Congress

The Reluctant Steamroller in the White House

Published

1 year ago

January 22, 2025

Just hours into his second presidency, Donald Trump was already bulldozing congressional Republicans.

He granted clemency to some 1,500 Jan. 6 offenders, some of them convicted of violent assaults. He flouted a bipartisan TikTok ban, ordering it to remain unenforced. And he moved to cancel some of his predecessor’s energy programs over the pleadings of some in the GOP who wanted him to wait — to name just a few of the ways he undercut members of his own party.

A day later, it was as if a switch had been flipped.

In a meeting Tuesday with top GOP leaders, he didn’t move to settle key strategic disputes over raising the debt limit and passing the party’s big domestic policy package. Top leaders from the House and Senate left the White House and gave reporters completely contradictory accounts of how his agenda would be passed.

In other words, Trump is already showing his split-screen approach to congressional relations — one that, so far, is more concerned with using his political muscle to perform acts of dominance than to settle the intramural disputes that are holding up his agenda.

The past two days underscore how Trump and his team view Capitol Hill, informed by his previous four years in office, and the four subsequent years he spent climbing back: Republicans will eventually fall in line with whatever he wants, they believe, so why hold back?

“The sooner these guys recognize that it’s the president that kept their House majority and their Senate majority, and the sooner they realize it’s the president that has the will of the people — not them — the sooner they will be able to live a productive life,” one Trump insider granted anonymity to discuss relations with Congress told me recently.

“At the end of the day, he’s the one with the mandate, and they know it,” said another.

There was immediate evidence that such a read is absolutely correct.

Faced with questions about Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons, most GOP lawmakers opted for a delicate tap dance. Many deflected attention to predecessor Joe Biden’s pardons of family members. Others quickly dusted off the old first-term playbook: I didn’t see the tweet/comment/executive order.

“I haven’t seen the list,“ Speaker Mike Johnson told my colleague Meredith Lee Hill. “I haven’t had a chance to evaluate it.”

And when Trump essentially flipped them the bird on TikTok — putting off dealing with something they’ve described for years as a major national security issue — nary a squawk was heard. Johnson and Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) spoke out Sunday to reiterate their support for the nine-month-old ban, only to be neutered a day later.

Same goes for Trump’s first-day decision to gut Biden’s electric vehicle mandates. Hill leaders wanted to repeal it themselves so they could book the savings and use them to offset the cost of tax cuts. Trump bullied forward anyway.

He even burned political capital on a molehill of a mountain: re-renaming Denali to Mount McKinley over the objections of Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan.

The past two days underscore how Trump and his team view Capitol Hill: Republicans will eventually fall in line with whatever he wants, they believe, so why hold back?

A more traditional politician might consider it risky to wildly alienate members of your own party (especially a known swing vote like Murkowski) when much of your agenda requires congressional approval — doubly so when you have a House majority even narrower than in the Senate.

Not so for Trump, obviously. Yet the alpha-male power plays suddenly evaporate when it comes to settling disputes among Republicans about his own agenda.

The chambers remain on diverging paths when it comes to passing border, energy and tax measures, with the House pushing one vote on one massive bill while the Senate wants to split it in two. Same for the debt limit: Include it in a party-line budget reconciliation bill? Or cut a deal with Democrats?

Some Republicans were hoping Trump would use his audience with Hill leaders at the White House on Tuesday to crack the whip on those questions and others. That doesn’t seem to have happened: One senior Republican aide we spoke to afterward couldn’t hide his disappointment; Trump continued to waffle rather than provide clarity.

That’s despite complaining in the meeting, as he often does, about how Democrats always stick together and Republicans instead bicker and fracture. He insisted on unity but didn’t do much to facilitate it.

Which is partly why Trump’s whatever-I-want posture early on is raising so many eyebrows among some Republicans. The president, they believe, will have to spend some of the political capital he seems intent on burning now to get his agenda passed later.

A key test is at hand, with some of Trump’s most controversial nominees headed toward confirmation votes that will force some Senate Republicans to eat a “shit sandwich,” as one Republican aide told me on Inauguration Day.

Pete Hegseth, his pick for Pentagon chief, is teed up for a vote within days despite a late-breaking report that he’d made an ex-wife “fear for her safety.” (The woman denied she’d been physically abused.) And many senators remain uncomfortable with his choice of Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, with her isolationist views and policy flipflops.

They haven’t even gotten yet to his plans for tariffs — not only on China but allies like Mexico and Canada — potential levies that have given traditional pro-business Republicans heartburn for months.

If Republicans fall in line behind Hegseth, Gabbard and tariffs — as most now expect — it will be proof positive that Trump’s steamroller approach is working.

“From his end, he’s doing what he said he would do, so this notion that we’re going to have any ability to stop him from doing what he feels is right is laughable,” said one senior GOP aide. “It’s just not happening.”

