Congress

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

Published

11 months 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

Mamdani-backed socialist ousts Espaillat in NY-13

Published

6 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — Darializa Avila Chevalier has ousted five-term House member Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in a massive victory for the Democratic Socialists of America.

Her win marks another rebuke of the Democratic establishment in New York following Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral election last year, cementing the DSA as one of the city’s most potent political forces. The upset reflects a political climate in which voters have become increasingly willing to cast aside longtime incumbents in favor of outsiders promising change.

Avila Chevalier focused much of her campaign on attacking Espaillat for accepting donations from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and real estate interests during his career.

“I really feel that this is a fight to make sure that we are representing working-class New Yorkers who have been left behind by a politics that only serves the interests of corporations, of corporate landlords, of special interest groups that are making life in New York deeply unaffordable for so many,” Avila Chevalier said last month, during an appearance with Mamdani on MS NOW where the mayor endorsed her campaign.

Espaillat, who is the first formerly undocumented person to serve in Congress, came up short despite having the support of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York Attorney General Letitia James and New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin.

Avila Chevalier, 32, was a leading organizer in the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University in 2024 and is a sociology Ph.D. student at the CUNY Graduate Center. She has served as an investigator for a public defender’s office and is originally from South Florida.

For most of the race, Espaillat was widely viewed as the favorite, but Mamdani’s late May endorsement of Avila Chevalier jolted a contest that began to show signs it was tightening. An April poll from Avila Chevalier’s campaign showed her down 14 points.

Her victory came despite intense outside spending in support of Espaillat, including from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ campaign arm.

Avila Chevalier’s election to New York’s 13th district also shows a changing of the guard in Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx. Espaillat has served at the helm of a political alliance, known as the “Squadriano,” that has ruled over those areas of the city, home to large Dominican American and African American populations.

At times during the race, Espaillat and his supporters sought to frame the primary battle as a contest between gentrifiers and long-term residents.

“Those that choose or want to parachute in, after the men and women of this city, the working men and women of the city, have built our neighborhood, we’re gonna send them back home packing wherever they came from,” the 71-year-old member of Congress said last month.

The story of his political ascendance and reign in Upper Manhattan has also been characterized by an intense rivalry with Manhattan Democratic Party Chair Keith Wright, an ally of the late Rep. Charles Rangel, whom Espaillat challenged for Congress in 2012 and 2014.

But this year’s primary seems to have calmed the bitter rivalry between Espaillat and Wright amid the encroachment of the Democratic Socialists of America on disputed turf. Earlier this month, Espaillat endorsed Wright’s son , state Assemblymember Jordan Wright, who was also facing a DSA-backed challenger.

The peace pact wasn’t enough to fend off the challenge from Avila Chevalier, who seized on a progressive swing in the district ever since Mamdani handily beat former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the mayoral primary there.

“We have come a long way from where we used to be as a party,” Mamdani said in the interview where he announced his endorsement of Avila Chevalier. “It’s time we have a new generation that not only takes us back to that ambition, but takes us forward to the tomorrow that so many New Yorkers are waiting for.”

Congress

Former Utah Rep. Ben McAdams is on track to return to Congress

Published

6 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Former Rep. Ben McAdams won his primary Tuesday, paving the way for his return to Congress.

McAdams, a moderate, staved off a roster of progressive challengers in Utah’s newly redrawn 1st District, a rare deep-blue Salt Lake City district in a deep-red state that came as a result of a messy, decadelong redistricting saga.

McAdams will enter November as the heavy favorite in a district former Vice President Kamala Harris won by nearly 24 points in 2024.

McAdams won a GOP-leaning seat in the 2018 Democratic wave and governed as a centrist, Blue Dog Democrat who pushed for a balanced budget amendment — but he lost his reelection bid in 2020. He was one of the first Democrats to signal interest in running in the new 1st District and quickly garnered support from Utah elected officials and national centrist Democrats.

His progressive opponents attempted to paint him as too conservative, pointing to his previous mixed record on abortion. One opponent, state Sen. Nate Blouin, called on the other candidates to consolidate their support behind one person to avoid splitting the progressive vote. None agreed, and McAdams — who raised more money than the three other Democrats combined — prevailed.

Congress

Trump’s preferred candidate wins primary to succeed Elise Stefanik

Published

6 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

ALBANY, New York — President Donald Trump’s preferred candidate to succeed Rep. Elise Stefanik cruised to victory in his Republican primary Tuesday evening.

Anthony Constantino, the CEO of custom sticker company Sticker Mule, defeated Assemblymember Robert Smullen, a retired Marine colonel, for the nomination in a deep red upstate New York House district.

Trump, along with MAGA figures Roger Stone and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, backed Constantino’s bid, casting aside Smullen’s endorsement from the New York Republican Committee.

Constantino’s victory underscores the power of Trump’s endorsement in a district he has won during each of his three presidential campaigns. His win also highlights how a candidate who’s fashioned himself in a MAGA mold can continue to resonate in a largely rural and predominantly white district that has struggled economically for decades.

A former boxer, Constantino has dabbled in music, producing songs that praise Trump. He initially drew Stone’s attention after erecting a large “Vote for Trump” sign on a building in Amsterdam, N.Y., a city less than an hour west of Albany. Constantino also gifted Trump a bronze statue in the president’s likeness.

The circus-like primary became a bruising battle between a first-time candidate who channeled Trump-style promotion and attacks against an establishment favorite with a long, accomplished resume.

Constantino referred to Smullen as “Slime Bob” and called him “evil” in a text message to his rival. Smullen, in turn, called Constantino “unfit” and knocked his prior enrollment as a Democrat.

The race became so bitter that Smullen refused to shake Constantino’s hand at the conclusion of their only televised debate.

Constantino poured $10 million of his own money into the race and spent more than $3.8 million on TV ads, saturating upstate media market airwaves. Smullen’s campaign spent a fraction of that amount, more than $500,000 in ad spending, according to the tracking firm AdImpact.

The sticker impresario also displayed a marketing flare, printing t-shirts that touted his Trump endorsement.

Smullen leaned heavily on his biography and background as a combat Marine. But he often found himself responding — sometimes angrily — to Constantino’s barrage of attacks.

Constantino will now have to make peace with some New York power brokers as he pivots to the general election. Smullen is set to remain on the November ballot with the backing of the state Conservative Party’s ballot line. Constantino is being sued for defamation by that party’s leader, Jerry Kassar.

The House seat opened after Stefanik, who has represented the area for more than a decade, announced she would leave Congress after scuttling her gubernatorial campaign. Stefanik was previously Trump’s nominee for United Nations ambassador, but that was yanked amid concerns her vacancy would complicate the House Republicans’ narrow majority.

Stefanik did not endorse in the race to replace her.