Congress
Trump pushes Hill GOP on recess appointments, debt limit
President Donald Trump prodded congressional leaders to consider recess appointments for his top nominees and expressed interest in trading California wildfire aid for a debt limit increase in a White House meeting Tuesday — resurfacing two controversial proposals floated during the returning president’s transition.
The discussions, which were described by two people granted anonymity to describe the private talks, also touched on his proposal to exempt at least some tip income from federal taxes and his efforts more generally to extend tax cuts.
Trump also emphasized the need for Republicans to stick together as a party: “The one thing the Democrats have going for them is they stick together,” one of the people familiar with the meeting said, paraphrasing Trump’s message. “No grandstanding — just stick together and deliver and we will win.”
Trump’s controversial pardons of Jan. 6 riot offenders did not come up, Speaker Mike Johnson said in an interview after the meeting.
The recess appointments push first surfaced last year after the election, when it appeared that several of Trump’s Cabinet appointments could get snarled in the Senate. Recess appointments could allow some nominees to take office at least temporarily without a confirmation vote.
But talk of using the dormant power ebbed as Trump’s nominees, such as Defense pick Pete Hegseth, improved their standing with Republican senators.
As for the fire-aid-for-debt-limit trade, GOP lawmakers who first raised the idea with Trump at recent Mar-a-Lago meetings said he was interested in the prospect at the time. That would mean making a debt limit hike part of a larger agreement around the bipartisan government funding talks.
The wider House and Senate GOP leadership teams met with Trump for more than a hour Tuesday as they tried to hash out the way forward on his early agenda.
Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune want sign-offs from Trump on a series of key decisions on the Republican agenda. GOP leadership and Trump’s team held several calls this past weekend during which they tried to form more of a consensus on the way forward before the Tuesday meeting.
They want Trump to make play calls on some of their biggest intra-party fights, including how to move a sweeping tax policy, what to do about the swirling debt limit fight and the mid-March government funding deadline.
Getting Trump’s blessing for how to tackle the fiscal battles could help Johnson mollify his hard-liners, unify his thin conference and satisfy growing concerns that he’s losing precious time to get going. Johnson has struggled to unite his conference, where he has a one-vote margin.
At the same time, having Trump articulate what he wants also lowers the risk that Johnson or Thune find themselves at odds with the leader of their party if they were to outline their own strategy just to have Trump disagree with it. Thune found himself in that position after he laid out his plan for a two-bill reconciliation only for Trump to embrace one bill, while leaving the door open for two.
But Trump himself admits he doesn’t care how GOP leaders accomplish his vast legislative agenda — just that they do it, and quickly. One senior Republican noted Trump in a recent interview appeared to confuse reconciliation with the government funding process, by arguing Republicans could add wildfire aid to the GOP party-line bill in order to secure some Democratic votes.
And some Senate Republicans are already acknowledging that ultimately much of their strategy will be what can get through the House.
“The Senate and the House are two very different bodies. And on the Republican side, in both the House and Senate, we both have free-range chickens that wander off but frankly ours are easier to catch than the House,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), who said he’s spoken to Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.).
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley rescheduled a planned vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general late Friday in a preemptive move as negotiations between the Trump administration and GOP holdouts continue.
The vote, now set for Tuesday after a scheduled Thursday vote was postponed, isn’t an indication that a deal allowing for Blanche’s confirmation is near, so much as it is a nod to Judiciary Committee rules that require three days of notice for a panel meeting.
There is no sign that President Donald Trump is about to acquiesce to the unflinching demands of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who wants a controversial settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS substantially pared back.
Cornyn, who lost his primary to a Trump-endorsed candidate, wants the Justice Department to nullify a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and limit the scope of a tax audit immunity component of the pact.
Trump told reporters earlier Friday the fund is “dead” but added “I wish it weren’t.”
“I’d like to see them compensated,” he added, referring to people he considers victims of government abuse, including participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
To advance Tuesday, Blanche needs to pick up Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another senator on the panel with similar concerns. He can’t lose any GOP votes if he wants to be reported favorably out of the Judiciary Committee.
“Chairman Grassley wants Todd Blanche’s nomination to be successful,” said a Judiciary Committee spokesperson, who declined to be named. “Noticing the markup gives more time for the White House to secure the votes for the President’s nominee. Grassley would like to see Blanche confirmed before the August recess as he has an excellent record restoring law and order and keeping Americans safe.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is zeroing in on one of House Republicans’ biggest contests — a purple district in Nebraska — when he starts his recess campaign sprint.
Scalise will travel to Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District in the Omaha area for an event with Republican Brinker Harding in the coming days, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter granted anonymity to share plans not yet made public. Republicans are digging in to defend the seat, which Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential race and is among Democrats’ best pick up opportunities this fall as they seek to flip the House.
Harding is running against Democratic consultant Denise Powell to replace retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon. Bacon, a moderate-leaning Republican, flipped the Omaha district red in 2016.
After Nebraska, Scalise is planning to travel across the country throughout August, including to defend GOP incumbents Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ and Zach Nunn’s key battleground seats in Iowa’s 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts and Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District.
He’ll boost candidates working to flip blue districts like Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, Derek Merrin in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District and Mike LiPetri in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.
Scalise also plans to travel to Michigan, Colorado, South Carolina and Texas for campaign events over the August recess.
President Donald Trump goaded John Cornyn on social media Friday morning, accusing the Texas senator of withholding his vote on Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination in retaliation for Trump’s central role in his political demise.
Cornyn, who lost his May primary to Texas’ scandal-ridden attorney general, the Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton, has threatened to block Blanche’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee until the White House promises to permanently shelve its $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” in writing — something Trump appears unwilling to do.
“John Cornyn never had a problem with the so called “Fund,” which will not benefit me, but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration, until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent in Texas, who easily won the Nomination for the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Several Republicans bristled at the fund, which could have been deployed to compensate Americans who faced charges after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and which gives the president and his family audit immunity over taxes. At his July confirmation hearing, Blanche said that the fund, part of a settlement the president reached with the IRS, was defunct. But the administration has been “reluctant to change” the text of the settlement, Cornyn told reporters Thursday.
Trump signaled his continued support for the Jan 6 rioters on Friday.
“I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!” he wrote. “Millions of people agree with me, as was proven in my landslide Presidential win, where this was a major subject of debate, and so did John Cornyn, until he lost his Election to an opponent that I Endorsed.”
On Thursday, the president suggested that he could punt a Senate vote on Blanche until after Cornyn — and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — leaves the chamber at the end of the year. Cornyn, however, suggested on social media that there are other Republican senators with concerns about the fund.
“After the midterms, who knows who’s going to be the next United States senator from North Carolina or Texas?” Cornyn told reporters.
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