Congress
How JD Vance Is Helping Trump Win on Capitol Hill
Sen. Todd Young needed to vent, and a former colleague was ready to listen.
One of the key swing votes on President Donald Trump’s troubled nomination for director of national intelligence, the Indiana Republican had told Republican leaders he was leaning no on confirming Tulsi Gabbard. And then Trump’s most powerful ally, Elon Musk, went online Sunday to call him a “deep state puppet” — unleashing a tide of MAGA fury.
He found a sympathetic ear in Vice President JD Vance, who spoke with Young shortly after Musk’s posting, according to two people familiar with the conversation.
Vance quickly made it clear to his team, legislative affairs staffers and others in the White House: Time to call off the dogs.
Those aides proceeded to contact a range of GOP influencers who had been pummeling Young — Turning Point USA captain Charlie Kirk, MAGA activist Jack Posobiec and close Gabbard friend Meghan McCain. Even Musk got a call with a request to make nice with Young. The billionaire listened, speaking to Young for 15 minutes on the phone then publicly walking back his criticism.
Two days later, Young announced he would vote to confirm Gabbard — and thanked Vance for helping him get with the decision.
It was only one of several instances where Vance has played a behind-the-scenes role in cajoling a former colleague and delivering a big win for Trump on Capitol Hill — vindicating the president’s decision, I’m told, to explicitly task Vance with getting his Cabinet confirmed.
With Pete Hegseth’s nomination as Defense secretary on the ropes in the 11th hour, Vance helped assuage Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina. And earlier this week, he not only won over Young on Gabbard but helped Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana get behind Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS secretary. Both are on track for confirmation next week.
Vance, in other words, has aced his first test as Trump’s Hill whisperer. But more difficult tasks lie ahead. Trump is looking to Vance to muscle his agenda through — not only in the Senate, where he enjoys good relationships with his ex-colleagues, but in the rowdier, more fractious House.
It’s a risky job. Consider what awaits in the next months: Republicans will have to strike a bipartisan deal with Democrats to extend government spending, raise the debt ceiling and deliver disaster aid to deep-blue California — something the GOP base, mark my words, will abhor.
It’s especially risky for someone with presidential ambitions of his own — and just four years from his grasp. Vance is already atop the hierarchy of post-Trump Republican standard bearers, but as he gets his hands dirty with Congress, he’ll have to be careful to avoid soiling himself with the toxic politics of Capitol Hill.
But so far, he’s made a distinctly positive impression with fellow Republicans by being ready, willing and eager to take care of whatever Trump needs. He jumped in to help smooth over Speaker Mike Johnson’s pre-Christmas spending fiasco. He’s reached out to key House lawmakers in the House as the chamber tries to pass a budget. And it doesn’t hurt that lawmakers see Vance as one of their own.
“Our members trust him, which is really important,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters this week.
“He has personal relationships with all the senators, and I think that goes a very long way to building credibility,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma told me this week. Added Sen. Kevin Cramer: “It’s just nice having somebody that can speak specifically for Donald Trump to us who also is one of us — that’s a big deal.”
That praise reflects a dramatic transformation for someone who was considered naive and arrogant when he arrived in the Senate just over two years ago. Elected as a MAGA populist, he joined a Republican Conference that was led by Sen. Mitch McConnell and still dominated by the Kentuckian’s brand of traditional Reaganite conservatism.
In a chamber where seniority means everything, some veteran Republicans chafed at his habit of telling them matter-of-factly they were wrong in closed-door meetings. (“He thinks he knows everything,” one senior GOP aide complained of Vance to me last year.)
It wasn’t just in private. Amid a tense intraparty debate over Ukraine aid — something Vance vehemently opposed but which McConnell and most other GOP senators firmly supported — he got into an online spat with Cramer.
Later, in a meeting of senators, Cramer gave it right back. When Vance suggested some of his colleagues didn’t want to take tough votes, Cramer stood up for his insulted colleagues and lectured Vance: “You might think about what you’re saying,” he said, arguing that his colleagues had taken plenty of tough votes in their lives.
Still, Vance’s willingness to mix it up quickly made him a force inside the Senate GOP — and an effective counterbalance to McConnell’s wing of the party.
“He called out some of the leadership about Ukraine, and asked, ‘What are we doing? It doesn’t look like they can win. Aren’t we supposed to be on the winning side?’” Sen. Tommy Tuberville recounted to me. “You could tell he was very informed and did a lot of reading.”
