Congress

Senate passes Trump’s megabill after pulling all-nighter

Published

10 months ago

July 1, 2025

Senate Republicans narrowly passed Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” Tuesday, taking a significant step toward the president’s goal of signing the legislation later this week.

The vote was 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance breaking a tie. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina joined Democrats and voted no.

The bill is expected to be the party’s marquee legislative achievement heading into next year’s midterms. The GOP’s slim House majority is at risk, and in the Senate, Tillis’ retirement announcement this week handed Democrats a major opening.

In addition to extending the president’s 2017 tax cuts, the bill includes scaled-down versions of his campaign priorities, such as “no tax on tips,” while overhauling social safety-net programs, and providing new border and military spending. It also hikes the federal debt ceiling by $5 trillion.

“This is about extending that tax relief so the same people that benefited from it back in 2017 and for the last eight years don’t end up having a colossal, massive tax increase hitting them in the face come Jan. 1,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said.

The Tuesday morning vote followed nearly a full day of round-the-clock uncertainty over how the bill would come together, all set against a slow-moving amendment “vote-a-rama” taking place on the Senate floor.

It made for a messy ending to a months-long process. Thune, Majority Whip John Barrasso and other leaders shuttled between GOP holdouts as the votes dragged on overnight. After huddling with a band of fiscal hawks around 1 a.m., the normally chatty Thune said only that “progress is an elusive term.”

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski emerged as a particular focus of leaders’ attention. They already spent days working with her to address concerns about the bill’s impact on her state’s health care and economy — for instance, putting a expanded tax break for whaling boat captains in the bill. But some of their proposals ran into trouble from the Senate parliamentarian, leaving her vote in question until the very end.

As Republicans questioned if they would be able to win her over, Thune and key committee chairs met with Paul, thought to be their most dug-in “no” vote, to see if he might be gettable.

Now Republicans could face an even more painful headache across the Capitol: The package still needs to get through the House, which is expected to start voting as soon as Wednesday, driving Republicans right down to the wire on their self-imposed July 4 deadline.

That will be a heavy lift: Moderates are worried about changes to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits included in the Senate bill, and conservatives are up in arms that it doesn’t go far enough in cutting spending. But GOP leaders are betting they can get it through the way they did their initial draft earlier this year — by daring holdouts to vote against Donald Trump.

Many of the same provisions that are giving House Republicans heartburn also sparked GOP opposition in the Senate. Collins had warned for days that she was leaning against the bill absent her cRon Johnsonolleagues agreeing to soften a provision curtailing state provider taxes, which many states use to fund their Medicaid programs, and significantly increase a rural hospital fund.

But Collins’ amendment failed on a procedural vote. She accused Democrats of “hypocrisy” afterward for voting to sink a provision softening the bill’s blow but insisted it wouldn’t impact her final vote, adding: “I told all of you earlier in the week that I have problems with the bill.”

Tillis, meanwhile, compared the political ramifications of the Medicaid provisions to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which was followed by political wipeouts for Democrats in subsequent elections. After getting attacked by Trump, and Senate leaders doing little to try to assuage his concerns on Medicaid, he announced on Sunday he would not run for re-election. That was in part to send a sign that he wasn’t flippable on the bill, according to a person close to Tillis granted anonymity to disclose private discussions.

Paul was long viewed as most likely “no” due to his firm opposition to the debt ceiling hike embedded in the megabill. But he was only one of four fiscal hawks that leaders had been watching.

The other three — Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida — ultimately voted for the bill, as several of their colleagues suggested they would weeks ago. The effort to win over the group included multiple meetings with Trump, outreach from Vance and an 11th-hour meeting late Sunday night with top Senate Republicans, including Thune.

As part of that meeting, Thune agreed to support a Scott effort to curb how much the federal government pays to cover some Medicaid enrollees starting in 2031. In exchange, Johnson, Lee, Scott and Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming all agreed to start debate on the bill. In the end, the amendment never got a vote after several Republican senators made clear they would not support it and it could not pass.

House Republicans and some governors bet that the Senate would water down the House’s Medicaid changes when the bill came across the Capitol earlier this year. Instead, the Senate Finance Committee went further than the House by incrementally scaling back the provider tax cap in expansion states instead of just freezing it.

The Senate’s passage of the bill is the culmination of more than a year of work, dating back to early 2024, when Barrasso held a meeting between Senate Republicans and Trump campaign officials to start discussing the agenda if their party won a trifecta. Senate Finance Committee Republicans also started meeting more than a year ago to start discussing the contours of their eventual reconciliation bill, and Thune convened meetings with his members to test how policy ideas would fare across the conference.

Thune and Johnson have been in close contact for months, including regular meetings and increasingly frequent phone calls as the Senate bill inched closer to the finish line. Yet Johnson will now need to sell his own members, nervous about the political and policy implications of the bill.

Democrats are planning to use many of those same arguments that Republicans are raising internally to hammer them heading into next year’s midterm election. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is warning that “the American people will not forget what Republicans do in this chamber today.”

“We heard what our colleague from North Carolina had to say about this bill. My guess is half, maybe even more than half of the Republicans in the Senate totally agree with him,” Schumer said. “But he had the courage to speak the truth. The backbone to speak the truth. But not our other colleagues.”

Congress

Wyden urges Democrats to back FISA privacy amendments

Published

2 hours ago

April 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Ron Wyden sent a letter to his Democratic colleagues urging them to reject a clean renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ahead of an expected House vote on Wednesday.

The federal surveillance authority expires Monday, and House GOP leadersdelayed a renewal vote set for Wednesday after disagreements with some Republicans over including amendments addressing privacy concerns. The White House and Republican leaders are calling for renewal without any changes, but a bipartisan group of lawmakers are demanding guardrails to address concerns AI can significantly enhance the government’s mass surveillance capabilities.

