WASHINGTON — Republicans on the U.S. House Budget Committee approved their budget resolution Thursday, marking one small step forward in the complicated process that could allow the party to enact a third party-line bill. 

The 20-14 vote followed hours of debate over amendments from Democrats that sought to roll back pieces of the earlier Republican packages and change how the upcoming process would work. None of the Democratic changes were approved. 

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, Texas Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar and Virgin Islands Democratic Delegate Stacey Plaskett didn’t vote. 

House Republican leaders are likely to bring the budget resolution to the floor next week before that chamber leaves for its five-week August recess, now expected July 23. 

The Senate will be in session for an additional two weeks after that before beginning its summer break, though it isn’t clear if GOP leadership in that chamber will bring the budget measure up for a vote. 

Process to provide funds for defense, farms

Both chambers of Congress must adopt a budget resolution in order to unlock the budget reconciliation process that will allow them to move another bill without Democratic support. 

House Republicans said during committee debate they hope another package would provide up to $95 billion. That currently unreleased measure would bolster aid to farmers, provide more funding to the Defense Department and implement pieces of a voter identification bill they’ve dubbed the SAVE America Act. 

“We are going to use reconciliation to make a run at doing what we think will save this country for our children’s future and for the remainder of this century,” Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said. “I can’t think of a more important thing to work on.”

Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle, ranking member on the committee, criticized Republicans for not focusing on how to make life more affordable for everyday Americans. 

“Over the last 18 months, we have seen where Republicans’ priorities are: trillions of dollars in tax cuts for billionaires, tens of billions of dollars for war and absolutely nothing for the American people,” Boyle said. 

Democratic changes rebuffed

Democrats offered more than a dozen amendments during debate, including one from Vermont Rep. Becca Balint that would have removed the instructions for the Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Republicans’ budget resolution, once approved by both chambers, would allow the Armed Services Committee to spend up to $60 billion and the Intelligence panel to spend up to $13 billion. 

“My colleagues use the deficit as a pretext to excuse increasing hunger and deepening poverty in this country,” Balint said. “They preach fiscal responsibility, and yet, when it comes to approving tens of billions of dollars in additional Pentagon spending, they are a rubber stamp.”

Michigan Republican Rep. Jack Bergman spoke against the proposal, saying the additional defense funding “is necessary to support our troops and supply them with the munitions and anything else they need to fight, win and return home safely.”

In addition to providing instructions for more defense spending, the budget resolution would allow the Agriculture Committee to write a bill that would provide up to $12 billion in additional aid to farmers. 

The Administration Committee would be able to spend up to $10 billion, likely to create a grant program for states that institute voter identification requirements. 

Wisconsin Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson is set to take up the gavel as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee following the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) — giving Johnson significant sway over federal spending decisions as President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans push to pass a third budget bill before this fall’s midterm elections. 

Johnson, the fourth most senior Republican on the budget committee, is in line to get the position because Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) already chair the Judiciary and Finance committees and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is on his way out of the Senate after losing his May primary. 

In a statement, Johnson’s office said he would focus on working with the House and White House to determine what is possible to include in a budget reconciliation bill in the limited time before November. 

“Senator Johnson supports drafting and passing Reconciliation 3.0, and he will work diligently with all the relevant parties in the Senate, House, and White House to determine what is possible to achieve,” Johnson spokesperson Grace Carnathan said. 

The push for a third reconciliation bill includes Trump’s proposed $350 billion in additional money for  the Pentagon during the ongoing war in Iran. Johnson also said he’s working with Wisconsin Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil to sidestep the filibuster and push through the SAVE America Act, imposing new restrictions on voting, through the budget reconciliation process, Politico reported. 

Johnson told the outlet that despite not officially having the gavel yet, he’s working to get ready for the job. 

“I’ve already met with Lindsey’s staff this afternoon,” he said Monday about picking up where Graham’s effort left off. 

Since being elected to the Senate for the first time in 2010, Johnson has promoted an image of himself as a budget hawk devoted to shrinking the size of the federal government. He’s also regularly supported Republican tax cut bills while using his platform to spread his anti-vaccine beliefs, climate change denial and support for Republican conspiracy theories about election administration. 

