against the traveling public.”

The committee did, however, vote to adopt an amendment from Markey that would allow the committee to examine the circumstances around Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ decision to send asylum-seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard rather than to Florida, DeSantis’ state, where the immigrants were trying to go. Markey was attempting to challenge Cruz and his fellow Republicans to shine a light on his own party’s practices when it comes to sheltering immigrants, but Cruz didn’t take the bait.

“This amendment raises an important point,” Cruz said, citing legislation he introduced in 2021 to send migrants from Texas to other states including California and Massachusetts — places where “rich liberals sip Chardonnay” and “don’t want 12 million people invading them.”

Cruz also on Wednesday said he canceled another vote on issuing subpoenas for the online service provider Bonterra, which he argues has deplatformed conservatives, and for the consulting firm Newpoint Strategies related to diversity training for federal workers. Both entities complied with the requests for information, Cruz explained.

Congress

Democrats drop $5M into Kansas Senate race

Published

2 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Democrats’ top super PAC is pushing into Kansas.

The Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC is launching a $5 million statewide television ad blitz starting Saturday through Election Day — the latest sign that Democrats believe the Senate map is shifting onto red turf.

SMP had signaled in recent days it could get involved in the race, telling Blue Light News late last month it was “actively thinking” about whether to wade into the state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in nearly a century but where Adam Hamilton narrowly leads GOP Sen. Roger Marshall in recent polls. Internal SMP polling that found an increasingly competitive race factored into the group’s decision to spend. It will also run digital ads.

“The gap is closing in Kansas,” SMP spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement. “We are committed to ensuring families understand Marshall’s real record of making health care and basic goods more expensive for working Kansans.”

Republicans are scrambling to shore up Marshall. Senate Leadership Fund, a top GOP super PAC aligned with Republican leadership, has booked over $10 million in ads through Election Day in the state, per ad tracking firm AdImpact.

SMP’s first ad attacks Marshall for joining Senate Republicans in voting to table a Democratic-led amendment last year to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. The Senate later approved legislation to release the files by unanimous consent. It’s the latest in a slate of ads from Democrats hitting their Republican rivals over the late, disgraced financier and convicted sex offender. Marshall’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Senate Democrats’ plunge into the state comes as the midterm battle map is undergoing a major realignment. Georgia and North Carolina — primed to be two of the cycle’s premiere battlegrounds — are tilting left to the point where national Republicans are retracting spending in both states and Democrats are starting to follow suit, freeing funds on both sides to shift elsewhere.

Republicans are racing to reinforce incumbents across what was once safer red turf. SLF has also pledged $5 million to bolster Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina.

Democrats, meanwhile, are starting to spend more in red states. SMP has dropped over $2 million on digital ads in Texas. Schumer, the Senate minority leader, has included Kansas and Mississippi in his pitches to donors.

Congress

House Democratic campaign arm says it needs $17 million, and fast

Published

2 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is begging for resources, and setting a hard deadline for donors to give $17 million in order to compete in a handful of districts that Republicans carried easily in 2024.

DCCC Executive Director Julie Merz said the committee needs the cash influx by Oct. 22 in order to “to take advantage of the opportunities we have” outside of the core battlefield, according to a memo shared with donors on Friday and obtained by POLITICO.

If they don’t pony up, Merz warns, the party “could be leaving winnable races on the table.”

Democrats have been clear that they have a fundraising disadvantage this cycle, but they have so far been reluctant to place a specific dollar amount on their needs, making the DCCC’s memo Friday a particularly surprising outlier.

“Here’s the tough reality though: the Republican ecosystem has amassed a massive war chest that is significantly greater than ours and is spending it,” Merz says in the memo after arguing that the members of the committee “remain confident that we will win back the majority in 25 days.”

