Congress

‘We’re running out of time’: GOP already antsy on Trump’s Hill agenda

Published

2 years ago

January 20, 2025

Welcome to the Washington trifecta, Republicans. Now get ready to wait.

Even as the GOP takes unified control of the House, Senate and White House on Monday, congressional leaders are facing doubts about just how quickly they will be able to deliver major wins for Donald Trump. Their legislative plans are highly unsettled, and the clock is ticking toward distracting fights over federal spending and the debt limit.

And when it comes to the heart of Trump’s agenda — a sprawling party-line effort encompassing border, energy and tax policy — key strategic questions remain in flux. Once they agree on the general direction of travel, leaders will then have to navigate a thicket of nasty intraparty disputes on the policies themselves.

Under the most ambitious timeline put forth by Speaker Mike Johnson, it will be Memorial Day before that bill lands on Trump’s desk. Deeply skeptical Senate Republicans are readying their own conflicting plans in case the House falters.

“Everybody is feeling the pressure now of time,” said Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, a member of the hard-right Freedom Caucus who has been pushing for quicker action. “In a short period, we’ve got to make something happen.”

Some smaller wins are at hand: Thanks to some Democratic cooperation in the Senate, Republicans expect to send a relatively small-bore immigration bill to Trump this week.

Named after a Georgia nursing student murdered last year, the Laken Riley Act would require broader incarcerations of undocumented immigrants accused of crimes. But it’s only a sliver of what Trump has in mind for immigration policy.

To fill out the House floor schedule in the first weeks, Johnson is eyeing bills on abortion and public safety that will likely get filibustered in the Senate. He’s also planning to put a bipartisan forestry and wildfire prevention bill up for a vote this week, with Congress unlikely to pass any aid for the wildfires tearing through California until at least March.

The Senate will churn through confirmations of Trump’s Cabinet and other nominees. And both chambers are hoping to use Congressional Review Act powers to claw back key Biden administration rules, something GOP leaders hope will help calm antsy conservatives.

But there is a massive distraction also looming: A March 14 government funding deadline that could result in a government shutdown if Trump and Republicans can’t come to a deal with congressional Democrats who still hold leverage due to the Senate filibuster.

Johnson has been moving carefully on the spending discussions and the party-line agenda talks, mindful of staying on the same page as Trump — who upended the last spending deal the speaker cut with Democrats in December. This time Johnson wants Trump’s sign off on key details related to both initiatives, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door conversations. But it’s unclear if that will ever come.

Meanwhile, the committee chairs who will actually have to write the bills are left tapping their feet. “We’re running out of time,” said House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who is waiting on top-line discretionary spending targets.

Settling some of these outstanding questions is likely to be on the agenda for a high-level meeting between Trump and congressional leaders Tuesday. Impatience is already emerging as a theme in interbranch relations: In a series of meetings last week on Capitol Hill, Trump policy chief Stephen Miller relayed the president-elect’s desire for “immediacy” in pushing through his legislative agenda.

The pressure is just as intense inside the House, where Norman and his fellow Freedom Caucus members continue to push a two-track approach to the party-line agenda in defiance of Johnson.

They want a smaller, border-focused package first that includes a debt limit hike and spending cuts. That’s essentially the opposite of what Johnson is now steering the conference toward — one massive bill with tax reform included but leaving a debt limit hike for bipartisan government funding talks.

Listed as a “key benefit” in the Freedom Caucus plan: “Speed to deliver huge early wins on key priorities for President Trump.”

Johnson, who shares fears with some House committee chairs that breaking up the bills could make them harder to pass given his narrow majority, tried to temper the unrest by laying out an aggressive timeline for pushing through the sprawling megabill in a closed-door conference meeting last week.

The timeline was a good start, one GOP lawmaker said leaving the meeting. “But at the end of the day, we need to know the plan,” the member said.

The speaker has also launched a listening tour. He is with scores of members about the plans, with a focus on hearing out their thoughts on making trillions of dollars in highly controversial spending cuts. GOP Whip Tom Emmer has corralled small working groups to hash out members’ diverging demands.

Meanwhile, leaders in both chambers are counting on Trump to settle things down with a flurry of Day One executive orders, many of which are expected to deal with immigration and reversing Biden-era climate and pandemic policies. Those actions, they hope will dampen the hard-liners’ push for immediate and sweeping legislative action on the border.

“I expect the president’s going to develop hand cramps signing executive orders,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said. “And that will demonstrate meaningful progress.”

But many senators still want to push their own two-track plan — notably Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is preparing a border-first budget blueprint to jam the House with, should Johnson fail to deliver on a tight timeline.

Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), who attended a meeting with Miller and House Republicans last week, said Trump’s early immigration executive orders would be “a good start” but “not permanent” and Republicans want to “codify” those executive actions in law — quickly.

Congress

Jim Jordan says he will relinquish Judiciary gavel, pass on a return to Oversight

Published

11 minutes ago

September 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

DALLAS — Rep. Jim Jordan said Wednesday he plans to end his eight-year run leading Republicans on two of the House’s most prominent committees after this Congress, raising fresh questions about what comes next for the veteran Ohio lawmaker.

