Congress

GOP’s reconciliation hopes are easier dreamt than done

Published

6 months ago

March 25, 2026

Republicans are hitting the gas on a new party-line policy bill. They are fully aware it might end up in the ditch.

The renewed push for budget reconciliation — spawned out of a Monday meeting between President Donald Trump and a group of GOP senators — marks the best shot Republicans have had in months to enact key agenda items without Democratic cooperation. House and Senate conservatives have clamored for a second attempt this Congress, following last summer’s tax-cuts-focused megabill, without much success.

But GOP leaders face a tall order in wrangling their thin margins and the hodgepodge of policy ideas already being pitched by their competing factions — or watching the effort collapse due to infighting.

Underscoring the massive challenge, some Republicans are stressing they aren’t committing to pass another bill under the reconciliation process — which could allow them to avoid a Democratic filibuster in the Senate — they are just promising to give it a try.

“The odds would be like 100 percent,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in an interview about the chances Republicans will attempt another reconciliation bill. “Now, do we pass it?”

The latest vision for a GOP reconciliation bill would build the legislation around new funding for immigration enforcement that Democrats are refusing to pass, plus parts of the SAVE America Act — the Republican elections overhaul that doesn’t have a path to passing the Senate. GOP lawmakers believe incentives for states to adopt new policies such as voter ID rules could comply with the Senate’s strict rules for reconciliation.

“I would keep it as simple as possible so it could pass,” Johnson said.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said in an interview that keeping the bill narrow would help raise the odds that Republicans would be able to get something across the finish line.

“If you want to keep all of our members tight … we need to agree to the parameters and not allow scope creep,” Tillis said.

Keeping the scope of the reconciliation bill narrower would have an added political benefit for Senate Republicans — it would limit the slate of issues on which Democrats could force simple-majority votes as they try to squeeze vulnerable GOP incumbents just months before the midterms.

But there is already outright skepticism, and in some cases early signs of opposition, inside the Senate GOP. Republicans can lose up to three senators and still pass a party-line bill.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is facing a tough reelection bid, said she thought reconciliation was not a “good approach.” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a Budget Committee member who chairs the Republican Steering Committee, predicted it would be “very difficult” to get the votes and compared it to a “pipe dream.”

“You know me, I’m not a big fan of reconciliation,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) added when asked if she wanted to pursue a new party-line bill.

It’s not just the Senate where GOP leaders are facing an uphill battle to pass both a budget resolution — a key prerequisite for reconciliation — as well as the bill itself.

A big risk of pursuing a second reconciliation bill is House conservatives seeking to include potentially billions of dollars in cuts to the social safety net and other long-brewing proposals that will “scare the hell out of” vulnerable Republican lawmakers ahead of the midterms, according to one senior House GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamics.

Even House GOP chatter about trying to add in extra Pentagon funding is sparking warnings from their Senate counterparts. One GOP senator, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, predicted that a heavy injection of defense spending could “kill the whole thing.”

Several House Republicans granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamics said they do not believe GOP leaders will be able to muster the multiple near-unanimous GOP votes needed to get another reconciliation bill through the House.

At a leadership meeting Tuesday, senior House Republicans voiced concerns about whether adding the SAVE America Act to a reconciliation bill would be a futile exercise, according to two people in the room.

That’s because of procedural reality: Most of the contentious elections bill won’t pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian, whose guidance on the reconciliation process is typically final.

The House Freedom Caucus called the Senate GOP plan “gaslighting” Tuesday morning. And Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said Tuesday that it’s “hard to imagine” how it could pass under the budget process.

“And by ‘hard’ I mean ‘essentially impossible,’” Lee added on X.

Republicans are discussing how they might induce states to implement some of the SAVE America Act’s voter ID requirements. Senate Budget Committee Republicans met Tuesday for what senators described as a meeting to “touch gloves” as members plotted how to enact ICE funding and parts of the election bill. Senate Republicans also discussed pursuing another reconciliation bill during a closed-door lunch Tuesday.

House Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) separately circulated a list of proposals with key GOP offices on his side of the Capitol that would mandate or financially incentivize states to implement voter ID laws, require proof of citizenship for voter registration, share voter data with federal agencies for verification and conduct post-election audits, among other items, according to a document obtained by POLITICO.

Some of those items appeared unlikely to pass scrutiny with the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, whose rulings tend to be the final word on the reconciliation process.

GOP senators could overrule her, but Majority Leader John Thune vowed Tuesday that they would comply with her guidance. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) also batted away a question about overruling her, calling it a “hypothetical.”

But Republican leaders are otherwise being careful not to make any pronouncements about where the latest reconciliation push will end up. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said only that they are “looking at a lot of different options to see if we’ve got a consensus.”

Thune added that he would need to be “pretty sure” any proposal has the requisite 50 votes before the Senate embarked on the initial and time-consuming step of approving a budget resolution, which unlocks the reconciliation process.

