It’s megabill crunch time in the Senate.

Arm-twisting over what to change in the House-passed version of the “big, beautiful” bill will largely play out behind closed doors the next few days. Strategy huddles include Senate Finance’s meeting tonight and Wednesday’s “Big Six” confab between Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Speaker Mike Johnson, their tax committee chairs and lead administration officials.

One of Thune’s biggest challenges to pass the bill by July 4 will be winning over the “Medicaid moderates” — an ideological cross-section of members who are aligned against the cuts passed by the House and have the numbers to force changes. Among them: Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. Thune can only lose three GOP senators to pass the megabill.

Thune and Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (Idaho), who is juggling Medicaid and tax conflicts in the bill, are talking to key members in anticipation of difficult negotiations. Crapo told Jordain he personally supports the House’s Medicaid work requirements, which some GOP senators wary of benefit cuts say they could also support. But beyond that, they’re steering clear of public commitments.

One potentially major sticking point: The House-passed freeze on provider taxes, which most states use to help finance their share of Medicaid costs. Sen. Jim Justice, the former West Virginia governor, called it a “real issue” and Hawley has also raised concerns. But other GOP senators, including Kevin Cramer (N.D.), want to go even further in reducing, not just freezing, the provider tax.

Republicans got a glimpse of the political minefield surrounding Medicaid while back home last week. Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst’s “we’re all going to die” response to town hall pushback about the cuts — and her decision to double down on the comments — generated days of negative headlines and ad fodder for Democrats.

Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told POLITICO’s Dasha Burns in the debut episode of her podcast “The Conversation” that the Medicaid work requirements in the bill would “future proof” the program.

Then there are the deficit hawks. President Donald Trump over the weekend warned Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) to get behind the megabill, with Paul vowing to vote against it over an included debt-limit hike.

But it’s not just Paul making noise. Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.) is calling for a line-by-line budget review to find places to slash more spending, and Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Rick Scott (Fla.) are also pushing for more cuts.

Paul hinted at hard-liners’ leverage Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” saying: “I would be very surprised if the bill at least is not modified in a good direction.”

What else we’re watching:

— Senate Dems make a move: Senate Democrats are preparing to challenge parts of the GOP megabill with the parliamentarian, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in a “Dear Colleague” letter Sunday. He highlighted a specific House provision that critics say would weaken judges’ power to enforce contempt orders.

— Trump’s budget request faces first tests: The House Appropriations Committee will begin marking up the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Agriculture portion of Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget request this Thursday. Trump’s request includes 22 percent cuts in non-defense spending and sweeping cuts that Democrats don’t appear interested in supporting (and their votes will be critical in September to avoid a government shutdown).

— Hitting Blue Light News: Trump administration officials will testify this week in defense of the president’s fiscal 2026 budget. That includes Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Tuesday, Acting FAA administrator Chris Rocheleau on Wednesday and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Wednesday and Thursday.

Jordain Carney and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

The Senate’s deficit hawks might be raising the loudest hue and cry over the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill.” But another group of Republicans is poised to have a bigger impact on the final legislative product.

Call them the “Medicaid moderates.”

They’re actually an ideologically diverse bunch — ranging from conservative Josh Hawley of Missouri to centrist Susan Collins of Maine. Yet they have found rare alignment over concerns about what the House-passed version of the GOP domestic-policy megabill does to the national safety-net health program, and they have the leverage to force significant changes in the Senate.

“I would hope that we would elect not to do anything that would endanger Medicaid benefits as a conference,” Hawley said in an interview. “I’ve made that clear to my leadership. I think others share that perspective.”

Besides Hawley and Collins, other GOP senators including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Jerry Moran of Kansas and Jim Justice of West Virginia have also drawn public red lines over health care — and they have some rhetorical backing from President Donald Trump, who has urged congressional Republicans to spare the program as much as possible.

Based on early estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, 10.3 million people would lose coverage under Medicaid if the House-passed bill were to become law — many, if not most, in red states. That could spell trouble for Majority Leader John Thune’s whip count: He can only lose three GOP senators on the expected party-line vote and still have Vice President JD Vance break a tie.

Republicans already have one all-but-guaranteed opponent in Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky so long as they stick to their plan to raise the debt limit as part of the bill. They also view Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson as increasingly likely to oppose the package after spending weeks blasting the bill on fiscal grounds.

Meeting either senator’s demands could be enormously difficult given the tight fiscal parameters through which House leaders have to squeeze the bill to advance it in their own chamber. That in turn is empowering the senators elsewhere in the GOP conference to make changes — and the Medicaid group is emerging as the key bloc to watch because of its size and its overlapping, relatively workable demands.

Heeding those asks won’t be easy. Republicans are counting on savings from Medicaid changes to offset hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, and rolling that back is likely to create political pain elsewhere for Thune & Co., who already want to cut more than the House to assuage a sizable group of spending hawks. At the same time, Speaker Mike Johnson is insisting the Senate make only minor changes to the bill so as to maintain the delicate balance in his own narrowly divided chamber.

Thune and Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) have already acknowledged that Medicaid, covering nearly 80 million low-income Americans, will be one of the biggest sticking points as they embark this month on a rewrite of the megabill. They are talking with key members in anticipation of difficult negotiations and being careful not to draw red lines publicly.

“We want to do things that are meaningful in terms of reforming programs, strengthening programs, without affecting beneficiaries,” Thune said, echoing language used by some of the concerned senators.

