Congress
Capitol agenda: GOP gets louder as Trump gets pushier
President Donald Trump has pushed Senate Republicans to the brink of their patience, and they’re not staying quiet about it.
The president in recent weeks has been firing out missives Republicans view as bad decisions that undermine their ability to deliver legislative wins as the midterms approach.
The latest irritation was the early-morning Truth Social post Wednesday, where Trump upended GOP plans to quickly confirm Jay Clayton as the new director of national intelligence and revive a key surveillance bill that the president already derailed earlier this month.
“The president’s timing and communication needs improvement,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said. “I think it’s unfortunate. It throws a kicker into the system when we get going and then we have to readjust.”
Trump’s U-turn on Clayton is one of several fronts where senators have pushed back in recent weeks. Republicans also foiled plans to fund part of his White House ballroom project in a recent immigration enforcement funding deal and forced the Justice Department to abandon plans for a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”
Sen. John Kennedy answered “No” when asked if Trump takes senators into consideration: “He wants what he wants, and until he gets it, he just keeps pushing.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, who announced his retirement last year after breaking with Trump on policy legislation, said the dynamic is “undermining our ability to produce the very results he wants.”
The frustrations are also bubbling up as the president is trying to sell an Iran peace deal that a section of his party despises (more on this below).
To Trump, the solution is simple: None of this would matter if Republicans would just follow his lead.
Trump has handed Republicans a midterm playbook they’re unlikely, and unable, to heed: get rid of the filibuster, fire the Senate parliamentarian and pass an election security overhaul known as the SAVE America Act.
“If everyone just follows his lead, follows the blueprints he’s laid out, and runs on the record that he has, then I think we’ll fare well,” said a senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Trump’s controversial demands, however, have been unfortunately timed as lawmakers have been on the precipice of delivering policy goals. His naming of Bill Pulte as acting DNI, for example, blew up a brewing three-year deal on reauthorizing a key piece of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. His announcement of the DOJ payout fund delayed and nearly killed a critical immigration funding bill.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said his relationship with Trump was “fine” amid the public turmoil. He later explained in an interview the White House and Senate Republicans do a “fair amount of coordination.”
“But sometimes you get surprised,” he added. “It’s a business model the White House employs, and we’ve had to figure out how to be adaptable.”
What else we’re watching:
— TRUMP’S IRAN DEAL RACKS UP BIPARTISAN CRITICS: Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle panned the details of the memorandum of understanding Trump signed in hopes of ending the conflict in Iran. Sen. Bill Cassidy called the agreement “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades.” “Before the war, the strait was open, Iran was being crushed by sanctions, and 13 service members were still alive,” Cassidy posted on X. “Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped.”
— SENATE GOP COOL ON ‘RECON 3.0’: Senate Republicans have taken no concrete steps toward advancing Trump’s ask for a $350 billion party-line bill to fund the military and notch other conservative policy victories. Senators acknowledge the tough path for marshaling 50 votes behind such a measure on their side of the Capitol just months before the midterms. Members and aides in interviews this week said it was becoming clear any “Reconciliation 3.0” would be a House-led effort.
Jordain Carney, Meredith Lee Hill, Katherine Tully-McManus, Megan Messerly, Alex Gangitano and Myah Ward contributed to this report.
A pair of House Democrats voted to rescue the Republican legislative agenda Tuesday as GOP leaders faced an internal revolt, representing an extremely rare crossing of party lines on a procedural vote in a closely divided chamber.
Democratic Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington voted with most Republicans to set up debate on a series of GOP-led bills, including a resolution condemning socialism that party leaders want to use to hammer Democrats on the campaign trail.
The two Democrats were decisive in the 210-208 vote, where five Republicans had broken ranks over frustrations with how party leaders had handled an earlier vote on government spending.
Neither Golden nor Gluesenkamp Perez gave immediate comment on their votes. Both are members of the moderate Blue Dog Democrats, and Golden is not seeking reelection in November.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters he did not get a heads-up from the two Democrats, and Majority Whip Tom Emmer also suggested he was caught by surprise.
“I don’t count Democratic votes,” he said.
Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, said he believed Golden backed the measure because it provided for passage of a bill benefiting lobstermen in his home state. The bill in question delays the implementation of fishing regulations meant to protect the right whale population.
