Congress
Donald Trump enters his lame duck era
Hours after witnessing his party’s worst electoral drubbing in at least six years, President Donald Trump hosted Senate Republicans at the White House and demanded they ditch their chamber’s supermajority rules.
“If you don’t terminate the filibuster, you’ll be in bad shape,” he told them over breakfast in the State Dining Room.
It was classic Trump dominance theater, like many other occasions this year where he successfully muscled recalcitrant Republicans to confirm controversial nominees, support divisive policies and enact sweeping domestic policy legislation.
But upon returning to the Capitol, the senators made it very clear: They planned to blow Trump off. One GOP senator, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, laughed out loud when asked about the anti-filibuster push.
Welcome to the dawn of Trump’s lame duck era.
Don’t expect an immediate stampede away from the president, according to interviews with GOP lawmakers and aides Wednesday — he remains overwhelmingly popular with GOP voters and is the party’s most dominant leader in a generation. Trump’s top political aide signaled Monday that the White House is not worried about a messy “family conversation” about the filibuster.
But with Tuesday’s stunning election losses crystallizing the risks to downballot Republicans in 2026 and beyond, there are growing signs that lawmakers are contending with the facts of their political lives: He’ll be gone in just over three years, while they’ll still be around.
The danger for the president is that if Trump can’t run roughshod over the thin GOP congressional majorities, it would leave him few legislative options given his scant interest in compromising with Democrats.
One Republican already liberated from reelection concerns openly vocalized frustrations Wednesday as Trump pushed for the end of the filibuster — something many in the GOP fear would backfire soon enough once Democrats regain power.
Retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) called Democrats’ victory margins Tuesday “a red flag to the GOP” and blasted Trump’s refusal to engage with the other party.
“He has zero ability to work across the aisle,” he added. “He needs to face reality and learn how to talk to Democrats he can reason with.”
Other House Republicans more quietly aired frustration with Trump’s approach to the record 37-day shutdown, which headed into the end of the congressional workweek with no clear end in sight.
Many are privately signaling they’re prepared to break with Trump if he doesn’t allow Republicans to negotiate on an extension of the Obamacare insurance subsidies Democrats are demanding. Others blamed the president and his top budget aide, Russ Vought, for favoring hardball moves such as canceling blue-state transportation projects and firing federal employees that only served to cause Democrats to dig in further.
One irate senior House Republican granted anonymity to speak candidly blamed Trump and Vought for spurring the shutdown with their unprecedented move to unilaterally rescind congressional funding over the summer through a so-called pocket rescission.
“That decision is why we’re in this mess,” the Republican said.
Democrats who on Wednesday finally found a bounce in their step after a year of infighting said it was no secret why Republicans were finally standing up to Trump over the filibuster after folding so many times before.
“Last night’s results look like a recipe for them to lose the House and the Senate next fall,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “And they’re going to hand us a 50-vote majority gift-wrapped when we show up Day 1?”
Trump on Wednesday night moved to buck up his faithful. “OUR MOVEMENT IS FAR FROM OVER — IN FACT, OUR FIGHT HAS ONLY JUST BEGUN!” he wrote in a Truth Social post with an upbeat video.
That followed a day on defense, where GOP leaders conspicuously split with Trump on the reasons for the stunning Republican losses.
Both Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune played down the Democratic victories, casting them as expected losses in blue states — never mind that the margins in New Jersey and Virginia far outstripped expectations and that Democrats also won big in Georgia, Mississippi and Pennsylvania.
Trump, on the other hand, told senators at the breakfast that the shutdown played a “big role” in the GOP losses. Asked about that assessment, Johnson replied, “I don’t think the loss last night was any reflection about Republicans at all.”
What GOP lawmakers do know is that there is a dramatic difference in their party’s performance in elections where Trump appears on the ballot versus the midterm and off-year contests where he’s not — no matter how many rallies he does or endorsements he doles out.
They also know, third-term musings of questionable constitutionality aside, Trump will never run for office again — which had many acknowledging that, if not fully reckoning with, the fact it might not be a great idea to hew so closely to Trump’s agenda.
“Trump drives turnout, and if he’s not on the ballot, the turnout is way down,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said.
Cornyn questioned whether the Tuesday elections “prove very much” and was one of the few GOP senators who said Wednesday he was newly open to considering changes to the filibuster after meeting with Trump. He could be considered the exception who proves the rule: Cornyn needs to stay in Trump’s good graces amid a fierce primary battle for reelection next year.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said voter dropoff in non-Trump years is “an issue for Republicans” and suggested the party should consider changing the filibuster to “do things that benefit the American public … secure the border, repair the damage done by Obamacare, transition to a system that works, secure elections.”
