Congress
Capitol agenda: Texas’ massive delegation is losing its sway
Thursday could determine whether the Lone Star State gets five more Republican-leaning seats next Congress. Yet the state’s Texas-sized influence is beginning to wane.
The Texas GOP delegation is losing its clout due to a combination of redistricting, retirements and bids for higher office.
The group is on track to lose the seniority and committee gavels it once wielded to influence key decisions in the House. With six retirements looming and another five new GOP-leaning seats in the proposed map — the Supreme Court could decide as soon as Thursday whether to approve it — the state is looking at potentially 11 new members in a 30-member delegation.
“There’s going to be a lot of introductory lunches, that’s for sure,” Rep. Jake Ellzey (R-Texas) told Blue Light News, noting it’s going to be a “drastic change.”
For decades, the GOP delegation was known for guarding its influence, holding weekly lunches to strategize, amassing seats on the influential steering committee that determines committee assignments and often voting as a bloc on key matters.
But the fact that President Donald Trump started his aggressive redistricting campaign with Texas — and that it proceeded at all — reflects the state’s relative impotence in Trump’s Washington. Republicans wary of the effort eventually folded under pressure from the president, and since then, a fifth of the delegation has announced plans to leave.
Those retirements include Budget Chair Jodey Arrington and Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on two key committees for over a decade. At the start of Trump’s first term, Texas had seven gavels, including influential Armed Services, Financial Services and Ways and Means panels and three coveted Appropriations subcommittee chairs. Now, Texans hold only three committee gavels — including Arrington — and no Texans serve in the House GOP’s elected leadership.
“We were powerful,” said Rep. Roger Williams (R-Texas), who chairs the House Small Business Committee, recounting what the delegation was like when he first arrived in 2013. “But that all cycles.”
What else we’re watching:
— Van Epps seated: Speaker Mike Johnson will swear in Rep.-elect Matt Van Epps (R-Tenn.) on the House floor at 9 a.m., giving the GOP a 220-213 majority.
— Health care talks: Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) plan to introduce a new framework at 9:30 a.m. to reduce health premiums as lawmakers scramble to figure out what to do about expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies. It includes a one-year extension of the subsidies with new guardrails to crack down on fraud and a menu of separate pay-for options — not in the form of subsidies — to keep premiums low.
Senate Democrats are expected to propose a three-year extension of the subsidies, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune said was “designed to fail.”
— NDAA hurdles: Final legislative text on the annual defense authorization bill was originally expected Thursday but has been delayed as GOP leaders work through eleventh-hour intraparty issues that could put its passage in jeopardy. Leaders are now aiming to unveil bill text by the end of the weekend.
Meredith Lee Hill, Jordain Carney, Connor O’Brien and Joe Gould contributed to this report.
The House Rules Committee advanced a procedural measure aimed at breaking an intra-Republican deadlock Monday night. But GOP leaders are still facing a major battle Tuesday to regain control of the House floor.
The panel approved on party lines a measure to set up Republicans’ $1.1 trillion defense policy bill, a government funding bill and other GOP bills for floor debate. It would then combine the Pentagon bill, once passed, with the contentious elections overhaul known as the SAVE America Act and send it to the Senate as one piece of legislation.
That maneuver, telegraphed by Speaker Mike Johnson earlier Monday, is aimed at appeasing House GOP hard-liners who have blockaded the floor, demanding the Senate pass the elections bill that has languished there for months.
However, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, the Republican leading the blockade, said in an interview Monday before the Rules Committee acted that Johnson’s plan is not sufficient — raising the possibility she and allies could vote down the measure on the floor. Other House GOP hard-liners say there are other outstanding issues to battle over Tuesday.
Rep. James McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Rules Democrat, called the merger move “a big waste of time.” The panel voted down a motion by McGovern to remove the provision to combine the two bills in a party-line vote.
The Senate is set to debate its own version of the defense bill next month, and it is likely that the elections overhaul will be removed in negotiations between the two chambers — as McGovern acknowledged Monday and House GOP leaders privately concede.
“The Senate will just strip the SAVE Act out,” he said at the meeting. “There is a zero percent chance SAVE ends up in the [Pentagon bill] because of this rule today.”
The defense bill faces a tight vote if Republicans can pass the procedural measure. Most Democrats are expected to oppose the measure over its massive price tag, which they contend is wasteful.
The panel is set up debate on 312 amendments to the bill. The slate includes GOP measures to codify a Trump executive order to block transgender people from serving in the military, prohibit coverage of gender-affirming care, block aid to arm Ukraine and strip Democratic-backed protections for collective bargaining for Pentagon civilian workers.
The committee also voted down Democratic proposals to slash $150 billion from the bill’s topline and limit the war against Iran.
Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday he plans to deploy an unusual procedural maneuver in a bid to unfreeze the House floor this week, seeking to send the annual Pentagon policy bill and the GOP elections bill known as the SAVE America Act to the Senate in a single package.
That is likely a recipe for a continued standoff between the two chambers over the SAVE America Act, which has stalled in the Senate for months due to internal GOP divides. Under Johnson’s plan, the annual defense policy bill, which typically passes every year with large bipartisan majorities, could become a collateral victim of the impasse.
Asked in brief interview if he had talked to Senate Majority Leader John Thune about his plans, Johnson replied, “I have to do my job in the House, and they’ve got to do their job in the Senate, so we’ll see what happens.”
Johnson is seeking to placate House conservative hard-liners, led by Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who have threatened to oppose the procedural measures that give Republicans control of the floor unless they agree to tougher tactics meant to force the Senate into passing the elections bill.
House GOP leaders discussed the plan to merge the two bills over the weekend as Luna pushed to amend the defense bill directly.
She did not say in an interview Monday whether Johnson’s gambit would suffice: “We want it baked together, not able to be stripped out,” she said.
But the Senate is free to work its own will, and members of that chamber are likely to reject any defense bill that has the partisan elections bill attached. That would set the stage for GOP leaders to strip it out when the House and Senate hash out the differences between their competing Pentagon bills later this year.
Johnson, meanwhile, is pushing a separate plan to pass a slimmed-down version of the SAVE America Act through the party-line budget reconciliation process — an option hard-liners have all but rejected.
“I don’t think that that can be done,” Luna told reporters Monday.
He’s also facing another complication: The version of the SAVE America Act he is proposing to attach to the Pentagon bill doesn’t include the latest demands for the bill from President Donald Trump — including a near-total ban on mail voting that is opposed by many Republicans.
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
Lawmakers of both parties questioned Secretary of State Marco Rubio and top Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff Monday in the first broad congressional briefings on President Donald Trump’s Iran deal.
While Democrats asked some of the sharpest questions, participants in an afternoon conference call with House members said, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) at one point pressed the administration officials on the fate of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade uranium.
According to two people granted anonymity to disclose the private remarks, Witkoff and Rubio repeated assurances the administration has privately made to select lawmakers in prior briefings — that the goal is to negotiate a final deal that would prohibit Iran from keeping its highly enriched uranium.
The memorandum of understanding Trump signed earlier this month, they said, was meant to launch those negotiations. Witkoff, the people said, added that the technical team involved in that part of the talks was traveling from Switzerland to Qatar, where talks between the U.S. and Iran are set to happen Tuesday.
Democrats, meanwhile, pushed the administration for more details on what financial benefits Iran could reap under the memorandum — including proceeds from previously sanctioned oil sales.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) went back and forth with Rubio and Witkoff over the lifting of the oil sanctions, two other people granted anonymity on the House call said. The officials eventually cut off the conversation and ended the call.
At another point, Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) raised concerns about Witkoff’s business interests in the Middle East as he’s negotiating with Iran, prompting a sharp defense from Rubio, those people said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asked Rubio and Witkoff about the oil sanctions during a separate all-senators call Monday, saying in a statement afterward that they “confirmed to me that Iran will reap billions in oil revenue while retaining dangerous leverage over the Strait of Hormuz.”
“If this is the administration’s defense behind closed doors, Secretary Rubio should make it under oath, in public, before the Foreign Relations Committee,” Schumer added, calling the briefing “delayed, deficient, and devoid of details.”
An administration official granted anonymity to speak candidly countered on Schumer’s characterization, noting that he had previously gotten a briefing of the deal as part of a group of top leaders engaged on national security matters. Schumer, the official said, had the opportunity to ask multiple follow-up questions on the Senate call.
A separate group of White House officials briefed top congressional leaders and key committee chairs in a classified briefing in the Capitol later Monday.
The administration has faced bipartisan skepticism over multiple provisions of the memorandum of understanding — particularly the lifting of oil sanctions and a $300 billion reconstruction fund that many Senate Republicans fear will help fuel Iran’s military and regional proxies.
Rubio and Witkoff sought to ease concerns about the slow reopening of the Strait of Hormuz — the critical trade route whose closure has sparked higher fuel and fertilizer costs. Both officials said more mine removal is required, and Witkoff indicated that Iran broke the terms of the Trump-signed deal by launching a drone attack on a passing ship over the weekend.
They also sought to assure lawmakers that Iran has received no money under the memorandum — especially not directly from American sources. Administration officials have previously pledged in smaller briefings that the reconstruction fund won’t include U.S. funds.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) called the Senate briefing a “productive conversation” but said “much of what I heard today is similar to what I heard last week” during a dinner at Vice President JD Vance’s residence.
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