Congress
Lawmakers to Bondi: DOJ funding cuts threaten national security
Attorney General Pam Bondi came under bipartisan pressure Monday from lawmakers who argued that proposed funding cuts to the Justice Department, including the FBI, are unwise as the conflict between the U.S. and Iran intensifies.
During Bondi’s first congressional testimony since her confirmation hearings, House members said the threat of attacks in the U.S. had risen significantly in the wake of President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites and Iran’s apparent retaliation with a missile attack Monday on a U.S. base in Qatar.
“When the DOJ submitted their budget, the United States was a nation at peace, and now we’re a nation at war,” Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) said. “I want us to, as much as we can, get ahead of it to give you the resources, the instruments that you need to go out and make sure that we’re preventing things from happening, not waiting until after the fact.”
Bondi was testifying before a House Appropriations subcommittee on DOJ’s budget request proposing $33.6 billion for fiscal year 2026 — a $2.5 billion or roughly 7% decrease compared to the current year. About one-third of the total request would support programs directed at reducing violent crime. The difference in funding year over year would also represent a reduction of about 5,000 positions.
However, Gonzales noted that Trump’s budget reduces DOJ funding for national security, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, threat screening and efforts to counter weapons of mass destruction.
“Those are the programs that we need more resources [for], more manpower,” he said.
Bondi, who used part of her opening statement to urge Americans to “pray for our troops in Qatar,” was noncommittal about any budget changes related to the intensifying conflict between the U.S. and Iran.
Of course, you can always do more with more, but we’re doing more with less,” the attorney general said. “It’s a frightening time in which we live right now but President Trump is committed to keeping all Americans safe.”
Bondi also said the FBI is on guard against potential Iranian sleeper cells in the U.S., including Iranian citizens who entered the U.S. via the border with Mexico during the Biden administration.
“We are on high alert, and everyone is looking at that very closely,” she said, without elaborating.
Democratic Reps. Glenn Ivey of Maryland and Frank Mrvan of Indiana similarly urged Bondi to take another look at her department’s budget request in light of escalating tensions with Iran.
“Taking FBI agents off the street now … there isn’t a worse possible time you could do it,” Ivey said.
Mrvan said the U.S. needs to be bracing for potential Iranian attacks on banking systems and the electric grid. “That is a new threat,” he said.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misspelled Tony Gonzales’ surname.
Congress
Rep. Dusty Johnson to announce a bid for South Dakota governor Monday
Rep. Dusty Johnson will announce a bid for South Dakota governor Monday, according to two people granted anonymity to speak about private conversations.
Johnson has served as South Dakota’s sole House representative since 2019. He’s been a key player in major deals on Capitol Hill in recent years as the head of the Main Street Caucus of Republicans.
Johnson, long expected to mount a bid for higher office, will make the announcement in Sioux Falls.
Johnson is the eighth House Republican to announce a run for higher office in 2026. Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Byron Donalds of Florida, Randy Feenstra of Iowa, John James of Michigan and John Rose of Tennessee are also seeking governor’s offices; Reps. Andy Barr of Kentucky and Buddy Carter of Georgia have announced Senate runs.
Congress
Senate slated to take first vote on megabill Saturday
Senate Republicans are planning to take an initial vote at noon on Saturday to take up the megabill.
Leadership laid out the timeline during a closed-door lunch on Friday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said after the lunch. A person granted anonymity to discuss internal scheduling confirmed the noon timeline but cautioned Republicans haven’t locked in the schedule yet.
During the lunch, Speaker Mike Johnson pitched Senate Republicans on the tentative SALT deal, according to three people in the room. He said the deal was as good as Republican can get, according to the people.
Johnson noted he still has “one holdout” — an apparent reference to New York Republican Nick LaLota, who said in a brief interview Friday that if there was a deal, he was not part of it.
Leaving the meeting, Johnson was asked by reporters whether he thought Senate Republicans would accept the SALT deal. “I believe they will,” he replied. “They’re going to digest the final calculations, but I think we’re very, very close to closing that issue.”
In the meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Johnson laid out details of the fragile agreement, telling Senate Republicans the House SALT deal would be cut in half, to total roughly $192 billion. They restated it would raise the SALT cap to $40,000 for five years under the current House-negotiated SALT deal, and snap back to the current $10,000 cap after that.
In related matters, Kennedy and Hoeven also said the Senate will keep its provider tax proposal but delay its implementation, which Republicans believe will help it comply with budget rules. and Johnson also told Senate Republicans that he wants to do another reconciliation bill — which senators took to mean they would get another opportunity to secure spending cuts or provisions passed that have been squeezed out of the megabill.
Congress
Trump says July 4 is “not the end all”
President Donald Trump on Friday backed off the July 4 deadline he set for Congress to pass his megabill, acknowledging that the timing could slip as Republicans work through a series of political and logistical hurdles.
“It’s not the end all,” Trump said of the self-imposed Independence Day goal. “It can go longer, but we’d like to get it done by that time if possible.”
The remarks represented a clear softening of the White House’s position from just a day earlier, when Trump administration officials insisted that the GOP lawmakers pass the domestic policy package within a week despite a series of fresh obstacles.
Senate Republican leaders are still struggling to lock down the necessary 51 votes for the bill, amid objections from competing factions over the depth of the legislation’s Medicaid cuts.
The effort has also been hamstrung by a flurry of adverse rulings by the Senate parliamentarian that are now forcing lawmakers to rewrite significant portions of the bill.
The president indicated that he has little interest as of now in trying to directly overrule or even fire the parliamentarian — a step that some close allies in Congress had called for after she disqualified several of the bill’s provisions.
“The parliamentarian’s been a little difficult,” Trump said. “I disagree with the parliamentarian on some things, and on other ways she’s been fine.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt downplayed those issues on Thursday, saying Trump still expected Republicans to coalesce in the coming days and put the bill on his desk by July 4.
But asked directly on Friday, Trump took a more ambivalent stance.
“We have a lot of committed people and they feel strongly about a subject, subjects that you’re not even thinking about that are important to Republicans,” he said, appearing to reference the policy divisions within the Senate GOP conference.
Trump also singled out Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) for praise despite his resistance to the bill, complaining instead about the lack of Democratic votes.
“The problem we have is it’s a great bill, it’s a popular bill,” Trump said. “But we’ll get no Democrats.”
If all Republicans vote for the bill, it would not need Democrats’ support to pass.
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