Congress

While Trump Was Away, His Megabill Went Astray

Published

1 year ago

May 17, 2025

President Donald Trump was only a few hours into a marathon flight from Abu Dhabi on Friday when he sent a crystal-clear message to Capitol Hill: Tidy up the house, kids, because dad’s coming home from his big work trip.

Or, translated into Trump-ese, “Republicans MUST UNITE behind, ‘THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL!’ … STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!”

It soon became clear Air Force One couldn’t land fast enough.

While Trump spent the week hob-nobbing with crown princes, emirs and titans of industry, Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans were watching Trump’s legislative agenda run slowly aground. Less than two hours after Trump sent his message, a clutch of hard-line conservatives joined with Democrats to tank a key House Budget Committee vote on Trump’s big tax, border and defense bill.

It was the latest demonstration that while Johnson and fellow GOP leaders might be within striking distance of advancing the “big, beautiful bill,” Trump remains the essential ingredient to getting anything done on Capitol Hill.

So after a five-day, eight-time-zone hiatus, expect the closer to start closing. The coming week, no doubt, will see a flurry of holdouts shuffling back and forth from the Capitol to the White House, not to mention an angry phone call or 20.

“My assumption is Trump’s going to get involved — I don’t know what that looks like yet,” a senior GOP aide, who like others was granted anonymity to speak frankly about behind-the-scenes conversations, told me Friday afternoon.

Don’t expect the president to be happy about it. The view on Air Force One, according to a senior White House aide, was that Johnson & Co. need to step up their own game and get their membership in line. The person said in a text that the president is “always willing to make calls” but that “Republicans on Blue Light News need to figure their shit out.”

Frustrations inside the MAGA-sphere have been mounting for some time at Johnson’s seeming inability to find a path forward without leaning on Trump. It’s long been assumed that Johnson won’t have the political juice to push this legislation through on his own.

“You think the president likes being the president and the speaker’s babysitter?” as Ohio Rep. Max Miller, a former Trump aide, told NOTUS amid last month’s budget haggling.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said as much in a stern statement issued shortly after the failed budget vote, betraying little patience for the antics from the handful of hard-right holdouts: “The White House expects ALL Republicans to vote for this bill and successfully pass it through Committee in the near future.”

To be fair to Johnson, he’s dealing with a historically small House majority and a staggeringly complex piece of legislation. Just about any time he tries to assuage conservatives who are ideologically closer to the House GOP’s center of gravity, he repels moderates who gave Republicans their majority, and vice versa. Furthermore, presidents have always served as dealmakers of last resort in any tricky Hill negotiation

But there was real annoyance Friday at how this particular implosion had played out. It was long expected that ultraconservatives would flex their muscle — likely in the House Rules Committee, where they hold a key bloc of votes.

Instead, the showdown that was expected next week, with Trump back in town, played out as the president was wrapping up his Middle East tour. To many Republicans’ chagrin, Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) pressed forward with the failed vote Friday in spite of the obvious opposition, believing it would be best to put the holdouts on the record.

One senior Republican official expressed frustration that the episode not only made the conservatives look bad for blocking the bill, but also Trump and Johnson for suggesting they don’t have control over the process.

Friday’s budget-panel implosion was, in some ways, months in the making. As I wrote in January, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and fellow fiscal hawks have been on a collision course with a president who cares more about notching wins than curbing deficits. While hard-liners view the megabill as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reduce spending, Trump sees it as a vehicle to deliver on his campaign promises — including tax cuts and money for the Pentagon and immigration enforcement — ahead of a midterm cycle he’s increasingly obsessed with.

Trump should be worried that Roy & Co. are making demands that will be hard to meet and hard to walk back. Roy said Friday the bill “falls profoundly short” and “does not do what we say it does with respect to deficits.”

“I’m not going to sit here and say that everything is hunky-dory when this is the Budget Committee,” he steamed. “We are supposed to do something to actually result in a balanced budget. But we’re not.”

He’s set against centrists and even some MAGA loyalists who are extremely wary of cutting too deeply into the social safety net. Sen. Josh Hawley — not exactly a moderate squish — blasted the House bill and vowed not to support legislation that harms working-class families.

“They’re not on Medicaid because they want to be — they’re on Medicaid because they cannot afford health insurance in the private market,” Hawley told BLN this week, contradicting careful GOP messaging about how the cuts would only affect the “able-bodied” who should not be on benefit rolls.