“Johnson is likely to do as much as he can to cut government spending in the remaining months of 2026,” Barry Burden, a professor of political science at UW-Madison, told the Examiner. “His party is very likely to lose control of the House and possibly the Senate, ending the opportunity to use the streamlined budget reconciliation process to enact cuts when the new Congress is seated in early 2027.”

Burden added that Johnson will “probably be more aggressive” about reducing federal spending, adding restrictions on voting and expanding the healthcare cuts made in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. 

“Without a reelection of his own to worry about in Wisconsin, Johnson has the freedom to devote himself to being a budget warrior in the waning days of the Republican trifecta,” Burden said. 

In recent months, Johnson has endorsed calls from some Republicans and Trump to end the Senate’s filibuster rules,  which require that non-budget legislation receive 60 votes to pass, in order to push through the SAVE America Act. Johnson said at the Republican Party of Wisconsin convention in May that Republicans should nix the filibuster now to preempt Democrats doing so if and when they get control of Congress and the White House. 

Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat, said in a statement she hopes Johnson uses the role to help Wisconsinites rather than focusing on slashing government services.

“Senator Ron Johnson and the budget committee greenlit the biggest cut to Medicaid and food assistance in history, all while increasing the national debt by $3.4 trillion over the next decade,” Baldwin said. “Now that he’s poised to take the gavel, I hope he will use this opportunity to deliver for the people of Wisconsin and help lower their costs moving forward – not deliver more cuts to Wisconsinites’ health care or spend more on this war in Iran.”

Jeff Mandell, general counsel of the voting rights focused firm Law Forward, said that given Johnson’s history of advocacy for harsh restrictions on voting and on behalf of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, putting him in control of the budget committee is alarming. 

“The Save Act would interfere with long-standing and well functioning election laws in Wisconsin leading to disenfranchisement of Wisconsin voters,” Mandell said. 

President Donald Trump said Friday morning he would not sign federal legislation aimed at lowering the cost of housing, but the bipartisan package became law at 12:01 a.m. Saturday anyway.

In a post to his social media site, Trump again said that as a protest against Congress not passing an elections bill known as the SAVE America Act he considers a top priority, he would not sign the housing bill that both chambers of Congress passed with wide margins. 

If the president does not sign or veto a bill passed by Congress, it becomes law in 10 days, excluding Sundays, after it reaches the White House. The constitutional provision does not apply if Congress is adjourned, resulting in what is called a pocket veto, but the current July Fourth recess does not count as an adjournment, experts agree.

The housing package, known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, overhauls several areas of housing policy in an effort to make it easier for builders to construct new units and potential buyers to secure federally backed loans. 

Trump in his post targeted the SAVE America Act.

“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, which is polling at 97% with the Republican Party, and very high with the non-politician Dumocrats,” Trump wrote, overstating the bill’s level of support.

Liked, but not universally

Public polling on the SAVE America Act, which would impose photo ID requirements for voters and limit mail-in voting, among other provisions depending on the version of the bill, is scant. But surveys that are available show the bill, while generally popular, is much more divisive than Trump represented.

A May Politico survey showed that, when pollsters did not describe the bill’s provisions, more voters supported than opposed the bill, 37% to 21%, but that a 42% plurality of voters had no opinion. Even among the sample of respondents who voted for Trump in 2024, only 62% said they supported it.

Asked about particular elements of the bill, the most popular in the Politico poll was a requirement to show proof of citizenship to register to vote, with 52% of respondents saying they supported it compared to only 18% who opposed.

In the U.S. Senate, Democrats are universally opposed to the bill. And not enough Republicans support abolishing the chamber’s legislative filibuster, which would allow the chamber’s majority Republicans to pass bills along party lines.

Consensus housing measure

The housing legislation, on the other hand, registered barely any opposition.

The measure passed 85-5 in the Senate and 358-32 in the House. Many of the no votes in the House came from a group of conservatives who took Trump’s cue and opposed the package not on its merits but as a protest of the Senate’s inaction on the elections bill.

The housing overhaul packages together many earlier proposals sought by various interests involved in housing policy. It would reduce some regulatory hurdles to home construction and expand the possible uses of federal housing funds. 

The bill would also allow money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant program to be used for construction of affordable housing. 

It would in addition tie the amount some cities and states receive from the $3.3 billion grant program to their rates of affordable housing construction and expand the eligibility for some federally backed low-income mortgage programs.

