Congress

Finance Republicans kill bid to stop Trump IRS audit-immunity deal

Published

2 hours ago

July 30, 2026

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee defeated an effort Thursday by Democrats to block a plan by the Trump administration to shield the president from IRS audits.

Lawmakers voted along party lines, 14-13, to kill an amendment to a tax-administration bill before the panel that would have barred the administration from implementing the plan.

While Democrats denounced the immunity deal as an illegal abuse of power, Republicans said little aside from saying they are working with the administration to change the plan as part of negotiations to confirm acting attorney general Todd Blanche as attorney general.

Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) warned that accepting Democratic amendment would probably doom the underlying legislation, which is aimed at streamlining IRS operations.

“This is not the place,” Crapo told colleagues. “If this bill were to become the vehicle where this issue is resolved, it would achieve basically making this bill a partisan bill” and that “would turn this bill into a bill that has a much dimmer future for becoming law.”

Lawmakers later approved the full measure on a 26-1 vote, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) the lone opponent.

“No other taxpayer, ever, has gotten this kind of a deal,” she said. “I cannot support a bill that rubber stamps Donald Trump’s corruption. Congress needs to stand up and put a stop to it.”

The administration announced in May a plan to spare Trump and his family from IRS audits in exchange for him dropping a likely unsuccessful lawsuit against the agency over the leak by a contractor of his tax information to the New York Times.

Democrats have been incensed by the plan, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who sits on the Finance Committee, has been demanding changes, though Cornyn’s suggestions are unlikely to quell Democratic outrage.

Cornyn wants to clarify that the audit protections only applies to the parties named in Trump’s suit, and that it only applies to returns already filed — not future filings. Cornyn has complained that Blanche already agreed to that during his confirmation hearing earlier this month, but that the administration must put it in writing. The Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Cornyn is also a member, delayed a scheduled Thursday vote on Blanche’s nomination as Cornyn and the White House continue to negotiate.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another tax writer critical of the immunity deal, said he believes the administration is working “in good faith” to address objections to the audit immunity plan.

The tax-administration legislation, which lawmakers hope to approve during a lame-duck session of Congress, includes more than 60 relatively uncontroversial provisions aimed at improving the tax system.

Congress

‘Clouds’ set to return to Senate’s Alexander Calder masterpiece

Published

59 minutes ago

July 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Hart Senate Office Building atrium will be restored to its full splendor after the August recess for the first time in more than a decade: The hanging mobile portion of Alexander Calder’s iconic “Mountains and Clouds” sculpture is returning.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who has been seeking a restoration of the suspended “Clouds” portion for nearly a decade, told reporters Thursday that the work will be done next month.

“We just built some new, more structurally sound clouds, and they are going back up,” he told reporters.

The four aluminum clouds weighing a combined two tons were removed following a 2014 seismic safety study conducted after a 2011 earthquake shook Washington and damaged the Washington Monument, National Cathedral and other key landmarks. While they were initially installed as motorized mobiles in 1985, the cloud sculptures had been hanging stationary since the 1990s.

The Calder sculpture has been steeped in drama even before the earthquake. The artist himself died just one day after presenting his model to the Architect of the Capitol in November 1976.

The refabricated clouds will eventually spin, but Murphy is not promising that the motor feature will be ready in September.

“I don’t know if they’ll be spinning in September, but they’re going to be up when everybody comes back” from the August recess, he said.

Murphy stressed that the replacement and reinstallation of the clouds is not coming at taxpayer expense.

“It’s all privately funded,” Murphy said. “I and others helped change the law to allow it to be privately funded.”

Since the clouds were removed, the 51-foot-high steel “Mountains” have sat unadorned — a situation Murphy compared to tearing up a masterpiece.

“That statue is like if the ‘Mona Lisa’ was ripped in half, and you kept it up in the Louvre. That wouldn’t be the ‘Mona Lisa’ anymore. ‘Mountains and Clouds’ is not a Calder sculpture without the clouds,” he said Thursday.

Leo Shane contributed to this report.

Congress

With Blanche in limbo, Cornyn hands DOJ new Trump settlement proposal

Published

3 hours ago

July 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. John Cornyn said Thursday he has sent the Justice Department a new offer to resolve the standoff that has thrown Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general into limbo.

