Democrats and Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee are set to have a bipartisan meeting next Wednesday with Mehmet Oz, President Donald Trump’s administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, as congressional tax writers eye year-end health care legislation following their work in helping craft the “big, beautiful bill.”

According to a notice of the meeting viewed by Blue Light News, Ways and Means members are invited “to discuss the priorities” of CMS on July 23, including issues “involving health care matters” that fall within the jurisdiction of the panel.

Conversation could turn to what’s next for Ways and Means and its counterpart in the Senate, the Finance Committee, where Republicans are actively discussing interest in moving an overhaul to the operations of pharmaceutical benefit managers, the intermediaries who negotiate drug prices between pharmacies and manufacturers.

Discussion next week could also focus on the critical role Oz played in reassuring Senate Republicans that hospitals in their states could tap into a rural hospital relief fund amid steep cuts to Medicaid in the GOP megabill.

Zohran Mamdani, the polarizing Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, huddled privately Wednesday with Democratic lawmakers at a Washington restaurant. The conversation, attendees said, focused on campaign strategy and lessons learned from his surprise win.

Those included “the effective communications strategy that they employed, very dynamic and natural,” said Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.). “And it allowed him to project who he is and his vision for New York.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) organized the event, which was billed as a “communication and organizing skill share” breakfast.

Ocasio-Cortez and Mamdani both left the roughly two-hour meeting without appearing or speaking with reporters. A Mamdani spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

As Democrats search for a winning message and campaign strategy heading into the 2026 midterms, some in the party have pointed to Mamdani’s campaign and its social media virality as evidence they need to focus more on cost-of-living issues than other hot-button culture war issues.

Attendees were largely from the left flank of the party; centrists have publicly and privately expressed concern about Mamdani, who identifies as a Democratic Socialist, being a liability for the party nationally. Hakeem Jeffries, the top House Democratic leader and a fellow New Yorker, has so far withheld an endorsement pending a meeting with Mamdani.

Rep. Laura Gillen (D-N.Y.), who represents a purple Long Island district, has gone so far as to brand Mamdani as “too extreme” to lead the city. But those leaving the meeting spoke positively about him and his campaign.

“There is no debating that the campaign that he ran was a successful one. His economic message, his ability to cut through and just speak to people’s pain points in New York City,” said Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.). “And then how he did it, right, the videos, the media, the volunteers, the organizing. … We talked about the lessons from that campaign and how it can really impact the way we speak to voters.”

“The party can learn a lot from him and AOC about digital communication and organizing,” added Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said he expects votes on all three cryptocurrency bills that Republicans are pushing to go to the House floor Wednesday, though leadership is still weighing how to sequence or combine them.

“We’re bringing all of them,” Scalise said in a brief interview. “We’re back on track. And exactly what the combination will be, we’re talking through that, but all three bills will be encompassed in the work we do today.”

The slate of crypto bills includes a sweeping market structure measure known as the CLARITY Act, Senate-passed stablecoin legislation called the GENIUS Act and a third measure to ban a central bank digital currency.

“They’re all going to pass,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) told reporters entering the speaker’s office Wednesday morning. How they pass, though, remains an open question.

GOP leaders could seek to merge the CBDC ban into the CLARITY Act in order to appease conservative hard-liners who brought down a key procedural vote Tuesday. The holdouts say they secured a promise from Trump to add CBDC language into CLARITY, but GOP leaders have balked at directly linking the two.

The market structure bill has bipartisan support, but most Democrats oppose banning a CBDC, which is a government-issued digital dollar that conservatives say would open the door to privacy invasions.

A senior Republican granted anonymity to describe private scheduling conversations said if the sequencing isn’t figured out today, the entire slate of bills could get pushed into next week.