Congress

The Federalist Society isn’t going anywhere

Published

12 months ago

June 25, 2025

President Donald Trump said the Federalist Society gave him “bad advice” on judicial nominations. He’s still appointing their members to the federal bench anyway.

On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider nominees for seats on the federal bench, including Emil Bove, Trump’s No. 3 at the Justice Department and an outsider to some mainstream conservative legal circles. Bove’s nomination has divided the right over whether Trump was eschewing the traditional conservative Federalist Society pipeline in favor of his own brand of loyalist nominees. But even amid a schism between Trump and the Federalist Society, the president’s orbit has continued to embrace lawyers and jurists who have ties to the most influential conservative legal group.

In a sign of the continued alignment between the Federalist Society and the administration, the Senate Judiciary Committee will also vote Thursday on a different slate of judicial nominees, all five of whom are members of the Federalist Society, according to their disclosures and the Federalist Society website.

“The Federalist Society is just interwoven into the conservative legal establishment,” said Russell Wheeler, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies the judiciary. For all Trump’s indignation, the majority of his picks thus far are “not only Federalist Society members, they’re proud Federalist Society members,” Wheeler said.

The Federalist Society is an influential conservative legal group whose ranks have included some of the nation’s most powerful judges, and its chapters on law school campuses have operated as a training ground for future conservative jurists. In Trump’s first term, the organization’s former Executive Vice President Leonard Leo served as a key adviser to the president on judicial nominations. The White House ultimately nominated and confirmed hundreds of judges to the federal bench, including three Supreme Court justices.

As some of the judges Trump nominated have ruled in ways he doesn’t like — and in particular in the wake of a ruling from the U.S. Court of International Trade that nullified Trump’s tariffs — the president announced in a post on Truth Social that he had cut ties with Leo. He called his onetime adviser on Supreme Court nominees a “sleazebag” and lamented his disappointment in the Federalist Society for the people the organization had recommended.

But it does not appear Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee — even some of the president’s staunchest allies — share Trump’s new animosity towards the Federalist Society.

“We’ll go to people that I’ve always relied upon to give me advice,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a current member and former chair of the committee. “The Federalist Society, I’ve known for a long time, I’ll still keep talking to [them].”

“I’m going to work with people that want to talk to me,” echoed Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the committee. “Would we sit down and talk to them and have discussions with them? The answer is, we’ll talk to anybody.”

And others warn that most qualified candidates are still going to come from the group. “Unless they use Federalist Society association as something that actually stops someone from getting a nomination, I don’t think it’s going to make a difference, and if they did take that step, the talent pool would shrink dramatically,” said an individual familiar with the administration’s judicial selection process granted anonymity to speak candidly.

A White House official said in a statement that Trump relies on “his senior advisors, White House Counsel, and the Department of Justice” in the judicial selection process. “The mold by which President Trump chooses judges is that of Justices [Clarence] Thomas and [Samuel] Alito and the late Justice [Antonin] Scalia,” the official said. “Outside entities, including hometown senators, think tanks, and others, are always free to share their recommendations, but the President and his team will be the ultimate decision-makers.”

There has been a notable exception to the administration’s continued affinity for Federalist Society-approved lawyers. Bove, who if confirmed would hold a lifetime seat on the powerful Third Circuit Court of Appeals, has come under scrutiny for his controversial maneuvering to fulfill Trump’s political agenda at the Department of Justice. The president’s one-time criminal defense attorney, not a typical Federalist Society candidate for the federal bench, is facing allegations by a former lawyer at the Department of Justice that he suggested the administration should go against court orders. Some in the conservative legal sphere have questioned his nomination out of concern that he would unduly prioritize loyalty to the president.

Michael Fragoso, former chief counsel to Mitch McConnell, who as Senate Republican leader shepherded the hundreds of nominees that Trump confirmed in his first term, underscored that if the most qualified candidates were Federalist Society members, Trump would still choose them. “If you look at who’s being nominated by and large really, I think Emil [Bove]’s probably the only exception,” said Fragoso, adding that Trump’s second term judicial picks are for the most part, “pretty traditionalist Federalist Society people.” Fragoso is supporting Bove’s nomination.

Behind the scenes, the Federalist Society has continued to angle for influence, despite Trump’s frustration.

Mike Davis, an outside adviser to the White House on judicial nominations, said the Federalist Society’s new president, Sheldon Gilbert, reached out to him around the time he took over the organization in early 2025. Gilbert expressed that he wanted to mend fences with Trump’s orbit, and the two ate lunch together, Davis said. The Federalist Society did not respond to a request for comment.

“Having new leadership is an important step in the right direction, but the problem with [the Federalist Society is] they need to stop being the string orchestra on the Titanic,” said Davis, a former staffer to Grassley. “They want to look majestic as the ship is going down.”

