Congress
Fetterman: Patel pledged to not go after political enemies
Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for FBI Director, claimed he would not go after his political enemies to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), despite Patel’s past claims that he would.
In an interview with Jonathan Karl on ABC’s “This Week,” Fetterman said that Patel told him he would use the FBI to go after Trump’s enemies, despite his comments vowing to go after Trump’s political enemies.
“So I’m not going to go into detail, but he absolutely, — that’s never going to happen,” Fetterman said when asked about Patel’s past comments pledging to go after Trump’s enemies. “That’s not it … that’s what he claims.”
Fetterman, one of the few Democratic senators who has been meeting with Trump’s Cabinet picks, said he has no regrets about meeting with some of the controversial selections. He added that he learned a lot about Patel from his meeting, including that he used to be a public defender and his own family’s immigration story.
“There is going to be some [nominees] that I will vote yes, and there’s some, maybe that I’ll vote no,” Fetterman said. “But nobody can accuse me of just saying I had a closed mind, or I just said no because Trump picked this person, or whatever.”
Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), who will be sworn into Sen. Mitt Romney’s Senate seat in the new year, said that he discussed Patel being blind to political affiliation in his new role.
“For me, one of the most important things that I needed to hear from Kash is that he would be blind to political affiliation, because I know some of the things that he said and that have been attributed to him,” Curtis said, also in an interview with Karl on “This Week.”
He added, “And I don’t care if they’re Republicans or Democrats and we had some very specific conversations about that. And I wanted to make sure that he would be blind to that.”
When asked about Republicans claiming every senator should get in line with Trump and support his Cabinet picks because he has a mandate, Curtis said his son had brought up a similar concern at Thanksgiving.
“I did get more votes than him in Utah. Does that give me a mandate?’” Curtis said he told his son.
“I think people forget the ‘advice’ part of advice and consent. I can’t advise the president if I haven’t thoroughly talked to these people, if I haven’t investigated everything about them, if I haven’t learned their strengths and their weaknesses,” Curtis said. “And I think I owe that to the president. And I think if the better job I do, the better president he will be.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee has abandoned plans to advance Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general Thursday, according to a committee spokesperson.
The decision comes as Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) continue to push the Justice Department to revise a controversial settlement agreement between President Donald Trump and the IRS. A “no” vote from either senator would effectively sink Blanche’s nomination.
The two senators met Wednesday with Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) but did not announce any breakthrough.
“Chairman Grassley works to set President Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure,” said the spokesperson, who declined to be named. “Senators Cornyn and Tillis want written assurances from the Department of Justice regarding the Trump-IRS settlement. Tomorrow’s markup is postponed as work continues to secure sufficient support in committee to favorably report [Blanche], who is highly qualified for the job.”
The meeting could still be rescheduled if Cornyn and Tillis are placated, but any delay threatens Senate GOP leaders’ plans to confirm Blanche before the chamber adjourns for its summer recess next week.
White House officials urged Senate Republicans on Wednesday to quickly adopt a spending blueprint for a narrowly focused party-line spending bill, but they struggled to quash GOP skepticism about the administration’s vision.
White House budget director Russ Vought stressed during the private lunch meeting with Senate Republicans that the next package passed under the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process should include only President Donald Trump’s most urgent priorities — particularly defense spending and aid for farmers.
Vought said Republicans should not seek to cut spending or otherwise offset the deficit impact of the tens of billions of dollars the Trump administration wants enacted, nor should they attempt to raise the debt limit.
“It should be tight,” he told reporters as he exited the lunch. “It should be for the defense needs that we need now, for the [agriculture] needs that we need now. And to get this as straight a shot to the president’s desk as possible.”
That approach comports with the $95 billion framework the House adopted last week before lawmakers there left Washington for their summer recess. But Vought and other White House officials faced pushback in the room Wednesday on a variety of issues.
Majority Leader John Thune warned afterward that he doesn’t believe he has the votes for the narrow budget resolution the Trump administration is contemplating. He said there was a disconnect between the narrow bill the White House is seeking and the political challenges it creates.
Those challenges revolve around “vote-a-rama” — a feature of the reconciliation process that allows Democrats to force a series of amendment votes that could put GOP senators in tough spots. The more committees the budget resolution “instructs” to deliver legislation, the more opportunities Democrats will have to create political mischief for Republicans.
“Some of the things that are contemplated being done in this reconciliation bill, or in this budget resolution legislation, are things that could implicate a number of committees,” Thune said. “Obviously that creates an uphill challenge in terms of trying to ensure that you have 50” votes.
Senators also aired concerns about Trump’s obsessive focus on the GOP elections bill known as the SAVE America Act. The House blueprint contemplates including parts of that bill in the party-line package.
But Senate Budget Chair Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said doing so in the Senate could involve more committees — and open up the range of issues Democrats would be able to force politically troublesome votes on.
“I think we all hate vote-a-rama,” Johnson added. “Some people are more sensitive to the kind of votes they have to take.”
In another complication, some Senate defense hawks want more military spending than the $60 billion House Republicans laid out in their own framework. Johnson said he and other Republicans expect to meet with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth later Wednesday to discuss the Pentagon’s needs.
But other Senate Republicans, such as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), aren’t convinced it’s a good idea to pursue another party-line bill at all.
“It used to be we would try to figure out how we worked through some challenging problems with the minority,” she said.
Murkowski added that the Trump administration’s strategy of relying on the reconciliation process to avoid bipartisan negotiations only works if a majority of Republican senators go along with the plan.
“It’s not always guaranteed that you get 50” votes, she said.
Vought, meanwhile, leaned on the potential for yet another party-line reconciliation package to be enacted after the midterm elections as another vehicle to deliver key priorities. That could include a debt limit increase, he said, along with yet another tranche of defense cash to meet Trump’s $1.5 trillion goal for annual military spending.
The various legislative vehicles left some GOP senators scratching their hands as they left the lunch.
Asked if he had gotten clarity from Vought & Co., Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said, “‘Not really’ is the short answer.”
Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz said Wednesday he is again postponing a highly anticipated markup of artificial intelligence bills planned for next week.
Instead, the Texas Republican said in an interview Wednesday, the panel will only take up bills focused on kids’ online safety.
Cruz said senators could not strike a deal on AI legislation in time for the committee to vote next week.
“We are going to do a markup on kids’ safety next week,” Cruz told Blue Light News. “We have moved the broader AI markup to September. … It’s our intention still to mark those up, but it is taking longer to get bipartisan agreement.”
Cruz said the committee would mark up the Kids Online Safety Act, led by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), along with other measures.
Under the panel’s rules, the chair must publish an agenda a week in advance. The committee did not immediately respond to a question about exactly which bills would be on the docket.
- Live updates: Fauci invokes Fifth at Senate COVID hearing; Blanche nomination at stand-still
- Obama offers his summer reading suggestions
- More now say AI does more harm than good: Survey
- Trump says he ‘respects’ Biden’s pardon of Fauci
- Iran’s surprise attack in Jordan blows up pause in fighting
- US launches strikes on Iran in retaliation for failed attack on American troops
- FIFA faces global anger over plan to give Kushner brother a financial stake
- Wednesday’s Mini-Report, 7.29.26
- Epstein survivors say meeting with Todd Blanche was ‘very condescending’
- Trump administration to dispense $600M for vaccines RFK Jr. held up
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship11 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words