Congress
Capitol agenda: Brutal day ahead for Mike Johnson
Turns out President Donald Trump didn’t have the magic touch House Republicans were expecting. Another day of crypto drama has now put the House in a severe time crunch, setting members up for a mammoth day of voting Thursday.
To recap: Speaker Mike Johnson headed into Wednesday confident that Trump had struck a deal with conservative holdouts to move a trio of cryptocurrency bills. But that quickly evaporated after committee chairs pushed back at hard-liners’ demands to attach a central bank digital currency ban to another bipartisan crypto bill.
The impasse kept the House rule vote open for nine hours until GOP leaders finally cut a late-night deal to include a CBDC ban in the National Defense Authorization Act.
The crypto crash-out now leaves the House with a lot to do in very little time: The three crypto bills, the Defense appropriations bill and a rescissions package were all scheduled to get a vote this week. House Republican leaders wanted to punt the Defense bill to next week — but an irate Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) insisted they finish up this week. The House stayed in extra late Wednesday night for general debate and en bloc amendments.
“He is just mad — I don’t blame him,” one House Republican told Blue Light News about Cole, who has his eye on the 11 unpassed fiscal 2026 spending bills and the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.
Which brings us to Thursday: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told Blue Light News the House will begin debating individual Defense amendments Thursday morning before finishing up that bill and moving on to the three cryptocurrency bills.
But the real must-do is recissions. The Senate finally passed a modified package around 2:30 a.m. Now the House needs to reconvene the Rules Committee, approve yet another rule on the floor and then vote on sending the $9 billion clawbacks package to Trump’s desk.
That’s a lot to cram into less than two days, especially with the rescissions deadline looming Friday night. If they get too close to the deadline, it’s possible Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — fresh off of an eight-hour “magic minute” speech two weeks ago — could try to blow past it.
If something’s got to give, watch to see whether all three cryptocurrency bills end up getting a vote this week as planned. One possibility under discussion is passing only the Senate-approved stablecoin bill, which Trump wants to sign as soon as possible, and punting the other votes.
He called into a meeting with holdouts and key committee leaders late Wednesday after they struck a new deal — for real this time.
“He’s happy with it,” a person in the room told Blue Light News of the outcome.
What else we’re watching:
— Senate Approps resumes: Senate Appropriations will resume its markup of the Commerce-Justice-Science funding bill Thursday morning after a fight over the future location of FBI headquarters derailed last week’s proceedings.
— Bove, Pirro get a committee vote: It appears all but certain Senate Judiciary will have the votes to favorably advance Emil Bove’s nomination Thursday morning, but the panel’s Democrats are still expected to put up a big fight against Trump’s pick to serve as a judge to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Also up for a committee vote is Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s nominee to be the U.S. Attorney for D.C.
— Epstein files fallout: GOP leaders are keeping their distance as MAGA outrage grows over the releasing of files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Johnson said he was “misquoted and misrepresented” in reports that he was breaking with Trump over whether to release the files. Senate Majority Leader John Thune dodged again Wednesday, telling reporters: “I’m not at this point taking a position on it. I just think it’s going to be a question that’s left to others to decide.”
Meredith Lee Hill, Jennifer Scholtes and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.
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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