Congress
Republicans brace for a messy slog on Capitol Hill
DORAL, Florida — House Republicans came here to President Donald Trump’s resort to map out what’s ahead for their legislative agenda. The big takeaway: It’s looking treacherous.
Despite progress on the stated goal of the three-day retreat — coalescing around a fiscal blueprint for their vast party-line agenda — what they saw wasn’t pretty: Key strategic disputes continued to fester inside the GOP ranks, and the uproar from Trump’s federal spending freeze gave vulnerable members a taste of the backlash that could result if they follow through on promised cuts to key programs.
Together it portends a difficult job ahead for Speaker Mike Johnson as he assembles the votes needed to enact Trump’s policy agenda. Johnson and Trump’s message for the GOP rank-and-file isn’t exactly calibrated to settle their anxieties: stay united, or else.
“We’re working together to make sure this package makes good on our campaign promises,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday — two days after Trump urged members to “make life easy” and follow his lead.
The good news for the speaker is that his conference is largely united on the big picture: assembling a sweeping package of border security upgrades, energy measures and tax cuts and passing it on party lines using the budget reconciliation process.
That stands in contrast to the start of Trump’s prior term, when congressional leaders embarked on an internally divisive push to overhaul the Affordable Care Act — an effort that ultimately unraveled amid a public uproar over potential rollbacks to Americans’ healthcare coverage.
The bad news is that the Republican majority in the House is much thinner this time, and Johnson has to worry about balancing the demands of an ideologically motivated faction of hard-line conservatives who want deep spending cuts with the concerns of swing-district members who could face a political reckoning in next year’s midterms if those cuts happen.
Those anxieties were on full display on Tuesday and Wednesday, as members took stock of the flood of phone calls they received from constituents worried about the scope of the White House spending freeze.
Among those raising alarms was Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, one of three House Republicans representing a district Trump lost in November. He said the warnings Tuesday from himself and others in the GOP helped influence the Trump administration to “narrow what they were doing in a way.” (The White House rescinded the order hours later.)
Yet much of the discussion behind closed doors at the Trump National Doral resort concerned efforts to finance the GOP’s ambitious policy plans by targeting cuts to federal programs. Members discussed imposing new and expanded work requirements for Medicaid, food aid benefits and other aid to low-income families that could provoke public backlash. Democrats are already trying to contrast those cuts with the GOP’s plans to deliver tax cuts for wealthy Americans as they look to unseat vulnerable Republicans in 2026.
Johnson showed no sign of flinching, calling it a “good thing” that Trump had taken aim at such a wide swath of federal spending: “We promised to reduce the size and scope of government,” he said. “We’re disrupting.”
House Republicans left the retreat with mixed feelings about how much clarity they received about the road ahead.
In the final meeting of the retreat, House committee chairs laid out their budgetary targets for the legislation, setting updated “floors” for potential cuts that are set to be embedded in the blueprint that the House Budget Committee is set to take up next week to kick off the reconciliation process.
Johnson, however, didn’t provide members with a top-line number for the overall package, and many members complained they didn’t get a better picture of the path forward, according to three people with direct knowledge of the closed meeting who were granted anonymity to discuss it.
House GOP hard-liners are growing more furious, meanwhile, that Johnson isn’t committing to higher spending cuts in the budget plan. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a key rebel and House Freedom Caucus member, didn’t attend the retreat but posted his criticism of Johnson and GOP leaders’ decisions from afar.
While Johnson is pushing a one-bill plan, the Freedom Caucus is still adamant on imposing its own plan to split the agenda in two.
“I think it’s disappointing,” Freedom Caucus member Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) said leaving the final retreat meeting Wednesday. “They want flexibility, but the problem is you have a lack of trust from fiscal conservatives like myself, that there will ever be an appetite to cut spending, and they’re promising to do more.” “I’m from Missouri, you have to show me,” Burlison added. “The truth is: I’ve never seen this town cut spending, so I don’t know that I believe it.”
Soon after, the larger Freedom Caucus quickly dashed off a post on X as the GOP meeting closed, criticizing Johnson and GOP leaders direction and asking, sarcastically: “Are you a Republican Member of Congress leaving Miami today feeling rudderless when it comes to reconciliation?” The post pushed the group’s competing two-track plan as the better option.