In other words, the Federalist Society needs to supply lawyers who will contribute meaningfully to the president’s legal aims, Davis said.

Trent McCotter, a former Justice Department official and Federalist Society member who worked on judicial nominations during Trump’s first term, feels similarly. He said the number one priority for judicial nominees going forward should be a “proven track record of doing conservative work.”

“Membership in the Federalist Society is a signal, but it’s a relatively weak one,” McCotter said. “What you’ve been doing, putting your name on and filing, arguing in court for the last year or five years or 10 years, those are things that demonstrate much more what a person thinks about the law.”

“There will presumably still be nominees who are members of the Federalist Society,” he said. “It just won’t be the same kind of signal that it used to be.”

Tessa Berenson Rogers contributed to this report.

Congress

A frustrated Trump unloads on Senate Republicans behind closed doors

Published

1 hour ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Republicans hoped to use a closed-door lunch to clear the air with President Donald Trump. Instead, the president vented his frustrations with the senators for more than an hour, leaving them no closer to detente.

The meeting came at an explosive moment, with GOP lawmakers increasingly frustrated by Trump’s mercurial treatment of congressional Republican priorities. Just hours before arriving on Capitol Hill, Trump delivered his latest rug-pull — announcing he would refuse to sign a major housing bill that leaders were already touting after big bipartisan majorities passed it this week.

But senators said Trump arrived determined to prosecute his internal grudges against the Republican lawmakers who have opposed him at times — particularly those who have expressed misgivings about the Iran war and who are refusing to comply with the president’s demands for swift passage of a controversial elections bill.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) described Trump as “mad as a murder hornet” about the Iran vote, while Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) described the scene as “very much like a hospital board meeting, when a bunch of doctors are yelling at each other.”

Marshall added that “at the end of the day, we’ll figure out a way to get along.”

Another GOP senator, granted anonymity to speak candidly, called the lunch “very intense.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), deploying some go-to congressional lingo for heated encounters, called it “spirited,” “frank” and “candid.”

Trump and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) sparred at length over the Iran war, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the private interaction. Trump also railed over Tuesday’s successful war powers vote, lambasting Cassidy and three other GOP senators who voted for the resolution.

Cassidy acknowledged the two had a heated exchange to reporters after the lunch. After Trump questioned why Republicans would vote against him on the war, Cassidy said he told the president that the conflict was not going as well as senators were being told.

“The president said something negative about me. I received it as attempting to bully me from asking a question that I think the American people need to know, and I’m not going to be bullied,” said Cassidy, who recently lost his campaign for renomination after Trump endorsed against him.

Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) also confirmed the exchange between Trump and Cassidy. He said the two “harbor bad feelings” and urged them both to move on.

The meeting also failed to reveal a way forward on Trump’s No. 1 priority, the elections bill known as the SAVE America Act.

Trump cited the need to pass the legislation in his stunning decision Wednesday morning to cancel a signing ceremony for the long-stalled housing bill. A rostrum had been erected in Statuary Hall for the occasion, and House GOP leaders were promoting its benefits at a news conference when the presidential U-turn occurred.

Senators said Trump largely reiterated his publicly stated positions on the housing bill, the GOP election bill and his demand that they eliminate the 60-vote legislative filibuster.

“He believes that the SAVE America act ought to be in front of the housing bill,” Justice said.

Sen. Rand Paul said there had been “a thorough airing” of the elections bill during the meeting, but added it’s unclear “if there is a solution.”

The announcement only served to further exasperate the Senate GOP ahead of the lunch, which had been arranged by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a MAGA loyalist who acted without the foreknowledge of Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

Underscoring the mood going into the meeting, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said, “I would advise them to only use plastic utensils today.”

Republicans had hoped the housing bill would give them a long-sought legislative victory that would get the party on the same page and give them a foothold to argue that they are responding to Americans’ affordability concerns heading into the midterms.

Instead, Trump’s surprise declaration, which appeared to catch even some of his own staff off guard, became the latest curveball for Senate Republicans — following a surprise request for White House ballroom security funding and the announcement of a Justice Department “Anti-Weaponization Fund” that overshadowed and delayed passage of a GOP immigration enforcement bill.

Since then, Trump also has thrown a key surveillance program into limbo and upended the confirmation plans for his own nominee for director of national intelligence.

Most persistently, he has fixated on Senate Republicans passing the SAVE America Act — including by eliminating the filibuster — even though Thune and other GOP senators have said repeatedly that there aren’t the votes to do that.

“There is a huge group of people who really appreciate what the president is doing right now and it’s the Democrat party,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said. ”And we’ve got to get our act together and stop surprising people and stop having conflicting messages.”

