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{"id":26003,"date":"2026-07-17T12:03:36","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T12:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-trump-leans-in-on-his-save-america-pitch\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T12:03:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T12:03:36","slug":"capitol-agenda-trump-leans-in-on-his-save-america-pitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/capitol-agenda-trump-leans-in-on-his-save-america-pitch\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitol agenda: Trump leans in on his SAVE America pitch"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>President Donald Trump made a prime time pitch to lawmakers Thursday night to pass his election security bill as a salvo <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/07\/16\/trump-declassifies-election-documents-investigations-01002581\" target=\"_blank\">to his claims<\/a> U.S. election systems are vulnerable to fraud and interference.<\/p>\n<p>It may have just scrambled Republicans\u2019 government funding plans.<\/p>\n<p>House GOP leaders announced earlier Thursday they want to put a \u201cclean\u201d continuing resolution on the floor next week \u2014 a move that inherently means leaving out Trump\u2019s SAVE America Act.<\/p>\n<p>Speaker Mike Johnson\u2019s strategy would fund the government well ahead of the normal Sept. 30 deadline in a Congress that\u2019s already seen two record-breaking funding lapses.<\/p>\n<p>And, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, Johnson has also been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2026\/07\/16\/congress\/mike-johnson-cr-01000563\" target=\"_blank\">privately trying to convince<\/a> Trump to endorse the plan in hopes of stoking another shutdown fight far in advance of the midterms, which Republicans believe would work to their party\u2019s advantage at the polls.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLet\u2019s see who actually does want to shut the government down and inflict pain on the American people, which would be a bad thing,\u201d said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.<\/p>\n<p>Now Republicans could be under fresh pressure from Trump to try and pass a funding bill with the SAVE America Act attached, which would immediately peel off needed Democratic votes and cause Republicans to quickly lose their moral high ground.<\/p>\n<p>Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was already warning Republicans Thursday against \u201ca my-way-or-the-highway approach\u201d to government funding this fall.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans could save face with Trump if they\u2019re able to make progress toward passing a watered-down version of the elections measure as part of a filibuster-skirting reconciliation bill.<\/p>\n<p>House Budget Republicans <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2026\/07\/16\/congress\/republicans-take-first-step-to-move-95-billion-party-line-package-01001120\" target=\"_blank\">approved a fiscal blueprint<\/a> for such a party-line package Thursday afternoon that would include up to $10 billion for election matters, like incentivizing states to implement stricter voter-ID laws \u2014 a central fixture of the SAVE America Act.<\/p>\n<p>House GOP leaders are trying to put that budget resolution on the floor next week, too \u2014 setting up some serious whip operations for leaders trying to get buy-in from all corners of their conference on both measures.<\/p>\n<p>It won\u2019t be easy, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune provided <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2026\/07\/16\/senate-budget-reconciliation-tensions-01000751\" target=\"_blank\">Johnson with another cold reality check<\/a> Thursday. After learning the speaker was telling reporters the Senate would adopt the House\u2019s budget framework before August recess, Thune responded, \u201cThat\u2019d be news to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b><i>What else we\u2019re watching:\u00a0<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>\u2014 THUNE TAPS BREAKS ON SUNSHINE BILL:\u00a0<\/b>Overwhelming support from House lawmakers this week for permanent daylight saving time is not shared by many of their Senate colleagues. Thune said the Sunshine Protection Act has \u201ca lot of opposition.\u201d Many Republicans from agriculture states object to what would be late sunrises in the winter months. \u201cI just don\u2019t think we want a mandate,\u201d he said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p><b>\u2014 CRUZ BULLISH ON JULY COLLEGE SPORTS VOTE:\u00a0<\/b>Commerce Chair Ted Cruz said he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2026\/07\/16\/congress\/college-sports-update-01001276\" target=\"_blank\"><u>believes the Senate\u00a0<\/u><\/a>will vote on his bipartisan college sports measure this month. Cruz said Wednesday he has been meeting this week with \u201cseveral dozen\u201d commissioners and university presidents to solicit feedback on the bill introduced last month with Commerce\u2019s top Democrat, Sen. Maria Cantwell. Cruz said he\u2019s making \u201cminor modifications\u201d to win support for the measure.<\/p>\n<p><i>Kelsey Brugger, Jordain Carney and Jacob Wendler contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Donald Trump made a prime time pitch to lawmakers Thursday night to pass his election security bill as a salvo to his claims U.S. election systems are vulnerable to fraud and interference. It may have just scrambled Republicans\u2019 government funding plans. House GOP leaders announced earlier Thursday they want to put a \u201cclean\u201d continuing [&hellip;]<\/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-26003","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\/26003","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=26003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26003\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}