Aside from Medicaid, GOP leaders are scrambling to deal with blue-district Republicans who are insisting on hiking the cap on the state-and-local-tax deduction, red-state members who fear their state budgets are at risk and farm-state types who want to preserve at least some Biden-era clean energy incentives.

This has mostly been Johnson’s problem to solve, and he and other GOP leaders have tried to be sensitive to not pulling Trump in too early to fix their problems. There’s an internal understanding that they need to do most of the cleanup on their own before calling dad and tattling on the naughty kids.

There’s other levers they can pull on, too. Vice President JD Vance has helped resolve some thorny Hill matters, and members of the president’s inner circle have perfected the art of dogging Republicans who stand in their way with online pressure campaigns.

Don’t be surprised in the coming days when the White House activates allies on the outside while Trump employs the inside game to move people to “yes.” Indeed, the Trump administration official whom I texted with Friday warned obstructionists they’ll pay a price.

“Voters gave them a once-in-a-generation opportunity to pass a good bill,” the person said. “And for those who vote against, they should know their careers are in jeopardy.”

Congress

Mamdani boosts congressional slate ahead of primary election

Published

14 hours ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

NEW YORK — With just five days to go until the primary election in New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a stark warning to members of Congress who believe “incumbency is a substitute for action”: Watch out.

“People often ask me what I think of the state of the Democratic Party,” Mamdani said to the crowd at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn as he boosted his endorsed congressional candidates. “This slate here today is our answer. The Democratic Party must change.”

The democratic socialist framed Tuesday’s election as much more than what that means for New York, though. In recounting how people also ask him about the 2028 presidential election, he put it bluntly: “It starts now. It starts on Tuesday.”

“For far too long, our party has seen its job as managing decline instead of delivering material change for working people,” Mamdani said. “That old way of thinking will lose on Tuesday. And frankly, it will lose in South Carolina and New Hampshire. It will fall short of 270 electoral votes, because the party of the past will not be what leads us into the future.”

Mamdani, joined by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, urged his supporters to show up for his endorsed candidates “the way you showed up for me.” They include former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who’s challenging two-term Rep. Dan Goldman; state Assemblymember Claire Valdez, who’s vying for retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s seat; and community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, who’s trying to unseat five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Mamdani’s endorsed slate of legislative candidates were at the rally, too.

The rally featured standard stump speeches from the candidates, highlighting the need to support working class New Yorkers and immigrants. Speakers called out the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel group that has loomed over many of these primaries — despite no evident spending from its independent expenditure arm. Sanders also emphasized his call to ban super PACs, which have reshaped primaries across the city.

Taking place just hours after the massive ticker-tape parade celebrating the Knicks’ historic championship, there were also Knicks references galore.

“I hate to break it to you, but OG Anunoby is not here to save the day,” said Mamdani, who was wearing a Knicks jersey under his suit. “The only hands we can count on are ours.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks during a get out the vote rally ahead of New York's primary election on June 18, 2026, in Brooklyn.

Sanders, who is wildly popular in New York, previously endorsed Valdez and Lander. Both Valdez and Avila Chevalier are members of the Democratic Socialists of America and are backed by the city chapter in their bids. Sanders had not officially endorsed Avila Chevalier prior to the rally.

“Why are progressives and socialist candidates winning elections all across this country?” Sanders asked. “The answer in my view is not complicated. The working class of America understands that our current economic system is rigged, that it is designed to benefit the wealthy and the powerful.”

Polling has shown Lander with a lead over Goldman, and a tight race for Velázquez’s seat. Public polling is scarce in the Espaillat race, but recent internal surveys suggest Avila Chevalier is posing a real challenge to the incumbent. Mamdani endorsed her just weeks ago, much later than Lander and Valdez, but his engagement in the race has significantly elevated its profile.

“Six months ago, they told us this race was over before it started,” Avila Chevalier said at the rally. “They told us Adriano was untouchable, that he was an institution, that you don’t run against someone like him and win. That this district was his, and that we should wait our turn. And they said it with such confidence, like the outcome had already been written. Look around. Look at what we’ve built.”

Mamdani’s decision to get involved in congressional races is stress-testing how the new mayor navigates relations with powerful, well-respected party figures — many of whom he’s on the opposite side of.

Mamdani’s endorsement is expected to be a significant asset for his picks; he had dominant performances across these districts in last year’s mayoral primary. And that shine doesn’t seem to have dulled. Recent polling has shown that Mamdani has high approval ratings.

Goldman did not support Mamdani during last year’s mayoral primary or the general election, as Lander has often pointed out. Espaillat backed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary, but supported Mamdani in the general election. Valdez’s opponents, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso and city Council Member Julie Won, both supported Mamdani in the primary.

