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Thune tells Senate GOP he wants sweeping bill within first 30 days of Trump admin

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Incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune is pushing for two major partisan bills next term, including one within the first 30 days of the Trump administration, he told Republican senators at a private GOP conference meeting on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with his remarks.

Thune was broadly outlining priorities for the next Congress during the closed-door meeting. He said the first of the two pieces of legislation, which would pass under a process known as budget reconciliation that can bypass the Senate filibuster, would focus on the border, defense and energy. A subsequent package would focus on taxes and other priorities for the Trump administration.

It’d be a significant first swing at legislation for Thune — 30 days is an ambitious timeline, even for a targeted package. While reconciliation would allow Republicans to pass priorities with no Democratic support, bills that pass under the process are often large and tricky to wrangle. GOP leaders could see significant complications given the House’s thin majority and the need to pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian.

Still, Republicans have been mapping out potential reconciliation priorities since earlier this year in hopes of taking back the Senate, House and presidency.

And Thune wasn’t the only one who spoke at the policy conference Tuesday. President-elect Donald Trump called into the meeting, according to a spokesperson for Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). Speaker Mike Johnson also spoke, according to a person familiar with the gathering. House Republican leaders had previously indicated they wanted a reconciliation package within the first 100 days of Trump’s administration.

Measures passed through reconciliation must be related to the federal budget, and have more of an impact on spending than policy. The Senate parliamentarian can dub a measure irrelevant to the budget and rule that it can’t be included in a reconciliation deal.

Thune also stressed that votes on the Senate floor — which frequently run longer than an hour — will no longer be held open indefinitely. Senators were also told to expect more work on Fridays and potentially weekends; typically, the Senate leaves town on Thursday afternoon and returns Monday evenings. Both pieces will likely be welcome news to Republican senators who’ve been haranguing leadership for a return to so-called regular order.

Emma Dumain and Andres Picon contributed to this report. 

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Congress

Republicans unlock filibuster-skirting power to pump billions of dollars to ICE

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House Republicans succeeded late Wednesday in harnessing the special budget power to advance up to $75 billion for the immigration enforcement agencies Democrats refuse to fund without new guardrails — bringing Congress closer to ending the Department of Homeland Security shutdown.

The vote was held open for more than five hours as lawmakers sought concessions from Speaker Mike Johnson around the farm bill, using the budget resolution as leverage. Finally, the chamber voted 214-212-1 to approve the fiscal blueprint the Senate advanced last week, unlocking the ability to draft and pass a party-line package containing tens of billions of dollars for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, a California Independent, voted “present.”

President Donald Trump wants the final producton his desk by June 1, completing one step in the two-part plan to resolve the DHS funding lapse that began more than 10 weeks ago.

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Congress

House vote hits 2-hour mark amid revolts

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Speaker Mike Johnson is fighting multiple separate revolts within his party while the vote on the Senate-backed budget resolution has been held open for nearly two hours.

Johnson has spent Wednesday trying to push a series of legislative priorities through his chamber, including the farm bill as well as the budget framework, which would set up a path for funding immigration enforcement amid a shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security.

Midwest and farm-state Republicans have so far withheld their votes for the budget measure in a revolt over Johnson agreeing to decouple a measure from the farm bill that would have allowed year-round sales of E15—an ethanol-gasoline blend.

A large huddle of lawmakers on the floor with Johnson erupted in yelling at the speaker before he moved the meeting off the floor and out of earshot of reporters.

“Farm people want a farm vote. And corn-belt people want [renewable fuel standard] changes. So we’re trying to work through it,” House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) explained. Those issues are not directly related to the budget resolution currently on the floor.

A separate group, made up of GOP hard-liners and rallied by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), stayed on the floor, arguing loudly with leadership staff and Arrington and racking up votes against the budget plan.

“We’re gonna have a big family meeting in here. We’ll get everybody on the same page,” Johnson told reporters as both groups eventually gathered in his office.

The House chamber emptied of lawmakers and the clock continued to tick up on the open vote.

“That’s the best way to have — get people to negotiate,” Johnson said of the open vote.

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Congress

The headache that won’t go away for Mike Johnson

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An arcane financial policy idea that conservatives love to hate has become a perpetual nightmare for House Speaker Mike Johnson.

House Republicans have been pushing legislation for years that would ban the Federal Reserve from creating a central bank digital currency. Republican hardliners have repeatedly pushed to ban a CBDC in key bills that require Democratic support in the Senate to pass, imperiling their path forward.

Conservatives secured their biggest victory on the issue yet Wednesday after convincing GOP leaders to combine the digital currency ban with a bill reauthorizing government spy powers set to expire Thursday. That’s setting up a major clash with the Senate, where Democrats oppose a CBDC ban and Majority Leader John Thune has warned that a combined bill is “dead on arrival.”

House hardliners’ anti-CBDC crusade has contributed to the growing dysfunction among House Republicans. The issue is also bewildering to Senate Republicans, who don’t want the push to imperil other legislation.

“I understand if there is a fear out there on it, but right now we’ve got some other fish to fry, and we need their help to get these other issues done,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee. “Let’s take the wins that we can get.”

The House on Wednesday approved an extension of a key section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that will be combined with a CBDC ban before being sent to the Senate. The combined measure is unlikely to clear the upper chamber, and it’s unclear how lawmakers will extend the spy powers before they expire at the end of the month.

Conservative hardliners say a CBDC would lead to government financial surveillance and suffocate private-sector innovation in the crypto industry. The ban has been a priority of the House Freedom Caucus this congress.

“It’s a worthwhile cause,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) said of the ban. “It’s the creepiest surveillance tool ever developed.”

The trouble for Johnson started last July when conservative hardliners froze the House floor, demanding that the CBDC ban be included as part of a larger crypto measure. To resolve a standoff over the demand, Johnson promised the House Freedom Caucus that the ban would be attached to a must-pass defense authorization bill later that year — a pledge he later broke.

The issue created another snag when GOP hardliners said a temporary ban included in a now-stalled Senate housing package didn’t go far enough, threatening to tank the bill if it came to the floor. Now FISA’s fate is wrapped up in the issue.

Johnson told reporters Wednesday that “the Senate knows exactly what we’re doing, of course.”

“They’re watching this very closely, and hopefully they can process what we send them,” Johnson said.

The vast majority of Republicans support the CBDC ban. However, most don’t think the issue should hold up other major legislative party priorities.

Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), a senior House Financial Services Committee member, said the ban was an “important issue” but “shouldn’t prevent us from making progress in other areas.”

Another senior House Financial Services Committee member, Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), said that he wants a ban “probably more than a lot of folks do” but that “people are not necessarily using the proper time, proper place” to push the policy.

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