Congress
Mike Johnson’s moment of truth
The Senate’s Plan B is in place. Now it’s up to Speaker Mike Johnson to deliver on Plan A — the “one big, beautiful bill” he’s been promising for weeks.
It amounts to a key inflection point for President Donald Trump’s domestic policy agenda, and GOP senators — who muscled through their own two-bill legislative blueprint early Friday morning — are eagerly watching to see if Johnson can finally unify his fractious conference and move forward with his own plan.
“I’m pulling for the House to pull together and get one big, beautiful bill,” said Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). If Johnson can do so, he added, “I will be his biggest fan.”
But Johnson is facing major skepticism as he plows forward this week. The Rules Committee will meet Monday to ready the House GOP budget plan for the floor as a group of holdouts concerned about deep cuts to Medicaid and other safety-net programs raise increasingly sharp concerns.
Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, normally an ally of GOP leadership, led a group of GOP lawmakers to warn against steep cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and Pell Grants. Several Republicans who held town hall meetings during their recess last week faced boos and criticism from constituents concerned about potential cuts.
The public dissent came even after Trump publicly called on both chambers to quickly pass the House GOP budget plan, which tees up $2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years. Republican leaders at this point think they can muscle the effort through with Trump’s support. But just a few Republicans could block those plans, depending on attendance.
One hard-liner, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has already told fellow Republicans he won’t support Johnson’s blueprint. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), who fellow Republicans have been watching as a likely source of opposition, posted on X Sunday night that she was indeed a “NO.” And New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, one of several remaining swing-district holdouts, said she was “still undecided.”
Malliotakis has been talking through her Medicaid concerns with House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.). And her final decision, along with other holdouts, is likely to come down to the wire: She said she plans to talk again with Guthrie Monday and also with GOP leaders as part of a larger group of concerned Republicans. Johnson is planning a Tuesday floor vote.
“We may need to get the president involved,” one House GOP aide said.
The cross-cutting political pressures have some Republican lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol looking across the Rotunda curiously.
As the Senate moved forward on its two-bill plan last week, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri openly wondered why, given Trump’s stated preference, the chamber wasn’t simply moving forward with the House budget. Meanwhile, there are House members who still prefer the Senate’s two-bill approach, with some arguing it delivers more quickly on Trump’s border security promises — and others happy that it sidesteps the messy fight over Medicaid.
Some House Republicans are pushing for the two chambers to resolve their differences over the competing budget plans now, rather than forcing vulnerable Republicans to take a hard vote this week that could cost them in next year’s midterm elections. But any compromise could inflame conservative hard-liners who are demanding steep spending cuts — and whose votes are crucial to winning approval for any House budget.
Another option some holdouts are discussing is to try to amend the budget plan before the final floor vote this week, including by adding cuts undertaken by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency and additional energy measures as a way to decrease the Medicaid cuts. Opening the bill up on the floor, however, could quickly spiral out of control for Johnson. Party leaders are opposed to offering any concessions to the holdouts, and senior GOP aides don’t expect any changes to the plans, according to three Republicans familiar with the private talks who were granted anonymity to describe them.
On the flip side, Johnson is still facing skepticism on the right flank — even after agreeing to increase the level of spending cuts in the plans to $2 trillion. The GOP whip team has been making calls about the $4 trillion debt limit increase provided for in the House budget, a deeply controversial vote among conservative lawmakers. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who has never voted to lift the debt ceiling, is among those still undecided, according to two Republicans familiar with the matter.
It’s all making Senate Republicans openly skeptical that the House will be able to get its budget across the finish line after weeks of infighting. And it emboldened GOP leaders in that chamber to move forward despite Trump’s endorsement of the “one big, beautiful bill” plan.
“If that [House budget] had already passed this would be a different discussion,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who noted that Johnson sent his members home for a recess rather than stay in town to finish up.
