Congress
Capitol agenda: No blinking yet as Trump and Hill leaders face off
President Donald Trump and congressional leaders appear primed for conflict ahead of Monday’s 3 p.m. White House meeting, with less than two days to go before a shutdown. And there’s no sign that either side plans to blink.
Here’s a quick rundown — with some news — of where all parties stand.
Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are poised to hold their ground as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries press for a compromise on health policy, including an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire at the end of the year.
For senior Republicans, striking any kind of ACA deal could cause major problems with their own members. While some GOP moderates are pushing for an extension, several hardliners warned Republican leadership over the weekend not to cut a deal on the subsidies.
GOP leaders are privately cautioning Trump not to agree to any ACA extension until after they resolve the funding impasse. But there are new signs of coordination on a potential health deal. A group of Senate Republicans is working on a proposal for later this year that would pair an extension of the subsidies with conservative policy changes. Members of the contingent are talking with White House officials and CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz to make sure any blueprint would be in alignment between lawmakers and the White House.
Republican leadership is also threatening logistical pressure. The Senate will likely wait until Tuesday to vote again on the GOP continuing resolution, and House GOP leaders have been considering keeping the chamber in recess next week during a shutdown. Johnson will hold a call with House Republicans at 11:15 a.m. Monday ahead of the White House meeting.
Some Republicans remain hopeful that enough Democrats will help advance the GOP CR like they did in March. But if not, they warn Trump will make a shutdown politically painful, given his latitude over what agencies and programs stay open.
“I’d be much more worried if I was a blue state,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said.
Democrats are so far undaunted. But between the House and the Senate, they also lack a unified position on what specifically they need to back the GOP CR. Jeffries has taken a hard line, warning that a health care agreement needs to be “ironclad and in legislation.” Senate Democrats are more pushing for Republicans to just talk with them. Schumer took a step in that direction when he called Thune to set up the White House meeting, as Blue Light News first reported.
As for Trump, White House officials say the president will pressure Schumer to accept the GOP-led stopgap bill without making a deal, at least for now, on any of the Democrats’ health care demands.
Ahead of the meeting, the administration hasn’t yet finalized closure plans for agencies, according to three Trump officials. As one of the officials put it: “I think it all hinges on [Monday’s] meeting.”
What else we’re watching:
— The Jeffrey Epstein pressure: GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Nancy Mace (S.C.) and Lauren Boebert (Colo.) appear to be resisting pressure from Trump officials and senior House Republicans who have pushed them to drop support for a bipartisan effort to release the Epstein files. Their support is key to Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) Epstein discharge petition that’s poised to get the last of the necessary 218 signatures when Democrat Adelita Grijalva of Arizona is sworn in. The timeline for a potential vote is unclear with House GOP leaders considering keeping the chamber out on recess next week.
— Incoming Jan. 6 probe: House Republicans have officially launched a subcommittee to reinvestigate the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack with an eye toward recasting the narrative about what happened that day. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), the panel’s chair, said in an interview that GOP staff has been gearing up for months “talking to different entities,” reviewing documents and brainstorming potential investigative targets.
Jordain Carney, Nicholas Wu, Meredith Lee Hill and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.
Congress
DHS stopgap set for quick House action after Rules Committee vote
The House Rules Committee advanced a measure Friday evening that would fund the entirety of the Homeland Security Department through May 22 — without setting up debate or a separate vote on the funding bill itself.
The panel, after a raucous meeting that devolved into shouting at multiple points, voted 8-4 on party lines to advance the measure to the floor.
The rule includes a “deem and pass” provision, a tactic that allows legislation to be passed by the House automatically once the rule itself is adopted. While there will be one hour of floor debate and a vote on the rule, there will not be a standalone House vote on the DHS spending bill.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) described himself as needing “a neck brace” from the whiplash of hearing Republicans argue for hours that the Senate’s early-morning voice vote on a different DHS funding measure was “shameful” for lack of transparency and accountability.
House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) accused the Senate of moving their bill “in the middle of the night, with the smell of jet fumes in the air,” lamenting that the House was left “to take it or leave it.”
House leaders, McGovern suggested, have chosen a similar path by fast-tracking the eight-week DHS stopgap.
