Congress
Trump’s Capitol Hill agenda in limbo
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.”
Rep. Tom Kean Jr. represents New Jersey’s most competitive district this November — but nobody, even his GOP colleagues, can say where he’s been for the past month.
A scion of one of the state’s most storied political dynasties, Kean’s team says the two-term congressmember is facing unspecified health issues. The New Jersey Republican hasn’t voted since March 5 and has missed almost 50 roll call votes.
The other two Republicans in the New Jersey delegation, Reps. Chris Smith and Jeff Van Drew, said they have called and texted Kean out of concern for his health. But so far, neither said they have heard from him. Van Drew said it’s been “radio silence.”
Several New York Republicans who have worked with Kean on key issues said similarly. Kean’s absence has largely fallen under the radar and GOP leaders haven’t addressed the issue to the conference, according to several Republicans.
One Republican, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), said he didn’t even realize Kean had been missing until he tried to find him on the House floor Tuesday.
“I was looking for him,” Bacon said in an interview Wednesday. “I didn’t know it was that long.”
“I know the congressman and his family appreciate all of the well wishes and support,” Kean consultant Harrison Neely told Blue Light News. “Please know that he will be back on a regular full schedule very soon.”
Closer to home, Kean’s allies also expect him to come back soon.
“I don’t even know the truth myself or even enough to disclose any information,” Union County GOP Chair Carlos Santos told Blue Light News. “But I have been texting with him and was told he’ll be fine and make a full recovery in the next couple weeks.”
Kean represents New Jersey’s most competitive House seat — the 7th Congressional District, a large swath across the northern and central part of the state that includes Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster. President Donald Trump narrowly carried it by one point in the 2024 presidential race, but Democratic former Rep. Mikie Sherrill carried the district by nearly two points in the 2025 governor’s race. Kean won the district by around five points in 2024.
Kean enters reelection in what could be his most challenging congressional bid to date. He faces an environment that is increasingly challenging for Republicans and the Trump administration is opening an immigration detention facility in his district while pulling funding for a major infrastructure project for New Jersey commuters — both of which have put him in a precarious position.
But Kean’s backers say his temporary absence will hardly be on voters’ minds come November.
“Everyone understands from their own family experiences that people run into unexpected health issues,” Bill Palatucci, a Republican National Committee member and attorney to the Kean campaign, told Blue Light News. “Voters will be completely sympathetic and it’s so early in the year that it will be long forgotten come the fall.”
There is a competitive Democratic primary to take on Kean, with four prominent candidates.
Democrats in the New Jersey delegation have also noticed his absence and have started to be concerned for the congressmember’s health. Those members have also not heard anything.
“It’s been a long absence,” New Jersey Democrat Rep. Rob Menendez said. “I hope he’s doing all right. But I haven’t heard anything.”
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
The Senate will kick off a marathon amendment voting session Wednesday night as Republicans aim to adopt a budget blueprint for immigration enforcement funding.
The chamber is expected to start the vote-a-rama free-for-all around 8 p.m., according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private scheduling. Senate Republicans need to adopt the budget resolution in order to subsequently pass their bill to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through the party-line budget reconciliation process.
The Senate’s top cybersecurity official is aiming to expand the number of AI licenses and approved AI tools available to Senate staff — and it will come with a price tag.
The Senate sergeant at arms, the chief law enforcement official on Capitol Hill whose office also manages IT and logistics, is seeking a $2.8 million boost for the department’s fiscal 2027 budget for AI licenses as appetite grows in Congress for using large language models in day-to-day workflow.
“About 10 percent of Senate users have already used the free, unsupported version of this technology,” Senate Sergeant at Arms Jennifer Hemingway told the Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch subcommittee Wednesday. “Moving those users and other Senate users into Senate-supported versions of these platforms is necessary to protect Senate data.”
In March, the Senate green-lighted the use of Google’s Gemini chat, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot in Senate offices with licenses that support enhanced data security measures compared with the free versions. Staff in the House have been using Copilot, Gemini and ChatGPT, as well as Anthropic’s Claude, approved platforms under the chamber’s internal AI guidelines.
The cybersecurity team in Hemingway’s office is currently conducting risk assessments on about 40 AI tools, she told lawmakers. The sergeant at arms plans to bring recommendations for AI tools for Senate use to the bipartisan AI Governance Board, and “if the AI products meet our defined criteria,” make more tools available to the Senate.
“The most popular on that list is Claude,” Hemingway noted. The sergeant at arms began assessing the Anthropic product March 3.
When pressed by ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) about the sergeant at arms’ policy of issuing one license per Senate user, Hemingway explained that the protocol is designed in part to incentivize staff to use data-protected versions approved by the sergeant at arms.
“If there is demand to have more than once license per user, we’d be happy to have conversations” with the Legislative Branch panel that funds the sergeant at arms, Hemingway said, calling it a “resource issue.”
She added that staff whose work focuses on AI and who need access to multiple tools could be accommodated very quickly.
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