Congress
Capitol agenda: Trump’s SOTU demands for Congress
President Donald Trump littered his record-breaking, nearly two-hour-long State of the Union address Tuesday night with dramatic tributes to American heroes, caustic attacks on congressional Democrats and a preview of his party’s midterm campaign pitch.
But he also sprinkled in a handful of legislative demands that have uneven prospects at best on Capitol Hill. Here’s what caught our ears:
— Targeting noncitizens: Trump repeatedly railed against illegal immigration and pushed lawmakers to pass the SAVE America Act, the GOP bill that would tighten proof-of-citizenship standards for voting.
“Why would anyone not want voter ID?” Trump said at one point. “One reason — they want to cheat.”
But the bigger news might be what Trump didn’t mention: A hard-right push to use a “talking filibuster” to get the House-passed bill past Senate Democrats. In what was likely a big relief for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, the president didn’t mention the filibuster at all.
Trump also called for passage of “Dalilah’s Law,” which would bar states from granting driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.
— Health care: The president pressed Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson to take the most-favored-nation drug-pricing deals he’s recently struck with pharmaceutical companies and enact them into law.
“I’m not sure it matters, because it’s going to be very hard for somebody that comes along after me to say, ‘Let’s raise drug prices by 700 or 800 percent,’” Trump said. “But John and Mike, if you don’t mind, codify it anyway.”
But the provision faces big opposition from the prescription drug industry and its allies inside the GOP.
Completely unmentioned? The expired Obamacare subsidies, which now seem like ancient history in Washington. Trump only briefly mentioned his “Great Health Care Plan” that would give money “directly to the people.”
— Stock trading: Trump drew bipartisan applause after endorsing a ban on stock trading by members of Congress. But getting a bill on Trump’s desk will be tough.
Johnson’s leadership-blessed legislation to crack down on the practice is in limbo, without enough GOP support to put it up for a vote. Democrats are pushing for a more expansive stock trading bill, which would also apply to the president and vice president.
Even if the House can pass something, the Senate is seen as even more unlikely to act.
— Crime: The president included a demand for lawmakers to pass “tough legislation to ensure violent repeat offenders are put behind bars and, more importantly, that they stay there.”
That called back to Trump’s multiple comments last summer about pursuing a sweeping crime bill, which never materialized into legislation. Rekindling the effort in an election year would be iffy at best.
— Housing: Trump renewed his request for Congress to limit large investors from purchasing single-family homes as the GOP tries to address a growing housing affordability crisis — an idea that has bipartisan support.
It comes as the House and Senate are working to reconcile competing legislative packages, and the White House push could help convince skeptical Republicans to include it in a final product.
“We want homes for people, not for corporations,” Trump said.
— Left unmentioned: There’s one area where the president conspicuously said lawmakers are free to sit on their hands: “Congressional action will not be necessary,” Trump said, to impose new global tariffs to replace the levies struck down by the Supreme Court last week in what he called a “very unfortunate” ruling.
And while Trump did discuss an expansion of a retirement savings program launched under former President Joe Biden, he did not call for new tax cuts or party-line economic measures to address rising prices — which he continued to blame on Democrats.
“Their policies created the high prices,” he said. “Our policies are rapidly ending them. We are doing really well.”
What else we’re watching:
Lawmakers are set to grill two Trump nominees Wednesday morning who have come under fire for their records and financial ties.
— Steve Pearce for BLM: Steve Pearce’s appearance in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will be the former House Republican’s first opportunity to publicly push back against accusations from Democrats and conservation groups that he’s unfit to lead the Bureau of Land Management.
The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, and Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) will almost certainly zero in on Pearce’s voting record. When Pearce was in Congress, he opposed BLM efforts to tighten rules on the oil and gas industry and supported selling some BLM and Forest Service lands.
Pearce also reported that he earned as much as $1 million last year from a business often associated with oil and gas development.
— Casey Means for ‘America’s top doctor’: Over at the Senate HELP panel, all eyes will be on how hard Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) presses Casey Means, Trump’s pick to be U.S. surgeon general, over her stance on vaccines. Cassidy has repeatedly criticized Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine policy changes, and Means has previously condemned giving the hepatitis B shot to infants.
There’s also bipartisan criticism over Means’ credentials. The wellness influencer and health-tech entrepreneur’s medical license is currently listed online as inactive, and she has promoted contested health practices such as consuming raw milk.
Scott Streater, Nico Portuondo and Amanda Friedman contributed to this report.