Johnson earlier in the morning told reporters he wants House Republicans “to come out with a number that shows the serious nature of what we’re facing and … the high level of cuts that are necessary to get fiscal sanity, responsibility restored to the federal government, but not to put everything in there.”
Leaving the retreat, Rep. Aaron Bean (R-Fla.) acknowledged the tough work ahead of nailing down enough spending cuts to pay for the package — including Trump’s demands to eliminate income tax on tips, overtime earnings and Social Security benefits.
“We got work to do,” he said. “That means we’ve got to cut more to be able to afford those things.”
Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley rescheduled a planned vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general late Friday in a preemptive move as negotiations between the Trump administration and GOP holdouts continue.
The vote, now set for Tuesday after a scheduled Thursday vote was postponed, isn’t an indication that a deal allowing for Blanche’s confirmation is near, so much as it is a nod to Judiciary Committee rules that require three days of notice for a panel meeting.
There is no sign that President Donald Trump is about to acquiesce to the unflinching demands of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who wants a controversial settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS substantially pared back.
Cornyn, who lost his primary to a Trump-endorsed candidate, wants the Justice Department to nullify a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and limit the scope of a tax audit immunity component of the pact.
Trump told reporters earlier Friday the fund is “dead” but added “I wish it weren’t.”
“I’d like to see them compensated,” he added, referring to people he considers victims of government abuse, including participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
To advance Tuesday, Blanche needs to pick up Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another senator on the panel with similar concerns. He can’t lose any GOP votes if he wants to be reported favorably out of the Judiciary Committee.
“Chairman Grassley wants Todd Blanche’s nomination to be successful,” said a Judiciary Committee spokesperson, who declined to be named. “Noticing the markup gives more time for the White House to secure the votes for the President’s nominee. Grassley would like to see Blanche confirmed before the August recess as he has an excellent record restoring law and order and keeping Americans safe.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is zeroing in on one of House Republicans’ biggest contests — a purple district in Nebraska — when he starts his recess campaign sprint.
Scalise will travel to Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District in the Omaha area for an event with Republican Brinker Harding in the coming days, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter granted anonymity to share plans not yet made public. Republicans are digging in to defend the seat, which Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential race and is among Democrats’ best pick up opportunities this fall as they seek to flip the House.
Harding is running against Democratic consultant Denise Powell to replace retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon. Bacon, a moderate-leaning Republican, flipped the Omaha district red in 2016.
After Nebraska, Scalise is planning to travel across the country throughout August, including to defend GOP incumbents Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ and Zach Nunn’s key battleground seats in Iowa’s 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts and Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District.
He’ll boost candidates working to flip blue districts like Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, Derek Merrin in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District and Mike LiPetri in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.
Scalise also plans to travel to Michigan, Colorado, South Carolina and Texas for campaign events over the August recess.
President Donald Trump goaded John Cornyn on social media Friday morning, accusing the Texas senator of withholding his vote on Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination in retaliation for Trump’s central role in his political demise.
Cornyn, who lost his May primary to Texas’ scandal-ridden attorney general, the Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton, has threatened to block Blanche’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee until the White House promises to permanently shelve its $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” in writing — something Trump appears unwilling to do.
“John Cornyn never had a problem with the so called “Fund,” which will not benefit me, but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration, until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent in Texas, who easily won the Nomination for the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Several Republicans bristled at the fund, which could have been deployed to compensate Americans who faced charges after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and which gives the president and his family audit immunity over taxes. At his July confirmation hearing, Blanche said that the fund, part of a settlement the president reached with the IRS, was defunct. But the administration has been “reluctant to change” the text of the settlement, Cornyn told reporters Thursday.
Trump signaled his continued support for the Jan 6 rioters on Friday.
“I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!” he wrote. “Millions of people agree with me, as was proven in my landslide Presidential win, where this was a major subject of debate, and so did John Cornyn, until he lost his Election to an opponent that I Endorsed.”
On Thursday, the president suggested that he could punt a Senate vote on Blanche until after Cornyn — and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — leaves the chamber at the end of the year. Cornyn, however, suggested on social media that there are other Republican senators with concerns about the fund.
“After the midterms, who knows who’s going to be the next United States senator from North Carolina or Texas?” Cornyn told reporters.
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