Congress

With Blanche in limbo, Cornyn hands DOJ new Trump settlement proposal

Published

2 hours ago

July 30, 2026

Sen. John Cornyn said Thursday he has sent the Justice Department a new offer to resolve the standoff that has thrown Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general into limbo.

The negotiations surround modifications to a controversial DOJ-brokered settlement agreement between President Donald Trump and the IRS. Cornyn said the administration remains “reluctant to change” the text of the settlement — which the Texas Republican says is essential to Blanche winning his vote.

“We provided some additional paper that basically committed him to his sworn testimony from the Judiciary Committee — which, if he would put that in writing, would satisfy my concerns,” Cornyn said.

The back-and-forth comes after Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) postponed a Thursday committee vote on Blanche’s nomination as Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) continue to haggle over the IRS settlement. Either man’s “no” vote could essentially bottle up Blanche’s nomination in the Judiciary panel.

Blanche testified to the committee on July 16 that the “anti-weaponization fund” set out in the settlement was dead as well as that restrictions on IRS audits of Trump are limited. Cornyn pointed to that testimony Thursday as crucial elements that he wants in writing.

“The administration and DOJ know where we stand, and they can decide whether they want this problem solved or not,” Cornyn said. “I don’t know whether they think they can wait us out or think we’ll cave.”

A DOJ official granted anonymity to describe the sensitive negotiations said the department sent “new language” to Cornyn and Tillis on Wednesday night. But Cornyn had called previous Justice Department proposals not “responsive” to his concerns, and it remains to be seen if an agreement can be reached before the Senate leaves next week for August recess.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in an interview Thursday that the GOP’s goal is to resolve the standoff as quickly as possible.

“I think they’re working on trying to get the questions answered so they can tee him up and move him soon, like probably next week,” Thune said.

Thune added that the “idea” is still to try to confirm Blanche before the Senate leaves for five weeks.

Congress

Finance Republicans kill bid to stop Trump IRS audit-immunity deal

Published

44 minutes ago

July 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee defeated an effort Thursday by Democrats to block a plan by the Trump administration to shield the president from IRS audits.

Lawmakers voted along party lines, 14-13, to kill an amendment to a tax-administration bill before the panel that would have barred the administration from implementing the plan.

While Democrats denounced the immunity deal as an illegal abuse of power, Republicans said little aside from saying they are working with the administration to change the plan as part of negotiations to confirm acting attorney general Todd Blanche as attorney general.

Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) warned that accepting Democratic amendment would probably doom the underlying legislation, which is aimed at streamlining IRS operations.

“This is not the place,” Crapo told colleagues. “If this bill were to become the vehicle where this issue is resolved, it would achieve basically making this bill a partisan bill” and that “would turn this bill into a bill that has a much dimmer future for becoming law.”

Lawmakers later approved the full measure on a 26-1 vote, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) the lone opponent.

“No other taxpayer, ever, has gotten this kind of a deal,” she said. “I cannot support a bill that rubber stamps Donald Trump’s corruption. Congress needs to stand up and put a stop to it.”

The administration announced in May a plan to spare Trump and his family from IRS audits in exchange for him dropping a likely unsuccessful lawsuit against the agency over the leak by a contractor of his tax information to the New York Times.

Democrats have been incensed by the plan, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who sits on the Finance Committee, has been demanding changes, though Cornyn’s suggestions are unlikely to quell Democratic outrage.

Cornyn wants to clarify that the audit protections only applies to the parties named in Trump’s suit, and that it only applies to returns already filed — not future filings. Cornyn has complained that Blanche already agreed to that during his confirmation hearing earlier this month, but that the administration must put it in writing. The Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Cornyn is also a member, delayed a scheduled Thursday vote on Blanche’s nomination as Cornyn and the White House continue to negotiate.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another tax writer critical of the immunity deal, said he believes the administration is working “in good faith” to address objections to the audit immunity plan.

The tax-administration legislation, which lawmakers hope to approve during a lame-duck session of Congress, includes more than 60 relatively uncontroversial provisions aimed at improving the tax system.

Congress

Capitol agenda: Thune tries to teach Trump Senate math

Published

5 hours ago

July 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

John Thune is stuck in between President Donald Trump’s demands and the realities of Senate math.