The GOP holdouts were upset over a variety of issues linked to the spending bill, including the inclusion of a delay on a ban on sales of some hemp products and the manner in which GOP leaders put the funding bill on the floor. That bill, which had White House backing, passed earlier Tuesday in a 370-48 vote.
Had the procedural vote failed, Speaker Mike Johnson would have faced immediate pressure to cut the House session short and send members home ahead of next week’s GOP midterm convention in Dallas. With the government now funded through the midterms and no other pressing deadlines to meet before November, GOP leaders could still scrap some or all of the remaining September session weeks to allow members to campaign in their districts.
The House cleared a stopgap funding patch Tuesday to keep cash flowing to federal agencies until mid-December — preventing a government shutdown before Election Day and setting up two major policy battles at year’s end.
The 370-48 vote takes care of Speaker Mike Johnson’s last must-pass bill before the midterms. But swift passage comes at a cost for House GOP leaders, who are now managing blowback from Republicans angry about the contents of the funding patch Senate leaders crafted and President Donald Trump endorsed.
The legislation would fund the government beyond the October start of the new fiscal year, keeping federal agencies running on current budgets through Dec. 11. It also allows incumbents to campaign for reelection without the threat of a government shutdown feeding into political messaging about dysfunction in Washington.
“We want to get a longer-term deal. But at a minimum, let’s ensure that we can continue to see government properly funded and functioning,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Tuesday, noting the “chaos” and “uncertainty” of last year’s record-breaking shutdown.
Besides funding the government through mid-December, the bill would temporarily block the White House from finalizing a rule to put political appointees in charge of approving federal grants.
It would also delay a ban set to kick in next month on intoxicating hemp products — to the dissatisfaction of House hard-liners, who threatened to vote Tuesday afternoon against teeing up debate on other bills this week and potentially block any significant House floor action between now and November.
Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, chair of the Freedom Caucus, was among the Republicans who voted no on the funding patch and said he would oppose moving forward with debate on other bills too. He scoffed at the last-minute pressure campaign from the White House and hemp industry leaders promising to regulate intoxicating products in lieu of proceeding with the ban lawmakers enacted last November.
“They had 10 months,” Harris said in an interview this week, knocking the Trump administration for not taking action sooner to crack down on the products currently sold in the U.S. without age restrictions or other regulations. “There are profiteers who are making money on basically the health of our children, and I object to that.”
Trump is expected to sign the funding patch, which the White House endorsed last month ahead of Senate passage — even though it blocks the Office of Management and Budget from finalizing its controversial rule to overhaul the federal grantmaking approval process.
That Senate-added language, as well as a prohibition on new funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, drove significant support from House Democrats.
“This critically stops the OMB rule from proceeding forward that many of us have been pushing against,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) said Tuesday, cheering other “incredibly helpful” additions to the bare-bones stopgap House Republicans initially passed earlier this summer.
Democrats also hope to regain control of the House and Senate in the November elections and increase their leverage in December negotiations on government funding for the rest of the fiscal year.
“That’s the huge intervening event,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said this week about the election. “And it will impact whatever comes after it, no matter what anybody thinks. So it’s not like we’ll go back and pick up exactly where we left off.”
The Oklahoma Republican traveled to Ukraine and other European countries last month with his counterpart across the aisle, top committee Democrat Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut.
The two top appropriators are motivated to strike a year-end deal to fund federal agencies with updated budgets, Cole said, rather than clearing another short stopgap or resorting to a lengthy patch that keeps programs on autopilot through next September
“We both are pretty adamant that we need to get these bills done before the end of the calendar year,” Cole said, adding that he and DeLauro will be “working really hard once we know who the players are on the other side” of Election Day.
Everton Blair was sworn in to the House Tuesday, adding another Democrat to the closely divided chamber. Blair won a special election this month to replace the late Georgia Rep. David Scott, a former chair of the House Agriculture Committee. Another Democratic winner of a recent special election, Aisha Wahab of California, is scheduled to be sworn in tomorrow to replace former Rep. Eric Swalwell, according to a person familiar with the plan.
With the two Democrats sworn and voting, Speaker Mike Johnson will be able to lose only one Republican on party-line votes.
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