Congress

How JD Vance Is Helping Trump Win on Capitol Hill

Published

1 year ago

February 8, 2025

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.

Sen. Todd Young questions Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as he appears before the Senate Finance Committee for his confirmation hearing on Jan. 29.

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.

Vance’s Hill allies hope he can serve as a two-way conduit with President Donald Trump.

“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.”

Congress

Cornyn, Tillis confirm they will vote for Blanche

Published

4 hours ago

August 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has a clear path to the Senate Judiciary Committee advancing his nomination to the permanent job after two GOP holdouts confirmed Monday they would vote for him.

The statement from Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) comes after the late-night announcement Sunday of a Justice Department agreement to clarify a controversial May settlement agreement between President Donald Trump and the IRS.

A successful Judiciary vote Tuesday would set Blanche up for confirmation on the Senate floor later this week, before the chamber breaks for August recess.

“We want to express our gratitude to Mr. Blanche and his staff for working with us on this, and we look forward to voting to advance his nomination out of the Senate Judiciary Committee soon,” Cornyn and Tillis said in a joint statement.

The senators suggested their agreement with Blanche also satisfies the concerns of several other Republican senators off the Judiciary Committee who have raised concerns about the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” created in the original settlement, as well as provisions immunizing Trump and his family from some tax audits.

“We are pleased that the Department of Justice has issued a formal order terminating the anti-weaponization fund. Additionally, the Department has acknowledged in a binding written order that the audit settlement is limited to the plaintiffs and the scope does not extend beyond the defendants in the lawsuit, the IRS and the Treasury, addressing concerns that multiple of our Republican colleagues share,” Cornyn and Tillis said.

Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, John Curtis of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are among the other Republicans who have expressed concerns about the payout fund. Blanche recently visited Alaska and announced a flurry of settlements benefiting Alaska as he courts Murkowski’s vote.

Congress

Maryland Dems kick off latest redistricting effort after a year of infighting

Published

4 hours ago

August 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland Democrats kicked off a special session on redistricting Monday, with the battle to redraw House districts around the country showing no signs of stopping at the November midterm elections.

Democrats are gearing up for a process to ultimately draw out the state’s only Republican member of Congress, Rep. Andy Harris. But any new map wouldn’t kick in until 2028.

Instead, the state Legislature is in town this week to vote on a constitutional amendment that some party leaders believe would insulate future redistricting efforts from legal scrutiny. This, after a Maryland state court blocked a proposed 8-0 Democratic district map in 2022, charging that it ran afoul of the state Constitution.

While Democrats around the state, including Gov. Wes Moore, had called for the Legislature to enact redistricting in time for this year’s midterms, Senate President Bill Ferguson — also a Democrat — has long argued that any map redraw coming before an amendment wouldn’t pass legal muster, and that the downside risks were “catastrophic.”

“We’ve known from the beginning what is at stake, and most importantly, we have known that in this moment of American history, it is insufficient to act with haste when the consequences of missteps are so impactful,” Ferguson said at a Monday press conference. “What those consequences could have looked like: a map rejected by Maryland’s Supreme Court. A map drawn by the court that sends us backwards when we could least afford it.”

The new language aims to make clear that certain requirements around compactness and respecting natural and political boundaries apply only to legislative districts and not congressional ones, which could clear a path for the state to gerrymander.

Should lawmakers pass it, Maryland voters would still need to approve the proposed amendment in November.

Republicans have taken a major lead in the interparty redistricting war for this year’s election, particularly after redrawing maps in a handful of Southern states after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in April.

“A legal earthquake changed the landscape this spring,” Ferguson said. “Even worse, we saw states like Tennessee, Louisiana, and South Carolina act with haste to attempt to eliminate majority-minority congressional districts. These acts changed the calculus, and that’s why we’re here.”

(Tennessee and Louisiana changed their lines for 2026, but South Carolina ultimately did not.)

The amendment, Ferguson said, “ensures that Maryland has the ability to respond if the Trump administration or any future federal administration seeks to further erode the basic standards of democracy.”

Congress

Capitol agenda: Senate stopgap sets up fall clash with House

Published

7 hours ago

August 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senators Monday will take up a bipartisan funding patch measure that sets them up for a clash with House lawmakers in September.

Senate appropriators released stopgap bill text Sunday that would fund federal agencies through Dec. 11 at current levels, with some exceptions. Leaders set an initial procedural vote tonight with hopes of passing the measure before the Senate breaks for recess.

But the bill includes several rebukes of President Donald Trump, and House lawmakers will need to decide when they return in the fall whether to take up the Senate’s version or try to muscle their own version forward.

Senators are also facing an immediate deadline crunch: Leaders will need bipartisan time agreements to fast-track legislation in order to accomplish their ambitious schedule this week, including for the funding patch. The chamber’s Republicans are preparing to potentially stay in session through the weekend, two people granted anonymity to disclose private scheduling told Blue Light News.

As for differences with the House: Senate Democrats with the backing of key Republicans like Appropriations Chair Susan Collins pushed for language to block Trump from finalizing a plan to put political appointees in charge of approving grants. The prohibition would last for the duration of the funding patch.

There’s also language Democrats have demanded ensuring no new funding goes to immigration enforcement agencies, since Republicans funded those programs through a party-line package this spring.

And while it incorporates some of the funding increases and authorizations the White House sought for specific programs, the Senate bill does not contain major military boosts the administration requested, including an extra $1 billion for a “Trump-class” battleship.

The differences stem from weeks of bipartisan negotiations between Collins and top Democratic appropriator Patty Murray — unlike the House-passed funding extension which Republicans advanced without consulting Democrats.

“This measure gives Congress the time we need to continue our work on bipartisan appropriations bills, which are always my strong preference for handling annual government funding,” Collins said in a statement.

The funding legislation is GOP leaders’ top priority in a busy sprint to recess, which is expected to include votes on Russia sanctions legislation, nominations, a cryptocurrency bill and potential initial votes on a college athletics bill.

And still up in the air: Whether Majority Leader John Thune brings a budget resolution for a third party-line bill to the floor or if his right flank insists on forcing their colleagues take a vote to allow the recess to start.

What else we’re watching:

— HOUSE GOP LEADERS SILENT AMID MILLER MESS: House Republican leaders aren’t yet publicly responding to domestic and child abuse allegations against Rep. Max Miller, including weighing in on whether Miller should continue to serve or run for his seat again. Spokespeople for Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team didn’t respond to a request for comment Sunday after the allegations against Miller were complicated by a statement from his former father-in-law, Sen. Bernie Moreno, who denounced the Ohio congressman for the first time. Moreno called for him to exit the House. Moreno’s statement is the first from the senator directly weighing in on Miller ahead of the Aug. 5 deadline to put someone else on the ballot.

— BLANCHE NOMINATION BACK FROM THE DEAD: Todd Blanche is suddenly back on track to be confirmed as attorney general later this week after a late-night deal Sunday. A spokesperson for Sen. John Cornyn said just before midnight he had come to terms with the Justice Department on a deal to rein in the controversial settlement agreement Trump reached with the IRS in April. With fellow holdout Sen. Thom Tillis indicating he plans to follow Cornyn’s lead, the deal appears to pave the way for a successful Senate Judiciary vote Tuesday. That could allow for Blanche’s confirmation before the summer recess begins later in the week.

Jennifer Scholtes, Jordain Carney, Mia McCarthy, Chris Marquette and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.