Congress
Capitol agenda: GOP leaders rush into Elon Musk damage control
Hill GOP leaders are in full-on damage control as they scramble to save their megabill — and themselves — from the blast radius of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s breakup.
But Musk doesn’t seem interested in sparing any part of the GOP trifecta from his wrath on his way out of Washington. The president’s new enemy attacked both Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune Thursday over the cost of the party’s sweeping domestic policy package. Thune brushed it aside.
Johnson, however, is mounting a multi-front rebuttal as he aims to keep Musk from hurting the megabill’s prospects. He’s questioning the tech mogul’s motives for opposing the bill and challenging his claims about its impact on the deficit. Johnson already had to reassure hard-liners concerned about the bill’s spending in order to squeeze the bill through the House last month.
“I’m the same guy that’s always been a deficit hawk, and now I’m the speaker of the House, and I’m working on a multi-step plan to reverse the fiscal insanity that has haunted our country,” Johnson told reporters Thursday. “We have to get the big, beautiful bill done.”
Johnson’s leadership team quickly claimed Musk wouldn’t rattle their members. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise insisted it hadn’t moved any votes. And Whip Tom Emmer, in an exclusive interview with POLITICO, said he’s not tracking Musk’s onslaught on X.
“Sorry,” Emmer said, “he’s not on my phone.”
Some fiscal hard-liners — who share in Musk’s concerns about the bill but allowed it to pass the House — avoided immediately picking sides in the feud. Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.), bombarded with questions about Musk on Thursday, said only that he’s “right on the deficit.” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) posted on X: “But … I really like both of them.”
They may not have to choose. Signs of a détente emerged late Thursday, with Trump brushing off the clash in a phone call with Blue Light News and Musk seeming somewhat open to a reconciliation (just not the reconciliation bill). White House aides are working to broker peace.
Still, if the Trump-Musk divorce goes through, MAGA will likely side with the president. There were signs Thursday that Musk was alienating some of Trump’s biggest Hill boosters.
“Elon is getting too personal. It’s getting out of control,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told Blue Light News. “Some of the most recent comments, I think: Elon, you’ve lost your mind.”
What else we’re watching:
— Rescissions deadline: Congress must act by July 18 on Trump’s request to claw back $9.4 billion in funding or the White House will be required to spend the money, the Senate parliamentarian said. The House is expected to vote next week to approve the request, as submitted. But Senate Republicans are considering their options for making tweaks to the package.
— AI update for the megabill: Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Thursday his committee would attempt to rewrite the 10-year moratorium on enforcement of state and local artificial intelligence laws that the House tucked into their version of the megabill.
Rachael Bade, Dasha Burns and Meredith Lee Hill 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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