Congress
Capitol agenda: Mike Crapo’s megabill Mission: Impossible
It’s shaping up to be an enormously consequential week for President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, and there’s one lawmaker at the center of it all: Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo.
The Idaho Republican has a mammoth to-do list this week, which includes resolving make-or-break fights over tax policy, Medicaid cuts and clean-energy credits. (Blue Light News Pro readers got our deeper dive first on Sunday.)
The soft-spoken Crapo has been stealthily working to coordinate changes to the “big, beautiful” bill. It’s looking like he won’t release his committee’s piece of the package until next week, with several outstanding policy issues unresolved. Senate Finance is expected to begin going through bill text with members and staff beginning Monday, and Crapo is expected to brief the broader Senate Republican conference mid-week.
“We’re working as aggressively as we can to move as fast as we can,” Crapo says.
Crapo’s leaning on a cadre of trusted advisers. Finance staff director Gregg Richard, chief tax counsel Courtney Connell and deputy chief tax counsel Randy Herndon are among his critical staff on the bill.
Crapo is known for his spare words but also for his history of landing deals. One of his biggest wins was the 2018 law that eased the Dodd-Frank banking law – an effort that required bringing along Democrats to help serve up a Trump administration victory.
He also flexed as a deal killer last year, blocking a tax revamp negotiated by House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and then-Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
Last year’s clash soured the relationship between Crapo and Smith, yet the two have found a way to work together to deliver Trump’s latest round of tax cuts.
“We’ve been communicating very closely so we each know what the other is thinking,” Crapo says.
Now Crapo faces his biggest test yet as he tries to resolve Senate clashes over razor’s edge deals that Smith and other top House Republicans struck to pass their version of the bill. Some of those conflicts are within Senate Finance itself, with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) pushing for changes to “no tax on tips” and Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) wanting to scale back planned endowment taxes on private universities.
Crapo’s personal priority? He is the leading advocate for using a legislative accounting method known as current policy baseline that would treat the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts as costing nothing. This is a big flash point between him and fiscal hardliners.
If he succeeds in the Senate, Crapo’s compromise will have to survive the House. Some top House Republicans are urging him to go easy on them.
“Mike Crapo is a brilliant senator and he’s instrumental on the tax stuff and everything else. You got to respect his opinion,” Majority Whip Tom Emmer told Blue Light News. “But at the end of the day, I hope they leave it right where it’s at.”
What else we’re watching:
— More megabill text this week: The Senate HELP and Energy committees are expected to release their text on Tuesday; Agriculture on Wednesday; and Homeland Security and Judiciary on Thursday, according to our latest intel. Agriculture text though may slide to later this week or possibly into next week as several governors are now raising concerns about plans for federal food aid.
— How lawmakers respond to immigration clashes: Congressional Hispanic Caucus members held an emergency meeting late Sunday after Trump mobilized the National Guard to respond to confrontations between law enforcement and protesters in Southern California over federal immigration policy. Sen. Lindsey Graham is among the GOP lawmakers using the clashes to call for passing the megabill. Look for the issue to come up at Monday’s House Appropriations subcommittee on DHS funding, which includes immigration enforcement.
— Rescissions vote: House GOP leaders are planning to vote Thursday on a rescissions bill that would claw back $9.4 billion in funds Congress has approved for foreign aid and public broadcasting. But there’s a new problem for Speaker Mike Johnson – at least 10 moderate Republicans have privately said they currently oppose the legislation, according to four people with direct knowledge. The bill is scheduled to go to Rules on Tuesday.
Meredith Lee Hill, Katherine Tully-McManus and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
The chair of the House Agriculture Committee said he’s not willing to “accept bad results” as a tradeoff for the benefits of advancements in artificial intelligence — a direct rebuttal to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“As someone who practiced health care for 28 years, I’m never willing to accept bad results. I think we just need to do our best,” Rep. G.T. Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, told reporters Monday.
He was responding to Altman’s comments to Decoded by Blue Light News that people “should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.”
Pressed further on whether he agreed with Altman’s premise, Thompson replied, “No, I think we have to work harder to prevent any bad things from happening.”
