Congress
What does Josh Gottheimer want now?
Josh Gottheimer didn’t raise tens of millions of dollars, carefully cultivate home-state political allies and spend more than a decade burnishing a bipartisan “problem solver” reputation to be sending out news releases about his choices for the annual congressional student art competition.
Yet that’s where the 51-year-old New Jersey Democrat finds himself, 166th in House seniority and suddenly plotting his next act in politics.
Losing last year’s Democratic primary for governor was just the start of it. He’s also no longer atop the high-profile caucus of centrist lawmakers he co-founded, and his brand of pro-business, pro-Israel politics is decidedly on the outs inside his own party.
And yet: Gottheimer is showing no sign of letting go of his political career — or his relevance on Capitol Hill — anytime soon.
Since losing the gubernatorial nomination to former colleague Mikie Sherrill, he has thrown himself into crash bipartisan efforts to extend expiring Obamacare tax credits, end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown and limit the Trump administration’s authority in Iran.
He is leading a coalition to shape House Democrats’ stance on artificial intelligence policy, meeting with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman last week. He has positioned himself as a leading voice in the caucus against antisemitism and against the party’s leftward turn — leading a recent media crusade against progressive influencer Hasan Piker, for instance. He’s also known to have the ear of Minority Leader — and potential speaker — Hakeem Jeffries.
“When you’ve tried to move out of the House and then come back to it, sometimes I think the best path forward is to say, ‘This is where I’m a good fit, and I need to be a leader here, and I can have a long career here,’” said former White House chief of staff John Podesta, a friend of Gottheimer’s dating back to their days together in President Bill Clinton’s administration.
Longtime observers of his ladder-climbing ways — including many of his House colleagues — may have a hard time buying it, but Gottheimer insisted in a series of interviews he’s interested in making the most of the perch he has.
“I’m very concerned with parts of the direction of the party, and to make sure that we keep the party from going off a cliff — I take that part seriously,” he said. “I know my colleagues won’t agree with me on everything, and I’m seen as one of the more centrist, commonsense members. I think it’s a very important part of the party to hold on to and to make sure we don’t get captured by Democratic socialists.”
Gottheimer does not have a high-level leadership position from which to espouse that view. But he has never lacked for a platform, and he said he’s ready to play Whac-A-Mole to beat back forces who would pull the party hard left.
“Who the hell knows?” he said of what, or who, he might push back on next. “These things just pop up.”
“But I know that I can have a lot of influence in making sure that we legislate the right way,” he added, “and stopping things from going the wrong way.”
For evidence of Gottheimer’s political savvy, look no further than the fact that in a year where scores of old-school, dealmaking Democrats are facing progressive primary challenges, he ran unopposed for renomination and is set to easily win a sixth term representing New Jersey’s affluent northern tip.
Likely intimidating potential challengers is Gottheimer’s massive campaign war chest: He has over $11 million in his coffers, even after spending $9 million on his run for governor. But he also knows what animates his constituents, many of whom have direct or indirect ties to the financial industry or are otherwise pro-business.
“The more progressive voices in our district are not always enchanted with Josh,” Loretta Weinberg, a former majority leader of the New Jersey Senate who lives in Gottheimer’s district, said in an interview. “But the mainstream Democrats here, I think, are pretty satisfied with his representation.”
Gottheimer’s ability to keep his ear to the ground and make unlikely allies has also served him well on Capitol Hill. He’s part of an increasing rare breed of Democrats who maintains serious friendships and working relationships across the aisle.
Those include Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who served six years in the House with Gottheimer and whose families have grown close enough that their teenage daughters are co-authoring a book together about bipartisanship.
“Josh and I might not agree on every issue, but he’s a friend,” Mullin said during his confirmation hearing, at which Gottheimer sat in the front row.
And while progressives have often bristled at Gottheimer’s unapologetic moderation and abrasive style, key leaders on the left give him credit for being an honest and accessible sparring partner.
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, publicly confronted Gottheimer in 2023 during a closed-door meeting where Hamas’ attack on Israel was discussed. But Casar struck a more diplomatic tone in an interview, noting Gottheimer attended a recent CPC meeting to update members on the AI commission’s work.