The White House initially said Trump supported the bill, and scheduled an unusually prominent signing ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in late June. 

But the president changed course just hours before he was scheduled to sign the bill and canceled the event. He has since dismissed the housing measure as unimportant compared to the SAVE America Act.

WASHINGTON — Republicans are campaigning to keep control of Congress for another two years, but their message about being the “grown-ups” in the room keeps getting overshadowed by public feuds that have sidetracked work on major legislation. 

After enacting large swaths of their agenda during the last year and a half, GOP lawmakers can’t seem to agree on what comes next, with senators openly debating each other on social media and a group of far-right House lawmakers blocking work on the floor, forcing the speaker to send them home early for the Fourth of July break. The infighting and limited time in session could prevent Republicans from notching any more wins before voters head to the polls in November.

The disagreements, largely over a voter identification bill known as the SAVE America Act, have held up the annual government funding measures needed to avoid another shutdown and a defense policy package that provides lawmakers one of their best opportunities to shape the country’s military objectives. 

Agreement on a farm bill to address agriculture and food safety net programs is years overdue with few signs of true momentum. And lawmakers are no closer to reauthorizing a foreign surveillance program that lapsed earlier this year for the first time in decades. 

On top of all that, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., wants to use the complex budget reconciliation process to pass a third party-line bill, though his Senate counterparts aren’t fully on board with that idea. 

Johnson said during an interview on “Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream” in early July that he believes the package could include elements of the voter identification bill, possibly clearing the way for other legislation to move forward. He said the reluctance from some Republican senators “is based upon what they think may be in it.” 

“What we’re planning to do is send over a bill that will be irresistible for any Republican. A really incredible piece of legislation that will get the job done, meaning that we will continue to increase affordability; we will reduce fraud, waste and abuse in government; and we’ll secure elections,” Johnson said. “Every Republican will vote for that if packaged correctly. And that’s what we’re planning to do right now.” 

Lawmakers’ time to get that done will be extremely limited when combined with other work on Congress’ to-do list. 

Both chambers return to the nation’s capital on July 13 but will be out for nearly all of August and October. In total, the House will be in session for about 24 days and the Senate at work on Capitol Hill for approximately 28 days ahead of the November midterm elections. 

GOP argues for keeping majorities

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said during a late June press conference he wants to “get as much done as we can in the amount of time we have left between now and the midterm elections.”

“There are things that I believe will create a record of accomplishment that our candidates can run on that will enable us to take an argument to the American people that will persuade them that they want to keep majorities here in Congress, in the United States Senate and in the House, that are Republican to work with the president to get good things done for this country,” he said.

While GOP senators “have differences of opinion,” Thune said, they agree that their goals should be “to keep the country safe, to put more money in the pockets of the American people and to give them better opportunities to get ahead.”

Republican senators, however, do not agree when it comes to the SAVE America Act that would, among other things, require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to cast a ballot. 

Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee posted to social media in early July that the chamber must pass that package, even if that means changing the rule that requires at least 60 lawmakers vote to cut off debate. Republicans control the chamber with 53 seats.

“History will not look kindly on us if we don’t pass the SAVE America Act,” he wrote. “Neither will voters.”

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn responded in a post of his own: “Then show us the votes!”

Filibuster fight

Michael Thorning, director of structural democracy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said the slim majority in the House and narrow majority in the Senate combined with President Donald Trump’s focus on the voter identification bill has led to “a lot of negotiation between different factions within the party about what is going to be on the agenda.”

While the House can pass bills with a simple majority, the Senate needs bipartisan support for most bills to move past procedural votes. This requires compromise between Republicans and Democrats in the upper chamber on some of the more pressing and politically fraught issues. 

That requirement often results in changes to House-passed bills or an inability to move forward with them at all — leading to considerable tension between GOP lawmakers who want to keep the procedural step and those that want to get rid of it.

The 60-vote threshold gives Democrats a chance to force compromise, but it also gives them a way to slow down or gridlock the Senate during an election year, compounding the challenges Republican leaders face from within their own party. 

This year is no exception. Democratic leaders must balance calling on voters to reject Republican incumbents while on the campaign trail and then work with some of those very lawmakers to negotiate certain must-pass bills when back on Capitol Hill. 

