Congress
Conservatives demand steep funding cuts as they fume over Johnson’s spending bill
In the latest sign of trouble for Speaker Mike Johnson’s spending bill, members of the Freedom Caucus, incensed over the package, are demanding a vote on steep funding cuts.
The group laid out what it wants in an X post on Tuesday night, including needing 72 hours to review the 1,550-page stopgap spending bill as well as two votes on conservative priorities, one on huge non-defense funding cuts and another on an amendment meant to preserve unused border wall material.
The Freedom Caucus said the three things should be included as part of a rule, which would govern the debate on the House floor for the short-term funding bill. The stopgap package as written would fund the government into mid-March as well as provide aid for natural disasters and farmers, among other things.
Members of the group appear to already be conceding that they won’t get their demands.
“That’s all we asked for, and we’re trying to help the conference … even though I hate all this garbage and we couldn’t get that,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said during an interview with Glenn Beck on Wednesday.
But Roy has filed legislation — known as the Disaster Offset and Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Act — laying out the changes to spending that the group is pushing for.
Johnson has said that he wants to, ideally, move the short-term spending bill through the Rules Committee and to the floor under a rule. Passing it through the Rules panel would require Johnson to win over three potential roadblocks on the committee, including Roy and Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).
Not to mention, Johnson would need nearly unified support from his conference to get it to the floor, which would be a tall order at this point.
Johnson hasn’t yet publicly landed on a strategy as he continues to negotiate with his conference. But some members expect the current funding bill to come to the floor under suspension, which requires a two-thirds threshold for passage on the House floor. With dozens of Republicans expected to oppose the bill, Johnson will need to lean on Democrats for support.
Roy added in the interview that Republicans aren’t “taking it though the Rules Committee” and that the short-term spending bill could come up under suspension as soon as Wednesday, though he said the “rough plan” is currently Thursday morning.
Sen. John Cornyn said Monday he will not support Todd Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general absent a written modification to the settlement agreement President Donald Trump entered into with his own administration.
Opposition from the Texas Republican could sink Blanche’s nomination in a highly anticipated Judiciary Committee vote scheduled for Thursday.
While Cornyn said he is in talks with Blanche and others at the Justice Department, he has not secured changes he has demanded to the settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS. Those include formally rescinding a proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” and restricting the scope of tax audit immunity granted to the president and his family.
Cornyn told reporters he needs the document to be signed by Blanche but did not specify whether Trump also needs to sign it.
“We’re talking about that. That hasn’t been fully resolved yet,” Cornyn said in a subsequent interview when asked if Trump needs to sign the modification as well. “We’re still talking. I mean, there’s different ways to approach it.”
Time is running out for Blanche to meet Cornyn’s demands ahead of Thursday’s committee vote, where any one Republican’s opposition could be fatal to the nomination. The senator said Blanche and the administration have been so far “reluctant” to follow through.
At his nomination hearing last week, Blanche testified that plans for the payout fund were dead and that the audit agreement was more limited than set out in the settlement. But Cornyn honed in on the text of the agreement, which states that it “may be modified only with the written agreement of the Parties.”
Blanche acknowledged during the hearing that, without a written change to the agreement, the anti-weaponization fund could still be revived.
“That’s what we’re trying to get them to agree to, which is again what his sworn testimony was,” Cornyn said. “So I don’t know why they’re so reluctant to do that.”
The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
Jay Clayton is on the verge of becoming President Donald Trump’s next director of national intelligence — though Democrats won’t be helping him get there.
The news: The Senate on Monday voted 51-43 in a party line vote to move forward with Clayton’s nomination, teeing up a final vote as soon as Tuesday to confirm him as the next head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. No Democrats joined their GOP counterparts in support of Clayton.
Clayton, the top prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office and a former SEC chair, will take over from acting spy czar Bill Pulte and join Trump’s Cabinet when he’s confirmed by the full Senate.
Why it matters: At some level, that’s a win for Democrats, who have been eager to replace Pulte, a Trump loyalist with no background in national security, since the president named him to the post last month. But after an up-and-down confirmation process for Clayton, Democrats have new reservations about the incoming intel adviser, as Monday’s vote underscored.
During his Senate confirmation hearing two weeks ago, Clayton refused to say that Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 vote, leading Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Panel to vote against his nomination. That marked a reversal from June, when Senate Democrats worked with their GOP counterparts to fast-track Clayton’s confirmation in exchange for renewing a powerful spy law. That deal fell apart after Trump intervened, alleging on social media that Democrats weren’t delivering on their end of the deal.
Open question: Though Clayton’s confirmation now looks imminent, Senate action on the spy statute that was supposed to be part of the deal — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — is not.
With the House already gone for the August recess, the Senate appears unlikely to vote on Section 702 until September.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will meet with lawmakers in Washington to discuss American leadership on artificial intelligence, the company said Monday.
A spokesperson for the chipmaker said Huang would hold talks with both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill to talk about latest developments with the technology.
“Jensen is in DC to meet with leaders on both sides of the aisle to discuss American leadership in AI, including leading in open source,” the spokesperson said.
Huang is scheduled to sit down Tuesday with Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has expressed serious concern about security threats following last week’s OpenAI autonomous cyberattack.
The senator’s office confirmed the meeting. Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It comes as Huang defended open-source AI on X, writing that such models “strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.”
Huang’s visit comes as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also expected to meet with Warner, although a spokesperson for the senator said the talks were separate. Earlier Monday, Open AI announced it was in talks with Nvidia, a technology company that makes chips to use artificial intelligence, for a data center project.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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