Congress
Megabill teeters after hard-liners make their stand
House Republican leaders are having to salvage their party-line megabill a lot sooner than they thought.
A surprise holdout by ultraconservative members of the House Budget Committee Thursday is forcing Speaker Mike Johnson to entertain significant changes to the GOP sweeping domestic policy bill, endangering his ambitious Memorial Day timeline for House passage.
The hard-right objections surrounded missing fiscal scores for the legislation and ongoing concerns about the depth of Medicaid cuts that Republicans are prepared to make. One option under serious discussion as a concession to fiscal hard-liners is moving up the onset of work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries by two years — from 2029 to 2027.
Three Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the negotiations confirmed the possible change, and Johnson himself was overheard discussing the proposal with House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington as the two left a Capitol Hill meeting Thursday.
“We’re working to settle all the pieces, so stay tuned,” Johnson said. Later he promised that the package “will clear the Budget panel Friday.”
The urgency of addressing the hard right’s concerns was heightened when several conservative members of the Budget Committee suggested they would withhold their votes at a scheduled Friday meeting. The panel needs to package up various pieces of the bill advanced by other committees and send it to the floor, a perfunctory but necessary step toward passage that is now threatened by the holdouts.
Johnson huddled with several of them just off the House floor Thursday evening, including GOP Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina. Both said they would vote no in the Budget Committee on the existing bill. Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma and Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin also declined to commit to supporting the bill.
The group demanded three key changes, according to two Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations: speeding up the phase-out of tax credits enacted under former President Joe Biden; immediately removing immigrants in the country illegally from any Medicaid access, rather than allowing states several years to comply; and moving up the Medicaid work requirement start date.
“We’ll kill it,” Norman said leaving the meeting. “I don’t want to. But I will.”
Norman and Roy both said they were pushing for the work requirements to hit as soon as possible, in the fall of 2026. Hardliners and GOP leaders are expected to hold a call late Thursday evening, with just hours to spare before the Budget panel meeting Friday.
Such a move could create tens of billions more savings for Republicans’ megabill, the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s agenda on taxes, energy and the border, while helping satisfy conservatives’ demands for deeper cuts. It would also create deeper coverage losses more quickly, potentially ahead of the 2028 presidential election.
Crucially, Republican moderates appear to be on board with the accelerated timeline, which could give leaders more space to address their own concerns — including the highly contentious state-and-local-tax deduction, or SALT.
Several moderate Republicans huddled separately with Johnson throughout the day Thursday, raising concerns about shifting Medicaid and SNAP food aid costs to states, changes to a federal pension program and other issues they want changed before the bill hits the House floor, according to three other Republicans with direct knowledge of the talks.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said in an interview he was promised that a controversial change to ban legal immigrants from accessing federal food assistance would be stripped before the bill hits the floor. Senior Republicans added the provision from Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) to the Agriculture panel’s portion of the bill this week.
As for moving up the start date of some Medicaid changes, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise told reporters to expect the requirements to come sooner than originally planned and that Republicans would revise the bill. He said the change could help leaders address the SALT demands from a separate group of Republicans.
“I think everybody in the room wants that,” Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.) said leaving a briefing Thursday afternoon, and asked if he wants work requirements moved up. “I think they’re going to move it up.”
Bacon, a key moderate, also said in an interview that he’s comfortable moving the timeline up. Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) told reporters that when the requirements begin is “not that consequential.”
Still, the White House would still need to sign off on the move; Trump and most of his senior aides have been in the Middle East this week, leaving Johnson and other GOP leaders to settle the various policy skirmishes themselves. But the speaker has remained in contact with the president while he’s been overseas.
Quickly implementing the Medicaid changes could be difficult. Most states will have to update their systems to incorporate the new work requirements, which they will be responsible for enforcing. The bill includes $100 million in federal grants to help update those systems; only Georgia currently has a work requirement program in place.
Arrington said Thursday afternoon that a committee markup Friday is “absolutely” possible but separately told reporters it wasn’t clear that the meeting could continue as scheduled given the sheer scale of issues raised inside the closed-door meeting.
Even if GOP leaders agree to tweak the package before passage, it can’t be amended during the Budget meeting Friday. The next opportunity for changes would come in the House Rules Committee, which Johnson wants to meet Monday to prepare the bill for floor debate.