Complicating the GOP agenda further: Even if the House can advance a budget this week, Senate Republicans are expected to change some key components of the plan, teeing up a grueling fight between the chambers.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and seven other GOP senators sent a letter to Trump — conspicuously sending a copy to Johnson — insisting that they won’t support a final bill that only extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts temporarily. That group alone would be enough to prevent any party-line bill from passing.
“The president has called for making the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent. And I am committed to ensuring that any tax bill we consider does exactly that,” Thune said on the Senate floor Thursday.
The Senate GOP budget resolution also doesn’t touch Medicaid — and there are already signs of unease there with the kinds of cuts Johnson is staking out. During the Senate’s overnight voting slog last week, Republicans rejected a budget amendment from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to mirror the House GOP’s $1.5 trillion floor for spending cuts — suggesting a potential fight to come.
And though no final decision has been made, Senate Republican leaders continue to signal that a debt ceiling increase should be handled on a bipartisan basis — not as part of GOP’s party-line agenda.
“My assumption has always been that the debt ceiling will have to be handled the way it traditionally is,” Thune told reporters last week.
Trump, as always, has been an unpredictable player in the process. After he publicly called on both chambers to approve the House’s budget resolution last week, he and members of his administration continued to raise other options — which the Senate took as a green light to move forward with their competing plan. Trump even thanked Thune in a Truth Social post just before the Senate started voting on its budget — a tacit sign that he was OK with the “optionality” the South Dakota Republican has vowed to provide for Republicans.
How the two sides ultimately work out their disagreements remains to be seen: Leadership and key factions in both chambers could informally work out an agreement, with the Senate adopting those changes when they take up a House-passed budget resolution. Though, some Budget Committee members are floating a formal conference committee to work out the differences.
“What I see happening is the Senate is working toward an objective. The House is working toward the same objective,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “We’ll go to a conference committee, and we’ll all have a cup of hot cocoa and hug each other.”
Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump announced the next chief for the White House’s Capitol Hill strategy on Saturday night, picking Katie Bailey, a former Republican Hill staffer.
Bailey will replace James Braid in the role of director of the Office of Legislative Affairs, which oversees nominations and confirmations of Cabinet roles, relationships on Capitol Hill and the White House’s legislative priorities. Braid left the job in September.
Bailey has served as deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs since the beginning of the summer. She formerly worked for Republican Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana and former Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and served in roles on multiple committees.
Trump commended Bailey for assisting with the confirmations of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, saying she has “already delivered strong results.”
“After previously working on Capitol Hill, Katie understands how the Executive and Legislative Branches of Government can most effectively work together to achieve Great Success for the American People,” the president wrote in a social media post Saturday night.
Bailey takes over the role ahead of the midterm elections, which could alter the power dynamics in Washington substantially if Democrats seize control of either chamber of Congress. The result, which the White House has begun preparing for, could include congressional subpoenas, depositions and investigations, as happened during the latter half of Trump’s first term in office, when Democrats flipped the House.
Trump’s approval continues to sag amid soaring gas and diesel prices driven by the war with Iran, leaving Democrats bullish that the map will continue to grow for them.
SYRACUSE, New York — President Donald Trump came to New York on Friday to help a Republican win an uphill race for governor. But his visit was also a reminder of the complicated role he plays in his party’s fight to keep control of Congress.
Trump rallied alongside GOP gubernatorial nominee Bruce Blakeman, calling on New Yorkers to fire Gov. Kathy Hochul and, referring to the state attorney general, “her totally corrupt sidekick, Letitia ‘Peekaboo’ James.”
“Your city and state are dirty, filthy places, and everybody wants to leave,” he told some 5,000 attendees at a convention center in downtown Syracuse — which, he noted, was “a short distance from the beautiful shores of Lake America.”
“You gotta get your act together, and I tell you what, Bruce Blakeman will get your act together,” Trump said.
