Congress
John Thune offers to tweak controversial phone records language
Senate Majority Leader John Thune offered Thursday to amend the controversial provision he slipped into last week’s government funding package that could award GOP senators hundreds of thousands of dollars for having their phone records seized without their knowledge as part of an investigation into President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.
Thune’s proposal, presented on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, would clarify that any payout to senators seeking damages would be directed back to the U.S. treasury and would not personally enrich lawmakers.
It comes less than 24 hours after the House voted unanimously to repeal the legislative language. It also follows a tense GOP lunch meeting Wednesday, where Thune got an earful from his own members upset they had no advance warning about the provision.
Republicans discussed how to change the legislative language during the closed-door meeting and spent much of Thursday working to nail down the changes before Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) came to the floor seeking unanimous consent to pass the House repeal measure.
The provision passed last week would allow lawmakers to be personally awarded at least $500,000, which could have resulted in millions of dollars transferred to several GOP senators who were singled out by former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s activities following the 2020 election.
There was no agreement on the floor Thursday to move forward with Thune’s proposed measure, which would not have changed the underlying statutory language. He instead offered a resolution that would have been binding only in the Senate and would not require House approval.
Heinrich, the ranking member of the legislature branch appropriations subcommittee, objected to Thune’s offer, saying the law itself needs to be changed and that both parties should keep talking about addressing the retroactivity of the provision.
“Frankly, this is just outrageous to me,” said Heinrich. “This is at the exact same time as 22 million Americans could see their health insurance premiums skyrocket because Republicans refuse to extend the [Affordable Care Act] tax credits.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who was among the lawmakers Smith subpoenaed, objected to Heinrich’s unanimous consent request and made clear he wasn’t interested in anything that would prevent him from filing a lawsuit.
“What did we do to justify having Jack Smith issue a subpoena for the phone records of a branch of government — the Senate — where all of us had to decide whether or not to certify the election?” Graham asked on the Senate floor. “We’re not going to let the Democratic Party decide my fate. We’re going to let a judge decide my fate.”
Graham also thanked Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who negotiated the language with Thune. Schumer told reporters yesterday he supported a repeal.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
Congress
Johnson touts ‘bipartisan’ path for FISA reauthorization, but obstacles remain
Speaker Mike Johnson is raising the possibility of a “bipartisan” path forward on extending a key spy authority after negotiations among House Republicans blew up late last week.
“We’re confident that we’ll be able to find strong bipartisan consensus that builds off of the really meaningful reforms that we included in the legislation the last time we reauthorized it,” Johnson said during a news conference Tuesday morning.
The emergency short-term reauthorization Congress cleared last week expires April 30, putting pressure on lawmakers to reach a deal quickly.
Among the options GOP leaders are discussing: If the Senate can advance a three-year extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, with policy changes, the House could then pass it with a majority of Republicans and some Democrats, according to three people granted anonymity to share direct knowledge of ongoing conversations.
It’s also possible Johnson could put that measure on the House floor under an expedited procedure that does not require prior adoption of a party-line rule, but would need a two-thirds majority voting in the affirmative to secure passage. House GOP leaders still need to appease hard-liners who have very specific demands for new guardrails on warrentless surveillance practices as part of any reauthorization measure.
House Democratic leaders, meanwhile, aren’t promising cooperation — and they’re skeptical Johnson is as close to a deal as he might suggest.
“His confidence meter was always pretty high, and then he put a bill on the floor that had zero consensus among his caucus, and looked like the disaster that it was after midnight,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California told reporters Tuesday.
He added that he has not had “any discussions” yet with Republican counterparts on next steps for Section 702, and “absent those conversations, it’s going to be hard to find bipartisan consensus.” Aguilar also said that Democrats would follow the leads of House Intelligence Chair Jim Himes of Connecticut and Jamie Raskin of Maryland.
Johnson is planning to meet Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Darin LaHood of Illinois later Tuesday as the pair of Republicans works with Democrats on a bipartisan FISA extension plan, according to two people granted anonymity to share private scheduling.
Congress
Graham releases blueprint for GOP immigration enforcement funding plan
Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham unveiled a fiscal blueprint Tuesday paving the way for the GOP’s party-line immigration enforcement plan.
The budget resolution is the first step in Republicans’ two-step plan to deliver a bill funding Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol and other agencies to President Donald Trump’s desk by his self-imposed June 1 deadline.
Senate Republicans are aiming to adopt the budget resolution this week. Senate Majority Leader John Thune can lose as many as three GOP members so long as Vice President JD Vance is available to break ties.
“Republicans are doing something that must be done quickly, and that our Democrat colleagues are trying to prevent us from doing. That something is simple: fully fund Border Patrol and ICE at a time of great threat to the United States,” Graham (R-S.C.) said in a statement.
The budget resolution tasks the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee with drafting the subsequent immigration enforcement bill.
The resolution gives the committees until May 15 to hand over text. It sets a ceiling of $70 billion for the Judiciary Committee’s portion and $70 billion for the Homeland Security panel’s portion. While the language would allow for a larger bill, a Graham aide said Tuesday that Republicans are aiming to keep the measure to about $70 billion.
Senate Republicans are expected to take an initial vote on the budget resolution as soon as Tuesday afternoon. After that they’ll need to complete a marathon session known as a vote-a-rama before they can approve the fiscal blueprint and send it to the House.
Democrats are expected to force several amendments related to cost-of-living concerns. Senate conservatives could also try to expand the scope of the bill, though GOP leaders hope to avoid making any changes to Graham’s text.
House Republicans could take their own vote next week. They are also waiting to grant approval of a Senate-passed deal to fund the rest of the Department of Homeland Security. Speaker Mike Johnson has delayed action on the measure amid hard-right demands that the Senate move on the immigration enforcement funding bill first.
Some House conservatives want the Senate to complete the entire reconciliation process, which allows ICE funding to bypass a Democratic filibuster, before they take up the larger DHS deal. That could drag the agency’s shutdown deep into May.
Senate Republicans are aiming to put the final immigration enforcement bill on the floor the week of May 11.
Congress
‘Many families are struggling’
Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan offered a rare acknowledgment from a GOP leader Tuesday that the U.S. economy might not be in tip-top condition. McClain, the Republican Conference chair, said at a news conference that “even with bigger [tax] refunds, many families are struggling right now, and I get it.”
That’s a departure from the message President Donald Trump sent at a event in Las Vegas last week, where he said “everything’s doing really well” and played down the impact of higher energy prices since he ordered military strikes on Iran.
“But we also owe it to the American people to be honest about how we got here, to make sure we don’t ever go back again,” McClain, the No. 4 party leader added, saying Americans are “digging out of a hole” from former President Joe Biden’s administration.
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