Congress
Capitol agenda: Troop pay fight tests the GOP
Tensions over troop pay are taking center stage as the shutdown heads into Week 4.
A number of Republican lawmakers are uneasy with President Donald Trump once again sidestepping the legislative branch’s power of the purse, this time to keep paying members of the military.
“While it’s a desired outcome, there’s a process that’s required — by Constitution and by law — for Congress to be not only consulted but engaged,” says Sen. Jerry Moran, a GOP appropriator from Kansas.
“There’s a way we take care of this. It’s called appropriations. It’s called reprogramming. And I don’t think that process is being respected,” says Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), another member of the Appropriations Committee.
Per two White House officials granted anonymity, Trump will continue to tap alternative funding for military paychecks if Congress doesn’t pass a bill before the next pay date at the end of the month. It’s unclear to top congressional appropriators how much cash the White House believes is available for use, and the administration has not submitted requests to Capitol Hill to reprogram any money.
Senators are poised to get a vote on paying the military and some other federal workers this week, via a bill from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). Democrats are expected to block it from moving ahead. Senate GOP leaders are also considering holding another vote this week on a defense appropriations bill, after it failed to get enough Democratic support to pass on Thursday.
The White House is hunting for money to address other shortfalls to support politically popular programs, including key loans for farmers (a priority for Senate Majority Leader John Thune), according to two Trump officials and two senior Hill Republicans.
What else we’re watching:
— Republicans rally shutdown support: Johnson will host a call with House Republicans Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. as he tries to keep his conference united against Democrats and supportive of staying out of Washington until the Senate reopens the government. Also on Tuesday, Trump will host Republican lawmakers for lunch to thank them for sticking together during the shutdown and confirming nominees, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the plans.
— North Carolina enters the redistricting fight: North Carolina Republicans are expected to approve a new congressional map for the state this week, endangering Democratic Rep. Don Davis. It will mark the state’s fourth map change in just five years, and comes as Trump and national Republicans seek to shore up the GOP majority ahead of the 2026 midterms.
Jennifer Scholtes, Meredith Lee Hill, Jordain Carney and Calen Razor contributed to this report.
A Democratic trio attempted to pass an artificial intelligence bill via a unanimous consent request on Tuesday but were blocked on the Senate floor.
Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) sought to pass their Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act using the procedural mechanism, which allows expedited consideration of legislation but fails if one senator opposes it.
“The whole world has recognized that we’ve got to do something,” Warner said in a speech on the floor. “We should not miss the moment to put a safety protocol in place now.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) objected to the bill, preventing any chance of passage.
“Congress must not legislate on the issue of artificial intelligence hastily or in a closed manner,” he said on the floor, adding that it gave some in the government too much power to dictate the technology that could be permitted to be released.
As some lawmakers grow concerned over dire warnings from AI labs’ top executives about the technology’s risk to humanity, Congress’ attempts to legislate AI guardrails have largely stalled.
In the past few weeks, two other AI-related bills, the Ratepayer Protection Act and AI Emergency Button Act, were also nixed in an attempt to pass them unanimously.
Warner, Schatz and Kim’s new bill would have established a new safety board within the Commerce Department to vet models before they are deployed and set safety standards for the industry. It would also have created a reporting process for safety and security incidents.
Sen. Darline Graham sought to take up her brother’s mantle Tuesday, going after former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining the late-Sen. Lindsey Graham’s phone data.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the South Carolina Republican told Smith as he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that the anguish the prosecutor caused her brother “makes me sick.”
Lindsey Graham, until his unexpected death in July, was among the most vocal in his outrage over revelations that Smith secretly collected electronic data from GOP lawmakers as part of the Biden-era investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The late senator was also unapologetic in his support for a provision tucked into a government funding package, which was later repealed, allowing senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 or more if they discover their electronic records were seized without notification — language specifically designed to compensate Smith’s targets.
But Smith replied that Lindsey Graham was not a target of his investigation and was not suspected of wrongdoing — in fact, he considered Darline Graham’s brother “a patriotic public servant” who likely would have been a “witness” in his case against Trump for attempted election subversion.
“Your brother investigated the claims that Donald Trump was making,” Smith told Darline Graham. “He found them to be false.”
The federal government’s internal watchdog told Congress Tuesday that it has concluded President Donald Trump acted unlawfully in unilaterally canceling $810 million in federal funding.
In a letter to congressional leaders obtained by Blue Light News, the Government Accountability Office’s top lawyer panned Trump’s declaration Friday that he is nixing money Congress appropriated through a controversial budget maneuver called a “pocket rescission.”
“The Constitution vests in Congress the power of the purse,” GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez wrote,
adding that “Congress did not cede this important power” by enacting the 1970s impoundment law intended to stop presidents from withholding money Congress approves.
“Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress’s constitutional power of the purse,” Perez added. “The President may not force the expiration of budget authority Congress has already enacted and did not rescind.”
It is unclear what practical effect, if any, the letter will have on the interbranch funding fight. Outside groups sued the administration last year over a prior pocket rescission, but the Supreme Court issued a preliminary ruling that they did not have standing to challenge the matter. The Trump administration has argued that only the head of the GAO is able to sue under the 52-year-old law governing rescissions.
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