Congress

The House GOP’s Medicaid holdouts are coming around

Published

1 year ago

February 25, 2025

Some of the House Republicans who have doubted Speaker Mike Johnson’s budget plan said Monday night that they’re more inclined to support the blueprint after GOP leaders ruled out certain cuts to Medicaid in a private meeting.

GOP leaders provided some generic but reassuring details about how they would protect certain Medicaid services and not cut into the share of federal payments for Medicaid, a joint state-federal program, according to several lawmakers who attended the late night confab in Johnson’s office.

A group of swing-district Republicans and others representing redder areas were in the meeting, along with House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.). Those members have demanded more detail from GOP leaders on how they would reach the $2 trillion in spending cuts they are laying out without making deep cuts to Medicaid services and benefits.

Leaving the meeting, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) said that Guthrie addressed some of the issues that had been of concern to her — including increasing the share of states’ responsibility in the joint state-federal Medicaid program. She said she is now leaning toward voting for the budget plan, claiming there are “hundreds of billions” of dollars in savings from addressing waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid as well as separate energy policy options that could reach the $880 billion in savings set out for Guthrie’s panel.

“It’s moving in the right direction,” Malliotakis said. “There’s a lot of space to address the issue without hurting beneficiaries.”

GOP leaders have been scrambling for alternative spending offsets in order to assuage members who have raised serious concerns about the GOP plans for Medicaid and other safety-net programs.

The progress is good news for Speaker Mike Johnson, who is hoping to hold a floor vote on the budget plan Tuesday night. It advanced out of the Rules Committee on Monday night in a key procedural step.

Johnson also faces opposition several other more-dug-in GOP holdouts who want deeper spending cuts in the plan, including Reps. Thomas Massie (Ky.), Tim Burchett (Tenn.) and Victoria Spartz (Ind.).

Congress

Pence-backed think tank joins push to keep kids’ safety bills out of AI package

Published

15 minutes ago

June 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

More than a dozen groups including former Vice President Mike Pence’s Advancing American Freedom are urging Senate Commerce Committee leaders to reject efforts to attach kids’ online safety measures to a national artificial intelligence framework, according to a letter shared exclusively with Blue Light News.

The groups argue that the proposed measures could undermine users’ free speech rights while creating new risk to privacy and data security. Their push comes as lawmakers weigh broader AI legislation, and follows reports last week that Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is working with the White House to shore up support for a kids’ safety package that could ultimately preempt some state laws on AI.

The Blackburn-led measure is expected to include the Senate version of the Kids Online Safety Act, which includes a “duty of care” requiring companies to design their products with an eye toward preventing harm to children, the NO FAKES Act and the App Store Accountability Act. It’s not yet clear how aggressively it would preempt state action on narrow issues such as verifying users’ ages on social media.

Think tanks including the libertarian R Street Institute, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, and industry group NetChoice, are among the 13 total signatories. They take issue primarily with ASAA, which would require app store platforms such as Google and Apple to verify users’ ages, and KOSA.

The coalition is alarmed by age verification requirements that could require users to submit personal information to digital databases vulnerable to data breaches and hacks. It also takes issue with parental consent provisions, which would “inevitably require even more intrusive data gathering to prove both the identity of the parent and his or her status as the child’s legal guardian,” the letter reads.

KOSA is also problematic, according to the coalition, because of its duty of care provision. It argues this would infringe on users’ First Amendment speech rights by “requiring online platforms to suppress certain kinds of content.”

Meta helped kill KOSA two years ago after raising similar free speech concerns with the bill to Speaker Mike Johnson, though it has since dropped its opposition because Blackburn’s package is expected to include language preempting state AI laws, as POLITICO exclusively reported Tuesday.

Congress

‘Un-American’: Democrats attack Trump’s uneven disaster response

Published

2 hours ago

June 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Democratic senators Wednesday attacked President Donald Trump’s approach to disseminating disaster aid as “unconscionable,” “shameful” and “un-American.”

At a confirmation hearing for Trump’s nominee to run the Federal Emergency Management Agency, three Democrats cited an article by POLITICO showing that the president had approved 89 percent of disaster requests from Republican-led states compared to 23 percent of requests from states led by Democrats. No president has distributed disaster aid at such uneven levels going back to at least 1981, when Ronald Reagan took office.

“Denying over 75 percent of requests from states that are led by representatives of another party is unconscionable,” said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, displaying a large poster of a chart included in the news article.