“Josh and I have our differences, but we have a good rapport,” Casar said.
Gottheimer’s most important alliance, however, is with Jeffries — one that has its origin in their work together to advance the 2018 First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill led by Jeffries that passed with bipartisan support. The pair later teamed up on a controversial PAC aimed at defending incumbent Democrats from left-wing primary challengers; they both also maintain friendly ties with AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby group that is increasingly toxic to Democratic voters.
Jeffries described Gottheimer as a “friend” in an interview, said the two speak “regularly” and predicted he would remain a leading voice on AI matters in a Democratic majority. Jeffries has also appointed him to a coveted spot on the House Intelligence Committee, and his GOP relationships could come in handy should Democrats win the majority and Jeffries seizes the speaker’s gavel.
“Josh is a get-stuff-done force of nature who can strongly agree to disagree with a whole host of folks, while still maintaining an excellent interpersonal relationship,” Jeffries said. “That’s a very valuable trait to have in an institution like the House.”
Gottheimer’s relationship to his longtime power center — the Problem Solvers Caucus, which he launched in 2017 with then-Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) — is more complicated. The group helped nudge along bipartisan bills in the Trump and Biden administration — notably delivering the decisive votes on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill — but has since been racked with internal tensions.
A particularly explosive moment came during the 2023 GOP fight over the speaker’s gavel. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), the Problem Solvers co-chair, wanted Democrats to join most Republicans and save Kevin McCarthy from being ousted. They did not, and Fitzpatrick fumed over the split.
More recently, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) quit as a vice chair of the group after Democrats abandoned her bill to advance the Smithsonian National Women’s History Museum when anti-transgender language and other controversial provisions were attached.
She said she personally gets along well with Gottheimer and other caucus members, but that “when we need their vote, they’re nowhere to be found.”
Gottheimer insists that the “gang is back together” now and there “is still a need” for the caucus to broker deals in the House, even as redistricting threatens its core set of bipartisan dealmakers. New York Rep. Tom Suozzi, the current Democratic co-chair, said he expected Gottheimer to be an “influential” voice in the group on issues such as affordability, AI and antisemitism.
“I think that I’m focused on getting things done, and I think that Josh is really focused on getting things done,” he said.
That kind of verbiage is common inside the Problem Solvers group, and especially with Gottheimer, who sat in his office recently and expounded on his pragmatic post-gubernatorial-campaign approach to the House.
“I mean, for now, I just want to be positioned to get shit done and to be helpful that way,” he said.
“Get shit done” also happens to be the trademark of another early-50s Democratic politician with a remarkably similar background: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro shares Jewish heritage and a moderate ideological bent with Gottheimer in addition to a first name.
With Shapiro occupying top-tier status in the developing 2028 Democratic presidential race, there’s speculation that Gottheimer could find a new outlet for his considerable ambitions somewhere in the executive branch. Podesta said he has a “combination of skills” that would make him valuable to any Democratic administration.
But Gottheimer insisted in an interview his focus is squarely on the House — where he sees himself as uniquely positioned as a bulwark against the party’s leftward impulses.
“I know I would have been a governor who got shit done, and my name would be Josh,” he said on the Shapiro comparison. “Listen, I think that I learned a lot from that race, and I’m taking what I learned that race and putting it to work right now. … I came back really refocused and re-energized in Congress.”
The Republican congressional agenda is melting in the summer heat.
Intraparty fights, tight margins, election-year pressures and an indifferent president have grounded the pre-midterm legislative plans of GOP leaders on Capitol Hill, with just a handful of days left to do anything about it.
House leaders, in particular, appear to have lost control of their chamber with just eight session days before a planned five-week summer recess. They discarded two of those days this week, sending members home early for Independence Day after a member rebellion left them unable to move major bills.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s demands for action on a stalled GOP elections bill and a series of mercurial power moves have left Senate Republicans frustrated and morose as major legislation piles up — including the annual defense policy bill, fiscal 2027 spending measures, an extension of government spy powers, the farm bill and more.