Nowadays, his former colleagues are using a different tone in talking about Vance — and it’s not just because of his new, more exalted title. He’s now viewed as an essential go-between with Trump — someone who speaks the language of Capitol Hill, who understands the pressures members are balancing and can get into the minutiae of congressional business in a way Trump just won’t.
“Whether you’re there two years or 12 years, there is connective tissue — like, I sat in your chair,” said one senior Republican aide. “He has earned the right to be heard and this place respects him,” added Cramer, who gushed over Vance for a full 10 minutes.
There’s also now a sense that while Vance might not always be on the same page ideologically as some Republicans, he is interested in listening and trying to understand other points of view inside the GOP umbrella as he tries to ensure success for Trump and Republicans.
Some now view him like the formerly pesky son who is now all grown up and running the family business. Instead of chasing cable TV hits and letting loose in conference lunches, he’s now nurturing unlikely relationships. He had dinner, for instance, with GOP Sen. Susan Collins just days before the Maine moderate decided to back Gabbard. He later talked through her concerns over Trump’s threatened tariffs on Canada.
With Cassidy struggling with Kennedy’s vaccine-skeptical views, Vance worked over a period of weeks to listen to the Louisianan — someone who had become persona non grata in Republican circles after voting to convict Trump on impeachment charges in 2021. As the Senate voted on Jan. 6 to certify Trump’s elections — four years after the riot sparking the impeachment — Vance sat with him making small talk about sports and politics.
“I found him to be an honest broker,” Cassidy said after announcing his Kennedy vote this week. “He was above board and saw my point.”
What’s in question is whether Vance can be anywhere near as effective across the aisle. While he made his MAGA reputation with brazen social media posts and prime-time “Hannity” hits, he also carved out a bipartisan Senate reputation in certain policy areas.
He partnered with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to curb bonuses for executives of failed banks during the regional bank crisis in 2023. He tag-teamed with Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) on bills to ensure taxpayer-funded inventions are made in the U.S. and to force online stores to list products’ country of origin. And he worked politely with fellow Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown on the East Palestine rail disaster before campaigning successfully to unseat him last year.
Whether those connections will help ease the way for bipartisan deals with Democrats is another question. As the face of the new populist right — someone who on Friday, for instance, called for the reinstatement of a Trump administration employee who had been fired for racist online postings — he might be too polarizing to rebuild those bridges.
Warren, who once called Vance “terrific,” wouldn’t go there when I prodded her this week on whether Vance could help land bipartisan deals on Blue Light News: “I just don’t know.”
Which is fine for the moment, as far as Republicans are concerned. They’re more worried about keeping their own party together as they try to grind through Trump’s nominees and pass his ultra-ambitious tax, energy and border security agenda. That will require wrangling a famously restless group of hard-line conservatives in the House.
Vance’s fans in the White House and Capitol Hill believe he is well positioned to do just that, given his old reputation as a troublemaker who was ready and willing to shake up a hidebound Senate GOP.
During his two years in the chamber, he ran with a posse of hard-right senators — members like Utah’s Mike Lee and Florida’s Rick Scott — who voted against spending bills and debt ceiling increases. He voted, in other words, a lot like the problem-child House Republicans that Trump now needs to wrangle, and that gives him a unique and useful connection.
It also helps that Trump genuinely likes being around Vance and trusts his political judgment. That has given him real influence — and given GOP lawmakers hope that his back-channeling can go both ways as they look for a real give-and-take with the White House. A former top Senate aide, James Braid, is now working side-by-side with Vance as Trump’s top Hill liaison.
Among those with praise — and high hopes — is Texas Rep. Chip Roy, an unofficial ringleader of House troublemakers.
“He has strong core conservative convictions combined with a real personal understanding of the populist underpinnings of the current landscape,” Roy said. “And that is a powerful political position to have, especially when you combine it with a good understanding of the people and the relationships in the House and the Senate.”
Republicans are hoping President Donald Trump won’t make this week’s GOP midterm convention all about himself.
The president — with his approval rating at record lows for his time in office amid the conflict in Iran, trade wars and inflation — is slated to be at the center of the two-day spectacle in Dallas beginning Wednesday.
