Congress
Hill Republicans want Trump to solve their internal problems
House infighting is threatening to sink the GOP agenda on Capitol Hill. Now Republicans are hoping their most effective whip — President Donald Trump — is ready to come off the sidelines.
The push for the White House to take a more active role comes as the GOP finds itself stalemated on several fronts with no sign that they will be able to navigate a way forward without Trump’s direct intervention.
The House floor was effectively closed for business Tuesday as days of internal negotiations failed to produce a deal among competing GOP factions, allowing Speaker Mike Johnson to extend a soon-to-expire surveillance law or pass the much-anticipated farm bill.
Meanwhile, there’s growing frustration among Senate Republicans and Trump allies that the House hasn’t yet taken up their bill funding most of the Department of Homeland Security after Saturday’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Instead, in a bid to satisfy his own members, Johnson wants to make small changes to the bill, which would further drag out the partial shutdown that is already on day 74.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who is careful to avoid telling the House what to do, was uncharacteristically direct Tuesday with his frustration over the other chamber’s refusal to pass a DHS bill senators have already twice passed unanimously. He suggested Trump needed to intervene.
“We’re trying as best we can to coordinate strategy with the House, but … it’s going to take, obviously, I think the involvement of the White House to bust some of these things loose,” Thune said.
He said to House Republicans who are still criticizing the Senate’s plan, “I guess my question is, what was the alternative? That’s what I said to them at the time. I mean, tell me, give me a better option.”
Republicans on the House Rules Committee agreed Tuesday night to tee up the votes on the spy-powers extension and the farm bill, among other measures, but there’s no guarantee the rest of the House GOP will fall in line Wednesday on the floor.
Trump hasn’t been completely on the sidelines as the House has floundered. He sent a Truth Social message Monday encouraging the House to support a separate budget plan aimed at providing immigration enforcement funding — part of a two-track plan to end the shutdown. His budget office issued a memo Tuesday evening urging support of the Senate-passed legislation funding the rest of the department, which could run out of money to pass employees as soon as next week.
Separately, White House deputies tried earlier this month to pressure House GOP hard-liners to back down in the fight over extending a spy law targeting foreigners abroad known as Section 702.
What’s missing in the minds of some Republican lawmakers is the type of sustained, one-on-one arm-twisting that Trump deployed on House Republicans last year on several occasions — including to push through the GOP’s tax-cuts-focused megabill and to get Johnson elected speaker.
Trump has instead been focused in recent days on the state visit from King Charles III of the United Kingdom, not to mention the military campaign in Iran he launched two months ago alongside Israel.
“Mike’s clearly having to wrestle with his House members, and it’s not his fault,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “He’s good, but he can’t work miracles. And I think the president’s going to have to step in.”
A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Thune’s call for more presidential involvement on Capitol Hill.
One House Republican, who has been in touch with Trump officials and was granted anonymity to describe behind-the-scenes conversations, said the White House wants “DHS fixed this week.” But so far Trump’s arm’s-length overtures haven’t worked with House hard-liners who want to expand the scope of the party-line immigration enforcement bill to encompass other conservative priorities.
Johnson has taken steps to assuage the holdouts. He has offered to attach a key hard-right priority — a permanent ban on the creation of a government-sponsored digital currency — to the spy-law extension before sending it to the Senate. The speaker is separately seeking to appease a group of farm-state members by attaching a year-round ethanol fuel measure to the bill authorizing agriculture programs.
Thune, in an interview, shot down the idea that a Section 702 renewal with a digital currency ban attached could pass the Senate, calling it a “bad idea” that is “not happening.”
Underscoring Johnson’s dilemma, the comments sparked a public rebuke from one of the conservative hard-liners, Missouri Rep. Eric Burlison, who said, “I don’t care what Thune thinks.”