Altman’s comments come in the wake of increased panic over the risks of catastrophic destruction from AI, with many industry leaders and experts arguing that guardrails are needed on the technology to prevent it from spinning out of human control.
Pressure is building on Congress to regulate the rapidly-advancing technology, but lawmakers are divided over whether the AI industry needs federal regulation or if it’s capable of governing itself.
The executives of major AI labs and tech companies gathered at the White House last week to discuss solutions with President Donald Trump, who believes overregulating AI will have national security repercussions. The group ended up signing a “morally binding” AI accord that critics say won’t do enough to prevent a worst-case scenario.
Thompson noted Monday he believes that AI will bring “tremendous solutions,” specifically in regards to finding cures for health issues like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. But he also said AI has to be led with “principle” — comparing it to how he addressed digital assets in a bill to regulate the cryptocurrency industry, which he worked on as chair of the Agriculture Committee.
“The first principle is ‘do no harm.’ So we need to protect consumers, and that means, I think, building some guardrails — some guidelines — to do that,” Thompson said. He added that the second principle is to “foster innovation.”
“I think AI has a lot to do with that,” he added. “I don’t think AI works without RI: Real Intelligence.”
LE SUEUR, Minnesota — Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday there is no “consensus” yet on advancing a bill establishing permanent daylight saving time even as President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on Republicans to pass it.
Thune addressed the matter in a Monday interview after Trump used his Truth Social account multiple times over the weekend to rail against the legislation, known as the Sunshine Protection Act — going so far as to post the personal cell phone number of one of its GOP opponents, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
“The president feels strongly on it like he does a lot of issues,” he said. “It’s something we’re having conversations about but there’s no clear path forward or consensus on it yet.”
While Trump singled out Cotton for scrutiny, Thune made clear the opposition to the permanent daylight saving time proposal — which would lead to very late winter sunrises in some parts of the country — ran deeper than one senator.
Cotton has publicly voiced opposition to the proposal for year, citing, among other things, the fact that children in his state would be going to school in the dark for part of the year.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) voiced similar objections Monday to reporters in the Capitol, saying he was mindful of “safety concerns in the more northern and rural states where children get on the school bus in very early hours.”
Thune, who spoke during a campaign swing in Minnesota with GOP Senate nominee Michele Tafoya, has himself opposed previous daylight saving bills. He said Monday that “a lot of it depends on where you are in the country” and that “your geography probably has as much to do with your position on that as anything.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who has aligned himself closely with Trump, is among the lawmakers who have been pushing to get the bill through the Senate. He recently told POLITICO, “I’m going to make sure it gets passed this year.”
Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.
Democrats have pulled back some of their ads in North Carolina’s Senate race, days after the top Senate Republican super PAC paused its future spending in the state.
WinSenate, a group affiliated with the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC, has removed roughly $1.1 million in North Carolina ad buys this week, according to ad tracking firm AdImpact. The group still has roughly $18.8 million in future reservations through Election Day.
“Senate Majority PAC is committed to seeing this race through to victory, and will continue to make spending decisions based on how to best build a strong Senate majority,” Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement.
The move, combined with the GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund’s decision to pause future spending, are a signal that both parties are shifting resources amid an ever-expanding Senate map. Democrats are increasingly confident in their North Carolina Senate nominee, Roy Cooper, as he continues to hold a sizable lead in public polling over Republican Michael Whatley — but some privately say states like Michigan and New Hampshire need more resources.
Meanwhile, multiple Republican groups, not just SLF, have retreated from the state in recent weeks, effectively deciding that it’s no longer worth the money to boost Whatley’s campaign.
The Koch-aligned Americans for Prosperity Action left North Carolina off its $22 million list of future spending across key Senate contests, and Old North Action removed $6.5 million in ad reservations last month.
The Cooper campaign, however, is still treating the race as competitive, pointing to North Carolina’s closely divided electorate and the fact that President Donald Trump won the state in each of the past three presidential elections.
“North Carolina is a truly 50/50 state and Democrats haven’t won a US Senate race in 18 years. We can’t take anything for granted or our eye off the ball,” said Morgan Jackson, a senior adviser to the Cooper campaign. “DC is broken and we’re going to continue to run this race like we’re ten points down to ensure North Carolinians get the change they desperately need.”
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