Congress

Hill Republicans brace for another grueling fight over Trump’s spending cuts

Published

1 year ago

July 18, 2025

Congressional Republicans have passed Donald Trump’s $9 billion rescissions package, capping a painful ordeal that put even members who supported it in a tough spot.

Now, many Republicans are wincing at the prospect of having to do it all over again.

White House budget director Russ Vought said Thursday that a second request to rescind congressionally approved spending is likely coming soon. That will mean another bitter go-round on an issue that inflamed GOP institutionalists who worry about the administration’s steady encroachment on Congress’ power of the purse — even as many fiscal hawks embraced the move to cut spending in any way possible.

Some Republicans think next time will be different. They believe the White House understands, after multiple warnings from lawmakers, that another norm-shattering rescissions package couldn’t land in GOP laps without a lot more transparency around what, exactly, the administration wanted Congress to cut.

“I think we’ll probably take a different approach,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said in an interview Thursday, adding, “I think the lesson on this one is, we need to be including the chair and making sure we’re working together.”

Mullin was referring to Sen. Susan Collins, the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Maine Republican was so piqued that she voted against the package alongside just one other GOP senator, fellow appropriator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. The Appropriations Committee chair cited qualms with both the nature of the original, $9.4 billion spending cut request and the information deficit around the scale and scope of that request.

“There can’t be too much communication; there can’t be too much information with senators. … We’ve got to obviously make sure that everybody feels like they’re getting all the information they need,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who spearheaded the rescissions process in the Senate, said in an interview Thursday about lessons learned.

This was something former Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell was clamoring for. He ultimately supported the rescissions bill on final passage, but made his irritation with the administration clear after opposing a procedural vote to advance it.

“OMB is the problem. They won’t tell us how they’re going to apply the cut,” the Kentucky Republican said of the Office of Management and Budget this week. “I want to make it clear I don’t have any problem with reducing spending. … They would like a blank check is what they would like, and I don’t think that’s appropriate.”

But it’s not clear whether the White House is, in fact, prepared to change its approach. At a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters Thursday morning, Vought appeared unrepentant about the posture the OMB had taken in spearheading the $9 billion spending cut request, which would slash public broadcasting and global health initiatives.

“The appropriations process has to be less bipartisan,” Vought said.

Without a course correction from the administration, there’s no guarantee Republicans would welcome another interruption of their legislative agenda to conduct another exercise that exposes them to Democratic attacks or forces them to potentially cross the president.

That Congress is now entering the pivotal weeks before the Sept. 30 deadline to avoid a government shutdown could further diminish the enthusiasm for another rescissions package.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) was noncommittal this week when asked about Congress signing off on additional funding cuts, pointing instead to the appropriations process as his top priority.

“We’ll see what the future holds, but the goal right now is to get into the appropriations process. Let’s start marking up bills, trying to get them on the floor,” Thune said. “So my hope would be that that’s the way we deal with a lot of these issues.”

Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, also suggested his priorities were shifting as the funding cliff deadline approaches. Asked what appetite his colleagues had for more rescissions packages, Hoeven said it “depends who you ask.” While they could try to do rescissions and appropriations, “I want to get the approps process going,” Hoeven said.

Even Schmitt, who confirmed that “additional rescissions are being contemplated,” conceded the Senate is now facing a major scheduling crunch.

Democrats are also warning that pursuing more GOP-only rescissions packages could blow up bipartisan government funding talks, with trust between the two parties already eroding in light of Vought’s latest comments.

Top Senate Appropriations Democrat Patty Murray (Wash.), during an Appropriations Committee meeting after Vought’s comments, called the GOP’s multi-part rescissions push a “dangerous new precedent.”

“Bipartisanship does not end with any one line being crossed,” she said. “It erodes over time, bit by bit. And frankly I am alarmed by how quickly that erosion is happening.”

At the same time, GOP leaders may have no choice but to plow ahead, especially in the House. Speaker Mike Johnson, his top lieutenants and Trump himself have repeatedly promised votes on an elaborate patchwork of more rescissions packages, party-line reconciliation bills and spending cuts in government funding measures. They did so to appease fiscal hawks who balked at the trillions in new spending in the just-enacted Trump megabill.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), a close ally of Trump, said in an interview earlier this month that she’s discussed with the president and Republican leadership a “multi-step plan” to cut spending that includes “massive rescissions” and more reconciliation bills.

Vought indicated the White House is well along in planning the next rescissions package. While Mullin said that Republicans are “not putting the cart too far before the horse” in planning what could be included, some members have had “high-level brainstorming” sessions with the White House budget chief on the subject.

Vought has also already started calling GOP senators and is getting an eager reception from some of his Hill allies.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said in an interview Thursday that he pushed Vought during a closed-door lunch Tuesday to send additional spending cut packages to Capitol Hill. The budget director, he added, called him on Wednesday morning and said, according to Kennedy, “another is coming your way.”

“I’m ready to gobble them up,” Kennedy added, before imitating a turkey: “Gobble, gobble.”

Cassandra Dumay, Jennifer Scholtes and Katherine Tully McManus contributed to this report.