GOP lawmakers, candidates, donors and party officials said in interviews they are counting on Trump to draw a contrast with Democrats rather than prosecute his personal grievances.
Rep. Riley Moore said in an interview the event is a “scene-setter” that should stay laser-focused on “what’s on the line” for voters in the election:
— GOP WINS: Republicans are eager for fresh promotion of the tax cuts in last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”, even if some don’t think Trump is the right spokesperson.
Though the first national TV ads funded by the president’s cash-rich political operation place him at the center, one touting provisions in the megabill was more up congressional Republicans’ alley. Several are hoping for that kind of focus at the convention.
“It’s incredibly important that we highlight what we’ve accomplished,” said Rep. Derrick Van Orden. “That’s the perfect venue for that.”
— DINGING DEMS: One consensus message Republicans want the convention oriented around is the choice between their legislative record and a Democratic Party they argue has moved way too far left.
“You’ve got Republicans that are campaigning on commonsense ideas. You’ve got Democrats that are being drawn to the absolute most extreme left of their party,” said Rep. Brian Jack, a deputy chair of the House GOP campaign arm. “So I expect each night to see that on full display.”
“The Democratic Party has taken a turn for the worse recently,” added Rep. Nick LaLota. “America needs to be quite aware of that as they make their decision here in November.”
LaLota is just one of scores of Republican members who are choosing not to travel to the convention — which has a price tag of $25,000 and up for lawmakers attending. Some of those Republicans said they have scheduling conflicts or simply want to campaign back home.
But they still have an interest in how the event goes off and what impression it gives voters.
“I’m going to look forward to listening to it on the radio as I’m driving down the road, going from one spot in my district to another,” Rep. Morgan Griffith said.
What else we’re watching:
— TRAHAN BYPASSES LEADERSHIP BID FOR AI —- Rep. Lori Trahan’s decision last week to forgo a leadership bid and instead focus on developing artificial intelligence policy surprised some of her colleagues. But in an interview Friday, Trahan brushed off the idea that efforts to broker a bipartisan AI deal thwarted her run to serve as Democrats’ vice chair. Instead, she said her work in the complex policy space had drummed up support from many House Democrats, but she ultimately wants to prioritize regulating the issue next year.
— ROUNDS AIDE’S SIDE GIG RAISES EYEBROWS — A senior staffer for Sen. Mike Rounds has quietly worked as a lobbyist for Meta and other high-profile clients. The unusual agreement for Robert Skjonsberg, who has worked for Rounds for over a decade, has raised questions from watchdog groups about ethics and possible conflicts of interest. Rounds spokesperson Dezmond Ward told Blue Light News his office’s general counsel consulted with the Senate’s ethics panel, “which provided guidance to make certain there was and is no conflict of interest.”
Mia McCarthy, Riley Rogerson, Kelsey Brugger and Jacob Wendler contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump will be at the center of this week’s GOP midterm convention. Many of his fellow Republicans are hoping he doesn’t make it all about him.
The parade of lawmakers, candidates, donors and party officials now headed to Dallas for the two-day spectacle are counting on Trump to make a compelling pitch on the national stage before voters hit the polls.
According to interviews with dozens of Republicans, they are largely hoping for a two-pronged approach aimed at getting the president’s committed supporters off the sidelines: a focus on what they call Democrats’ extreme positions and the accomplishments of the Republican Congress — most of which are now more than a year old.
“Communism vs. common sense,” Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) said in an interview, calling the event a “scene-setter” that should stay laser-focused on “what’s on the line” for voters in the election.
Republicans have reasons to be wary. Trump’s approval ratings are at record lows for his time in office, and many swing-district GOP lawmakers are torn between running from an unpopular president and alienating his base of committed supporters.
There is little evidence Trump is content to let rank-and-file Republicans run away from him. The first pair of national midterm ads funded by his cash-rich political operation put Trump at the very center.
One ad begins with businessman Dana White extolling Trump as “the toughest, most resilient person that I’ve ever met.”
The other is more up congressional Republicans’ alley, with a Trump voiceover running through a litany of tax cuts included in last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Even if not all agree Trump is the party’s best spokesperson at this point, they are eager to see a new effort to promote the tax cuts, which were enacted in July 2025, and want to see them touted anew in Dallas.
“It’s incredibly important that we highlight what we’ve accomplished,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) said in an interview. “That’s the perfect venue for that.”