Congress

House Republicans no closer to a deal on ‘Reconciliation 3.0’

Published

1 hour ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House GOP leaders are trying to make good on their promise to advance a long-shot, party-line package of conservative priorities by arguing it’s the only chance to pass pieces of President Donald Trump’s doomed elections bill. So far, their pitch is falling short.

Trump announced Wednesday he would not sign a major housing affordability measure until Congress passes the so-called SAVE America Act, which Speaker Mike Johnson and members of his senior leadership tried to leverage during their meeting later that same morning with Republicans on the House Budget Committee.

According to four people with direct knowledge of the closed-door discussions, however, fiscal hawks on the panel warned they would oppose any budget resolution — necessary to unlock the filibuster-skirting reconciliation process — unless it’s paid for on a yearly basis, and without budgeting gimmicks.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a key Budget Committee Republican, told reporters as he left the meeting that he would vote against any budget blueprint that is not fully paid for in current savings “dollar for dollar” and “year for year.”

And Rep. Erin Houchin (R-Ind.), another Budget Committee member, said that while the committees instructed to contribute policies to the reconciliation bill could include Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means, it’s “too early” to talk about what will be in the budget resolution or any timeline for consideration.

It essentially guarantees that House Republicans will fail to meet an ambitious deadline of adopting a budget resolution before the July 4 holiday, let alone passing a reconciliation bill ahead of the monthlong August recess.

A failure to proceed would be a blow to Republicans who have argued there are few other opportunities to notch conservative wins in advance of the midterms — not to mention deliver on Trump demands, from the SAVE America Act to funding his ongoing military operation in the Middle East.

Johnson has remained bullish that Republicans will be able to move ahead on “Reconciliation 3.0” — follow-ups to last summer’s tax and spending megabill and the immigration enforcement bill Congress cleared earlier this month.

He is specifically floating the possibility that Republicans could, in that next reconciliation bill, create a grant program providing money to states to encourage the adoption of REAL ID requirements in order to vote.

Johnson said he made this case directly to Trump, too, before the president ultimately canceled his scheduled ceremonial signing of the landmark housing package in protest over the lack of Hill momentum on the elections bill.

“House Republicans will pull together a reconciliation bill … that will have that,” Johnson told reporters of the grant program Wednesday. “That’s what we’re going to do.”

But members who attended the meeting Wednesday argued the REAL ID grant program was no substitute for enacting the full SAVE America Act, which has passed the House but does not have the support to move forward in the Senate.

Roy, for instance, said the grant program is “not the SAVE America Act.”

Still, House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) mirrored Johnson’s optimism Wednesday, saying he believed House Republicans could come to an agreement on viable offsets by the end of this week and perhaps on what policies to include by the end of next.

There are enough fraud-tackling initiatives that could cover the cost of any “Reconciliation 3.0” legislation in full, Arrington insisted, while also doubting the entire package would be paid for given intraparty disagreements about how deep to cut into social safety net programs.

“We know the money’s there. The question is, do we have the political will as a conference to do those things,” Arrington said. “We need everybody on the same page.”

There are other major policy disagreements, too, that show few signs of being quickly resolved.

After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth briefed members of the Republican Study Committee on Wednesday afternoon of the Pentagon’s $350 billion funding request as part of another reconciliation bill, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) suggested he would support such a cash infusion — but wanted the administration to agree to replace the brigade in Eastern Europe.

Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), meanwhile, has said he wants the funding to be audited before agreeing to vote for it.

Some Republicans are pushing for defunding Planned Parenthood to be a part of any future reconciliation package, too — a politically charged demand for vulnerable incumbents to swallow.

“When we have something, I’ll start calculating the odds, but so far they haven’t put anything together,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in an interview this week. “It’s all a pretty vague concept.”

Congress

White House tells Republicans to expect war funding request by end of week

Published

3 hours ago

June 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump administration officials have told key Hill Republicans they should expect a request for an Iran war supplemental funding package by the end of this week.

The request is expected to be about $80 billion, according to five people familiar with the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.

But House GOP appropriators believe the Senate will likely add additional non-military items, such as disaster relief or farm aid. House GOP leaders are worried the push for a supplemental bill will undercut their effort to pass another party-line reconciliation bill with GOP priorities and extra defense funding.

Congress has long awaited President Donald Trump’s request to cover the cost of the military campaign in the Middle East. But the measure, which would need at least some bipartisan support to pass the Senate, will face an uphill fight to become law.

Many Democrats who oppose the war are almost certain to object to funding a conflict they disagree with and regard as illegal because Trump didn’t seek congressional approval.

The roughly $80 billion price tag, though, is significantly less than the approximately $200 billion the Trump administration was reportedly weighing in recent months.

The supplemental request would likely be dedicated to replenishing stocks of missiles fired off in the early stages of the war and cover other costs of military operations in the Middle East in recent months.