Plenty of Republicans — both centrists and conservatives — are growing frustrated that Johnson isn’t just putting the Senate-approved DHS funding bill, the other part of the party’s two-part plan, on the floor. The bill includes funding for Secret Service paychecks, among other key security-related matters.“This is batshit,” another House Republican said about Johnson’s plan to push through several other bills this week but not yet the DHS fix.
House GOP leaders want to put a reworked DHS funding bill on the House floor Thursday — but only after they clear the separate budget resolution Wednesday.
Scores of conservatives have threatened to tank the Senate-passed bill unless the speaker strips out language that explicitly zeroes out funding for agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But many Republicans believe those holdouts would quickly cave — and end the record-long DHS shutdown — if Trump would simply apply some pressure.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said in an interview Trump should get more personally involved in pushing House Republicans on both the DHS legislation and the surveillance bill. Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.), meanwhile, said in a statement it was “absurd” DHS was still shut down and that it is “beyond time to open the government.”
Thune said Tuesday he also believed House Republicans should “just pass the bill” as GOP leaders discussed whether they could “massage” the contentious ICE funding language to the hard-liners’ liking without threatening its rapid passage in the Senate.
According to two administration officials and a person close to the White House who were granted anonymity to candidly describe the situation, there is little optimism inside DHS that the shutdown will end quickly.
“That is really leading people to question why we even do [our jobs] anymore if Congress can’t do their jobs,” one of the administration officials said.
Within DHS, the feeling is “we all know what the end result is going to be, so just do it — make it happen,” the person close to the White House said. “Instead it continues to drag on and drag on.”
The Senate is aiming to leave town Friday for a five-week recess. They’ve got to finish a mountain of work first.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Thursday night the chamber is hoping to pass a stopgap funding bill as well a long-stalled Russia sanctions bill Friday. They are also set to confirm dozens of nominees and — Republicans hope —Todd Blanche as attorney general if he can win the support of Sens. Lisa Murkowski or Bill Cassidy.
Thune indicated Blanche’s fate was still uncertain and that leaders were “still working to get the final vote.”
Republicans will also hold an initial vote on a budget blueprint for a third party-line spending bill, Thune said, as well as a vote related to the SAVE America Act.
“I would expect that would be in whatever the final tranche of votes [is],” Thune said about an initial vote on the budget resolution.
Senate Republicans, as Blue Light News previously reported, don’t believe the budget resolution has the votes within the conference to be adopted. Instead, the Senate is expected to hold an initial vote that will fail to clear a simple majority threshold.
The decision to hold that vote comes after two Republican senators, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said Thursday that they believed Sen. Mike Lee of Utah or another member of the GOP’s right flank would force a vote regardless on the framework, which they are able to do under the chamber’s rules.
Any single senator could still object to expediting the chamber’s agenda, which would derail Thune’s goal of getting members out of town by the end of the day Friday.
The majority leader teed up a final vote on the Russia sanctions legislation for Friday morning, a confirmation vote for dozens of nominees and another procedural step on a stopgap funding bill.
Leadership is hoping they’ll get a deal later in the day to finish other business, including passing the CR, advancing a college sports bill, confirming Blanche and voting on the budget resolution.
“We’ve been having these conversations with Democrats trying to figure out what’s the path – so we’ve tried to set up a series of votes to deal with all the unfinished business with one exception, so anyways we’ll see how it goes,” Thune said.
A bipartisan counteroffer for ethics language in a major cryptocurrency bill would force President Donald Trump and other federal officials to divest any ownership stake in a digital asset company if it is worth more than $1 million and represents 10 percent or more of the firm’s value, according to three people with knowledge of the language who were granted anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
The restriction applies to ownership stakes in firms that obtain most of their revenue from issuance or sponsorship of digital assets, the people said.
The offer for ethics language in the crypto bill was sent to the White House last week by Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). Democrats, who rejected a previous White House-blessed GOP ethics proposal, are demanding the provision be in the bill to address concerns about the Trump family’s crypto businesses. It is unclear how exactly the language would apply to Trump, but it could require him to divest from World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm he launched with his sons.