Congress

Trump apparently shares Tom Cotton’s phone number in push to make Daylight Saving Time permanent

Published

1 day ago

October 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump appeared to share Sen. Tom Cotton’s phone number in a Saturday morning social media post imploring the Arkansas Republican to get behind a bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent.

“Almost everybody wants “The Sunshine Protection Act” to pass, except for Tom Cotton,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”

The president has spent months personally pushing Senate Republicans to end the practice that sees Americans change their clocks twice a year, cementing more sunlight hours in the evening for all twelve months of the calendar. Cotton, whom Trump called “a friend of mine” in the Saturday post, has long argued that making daylight saving time permanent would leave children, farmers and other early risers in the dark for hours on winter mornings.

One of Trump’s key selling points on Saturday: the PGA tour.

“The PGA TOUR, as an example, needs more Daylight in the afternoon in order to finish their Tournaments,” he said, attaching a letter from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp endorsing the bill. ”Likewise, regular Golfers, Tennis Players, Hunters and, perhaps most importantly, Farmers who want more Daylight to play or work.

A Blue Light News call to the cellphone number went to voicemail. A spokesperson for Cotton did not respond to a request for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The current version of the bill was introduced in the House in January 2025 by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) leading the Senate version. The legislation would make daylight saving time permanent across most of the country, ending the twice-yearly clock changes. The legislation has been stalled in the Senate since July.

The president encouraged supporters of the bill, dubbed the “The Sunshine Protection Act,” to call Cotton to “let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”

During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, he publicly gave out the personal cellphone number of then-rival Sen. Lindsey Graham after the South Carolina Republican criticized him. Trump, who came to count on Graham as a reliable Senate ally after he won the presidency, revisited the moment during Graham’s funeral in July, acknowledging that sharing the number was something he “shouldn’t have done.”

Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.

Congress

Sanders to rally for Troy Jackson in Maine

Published

2 days ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Bernie Sanders will hit the road for Troy Jackson in Maine starting Oct. 10, the first time the progressive leader will stump for the candidate this cycle.

The Vermont independent plans to hold three rallies with Jackson, according to an itinerary shared first with Blue Light News: first in Bangor on Oct. 10th followed by Lewiston and Biddeford on Oct. 11.

The Maine swing will kick off Sanders’ travel for the final stretch of the midterms, covering ground throughout October for House and Senate candidates, POLITICO reported.

“Bernie and Troy know that working people built this country and deserve a government that fights for them,” Jackson spokesperson Dan Gottlieb told Blue Light News. “Susan Collins has had nearly 30 years to deliver, and working Mainers are still getting squeezed while she serves the billionaires and corporate interests who bankroll her campaigns. Mainers don’t need another six years of excuses.”

Sanders campaigned ahead of major wins for progressives in the primary season, speaking at more than 60 rallies since last year’s Fight the Oligarchy tour and endorsing more than 90 candidates up and down the ballot.

He’s also opening his substantial $23 million campaign war chest, POLITICO reported, and contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars toMinnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s Senate campaign and others including Angie Nixon in Florida and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison,

Sanders will return to Maine after initially backing Graham Platner’s campaign for Senate. Allegations reported by POLITICO ultimately led him to call on the Democratic nominee to drop out of the race.

Sanders had not formally endorsed Jackson since he clinched the nomination from Platner, though he previously backed Jackson’s initial run for governor.

Congress

Hill: Trump’s ‘lack of favorability’ creating challenging politics

Published

2 days ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Financial Services Chair French Hill said he has “no concerns” about winning back his Arkansas seat in the upcoming midterm elections, but the six-term House member acknowledged the political headwinds for his party.

“I consider the atmosphere a very tough political environment right now because of President [Donald] Trump’s lack of favorability at the top, and you know people are concerned about, as I say, what it’s like to live under an inflated economy the last four years,” Hill said in an interview.

Hill is in a solidly red district, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, and said he is up against a “weaker candidate this time than I’ve had in past races.” Polling in the district, however, has shown a tighter race. The two polls done this year placed Democratic challenger Chris Jones ahead of Hill by a few percentage points. Any perceived polling victory for Jones is still well within the margin of error, and one of the polls had a Democratic sponsor.

Stephannie Lane Baker, a spokesperson for Jones, said that “of all the Republicans in Congress, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee doesn’t get to dodge responsibility for this economy. He’s in trouble, and he knows it.”

Additionally, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s PAC, Ready for the Fight, committed more than $1 million in television ads through the next five weeks for Jones’ race in Arkansas’s 2nd District, Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the PAC confirmed. Overall Democratic spending on advertising for the race was just over $1 million, primarily made up by contributions from the Ready for the Fight PAC, with Republicans spending almost $2.7 million on ad buys, according to AdImpact, an advertising tracking service.

Hill said he has addressed affordability concerns “head on” this Congress.

“My work on housing, my work on the Price Stability Act, my work to try to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, and drop the federal budget deficit as a percentage of GDP,” Hill said. “All these things can contribute to a more affordable environment for people. So I’ve tried to make that a forefront of my campaign this year.”

Hill was a key architect of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan housing affordability bill that became law in July. The Price Stability Act, which is unlikely to become law this year, would narrow the Federal Reserve’s current dual mandate of pursuing maximum employment and price stability to focus exclusively on containing inflation.