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The transition crisis Congress feared didn’t materialize

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Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 election handicapped Joe Biden’s presidential transition so badly that it spooked Congress into taking action. But this year’s quick and decisive results mean the Trump-proofing they did for the process won’t be put to the test.

Four years ago, Trump’s election defiance triggered a broader national crisis and prevented Biden’s transition team from accessing federal funding and information for several weeks, a holdup that hampered the new administration’s readiness on national security and tackling the then-raging Covid-19 pandemic.

Lawmakers believe they solved at least part of the problem two years later: Instead of leaving the General Services Administration, an obscure federal agency that manages the government’s real estate, in charge of declaring whether and when to share resources with the winner’s transition team, multiple candidates can now get parallel access during a contested election.

Had the race dragged for days or weeks past Election Day as happened in 2020 and 2000, Trump and Kamala Harris could have both prepared to be the next commander-in-chief while courts and state legislatures hashed out the votes. The new law gave multiple transition teams the ability to send “landing teams” to agencies across the government, get money to set up offices and receive security briefings until a winner is declared.

Congress’ 2022 fix also created new vulnerabilities and left a lot of things unaddressed should there be another contested election in the future. An eventual election loser could access extremely sensitive government intel, for example, and other parts of the government could still obstruct the transfer of power.

As Trump fought the 2020 election results, individual agencies and officials refused to meet with and share information with the Biden team — even after the GSA gave them a green light to do so. And some election experts argue there’s nothing much Congress can do.

One additional curveball: Trump’s team has  not yet signed agreements to receive federal funding for their transition — nor are they bound by the usual ethics and financial transparency rules that come with them.

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Congress

Rep. Dusty Johnson to announce a bid for South Dakota governor Monday

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Rep. Dusty Johnson will announce a bid for South Dakota governor Monday, according to two people granted anonymity to speak about private conversations.

Johnson has served as South Dakota’s sole House representative since 2019. He’s been a key player in major deals on Capitol Hill in recent years as the head of the Main Street Caucus of Republicans.

Johnson, long expected to mount a bid for higher office, will make the announcement in Sioux Falls.

Johnson is the eighth House Republican to announce a run for higher office in 2026. Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Byron Donalds of Florida, Randy Feenstra of Iowa, John James of Michigan and John Rose of Tennessee are also seeking governor’s offices; Reps. Andy Barr of Kentucky and Buddy Carter of Georgia have announced Senate runs.

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Senate slated to take first vote on megabill Saturday

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Senate Republicans are planning to take an initial vote at noon on Saturday to take up the megabill.

Leadership laid out the timeline during a closed-door lunch on Friday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) and John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said after the lunch. A person granted anonymity to discuss internal scheduling confirmed the noon timeline but cautioned Republicans haven’t locked in the schedule yet.

During the lunch, Speaker Mike Johnson pitched Senate Republicans on the tentative SALT deal, according to three people in the room. He said the deal was as good as Republican can get, according to the people.

Johnson noted he still has “one holdout” — an apparent reference to New York Republican Nick LaLota, who said in a brief interview Friday that if there was a deal, he was not part of it.

Leaving the meeting, Johnson was asked by reporters whether he thought Senate Republicans would accept the SALT deal. “I believe they will,” he replied. “They’re going to digest the final calculations, but I think we’re very, very close to closing that issue.”

In the meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Johnson laid out details of the fragile agreement, telling Senate Republicans the House SALT deal would be cut in half, to total roughly $192 billion. They restated it would raise the SALT cap to $40,000 for five years under the current House-negotiated SALT deal, and snap back to the current $10,000 cap after that.

In related matters, Kennedy and Hoeven also said the Senate will keep its provider tax proposal but delay its implementation, which Republicans believe will help it comply with budget rules. and Johnson also told Senate Republicans that he wants to do another reconciliation bill — which senators took to mean they would get another opportunity to secure spending cuts or provisions passed that have been squeezed out of the megabill.

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Trump says July 4 is “not the end all”

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President Donald Trump on Friday backed off the July 4 deadline he set for Congress to pass his megabill, acknowledging that the timing could slip as Republicans work through a series of political and logistical hurdles.

“It’s not the end all,” Trump said of the self-imposed Independence Day goal. “It can go longer, but we’d like to get it done by that time if possible.”

The remarks represented a clear softening of the White House’s position from just a day earlier, when Trump administration officials insisted that the GOP lawmakers pass the domestic policy package within a week despite a series of fresh obstacles.

Senate Republican leaders are still struggling to lock down the necessary 51 votes for the bill, amid objections from competing factions over the depth of the legislation’s Medicaid cuts.

The effort has also been hamstrung by a flurry of adverse rulings by the Senate parliamentarian that are now forcing lawmakers to rewrite significant portions of the bill.

The president indicated that he has little interest as of now in trying to directly overrule or even fire the parliamentarian — a step that some close allies in Congress had called for after she disqualified several of the bill’s provisions.

“The parliamentarian’s been a little difficult,” Trump said. “I disagree with the parliamentarian on some things, and on other ways she’s been fine.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt downplayed those issues on Thursday, saying Trump still expected Republicans to coalesce in the coming days and put the bill on his desk by July 4.

But asked directly on Friday, Trump took a more ambivalent stance.

“We have a lot of committed people and they feel strongly about a subject, subjects that you’re not even thinking about that are important to Republicans,” he said, appearing to reference the policy divisions within the Senate GOP conference.

Trump also singled out Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) for praise despite his resistance to the bill, complaining instead about the lack of Democratic votes.

“The problem we have is it’s a great bill, it’s a popular bill,” Trump said. “But we’ll get no Democrats.”

If all Republicans vote for the bill, it would not need Democrats’ support to pass.

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