Connect with us

Congress

‘I’m glad I’m not on the ballot’: Senate GOP worries about its midterm edge

Published

on

Senate Republicans are growing anxious about the midterms.

They once felt like they had a glidepath to keep or even grow their majority in November, unlike in the House, where GOP control is razor-thin and members have become increasingly on edge about Democrats returning to power.

But the mood is shifting, according to interviews with 10 GOP senators and aides, as the U.S. engages in open-ended war in the Middle East, rising oil prices threaten to slow the economy and President Donald Trump stokes intra-party divisions over an elections overhaul bill known as the SAVE America Act.

Some GOP senators are now openly predicting a tough battle to hold onto control as their party struggles to keep the focus on affordability policies that lawmakers want to make the centerpiece of their midterm campaign. The Senate passed a major housing bill this week but it faces an uncertain future in the House. Trump himself told Republican lawmakers Monday that housing is not a top concern for voters.

“I’m glad I’m not on the ballot,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), a close Trump ally, said in an interview when asked how he was feeling about the November elections.

Republican senators are warning that the party writ large needs to hammer home cost-of-living measures — despite apparent disinterest and distractions from Trump, who they hope will lean into the housing bill fight. Recent polls have shown the Iran conflict and the resulting rise in prices are major worries for voters, even as the president downplays affordability concerns.

“Energy prices are high. Everything’s high,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), another Trump ally. He added that Republicans should “take some votes to lower the costs.”

Democrats have to net four seats to win back control of the Senate — a tall order that still gives Republicans an inherent edge. But Republicans are playing defense in Maine and North Carolina, the two races widely viewed as the most likely flips, and they’re facing a messy Trump-fueled primary in Texas. Republicans view Michigan and Georgia as potential pick-ups, though Democrats think they’ve also been able to put states like Ohio and Alaska in play through strong candidate recruitment.

Asked about Trump’s claim that the party will be in trouble if it doesn’t pass the SAVE America Act, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters this week that he believed the election is instead “going to be about the economy, and that’s why I think we’re focused on that.”

He also said that midterms are “always a little dicey” during the second term of a presidential administration.

But under pressure from Trump and a fervent base, Thune is teeing up what will likely be a multi-week debate on what the president calls his “No. 1 priority” — the SAVE America Act legislation that would institute tough new citizenship and photo ID requirements in order to cast a ballot. Trump wants to expand this legislation even further to prohibit gender-affirming surgery for children and restrict mail-in voting.

The bill lacks the votes for Senate passage, yet Thune and his conference are being lobbied hard by the right flank to revamp or eliminate the filibuster as a means of jamming the legislation through — a strategy that also doesn’t have the votes.

This intra-party tension is on full display in Texas, where Sen. John Cornyn is facing a May runoff against Texas Attorney General and MAGA favorite Ken Paxton. The elections bill has taken centerstage as Cornyn and Paxton vie for Trump’s endorsement, with Cornyn this week throwing his support behind scrapping the filibuster to pass the legislation.

Trump’s pressure campaign over the bill, including his decision to use the Texas race to make a play for its passage, has privately infuriated a broad swath of Senate Republicans, according to two people granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Republicans have privately conveyed to Trump that the voting measure can’t pass, while Thune has also publicly warned against linking a possible Cornyn endorsement to the bill.

Trump, however, told Fox News Radio Friday that he still intends to endorse in the race, but the “main thing I have to do is find out who’s going to get the SAVE America Act approved.” Senate Republicans are fearful that if Cornyn fails to win his runoff, the best-case scenario will cost the party hundreds of millions of dollars to defend against Democratic nominee James Talarico.

The election bill fight has spilled beyond Texas, as GOP senators are being flooded with public warnings from high-profile figures on the right that voters won’t turn out in the midterms or donate money unless the legislation passes. Trump has said passing the bill will “guarantee the midterms.”

White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said in a statement Friday that Trump “is the unequivocal leader of the Republican party, and he is committed to maintaining Republicans’ majority in Congress to continue delivering wins for the American people.”

