Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday that Republicans would quickly fill a Supreme Court vacancy if one opens up before the midterms.

“That’s a contingency I think around here you always have to be prepared for. And if that were to happen, yes, we would be prepared to confirm,” Thune told reporters Tuesday.

Even as Thune committed to filling a vacancy quickly, Senate Republicans haven’t yet started having serious conversations within the conference about the logistics of a confirmation battle, according to three people granted anonymity to speak candidly.

If there’s a vacancy, it’s possible Trump could pick a justice from within the Senate GOP ranks.

The president remains very interested in the possibility of placing Sen. Ted Cruz on the court, according to two other people granted anonymity to describe Trump’s thinking. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the president’s current thinking.

The president pointed to the Texas Republican as a potential pick earlier this year during a stop in his state, joking that he would get unanimous support from his colleagues because “they want to get him out of there,” referring to the Senate.

No justice has publicly tipped their hand that they are eyeing an exit from the court. But Justice Samuel Alito, 76, has come under intense speculation as the second oldest justice. Justice Clarence Thomas, 77, has repeatedly batted down retirement chatter.

Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Tuesday he asked that President Donald Trump take down an AI-generated image he’d posted on social media depicting himself as Jesus.

“I did ask him to delete it,” Johnson said.

The picture Trump posted late Sunday featured him in flowing robes touching his hand to the forehead of a sick man in a hospital bed, flanked by a nurse, a soldier and a Trump supporter looking toward him with reverence. It came the same day Trump blasted the Pope as being “WEAK on crime.”

It was quickly deleted Monday morning after significant criticism from Christian commentators. Johnson, a devout Christian, and members of his GOP leadership circle, which includes several Catholics, immediately received phone calls from lawmakers, constituents and church groups incensed about the post, according to three people granted anonymity to share private conversations.

Trump denied a resemblance to Jesus and told reporters that he thought he was being depicted as a doctor.

The Republican chairs of three House committees are ramping up their probe into whether ActBlue, the Democratic online fundraising platform, misled members of Congress about its vetting of potential illegal foreign donations.

House Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wisc.), House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter to ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones on Tuesday requesting additional documents under subpoenas issued last year in their investigation into whether the platform knowingly accepted political donations from foreign nationals.

The letter points to a New York Times report that ActBlue’s then-outside counsel was concerned that Wallace-Jones may have misled congressional investigators in a 2023 letter to Steil’s committee regarding ActBlue’s vetting of foreign donations.

“Given ActBlue’s demonstrated history of misleading Congress, there is considerable reason to believe that ActBlue may have deliberately withheld this responsive material to impede our investigation,” the letter said.

The committee chairs also accuse ActBlue of obstructing their investigations through “noncompliance with our subpoenas.” They requested ActBlue comply by April 28.

ActBlue did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and Blue Light News has not independently verified the documents cited in the New York Times story. But a post from ActBlue shortly after The Times’ story was published said Wallace-Jones “never made false statements to Congress. Her correspondence was reviewed and approved by multiple in-house and outside attorneys before it was submitted.”

Democrats have largely insisted that the House GOP probe into ActBlue, which powers Democrats’ online fundraising advantage, is politically motivated and without evidence. President Donald Trump has also repeatedly called for probes into the donor platform.

“We almost were in a, ‘This can’t be real, this can’t be serious. These are not serious people, these are not serious allegations,’” Wallace-Jones said in an interview with POLITICO last May. “And instead held on for a very long time to our traditional posture.”