Congress

Capitol agenda: Rand Paul forces GOP into megabill runaround

Published

1 year ago

June 20, 2025

Sen. Rand Paul is a frequent thorn in GOP leadership’s side. But his recent break over border security funding in President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” has top Republicans pushing the bounds of institutional norms to rein him in.

Senior Republicans have sidelined the Kentucky Republican, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in their talks with the White House over policies under the panel’s purview.

Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Blue Light News he has taken over as the lead negotiator around how to shepherd through tens of billions of dollars for border wall construction and related infrastructure in the GOP megabill. Meanwhile, a Senate Republican aide said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) — who heads the relevant Homeland Security subcommittee — will be the point person for negotiating the bill’s government affairs provisions.

With every other committee chair helping manage negotiations for their panels’ portions of the massive tax and spending package, cutting Paul out is unprecedented. But Paul proposed funding border security at a fraction of what the administration requested and the House passed in its bill.

“Senator Paul usually votes ‘no’ and blames everybody else for not being pure enough,” Graham told Blue Light News. “As chairman, you … don’t have that luxury sometimes. You have to do things as chairman you wouldn’t have to do as a rank-and-file member.”

Indeed, few of Paul’s own committee members appear willing to defend him. Paul lost an ally in Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a fellow deficit hawk, after top White House adviser Stephen Miller briefed senators on the administration’s border request and made a persuasive argument. Graham said the meeting was requested by him and Majority Leader John Thune to “contest” Paul’s offer. Paul did not attend.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said Paul’s decision to draft his own proposal “without any consultation of the committee” was concerning, adding that he had “never seen that happen before.”

Nonetheless, Paul still believes some pieces of his own plan unrelated to border security will end up in the final bill, he told Blue Light News on Wednesday, and that he’s involved in ongoing talks with the Senate parliamentarian.

Speaking of the parliamentarian: Senate rule-keeper Elizabeth MacDonough is scrubbing the final draft of the megabill in a “big beautiful” Byrd bath. Her rulings on which provisions will fly under the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process are expected to roll in through the middle of next week, when Thune wants to schedule the first procedural vote related to the package.

Republicans are bracing for an answer to one consequential question they punted on earlier this year: whether they can use an accounting maneuver known as “current policy baseline” to make it appear that extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts would cost nothing.

Senate Finance Republicans and Democrats will make a joint presentation to MacDonough this weekend about which provisions to keep or scrap. And there’s no shortage of GOP priorities under Byrd scrutiny — from tax cuts on certain gun silencers to a plan to raise taxes on foreign companies known as the “revenge tax.”

Other outstanding issues before the parliamentarian: whether Commerce has to tweak language to prohibit states from regulating AI over the next decade; whether Judiciary can block judges’ ability to issue preliminary injunctions; and whether Agriculture can use the megabill to pay for pieces of the stalled farm bill.

What else we’re watching:

— More megabill timeline hurdles: The Senate majority leader is ramping up efforts to quell rebellions within his conference over the megabill as he works to get it to the floor next week. That includes talking to Trump, who he frequently refers to as his “closer,” on a near-daily basis, Thune said. Meanwhile, Hawley is urging GOP leaders to strike Senate Finance’s language that would largely reduce the provider tax to 3.5 percent from 6 percent, warning that it won’t fly with House Republicans who voted to freeze, rather than reduce, the tax that many states use to fund their Medicaid programs.

— Iran classified briefing: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has privately confirmed there will be an all-senators classified briefing on Iran early next week, a Schumer aide said. It comes as Trump says he’ll decide within the next two weeks whether to strike the country amid its escalating confrontation with Israel.

— Trump pushes Senate’s crypto bill: Trump is urging House Republicans to send a “clean” version of the Senate-passed stablecoin regulatory framework to his desk “LIGHTNING FAST” — dialing up the pressure on congressional Republicans as they mull changes to the bill, including potentially packaging it with broader digital-assets market structure legislation.

Hailey Fuchs, Jordain Carney and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

Congress

Where Warnock is visiting in the final midterms sprint

Published

7 hours ago

October 5, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Raphael Warnock is hitting the road for the last month before Election Day.

