{"id":10913,"date":"2025-07-03T09:17:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T09:17:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-mike-johnson-on-the-cusp-of-megabill-victory\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T09:17:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T09:17:18","slug":"capitol-agenda-mike-johnson-on-the-cusp-of-megabill-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-mike-johnson-on-the-cusp-of-megabill-victory\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: Mike Johnson on the cusp of megabill victory"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Speaker Mike Johnson is potentially just a couple of hours away from sending Donald Trump his \u201cbig, beautiful bill,\u201d defying expectations that he could meet the president\u2019s arbitrary but unwavering deadline.<\/p>\n

After it appeared to be derailed late Wednesday by hard-right holdouts, Republicans advanced the bill around 3:30 a.m. and are set to vote on final passage around 6 a.m.<\/p>\n

During the all-nighter, GOP leaders kept the procedural vote open for almost six hours as they worked to flip 12 votes. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick was the lone Republican to vote \u201cno\u201d at the end.<\/p>\n

Things looked dire until around the 2 a.m. hour, when Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise returned to the House floor saying they had the votes. Not long after, the speaker was seen talking, laughing and what appeared to be praying with some of the House Freedom Caucus holdouts.<\/p>\n

How did they get there? Per Meredith Lee Hill, holdouts say they\u2019ve secured commitments from the White House on a variety of topics, especially on how the megabill is implemented. But House Republicans described the hours of talks as more of a venting session for the hard-liners.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was more just expression of concerns and priorities that are shared by the administration,\u201d said one person granted anonymity to relay the conversations.<\/p>\n

The holdouts said earlier Wednesday they were discussing future legislative opportunities, including a second reconciliation package, and the possibility of executive branch moves to address aspects of the bill they don\u2019t think go far enough.<\/p>\n

There was some tough love, too. Several MAGA-world figures including long-time Trump aide Jason Miller and Trump\u2019s 2024 co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita threatened the Republican holdouts on social media. Trump, who\u2019d been privately helping Johnson press them all day, piled on pressure in a series of increasingly irritated missives. \u201cRIDICULOUS!!!\u201d he fired off at 12:45 a.m.<\/a> as the bill was in limbo.<\/p>\n

The mood among House Republicans is that they\u2019re likely to pass the bill later this morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do so deeply desire to have just [a] normal Congress, but it doesn’t happen anymore,\u201d Johnson said around 1:30 a.m. \u201cI don’t want to make history, but we’re forced into these situations.”<\/p>\n

What else we’re watching: <\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2014 New E&C subcommittee chair: <\/b>Rep. Morgan Griffith is in line to be announced today as the next chair<\/u><\/a> of the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, according three people granted anonymity to discuss the plan. \u201cThere\u2019s a good possibility,\u201d E&C Chair Brett Guthrie said Wednesday when asked if Griffith would get the post. \u201cWe\u2019re announcing tomorrow though.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 Race for DHS chair: <\/b>Rep. Carlos Gimenez has entered the race<\/u><\/a> to lead the House Homeland Security Committee. After Rep. Mark Green announced his retirement, Gimenez sent a letter to the GOP Steering Committee on Tuesday notifying his intent to run for the seat.<\/p>\n

David Lim, Bethany Irvine and Ali Bianco contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaker Mike Johnson is potentially just a couple of hours away from sending Donald Trump his \u201cbig, beautiful bill,\u201d defying expectations that he could meet the president\u2019s arbitrary but unwavering deadline. After it appeared to be derailed late Wednesday by hard-right holdouts, Republicans advanced the bill around 3:30 a.m. and are set to vote on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}