For Republicans, the president’s appearance underscored a political dilemma that extends beyond New York: Even as Trump increasingly appears to be a drag on their ticket, they need his loyal supporters to energize their base. While voters have soured on the president’s handling of the economy and costs, he remains a potent force in turning out MAGA voters — even in an otherwise Democratic-dominated state.
“The targeting of where the president goes is not a random exercise,” Marist University pollster Lee Miringoff said. “They’re looking to stir the base without stirring the opposition. They’re picking and choosing, that’s not uncommon. For him to come to New York to help the turnout upstate is a positive for the Republicans and his base.”
Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, hasn’t distanced himself from the president — nor have most of the top officials in New York’s GOP. Nearly every Republican running a competitive congressional race in this half of the state came to Friday’s rally, eager to make their presence known.
“I’m always happy to be with the president,” said Anthony Constantino, who’s running in a nearby red district that’s inched into toss-up territory. “He’s the leader of the free world, and I’m excited to have a great relation with him.”
Some GOP operatives, however, have quietly grumbled that their candidates need to start creating some distance from the president. Republicans from other parts of the state like Rep. Mike Lawler decided that campaigning in their districts was more valuable than trekking to be seen with Trump — as did several down-ballot candidates in Central New York. Democrats, notably, have been just as eager to highlight the visit.
“This is supposed to be a swing district. And the feedback I get is that the president is very unpopular,” said Democratic Rep. John Mannion, who represents Syracuse and the surrounding Central New York area. “He still certainly will have his core base of supporters, but I do think he’s lost support here compared to what he had around the 2024 election.”
Blakeman, for his part, isn’t worried about Trump’s drop in popularity.
“Kathy Hochul should be worried about her drop in popularity,” he said before taking the stage in Syracuse. “She’s the most unpopular governor in the history of the state of New York.”
Trump’s visit came against the backdrop of a darkening political environment for New York Republicans.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement shot a man in Manhattan on Thursday afternoon, stirring fresh condemnation of Trump’s aggressive deportation policies. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has a surprisingly warm relationship with the president, called on him to cease all ICE activity in the five boroughs. Hochul stressed that the shooting took place with a five-year-old child present and demanded that federal authorities “provide answers.”
Immigration is one of several areas where Blakeman has hewed close to the Trump wing of the party throughout his campaign.
“I’m outraged with Kathy Hochul for taking sides with somebody who was a convicted felon, someone who was an alleged drug dealer, a gang member,” he said Friday about the shooting in Manhattan.
While Trump’s speech repeatedly careened back to the rhetoric one could expect from any of his rallies — boasts about the stock market, complaints about ‘Dumocrats’ — he did manage to seamlessly blend almost all of Blakeman’s oft-used talking points into his stump speech.
“Since Hochul took office, she’s raised your utility rates 48 times, and energy prices in New York have skyrocketed 100 percent,” Trump said. “If Bruce Blakeman gets in, he will cut your electric bills by 70, 80, 90 percent.”
The climate outside of deep blue New York City is also turning increasingly hostile to the GOP. Constantino, who’s running to succeed Rep. Elise Stefanik in upstate New York, trails his Democratic foe Blake Gendebien by 4 points, a Siena Research Institute survey released Friday morning found. A Blue Light News poll showed that nationally one in four Trump voters believe Republican candidates should break from the president in order to win in November.
The wisdom of appearing with Trump has been debated by Republicans throughout the country at a time when gas prices are high and a foreign war drags on. And New York Democrats aren’t viewing the presidential visit as a concern.
Much of Hochul’s messaging this year has focused on making sure New Yorkers know Blakeman and Trump are friends. Her most-aired TV commercial features a puppeteer saying one Republican would do the other’s bidding.
“Puppets are my life. You tell them what to say, they say it,” the narrator says. “But that’s not what you want in a governor.”
Earlier in the day during an MSNOW interview, Hochul dismissed the rally.
“It’s obviously a very political event,” she said. “It seems like a last-ditch effort to breathe some life into a campaign that’s on life support.”
