Congress

Trump, disruptor-in-chief, touts upheaval

Published

2 years ago

March 5, 2025

President Donald Trump declared the far-reaching, disruptive actions of his first 40 days in office as the first wave of a “common sense revolution,” blaming Democrats during his joint address to Congress on Tuesday for lingering problems and claiming credit for a wrecking ball approach that is roiling Washington and the world.

“America’s momentum is back,” Trump said in a stemwinder that lasted an hour and 40 minutes. “Our spirit is back. Our pride is back.”

While most presidents use such addresses to tout new programs, unveil ambitious initiatives or whip legislation, Trump offered a laundry list of all that he had obliterated — pacts with foreign governments, regulations, diversity initiatives.

Boasting about his early flurry of executive orders, Trump said that everything — withdrawing the U.S. from climate treaties, the World Health Organization and the UN human rights council; slashing the federal government, freezing regulations and all foreign aid — was an effort “to restore common sense, safety, optimism and wealth.”

“The people elected me to do the job, and I’m doing it,” he continued, declaring it a “a time for big dreams and bold action.”

On a day that saw the stock markets dip following Trump’s imposition of 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico — and in the midst of a high-stakes diplomatic staredown with Ukraine that has allies anxious — Trump promised that it was all part of a plan to enrich the country and force neighbors to crack down on the drug trade.

“My administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history. And we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crossers ever recorded,” Trump said. “The media and our friends in the Democrat party kept saying we needed new legislation. We must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”

Trump last year urged Republicans to thwart a bipartisan border bill to deny former President Joe Biden a win, just months before the election. His taunting of his predecessor typified a speech that was full of all the familiar Trumpian self-congratulation, hyperbole and withering partisan attacks.

Trashing the man who defeated him in 2020 as “the worst president in American history,” Trump blamed his predecessor for illegal immigration, stubborn inflation and, specifically, the high price of eggs, and said his first month in office is the best ever. “Do you know who number two is?” Trump asked. “George Washington.”

Opening his speech by recounting his victory in last November’s election, Trump drew shouts and protests from the Democratic side of the aisle. One lawmaker, Rep. Al Green, (D-Tex.), was removed from the chamber after continuing to shout back at the president in protest of the Republican plan to cut Medicaid.

Trump groused that there was “nothing I can do” to make Democrats “stand or smile or applaud” him, claiming that his victory amounted to a “mandate like has not been seen in many decades.”

Describing the Republicans’ reconciliation bill as a package of “tax cuts for everybody,” he sarcastically suggested that Democrats should vote for the proposal they have derided as a giveaway for corporations and the wealthy.

“I’m sure you’re going to vote for those tax cuts because otherwise I don’t think the people will ever vote you into office,” Trump said.

His dismissal of the opposition party, who he needled and mocked throughout the speech, prompting several Democrats to walk out of the House chamber mid-speech, came as Republicans may need Democratic votes to avoid a government shutdown. And it underscored an inclination that has thus far defined Trump’s second term — an even greater indifference to countenancing establishment views or bipartisan buy-in for his MAGA agenda.

While declaring that lowering costs for families was his top priority, Trump devoted only a few lines to the subject. Claiming he was “working hard” to get the price of eggs back down, he implied that the job was in the hands of his secretary of Agriculture, who he addressed directly like he might have done in a boardroom scene from ‘The Apprentice.’

“Secretary, do a good job on that one,” he said, pointing at Brooke Rollins.

He continued with the reality-show style theater throughout the speech, signing an executive order renaming a wildlife refuge after a woman who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant, naming a pediatric cancer patient in the balcony an honorary Secret Service agent and admitting a star student, also in attendance, into West Point.

Trump devoted more time to defending his and Elon Musk’s chainsaw-styled slasher approach to reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy. After thanking Musk, who he described as “the head of DOGE (the Dept. of Government Efficiency),” Trump drew laughs as he listed several of the aid programs he had cut: “a $3.5 million consulting contract for lavish fish; monitoring, $1.5 million for voter confidence in Liberia; $14 million for social cohesion in Mali; $59 million for illegal alien hotel rooms in New York City.”

And he mischaracterized “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program,” suggesting that payments were being made to thousands of deceased individuals, a debunked claim that Trump has made repeatedly.

Musk, who attended the address Tuesday night, has had to scramble to rehire several of the critical employees he indiscriminately fired, including those who oversee the country’s nuclear weapons. And the tech billionaire has acknowledged making a number of mistakes. But Trump framed DOGE’s work as part of his economic agenda.

“By slashing all of the fraud, waste and theft we can find, we will defeat inflation, bring down mortgage rates, lower car payments and grocery prices, protect our seniors, and put more money in the pockets of American families,” Trump said.