“It’s what we do around here,” Johnson said. “We’re working to settle all the pieces.”
Robert King, Jennifer Scholtes and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
LE SUEUR, Minnesota — The word on John Thune’s mind these days is “resources.”
In the Senate majority leader’s recollection, it was a dominant topic in his recent conversations with President Donald Trump, including at a recent visit to the White House, not to mention in his frequent conversation with Trump’s political team — and in an exclusive conversation with Blue Light News Monday during a Midwest campaign swing.
“I think the president is sincerely interested in trying to do whatever he can to help the team,” Thune said about his midterm conversations with the president and his advisers. “I also share with him, too, the importance of just the resources in some of these states. You know, some of the states have gotten very expensive.”
As Trump focuses on turning out his own voters — a message the president is taking into his own hands in a series of preelection rallies — Thune is making sure he also has money on his mind: “I … just conveyed to him the importance of ensuring that our candidates are well-resourced.”
Thune’s focus underscores the emerging question defining the 2026 midterms: Is there enough Republican money, and can it be spent fast enough, to counter surging Democratic campaigns and a lackluster national environment for the GOP?
It’s a narrative both sides largely agree on — Thune’s Democratic counterpart, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, said as much last week — even as each leader insists his side will prevail.
Thune declined Monday to put odds on the GOP’s chances of keeping control of the Senate but said repeatedly, “I think we can keep the majority.”
“I think all of these races are margin of error, at least the ones that we have to win,” he added. “And historically, at least if you look at polls, we tend to outperform them.”
Unlike Schumer, who is keeping a low profile in October and focusing on private fundraising, Thune is barnstorming the country — visiting a mix of deep-red and battleground states.
Minnesota was not expected to be in play for Republicans when Thune took over as leader nearly two years ago. Democratic incumbent Sen. Tina Smith had a clear path to reelection in a state that has not elected a GOP senator since 2002.
But Smith chose to retire, and Democrats nominated an unabashed progressive, Peggy Flanagan, who is now facing Michele Tafoya, the well-known former sportscaster, in November. Recent public polls have shown the race in single digits, and Thune was not shy about including it alongside Michigan and New Hampshire as a GOP pickup opportunity.
Mentioning Minnesota is one thing, but investing in it is another, and national groups affiliated with Thune have not made major investments in the state so far. Standing next to Thune at a news conference Monday, Tafoya made the case for that to change.
“We have had three or four straight weeks of really solid polls,” she said. “This is one worth investing in. We are right there.”
But they both kept things vague when asked about Washington Republicans’ potential commitment to the race — including how much cash would be necessary to overcome 24 years of futility and a bad political environment.
Both Thune and Tafoya used the same words to answer that question: “We haven’t had that conversation.”
Thune put the party’s spending decisions into a larger context: “If the president is looking for places where he can make a difference … we’re in touch on a daily basis with his team and hopefully they will — as they already have — continue to help us leverage the resources that we’ve got to bring to bear to get the best possible impact and outcome in these key states.”
Thune pointed to Minnesota as one possible state where Trump could choose to deploy his $400-million-plus war chest. But the tiny national footprint in the Gopher State pales next to the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent in Texas — an expensive state Thune and Trump continue to discuss as Republicans struggle to drag Senate nominee Ken Paxton over the finish line.
Asked about the super-sized investments there, Thune declined to connect the massive spending on Paxton to tough decisions elsewhere on the map. “Dedicated donors” focused on Texas, he said, have meant GOP groups haven’t yet had to siphon funding away from other key states.
But the tough decisions are nevertheless underway. As Republican candidates play defense in a growing list of red states, the Thune-aligned Senate Leadership Fund recently pulled back spending in North Carolina — essentially surrendering a GOP-held seat to Democrats — while increasing its spending in Kansas.
Thune referred to the decision as a “pause” in financial support for nominee Michael Whatley.
The reasons for the political headwinds were on display Monday at an agriculture-focused roundtable, where Thune and Tafoya heard about the impact of Trump’s trade war with Canada, the president’s decision to import foreign beef and the high diesel prices that followed his decision to attack Iran.
Thune, a South Dakotan fluent in farm-state politics, touted Tafoya as someone who could help address some of those concerns by being a “great voice on issues like agriculture” if she makes it to the Senate.