The Georgia Democrat’s final midterm campaign surrogate sprint will only increase chatter around the possibility that he might run for president in 2028, according to a nine-stop itinerary shared first with Blue Light News.

First, he’ll touch down in New Hampshire on Tuesday before hitting Nevada on Wednesday. Next, he’ll travel to South Carolina (Oct. 13), Mississippi (Oct. 14), North Carolina (Oct. 15), South Carolina (Oct. 16-17), Michigan (Oct. 20-21), Wisconsin (Oct. 23) and Ohio (Oct. 24-26).

“Senator Reverend Warnock will be hitting the trail to energize voters who are sick of the President enriching himself while ordinary people continue to pay more for everything,” a spokesperson told Playbook. “Tapping into the righteous anger that voters are feeling across the country, the pastor in the Senate will again make the campaign trail his pulpit: calling out Trump’s corruption, while leaving voters hopeful for the next generation of Democratic leadership.”

Asked recently at the Texas Tribune Festival about whether he would run for president, Warnock said: “We’ll see what happens.”

Congress

Capitol agenda: Dems split on probing Trump corporate allies

Published

8 hours ago

October 5, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democrats are eager to win back subpoena power if they retake Congress, but they’re split on how hard they’ll go after corporate America.

The party is united by the idea of aggressive oversight of President Donald Trump’s administration, which will help shape their messaging in the run-up to the 2028 election. But Democrats are at odds over how fiercely to use their probing power to go after the corporations, law firms and universities that courted the White House over the past two years.

“We don’t want to turn into a banana republic where you lose an election and it’s all about retribution,” Rep. Bill Foster, a senior member of the Financial Services Committee, said.

“We’re going to have to be a little bit wise about when companies simply did something they had to do to survive this unprecedented level of corruption, compared to companies that actually got on board and profited more by being a partner in his corruption,” he added.

Some progressives counter that a restrained approach would sit uneasily with the party’s base.

“It would be political suicide for Democrats to campaign on fighting corruption and then turn around and go easy on the very companies that are facilitating it,” said Ella Fanger, corporate power policy adviser at the liberal nonprofit group Demand Progress.

Prime targets for some Democrats are the tech companies that have taken steps to be on the president’s good side, like Apple, Amazon and Meta, which have all donated to Trump’s ballroom effort. Major cryptocurrency players, including Coinbase, Ripple and Tether also chipped in for the ballroom, and will be subject to questioning from Democrats.

The late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s networks and associates are also poised for probes — a push that has ensnared big banks like JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank and Bank of America in the past.

Sen. Chris Murphy said the party should focus on the nexus between Trump and corporate corruption.

“We should get to the bottom of the corrupt relationship that exists between corporations in this country and the Trump administration,” Murphy said, pointing to questions he’s posed about a tobacco company’s donation to Trump’s super PAC before new e-cigarette rules were unveiled.

Still, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who serves on Senate Banking, warned against the weaponization of power.

“Our focus should be solving problems that we’re seeing happening,” she said, pointing to cost-of-living issues around health care, housing and energy.

What else we’re watching:

— FIRST IN IC: BUILD AMERICA CAUCUS AGENDA — Energized by progress on permitting and housing legislation this term, a bipartisan development-focused caucus is rolling out a detailed agenda for next term. The 40-member Build America Caucus is releasing a 95-page package of proposals, first shared with Blue Light News, that outlines plans touching on health care, transportation, child care and research. The group launched last year with the goal of cutting red tape and regulatory bottlenecks to spur development.

— AI COLLAB STILL ILLUSIVE FOR CRUZ, CANTWELL — Commerce Chair Ted Cruz and ranking member Maria Cantwell might still be celebrating Senate passage of their landmark college sports bill last week, but it’s unclear the momentum will carry forward to agreement on another committee priority: artificial intelligence. Among the dozen lawmakers, aides and industry experts who spoke to Blue Light News, few expect the two senators to shed their well-established ideologies and styles after the mutual win. That could doom their ability to replicate their latest achievement in something as complex and divisive as an AI regulatory framework.

Jasper Goodman, Katherine Hapgood, Riley Rogerson and Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.