“It’s a great opportunity for us to brag about what the Republican Party has done the last year and a half,” added Rep. Craig Goldman (R-Texas). “So certainly talking about the One Big Beautiful Bill.”
While Van Orden and Goldman are attending the convention, which kicks off Wednesday and ends Thursday, many other lawmakers and candidates are staying back in their districts. Some of those Republicans said they have scheduling conflicts or simply want to campaign back home.
But there are also qualms about Trump’s obsession with priorities that many of them consider off-message ahead of the midterms — such as pressuring Congress to take up the GOP elections bill known as the SAVE America Act.
As GOP lawmakers begged Trump to get serious about tackling the high cost of living, the president has instead openly scoffed at “affordability” as an issue concocted by Democrats to hurt Republicans.
He refused for months to help pass a major legislative package over the summer designed to help lower housing costs, and his trade wars and ongoing conflict with Iran have contributed to persistent inflation. A recent import deal designed to address rising beef prices came at the cost of upsetting American cattlemen.
Speaker Mike Johnson brushed off a question last week about the risk of having candidates show up at a Trump-focused event given his disapproval ratings.
“It was the president’s idea, which is why he’s getting credit for it, and it’s rightfully so,” Johnson said. “I think it’s going to be an extraordinary opportunity for us to get a couple of nights on national television to talk about our extraordinary record of achievement.”
Other Republicans said the president was well positioned to send a message of “promises made, promises kept.”
“Politics 101 is just telling folks what you’re going to do, and then come to Washington and do it, and then go back and tell them what you did,” said Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.). “When you look at President Trump’s agenda, securing the border, we’ve done that. That he wanted to make the tax cuts permanent, we’ve done that.”
“Peace through strength — and I think we have moved in that direction,” he added. “Obviously, we got detoured to this journey over in Iran.”
If there is one consensus message Republicans want the convention oriented around, it’s the choice between the legislative record Trump will be touting and a Democratic Party that they argue has moved way too far to the left — especially as progressive candidates, some of them democratic socialists, continue to win key primaries.
Rep. Brian Jack (R-Ga.), a deputy chair of the House GOP campaign arm, said “you’re going to see on full display each night a contrast that we’ve never seen before in politics.”
“You’ve got Republicans that are campaigning on commonsense ideas. You’ve got Democrats that are being drawn to the absolute most extreme left of their party,” he said. “So I expect each night to see that on full display.”
RNC national press secretary Natalie Baldassarre also said in a statement that the event would “put front and center Democrats’ desire to abolish police and prisons, raise costs, and strip away our freedoms,” while also promoting “Republicans’ historic achievements.”
“The Democratic Party has taken a turn for the worse recently,” added Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), who is in a competitive race and not attending the convention. “America needs to be quite aware of that as they make their decision here in November.”
LaLota is just one of scores of Republican members who are choosing not to travel to the convention — which has a price tag of $25,000 and up for lawmakers attending — but who have an interest in how the event goes off and what impression it gives voters.
Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) called the midterm convention — the first held since Democrats did them in the late 1970s and early 1980s — “an interesting concept” and said he would be paying close attention to the size of the television audience. But he said he would be back in his safe red district campaigning.
“I’m going to look forward to listening to it on the radio as I’m driving down the road, going from one spot in my district to another,” he said.
Jordain Carney and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
Rep. Lori Trahan’s decision last week to forgo a leadership bid to instead focus on developing artificial intelligence policy surprised some of her colleagues. It also left some of them wondering whether her thwarted attempt to work across the aisle on the subject was what doomed her prospects.
In an interview Friday, the Massachusetts Democrat brushed off the idea that efforts to broker an AI deal with a Republican backfired. She said the opposite was true: Many House Democrats told her she should run for caucus vice chair because of her work in this complex policy space.
“Look, I spent August really thinking it through, and it came down to a simple question that I think a lot of people don’t ask themselves enough, and that’s just: What I’m most passionate about?” Trahan recalled.
It turned out that the chance to help Democrats formulate a vision for how to regulate a rapidly evolving industry was what she couldn’t pass up.
“When I commit to something,” she said, “I go all in.”
There’s no guarantee Trahan will be successful, with members of both parties reluctant to work together and slamming each other over the issue on the campaign trail. But Trahan isn’t retreating or shying away from her work with Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.).