He also touted $1.7 billion in new investments in America since he took office and defended the controversial approach with tariffs that has shaken the stock market and angered allies in Canada and Mexico. Trump demanded that those countries “do much more” to tackle the flow of illegal drugs to America, which he has used as his rationale for the tariffs — despite almost no fentanyl having entered the U.S. from Canada.

In a nod to the political risk of those policies, Trump spoke directly to American farmers, who required a $29 billion bailout by Trump following tariffs in his first term. But he offered no specifics. “I love the farmer,” he declared. “Our farmers are going to have a field day right now.”

Tariffs, Trump said, “are about making America rich again and making America great again. And it’s happening. And it will happen rather quickly. There will be a little disturbance. But we’re okay with that. It won’t be much.”

Losses on the major stock indexes this week following Trump’s imposition of 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico wiped out all gains for the S&P 500 since Election Day.

Turning to foreign policy some 80 minutes into his speech, Trump returned to the brash imperialism outlined in his inaugural address, vowing to wrest control of the Panama Canal away from the Chinese and suggesting that a looming independence vote in Greenland would ultimately result in the U.S. taking it away from Denmark.

“One way or the other we’re going to get it,” Trump said.

He blamed Biden for the messy 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, the war in Gaza that he said wouldn’t have happened on his watch and for spending too much money backing Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion.

Just more than 24 hours after pausing all U.S. military aid to Ukraine in an effort to pressure President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sign an economic agreement with the U.S. and engage in peace talks with Russia, Trump read a letter Zelenskyy wrote him Tuesday expressing regret over last week’s blow-up in the Oval Office and desire to achieve peace.

“I appreciate that he sent this letter,” Trump said, offering nothing further about whether the agreement to share profits from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals was still on the table.

He criticized Europe for spending more on Russian energy than aid to Ukraine and called out Democrats — and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in particular — for criticizing his approach of pressuring Ukraine while accepting a number of Russian conditions and even parroting Kremlin talking points.

“Do you want to keep it going for another five years?” he said, looking at the Democratic side and keying on Warren. “Yeah, yeah, you would say — Pocahontas says yes.”

Congress

Democrats drop $5M into Kansas Senate race

Published

2 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Senate Democrats’ top super PAC is pushing into Kansas.

The Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC is launching a $5 million statewide television ad blitz starting Saturday through Election Day — the latest sign that Democrats believe the Senate map is shifting onto red turf.

SMP had signaled in recent days it could get involved in the race, telling Blue Light News late last month it was “actively thinking” about whether to wade into the state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in nearly a century but where Adam Hamilton narrowly leads GOP Sen. Roger Marshall in recent polls. Internal SMP polling that found an increasingly competitive race factored into the group’s decision to spend. It will also run digital ads.

“The gap is closing in Kansas,” SMP spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement. “We are committed to ensuring families understand Marshall’s real record of making health care and basic goods more expensive for working Kansans.”

Republicans are scrambling to shore up Marshall. Senate Leadership Fund, a top GOP super PAC aligned with Republican leadership, has booked over $10 million in ads through Election Day in the state, per ad tracking firm AdImpact.

SMP’s first ad attacks Marshall for joining Senate Republicans in voting to table a Democratic-led amendment last year to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. The Senate later approved legislation to release the files by unanimous consent. It’s the latest in a slate of ads from Democrats hitting their Republican rivals over the late, disgraced financier and convicted sex offender. Marshall’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Senate Democrats’ plunge into the state comes as the midterm battle map is undergoing a major realignment. Georgia and North Carolina — primed to be two of the cycle’s premiere battlegrounds — are tilting left to the point where national Republicans are retracting spending in both states and Democrats are starting to follow suit, freeing funds on both sides to shift elsewhere.

Republicans are racing to reinforce incumbents across what was once safer red turf. SLF has also pledged $5 million to bolster Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina.

Democrats, meanwhile, are starting to spend more in red states. SMP has dropped over $2 million on digital ads in Texas. Schumer, the Senate minority leader, has included Kansas and Mississippi in his pitches to donors.

Congress

House Democratic campaign arm says it needs $17 million, and fast

Published

3 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is begging for resources, and setting a hard deadline for donors to give $17 million in order to compete in a handful of districts that Republicans carried easily in 2024.

DCCC Executive Director Julie Merz said the committee needs the cash influx by Oct. 22 in order to “to take advantage of the opportunities we have” outside of the core battlefield, according to a memo shared with donors on Friday and obtained by POLITICO.

If they don’t pony up, Merz warns, the party “could be leaving winnable races on the table.”

