Congress
Thune steadfast on data seizure payouts for senators as Republicans seek repeal
The House plans to vote Wednesday to repeal a provision that could award eight GOP senators hundreds of thousands of dollars for having their phone records seized without their knowledge during a Biden-era probe. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who secured the measure, is standing his ground.
“The House is going to do what they are going to do with it,” he told reporters Tuesday night. “It doesn’t apply to them.”
But many senators from both parties are eager to roll back the legislative language they didn’t know Thune secretly negotiatedwith Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in the government funding package that ended the longest shutdown in history last week. Republicans could revolt if leadership doesn’t give them a vote to overturn it.
In interviews Tuesday with nearly a dozen lawmakers, confusion, frustration and anger ran rampant about what has quickly become branded as a politically toxic, taxpayer-funded windfall for a select few. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) went so far as to quip there could be “some stabbings” at the Senate GOP’s weekly lunch Wednesday when the topic will inevitably get discussed.
“Whoever put this in had an obligation to tell us about it, and they didn’t,” said Kennedy. “There’s something called trust and good faith around here.”
Even Schumer conceded the widely unpopular language should ultimately be scrapped.
“The bottom line is, Thune wanted the provision and we wanted to make sure that at least Democratic senators were protected from [Attorney General Pam] Bondi and others who might go after them,” he said Tuesday. “But I’d be for repealing all of it and I hope that happens,” he told reporters.
It’s not clear whether it’s too late to reverse course in the Senate.
The provision at issue, which President Donald Trump signed into law last week, would award senators $500,000 or more if they discover their electronic records were seized without notification.
In seeking to attach it to the funding bill, Thune was directly responding to furor from several Senate Republicans eager for retribution against former special counsel Jack Smith, who obtained the phone records for at least eight Republican senators during his investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Thune in an interview acknowledged that members would indeed discuss the issue at lunch Wednesday but reiterated that he personally was not having second thoughts about including the measure in the funding deal.
“It’s designed to protect United States senators,” Thune said. “We have a number of people who are interested in making sure that that sort of thing has a consequence if that kind of weaponization of the government along the lines of what Jack Smith did is ever employed again in the future.”
Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who claims he was targeted by the Smith probe, praised Thune for including the language. Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is confirmed to have had his records subpoenaed during the Smith investigation, has said he plans to take advantage of the provision to make it “so painful” for those involved.
Some Senate Republicans admitted they hope the language is preserved. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said he wanted the provision expanded to let a broader range of parties sue to show “how corrupt Jack Smith is.”
It’s far from certain disgruntled lawmakers would make it easy for Thune to move a standalone bill to revoke the provision, even if he decides he wants to — they could insist on controversial amendments or make the voting process drawn-out and disruptive. Nor is it clear Republicans would allow the provision to be stripped in a subsequent government funding bill.
There’s far less hand-wringing in the House, where members were criticizing the language before they even voted on the Senate-passed funding bill last Thursday.
The House Wednesday evening is expected to easily pass a bill to repeal the payout provision with support from Speaker Mike Johnson and House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, who is working to get Smith to sit for a transcribed interview before his committee.
In the Senate, several lawmakers signaled Tuesday night they were anxious to distance themselves from the new policy and wanted to follow the House’s lead.
“I’m going to support repealing it,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), the chair of the legislative branch appropriations subcommittee.
He added he was not alerted about the language until after he already voted for the funding package last week and that he later received an “apologetic” call from GOP leadership over how the matter was handled. Thune confirmed that he had spoken to Mullin and that the Oklahoma Republican was not aware of the provision’s drafting.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said she was likewise in the dark in advance of the vote.
“That was something that the leaders put into the bill, and I played no role in that whatsoever,” she told reporters.
Democrats made clear they would continue to pummel Republicans if Thune failed to take action.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the ranking member on the legislative branch appropriations subcommittee, said he was “furious” with leadership and has since introduced a bill to pare back the provision.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), another senior appropriator, said in an interview his party was “going to make every effort to try to reverse that pretty serious mistake.”
“I guess there’s an argument that it offers some future protection, but that’s not what the provision is about,” he said. “The provision is about a cash payout to Republican senators, plain and simple.”
Jennifer Scholtes and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
Less than a month ago, a huge bipartisan Senate majority voted to honor the late Sen. Lindsey Graham and pass legislation he pushed aimed at sanctioning Russia’s trading partners.
Now the bill is at serious risk of languishing in the House, where it is suffering from significant Democratic opposition, lack of Republican enthusiasm and fading impetus to honor the late South Carolina senator.
GOP leaders omitted it from a list of bills to be voted on this week, and as top Republican lawmakers filed into the Capitol Monday after a five-week summer recess, none said passing the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act was anywhere near top of mind.
“We just came from a chairmen’s meeting, and nobody brought it up,” House Rules Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said in an interview.
Asked whether the bill might pass through her committee on the way to the House floor, she said, “I have no idea. Nobody’s talking about it.”
Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged an uphill battle Monday and was noncommittal on whether the bill would hit the House floor after passing the Senate on an 86-11 vote.
“We’ll see,” Johnson said, blaming Democratic opposition for the uncertainty. “We’ve been very consistent on taking a strong hand against Russia. So we’ll see what happens.”
The measure’s backers in the House and Senate argue it would give the White House new leverage as it leans on Russia to end the war in Ukraine — including by handing President Donald Trump new tariff tools.
But with the GOP majority split over intervening in Russia’s war with Ukraine and many Democrats wary of giving Trump any new tariff powers, the bill doesn’t appear to be a top priority for Republican leaders as they plan out their final legislative sprint before the election.
Republicans are also openly speculating whether Johnson will keep the House in session for four weeks in September as scheduled — particularly if lawmakers pass a bill as expected Tuesday to punt government funding to December.
Johnson is already facing internal resistance to getting his scheduled bills on the floor this week, with some hard-right members unhappy about how GOP leaders have handled government funding and other issues. If they vote down a procedural measure setting up debate on those bills Tuesday, that could spell the end of the pre-election House session.
“I don’t know if we’re going to pass anything,” said Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), one of the ultraconservatives threatening to frustrate the leadership’s plans.
At the same time, a handful of hawkish Republicans are warning that the House needs to stay and bring the sanctions bill across the finish line before heading home for campaign season.
“I think it’s very important to pass the sanctions bill,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a defense hawk who is retiring from the House. “It’s a failure to not do so.”
Even if leaders make a push to get the sanctions bill on the floor, it’s unclear if it has enough Republican support to pass. Several conservatives who have vocally opposed Ukraine aid in the past said they haven’t looked into the legislation yet.
“Haven’t seen it. Haven’t heard about it. All I can say is in 14 years I’ve never voted to sanction a sovereign country,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said in an interview Monday.
While leaders could seek to skirt Republican opposition by using a fast-track procedure requiring a two-thirds-majority vote, it’s unclear if there are enough Democrats to push it over that threshold.
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries expressed “serious concerns” with the measure at a news conference Monday, saying top Democrats are worried that the bill “risks providing tariff and sanctions authority to Donald Trump and his administration that we believe they will abuse.”
The Democrats who are opposed include the party’s leaders on the Foreign Affairs and Ways and Means committees — Reps. Greg Meeks of New York and Richard Neal of Massachusetts, respectively — who argue that Trump already has all the tariff powers he needs.
“Donald Trump already has ample authority to impose sanctions on the companies, individuals, and vessels propping up a Russian war machine that continues its deadly attacks on Ukraine,” they wrote in a Monday joint statement with Democratic Rep.. Don Beyer of Virginia and Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. “Congress does not need to greenlight new tariff authority for the President to impose those sanctions on Russia today.”
Rep. Brad Schneider of Illinois, leader of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, also opposes the sanctions bill and said in an interview Monday, “I’m opposed to giving the executive branch more authority that was rightly placed with the legislative branch a very long time ago.”
“We’ll see and evaluate if it comes to the floor,” Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the No. 2 House Democrat, said in an interview. “But there’s a great deal of concern about giving this president, who continues to drive up costs with tariffs for working Americans, even more authority to do that.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blasted Republicans Monday for being “pro-data center without any restraints,” making his strongest rebuke yet of the tech industry’s massive infrastructure buildout as it becomes a key issue in midterm campaigns.
“Donald Trump and Republicans are divorced from reality,” Jeffries said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “They think that the affordability crisis is a hoax. Donald Trump and Republicans have made clear they love inflation. Donald Trump and Republicans have told the American people directly, ‘We don’t think about your personal financial situation.’”
“So the Republicans — it should come as no surprise — are pro-data center without any restraints,” he continued.
His criticism of Republicans’ approach to artificial intelligence and the infrastructure needed to power it comes amid a groundswell of voter frustration in key battleground districts about the impact of data centers on their communities.
Jeffries told Blue Light News earlier this year protecting consumers from rising electricity costs associated with the data center boom would be a priority on Democrats’ should they win the majority.
President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social Monday that communities that reject data centers will end up “backwards and poor.”
Jeffries specifically hit Republicans for policies embedded in their sweeping 2025 tax-cuts-focused domestic policy bill.
“House Republicans voted to preempt state and local authorities from regulating data centers at all,” Jeffries said. “And every single House Republican but one or two voted to unleash data centers on the American people in an unfettered fashion. That’s facts, right there.”
He specifically blasted vulnerable Republican Reps. Mike Lawler of New York and David Valadao of California for voting to “give tax credits to people building massive data centers in communities across the country, particularly in rural America, without restriction.”
“They can try to run away from their votes right now,” Jeffries said. “We will not let them hide.”
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will speak at the Republican Study Committee’s weekly lunch Wednesday, according to two people familiar with the plans. The visit to Capitol Hill comes as more lawmakers express concerns about the burgeoning trade war President Donald Trump is escalating with Canada just months before the midterm elections.
House Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast (R-Fla.) will also be speaking to the group of House conservatives.
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