Thune has eight days to appease the president who wants to see the framework for a third GOP bill advance before senators break for summer recess.

But the Senate majority leader in an interview with Jordain says he doesn’t have the 50 votes needed to adopt the budget plan right now. And he’s uncertain the president would be happy with the substantially watered-down form of the election security bill — the SAVE America Act — that Trump sees as the centerpiece of the measure.

“I think the question at the end is, is that going to be satisfactory to him?” Thune said. “And so we’re still trying to figure that out.”

Around the same time, Trump was in the Oval Office insisting Thune “has the votes” to kill the Senate’s longstanding filibuster and pass the elections bill. He went on to sow doubt on whether he believed Thune was fit to lead Republicans.

“We will find out, and I will let you know,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.

The White House, meanwhile, sent a number of Trump officials to lobby for Reconciliation 3.0 Wednesday, but they struggled to squash GOP senators’ skepticism about the administration’s vision.

Republicans laid out for officials the political complications of taking up the House-passed $95 billion budget resolution in their chamber. Senate Budget Chair Ron Johnson, for example, said including the SAVE America provisions in the Senate — unlike in the House — could involve more committees and open up the range of issues Democrats would be able to force politically troublesome votes on.

“I think we all hate vote-a-rama,” Johnson added. “Some people are more sensitive to the kind of votes they have to take.”

Meanwhile, some senate want more military spending than the $60 billion House Republicans laid out in their own framework.

“I think we have challenges that need to be met,” Sen. Jerry Moran said after a closed-door Senate GOP meeting with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “The process is going to be difficult.”

The bottom line: taking up the party-line bill is a political minefield for GOP senators less than 100 days from the midterms, and Thune said the Republican-on-Republican attacks aren’t helping.

“Let’s try and win some seats in both the House and the Senate, and let’s use this issue to our advantage instead of using it to beat each other up,” Thune said.

What else we’re watching:

— BLANCHE VOTE POSTPONED: Senate Judiciary delayed plans to advance Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general today after key GOP holdouts failed to reach an agreement with the administration on preconditions for their support. Sen. John Cornyn was explicit on the legal language he needed from Blanche to revise a controversial settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS by Wednesday afternoon to secure his vote. Sen. Thom Tillis, another member of the panel with concerns about the settlement, said he would follow Cornyn’s lead.

— SENATE STOPGAP TAKES SHAPE: Senate leaders are leaning toward a Dec. 11 shutdown deadline for the stopgap government funding patch they want to pass next week, according to two people familiar with the discussions. That’s one week later than the Dec. 4 date House Republicans put in the bare-bones version they passed last week. Top senators are still working to finalize a bipartisan agreement on their plan to keep federal agencies funded beyond the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.

Katherine Tully-McManus, Chris Marquette and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

Congress

How John Thune is trying to manage Trump’s summer squeeze

Published

8 hours ago

July 30, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

John Thune is eager to let GOP senators out of the Capitol and onto the campaign trail as Republicans fight to hold the Senate majority in November. First, he has to get through the next eight days.

The majority leader is hoping to fund the government, confirm dozens of President Donald Trump’s nominees and hand him new powers to punish Russia’s trading partners before letting his members leave for a five-week recess. But Trump has turned Thune’s exit strategy into a cascading political test.

The vise-like pressure campaign was playing out as Thune sat down with Blue Light News in his Capitol office Wednesday. At about the same moment, Trump was in the Oval Office insisting Thune “has the votes” to kill the Senate’s long-standing filibuster rule and pass a GOP elections bill. He went on to sow doubt as to whether he felt Thune was fit to lead the chamber’s Republicans.

“We will find out, and I will let you know,” Trump told reporters.

Unaware of Trump’s latest attacks, Thune in the interview nonetheless repeated that, no, he does not have anywhere near the votes to kill the filibuster or pass the SAVE America Act — the partisan elections bill Trump is pushing for. And he spoke frankly about the political risk Trump and other Republicans who are training their fire inward are assuming.

“I feel like we’re as well positioned as we can be,” Thune said of the midterm landscape, but “what we’ve got to do is just make the overarching narrative one that has us drawing contrast with our Democrat opponents rather than us shooting each other.” He held out hope that Trump would do just that as Election Day approaches.

Trump visited the Senate in June — at the invitation of Florida Sen. Rick Scott, not Thune.