Democrats have been clear that they have a fundraising disadvantage this cycle, but they have so far been reluctant to place a specific dollar amount on their needs, making the DCCC’s memo Friday a particularly surprising outlier.

“Here’s the tough reality though: the Republican ecosystem has amassed a massive war chest that is significantly greater than ours and is spending it,” Merz says in the memo after arguing that the members of the committee “remain confident that we will win back the majority in 25 days.”

Specifically, Merz dedicates significant portions of the memo to four districts where the committee is desperate for more money in order to compete — all of which President Donald Trump won by double-digit margins in 2024:

— Florida’s 27th District (Trump +14.6)

— Nevada’s 2nd District (Trump +13.9)

— South Carolina’s 1st District (Trump +13)

— New York’s 21st District (Trump +20.7)

The fundraising disadvantage has created headaches for both House and Senate Democrats over where, exactly, to deploy the resources they do have.

The committee tells donors that their internal polling shows all of those races within reach, but that Republicans’ big cash advantages — especially in the Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA Inc. — will make it harder to win those and other reach seats.

Merz also name drops a handful of other deep-red districts that are “worthy of additional investment in this environment,” including seats held by GOP Reps. French Hill (R-Ark.) and Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the chair of the Republican National Congressional Committee.

The NRCC was quick to mock the DCCC’s memo.

“No amount of money fixes candidates voters don’t want. These seats are staying red, and Republicans are on offense across the map,” NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said in a statement.

Congress

Capitol agenda: How Warren could link arms with Trump’s GOP

Published

9 hours ago

October 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Elizabeth Warren may get her clearest shot yet to take on corporate America next year — thanks to the once unthinkable help of Republicans.

The Massachusetts Democrat is poised to chair Senate Banking if the party takes back the chamber. And while the progressive has long been a boogeyman to corporate America, lobbyists worry she’ll have powerful backup thanks to the surge of populist Republicans eager to take big swings at Wall Street and Big Tech.

One longtime financial industry lobbyist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said Warren “has a streak that is not just wanting to be a progressive gadfly, but to actually reach across the aisle to push for policy ideas.” There is “absolutely” reason for concern, the person said.

Atop the panel, Warren would also have a strong position to shape the 2028 presidential debates on both sides.

“There’s very little doubt that the agenda of the Senate Banking Committee is going to overlap substantially with the core issues that the candidates in the 2028 election cycle are going to be grappling with,” said Dennis Kelleher, the outgoing leader of the progressive group Better Markets.

As Banking chair, Warren is expected to try to recruit Republicans in a crackdown on artificial intelligence — specifically restrictions on chip giant Nvidia’s exports to China, which already has some GOP support — and a follow-up of this year’s bipartisan housing law that sought to rein in private equity’s role in the market, according to people close to the senator.

Some of President Donald Trump’s own populist ideas, like credit card interest rate caps and limits on stock buybacks for defense contractors, would provide fertile ground for Warren.

But Trump would also likely be Warren’s biggest obstacle, as he’s been resistant to embrace policy overlaps with her. He’s also been resistant to any AI restrictions.

Warren’s approach also threatens to expose rifts between GOP populists who have been ascendent under Trump and more mainstream conservatives.

Asked about the possibility of a Chair Warren, Sen. Mike Rounds, a more moderate South Dakota Republican, said he doesn’t “think anything would get done except lots of investigations and lots of accusations.”

What else we’re watching:

— LAWMAKERS CLAMOR FOR GAO v. TRUMP — Lawmakers are desperate for a government watchdog to step up and help them in their fight against the Trump administration over control of federal cash. The independent Government Accountability Office concluded earlier this week that the White House illegally withheld more than $1 billion for education and health care research programs — the latest in more than a half-dozen such findings GAO has published since the start of Trump’s second term. But the agency has yet to use its unique power to take the president to court to challenge those “impoundments,” and lawmakers who are tired of the administration running roughshod over their funding prerogatives want GAO to act.

— MURPHY’S DEFENSE FUNDING ULTIMATUM — Democrats should not approve Pentagon funding or the annual defense policy bill if they control Congress next year unless those bills would hasten the end of the Iran war, Sen. Chris Murphy told reporters Thursday. “We should make the end of the war a priority,” said the Foreign Relations Democrat who was returning from a trip to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Murphy also accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and officials of attempting a “cover-up” of the war’s damage and obscuring its true cost after he was denied entry on a base in Qatar. Given the damage to bases in the region, Murphy also told reporters that the U.S. should “reconsider its footprint” in the Middle East.

Jasper Goodman, Jennifer Scholtes and Connor O’Brien contributed to this report.