The mayor has been active on the trail for his congressional candidates of choice in the closing stretch of the campaign. And he touted them all in an advertisement that ran during the first game of the Knicks’ finals run.

Still, Lander has tried to keep some distance. When asked at a recent press conference why he would appear in that ad with Avila Chevalier, who attended a pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in 2023 — the same rally Lander said he left the DSA over — he said it was an “opportunity to show New Yorkers that politics can be a team sport.” He also clarified that he has not endorsed candidates in any other congressional primaries.

Avila Chevalier told reporters that she went to that rally to “stand against” Israel engaging in “a response that is often disproportionate and creates a greater loss of life.” She added that she has “condemned Hamas” and does “not believe that celebrating the loss of anybody’s life is OK.”

Kings Theatre isn’t located in any of the districts these congressional hopefuls are trying to represent — though it neighbors the seats that Lander and Valdez have their eyes on.

It’s especially far from Espaillat’s district, which includes parts of upper Manhattan and the Bronx.

While handing out campaign literature to people walking out of the subway in Hamilton Heights, Blue Light News asked Espaillat if he had thoughts about Avila Chevalier appearing at the rally.

“I’m rallying right here in my district with my constituents — not in Brooklyn,” he replied.

Jason Beeferman contributed to this report.

Congress

Meta faces calls for Congress to probe scam ads targeting seniors

Published

17 hours ago

June 18, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Retirement groups are calling on Congress to investigate Meta over a wave of social media scams targeting older Americans.

In a letter sent Thursday to House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.) and ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the groups alleged Meta has been slow to take down fraudulent ads, leaving seniors vulnerable to financial loss. The letter, shared exclusively with POLITICO, was signed by the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Postal Workers Union Retirees and the American Federation of Teachers, among others.

“Fraudulent Medicare ads have proliferated on Meta platforms and too many seniors are getting scammed while Meta profits,” said Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans. “We are calling on Congress to investigate how these scams are allowed to spread, what Meta knew about them, and why stronger protections are not in place. Seniors should not be left vulnerable while scammers and tech companies cash in.”

The letter’s demands follow a report published last month by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit advocacy group, which alleged that Meta has profited by leaving up fraudulent ads, many of which target Medicare recipients.

“Scammers are determined criminals who use increasingly sophisticated tactics to defraud people and evade detection,” Meta spokesperson Andy Stone said in a statement. “We aggressively fight scams on and off our platforms because they’re not good for us or the people and businesses that rely on our services and for years we’ve been one of law enforcement’s strongest partners in the fight against this type of online crime — identifying criminals, disrupting their crimes and helping bring them to justice.”

Stone pointed to several examples of Meta’s efforts to combat scams on its platform, including a recent collaboration with U.S. and Thai law enforcement to disrupt online scams.

It’s not the first time Meta has faced scrutiny over the scams: Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) urged the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities Exchange Commission to open an investigation into the company in November after Reuters reported that Meta in internal documents projected 10 percent of its 2024 revenue would come from fraudulent ads. And in February, a group of bipartisan lawmakers pressed Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg over its plans to prevent and combat fraud on its platforms.

Reps. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.) and Lou Correa (D-Calif.) also introduced bipartisan legislation earlier this year to combat predatory scam ads.

Congress

Congress lays out path for final passage of housing bill

Published

17 hours ago

June 18, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Congress is expected to send a landmark, bipartisan housing affordability bill to President Donald Trump’s desk by the end of next week as the Senate and House schedule action on the legislation in the coming days.

The Senate has teed up the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act for final passage on Monday, after completing all its necessary procedural votes this week.

The legislation will then move on to the House where GOP leadership plans to open debate on Wednesday, with a vote expected as early as the same day, according to six people familiar with the vote granted anonymity to discuss plans.

House leadership plans to suspend the rules, requiring a two-thirds majority vote, to speed up the bill’s path to Trump’s desk. Final passage could be pushed to Thursday depending on timing, the people said.

The housing bill aims to tackle housing affordability and boost homeownership and supply ahead of a midterm election dominated by cost-of-living concerns.

The four lawmakers leading the negotiations over the legislation — Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott (R-S.C.), ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and ranking member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) — came to an agreement Tuesday afternoon after months of back and forth on the bill’s contents.

The housing affordability legislation, which the White House supports, contains a provision limiting the role of large institutional investors in the single-family housing market, which was a key condition for Trump to sign the bill.