She spoke with Blue Light News about how she sees the AI landscape from a political and policy perspective, capping off a week of major developments in Washington — including the introduction of an aggressive plan to pause development of superintelligence models, an escalation in Democratic attacks on Republicans for the rise of data centers, President Donald Trump’s vow to “Let Data Reign,” and new reporting about a tech industry giant’s attempts to talk Trump out of onerous regulations.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries came out swinging this past week in trying to pin the proliferation of data centers on Republicans. What do you think of Democratic messaging on this?
I do think that the Republicans are having trouble reconciling what the president is saying with what their constituents are demanding, and that, I’ll just say, people aren’t imagining this. They’re already feeling it … in their electric bill. They see it when a new data center gets proposed down the road.
They’re obviously reading headlines about AI models that break out of their own labs, and I think those worries are legitimate. So I don’t think the folks are necessarily antitechnology, but they want to know that somebody’s watching this — that the most powerful technology in human history isn’t running on the honor system, and right now, it basically is.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar has made a huge push for Democrats to be, as he put it, “AI populists.” What do you think of progressives trying to carve out a lane for themselves on AI, and what has your work with them on this issue been like?
I think for a long time, the hardest part of this job was convincing people that this is an issue that couldn’t wait. I think that part is largely over, right? AI is advancing at a staggering pace, and the risks are scaling right alongside the capabilities. So I think after a summer of breaches … members on both sides, they’re just done waiting, and I think you’re seeing a wave of proposals … I think that just reflects a new sense of urgency in Congress that I couldn’t be happier to see.
Casar and Sen. Bernie Sanders announced a plan to ban the development of AI “superintelligence” and pause work on cutting-edge models until an agency is stood up to monitor risk. What is your reaction to the proposal?
My team and I are still reviewing the bill, obviously gathering feedback from the safety community, so I’m not going to prejudge the details. Of course, I share the concern driving it. I mean, these companies are losing control of their own models, and they’ve said so themselves.
I’m always a little cautious about outright bans, moratoriums, or blanket pauses because you really only get one shot at something like that, and if you time it wrong, you can end up worse off. … You trigger a backlash that chokes off the chance to put sensible, durable guardrails in place in the future.
A permanent ban with no path to passage, that doesn’t protect anyone. … But right now I get most nervous that we’re not passing the bill that can pass, that matches sort of where we are right now, which is, models escaping their environment and us relying on the honor system from these companies.
You are referring to your bill with Obernolte, which would establish a national framework for regulating advanced AI models. What’s happening with it? You were pushing for committee action before the midterms. That seems all but impossible now.
The calendar isn’t on our side before the midterms … so I have shifted my focus to before the end of the year. I think that’s the realistic window to get this done this year. Jay and I are working our respective sides of the aisle. … I talked to a lot of rank-and-file members on both sides of the aisle, and they’re all scratching their heads, wondering why we’re not taking this up.
So why do you think it hasn’t moved?
I don’t sit in the minds or the rooms of Republican leadership. … I am worried that they are comfortable with the president sort of managing this through executive fiat rather than putting something in place that is durable and predictable.
I’m hoping that with internal pressure and with external pressure, that the leadership, Speaker [Mike] Johnson and Leader [Steve] Scalise, will take this up and debate it at a minimum.
What is your reaction to the phone call our colleagues reported on, where Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg urged Trump to scrap a plan to stand up a federal AI regulator?
I think that there are a lot of members of Congress who have ideas in terms of how this gets regulated.
Reasonable people can disagree on what regulatory construct we come up with. What I don’t think the American people agree with is that Mark Zuckerberg and President Trump are going to figure that out on a phone call.
Democrats have been fairly scattered on AI policy this Congress, and that could make it difficult for the party to unify around a policy platform while still negotiating with Republicans. How are you thinking about the next Congress?
I’m excited about next Congress just because I know when Democrats are in the majority, we’re going to get to work. … I think the fact that Democrats are talking about it a ton and we’re not under the thumb of the leader of our party, so that we can’t say or reflect any of the concerns that we hear back at home, it’s how it should be.
The fact that we’re able to have those conversations and we’re all coming from diverse places is a good thing. I think that’s what the American people want to see. They want to see us engage in every corner of the country in terms of concerns around AI and have a debate about it.
That’s not happening right now. Right now, we’re mostly just hearing from the president having a phone call with a rich tech executive or using export controls at his discretion.
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