“It’s clear that he has delivered for Americans with a secure border, cooling inflation, working-class tax cuts, new trade deals, new drug pricing deals and trillions in investments,” Wales added. “The White House is keen to tout these victories in the months ahead as we continue to work to Make America Great Again.”

In the meantime, recent polls show that it’s the unfolding Iran conflict and cost-of-living issues that voters care most about.

Just over half of voters oppose military action against Iran, compared to 40 percent who support it, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released this week. Nearly three-fourths said they were either very or somewhat concerned the war in the Middle East will lead to higher oil and gas prices.

In contrast, a Marist Poll also released this week found that 59 percent of Americans, when asked to consider November’s elections, said they wanted to ensure that everyone who wants to vote can do so — compared to 41 percent, who said their priority was making sure that no one who is ineligible can vote.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in an interview that he gives the president credit for making a “tough decision” on Iran but that “it’s not going to be necessarily good for the midterms.”

“Do I feel confident? I never feel confident,” he said. “It’s going to be a tough midterm.”

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) when speaking to reporters this week urged patience on rising gasoline prices but acknowledged if they persist into the summer, “that’s always bad.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of the GOP conference’s louder Trump critics, was more blunt during a Fox News interview this week, saying it could be a “disastrous election” for the party if the war drags on. Trump announced Friday evening that the U.S. military had carried out a major bombing operation in an apparent attempt to pressure Iran into reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway which carries roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil.

Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), whose state is very much in play with his exit, said he’s seeing parallels to 2018, when Democrats won the House amid deep dissatisfaction with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill and in the Trump White House.

Tillis, who frequently vocalizes the concerns many of his colleagues express privately, said some Republicans have asked him, “‘why are you saying this out loud?’”

“Democrats are going to … take advantage of the increase in energy and drive the affordability message and we’ve got to have an answer for affordability,” he explained.

“We’ve just got to be realistic about it,” Tillis added. “We’ve got a voter enthusiasm gap that we need to address.”

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Congress

Congress ends record-shattering DHS shutdown

Published

on

On the 76th day since Department of Homeland Security funding lapsed, Congress passed a bill Thursday restoring the flow of federal dollars to most of its agencies — without solving any of the policy disagreements that led to the record-breaking shutdown.

The House approved by voice vote the partial DHS funding measure the Senate passed more than a month ago. President Donald Trump is expected to swiftly sign the bipartisan legislation, fully funding the Coast Guard, TSA, Secret Service, FEMA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, along with other offices within DHS that don’t deal with immigration enforcement.

Now congressional Republicans turn their attention to enacting tens of billions of dollars for Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a party-line package. They jump-started the process this week with the adoption of a framework unlocking special budget power to skirt the Senate filibuster.

Trump is demanding that bill, which would fund the controversial agencies for the remainder of his term, land on his desk by June 1. ICE and Border Patrol have been operating largely as normal during the shutdown due to funding previously provided in last year’s GOP megabill.

The upshot of the two-track approach to funding DHS is that there will be no changes to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics, which led to the shutdown stalemate that began in February after federal immigration agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.

In the more than 10 weeks since DHS funding lapsed, Democrats have remained largely united in refusing to support funding for the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement activities without new guardrails. Republicans, meanwhile, are doubling down on funding those agencies without strings — emphasizing a blunt partisan divide five months before the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.

House GOP leaders sat on the bipartisan package for weeks, scoffing at the late-night decision Senate leaders made last month to fund DHS through the two-step maneuver without consulting their House counterparts.

“You don’t dump things on the other chamber in the middle of the night without talking to the speaker about it,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told reporters this week. “This is created by bad management in Senate leadership and by not being transparent and open with us in the House.”

But pressure from the White House and some Republican lawmakers prompted House GOP leaders to ultimately pass the package unchanged, even after floating the idea of tweaking the bill and sending it back across the Capitol.

