Congress
Capitol Hill’s DOGE-era power players
Republican lawmakers are racing to embrace Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s push to chop up the federal government — even if their actual authority is still murky and the effort poses a potential threat to congressional power.
While President-elect Donald Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) won’t formally get started until January, the team behind the office has already been meeting with GOP lawmakers, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations. Ideas that Musk and Ramaswamy are floating include cutting regulations, reducing the size of the federal workforce and mounting a legal bid to bypass Congress on spending cuts.
What has emerged from the early DOGE-Capitol Hill discussions is a growing number of Republicans eager to work with the office, including not only MAGA favorites like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, but also incoming Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs chair Rand Paul of Kentucky and Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa. Ernst, a one-time Trump critic who has recently huddled at Mar-a-Lago, is spearheading a dedicated DOGE caucus.
Many of those Republicans have previously pushed to cut spending, making DOGE an opportunity to bear hug one of Trump’s first big initiatives and also advance their own long-held goals.
One group of outliers appear to be appropriations committee leaders, the senior lawmakers who control Congress’ power of the purse and would nominally be crucial to executing any DOGE recommendations. They face a potential challenge to their power, with Musk and Ramaswamy floating the possibility of circumventing Congress in their bid to slash the federal bureaucracy. Further complicating things is the fact that DOGE, though created by Trump, won’t be a formal part of the government and is poised to act in a pure advisory fashion.
What follows is a run-down of how Republican House members and senators are jockeying for influence in the DOGE era.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.)
Less than four years ago, 11 Republicans joined with Democrats to remove Greene from congressional committees over a series of incendiary comments and actions. This January, she’ll be leading the new House Oversight subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, which is being tasked with helping Musk and Ramaswamy at DOGE.
It will give one of Trump’s loudest allies on Capitol Hill an official perch where she can coordinate with the administration, drive her own policy ideas and pressure recalcitrant GOP colleagues. Greene said in a statement that her subcommittee will “work hand in hand with President Trump, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and the entire DOGE team.” House Oversight Chair James Comer of Kentucky said in an interview that Greene would be a “good match” with Musk and Ramaswamy given her previous experience as a small business owner.
Greene’s ascendance comes as Speaker Mike Johnson pushes for her to be a more active player in the GOP conference, which could work to his benefit as he tries to shore up support for keeping his gavel in January.
Greene’s subcommittee is expected to target “wasteful spending,” come up with ideas for reorganizing federal agencies and identify ways to “eliminate bureaucratic red tape,” said a person granted anonymity to discuss the panel’s plans.
Greene is lobbing a more direct warning, saying the subcommittee would help “expose people who need to be FIRED.”
Comer said the Oversight Committee’s jurisdiction of the federal workforce would be a big area of overlap with Trump’s DOGE team. Musk and Ramaswamy indicated in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this month that they would try to get around protections that make it harder to fire federal employees. They are also considering pushing for a five-day return to office as a way to thin the federal workforce.
Comer and Greene have already met with Trump’s incoming DOGE team, including Ramaswamy, according to a person briefed on the discussion, who added that the Trump officials are “supportive of the Oversight Committee’s endeavor and are already working together.”
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa)
Ernst is making an early bid to position herself as a lead Senate DOGE ally, where large swaths of Trump’s agenda still face pockets of GOP opposition and a Democratic filibuster.
Ernst is leading a new DOGE caucus and outlining trillions in potential spending cuts or savings, arguing that DOGE’s mission is in line with her long-running “Squeal Awards” that target government waste. The House has its own DOGE caucus, spearheaded by Reps. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.) and Pete Sessions (R-Texas).
Ernst’s move to align herself closely with DOGE, and by extension Trump and his allies, comes after she lost the race for Senate GOP conference chair earlier this month to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).
Ernst met with Ramaswamy late last week at Mar-a-Lago, where she pitched him on ways to curb federal spending. Ramaswamy publicly thanked Ernst and said that DOGE officials “look forward to partnering with the Senate to downsize government.” Ernst then posted a photo on social media from over the weekend with Trump and Musk, saying she met with the incoming president to discuss his Cabinet.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
In the Senate, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will have the largest area of overlap with DOGE. Paul, a libertarian-leaning, small government Republican, will be its chair.
Paul has long been a gadfly for leadership and often pushes efforts to cut spending, which have routinely gotten votes on the Senate floor but been rejected by even some of his GOP colleagues.
Paul during a recent Fox News interview, said that he was “all in” on helping DOGE, adding that “we’ve already forwarded them 2,000 pages of waste that can be cut.” He’s also pledged to give advice to Trump’s DOGE team about using recissions to clawback already approved government funding, which would require congressional signoff.
Cagey appropriators
Republican lawmakers who are responsible for crafting and spearheading funding legislation aren’t totally shutting the door on DOGE as it encroaches on their turf.
Musk and Ramaswamy are floating the possibility of circumventing Congress on steep cuts by mounting a legal challenge against the Impoundment Control Act, which places limits on a president’s ability to unilaterally withhold funding. They believe the Supreme Court, which has three justices nominated by Trump, would be favorable to them.
Key appropriators aren’t embracing that plan, but aren’t yet fighting back. Instead, in interviews with Blue Light News, Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and other members of the panel said they are waiting to see the details of what Trump is proposing and how realistic the plans from his allies are.