“Who needs Democrats when you have your own party derailing the Trump agenda?” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) lamented Tuesday as members unexpectedly scattered for the upcoming holiday.
Absent strong leadership or presidential intervention, the contemporary Congress tends to act only when deadlines force it to, and that has made the early part of this summer especially languid on Capitol Hill.
Lawmakers blew past a supposed June deadline for the surveillance program’s renewal, with spy agencies able to rely on existing wiretaps into early next year. The Pentagon bill doesn’t have to get done until the end of the year, and government funding expires Sept. 30, when it is likely to be extended beyond the November election — along with the farm bill.
Still, frustrations are mounting among the lawmakers who toil at the committee level to prepare bills for a dysfunctional House floor.
“We lost four bills that we might have been able to get across the floor,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said Tuesday. “We’re losing time, and time is a very precious commodity.”
The one major piece of legislation passed in recent weeks, a bipartisan housing bill, remains unsigned by Trump, who recently called it a “big yawn.” And the GOP’s chances of passing a new policy bill under the party-line reconciliation process are looking increasingly remote.
House GOP leaders hoped a Trump administration request for defense funding would jump-start plans for that longshot bill, which could carry other Republican priorities ahead of the midterms. Instead, members are mired in fights over how to pay for the package, and hopes of moving forward with a budget blueprint for the bill ahead of the July 4 recess collapsed last month.
Key rank-and-file members and some House chairs huddled in Speaker Mike Johnson’s office Wednesday to plot a way forward on a reconciliation package, but another meeting with Budget Committee Republicans was canceled after GOP leaders sent lawmakers home early.
Those who stayed — including Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas), an avowed cheerleader for the party-line bill— acknowledged hope is fading fast.
“After this recess, if it doesn’t happen in the first couple of days, then I think it’s in real trouble,” Pfluger, chair of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said in an interview.
Only a handful of potential developments appear capable of pulling the GOP majorities out of their summer torpor.
In the Senate, members are on guard for a potential Supreme Court confirmation fight — especially after National Public Radio mistakenly published a false report about Justice Samuel Alito’s retirement.
Otherwise the chamber is set to debate its version of the defense policy bill and process a handful of Trump nominations later this month before starting its summer recess. Other bills, including those dealing with college sports and cryptocurrency regulations, could also come to the floor.
Republicans in both chambers believe they could be forced to act on an emergency Pentagon funding request that the White House transmitted to Capitol Hill last week to cover the expense of the war with Iran. Farm assistance, disaster aid and other bipartisan priorities could ride along on that bill.
But the military funding request is facing serious doubts as GOP lawmakers bristle at a lack of information from the Trump administration on how the requested $67 billion would be spent — and whether servicemember paychecks and munitions stockpiles might be at imminent risk. Key Republicans left a classified briefing from senior Pentagon officials at the Capitol Wednesday frustrated at the unanswered questions.
“We recognize that the department needs more money fast,” said Rep. Ken Calvert of California, the top Republican responsible for shepherding the supplemental bill through the House. “We’ve got to figure out exactly how much that is, and we’ve got to do that as fast as possible.”
Asked as he left the briefing when exactly the Pentagon needs the money, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) said, “Now.”
“This is really, really, really crucial,” he said.
But even if the administration coughs up the details appropriators like Calvert and Diaz-Balart are demanding, there is no sign the hard-liners holding the House floor hostage are willing to end their blockade — to say nothing about a potential Democratic filibuster in the Senate.
The 13 Republicans who tanked a procedural vote Tuesday had a variety of grievances. Some wanted to pressure the Senate to take up the elections bill, the SAVE America Act. Others wanted to protest Johnson’s failure to act on a border security measure, as they claim he promised to do weeks ago.
“When leadership is making promises and not following through and then you don’t do anything about it, then it’d be, shame on me,” said Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.).
But the proposed border bill is entangled in other intra-GOP conflicts, according to five people granted anonymity to describe internal conversations. House GOP leaders and leadership staff huddled in a series of closed-door meetings Wednesday over the various issues, with still no solution to reopening the floor.