Trump administration officials have grown increasingly antsy to see the legislation enacted after nearly draining the $10 billion fund they have been tapping to cover paychecks for DHS workers. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin warned last week that his department would run out of payroll money in the coming days.

Under the package, all of DHS except ICE and Border Patrol will be funded through September, the end of the fiscal year.

The legislation includes some new guardrails on immigration enforcement tactics negotiated early this year. But it does not contain any of the additional rules Democrats sought, including barring immigration officers from wearing masks and requiring judicial warrants to make arrests or enter private property.

The end result of the funding lapse is largely what top Democrats have advocated for months as a fallback plan if Republicans wouldn’t agree to any new enforcement restrictions. Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s top Democratic appropriator, introduced a bill more than two months ago to fund all but ICE, Customs and Border Protection and the Office of the Secretary at DHS.

Instead, House Republicans repeatedly passed legislation to fund all of DHS throughout the shutdown, daring lawmakers on the other side of the aisle to oppose it. While a few Democrats broke ranks, the Republican attempts were met with consistent opposition among Democrats in the Senate, where the bills inevitably ran up against the filibuster.

Off Blue Light News, TSA agents and other DHS workers who aren’t considered law enforcement personnel worked for weeks without pay, until Trump directed DHS to temporarily cover their paychecks last month.

Since the funding lapse began, more than 1,100 agents have quit at TSA and some homeland security efforts have been halted, including preparations for the World Cup soccer games being hosted in U.S. cities this summer.

Andres Picon contributed to this report. 

Continue Reading

Congress

House Republicans eye passage of Senate-backed DHS funding bill

Published

on

House Republican leaders are working to approve a bill Thursday that would fund all of the Department of Homeland Security except its immigration enforcement agencies — potentially ending the department’s 76-day shutdown — according to a half-dozen people granted anonymity to describe the behind-the-scenes talks.

Speaker Mike Johnson is discussing the idea with members of his conference who have wanted to hold off on passage of the bill until Republicans enact a separate party-line package to fund agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.

The Senate passed the partial DHS funding measure in March, but for more than a month, House GOP leaders have bowed to the holdouts and resisted calls to send it to President Donald Trump’s desk. Now the White House and some House Republican lawmakers are pressuring Johnson to clear the bill before lawmakers leave town for a weeklong recess.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole of Oklahoma and House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain of Michigan were among the Republican lawmakers who confirmed that GOP leaders are attempting to send the bill on for Trump’s signature Thursday.

Johnson and Cole have both floated the idea of tweaking the bill to omit language explicitly stating that ICE and Border Patrol aren’t funded. But that would require sending it back to the Senate — not directly to Trump.

The speaker is still considering whether to alter the bill or put it on the floor without changes, the people familiar with the talks said. Either would involve using a fast-track process that requires support from two-thirds of lawmakers for passage.

Continue Reading

Congress

Mike Johnson backs Louisiana election delay, urges other states to redraw maps

Published

on

Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday he supported delaying House elections in his home state of Louisiana after the Supreme Court invalidated the state’s congressional map Wednesday.

“The governor has no choice but to suspend it,” Johnson said. “The court has ruled our map unconstitutional.”

He spoke as GOP Gov. Jeff Landry announced that Louisiana could not carry out elections under the current map and would be working “to develop a path forward.” Any new map is likely to threaten the seats of Democratic Reps. Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, who are both Black.

The Supreme Court ruling narrowed the impact of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on the longstanding practice of requiring line-drawers to protect racial minorities’ voting power.

The exact timing of the rescheduled elections is “not my decision,” Johnson added, but said “the way it was typically done” was to hold an all-party “jungle” primary in November, with a runoff in December, and “it looks like it may be that way again.”

“But again, my fingerprints aren’t on it,” Johnson added. “It’s a decision of the state Legislature.”

He also encouraged other states with VRA-mandated minority districts to act quickly and potentially redraw their maps before November, even though many have their election processes well underway already.

“All states that have unconstitutional maps should look at that very carefully, and I think they should do it before the midterms,” he said.

Continue Reading

Trending