Jordan, 62, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Republican midterm convention that he has no plans to seek a waiver of the GOP’s three-term limit on committee leaders to retain the top spot on the Judiciary Committee.

Nor, he said, would he seek to return to lead Republicans on the House Oversight Committee. He previously served as ranking member from 2019 to 2020, when he took the GOP reins at Judiciary, and has at least two terms of eligibility remaining there.

“No, I don’t plan to do that,” Jordan said. “There’s other people who are very interested in Oversight.”

Jordan could have requested a waiver from the House Republican Steering Committee, and several other sitting GOP chairs — including Agriculture’s G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) and Armed Services’ Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) — are expected to do just that. He brushed off questions about why we would not join others in seeking to keep the coveted gavel overseeing the Justice Department, immigration law and other high-profile matters.

“I’m just not going to do it,” he said.

The decision is likely to stoke speculation about another potential leadership run for Jordan, who is seeking his 11th term this fall. He unsuccessfully sought the speakership after Kevin McCarthy’s 2023 ouster, and there has been open chatter in recent months that he is quietly setting the grounds to make another run at the top job.

After flatly denying plans to retain a committee gavel, Jordan was far less direct in addressing other questions about his future in the House.

“I’m focused on one thing, one thing only: winning,” he said. “If the left wins, where they want to take the country is very, very scary.”

Jordan, for instance, did not rule out running against Speaker Mike Johnson for the gavel if Republicans hold onto House majority this fall.

“As I said, I’m focused on winning. We got to win,” he said when asked if he could challenge Johnson, adding “that’s why I’ve been … in 15 different states, and so we just keep going to help our colleagues and candidates.”

Jordan only serves on the Judiciary and Oversight committees, and it is rare for veteran Republican members who are term-limited out of committee leadership posts to stick around as back-benchers in the House.

Jordan did not criticize his fellow chairs who are seeking waivers: “They want a waiver, that’s fine. It’s been granted in the past, and sometimes they get them, sometimes they don’t,” he said, noting it was “up to the conference and the steering committee.”

Asked if he would stay in Congress without a committee or conference leadership position, he noted he is running for reelection: “I’m going to go represent the people in the 4th District.”

Asked a final time what’s next for his decadeslong political career, Jordan chuckled and went through his plans for the day.

“I got like three more interviews,” Jordan said. “And then I’m going to go sit down in that suite, and we’ve got to have some popcorn and watch the speeches. I think that’s what’s next for me.”

Congress

Bobby Scott defends his track record amid fight to keep committee post

Published

2 hours ago

September 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Bobby Scott is defending his track record leading Democrats on the House Education and Workforce Committee in a new letter as he faces an internal challenge for the top job.

In a Dear Colleague letter dated Wednesday, the 79-year-old Virginian said he is running to keep the top spot on the committee, guaranteeing a showdown with fellow Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut, a 53-year-old former teacher.

Scott has led the panel’s Democrats since 2015, including four years as chair during his party’s time in the majority from 2019 to 2023. He said in the latter that he looks forward to again holding the gavel of the Education and Labor Committee, as it is traditionally named under Democratic majorities.

“In this moment, we need a leader with a proven record of confronting and thwarting a dangerous President, a leader who will conduct rigorous oversight without fear or favor,” Scott said in the letter. “We also need a leader who will advance legislation grounded in evidence and data, restore and expand programs people need not only to survive but to thrive, and ensure we have a government that is truly accountable to the people. My track record speaks for itself.”

He made reference to one critique of his leadership — that he is a relatively low-profile presence inside the Democratic caucus: “While I have no qualms about sharing the spotlight with my colleagues, I want to be clear that my colleagues should not confuse my humility with an inability to deliver results.”

Blue Light News first reported Hayes’ interest in challenging Scott last week. She said in an interview that there needs to be a “push from the caucus” to counter President Donald Trump’s attempts to dismantle the Education Department.

“We are going to lift our heads up, and the Department of Education is going to be gone,” Hayes said. “I think that as a caucus and as a country, that should be a part of our priorities and a part of our agenda because it is incredibly important.”

Congress

Sanders to host AI briefing for senators

Published

3 hours ago

September 9, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will host a private briefing for senators next week with top artificial intelligence researchers, according to a letter to colleagues obtained by Blue Light News.

The meeting, slated for 4 p.m. on Sept. 16, comes as concerns grow on both sides of the aisle about safety warnings from top AI labs and researchers about the technology’s growing capabilities.

“Congress needs SERIOUS discussions about this issue,” Sanders wrote. “That is why I will be convening a private briefing with some of the leading experts in the world to discuss this recent incident and the extraordinary dangers that AI poses for humanity.”

Geoffrey Hinton, widely known as the “godfather of AI,” is expected to brief the lawmakers alongside MIT professor and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute Max Tegmark and Ajeya Cotra, an independent investigator who helped probe helped probe OpenAI agents’ recent autonomous attack on the tech platform Hugging Face.

Sanders has positioned himself as a leading progressive voice on AI, calling last week for a pause in AI development until a vetting regime can be stood up and a complete ban on superintelligence, a type of AI that may exceed humans’ cognitive capabilities.

Axios first reported details of the briefing.