The negotiations surround modifications to a controversial DOJ-brokered settlement agreement between President Donald Trump and the IRS. Cornyn said the administration remains “reluctant to change” the text of the settlement — which the Texas Republican says is essential to Blanche winning his vote.

“We provided some additional paper that basically committed him to his sworn testimony from the Judiciary Committee — which, if he would put that in writing, would satisfy my concerns,” Cornyn said.

The back-and-forth comes after Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) postponed a Thursday committee vote on Blanche’s nomination as Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) continue to haggle over the IRS settlement. Either man’s “no” vote could essentially bottle up Blanche’s nomination in the Judiciary panel.

Blanche testified to the committee on July 16 that the “anti-weaponization fund” set out in the settlement was dead as well as that restrictions on IRS audits of Trump are limited. Cornyn pointed to that testimony Thursday as crucial elements that he wants in writing.

“The administration and DOJ know where we stand, and they can decide whether they want this problem solved or not,” Cornyn said. “I don’t know whether they think they can wait us out or think we’ll cave.”

A DOJ official granted anonymity to describe the sensitive negotiations said the department sent “new language” to Cornyn and Tillis on Wednesday night. But Cornyn had called previous Justice Department proposals not “responsive” to his concerns, and it remains to be seen if an agreement can be reached before the Senate leaves next week for August recess.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview Thursday that the GOP’s goal is to resolve the standoff as quickly as possible.

“I think they’re working on trying to get the questions answered so they can tee him up and move him soon, like probably next week,” Thune said.

Thune added that the “idea” is still to try to confirm Blanche before the Senate leaves for five weeks.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Thune tries to teach Trump Senate math

Published

6 hours ago

July 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

John Thune is stuck in between President Donald Trump’s demands and the realities of Senate math.

Thune has eight days to appease the president who wants to see the framework for a third GOP bill advance before senators break for summer recess.

But the Senate majority leader in an interview with Jordain says he doesn’t have the 50 votes needed to adopt the budget plan right now. And he’s uncertain the president would be happy with the substantially watered-down form of the election security bill — the SAVE America Act — that Trump sees as the centerpiece of the measure.

“I think the question at the end is, is that going to be satisfactory to him?” Thune said. “And so we’re still trying to figure that out.”

Around the same time, Trump was in the Oval Office insisting Thune “has the votes” to kill the Senate’s longstanding filibuster and pass the elections bill. He went on to sow doubt on whether he believed Thune was fit to lead Republicans.

“We will find out, and I will let you know,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.

The White House, meanwhile, sent a number of Trump officials to lobby for Reconciliation 3.0 Wednesday, but they struggled to squash GOP senators’ skepticism about the administration’s vision.

Republicans laid out for officials the political complications of taking up the House-passed $95 billion budget resolution in their chamber. Senate Budget Chair Ron Johnson, for example, said including the SAVE America provisions in the Senate — unlike in the House — 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.”

Meanwhile, some senate want more military spending than the $60 billion House Republicans laid out in their own framework.

“I think we have challenges that need to be met,” Sen. Jerry Moran said after a closed-door Senate GOP meeting with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “The process is going to be difficult.”

The bottom line: taking up the party-line bill is a political minefield for GOP senators less than 100 days from the midterms, and Thune said the Republican-on-Republican attacks aren’t helping.

“Let’s try and win some seats in both the House and the Senate, and let’s use this issue to our advantage instead of using it to beat each other up,” Thune said.

What else we’re watching:

— BLANCHE VOTE POSTPONED: Senate Judiciary delayed plans to advance Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general today after key GOP holdouts failed to reach an agreement with the administration on preconditions for their support. Sen. John Cornyn was explicit on the legal language he needed from Blanche to revise a controversial settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS by Wednesday afternoon to secure his vote. Sen. Thom Tillis, another member of the panel with concerns about the settlement, said he would follow Cornyn’s lead.

— SENATE STOPGAP TAKES SHAPE: Senate leaders are leaning toward a Dec. 11 shutdown deadline for the stopgap government funding patch they want to pass next week, according to two people familiar with the discussions. That’s one week later than the Dec. 4 date House Republicans put in the bare-bones version they passed last week. Top senators are still working to finalize a bipartisan agreement on their plan to keep federal agencies funded beyond the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.

Katherine Tully-McManus, Chris Marquette and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.