So who cares if he isn’t sweating the small stuff?

Congress

OMB nominee ‘can’t commit’ to forgoing ‘pocket rescissions’ funding gambit this year

Published

21 minutes ago

June 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump’s pick for deputy director of the White House budget office told lawmakers Tuesday he can’t promise the administration won’t unilaterally cancel funding later this year without Congress’ consent.

Hal Duncan, the nominee to serve in the No. 2 position at the Office of Management and Budget, defended the controversial “pocket rescission” maneuver during his first of two confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill this week.

“Pocket rescissions have been executed by previous administrations, notably the Ford administration,” Duncan said during testimony before the Senate Budget Committee. “I can’t commit to any of the fiscal tools the administration may or may not use in the future.”

His comments come after the White House defied Democrats and many Republicans last year by canceling $4.9 billion in foreign aid without a vote from Congress.

Typically, if an administration wants to withhold funding Congress has already appropriated, the White House will send a rescissions request. Then Congress has 45 days to approve, amend or reject the request to cancel the funding, with inaction considered rejection.

But Trump administration officials claim they can submit a formal request to rescind funding with less than 45 days left in the fiscal year and then withhold it until it lapses on Oct. 1, regardless of whether Congress acts, even though lawmakers in both parties consider the tactic an illegal end-run around Congress’ “power of the purse.”

The Supreme Court gave the Trump administration the go-ahead last fall to cancel much of the foreign aid it nixed through a pocket rescission. But the high court has yet to settle major questions about whether the Trump administration has violated the Constitution or federal law in withholding billions of dollars Congress has appropriated.

If the Trump administration attempts the tactic again this year, it would happen in August or September.

Duncan will appear Wednesday before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Trump leaves Congress in dark on Iran deal

Published

5 hours ago

June 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Republicans want a say on a deal President Donald Trump is touting to end the monthslong war in Iran.

The absence of publicly released text for the “memorandum of understanding” Vice President JD Vance reportedly signed with Iranian officials Sunday sparked bipartisan scrutiny on Capitol Hill about what the deal might entail.

Senators in both parties agreed: More information needs to come to Congress soon, and any agreement touching on the future of the Iranian nuclear program would have to eventually be subject to a congressional vote.

“If you want a deal to last, it can’t be an executive agreement,” said Sen. James Lankford. “We’ve got to have a vote of Congress to be able to solidify [it] long term.”

The Trump administration said it expects release of the memorandum of understanding no later than Friday.

The agreement reportedly includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, but it’s not clear to what degree Iran will be required to abandon its nuclear program. The White House circulated talking points to Hill Republicans Monday touting the deal, including that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon” and “energy prices … are coming down,” according to a copy of the document reviewed by Blue Light News.

“If it’s a secret deal, then how can I take it seriously?” Sen. Thom Tillis told reporters.

Weighing heavily on several lawmakers is the possibility of an agreement landed by the administration looking very similar to the last Iran nuclear deal, consummated more than a decade ago by then-President Barack Obama amid a bipartisan uproar over trading sanctions relief and cash concessions to the Iranian regime in return for curbs on its nuclear ambitions.

Democrats believe Trump should’ve never abandoned that deal — known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — in his first term, while GOP defense hawks despised it from the start.

“If [the Iranians] can enrich [uranium] anywhere at all, then it’s the same as JCPOA,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of the Trump administration’s forthcoming deal. “If they can’t enrich, then that makes it a good deal.”

One legacy of that 2015 controversy: the GOP-controlled Congress at the time passed legislation allowing for congressional review of any agreement dealing with the Iranian nuclear program. That law gives members the ability to kill a deal via a disapproval resolution that could be subject to presidential veto.

In the absence of further details, senators mainly agreed that they wanted a chance to formally review and vote on Trump’s deal — even as some Republicans predicted the administration would find a way to avoid that happening.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday there is “probably some expectation” that his chamber would ultimately vote on the agreement while declining to weigh in on the particulars.

“I just don’t know enough about it yet, and I don’t think even the people who follow this stuff closely up here know that much about it,” he said, adding that he expected Vance or other administration officials to brief members on the deal at some point.

What else we’re watching:

— DEMS NONCOMMITTAL ON SPEEDY CLAYTON CONFIRMATION: It’s unclear if Senate Republicans will be able to move at the lightning speed they’d hoped to in confirming Jay Clayton to serve as director of national intelligence by the end of the week. If every Senate Intelligence member agrees, Clayton could get a committee vote Thursday following his Wednesday hearing. Confirming Clayton on the Senate floor hours later would require getting agreement from every senator to speed up the process. Opposition from a single member would punt a vote to next week.

— THUNE AIMS FOR HOUSING BILL PASSAGE THIS WEEK: Thune is hoping his chamber can pass an updated version of a bipartisan housing affordability bill by the end of the week. The legislation comes after talks between Thune, Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott and ranking member Elizabeth Warren. Two Senate Democratic aides granted anonymity to discuss ongoing plans said the bill was also discussed with the House and the White House.

