Congress
Trump backs key Senate tax plan strategy in struggle with House
President Donald Trump indicated to GOP senators during a White House meeting Thursday that he supports using an accounting method that would treat trillions of dollars in tax cuts in a massive GOP package as costing nothing, according to three senators who attended the meeting and three other people familiar with the conversation.
“If you are going to make the tax code permanent, by definition it’s going to be with current policy,” said Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who affirmed that Trump is on board with the accounting tactic. “The aperture is opened up a bit in thinking more broadly around how we continue to find additional reductions in federal spending.”
House and Senate Republicans are split on the controversial accounting tactic, though Speaker Mike Johnson is increasingly open to using it. The move would make it easier for GOP lawmakers to make the math work on their costly plan.
But many hard-liners are suspicious of the tactic and want to stick with Congress’s traditional accounting method, which would show that extending the tax cuts, and adding other provisions Trump wants, would cost trillions of dollars.
Settling the matter will be key as the House and Senate try to reconcile vast differences in their approaches to the massive Trump agenda bill spanning border, energy, taxes and defense spending. But it is likely to run into trouble with deficit hawks, especially in the House, who insist that tax cuts must be accompanied by spending reductions.
Trump also reiterated he wants the 2017 tax cuts he presided over to be extended permanently. And, he raised his Gold Visa card concept as a way to pay for the vast package, along with tariffs and other options.
The GOP senators in the room also discussed the politically complex issue of raising the debt ceiling, which Trump has pushed to be in the package because he doesn’t want to negotiate a separate deal with Democrats.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he made clear in the meeting he still wants incredibly steep spending cuts in order to back a debt limit increase, adding Trump was receptive to his pitch to pare back a vast swath of federal spending to pre-COVID levels.
“I don’t know that we solved anything. We got what we needed — just some kind of direction and feel for where the president wants all this to land,” Senate GOP leader John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters when he returned to the Capitol.
The Republicans who met with Trump on Thursday are all members of the Senate Finance Committee who are trying to work through a host of complex and arduous tax talks in order to decide what they can fit into their party-line bill.
“It’s kind of along the lines of what we’ve been talking about for some time,” Thune said.
Sen. Thom Tillis said the conversation with the president helped to act as “a funnel” for the vast list of tax policies that GOP senators are trying to squeeze into the package.
But some senators in the meeting appeared less enthusiastic that they had made any major progress.
“Talk, talk, talk, talk,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said. “Just like the last 10 weeks.”
House and Senate Republicans are stuck in an increasingly bitter impasse over how to advance Trump’s vast legislative agenda and how quickly to move.
Many House Republicans were livid earlier this week when Tillis emerged from a meeting of Senate Finance Republicans on Monday evening and suggested August was the real timeline for passing a budget reconciliation bill, citing the tax talks.
Heading to the White House meeting on Thursday, Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo again declined to predict any timeline for the Congress to advance or pass the package and its many tax provisions.
Other members of his panel hoped the meeting with Trump and his advisers would help start to bridge the divide between the two chambers — something Trump has struggled to do.
“I’m not even going to joke about it,” the normally soft-spoken Crapo said, with a smile.
Thune has been organizing meetings all week with small groups of his conference as he and GOP leaders try to hear from a cross-section of GOP senators about what they want to see in a reconciliation bill, which would allow Republicans to short-circuit a Democratic filibuster in the Senate.
Those meetings, according to senators in attendance, have focused on the tax provisions — including measuring support for using the current policy baseline accounting method to make the extension of the Trump-era tax cuts appear to cost nothing.
Senate Republicans are also using the meetings to discuss how big they should go on spending cuts and outline the challenges of the major task ahead.
NEW YORK — With just five days to go until the primary election in New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a stark warning to members of Congress who believe “incumbency is a substitute for action”: Watch out.
“People often ask me what I think of the state of the Democratic Party,” Mamdani said to the crowd at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn as he boosted his endorsed congressional candidates. “This slate here today is our answer. The Democratic Party must change.”
The democratic socialist framed Tuesday’s election as much more than what that means for New York, though. In recounting how people also ask him about the 2028 presidential election, he put it bluntly: “It starts now. It starts on Tuesday.”
“For far too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline instead of delivering material change for working people,” Mamdani said. “That old way of thinking will lose on Tuesday. And frankly, it will lose in South Carolina and New Hampshire. It will fall short of 270 electoral votes, because the party of the past will not be what leads us into the future.”
Mamdani, joined by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, urged his supporters to show up for his endorsed candidates “the way you showed up for me.” They include former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s challenging two-term Rep. Dan Goldman; state Assemblymember Claire Valdez, who’s vying for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat; and community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, who’s trying to unseat five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Mamdani’s endorsed slate of legislative candidates were at the rally, too.
The rally featured standard stump speeches from the candidates, highlighting the need to support working class New Yorkers and immigrants. Speakers called out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel group that has loomed over many of these primaries — despite no evident spending from its independent expenditure arm. Sanders also emphasized his call to ban super PACs, which have reshaped primaries across the city.
Taking place just hours after the massive ticker-tape parade celebrating the Knicks’ historic championship, there were also Knicks references galore.
“I hate to break it to you, but OG Anunoby is not here to save the day,” said Mamdani, who was wearing a Knicks jersey under his suit. “The only hands we can count on are ours.”
Sanders, who is wildly popular in New York, previously endorsed Valdez and Lander. Both Valdez and Avila Chevalier are members of the Democratic Socialists of America and are backed by the city chapter in their bids. Sanders had not officially endorsed Avila Chevalier prior to the rally.