“We’re just trying to make sure we keep our expectations realistic,” he said.

Congress

Trump nominates Wesley Hunt as US ambassador to Saudi Arabia

Published

2 hours ago

September 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump nominated Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) to be the next U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia on Monday, part of a spate of nominations sent to the Senate less than two months before the midterms decides the fate of the GOP’s control of the chamber.

Hunt, one of the first Black Republicans to represent Texas in the House, was one of three Republican candidates locked in a fierce battle for a Senate seat in Texas earlier this year.

Trump held off on endorsing a candidate in the initial primary but backed state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the runoff. Hunt pitched himself as a staunch Trump ally in that race and quickly endorsed Paxton — the eventual winner — once Trump signaled his favorite.

The ambassadorship was last held by Michael Ratney, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden and served in the position until January 2025.

Trump has long made relations with Saudi Arabia a priority, welcoming Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to the White House in 2025 and striking deals with the kingdom. But the nomination comes as tensions between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-backed Houthis has reignited and the war in Iran has caused disruptions in its ability to export oil.

The other 40 nominations sent Monday to the Senate include some that Trump had previously announced on social media, including Heidi Overton as the next commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and Hung Cao as the next Navy secretary.

Congress

Hakeem Jeffries: Congress must act ‘immediately’ to rein in AI

Published

3 hours ago

September 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Monday for immediate congressional action to regulate artificial intelligence — his most urgent call to date for guardrails on the rapidly advancing technology amid warnings it could eradicate humanity if left unchecked.

“The explosive growth of artificial intelligence and the challenges that are therein presented — that’s not a hoax,” Jeffries said at his weekly news conference. “It’s very real, despite what Donald Trump has to say about that issue as well, and it requires decisive congressional action immediately, in a manner consistent with what some of the leading AI voices in the country are now saying needs to happen, as it relates to slowing things down to protect the health, the safety and the well-being of the American people.”

Jeffries’ call for regulation comes days after an ex-Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, warned that AI could “kill us all,” prompting calls from the company’s CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI CEO Elon Musk for an AI development slowdown. Trump has responded by downplaying the risks and doubling down in his support for accelerating AI breakthroughs to compete with China.

Jeffries urged Speaker Mike Johnson Monday to keep Congress in session “until something is done decisively to protect the safety and the well-being of the American people, in the face of growing concerns being raised by experts within the artificial intelligence industry itself.”

Johnson canceled the last two weeks of session before the midterms, meaning that the House is slated to leave Capitol Hill on Thursday and not return until Nov. 9. The speaker has given no indication he will revisit this plan and has remained noncommittal on whether the chamber will consider AI safety legislation ahead of the elections, if at all.

Jeffries also said the Democrat-only AI commission he convened this Congress could begin rolling out its policy recommendations soon, noting he plans to meet with the group’s three co-chairs this week. And he blamed Johnson for declining to reconstitute a bipartisan AI task force that would have allowed members of both parties to work together on the issue.

“We want to ensure that American entrepreneurs and companies can continue to lead in this space and not be overcome by the Chinese Communist Party,” Jeffries said of what the Democratic-led commission has been working on. “But on the other hand, we’ve got to ensure that the American people actually experience the benefits of artificial intelligence without being subjected to the very real, and very grave and very dangerous downsides.”

But while Jeffries is positioning Democrats as leaders on AI policy — now and in the next Congress — he declined to endorse a proposal from some of his colleagues to create a select AI committee if the party wins the majority in November.

“We’re focused on the substance, not the process,” he said, adding that any select committee discussions would take place after election day.

Jeffries did endorse the Ratepayer Protection Act — a bipartisan bill intended to shield Americans from energy costs associated with the data center boom — which is slated for a vote Tuesday.

“It’s a step forward,” he said. “More clearly needs to be done.”

Congress

Thune says ‘light touch’ needed on AI regulation

Published

3 hours ago

September 14, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday he sees a role for Congress in regulating artificial intelligence — albeit with a “light touch.”

Thune’s comments, made to reporters in the Capitol as President Donald Trump publicly railed against regulating frontier AI models, are the first he’s made since industry insiders sounded alarm bells about the technology’s potentially catastrophic impacts on humanity.

“It needs to strike a balance, light touch. You don’t want to stifle innovation, but I think you also want to make sure that the more advanced threats can be mitigated, and there’s a capability in place to do that,” Thune said.

He added that he believed Congress could put “guardrails around those types of more consequential threats without in any way harming our ability to stay ahead in the AI race.”

Thune introduced an AI safety bill with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in 2023 and is negotiating a revised version that he said Monday “reflects the approach” he is advocating. Thune said he spoke with Klobuchar over the weekend about the revised bill, which is also being negotiated with Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and expressed hopes it would be finalized “hopefully soon” and that they can “get a path forward for it.”

Cruz previously told Blue Light News that he could hold a committee vote on AI legislation before the chamber adjourns ahead of the midterm elections — perhaps as soon as the end of next week.