Lawmakers seem to have reached a breakthrough over language for a spectrum provision in the GOP’s tax and spending megabill, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told Blue Light News Wednesday.

The House proposal aimed to open up 600 MHz of spectrum for commercial use, alarming national security hawks, who warned that it would encroach on important military and intelligence frequencies. Rounds, a senior Senate Armed Services Committee member who was among those who pushed back, said on Wednesday that, per this emerging agreement, key spectrum bands would be protected from the auctions through 2034.

“It’s looking better than it has in the past, and I think we’re going to be able to get everything that we had concerns with,” he said, cautioning that the deal was still pending. “Final paper I have not seen, but it looks good.”

Asked earlier Wednesday about Rounds’ threats a day earlier to vote against legislation that doesn’t address his spectrum concerns, Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said, “I am confident we’ll get it done.”

The secretive board overseeing the Capitol Police has narrowed its search down to two choices for the next chief of the department: former Phoenix Police Chief Michael Sullivan and former Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the private deliberations. The people said a final decision was expected imminently.

Before serving as interim in Phoenix, Sullivan had stints at the Baltimore Police Department as deputy commissioner of compliance and deputy commissioner of operations, according to his Linkedin profile. He’s also been a deputy chief at the Louisville Metro Police Department.

Alles, a former Marine Corps major general, served as the director of the Secret Service during President Donald Trump’s first term before departing the role in April 2019 as part of a department-wide shakeup. Trump derisively referred to Alles as “Dumbo,” the New York Times reported at the time. Since then, he served in a senior role at the Department of Homeland Security until March of this year, according to Alles’ LinkedIn profile.

Notably, the Capitol Police Board appears poised to go outside the department for a chief yet again, passing over Sean Gallagher, the interim head of the department and assistant chief, who has been with the department for more than two decades and served in a wide variety of roles across the agency. Gallagher was part of the leadership team during the Jan. 6 insurrection, weathered a no-confidence vote by the union and eventually worked to help stabilize the agency after a time of tectonic tumult.

The union signaled it was opposed to Gallagher’s selection as interim chief, with union chair Gus Papathanasiou saying in a Tuesday statement: “We’re astounded the Board would even consider [Gallagher] for the role. The Capitol Police force cannot continue to see problem officers ‘fail upwards’, winning promotions instead of demotions commensurate with their actions.”

The Capitol Police Board is composed of Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Jennifer Hemingway, House Sergeant-at-Arms William McFarland and Architect of the Capitol Thomas Austin. They are tasked with replacing former chief Thomas Manger, who retired last month after four years at the helm.

The board’s potential choice of another outside candidate, instead of promoting internally within the Capitol Police ranks, signals residual doubts about those who were in leadership roles for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“They’re going to have to learn about our mission, the uniqueness of it, but the structure of oversight as well, and there is a learning curve there,” Manger said in a recent interview, talking about anyone who comes to lead Capitol Police from an outside law enforcement agency.

Others who had been in the mix included external and internal candidates from the force, including former Deputy Chief JJ Pickett, Deputy Chief Tom Loyd, and Assistant Chief Jason Bell.

Several former Republican governors in the Senate have sounded alarms over a controversial House GOP plan to help pay for the Trump megabill by pushing billions in federal food aid costs to states.

Now there’s a would-be governor raising similar concerns. Behind the scenes in recent days, Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama raised issues over the provision with GOP leaders and pushed for the plan to be scaled back, according to three Republicans granted anonymity to describe the conversations.

Tuberville, who announced a gubernatorial bid May 27, confirmed his worries in a brief interview Wednesday.

“Everybody that’s going to be in state government is going to be concerned about it,” he said. “I don’t know whether we can afford it or not.”

The House provision affecting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would financially hammer deep-red states like Alabama, forcing governors and state legislatures to foot billions in new costs or cut benefits to low-income families. The Republicans say Tuberville appears to be increasingly worried about a multi-billion-dollar bill hitting his desk should he be elected governor.

Tuberville, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump who supports the House bill’s strict new work requirements for SNAP, isn’t the only Republican who’s raised concerns about the House plan. At least two dozen other GOP senators have quietly raised concerns about how their states could be hit.

Senate Republicans involved in the talks have been surprised that current GOP governors have not raised more public concern about the House GOP plan. Many House Republicans assumed the Senate would strip the proposal out of the megabill, but the Senate GOP is now considering a host of options to scale down but not fully strip out the cost-sharing measure.

Senior Republicans have discussed one option to force every state to pay five percent of the cost of SNAP benefits for the first time, adding extra penalties for states with the highest payment error rates, according to three other Republicans with knowledge of the conversations.

“I think a lot of governors are saying the Senate is not going to do this to us,” said one Republican with direct knowledge of the conversations. “No, we absolutely might.”

Republicans involved in the talks say they will likely need to maintain some version of the provision in order to achieve the needed spending cuts while also paying for a $60 billion farm bill package in the House version of the bill. The Senate parliamentarian appears likely to nix one smaller source of savings from the Agriculture bill — a provision creating a national clearinghouse to crack down on duplicate benefits across SNAP, Medicaid and other programs.

Sen. Jim Justice, who served as West Virginia’s governor until January, said both current and future governors need to “analyze this very, very, very seriously” and “voice their opinions.”

“Because if you’re asleep at the switch, and you miss what the cost is going to be … you can put a state in a tough spot,” he said.