“I am not concerned at all,” said Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), a member of the Appropriations Committee. “I learned a long time ago, stay calm, we’ll deal with all these issues as they come. Look, what are we even talking about? Is this something real?”
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
Adam Hamilton raised $10.6 million in the third quarter of 2026 across his Senate campaign and his joint fundraising committees, his campaign tells Blue Light News, a significant haul for the Kansas Democrat.
The fundraising total illustrates Democrats’ newfound bullishness about flipping a Senate seat in the deep-red state for the first time since 1932.
“This grassroots support sends a clear message: with three weeks until Election Day, Adam Hamilton is building the momentum to win,” said Hamilton campaign spokesperson Tyson Brody.
Hamilton’s third-quarter figure is nearly triple his $3.66 million second-quarter total. His campaign did not provide a current cash-on-hand total.
National Democrats began pumping money into Kansas in recent days, a sign of their growing hopes that Hamilton could win. Last week, Senate Majority PAC — Senate Democrats’ top super PAC — reserved $5 million in television ads backing Hamilton. American Bridge PAC and Lower Costs Now, a new group affiliated with former Vice President Kamala Harris’ super PAC, have spent in Kansas in recent weeks.
Republicans have also flocked to Kansas to prop up Marshall: Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP’s top PAC, has spent or reserved nearly $11 million backing Marshall in the past week, according to tracking firm AdImpact.
“It took us five months to raise $15 million. [Marshall] got it in a day,” Hamilton said at a campaign event in Lawrence, Kansas on Monday. “So please help us.”
Marshall’s campaign has yet to release his third-quarter fundraising totals. As of mid-July, Marshall had over $5 million in the bank to $1.73 million for Hamilton.
A bipartisan Senate duo is urging Trump national security officials to “bring its full capacities to bear” to stave off threats posed by artificial intelligence — sooner rather than later.
Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee, and Republican South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, who serves on the Senate Armed Services cybersecurity subcommittee, are calling for a full government response to a growing number of cybersecurity breaches.
“Recent AI security incidents should serve as a warning,” the senators wrote in a Tuesday letter to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and White House Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios. “Advanced AI agents have escaped testing environments, bypassed safeguards, and gained unauthorized access to real-world systems owned by government agencies and private organizations.”
Spokespeople for Clayton and Kratsios did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Their letter comes as lawmakers struggle to hash out what legislation on AI safety, if any, might look like. Members are currently in recess ahead of the November elections and there’s little hope progress can be made by the year’s end.
But those lawmakers who have been engaged on the topic for years now have mapped out administrative actions the Trump administration could move on now, without waiting on Congress.
The Cantwell and Rounds priorities include: strengthening federal AI safety and security standards at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST; expanding independent testing capabilities at the Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence, Department of Energy and the national labs; and working with the tech industry to develop and deploy defensive AI tools.
Specifically, the senators wrote, new NIST standards should address the risks posed by advanced AI capabilities, including the “potential misuse by malicious actors” to conduct sophisticated cyberattacks, automate attacks at scale and agents that threaten external systems and critical infrastructure.
They also said the federal government capacity should be complemented by universities and other research organizations, as well as by private sector, third-party evaluators.
Finally, they point to ways the government could use existing programs at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to work with AI labs to help detect threats and reinforce vulnerable systems.
A bipartisan group of senators urged President Donald Trump to rescind his recent diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, amid bubbling anger on Capitol Hill about Trump’s announcement.
In a letter sent to the White House, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the senators warned that the president’s deal with Russia will not “achieve just ends” or benefit Americans.
“Granting Moscow the ability to sell Russian diesel freely in global markets damages American security interests and is a betrayal of the people of Ukraine, who continue to defend themselves from Putin’s murderous, illegal war,” wrote the lawmakers, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “This deal is a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our Allies; it should be rescinded.”
On Sunday, a smaller group of senators called on the president to “immediately reverse course” on the plan in a statement. Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — who signed on to both — said Sunday there may be “a legitimate case for saying the president’s not following the law.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump announced in a social media post on Friday that Russia would “immediately supply” diesel fuel to global markets — including potentially the U.S. — to help relieve high prices driven, in part, by the ongoing war with Iran. Though Trump has repeatedly defended the U.S.’s actions against Iran, on Saturday he demanded an end to Ukrainian drone strikes that have crippled Russian oil refineries that he argues have caused the record-high oil prices.
The senators on Tuesday argued that the deal with Russia will have a “negligible impact” on fuel prices while providing Putin with “more fuel to finance his war machine” as Russia continues its “brutal attacks on Ukrainian civilians.”
The deal with Russia is a sharp pivot from a sweeping sanctions package signed into law last month. That legislation — championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — was meant to deplete Moscow’s resources by targeting Russian officials, banks and a shadow fleet of oil tankers. It drew widespread bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress.
Senators on Tuesday referenced the package as they condemned Putin as a “tyrant.”
“For decades, America has stood as the bastion of freedom against tyranny, and American presidents have embodied our nation’s resistance to tyrants. Putin is a tyrant,” the letter reads. “Withdraw from this agreement, rescind General License No. 135, and execute the authorities provided under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026. Maintain our legacy – and the duty America holds – as leader of the free world.”
In addition to Blumenthal and Tillis, Tuesday’s letter was signed by Democratic Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Jack Reed (R.I.), and Chris Coons (Del.) and Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Susan Collins (Maine), Alan Armstrong (Okla.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and John Cornyn (Texas).
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words