Congress
GOP Whip Emmer weighs in on megabill’s fate
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer isn’t concerned about the GOP megabill’s fate in the Senate, despite a raft of current policy disputes in need of speedy resolution. During an exclusive interview Thursday, the Minnesota Republican was bullish about getting the massive tax and spending package to President Donald Trump’s desk by July 4.
“The Senate will do their work. They’re going to send the bill back to us,” Emmer said. “We are going to pass it and send it to the president’s desk. The time for talking is over.”
There’s one area Emmer said he hopes the Senate won’t touch: the quadrupled state and local tax deduction cap carefully negotiated with blue-state Republicans in the House. Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo recently said there’s little appetite among his members for keeping the increase fully intact. But Emmer said he believes the Senate understands the House’s more difficult math.
“John Thune was quoted somewhere as saying, you know, ‘We understand it’s 51 over here and it’s 218 over there.’” Emmer said. “That should tell you everything you need to know.”
Emmer also said he believes the Republican senators who have raised concerns on the House’s Medicaid overhaul proposals — specifically Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Josh Hawley of Missouri— are “going to be pleasantly surprised when they go through” the House-passed package.
“A lot of their concerns that they thought they were going to have are just not there,” Emmer insisted, adding that “there might be” tweaks from across the chamber to the House’s product, but no one has flagged any “major problems” in the bill. Emmer said the only area he thinks there might be unease is about the provider tax.
A key group of senators could also hold up the bill over the House’s moves to repeal or scale back the clean-energy tax credits that were created by the Democrats’ 2022 climate law. Disrupting the long-term availability of those credits could disrupt projects already underway in red districts and states. Emmer said House members are sensitive to this dynamic as well.
“That’s one of the reasons why the sunsetting [of certain credits] is out at least three years, so that people can continue projects and repurpose them,” said Emmer. “That was the whole concept. Whatever the Senate does with it, that’s their business.”
Emmer weighed in, too, on Speaker Mike Johnson’s suggestion that Republicans could pursue a second megabill through the filibuster-skirting, party-line budget reconciliation process — or even a third. The majority whip didn’t wave off the idea but emphasized that Congress should “get the first one done.”
“All of it’s possible,” Emmer said. “Is it probable? We’ll see.”
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.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said he plans to stay on the court through next year, brushing aside speculation that he could retire early and let President Donald Trump fill his seat after the election but before a new Congress is sworn in next year.
“I intend to stick around through this term,” Alito, 76, said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “I made that decision many months ago.”
The Supreme Court began its new term on Monday, which will last through next June.
Alito, the second-oldest justice on the bench, was in the news last week after telling CBS News that he considered retiring this year and will do so again in 2027.
His comments come as the fight over control of the Senate is in a dead heat. Democrats would have to flip at least four seats, but recent polls show several races, including in states Trump carried easily two years ago, remain competitive.
Several Senate Democratic candidates are already running on the prospect of filling a seat on the Supreme Court or, at least, denying Trump’s ability to do so. Senate Republicans successfully blocked a Democratic nominee in 2016, allowing Trump to fill the seat after he came into the White House.
“Our race to decide Ohio’s next Senator could not only determine control of the U.S. Senate, but also who fills a lifetime seat on the highest court in the land,” Sherrod Brown, the Democratic nominee in Ohio, wrote in a blog post Monday. “Ohio’s next senator could be our first line of defense against another partisan Supreme Court Justice — or rubber stamp a Trump nominee.”
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