Congress
House left in limbo as megabill talks continue
Republican holdouts on the Senate-passed version of the party’s “big, beautiful bill” are huddling with House GOP leaders, who are holding open a vote to move the legislation forward as they negotiate.
The procedural vote remained stuck more than 90 minutes after it was first called. Seven Republicans have yet to vote, and several of them are gathered in a room off the House floor where Speaker Mike Johnson and other top leaders have been shuffling in and out.
Placating those hard-line fiscal hawks could be the final test of whether Republicans can send the massive domestic-policy bill to President Donald Trump’s desk before his arbitrary July 4 deadline.
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, said his fellow holdouts on the megabill are deciding between “voting it down and sending it back [to the Senate] or getting our questions answered from the White House and supporting it.”
He added that discussions surround “what the administration can do” to implement the Senate bill in ways that would assuage the concerns conservatives have put forth.
White House budget director Russ Vought arrived at the room around 3:45 p.m. to walk through how the White House could find future spending cuts and how the administration plans implement the policies in the megabill — especially around rollbacks to federal food aid and clawbacks of clean-energy tax credits.
A key GOP holdout, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, said in a Fox News interview that he was “trying to go through the bill and understand it” after railing against a number of the Senate’s changes.
“I will note that I have now gotten a little bit more information on some of the Medicaid stuff that I feel like it’s a little bit better than I originally anticipated, but I still have concerns,” he said, citing “massive reservations about the Green New Scam subsidies and the overall spending levels.”
The Capitol huddle follows meetings earlier in the day at the White House where Trump participated.
“I think all of the momentum is in the right direction,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson, a South Dakota Republican who attended some of the White House meetings. “The president did a really good job of noticeably moving members toward ‘yes.’”
There is GOP angst about the Senate’s deeper cuts to Medicaid than were in the bill the House passed weeks ago. There are also concerns from House lawmakers about their districts being able to access funds specifically earmarked for rural hospitals — an issue that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Director Mehmet Oz tried to soothe at a White House meeting earlier in the day.
But the touchiest issue for the hard-liners concerns the additional deficits piled onto the Senate bill, which includes significantly larger tax cuts and additional spending, including the hospitals fund. They are accusing Mike Johnson of violating a budget agreement that stipulated any additional tax cuts would be offset with new spending cuts.
“There were just a lot of promises they’re not living up to,” said a House Republican granted anonymity to describe the sensitive talks.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), a Freedom Caucus member, said he thinks they will be able to “work something out” to clear the bill on Wednesday, but the path for that is not year clear.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said the only reason the vote was being held open for multiple hours was to accommodate lawmakers whose travel plans back to Washington were disrupted by thunderstorms.
“We need their votes, and they’re going to be here shortly and so when they get here within the next hour, we’ll come back, finish this vote, then go straight into the rule vote,” said Scalise.
But after two of the waylaid GOP members, Pennsylvania Rep. Dan Meuser, and Florida Rep. Neal Dunn, arrived and voted — giving leaders enough votes to move forward — the vote was instead held open as negotiations with the final holdouts continued.
Benjamin Guggenheim, Lisa Kashinsky and Calen Razor contributed to this report.
Congress
Trump apparently shares Tom Cotton’s phone number in push to make Daylight Saving Time permanent
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.
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.
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.
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