Congress
What we’re watching: One week to go
Here’s what we’re watching in transition world today:
🗓️ What we’re watching
- We’re officially one week away from Donald Trump’s return to the White House, and the Senate will begin hearings for some of the president-elect’s most important nominees this week.
- Trump and a group of House Republicans talked about tying wildfire aid to a debt ceiling increase Sunday night, Meredith Lee Hill reports this morning. On Sunday, Los Angeles County officials said they invited Trump to visit the areas ravaged by ongoing wildfires and discuss federal relief, but nothing has been scheduled.
- Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso is predicting “shock and awe” on Day One of the new term, when he expects Trump to issue “a blizzard of executive orders on the economy, as well as on the border.”
- Vice President-elect JD Vance said that people who committed violence on Jan. 6 “obviously” should not be pardoned.
- Inauguration Day rehearsals took place Sunday.
👀 What’s Trump up to?
- At his Mar-a-Lago club, Trump has been courting a number of House Republicans whose votes he will need to pass key pieces of his agenda, including a lavish dinner for House Freedom Caucus members on Friday. (Billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk also popped by.)
🚨What’s up with the nominees?
- On Tuesday at 9 a.m., Doug Collins, Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, will be the first Cabinet nominee with an official hearing, followed by embattled Defense Secretary pick Pete Hegseth, who will appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee at 9:30 a.m. Interior pick Doug Burgum will appear before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee at 10 a.m.
📝ICYMI: Here are Trump’s latest administration picks
- Over the weekend, Trump named a number of deputies, including Bill Briggs as deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration, Steven Gill Bradbury as deputy secretary of Transportation, Katharine MacGregor as the next deputy Interior secretary, David Fotouhi as deputy EPA administrator, James P. Danly as deputy secretary of Energy and Paul R. Lawrence as deputy secretary of Veterans Affairs.
Congress
Tom Kean to return?
Rep. Richard Hudson, chair of the House GOP’s campaign arm, told reporters Thursday he spoke to Rep. Tom Kean Jr. and he will be back voting in June.
Kean, a New Jersey Republican, has been missing from Capitol Hill since March 5 without explanation. Hudson, of North Carolina, said in an interview just a few days ago he hadn’t spoken to Kean in a while and only heard from Kean’s team that he could run for reelection.
Congress
House rejects Smithsonian women’s history museum bill after partisan split
The House rejected legislation Thursday to advance construction of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum after a partisan battle broke out in recent days over the long-sought building.
Lawmakers voted 216-204 to reject the legislation led by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.). Six Republican hard-liners joined all Democrats in opposition.
While 127 Democrats cosponsored an earlier version of the bill, most of them bailed after Republicans altered it ahead of the floor vote.
New language added in the House Administration Committee last month dedicated the museum to “preserving, researching, and presenting the history, achievements, and lived experiences of biological women in the United States” and prohibited the institution from seeking to “identify, present, describe, or otherwise depict any biological male as a female.”
Other new provisions called for “an equal representation of the diversity of the political viewpoints and authentic experiences held by women in the United States” and gave President Donald Trump the unilateral power to relocate the museum from sites already identified on the National Mall.
The Democratic Women’s Caucus announced earlier this week it would oppose the altered bill after working on it with Republicans for years.
“They amended the bill to give Trump and his allies unregulated power over what content and which women can be included in the museum, and the museum’s location,” Democratic Reps. Teresa Leger Fernández (N.M.), Hillary Scholten (Mich.) and Emilia Sykes (Ohio) said in a statement. “A museum about women, fought for and supported by women, should not be controlled by one man.”
Republicans also dealt with their own internal fights over the legislation this week. Several GOP lawmakers raised concerns in House Republicans’ closed door meeting Wednesday morning about why the museum was needed.
They also argued it would further divide Americans into groups when there are already women represented across the wider collection of Smithsonian museums, according to five people in the room granted anonymity to describe the private discussion.
Congress
GOP calls off votes after contentious meeting on ‘anti-weaponization’ fund
Senate GOP leaders have canceled plans to vote this week on a party-line immigration enforcement bill, a major setback as lawmakers contend with President Donald Trump’s personal political agenda.
Several Republican senators said action on the legislation would wait until after a weeklong Memorial Day recess — guaranteeing that Congress would blow a Trump-set June 1 deadline for the immigration funding.
The decision appeared to be driven by fierce internal divides over politically sensitive issues not related to the core purpose of the bill — pumping tens of billions of dollars into Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies.
It came after Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche struggled Thursday to quash GOP concerns over a newly announced $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund. Leaders had already concluded they would have to omit a $1 billion Secret Service funding line item that could have gone toward Trump’s White House ballroom due to internal dissension.
Blanche met privately with Senate Republicans as the administration and GOP leaders tried to defuse the controversy over the fund.
GOP leaders believed they had enough members who would support a proposal targeting the fund that it would ultimately be added into the filibuster-skirting bill, as Blue Light News first reported Wednesday.
Asked if the briefing changed her mind, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a critic of the fund, told reporters, “No.”
Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) — who have also been critical of the fund — declined to comment. But two people granted anonymity to describe the meeting said the meeting did not go well for the administration and that Blanche was not persuasive.
Money for the fund isn’t included in the GOP’s immigration enforcement bill. But because the bill involves Justice Department funding and the Senate Judiciary Committee is involved in the bill, senators have a path to add language related to the fund into the bill with only 51 votes. Republicans did discuss possible guardrails they could put on the fund during the meeting.
Republicans have not yet finalized the bill they plan to put on the Senate floor, raising the possibility that the chamber could punt action until after a weeklong Memorial Day recess. Senate leaders could have attendance issues if they try to keep members in town past Friday afternoon.
Asked if they could still vote on the bill this week, Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.) told reporters, “That’s being discussed.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told reporters after leaving the meeting that leaders would likely decide “within the next hour or so” about whether to send members home and reconvene after the recess.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune declined to comment on the fund or on the ability to pass a bill this week as he left the meeting.
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