Congress
Trump’s agenda is about to hit a make-or-break moment
House Republicans are heading to President Donald Trump’s Miami-area resort for their annual policy retreat. They’re not going there for the weather.
Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP members have major decisions to make over the coming days that will determine whether Trump and Republicans can deliver on their sweeping legislative agenda before the 2026 midterms. They’re already running behind.
The biggest task for the gathering at Trump National Doral: Finalize a budget blueprint plan for the massive, party-line bill they’re planning, touching energy, border security and tax policy.
But to do that, Republicans need to decide what will go in that package — with the price tag of Trump’s priorities reaching $10 trillion over 10 years — versus what might be included in a separate, bipartisan government funding bill that will be negotiated with Democrats over the next seven weeks. The fate of a necessary debt ceiling increase is top of mind.
Johnson has been carefully collecting member feedback for weeks while privately debating a host of options with GOP leaders. But House Republicans are growing impatient and want to know the game plan.
“We need to have a sense of urgency with the debt ceiling coming,” said Rep. Barry Moore (R-Ala.), a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus. “I hope there’s options at this point.”
The House Budget Committee is set to meet and take up the fiscal blueprint for the GOP agenda when lawmakers return to Washington next week. Adopting an identical blueprint in the House and Senate is a prerequisite for unlocking the budget reconciliation process that allows Republicans to sidestep a filibuster by Democrats.
Johnson last week indicated he’s planning to present more detailed plans to GOP members and discuss the reconciliation package, government funding for fiscal 2025, a debt-limit hike, California wildfire aid, border security money “and more” — including a potential bipartisan deal with Democrats that could encompass multiple parts of that puzzle.
“We’re looking at all options,” Johnson said of a larger funding deal with Democrats, adding that no decisions have been made.
But many Republicans are skeptical they’ll leave the retreat with concrete plans in hand. Some GOP members initially planned to skip the gathering, opting instead for an official trip to Africa, but those plans ended up getting canceled, according to two people granted anonymity to talk about planning for the closed-door event.
The planned retreat discussions have been tailored to show attending members the possibilities for the way forward and to take their temperatures on potential spending cuts, according to three Republicans with direct knowledge of the planning. Leaders will have to carefully balance sometimes competing interests from various GOP factions.
Committee chairs will present their proposals for the reconciliation package and answer member questions during a series of breakout sessions Tuesday.
The reconciliation process will be the subject of a plenary session hosted by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and chairs on Wednesday morning. They’re set to then pile into buses and head back to the airport just before noon Wednesday.
“In my world, there’s some, ‘All right, this can be part of reconciliation, this can’t be part.’ And then once you get what the doable is, then you start figuring out what the legislative language is,” said Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.).
Republicans can expect to get a message of urgency Monday night, when Trump himself will address them at his resort.
“That will certainly be a highlight for us,” said Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), head of the party campaign committee, adding that Trump’s “fun to be around” and that retreats generally allow Republicans to “get together away from all the chaos” in Washington.
But he acknowledged it’s not just another GOP gathering.
“This one is particularly important because we have to hammer out what our plan is on reconciliation,” Hudson said. “So I’m hopeful we can get to a point where we can all agree and get ready to get back here and go to work.”
Beyond being a team-building exercise, party retreats can also serve as an early-warning system for potential threats to the agenda.
Eight years ago, Republicans gathered in Philadelphia to plot out their plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a more conservative alternative. In one contentious closed-door session — one that was secretly recorded and leaked to media outlets — members expressed serious trepidations about how leaders were planning to go about it.
Seven months later, the push for the health care overhaul imploded when the party could not unite around a plan. Leaders ended up having to abandon it and move on to a package of tax cuts — one they now have to renew.
This year, there aren’t the same sort of fundamental objections to core agenda items. But there are serious disagreements that members have to work through — most of them over how to pay for the massive bill.
For example, Republicans on the Armed Services Committee are deeply opposed to Guthrie’s proposal to restore the spectrum auction authority of the Federal Communications Commission as they try to balance the promise of advanced wireless technology and the needs of the military. Guthrie said he planned to use the retreat to work through the impasse. And there are some members — especially on Johnson’s right flank — who are expecting trillions of dollars in spending cuts. They’re also wary that his plan for one huge bill comes at the cost of delays and the risk the entire package could blow up.
“I was kind of in favor, honestly, of doing two separate bills. I think that would have been the way to play this,” Moore said, adding he just wants a “good game plan” out of the retreat.
Centrists are also relaying their concerns to GOP leaders about some committees’ plans to target pieces of the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that provides food aid benefits for more than 40 million low-income Americans.
Republicans are discussing enacting Medicaid work requirements for the first time and adding additional SNAP work requirements for parents with children over 7 years old.
Those proposals are relatively more palatable for GOP lawmakers in competitive districts than the massive cuts to current benefits some conservatives would prefer. But they’re still politically divisive and could provide Democrats major campaign fodder in blue and purple districts ahead of the 2026 midterms.
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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