“Given this stark data, what other conclusions can one draw other than that the president is using federal disaster assistance to punish states that elect Democrats?” Peters asked Cameron Hamilton, who would be the first permanent FEMA administrator in Trump’s current term. The committee did not vote Wednesday on Hamilton’s nomination.

“The idea that Americans who need help in the wake of a tornado or a flood or a hurricane should be treated differently based upon politics is shameful. It is un-American,” Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) told Hamilton.

Hamilton avoided answering questions about the discrepancy as he tried to assure senators.

“If confirmed, my focus will be to ensure that FEMA is objective, is fair and reasonable, follows the law, and is consistent in the approach to how we adjudicate claims and requests for disasters,” Hamilton told Peters.

“You still can’t answer questions about what happened while you were there,” Peters shot back, noting that Hamilton was FEMA’s acting administrator for part of 2025. “I don’t trust that that’s what you’re going to do because it didn’t seem like you did it when you were there before.”

The sharp comments came the day after 16 Democratic senators along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) sent a letter to White House budget director Russ Vought citing the Blue Light News article to ask for details about every disaster request Trump has handled, including internal FEMA documents.

“There is no politicization to the President’s decisions on disaster relief,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Blue Light News’s E&E News.

Hamilton ran FEMA from the start of Trump’s term until he was fired on May 9, 2025, after contradicting the administration by testifying that FEMA provides essential services to the country. Trump and then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had said they were considering eliminating the agency.

During Hamilton’s 15 weeks at FEMA last year, Trump denied a disaster request for Washington state that had been submitted by Gov. Jay Inslee (D) in late 2024, shortly before he left office.

FEMA’s own analysis of Inslee’s request found that storms and flooding had caused $34 million in damage, which is more than double the agency’s financial threshold to qualify for disaster aid. Trump and Inslee had harshly criticized each other during Trump’s first term.

Hassan asked Hamilton what he would do if Trump rejected a request for disaster aid to punish Democrats.

“Well, that’s a very odd hypothetical. I don’t believe the president would do that. But I will tell you that my oath of office requires that I follow and obey the law,” Hamilton replied.

“You all are going to have to think about what you will do when he reverses your decision, completely based on politics, which as I said would be immoral and un-American,” Hassan replied.

Federal law gives presidents exclusive authority to approve or deny requests for disaster aid. FEMA recommends whether aid should be approved or denied based on an estimated cost of repairs.

Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D) recalled what she described as an unusual action by Trump after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) sought disaster aid last year following an ice storm that demolished electricity infrastructure in northern Michigan. Trump approved some disaster aid but denied Whitmer’s request for aid to repair the damaged equipment. Trump eventually reversed his denial and approved the infrastructure aid after heavy lobbying from Michigan officials.

“It’s just hard to rationalize how many disasters have been approved for aid in Republican states versus Democratic states,” Slotkin said. “Republicans would be screaming bloody murder if the stats were reversed.”

Congress

OMB nominee touts plan to give Trump appointees power to kill grants

Published

4 hours ago

June 17, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s nominee for the No. 2 post at the White House budget office told lawmakers Wednesday that the administration will stop federal cash from flowing to “divisive ideologies” under new grant rules in the works.

Hal Duncan, who is seeking Senate confirmation to serve as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, said during his confirmation hearing that the White House will ensure federal grants are aligned with Trump’s priorities by changing the way more than $1 trillion is approved each year.

“The ultimate deciders of these grants will be the political employees at the agencies,” Duncan noted in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The White House proposed changes last month that would put political appointees in charge of blessing or nixing awards to state and local governments, community groups, education institutions and nonprofit organizations. The result, Duncan said, will be that the administration will more easily head off fraud and no federal dollars will go to “divisive DEI ideologies, woke gender ideologies, illegal immigration.”

The administration is expected to finalize these plans as soon as this summer.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) touted the proposal as a way to ensure federal money goes to “things that President Trump actually ran on — his causes.”

But Democrats are raising concern that the Trump administration will use the new approval process to deny federal support for groups or governments that don’t boost Trump.

“That really sounds to me like you all are trying to turn the entire federal government into this one big slush fund to reward those aligned with the administration and punish everyone else,” Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, told Duncan on Tuesday, during his first confirmation hearing before the Budget Committee.

Both committees must vote in the coming weeks to advance Duncan’s nomination to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote by the full chamber. He is already serving in the role as acting deputy director.