The frustration with Trump’s intraparty attacks is widely shared among Thune’s colleagues but has been most frequently voiced by GOP members who are retiring or are otherwise insulated from Trump’s staggering political influence, like Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

Tillis downplayed Trump’s latest attacks Wednesday, chalking it up to the “typical tug and pull” among Republicans rather than a reflection of the president’s specific views on Thune.

Thune has up to this point acted more as a lightning rod for his conference, which is a traditional role for congressional leaders. But typically they attract bolts from the other party, not their own president.

In the interview Wednesday, Thune said he and Trump “get along” even as he acknowledged that he’s bearing the brunt of the president’s frustrations with the Senate’s inability to bend reality to his whims.

“He gets obviously frustrated with me because he sees me as the person that’s the impediment to some of the things he wants to get done. But as I continually point out … I don’t make this stuff up,” he said. “Math is math, arithmetic is arithmetic. … And part of it, too, is the active role he played in some of these primaries.”

“He thinks I can wave the magic wand,” he added. “I wish it were that easy.”

What has made things more challenging in recent weeks has been the sudden death of Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump confidant who was able to have frank conversations with the president about the realities of the Senate.

“He was a great intermediary, whisperer, whatever you want to call it,” Thune said. “But yeah, it’s a real loss. I do think that he had the kind of relationship where he could speak bluntly, candidly, directly, and the president would accept it.”

He added there are conversations now happening about “how to better have a better line of communication” between Senate Republicans and Trump’s orbit. Just after sitting down with Blue Light News, he met with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

“We’ve got some people that can step into that role,” Thune said.

Thune paid tribute Tuesday to late colleague Lindsey Graham.

If the SAVE America Act was the only Trump-obsession Thune had to manage, it would be one thing, but the debate over the bill — which Thune supports — is also tied to Republicans’ attempt to enact a new party-line spending bill, which could include some election-related grant funding.

House Republicans managed to muscle through a $95 billion budget blueprint, but the path in the Senate is murky at best. Thune is dealing with deficit hawks who want at least part of the spending offset with cuts, defense hawks who want more Pentagon funding, and members who aren’t convinced there should be any bill at all.

But the White House is keeping the pressure on: Trump himself issued a public call for action on Truth Social Wednesday morning, and budget director Russ Vought pushed senators to move quickly in a private lunch just hours later.

Speaking in the interview shortly after the lunch, Thune said the budget blueprint Trump and his deputies are hoping to pass doesn’t currently have the votes to be approved. But he left the door open to a potential breakthrough before the end of next week while also acknowledging possible Plan Bs that could release at least some of the mounting pressure — possibly by putting pieces of the elections bill up for a vote.

“The question is, do we … trigger a vote on photo ID, put it on the floor, have a debate about it?” he said. “Those things are all kind of [things] we’re giving consideration to. But at the end of the day, does it change the outcome? I can’t see it.”

Thune also effectively ruled out holding a test vote on killing the filibuster. He warned that forcing what would essentially be symbolic votes would risk dividing Republicans while serving no practical end.

“You end up … basically for the 60 or 90 days heading into an election, fighting among Republicans, which to me seems really counterproductive, going into an election that’s pretty high-stakes,” Thune said.

Instead, Thune wants to make progress on other fronts. In addition to the sanctions bill, Thune wants to pass legislation funding the government past November — something virtually unheard of in July but something that he says is “trending in the right direction” nevertheless.

He’s also got nominees to confirm, and he’s looking to at least take an initial step on a cryptocurrency bill or college sports legislation. It’s an ambitious schedule for a month in the Senate, much less a week — especially when the president has his own priorities.

But Thune has consistently paid heed to his own constituency — the Republican senators who elected him to stay focused, put legislative wins on the board, and keep the GOP in the majority.

Thune has said he is planning to run for leader again in November, and most Senate Republicans believe he’s secure in his job.

Asked about the Oval Office comments later Wednesday evening, Thune initially danced around Trump’s equivocal assessment of whether he was “the man for the job” of leading the Senate GOP.

“That’s a decision that’s made by my colleagues,” he said.

But in subsequent comments, Thune joked that if Trump “could find somebody else to do this job, it might be a big relief.”

“It is what it is,” he added. “You just roll with it.”