His broader message in the interview, however, was to cast the midterm election as “choice” between the two parties rather than a referendum on the Iran war and the ensuing spike in energy prices. Democrats want “more spending,” “higher costs,” and “open borders,” he said, while Republicans had put “more money in your pockets” with their 2025 tax bill.
“Iran is temporary,” he said. “It will be behind us. Gas prices are going to come down, so who do you want to invest in for the next two years, four years?”
The midterm results carry personal stakes for Thune, who is expected to run for leader again in internal Senate GOP elections that are expected to take place just days after the midterms, regardless of the outcome.
Thune remains well-liked within the Senate GOP conference, and no other senator has raised his or her hand to run against him. But some conservatives, in and out of the Senate, have privately questioned whether Trump would publicly turn on Thune if Republicans lose their majority.
Asked about that possibility, Thune said, “I can’t control that.” He added that “the Republican conference” would ultimately make the decision.
“What the president does or doesn’t do … you just move forward and let the chips fall where they may,” he said. “All I can say is, I’m with him and his team to do the things I think are good for the future of the country.”
When Blue Light News pointed out Trump defended Thune at last month’s GOP midterm convention after some in the crowd booed the mention of his name, he laughed.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “It’s the little things, right?”
The chair of the House Agriculture Committee said he’s not willing to “accept bad results” as a tradeoff for the benefits of advancements in artificial intelligence — a direct rebuttal to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“As someone who practiced health care for 28 years, I’m never willing to accept bad results. I think we just need to do our best,” Rep. G.T. Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, told reporters Monday.
He was responding to Altman’s comments to Decoded by Blue Light News that people “should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.”
Pressed further on whether he agreed with Altman’s premise, Thompson replied, “No, I think we have to work harder to prevent any bad things from happening.”
Altman’s comments come in the wake of increased panic over the risks of catastrophic destruction from AI, with many industry leaders and experts arguing that guardrails are needed on the technology to prevent it from spinning out of human control.
Pressure is building on Congress to regulate the rapidly-advancing technology, but lawmakers are divided over whether the AI industry needs federal regulation or if it’s capable of governing itself.
The executives of major AI labs and tech companies gathered at the White House last week to discuss solutions with President Donald Trump, who believes overregulating AI will have national security repercussions. The group ended up signing a “morally binding” AI accord that critics say won’t do enough to prevent a worst-case scenario.
Thompson noted Monday he believes that AI will bring “tremendous solutions,” specifically in regards to finding cures for health issues like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. But he also said AI has to be led with “principle” — comparing it to how he addressed digital assets in a bill to regulate the cryptocurrency industry, which he worked on as chair of the Agriculture Committee.
“The first principle is ‘do no harm.’ So we need to protect consumers, and that means, I think, building some guardrails — some guidelines — to do that,” Thompson said. He added that the second principle is to “foster innovation.”
“I think AI has a lot to do with that,” he added. “I don’t think AI works without RI: Real Intelligence.”
LE SUEUR, Minnesota — Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday there is no “consensus” yet on advancing a bill establishing permanent daylight saving time even as President Donald Trump ramps up pressure on Republicans to pass it.
Thune addressed the matter in a Monday interview after Trump used his Truth Social account multiple times over the weekend to rail against the legislation, known as the Sunshine Protection Act — going so far as to post the personal cell phone number of one of its GOP opponents, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
“The president feels strongly on it like he does a lot of issues,” he said. “It’s something we’re having conversations about but there’s no clear path forward or consensus on it yet.”
While Trump singled out Cotton for scrutiny, Thune made clear the opposition to the permanent daylight saving time proposal — which would lead to very late winter sunrises in some parts of the country — ran deeper than one senator.
Cotton has publicly voiced opposition to the proposal for year, citing, among other things, the fact that children in his state would be going to school in the dark for part of the year.
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) voiced similar objections Monday to reporters in the Capitol, saying he was mindful of “safety concerns in the more northern and rural states where children get on the school bus in very early hours.”
Thune, who spoke during a campaign swing in Minnesota with GOP Senate nominee Michele Tafoya, has himself opposed previous daylight saving bills. He said Monday that “a lot of it depends on where you are in the country” and that “your geography probably has as much to do with your position on that as anything.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who has aligned himself closely with Trump, is among the lawmakers who have been pushing to get the bill through the Senate. He recently told POLITICO, “I’m going to make sure it gets passed this year.”
Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.
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