“With recent developments in AI supercharging how the government can surveil Americans, Congress must use this upcoming debate to make necessary reforms to all our surveillance laws,” Wyden (D-Ore.) said in the letter obtained exclusively by POLITICO.

The senator sent a similar letter to House Democrats on Monday.

A final vote in the House could happen around 10 p.m. Wednesday if GOP leadership can strike an agreement with holdouts on changes to the bill. That would set up a possible Senate vote on Thursday.

Amendments could include requiring a warrant for purchasing Americans’ information from data brokers, and closing a loophole that allows the government to use the foreign surveillance authority to investigate American citizens.

Wyden’s letter also called for declassifying a FISA Court opinion from last month that he described as finding major compliance problems with Section 702.

Congress

Vought: White House doesn’t have ‘ballpark’ total for Iran war funding

Published

2 hours ago

April 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

White House budget director Russ Vought told lawmakers Wednesday that the Trump administration hasn’t settled on “a ballpark” range for how much funding it will ask Congress to approve for the Iran conflict.

“We’re not ready to come to you with a request. We’re still working on it. We’re working through to figure out what’s needed in this fiscal year versus next fiscal year,” Vought said during testimony before the House Budget Committee on President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget blueprint.

Republican lawmakers are eager to receive the White House’s request for the Iran war, as GOP leaders discuss whether to fashion an emergency funding package that might attract Democratic votes or use the party-line reconciliation process to boost military spending.

It has been more than six weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched airstrikes on Iran and almost a month since Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed that the Pentagon sent the White House a request for $200 billion in emergency funding to support the military during the conflict.

The White House has said the forthcoming military funding request amid the Iran onslaught is separate from the president’s request earlier this month for a record $1.5 trillion in defense funding for the upcoming fiscal year.

Vought could get more questions on this topic Thursday when he testifies before the Senate Budget Committee.

Congress

GOP leaders delay FISA vote amid GOP rebellion

Published

4 hours ago

April 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House GOP leaders postponed a Wednesday procedural vote on an extension of a key federal spy powers program as they scramble to land a deal with hard-liners around changes — acknowledging the truly “clean” extension that President Donald Trump is demanding is currently DOA in the chamber.

There are ongoing discussions around modifying the clean, 18-month extension of the surveillance authority known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, that Trump is ordering. GOP leaders acknowledged in private conversations Tuesday night and publicly Wednesday morning that at least some tweaks are necessary to quell a GOP rebellion that could lead to Section 702’s expiration April 20.

Republican leaders are still hoping to hold a procedural vote later Wednesday to pave the way for floor consideration of the measure, if they can strike an agreement with hold-outs around some changes. A final vote would then happen around 10 p.m. Wednesday. But Speaker Mike Johnson was noncommittal in an interview late Wednesday morning if all that could still happen. “We’ll see,” he said.

Conversations around potential changes picked up Tuesday night, as Blue Light News first reported. Holdouts are asking for guardrails on the program, including warrant requirements; the White House is open to making changes in this regard but likely in a more watered-down capacity than what hard-liners have been seeking.

Ultraconservatives are also pushing House GOP leaders and the White House to follow through on a previous promise to advance a ban on a central bank digital currency, known as CBDC. House GOP leadership and the White House are pushing for a longer Section 702 extension in exchange for advancing that policy or other reforms, while some hard-liners want the promised CBDC ban passed as a standalone rather than attached to the FISA bill.

Majority Leader Steve Scalise said in an interview that White House officials, GOP leaders and Republican holdouts are discussing some “potential amendments.” He added, “We’re still negotiating.” He maintained GOP leaders and White House officials won’t incorporate any changes that undermine the underlying government surveillance program.

Nothing has been agreed to. And Scalise said in an earlier interview leaders would likely incorporate “minor tweaks” into the procedural rule governing floor debate on the underlying bill — if the White House approves.

So far, however, conversations have not sufficiently moved the needle. Hard-liners aren’t budging, continuing resisting renewed calls from Trump and an increasingly aggressive pressure campaign from the administration. That includes a detailed presentation from CIA Director John Ratcliffe at Wednesday morning’s closed-door House GOP Conference meeting on the need for a clean extension.

“Look, he’s the executive, we’re the legislative, and we’re going to see a little bit of conflict between those two today,” Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) said Wednesday, referring to the president.

GOP Reps. Michael Cloud of Texas, Andrew Clyde of Georgia and other hard-liners stood up in the GOP Conference meeting to raise their concerns about a clean reauthorization and continued push for overhauling the program. Some Republicans grew irritated that Ratcliffe “filibustered” until close to the end of the meeting’s scheduled conclusion to avoid taking challenging questions, according to four people in the meeting.

Even before the rule vote was postponed, several rank-and-file members said they were not confident the rule would be adopted.

“There are some who will vote against the rule for sure,” said one House Republican granted anonymity to speak candidly. “It’s a math issue.”

Democrats aren’t expected to help Republicans overcome the procedural rule, even though some of them support a reauthorization without policy changes at this time. The top Democrats on the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees — Reps. Jim Himes of Connecticut and Jamie Raskin of Maryland, respectively — discussed a joint proposal for a package of FISA overhaul provisions at their party’s weekly caucus meeting Monday morning, which they plan to attempt to advance if the Republicans’ rule fails, according to two people in the meeting.

A fail safe option, if negotiations don’t yield results soon, is to pursue a very short term clean extension — possibly a few months — to buy more time for talks. White House officials and GOP leaders are trying to avoid that scenario.

Riley Rogerson contributed to this report.