“You’re in charge,” he told Rules Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). “You can do whatever the hell you want to do.”
Congress
Rand Paul weighs a 2028 presidential bid
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is considering a bid for president in 2028, as Republicans jockey for the future of the GOP post-Trump.
In a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview airing Sunday, a reporter asked Paul about an article that implied he would be running for president.
“We’re thinking about it,” Paul said. “I would say fifty-fifty,” adding that he would make a final decision after the midterm elections.
Paul ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 with a libertarianism-focused campaign but ultimately dropped out after a poor performance in the Iowa caucuses and a shortage of cash. He instead ran for reelection to the Senate.
Paul has had a complex relationship with his own party and with President Donald Trump, often finding himself the lone Republican on certain issues. More recently, he was the only Republican to support a joint resolution that would limit Trump’s war powers in Iran.
His father, former Rep. Ron Paul, also ran for president three times: first as a Libertarian in 1988, and twice as a Republican in 2008 and 2012.
Congress
‘Meltdown’: DHS shutdown set to drag on after House GOP rejects Senate deal
House Republicans moved Friday to further extend the six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by rejecting a Senate bill that would fund the vast majority of DHS agencies through September.
Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a temporary extension of DHS funding through May 22 — a plan that has uncertain prospects in the House and certainly won’t pass the Senate before the shutdown becomes the longest funding lapse in U.S. history Saturday.
But Johnson said House Republicans simply could not swallow the Senate bill, which omits funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Border Patrol and some other parts of Customs and Border Protection.
“The Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” he said. “We are going to deport dangerous criminal illegal aliens because it is a basic function of the government. The Democrats fundamentally disagree.”
The move toward an eight-week stopgap creates a tactical gulf between Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who called an end to weeks of abortive bipartisan talks Thursday and pushed through the funding bill in hopes of tacking on funding later for ICE and CBP in a party-line budget reconciliation bill.
President Donald Trump has largely stayed out of the GOP infighting on Capitol Hill, keeping his criticism trained on Democrats. He ordered DHS to pay TSA officers Thursday as long security lines snarls more U.S. airports.
Johnson played down the split with his Senate counterpart, saying the Democratic leader there bore more blame for the impasse.
“I wouldn’t call John Thune the engineer of this,” he said. “Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate have forced this upon the Senate. I have to protect the House. … Our colleagues on this side understand this is not a game. We are not playing their games.”
Thune said early Friday morning he did not speak directly to Johnson in the final hours leading up to the Senate’s voice vote, but he said they had texted. He acknowledged he did not know in advance how the House would handle the Senate bill.
“Hopefully they’ll be around, and we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again, and then we’ll go from there,” he said.
Johnson made his game plan clear with House Republicans on a private call just minutes before addressing reporters in the Capitol, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the call. He warned that a failure to advance the short-term DHS stopgap would upend GOP plans for a reconciliation bill, the people said.
He suggested the Senate could quickly clear the stopgap measure once it passes the House. Most senators have left Washington for a recess running through April 13, but Johnson said the chamber could approve the House measure by unanimous consent at a planned pro forma session Monday.
But some House Republicans on the private call, including Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, aired doubts it could pass the Senate — or even the House. Some fellow GOP centrists argued that the House should just swallow the Senate bill and end the standoff.
The House plan for a 60-day stopgap won a cold reception in the Senate, with even Republicans warning it will only prolong the partial government shutdown.
The plan is instead fueling frustration among both Republicans and Democrats who view House Republicans as essentially throwing temper tantrum. Three people granted anonymity to speak candidly each described the House as having a “meltdown.”
Schumer publicly slammed the House GOP plan Friday, saying it was “dead on arrival” across the Capitol, “and Republicans know it.”
A Senate GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly added that the quickest way to end the shutdown is for the House to pass the Senate bill.
Five people granted anonymity to comment on Senate dynamics said there was no possibility that Democrats would let the House GOP plan pass during the Senate’s brief pro forma sessions over the next two weeks. It would only take one Democratic senator to show up and object to any attempt to pass it.
The bill, according to the five people, also can’t get 60 votes in the Senate once the chamber returns. Democrats have previously rejected even shorter stopgaps, leaving some to privately question why House Republicans would ever think their plan would work.
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