But with Thune making clear the Senate’s rules aren’t changing — “I just know where the math is on this issue,” the majority leader said — Johnson put the focus on GOP voter behavior.
“People need to understand: If you want to keep Trump’s agenda moving forward, you’ve got to come out in midterms,” he added.
Discussion has ramped up among senators about not only changing the filibuster but also trying to pass a new party-line reconciliation bill under the budget rules the GOP used to enact their megabill this summer. The suggestion came up at the White House breakfast, according to senators.
But there are huge obstacles to going down that road. The GOP still has a super-tight margin in the House, four senators can kill any party-line effort, Senate rules restrict what initiatives can be passed under budget rules and Republicans are far from united on what they would want to do with a reconciliation bill in the first place.
James Blair, political director for Trump’s 2024 campaign and the RNC who now serves as a deputy White House chief of staff, rejected the notion that lawmakers will treat Trump as a lame duck in an interview for Blue Light News’s “The Conversation.”
“I don’t think Republicans are going to do that at all,” he said. “The president, you know, sort of has his way of communicating, but the senators have their way, and it’s a family at the end of the day.”
Some GOP senators, he added, “have long relationships, and they hope somehow the Democrat fever will break one day. And I think the president’s view is, it’s not breaking.”
Dasha Burns, Mia McCarthy and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.
Congress
Schumer rolls out Democrats’ midterm energy pitch
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rolled out an energy and climate change agenda Wednesday as a preview of what Democrats have in store if they take the chamber’s majority in November’s elections.
Schumer’s five-point plan seeks to ride the national momentum on affordability, framing Democrats as the party not just of clean energy and fighting climate change, but of lower electricity bills and more jobs.
It touches on some longtime Democratic priorities — like bringing back the Inflation Reduction Act clean energy tax incentives that President Donald Trump and Republicans rolled back last year — and easing permitting hurdles for wind, solar and other zero-emissions energy sources.
“We can bring new voters and allies into the fight for a cleaner environment by showing how clean energy is affordable energy,” Schumer said.
“With this new expanded coalition, putting us back in the majority, we have an opportunity to put forward new policy solutions, strong policy solutions, that tell the American people we can both lower costs and make real progress on climate change,” he continued.
Schumer presented the plan at the League of Conservation Voters’ annual Capital Dinner, gathering hundreds of donors, lawmakers, environmental staff and others.
The group, long a major Democratic ally, is one of the nation’s top election spenders, and is poised to be a major part of Democrats’ attempts to recover from their 2024 losses.
Clean energy, Schumer said, is “the cheapest and fastest way to add energy to the grid, and reduces our emissions at the same time.”
The Democrats’ plan seeks to build out more electricity transmission and storage, make sure data centers pay their fair share for energy, and better protect consumers from electricity bill increases.
While many of the pillars are longtime priorities on the left, Schumer emphasized some new priorities. The plan puts geothermal and nuclear energy, including fusion, on a similar level to renewables like wind and solar.
Schumer is also promising “a thorough re-examination of the entire structure and incentives within our energy systems … to prioritize lowering costs,” and new efforts to make electricity bills “easier to understand.”
While Democrats have been engaging with Republicans toward bipartisan permitting legislation for all forms of energy, Schumer presented a more partisan permitting concept in his speech.
“Democrats will provide legislative certainty for clean energy projects, so that workers and investors can rebuild the clean energy project ecosystem that Trump has destroyed,” he said, adding that permitting legislation “never, never must come at the expense of our obligation to protect local communities and safeguard the environment.”
Democrats have not been particularly vocal on climate change in their drive to take the Senate and House majorities, as they reexamine the issue’s palatability with voters. Schumer’s rollout shows at least some willingness to focus on climate, but keeps the party’s priority on affordability.
Democrats currently hold 47 of the Senate’s seats, so they would need a net gain of four seats to get the majority. The party is focusing on candidates like former Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina, Gov. Janet Mills in Maine and former Rep. Mary Peltola in Alaska to get there, but it’s an uphill battle.
The party has also taken recent steps to push its energy agenda in the Senate. Earlier Tuesday, Democrats forced a vote on a resolution that sought to undo Trump’s implementation of clean energy tax policies. More such resolutions are forthcoming.