Trump administration officials have told key Hill Republicans they should expect a request for an Iran war supplemental funding package by the end of this week.
The request is expected to be about $80 billion, according to five people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
But House GOP appropriators believe the Senate will likely add additional non-military items, such as disaster relief or farm aid. House GOP leaders are worried the push for a supplemental bill will undercut their effort to pass another party-line reconciliation bill with GOP priorities and extra defense funding.
Congress has long awaited President Donald Trump’s request to cover the cost of the military campaign in the Middle East. But the measure, which would need at least some bipartisan support to pass the Senate, will face an uphill fight to become law.
Many Democrats who oppose the war are almost certain to object to funding a conflict they disagree with and regard as illegal because Trump didn’t seek congressional approval.
The roughly $80 billion price tag, though, is significantly less than the approximately $200 billion the Trump administration was reportedly weighing in recent months.
The supplemental request would likely be dedicated to replenishing stocks of missiles fired off in the early stages of the war and cover other costs of military operations in the Middle East in recent months.
The leaders of several prominent House Democratic caucuses are proposing a Supreme Court overhaul as well as the Senate filibuster in response to the justices’ decision to narrow the 1965 Voting Rights Act earlier this year.
Their resolution obtained by POLITICO calls for the expansion of the Supreme Court and to establish term limits and a code of ethics for justices. It also calls for the elimination of the 60-vote filibuster in the Senate.
While the resolution stands virtually no chance of adoption, it is the latest indicator of how the Congressional Black Caucus and other key Democrats want to respond to the April decision that cleared the way for Republican states to redraw their congressional maps and eliminate majority-minority districts. The measure also lays down a marker for progressives — who will be emboldened next Congress after defeating several incumbents in New York City Tuesday — as they seek to influence the Democratic agenda.
“The Court’s far-right supermajority poses a serious threat to any future attempts by Congress to realize the promise of a multiracial democracy, rein in executive power, champion worker’s rights, protect voting rights, and restore and strengthen the Federal protections against racial discrimination in the Voting Rights Act,” the resolution reads.
The measure is led by Democratic Reps. Greg Casar of Texas, who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus; Rep. Yvette Clarke of New York, who leads the CBC, Rep. Grace Meng of New York, who leads the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus; and Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia. Rep. Adriano Espaillat of New York, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus chair who lost his bid for renomination Tuesday to a hard-left challenger, is also a lead sponsor.
The leaders of the resolution will speak at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
House Republicans have advanced a bill that would prohibit members of Congress and their family members from trading on certain Washington-focused prediction markets.
The House Administration Committee’s GOP members on Wednesday voted along party lines in favor of the legislation, which proposes to bar lawmakers, their spouses and their dependent children from participating on prediction markets that are based on the outcome of elections or government actions.
It marks the latest in Capitol Hill’s efforts to curb the threat of insider trading on the prediction markets — a risk that has burst into the spotlight in recent months after a series of well-timed trades around the capture of then-Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, Google’s search results and the Iran war. Earlier this year, the Senate banned its members and their staffs from trading on the prediction markets altogether, effective immediately.
And yet, the House Administration Committee vote also revealed a fracture within the House over how far to go in clamping down on lawmakers’ use of the prediction markets. Democrats opposed the bill, saying it didn’t go far enough, while Republicans supported it.
Rep. Joe Morelle of New York, who is the committee’s top Democrat, argued that the legislation is “so filled with loopholes that it looks more like a sieve than a bill.” Instead of passing such a bill, he said the House should follow the Senate’s lead and approve a new and broader resolution aimed at prediction market use among members and their staffs.
“The Senate did it in a matter of minutes — no six-month grace period, no procedurally laborious process,” Morelle said. “They just went to the floor with a two-page resolution and banned it all unanimously. We should do the same.”
House Administration Chair Bryan Steil, who introduced the bill, hit back at his Democratic counterpart’s concerns by questioning why members’ families shouldn’t be allowed to bet on sports through the prediction markets — but can through sportsbooks or casinos.
The Wisconsin Republican pointed to a hypothetical scenario where a member’s child is at college and bets on a sporting event through a prediction market platform. That situation, he said, could be covered by a broader prohibition.
Steil, rather, said his bill is aimed at addressing public policy- and election-focused markets.
“Lawmakers elect to serve the American people, not to enrich themselves by wagering on outcomes from the decisions they make,” he said. “We have a real opportunity to restore trust in Congress by taking necessary steps to eliminate even the appearance of impropriety.”
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