“This, really unfortunately, is a part of a longer term trend that we’ve seen for quite a while in Congress, which is that the minority party does not have a lot of incentive to cooperate with the majority,” Thorning said. “And so, you know, it’s not unusual to see the minority party sort of trying to posture and position itself to deny the majority party perceived legislative wins.”

That calculation is particularly acute on government funding ahead of the Oct. 1 deadline, following three shutdowns of varying impact and length during the last year.

“I would say on appropriations, the difficulty there on funding the government is that it’s never clear which way the blame is going to cut,” Thorning said, adding it would be “a pretty risky assumption” that a funding lapse this year would be blamed on Republicans. 

“If Democrats were to deny the appropriations process from going forward and the government were shut down, it’s not clear who the voters would blame,” Thorning said. “And that would really be happening for the first time ever right up to an election. You know, voters have rarely had the opportunity to weigh in quite that proximate to a government shutdown on who they do or don’t blame. So that’s sort of uncharted territory.”

President Donald Trump is running out of time to decide what to do with a bipartisan bill meant to lower housing costs by making it easier to build.

If Trump does not sign the measure, it would become law at 12:01 a.m. Saturday under a provision of the Constitution that gives the president 10 days, excluding Sundays, to sign or veto a bill. Trump has said he would not sign the bill to pressure the U.S. Senate to pass an unrelated election security measure he considers a higher priority.

The constitutional provision does not apply if Congress is adjourned, resulting in what is called a pocket veto, but the current July Fourth recess does not count as an adjournment, experts agree.

“This would be considered a recess so the bill will become law without signature 10 days after presentment,” Jason Roberts, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, wrote in an email to States Newsroom. 

The White House has not publicly communicated its legal position and spokespeople did not return a message seeking comment Wednesday. 

Trump has vetoed only two other bills passed by the GOP-controlled Congress during his second term. Both were noncontroversial and targeted to local projects in Florida and Colorado.

‘A huge problem’

Groups representing a vast array of housing interests, from low-income renters to bankers, have endorsed the wide-ranging legislation that packages together numerous bills affecting every corner of the industry.

“Housing affordability is a huge problem for almost everybody,” Alys Cohen, the director of federal housing advocacy at the National Consumer Law Center, said in an interview. “And so there’s broad consensus that Congress needs to do something about that, period. So, as a result, they have a lot of different stakeholders coming together to really get something done.”

The bill, called the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, generally seeks to lower housing costs by expanding the supply, while also adjusting loan programs backed by the federal government. 

Estimates of the number of housing units needed to meet demand vary, but it is “probably” near 4 million units, Kristen Klurfield, an associate director for housing policy at the Washington, D.C.-based Bipartisan Policy Center, said.

The package includes an assortment of smaller bills to update regulations on manufactured homes, loosen requirements for home construction and adjust a rural loan program to help lower income people qualify for and keep mortgages. The wide scope of the bill gives every segment of the policy space a reason to support it.

“In general it modernizes federal programs,” Klurfield said. “It incentivizes pro-housing policies locally, streamlines regulations that have been hindering housing production and really expands options for affordable housing financing. And so we think that the bill tackles the problem from these several angles, and that’s really what it’s going to take to chart a path forward.”

Trump quiet

As the package was gaining momentum in Congress last month, White House staff said Trump supported it. After it passed both chambers of Congress with broad bipartisan votes, he was set to sign it at a high-profile ceremony at the Capitol. 

But the president changed course and canceled the signing ceremony at the last minute in a protest of Congress’ failure to pass an election security measure, the SAVE America Act, he considers a top priority.

Since the Senate passed the housing measure, 85-5, and the House cleared it, 358-32, in June, Trump has disparaged the bill as “a big yawn” and “unimportant” compared to the election bill. 

That bill would introduce a series of restrictions on voting, especially vote-by-mail, and would require voters to provide photo ID to cast ballots. Critics say it raises new barriers to voting while attempting to limit noncitizen voting, which is exceedingly rare. The GOP-controlled House has passed a version of the SAVE America Act, but it does not have the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate.

Trump has not commented on the bill in several days and spent Wednesday attending a NATO conference in Turkey.

