Congress

Trump’s Capitol Hill agenda in limbo

Published

2 years ago

March 13, 2025

Congressional Republicans notched a major victory by muscling a funding bill through the House, but GOP lawmakers are still struggling to make headway on President Donald Trump’s biggest legislative priorities.

House and Senate Republicans have yet to reach a deal on a budget plan that would set the framework for Trump’s legislative agenda — a source of tension ahead of a meeting Thursday between GOP senators and Trump at the White House. Republicans need to agree on how much spending to cut to offset the cost of their massive bill to fund tax cuts, border security, defense and energy policy. And they also don’t agree on when or how they’ll try to raise the debt ceiling to avoid a global economic catastrophe.

But there’s one sentiment House and Senate Republicans do share right now: They have yet to deliver any major legislative policy wins for their new president.

“I am worried about it,” Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, said in an interview.

Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged this week he has little time to celebrate Republicans’ major spending win after the House passed his stopgap funding bill Tuesday.

“Everybody says ‘congratulations.’ And they high-five me. And then I go right back to work,” Johnson said during a fireside chat at Georgetown University Tuesday. “This is going to be the heavy lift.”

The rising concerns about the path forward reflect the reality that Republicans are about to launch some of the toughest Capitol Hill negotiations in years, with competing GOP factions at odds over fiscal policy and the future of the federal safety net. Republicans are only just beginning to hash out the details, and Trump himself is providing little direction — and occasionally creating confusion — about the specifics. At stake are major campaign promises that both Trump and Republicans made to win back control of Washington.

“We’ve confirmed his Cabinet,” said Hawley. “That’s great. But if you look at the legislation …” Hawley trailed off before finishing his thought.

Senate Finance Committee Republicans are hoping to break the impasse at their meeting with Trump at the White House Thursday. Johnson is also looking to ramp up cross-chamber meetings with party leaders and key committee chairs when lawmakers return later this month from a scheduled recess.

The coordination is key. Both the House and Senate need to agree on, and then approve, the same budget resolution before they can advance the actual tax, energy, defense and border policy legislation through the party-line, filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process.

But behind the scenes, House GOP leaders are stewing over what they see as the Senate’s failure to act expeditiously, despite House Republicans approving their budget plan two weeks ago.

In an effort to spur them along, Majority Leader Steve Scalise this week quietly encouraged GOP committee chairs to increase their public criticism of what he described as the Senate’s unacceptable timeline. Those House GOP leaders were also deeply alarmed when Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a Finance Committee member, emerged from a meeting of panel Republicans Monday night and said the reconciliation bill might not be completed until August.

The suggestion also turned heads at the White House, where a group of senior officials have worried the House’s strategy for passing one massive bill would slow down the quick delivery of funding for border security and mass deportations. Johnson, who is already facing the threat of a hard-right revolt along those same lines, quickly shot down the late-summer timeline.

“August is far too late. We’re going to move that ball a lot faster than that,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday.

Instead, Johnson at the Georgetown event on Tuesday night floated a highly ambitious timeline: Putting the massive bill on the House floor before Easter. The House is scheduled to leave for another two-week break on April 10.

Senior Republicans ultimately expect a sort of mini-conference meeting to resolve the differences between the two chamber’s competing reconciliation visions. Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are also meeting regularly, including on Tuesday night this week, to try to chart a path forward.

“This is just a long, arduous process, but we’ll get there,” Thune said later.

Thune and Senate Republicans, however, are also still working through complex tax policy plans, and are expected to make changes to the House budget blueprint’s guidelines for that issue.

GOP senators are also raising quiet warnings about a brewing fight over whether they can attach a debt ceiling hike to the massive reconciliation bill, as House Republican leaders and Trump are pushing. And while senators have been hesitant to publicly give a timeline, they haven’t strictly batted down the August suggestion.

“I’m for as soon as possible. I visited with the speaker last night. We want to get this done quickly,” said Sen. John Barrasso, the chamber’s majority whip. “But I’m not going to give you a deadline date.”

If the bill’s timeline does slip into late summer, as Hill Republicans have generally feared since early this year, Johnson will face a host of new problems.

That includes a fresh wave of threats from members of his right flank, who are already upset about delays in delivering more border funding. It would also mean Republicans would have to tackle the debt limit outside their reconciliation plans, as the debt cliff could hit as soon as early this summer.

That’s a hugely toxic political fight that Johnson has no desire to mediate.

“It’ll be part of reconciliation,” Johnson said in a brief interview this week, referring to the debt limit. “So, we pretty well have that covered.”

Congress

Democrats drop $5M into Kansas Senate race

Published

12 minutes 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

42 minutes 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

7 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.