Some centrist Republicans don’t want to vote on it before the midterms, they said, and farm-state members are demanding GOP leaders add guestworker visa provisions — something immigration hard-liners sharply oppose.
Johnson held a call Wednesday with Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other members to try to find a path forward without making much progress, according to the five people.
It didn’t help, some members noted this week, that members were sent home early rather than hash out their differences in person.
“We shouldn’t be leaving town,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said. “We ought to be working, and we’re not doing it.”
Calen Razor and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
House conservatives bristled this week over the Senate’s refusal to pass the SAVE America Act — the GOP elections bill that President Donald Trump has called his “No. 1 priority” in Congress — and shut down the floor in protest.
Their outrage has obscured an inconvenient truth for the Republicans locking arms with the president to push for the bill: It can’t even pass the House — at least not the version Trump is pushing.
Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged as much this week, appearing to concede he does not have the votes to move forward with a drastic crackdown on mailed ballots that Trump has repeatedly demanded this year.
Instead, Johnson and other House leaders have stuck with an older version of the SAVE America Act that focuses on proof-of-citizenship requirements but otherwise lets states run their elections as they see fit.
“I’m going to do everything I can with the vote tallies that we have,” he said when asked by a Blue Light News reporter if a Trump-style approach to mail voting could come to the floor.
“We all do” want to follow Trump’s lead on the issue, Johnson added. “But the mail-in ballot, he’s acknowledged, is a very difficult thing to regulate at the federal level, because different states do it differently.”
When a band of conservative hard-liners pushed over the past week to add the election bill to the annual Pentagon policy bill, Johnson moved to attach the version of the bill that narrowly passed the House in February, not a broader version that includes the additional provisions Trump has demanded. The latest version Trump wants has never passed the House — which is part of the problem.
The added provisions Trump wants include a blanket prohibition on transgender people playing women’s sports, a ban on gender-affirming surgeries for minors and the mail voting crackdown — which could effectively end the no-excuse policies both blue and red states employ to send ballots out widely.
Trump has said he would allow exceptions for military members, the disabled and other small groups but he has shown no sign he is willing to abandon the push entirely — saying just this week that the mail voting restrictions must be included. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office this week the “no mail ballots” provision was “maybe the most important of all, because it’s so corrupt.” He added he was willing to allow “strong exceptions” for military members and other limited cases.
But the lack of widespread GOP support for upending the voting systems in states like Arizona, Florida and Alaska is an open secret on Capitol Hill, where many Republicans credit mailed ballots with helping them win tight races.
“Listen, absentee ballots are not a bad thing historically as long as you put some kind of structure on it,” Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nevada) said in an interview. “Just have some commonsensical safeguards for when it has to be postmarked by.”
The Supreme Court last week struck down Trump’s attempts to regulate mail voting by executive order — by restricting the counting of ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive afterward.
Amodei said he was “happy” to hear of the ruling: “It says mail-in voting in and of itself is not evil. … There ought to be some mechanism for you to do that”
Rep. Julie Fedorchak (R-N.D.) is an outspoken supporter of the SAVE America Act and has introduced a bill that could allow Republicans to incorporate portions of the elections overhaul in a party-line budget reconciliation bill. But she said a near-total ban on mail-in voting would pose problems for states like hers, where some counties have a single polling place.
“We’re a rural state,” she said. “I understand the concerns about mail-in voting … but I think the solution that I’m in favor of is restricting it and creating these commonsense reforms for it.”
Johnson acknowledged those concerns in his comments Tuesday, saying residents of rural states such as Alaska sometimes find it “very difficult to get to a ballot box, and so they use mail-in ballots very effectively, and I think securely, and that’s something that has to be contended with.”
“There are other states that do it well, and without a problem,” Johnson said. “Our concerns are with the handful, five or six blue states, who abuse this, and California is the avatar for this, because it is so ridiculous.”
In the Senate, where even the narrower House-passed version of the bill has languished due to GOP divisions and a Democratic filibuster, there is also an understanding that the expanded bill Trump wants is DOA.
