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

Jack Smith invited to testify before Senate next month

Published

49 minutes ago

August 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Jack Smith, the former special counsel who brought criminal charges against President Donald Trump, has been invited to testify Sept. 22 before the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to an invitation from Chair Chuck Grassley reviewed by Blue Light News.

Smith previously testified before the House Judiciary Committee in January, but Grassley (R-Iowa) and his team have been probing Smith and his investigations for months.

Grassley recently revealed that Smith obtained text messages that 44 members of Congress sent to White House officials during the waning months of Trump’s first term leading up to and around the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

Grassley’s texts were among those accessed by Smith’s team, along with Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).

“In the process of a deeply flawed, weaponized investigation, Jack Smith subpoenaed phone toll records from a dozen senators, scooped up text messages from over 40 members of Congress, and subpoenaed the private communications and financial records of hundreds of other Republican entities and individuals,” Grassley said in a statement.

“He needs to answer directly to Congress for his actions,” Grassley added. “Smith has requested to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and our committee looks forward to hearing from him as part of Congress’ investigation into Arctic Frost and his time as Special Counsel. Smith must be honest and forthcoming in his answers, because the American people deserve nothing less than full transparency and accountability.”

Lawyers for Smith did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During the January hearing, Republicans focused on technicalities of how Smith investigated the probe into Trump’s election interference, such as whether he properly signed his oath of office and whether he was sufficiently versed on the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause that protects members of Congress from criminal investigation for their lawmaking actions.

Congress

Chuck Edwards recommended for censure by House Ethics Committee

Published

1 hour ago

August 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The House Ethics Committee recommended Monday that lawmakers censure Rep. Chuck Edwards for engaging in “persistent unprofessional and inappropriate conduct towards two young female staffers” — cataloguing multiple episodes of sexual harassment by the married lawmaker.

Censure is the most severe punishment the panel can recommend short of expulsion, requiring targeted members to submit to a public shaming on the floor. The bipartisan panel said it plans to bring a privileged resolution to a vote once the House returns to session later this month.

A spokesperson for Edwards, 65, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a 15-page rebuttal, lawyers for Edwards said that the Ethics Committee “failed to demonstrate that either of the two staffers expressed discomfort to Representative Edwards regarding his conduct with them.” They also rejected the need for censure, noting that it has been used “sparingly in this context and directed only at matters of severe sexual misconduct.”

The panel itself released a trove of evidence including emails, text messages and photographs showing how Edwards had insinuated himself into intimate aspects of their lives.

Edwards, the committee found, made comments on the appearance of two young female staffers in his congressional office, telling them they looked “pretty” or “breathtaking” and made a comment on one staffer’s weight. He also lavished the young women with gifts, including purses valued at more than $1,000, as well as guns, shoes, flowers and one-on-one dinners.

Text messages from one of the women showed Edwards at one point sent her more than 20 containers of ice cream because, he said, she needed “a lot of cheering up!”

Sexual harassment is prohibited by House rules and federal law, and the committee found that Edwards violated “the spirit of the House’s prohibitions on sexual harassment and unwanted advances, as well as the requirement to act in a manner that reflects credibly upon the House.”

The report found Edwards brought one of the staffers to a holiday event at the White House, gave her flowers and texted her how he was “so excited about tonight” and that he pressured her to continue the night with him after the event. Edwards told the committee he accompanied that staffer to her home in Virginia because he “felt uncomfortable dumping a young lady on the street.”

Edwards also talked to that staffer and others about going to strip clubs in Washington, the report says.

The panel concluded that Edwards did not engage in sexual activity with either of the women, nor did he explicitly proposition them or other staff members for sex. Edwards, who is facing a competitive race for reelection in his western North Carolina district, cooperated with the probe, the committee said.

In one instance, the panel found, Edwards skipped House votes one night to decorate the second staffer’s Christmas tree. He also went out drinking and gambling with her. On another occasion, he recited a poem at her going-away party in his office and cried during that incident, making his staff noticeably uncomfortable.

When the second staffer left his office, Edwards helped her move back to North Carolina and sent her a handwritten letter in which he described her as “the most amazing woman” and that she had “written a complex chapter in my heart that I will never stop reading.”

Edwards told the committee that letter was not romantic.

“It was only to imply that we had a relationship on so many different levels — on a congressional level, on a professional level, on a friendship level, on a helping-one-another-out-with-our-chores-and-responsibility level,” he said.

Congress

Cornyn, Tillis confirm they will vote for Blanche

Published

6 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.