The ethics language in the bill, known as the Clarity Act, remains the subject of ongoing discussions. Tillis told reporters Thursday afternoon that his office has had “discussions” with the White House, “but there’s no exchange of paper” so far.
The counteroffer would allow state attorneys general to sue the Justice Department for not enforcing the ethics requirements. It would also allow state AGs to sue crypto exchanges for listing assets that are in violation of the ethics requirements.
The state AG authorities have been a major sticking point in the ethics talks. Democrats say they don’t trust the Trump Justice Department to enforce any ethics rules, but Republicans have pushed back on proposals to create a role for state AGs, saying they could use the language to go after politicians in the opposite party.
Gallego said in a statement that “this sensible, bipartisan ethics deal ends Trump’s crypto grift by requiring him to divest and stops him from making one dollar more from his rug pulls.”
“If these provisions were law before Trump got into office, they would have prevented the $1.4 billion in corrupt earnings he’s made this term,” he said.
Tillis said in a statement that he has “made it clear” that he “will be voting to get on the Clarity Act but won’t support final passage without a bipartisan ethics agreement.”
“We have worked on a fair proposal that directly addresses the legitimate concerns of both Republicans and Democrats, including enforcing the law and preventing state attorneys general from abusing litigation for partisan purposes,” he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday evening.
Republican supporters of the crypto bill have been hoping to hold an initial procedural vote on it before the Senate departs for its August recess, but GOP leaders are not currently expecting to take it up before leaving. The ethics fight is the biggest sticking point in bipartisan talks, though other outstanding policy issues also remain. The legislation needs bipartisan backing to advance.
The ethics counterproposal transmitted last week would also cover federal officials who have stakes in crypto firms that are less than $1 million. It would require any official who has an ownership stake of more than $15,000 to place those holdings in a blind trust or divest.
The ethics requirements would take effect one year after the bill is enacted into law. Officials would have six months after that to comply with the divestment requirement.
Bloomberg previously reported that the divestment proposal could let Trump take advantage of a tax break that allows federal officials who divest from certain assets to put off paying capital gains tax.
Vice President JD Vance fielded questions on Iran — lots of them — during a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans Thursday.
Vance’s visit to Capitol Hill came as the Senate is trying to wrap up a massive to-do list ahead of a planned five-week recess — including unfinished work on a spending stopgap, Russia sanctions and cryptocurrency regulations, as well as possible votes on a party-line spending bill and the GOP elections legislation President Donald Trump desperately wants enacted.
But senators emerging from the lunch said the dominant topic was instead the administration’s ongoing negotiations with Iran over reopening the Strait of Hormuz and ending months of hostilities that have put upward pressure on prices.
Some Republicans urged Vance to provide more transparency as polling shows that the conflict is unpopular with many Americans with the midterms just three months out.
“The vice president responded to questions, and a lot of the questions were about Iran,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.).
Kennedy said he suggested that Vance and other top administration officials go on TV or hold a news conference to explain what was happening and why.
Vance, according to multiple GOP senators, detailed how much damage the U.S. has done to Iran’s military since strikes began in February. Republicans said they also discussed the state of the Pentagon’s munitions stockpile during the lunch amid reports that some weapons are running low — something Trump denies — and as the administration pushes for a $1.5 trillion defense infusion.
“That was one of the things I wanted to talk about because I’m on Defense [appropriations],” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) when asked if there was a concern Congress wasn’t approving money fast enough. “We went through the impacts and timing and how they’re managing that. But they’re doing a good job.”
Trump announced earlier this month that a deal with Iran to reopen the strait, a vital global oil corridor, was imminent. Vance, according to the senators, said that the administration is “hoping” to get an agreement.
“But they have to trust and verify, not just trust — so verify whatever it is that they offer, and then maintain it,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.). “And if they back out, then we’re still right back in their face again.”
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