Congress
Special election shocker has Florida Republicans nervous about redistricting
Florida has been viewed for months as the potential capstone of a GOP redistricting campaign, but now Sunshine State Republicans are growing wary after the dramatic flip of two legislative seats in the state — including one where President Donald Trump votes.
Republicans already hold a commanding 20-8 edge over Democrats in the Florida House delegation, and some in the GOP — including Gov. Ron DeSantis — believe they could pick up as many as five more seats with a rare mid-decade redraw of district lines.
Some Florida incumbents are now warning in stark terms it could backfire.
“I think the Legislature needs to be very cognizant of the fact that if they get too aggressive … you could put incumbent members at risk,” GOP Rep. Greg Steube said. Some seats that Republicans previously won by eight or nine points, he said, could instead have only a four- or five-point GOP advantage — putting them in reach for Democrats in a wave election.
DeSantis, citing a state Supreme Court decision from last year and a potential ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, has already called a special session of the state Legislature in April to push ahead with new lines. So far there have been no official maps produced or any signs that lawmakers have started working on them.
Republican anxiety has only grown further after Democrats notched surprising wins in special elections Tuesday, including a Palm Beach County district that contains the Mar-a-Largo resort where Trump lives and votes.
While many in the GOP have brushed off the Democratic gains there and in other states as anomalies, private qualms are growing among the incumbents whose seats could be put at greater risk due to redistricting.
“We keep saying these are kind of one-off things that haven’t gone our way,” said one Florida House Republican granted anonymity to speak candidly. “But I’m not seeing any of the one-offs that are going our way.”
“To talk as aggressively as some of what we’ve heard, there’s no way to get there without significantly weakening some districts,” the member added.
House Democrats are hoping to capitalize on the opportunity. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries quickly sent a warning Tuesday night that redistricting could backfire.
“We will crush House Republicans in November if DeSantis tries to gerrymander the Florida congressional map,” Jeffries said in a post on X.
Others are openly objecting to redistricting on more high-minded grounds. Rep. Daniel Webster, a veteran Republican from central Florida, called it a “slippery slope.”
“I’ve been around enough reapportionments to know it can come back and bite you,” he said.
“I don’t like this redistricting stuff,” Jacksonville-area Rep. John Rutherford said, noting south Florida would likely bear the brunt of any changes. “But if they think they can get another two seats or something, have at it.”
Any significant redraw in Florida would likely focus on changing districts that were drawn based on racial considerations, the subject of the court rulings DeSantis has cited. While much of the focus has been on seats held by Democrats, Republicans concede it could lead to changes to the Miami-area district represented by GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.
Some incumbents are also worried that redistricting — still weeks away — is hindering their reelection campaigns as the midterms approach.
“Why would you knock on doors if you don’t know if those doors are gonna be in your district or not?” Steube said.
The hand-wringing over Florida comes as the fallout from Trump’s monthslong redistricting push continues to ripple through the House. Republicans kicked things off with a surprise effort to draw new maps in Texas, but Democrats countered with an effort to draw California’s lines in their favor.
After months of wrangling in about a dozen states, the whole effort looks to end up close to a wash — after some Republicans tried to warn party leaders the heavy-handed effort could backfire.
A group of House Republicans from Florida privately discussed their concerns about the fallout of yet another redistricting push in their state, several Republicans confirmed — especially amid rising anxiety that Hispanic voters could be turning away from the GOP.
House GOP leaders mostly brushed off the Florida special elections in public comments Wednesday, arguing that low-turnout, off-cycle races shouldn’t be considered midterm bellwethers. But some suggested there are lessons to be learned from Tuesday’s results.
“Surely you look at those and see, are there things we can learn and improve upon when the big election comes?” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Wednesday. “And obviously, November is the election that we are focused on.”
The top leaders of the House GOP’s campaign arm, Reps. Richard Hudson of North Carolina and Brian Jack of Georgia, both deferred to the state Legislature on redistricting in Florida Wednesday.
Hudson, the NRCC chair, said Florida’s growing population means redistricting “makes sense to do,” but he said he was more concerned about turnout and other factors.
Jack, the group’s deputy chair for recruiting, similarly talked up the candidates Republicans would be fielding in Florida and elsewhere. As for redistricting, he said, “I defer to the Legislature.”
“It’s up to them,” he said, “not up to us.”
Congress
Arrington: Fraud cuts for war funding
House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington is making clear he will push for the “fraud prevention” spending cuts he wants across state and social safety net programs in order to pay for any Iran war funding in a second GOP reconciliation bill.
The Texas Republican is meeting soon this afternoon with Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in Graham’s office to discuss plans.
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