During a lunch with Trump last week, Sen. Rick Scott told colleagues that while the expanded version of the election bill — including the mail-in ballot provisions — were good policies, there wasn’t consensus for them within the Senate GOP, according to a copy of the Florida Republican’s notes reviewed by Blue Light News.
Instead, Scott pointed to other tactics as a more realistic way forward, such as attempting to launch an extended debate on the slimmed-down bill that does not include Trump’s latest demands.
Calen Razor, Jordain Carney and Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.
Last July 4 recess, House Republicans were triumphantly celebrating the massive victory of clearing the party’s tax and spending bill.
Fast forward a year and Speaker Mike Johnson can’t even get enough votes to open his chamber’s floor for debate.
“Who needs Democrats when you have your own party derailing the Trump agenda,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis said Tuesday.
A rebellion by a small band of conservatives now jeopardizes members’ top priorities as the legislative calendar ahead of the midterms rapidly shrinks. Progress on the annual Pentagon policy bill, fiscal 2027 government funding bills, Iran war funding measure, third party-line reconciliation bill and more is frozen in the party’s paralysis.
Frustration at the roughly dozen Republicans who refused to support a procedural vote to unlock floor business exploded Tuesday afternoon as members watched their legislation become collateral damage. The hard-liners want Johnson to do more to force the Senate to pass an election security bill.
“We’ve got knuckleheads taking down the rules, that’s frustrating,” Rep. John Rutherford said in an interview. “They think they’re putting some kind of pressure on the Senate, but you don’t put pressure on the Senate by shutting down the House floor.”
Anger from the hard-liners had been simmering for days even as Johnson tried to appease the group by effectively attaching the SAVE America Act to the must-pass defense policy bill.
Several hard-liners who voted against the procedural rule, like Reps. Chip Roy and Andy Harris, also cited what they said was a broken promise from Johnson to hold a vote on an immigration bill before the July 4 recess, among other concerns.
Now lawmakers will return July 13 to a chaotic mess of a to-do list.
They’ll need to use valuable floor time to pass the defense policy bill, including votes on more than 300 amendments. A stack of fiscal 2027 spending bills GOP appropriators wanted to pass before recess awaits them, as does an $88 billion emergency funding request from Trump for the Iran war and farm aid.
And hanging from a thread: the GOP’s hope to clear another party-line bill to help members campaign before the midterms.
A meeting initially set for today between House Budget Republicans and GOP leaders to discuss the next steps on a third reconciliation bill was canceled in light of the schedule change.
Another casualty of the frozen floor: Republicans left town unable to vote on a ceremonial resolution commemorating the one-year anniversary of the tax-cut legislation that remains the GOP’s major legislative victory in Trump’s second term.
To pull off that final vote, Johnson had to muscle near complete unity from his members and plow through months of lawmaker angst and discord to meet Trump’s self-imposed deadline of Independence Day.
Johnson tried to project optimism amid his conference’s meltdown Tuesday.
“We don’t have time to waste because we’re coming up on an election and the end of Congress,” Johnson told reporters. “It’s frustrating, but we’ll get everybody together and then do it again. This is life in a small majority.”
With just eight legislative days on the calendar between now and Congress’ August recess, and 16 days more between then and the November elections, Johnson’s optimism faces the brutal reality of a short timeline.
What else we’re watching:
— BENNET, DEGETTE LOSE PRIMARIES: Stunning losses for two of Colorado’s most prominent Democrats Tuesday were the latest sign of boiling anti-establishment rage among the electorate. Sen. Michael Bennet will return to the Senate to finish out the last two years of his term after losing the Democratic primary for Colorado governor. And in the 1st District, Democratic socialist Melat Kiros defeated 15-term Rep. Diana DeGette.
— NYC SOCIALIST SWEEP COMPLICATES REDISTRICTING PLAN: It’s no secret Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is spearheading a mid-decade redistricting drive to win control of the House. But the results of last week’s primaries in New York City add a new wrinkle to that project: How will he handle foes from within his own party?
William Steakin and Joe Anuta contributed to this report.
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