Despite his low approval ratings with voters, Trump’s visit stands to light up a Republican base that Blakeman will need to turn out next month to help him defeat Hochul.
Polling has shown the governor leading the GOP nominee by as much as 18 points in this deep blue state. Yet some Trump supporters maintain the president can help generate much-needed enthusiasm for Blakeman, especially in areas of upstate New York where the Long Island native is not well known.
“We actually have the ability to win these elections, but I just don’t see the enthusiasm out there,” Conservative Party Chair Gerard Kassar said. “Hochul has won the day as far as being a terrible governor, but now we’ve got to get our people out to vote.”
Winning is still a tall order for Blakeman — especially in a tough national political environment where polls show GOP candidates in red states like Texas, Ohio and Kansas struggling against Democratic challengers.
Republicans have not won statewide in New York since George Pataki secured a third term in 2002. Since then, the GOP has lost all levers of statewide power, and Trump’s tariffs as well as his decision to launch a war in Iran have not helped him fulfill his campaign pledge of addressing voters’ cost concerns.
The president’s political woes aren’t going unnoticed.
Privately, Republican operatives grumbled that the president’s visit put swing seat candidates in an uncomfortable spot.
“There’s a lot of commiserating between folks within the party structure — why is this happening? Why is he doing this?” said one Republican operative who was granted anonymity to freely discuss the dynamic. “Then you’ve got the blind loyalists who say, ‘Yay Trump’s coming’ — people who are too politically dumb to understand the ramifications of it.”
Yet the head of the Republican party kept his message very much in line with Hochul’s.
“Please pretend I’m on the ballot,” Trump told Central New Yorkers.
Sen. Chris Murphy wants Democrats to go big for Angie Nixon in Florida’s Senate race — and he’s pushing to raise some “serious money” to help.
“I do believe that we’d make a big mistake if we slept on Florida,” the Connecticut Democrat told Blue Light News on Friday. “I know it feels like a longer shot, but I just think this year is looking exceptional.”
Murphy plans to hit the trail with Nixon as part of a campaign swing for Senate candidates over the next three weeks that will take him through North Carolina and Florida, as well as events with Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota and Chris Pappas in New Hampshire. Murphy will serve as a surrogate for El-Sayed in the spin room at his next debate, and said he’s “just a big believer” in the Michigan Senate nominee.
Murphy’s bullishness about a blue wave comes as Senate Democrats are pushing the boundaries of a midterm battle map that is shifting further into red territory. The Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC has dropped roughly $5 million apiece into Texas and Kansas over recent days, and the minority leader has included Kansas and Mississippi in his pitches to donors.
“If I were in charge, I would definitely put some resources in Florida,” Murphy said. “When you have an exciting candidate like this, it’s a good long-term investment” in growing Democrats’ activist base.
Still, Murphy stressed he’s “not making any formal recommendations” on where Schumer or top Democratic campaign groups should move their money.
“They’ve got so many mouths to feed,” Murphy said. “That’s why I’m going to try to step up and do some work on my own.”
Murphy, who is considered a potential 2028 presidential contender, has spread roughly $2.5 million across candidates, campaign arms and other organizations this cycle. That includes transferring more than $500,000 to Democrats’ three top campaign arms and 25 state parties.
Prominent Democrats have been ramping up their attention on Florida. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has funneled $250,000 toward Nixon’s campaign, along with other resources. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) also told Blue Light News he hopes to campaign with Nixon.
But Democrats across suddenly competitive red states are clamoring for more cash and Florida is an expensive state, complicating the chances of a significant investment from national groups.
Nixon also faces an uphill battle against GOP Sen. Ashley Moody in the Sunshine State. A progressive state lawmaker, Nixon aligned herself with the Democratic Socialists of America over the summer in a state where many voters, especially those with ties to Cuba, reject such an ideology. Also, Republicans in Florida have a 1.5 million voter registration advantage over Democrats.
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words