Crapo voiced support in an interview for one pillar of the House bill — broad new work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries — but rushed to add that he’s “still working with a 53-member caucus to get answers” to how the program can be overhauled: “I can only speak for myself.”

Complicating their task is the fact that some in the group — namely Collins and Murkowski — have a proven history of bucking their party even amid intense public pressure. The pair, in fact, helped tank the GOP’s last party-line effort on health care, in 2017.

Leaders view them as unlikely to be moved by the type of arm-twisting Republicans are planning to deploy to bring enough of the fiscal hawks on board. And then there’s Hawley, who is playing up Trump’s own warnings to congressional Republicans about keeping their hands off Medicaid.

Hawley and Trump spoke shortly before the House passed its bill, with the senator recounting that the president said “absolutely categorically, ‘Do not touch Medicaid. No Medicaid benefit cuts, none.’”

Hawley, like Crapo, has indicated he is comfortable with work requirements, but he is pushing for two major tweaks to the House language: undoing a freeze on provider taxes, which most states use to help finance their share of Medicaid costs, and new co-payment requirements for some beneficiaries that he has been calling a “sick tax.”

The provider tax changes would present an issue with multiple senators, who fear it would exacerbate the bill’s impact on state budgets and slash funding that helps keep rural hospitals afloat. Justice, a former governor, called it a “real issue.”

“They haven’t done anything to really cut into the bone except that one thing,” Justice added. ”That’s gonna put a big burden on the states.”

Moran grabbed the attention of his colleagues when he warned in a pointed April floor speech that making changes to Medicaid would hurt rural hospitals. A “significant portion” of his focus, he said, “is to make sure the hospitals have the capability and the revenues necessary to provide the services the community needs — Medicaid is a component of that.”

Collins, who is up for reelection in 2026, has also left the door open to supporting work requirements, depending on how they are crafted. She has also raised concerns about the provider tax provision, noting that “rural hospitals in my state and across the country are really teetering.”

Murkowski, meanwhile, isn’t as concerned about the provider tax, because Alaska is the only state that doesn’t use it to help cover its share of Medicaid spending. But she has expressed alarm over the House’s approach to work requirements, including a decision to speed up the implementation deadline to appease House hard-liners. She said it would be “very challenging if not impossible” for her state to implement.

As it is, any effort to water down the House’s Medicaid language will face steep resistance in other corners of the GOP-controlled Senate, where lawmakers are pushing to amp up spending cuts, not scale them back. Some senators, in fact, want to further tighten the House’s work requirements or reduce, not just freeze, the provider tax.

“I’d be damned disappointed if a Republican majority with a Republican president didn’t make some reforms,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “The provider tax is a money laundering machine. … If we don’t go after that, we’re not doing our jobs.”

Ron Johnson and a few others are continuing to push to change the cost split for those Medicaid beneficiaries made eligible under the Affordable Care Act. The federal government now picks up 90 percent of the cost, and House centrists nixed an effort by conservatives to reduce it.

One idea under discussion by conservatives is to phase in the change to appease skittish colleagues and state governments, but that is still likely to be a nonstarter for 50 GOP senators. Hawley warned that “there will be no Senate bill if that is on the table.”

Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) denounced the Trump administration’s decision to axe temporary protected status for Afghan immigrants — the latest break by the centrist Republican from President Donald Trump’s administration.

In a joint letter with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the senator urged the administration to reconsider the cancellation of the temporary protection, which affords Afghans a work permit and legal status in the U.S.

“This decision endangers thousands of lives, including Afghans who stood by the United States,” Murkowski and Shaheen — the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — wrote. “This decision represents a historic betrayal of promises made and undermines the values we fought for far more than 20 years in Afghanistan.”

The letter — which was sent May 23 and released Friday — comes amid reports that the State Department is shuttering the office that coordinated Afghan resettlement for those who helped with the war effort, part of an agency-wide reorganization aligning with the Trump administration’s moves to reduce foreign aid and assistance and refocus on “America First” priorities.

Murkowski has not been shy about criticizing her own party, while encouraging her fellow GOP senators to do the same. The Republican has rebuked President Donald Trump for his close relationship to Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing the U.S. of “walking away from our allies.” But she also acknowledged a reticence within Republican circles of defying Trump — saying “we are all afraid” of Trump’s retaliation.

She’s also not the only Republican to raise red flags about the cancellation of TPS protections for some immigrants, with Miami’s members of Congress also urging the Trump administration to continue the protections for Venezuelans and Haitians.

The Alaska Republican first criticized the decision on TPS shortly after it was announced by the Department of Homeland Security, calling it “concerning” in light of promises from Noem to address a backlog of asylum applications — which could dramatically increase as former TPS holders look for avenues to stay in the U.S.

But eliminating TPS has been one of Trump’s key campaign promises from the start, after calling the program corrupt and saying the legal status had been extended for too long.

The battle over TPS has made its way to the courts. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to revoke TPS protections for roughly 350,000 Venezuelans.

Murkowski has previously called out the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, which happened under the Biden administration, saying the “botched” operation endangered many who then came to the U.S. — and that ending protections would only exacerbate the problem.

“This administration should not compound that misstep by forcing them to return to the Taliban’s brutal regime,” Murkowski wrote on X earlier this month.