Congress

Blanche’s big meeting

Published

45 minutes ago

July 30, 2026

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche met Thursday afternoon with Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — the key holdouts on his nomination as permanent AG. A spokesperson for Cornyn and a second person granted anonymity to describe the private meeting confirmed the discussion.

It took place just hours after President Donald Trump indicated he would not give in to demands made by Cornyn and Tillis to modify his May settlement agreement with the IRS — a central demand of the two senators to allow Blanche through the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Congress

Senate education committee blocks parts of Trump’s Education Department breakup

Published

1 hour ago

July 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Senate education committee approved legislation to stop four of the Trump administration’s deals to downsize the Education Department.

In a 13-9 vote, the Senate HELP Committee advanced S. 5046, a bipartisan bill from Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that would prohibit the Education Department from transferring special education and several other major education offices to other federal agencies.

Thursday’s Senate markup represents a major legislative effort to block President Donald Trump from dismantling the education agency without the approval of Congress.

“This bill is straightforward,” Collins said. “It keeps the administration of important landmark education programs at the Department of Education, where Congress specifically put them and where they belong.”

The Trump administration has initiated agreements with other federal departments to manage education programs in the absence of congressional approval to shut the agency down. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has called these deals “proofs of concept” to show lawmakers how other federal departments can handle education responsibilities.

“Secretary McMahon promised Congress a proof of concept that is currently underway and delivering results across our partner agencies, and it is entirely premature to sabotage this effort before it has the chance to eliminate bureaucratic barriers and fully deliver the results that our students, families, and educators deserve,” Savannah Newhouse, an Education Department press secretary, said in a statement.

Congress approved nonbinding language in its most recent spending bill saying the education agency has no authority to transfer its functions to other agencies. But this latest bill goes further because it would stop the agency from transferring the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services as well as functions of the offices of Elementary and Secondary Education, Postsecondary Education and Indian Education from being moved to other federal agencies. These offices are responsible for overseeing key federal education programs and billions of dollars in federal funding, including Title I funds that support low-income schools, federal TRIO programs that help disadvantaged students prepare for college and tribal education programs.

Murkowski said that programs Congress directed to exist at the education agency “for a good reason” should remain there.

“We cannot lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day, we’re talking about children, whether it’s children with special needs, whether it’s children in our elementary schools, whether it’s our Native students — making sure that we don’t lose that focus,” Murkowski said.

But the bill wouldn’t completely stifle all of the department’s interagency agreements. The legislation doesn’t target agreements to shift career and technical education programs to the Labor Department, federal student loan functions to the Treasury Department or civil rights enforcement to the Justice Department, for instance, despite Democrats wanting to stop those deals too.

McMahon, the heads of Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior, State and Treasury, and the acting attorney general — who are all managing federal education programs under deals with the education agency — sent a letter to congressional leadership Thursday detailing how the agreements are “breaking up the failed federal education bureaucracy.”

The bill’s future in the Senate is unclear, but Kaine told Blue Light News that he hopes the bill “factors into appropriations discussions.” The bill would conflict with legislative efforts in the House, where the Education and Workforce Committee voted last month to permanently move a trove of education programs to other agencies.

Congress

‘Clouds’ set to return to Senate’s Alexander Calder masterpiece

Published

4 hours ago

July 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Hart Senate Office Building atrium will be restored to its full splendor after the August recess for the first time in more than a decade: The hanging mobile portion of Alexander Calder’s iconic “Mountains and Clouds” sculpture is returning.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who has been seeking a restoration of the suspended “Clouds” portion for nearly a decade, told reporters Thursday that the work will be done next month.

“We just built some new, more structurally sound clouds, and they are going back up,” he told reporters.

The four aluminum clouds weighing a combined two tons were removed following a 2014 seismic safety study conducted after a 2011 earthquake shook Washington and damaged the Washington Monument, National Cathedral and other key landmarks. While they were initially installed as motorized mobiles in 1985, the cloud sculptures had been hanging stationary since the 1990s.

The Calder sculpture has been steeped in drama even before the earthquake. The artist himself died just one day after presenting his model to the Architect of the Capitol in November 1976.

The refabricated clouds will eventually spin, but Murphy is not promising that the motor feature will be ready in September.

“I don’t know if they’ll be spinning in September, but they’re going to be up when everybody comes back” from the August recess, he said.

Murphy stressed that the replacement and reinstallation of the clouds is not coming at taxpayer expense.

“It’s all privately funded,” Murphy said. “I and others helped change the law to allow it to be privately funded.”

Since the clouds were removed, the 51-foot-high steel “Mountains” have sat unadorned — a situation Murphy compared to tearing up a masterpiece.

“That statue is like if the ‘Mona Lisa’ was ripped in half, and you kept it up in the Louvre. That wouldn’t be the ‘Mona Lisa’ anymore. ‘Mountains and Clouds’ is not a Calder sculpture without the clouds,” he said Thursday.

Leo Shane contributed to this report.

Congress

Finance Republicans kill bid to stop Trump IRS audit-immunity deal

Published

5 hours ago

July 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee defeated an effort Thursday by Democrats to block a plan by the Trump administration to shield the president from IRS audits.

Lawmakers voted along party lines, 14-13, to kill an amendment to a tax-administration bill before the panel that would have barred the administration from implementing the plan.

While Democrats denounced the immunity deal as an illegal abuse of power, Republicans said little aside from saying they are working with the administration to change the plan as part of negotiations to confirm acting attorney general Todd Blanche as attorney general.

Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) warned that accepting Democratic amendment would probably doom the underlying legislation, which is aimed at streamlining IRS operations.

“This is not the place,” Crapo told colleagues. “If this bill were to become the vehicle where this issue is resolved, it would achieve basically making this bill a partisan bill” and that “would turn this bill into a bill that has a much dimmer future for becoming law.”

Lawmakers later approved the full measure on a 26-1 vote, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) the lone opponent.

“No other taxpayer, ever, has gotten this kind of a deal,” she said. “I cannot support a bill that rubber stamps Donald Trump’s corruption. Congress needs to stand up and put a stop to it.”

The administration announced in May a plan to spare Trump and his family from IRS audits in exchange for him dropping a likely unsuccessful lawsuit against the agency over the leak by a contractor of his tax information to the New York Times.

Democrats have been incensed by the plan, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who sits on the Finance Committee, has been demanding changes, though Cornyn’s suggestions are unlikely to quell Democratic outrage.

Cornyn wants to clarify that the audit protections only applies to the parties named in Trump’s suit, and that it only applies to returns already filed — not future filings. Cornyn has complained that Blanche already agreed to that during his confirmation hearing earlier this month, but that the administration must put it in writing. The Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Cornyn is also a member, delayed a scheduled Thursday vote on Blanche’s nomination as Cornyn and the White House continue to negotiate.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another tax writer critical of the immunity deal, said he believes the administration is working “in good faith” to address objections to the audit immunity plan.

The tax-administration legislation, which lawmakers hope to approve during a lame-duck session of Congress, includes more than 60 relatively uncontroversial provisions aimed at improving the tax system.