“Why are progressives and socialist candidates winning elections all across this country?” Sanders asked. “The answer in my view is not complicated. The working class of America understands that our current economic system is rigged, that it is designed to benefit the wealthy and the powerful.”
Polling has shown Lander with a lead over Goldman, and a tight race for Velázquez’s seat. Public polling is scarce in the Espaillat race, but recent internal surveys suggest Avila Chevalier is posing a real challenge to the incumbent. Mamdani endorsed her just weeks ago, much later than Lander and Valdez, but his engagement in the race has significantly elevated its profile.
“Six months ago, they told us this race was over before it started,” Avila Chevalier said at the rally. “They told us Adriano was untouchable, that he was an institution, that you don’t run against someone like him and win. That this district was his, and that we should wait our turn. And they said it with such confidence, like the outcome had already been written. Look around. Look at what we’ve built.”
Mamdani’s decision to get involved in congressional races is stress-testing how the new mayor navigates relations with powerful, well-respected party figures — many of whom he’s on the opposite side of.
Mamdani’s endorsement is expected to be a significant asset for his picks; he had dominant performances across these districts in last year’s mayoral primary. And that shine doesn’t seem to have dulled. Recent polling has shown that Mamdani has high approval ratings.
Goldman did not support Mamdani during last year’s mayoral primary or the general election, as Lander has often pointed out. Espaillat backed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary, but supported Mamdani in the general election. Valdez’s opponents, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and city Council Member Julie Won, both supported Mamdani in the primary.
The mayor has been active on the trail for his congressional candidates of choice in the closing stretch of the campaign. And he touted them all in an advertisement that ran during the first game of the Knicks’ finals run.
Still, Lander has tried to keep some distance. When asked at a recent press conference why he would appear in that ad with Avila Chevalier, who attended a pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in 2023 — the same rally Lander said he left the DSA over — he said it was an “opportunity to show New Yorkers that politics can be a team sport.” He also clarified that he has not endorsed candidates in any other congressional primaries.
Avila Chevalier told reporters that she went to that rally to “stand against” Israel engaging in “a response that is often disproportionate and creates a greater loss of life.” She added that she has “condemned Hamas” and does “not believe that celebrating the loss of anybody’s life is OK.”
Kings Theatre isn’t located in any of the districts these congressional hopefuls are trying to represent — though it neighbors the seats that Lander and Valdez have their eyes on.
It’s especially far from Espaillat’s district, which includes parts of upper Manhattan and the Bronx.
While handing out campaign literature to people walking out of the subway in Hamilton Heights, Blue Light News asked Espaillat if he had thoughts about Avila Chevalier appearing at the rally.
“I’m rallying right here in my district with my constituents — not in Brooklyn,” he replied.
Jason Beeferman contributed to this report.
Retirement groups are calling on Congress to investigate Meta over a wave of social media scams targeting older Americans.
In a letter sent Thursday to House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) and ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the groups alleged Meta has been slow to take down fraudulent ads, leaving seniors vulnerable to financial loss. The letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, was signed by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Postal Workers Union Retirees and the American Federation of Teachers, among others.
“Fraudulent Medicare ads have proliferated on Meta platforms and too many seniors are getting scammed while Meta profits,” said Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans. “We are calling on Congress to investigate how these scams are allowed to spread, what Meta knew about them, and why stronger protections are not in place. Seniors should not be left vulnerable while scammers and tech companies cash in.”
The letter’s demands follow a report published last month by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit advocacy group, which alleged that Meta has profited by leaving up fraudulent ads, many of which target Medicare recipients.
“Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “We aggressively fight scams on and off our platforms because they’re not good for us or the people and businesses that rely on our services and for years we’ve been one of law enforcement’s strongest partners in the fight against this type of online crime — identifying criminals, disrupting their crimes and helping bring them to justice.”
Stone pointed to several examples of Meta’s efforts to combat scams on its platform, including a recent collaboration with U.S. and Thai law enforcement to disrupt online scams.
It’s not the first time Meta has faced scrutiny over the scams: Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) urged the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities Exchange Commission to open an investigation into the company in November after Reuters reported that Meta in internal documents projected 10 percent of its 2024 revenue would come from fraudulent ads. And in February, a group of bipartisan lawmakers pressed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over its plans to prevent and combat fraud on its platforms.
Reps. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) and Lou Correa (D-Calif.) also introduced bipartisan legislation earlier this year to combat predatory scam ads.
Congress is expected to send a landmark, bipartisan housing affordability bill to President Donald Trump’s desk by the end of next week as the Senate and House schedule action on the legislation in the coming days.
The Senate has teed up the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act for final passage on Monday, after completing all its necessary procedural votes this week.
The legislation will then move on to the House where GOP leadership plans to open debate on Wednesday, with a vote expected as early as the same day, according to six people familiar with the vote granted anonymity to discuss plans.
House leadership plans to suspend the rules, requiring a two-thirds majority vote, to speed up the bill’s path to Trump’s desk. Final passage could be pushed to Thursday depending on timing, the people said.
The housing bill aims to tackle housing affordability and boost homeownership and supply ahead of a midterm election dominated by cost-of-living concerns.
The four lawmakers leading the negotiations over the legislation — Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.), ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and ranking member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) — came to an agreement Tuesday afternoon after months of back and forth on the bill’s contents.
The housing affordability legislation, which the White House supports, contains a provision limiting the role of large institutional investors in the single-family housing market, which was a key condition for Trump to sign the bill.
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