Congress

It took four years, but a Capitol Hill office finally has a union contract

Published

8 hours ago

October 5, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Four years ago, California Rep. Ro Khanna’s staff voted to unionize — one of a handful of Democratic offices that sought to ride a wave of organizing momentum during then-President Joe Biden’s administration.

Much has changed since, to put it mildly, but Khanna aides persevered and recently won approval of their first collectively bargained contract — the first labor agreement of its kind inside Congress.

“This was four years in the making,” Nicole Waring, a deputy director of constituent services for Khanna and the union steward, said in an interview. “We finally, finally reached the point where we were able to finalize our contract and ratify it.”

The agonizing process of turning pro-union enthusiasm into an actual binding agreement is both a breakthrough for the fitful labor movement on Capitol Hill while also underscoring how that movement has sputtered in the years since Biden left office, Donald Trump took back the White House and unionization moved off the front burner for Democratic staffers.

Since an initial wave of offices voted to unionize in 2022, that momentum has largely petered out. Less than a dozen offices are now unionized as staffers’ efforts are complicated by heavy workloads, adversarial bosses and Congress’ recent record high turnover rates that have led some aides to the conclusion that unionizing is more trouble than it’s worth.

Against that backdrop, that the eight-person union in Khanna’s office was able to win a contract constitutes a bright spot for organizers.

The agreement establishes a higher salary floor and a mechanism to renegotiate salaries if the office’s budget allowance increases, according to Waring and portions of the text reviewed by Blue Light News.

The document also codifies a procedure to resolve internal grievances. When Khanna almost certainly wins reelection, the agreement — which was officially ratified in August — will continue through next term.

“I’m proud of our office for signing the first long-term contract in the history of the U.S. Congress. I hope this can serve as a model for other offices in Congress,” Khanna said in a statement thanking his staff. “We need to be a model for the collective bargaining in our offices that we want to see across our nation.”

Waring said Khanna and his senior aides were supportive and trusting during contract negotiation but noted that, even under those positive circumstances, the effort was time- and labor-intensive.

“There’s a lot of back and forth. It takes time to review each passback of the contract, redline everything,” Waring said. “The biggest thing was we wanted to make sure that this contract would be governable, and rather than just make things convenient and take shortcuts, make sure that it was going to be something that we knew would stand the test of time.”

Khanna’s chief of staff, Marie Baldassarre, said in an interview the process for her office took years because “we realized like this is going to actually impact people’s lives, and it’s a binding contract, and so we have to get it right.”

“It’s just never been done before, and none of us were experts,” she added.

Staffers on Capitol Hill often face a grueling office cultures that can hamstring efforts to advance worker protections. Staffers for pro-labor Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.), for example, voted to unionize in 2023 but then faced internal retaliation, according to the Nevada Independent.

Staffers for lawmakers across the ideological spectrum can be subjected to long hours, eyebrow-raising member requests and unrelenting demands that can spur staffer interest in pursuing labor protections — but also fears about potentially hindering their careers.

A person involved in the Congressional Workers Union — an umbrella group that provides support to individual office bargaining units — called the Khanna office contract “historic” and acknowledged it was “probably the biggest win recently” for the broader organizing effort.

“There’s small wins all the time,” added the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly on behalf of the group.

Staffers for former Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) ratified a contract in the final days of his term in December 2022. While that contract was technically the first for a member office, it was largely symbolic given Levin’s imminent departure. Staff for Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Val Hoyle (D-Ore.) secured “memorandums of understanding” with their members in 2024, but not formal contracts.

“Hats off to them for getting it done,” Levin said in an interview. “In terms of what comes next, much will depend on the outcome of the midterms.”

Levin, a labor attorney, said that Republican majorities and White House have had a chilling effect on Capitol Hill unions and predicted that if Democrats take back the House majority next year, a flurry of labor activity will ensue. He added that several Democrats with close ties to organized labor are poised to enter the House, naming fellow Michigan Democrat and former SEIU organizer Donavan McKinney.

“In this political climate, the idea of getting contracts negotiated on Blue Light News, where it’s hardly ever been done, I think that seems very challenging to me,” Levin said. “I do think it’s great that another office has gotten the first contract, and I think the momentum will continue to grow from here.”