Congress
In Today’s GOP, There Is No Choice at All
The so-called Big Beautiful Bill was always destined to pass, and it’s instructive to realize why: for Republican lawmakers, this was an up-or-down vote on President Donald Trump.
The sprawling measure — which at its core was really one big, beautiful tax extender — was never about those tax rates or Medicaid or the deficit. The underlying legislation was no bill at all, but a referendum on Trump. And that left congressional Republicans a binary choice that also had nothing to do with the policy therein: They could salute the president and vote yes and or vote no and risk their careers in a primary.
It doesn’t take a political science PhD to realize where today’s GOP would land.
Don’t believe me, just ask the senior senator from North Carolina, Thom Tillis.
Yes — to be sure alert! — there was much juggling between the two chambers of Congress. House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate GOP Leader John Thune and their lieutenants deserve credit for the creativity and flexibility they demonstrated by pacifying lawmakers uneasy about state and local tax deductions, rural hospitals and even the fate of Alaska Native whaling captains (somewhere, Don Young and Ted Stevens are smiling).
But, folks, the alternative was no alternative at all. Without acting, Republican lawmakers would have risked breaching the debt ceiling this summer, tempted an across-the-board tax hike when the 2017 rates expired at the end of the year and torpedoed their president’s sole legislative initiative.
The last of these merits more attention.
Perhaps the most remarkable story sitting in plain view in today’s Washington is the gap between Trump’s political and media dominance and the paucity of his legislative agenda. The president has been happy to spend the first six months of his second term signing executive orders, wielding tariffs as economic weapons and rampaging through news cycles with all manner of provocations, outbursts and threats. He’s less a traditional president than the old Kool-Aid man bursting through walls.
Which works quite well for somebody who measures success by attention and is mainly interested in the perception of winning than an LBJ-style collection of pens and parchment from bills signed.
The second-term, free-range Trump has not even pretended to be interested in the details of lawmaking and is even less interested in forging bipartisan coalitions with people he sees criticizing him on the television shows he consumes by the hours. Also, he’s mostly animated by immigration crackdowns and playing department store owner or price- fixer-in-chief, which he can mostly do on his own and battle out in the courts without consulting Congress.
Recognizing as much, and that their narrow margins in both chambers would limit their ambitions, a group of GOP lawmakers wisely decided to stuff every measure they could into one reconciliation bill they could ram through the House and Senate with bare majorities. Yes, there was more money for immigration and defense, but the most significant policy changes, except for Medicaid, were modest changes to deductions on tips, overtime and auto purchases that helped Trump fulfill campaign trail promises.
Those sweeteners helped keep Trump’s attention, relatively speaking, and let him portray the bill in which-side-are-you-on terms that rendered the language less relevant than the stakes.
The hard truth for small-government conservatives in Congress to swallow is that their primary voters care more about fidelity to Trump than reducing the size of the federal government.
Any overly loud critiques by lawmakers — no matter if rooted in principle or sound politics — were angrily dismissed by Trump as so much “grandstanding” by malcontents. He had scant interest in bill language because signing a bill is the point. Victory is in the action not the particulars. Plus, there’s only room for one grandstander in today’s Republican Party, as Tillis, Rep. Thomas Massie and Elon Musk (twice) have now learned. Every other actor is merely toiling in the engine room of the USS MAGA.
It’s fitting that this Trump-era fact of political life is most difficult for Republicans on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum to grasp. What unites Senators Rand Paul and Susan Collins, a goldbug curious libertarian and old-school New England moderate? Neither is willing to accept a purely tribal politics in which substance is secondary to a cult of personality.
In fairness to Trump, he’s matured enough politically to recognize the difference between hectoring Massie, Paul and Tillis and haranguing Collins. The first cohort represents states the president carried three times and, with the important exception of Tillis, can easily be replaced by another Republican. But the Mainer is the GOP version of Joe Manchin: Once she’s gone, the replacement will be a conventional Democrat, not a more loyal Republican.
Speaking of Manchin, he and other Democratic veterans of the last administration’s legislative wars are all too familiar with the hangover that may await today’s jubilant Republicans after the beautiful black ink on the bill is dry and the fireworks have all gone off.
Joe Biden hardly commanded a cult of personality, but the tug of tribalism was almost as strong on congressional Democrats like Manchin, who were told to fall in line and back Biden’s pricey agenda. The West Virginian eventually did so, the main legislation did little to alleviate inflation despite its name and most voters at the polls last year pointed a finger at Democrats and not global supply chains for higher costs.
So Trump may not care about the details, but Democratic ad-makers in next year’s midterm will — and they’ll bet that the Medicaid cuts the president swore he’d never enact will do more to move voters than their tax bracket remaining the same.
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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