Specifically, Merz dedicates significant portions of the memo to four districts where the committee is desperate for more money in order to compete — all of which President Donald Trump won by double-digit margins in 2024:

— Florida’s 27th District (Trump +14.6)

— Nevada’s 2nd District (Trump +13.9)

— South Carolina’s 1st District (Trump +13)

— New York’s 21st District (Trump +20.7)

The fundraising disadvantage has created headaches for both House and Senate Democrats over where, exactly, to deploy the resources they do have.

The committee tells donors that their internal polling shows all of those races within reach, but that Republicans’ big cash advantages — especially in the Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA Inc. — will make it harder to win those and other reach seats.

Merz also name drops a handful of other deep-red districts that are “worthy of additional investment in this environment,” including seats held by GOP Reps. French Hill (R-Ark.) and Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the chair of the Republican National Congressional Committee.

The NRCC was quick to mock the DCCC’s memo.

“No amount of money fixes candidates voters don’t want. These seats are staying red, and Republicans are on offense across the map,” NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement.

Congress

Capitol agenda: How Warren could link arms with Trump’s GOP

Published

8 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Elizabeth Warren may get her clearest shot yet to take on corporate America next year — thanks to the once unthinkable help of Republicans.

The Massachusetts Democrat is poised to chair Senate Banking if the party takes back the chamber. And while the progressive has long been a boogeyman to corporate America, lobbyists worry she’ll have powerful backup thanks to the surge of populist Republicans eager to take big swings at Wall Street and Big Tech.

One longtime financial industry lobbyist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said Warren “has a streak that is not just wanting to be a progressive gadfly, but to actually reach across the aisle to push for policy ideas.” There is “absolutely” reason for concern, the person said.

Atop the panel, Warren would also have a strong position to shape the 2028 presidential debates on both sides.

“There’s very little doubt that the agenda of the Senate Banking Committee is going to overlap substantially with the core issues that the candidates in the 2028 election cycle are going to be grappling with,” said Dennis Kelleher, the outgoing leader of the progressive group Better Markets.

As Banking chair, Warren is expected to try to recruit Republicans in a crackdown on artificial intelligence — specifically restrictions on chip giant Nvidia’s exports to China, which already has some GOP support — and a follow-up of this year’s bipartisan housing law that sought to rein in private equity’s role in the market, according to people close to the senator.

Some of President Donald Trump’s own populist ideas, like credit card interest rate caps and limits on stock buybacks for defense contractors, would provide fertile ground for Warren.

But Trump would also likely be Warren’s biggest obstacle, as he’s been resistant to embrace policy overlaps with her. He’s also been resistant to any AI restrictions.

Warren’s approach also threatens to expose rifts between GOP populists who have been ascendent under Trump and more mainstream conservatives.

Asked about the possibility of a Chair Warren, Sen. Mike Rounds, a more moderate South Dakota Republican, said he doesn’t “think anything would get done except lots of investigations and lots of accusations.”

What else we’re watching:

— LAWMAKERS CLAMOR FOR GAO v. TRUMP — Lawmakers are desperate for a government watchdog to step up and help them in their fight against the Trump administration over control of federal cash. The independent Government Accountability Office concluded earlier this week that the White House illegally withheld more than $1 billion for education and health care research programs — the latest in more than a half-dozen such findings GAO has published since the start of Trump’s second term. But the agency has yet to use its unique power to take the president to court to challenge those “impoundments,” and lawmakers who are tired of the administration running roughshod over their funding prerogatives want GAO to act.

— MURPHY’S DEFENSE FUNDING ULTIMATUM — Democrats should not approve Pentagon funding or the annual defense policy bill if they control Congress next year unless those bills would hasten the end of the Iran war, Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters Thursday. “We should make the end of the war a priority,” said the Foreign Relations Democrat who was returning from a trip to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Murphy also accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and officials of attempting a “cover-up” of the war’s damage and obscuring its true cost after he was denied entry on a base in Qatar. Given the damage to bases in the region, Murphy also told reporters that the U.S. should “reconsider its footprint” in the Middle East.

Jasper Goodman, Jennifer Scholtes and Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.