Katherine Hapgood contributed to this report.

Congress

Senate Republicans want a say on Trump’s Iran deal

Published

17 hours ago

June 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump is touting a deal that would end the monthslong war with Iran — and potentially ease some of the political headwinds bearing down on Republicans.

GOP lawmakers still have lots of questions.

The absence of publicly released text for the “memorandum of understanding” Vice President JD Vance reportedly signed with Iranian officials Sunday left an information vacuum on Capitol Hill, where senators of both parties were left airing concerns about what the deal might entail.

Even most Republicans agreed: More information needs to come to Congress soon, and any agreement touching on the future of the Iranian nuclear program would have to eventually be subject to a congressional vote.

“If you want a deal to last, it can’t be an executive agreement,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). “We’ve got to have a vote of Congress to be able to solidify [it] long term.”

The bipartisan scrutiny of the long-brewing agreement is a legacy of the last Iran nuclear deal, consummated more than a decade ago by then-President Barack Obama amid a bipartisan uproar over trading sanctions relief and cash concessions to the Iranian regime in return for curbs on its nuclear ambitions.

Trump withdrew from the deal in his first term, and now he is back with an agreement that — pending release of the text and final negotiations yet to come — could end up looking like Obama’s deal. That has raised the hackles of both defense hawks who despised the original agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and Democrats who believe Trump never should have left it in the first place.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of those defense hawks, told reporters that he was “pulling for a deal,” while also making note of serious discrepancies in the terms that have emerged thus far.

“The MOU being described by us sounds really very good; the MOU being described by Iran sounds awful,” Graham said.

“If they can enrich [uranium] anywhere at all, then it’s the same as JCPOA. If they can’t enrich, then that makes it a good deal,” he continued, adding in a separate conversation that he was “skeptical that Iran will ever go there” to cease enrichment.

The Trump administration said it expects release of the memorandum of understanding no later than Friday.

The possibility that Congress would take any kind of vote on the agreement is also a legacy of the 2015 deal. Amid bipartisan concern about the Obama administration’s pursuit of nuclear talks, the GOP-controlled House and Senate that year passed legislation allowing for congressional review of any agreement dealing with the Iranian nuclear program.

That law, however, does not require Congress to approve a deal — it rather gives it the ability to kill a deal via a disapproval resolution that could be subject to presidential veto. That means each chamber would have to effectively muster a two-thirds majority to block Trump, something it did not come close to doing in 2015.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Monday there is “probably some expectation” that his chamber would ultimately vote on the agreement while declining to weigh in on the particulars.

The lack of specificity was par for the course on Capitol Hill Monday, with many senators expressing exasperation that text of the signed agreement has not yet been released.

“If it’s a secret deal, then how can I take it seriously?” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters.

The agreement reportedly includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, but it’s not clear to what degree Iran will be required to abandon its nuclear program. Vance indicated in a series of interviews that the administration will attempt to ensure Iran does not develop or obtain a nuclear weapon but left details regarding civilian nuclear facilities and potential uranium enrichment unaddressed.

The White House circulated talking points to Hill Republicans Monday touting the deal including that “Iran will never have a nuclear weapon” and “energy prices … are coming down,” according to a copy of the document reviewed by Blue Light News. The administration also argued in the memo that the agreement “beats” the Obama-era agreement.

In the absence of further details, senators mainly agreed that they wanted a chance to formally review and vote on the deal — even as some Republicans predicted the administration would find a way to avoid that happening.

“I don’t expect that to happen,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said about a vote. “They’ll try to write it around the treaty requirements, so I don’t expect we’ll vote on it.”

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said the administration should send the deal to Congress “if they want it to be something other than a political agreement, like the JCPOA was.”

Most congressional Republicans have been eager for Trump to find a way out of the nearly four-month war, which has driven up energy prices ahead of the November elections. Thune predicted Monday that a deal would “have a very positive impact on the economic situation in the country and that obviously will translate into the political situation in the country.”

Some of Trump’s most vocal allies on Capitol Hill praised the agreement Monday.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said has had conversations with senior White House officials and he was “very hopeful.” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), who is likely the next Senate GOP campaign chair, added on X: “President Trump deserves our trust and support as he works to bring peace to the Middle East.”

Democrats were largely keeping their powder dry Monday on how they would handle a vote on the agreement. Some could find it hard to oppose a deal that ends hostilities on negotiated terms roughly similar to what was secured under a Democratic president in 2015.

But plenty of Democrats questioned what was gained by the conflict.

“We still don’t know the details,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the Senate floor. “The American people need to know exactly what’s in the deal. … We know this for certain: We are worse off than before Trump began his foolish war of choice.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.