Congress
Capitol agenda: Senate says SALT isn’t settled
Pity Speaker Mike Johnson this morning.
Not only does he have to deal with Elon Musk trying to sabotage the “big, beautiful bill,” Johnson is now staring down Senate tax writers who are doubling down on threats to scale back his carefully negotiated deal to raise the state-and-local-tax deduction cap.
Senate Finance Republicans left the White House on Wednesday without decisions on key tax provisions in the bill. But two things are clear: Senators want to make President Donald Trump’s business tax incentives permanent, not just extend them for five years as the House did. And to help pay the roughly half-trillion-dollar price, they’re ready to carve up the House’s deal to quadruple the SALT deduction limit.
SALT Republicans don’t have the same leverage in the Senate that they do in the House — because they simply don’t exist in the other chamber.
“There’s not a single [Republican] senator from New York or New Jersey or California,” said Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho). That means there’s not much appetite “to do $353 billion for states that, basically, the other states subsidize.”
But Senate Republicans are keenly aware of the House’s precarious math problem. If they send a package back to the House with significant SALT changes, it could derail the timeline for Trump’s biggest legislative priority.
“We are sensitive to the fact that, you know, the speaker has pretty narrow margins, and there’s only so much that he can do to keep his coalition together,” Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) told reporters. “At the same time it wouldn’t surprise people that the Senate would like to improve on their handiwork.”
Where’s Trump? The president on Wednesday didn’t directly tell lawmakers not to meddle with the House’s SALT deal. But he, too, is playing the numbers game. “He said, ‘You do this, do we lose three votes here? If you do that, do you lose three votes here?’” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told reporters after the meeting.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune also conceded the difficult calculus on SALT, telling reporters “we understand that it’s about 51 and 218” and “we will work with our House counterparts and the White House” to move the megabill.
There’s been a breakthrough elsewhere, though: With Commerce preparing to release its draft bill Thursday, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told Blue Light News Wednesday that he’s satisfied a planned spectrum auction will protect national security, with specific frequencies used by the military shielded through 2034.
One potential wrinkle: Rounds later suggested to Blue Light News that the deal that was still being finalized Wednesday could look to free up other frequencies “that the business community is going to be concerned with.”
What else we’re watching:
— Appropriations moving: Speaker Johnson plans to meet Thursday with top GOP appropriators about what funding totals to use in drafting the dozen government funding bills they’ll write this summer. House Appropriations is forging ahead with markups Thursday on two of the 12 bills, even before GOP leaders and his dozen subcommittee chairs — “the cardinals” — have settled on numbers for the full slate.
— Senate Banking meeting: Senate Banking Republicans will propose provisions that would change the pay scale for Federal Reserve employees and zero out funding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as part of the Senate version of the GOP megabill, according to a committee staff memo obtained by Blue Light News. Banking Republicans are scheduled to meet Thursday morning to discuss the proposal.
— Lutnick on Blue Light News (again): Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is back on Capitol Hill Thursday to testify in front of House Appropriations. Expect him to be back in the hot seat after Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) grilled him on Wednesday over the Trump administration’s tariffs.
Jasper Goodman, John Hendel and Jennifer Scholtes 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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