On the eve of the nation’s 250th birthday, President Donald Trump used his address Friday night at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota to allege that there is “a resurgence of the communist menace in our land.”

“Communism is a mortal threat to American liberty,” Trump said. “It is the greatest threat to our country, including World War I, World War II, Pearl Harbor or even 9/11.”

Though he did not directly link Democratic socialists to communism in the speech, the rhetoric continued a recent theme of criticism by Trump alluding to electoral successes by Democratic socialist candidates. That includes New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who upset a Democratic New York City congressman last month in a primary election.

Democratic socialists advocate for expanding parts of the social safety net, such as health care coverage, through democratic means. Communist tenets include central economic planning and abolishing private property.

In Trump’s speech, he pivoted from communism to Republican chances in the November midterm elections.

“America will never be a communist country,” Trump said, adding “we can only lose the midterms” if “we are foolish, stupid and unwise.”

He then said Republicans will “not lose an election for a hundred years” if they terminate the filibuster and pass the SAVE America Act. The filibuster is a U.S. Senate rule that requires the votes of at least 60 senators to limit debate on most bills. The SAVE America Act would require all voters to prove their U.S. citizenship when they register and show identification at the polls.

Trump made those remarks with U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, in the audience. Thune has pledged to protect the filibuster, which he’s called “a critical protection that ensures representation of the minority party in the Senate.”

Last week, Trump canceled a signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing bill and said he wouldn’t sign that legislation until Congress sends him the SAVE Act.

Thune, who did not deliver a speech Friday night, responded last week by saying “there are not the votes to nuke the filibuster and there aren’t going to be 10 Democrat votes to all of a sudden support the SAVE America Act. Those are just hard realities and I think people at some point have to come to grips with that.”

Earlier in Trump’s speech, he called Thune “a good friend of mine and all of us.” Thune met Trump earlier at Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City when Air Force One landed there.

Trump’s keynote address was preceded by brief remarks from South Dakota Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who formerly served as governor of North Dakota. A fireworks display followed the speeches.

Rain dampens afternoon ceremonies

Entertainment at the memorial began hours earlier for 4,800 people who obtained tickets months ago in an online lottery. The lineup included the U.S. Air Force Academy Band.

Ron Emerson, 60, planned his Fourth of July weekend trip to the mountain carving before he had tickets. He drove 28 hours from Willis, Texas, to western South Dakota earlier this week.

Before Trump’s speech, Emerson said he’s concerned about the spread of socialist and communist ideas.

“It’s a capitalist country and it should stay that way, I think,” Emerson said.

His mother, Mary Lou Emerson, 84, hadn’t visited Mount Rushmore since she was in fifth grade. She’s been “very sad to see a lot of things that are happening” since then, she said, “but we still have hope for America.”

The fireworks display was a signature event of Trump’s Freedom 250 planning group, which he created with an executive order. Another group coordinating events celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, America 250, is a bipartisan committee created by Congress in 2016.

A nearby lightning storm Friday afternoon pushed people indoors before the programming started, with hundreds cramming into the memorial’s cafeteria. After a momentary reprieve from the weather, heavy rain began to fall, prompting a second call from event officials for people to head indoors. Thunder, hail and heavy rain continued for over an hour.

Many ticketholders came dressed in patriotic garb, including red, white and blue apparel and hats, pins and shirts supporting Trump.

Toby Doeden, who faces Rhoden in the July 28 runoff election for South Dakota’s Republican nomination for governor, was in attendance Friday night as an audience member.

A few dignitaries received recognition from Trump during his speech. Those included Thune, U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, Rhoden, Republican South Dakota Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen, Burgum and Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Environmental concerns about fireworks

Trump also spoke at the last iteration of Mount Rushmore fireworks in 2020. That year, his address criticized efforts across the country to remove statues of Confederate Civil War leaders. Those efforts came amid a broader racial justice movement after a police officer’s murder of a Black man, George Floyd, in May 2020 in Minneapolis.

The 2020 fireworks show was the first in 11 years. Fireworks displays were approved at the memorial in the 1990s and early 2000s, but disallowed by the National Park Service beginning in 2010.

Internal assessments and environmental studies reflected concerns about embers falling in the surrounding Black Hills National Forest and sparking wildfires, chemicals from fireworks polluting local water sources, and litter from exploded fireworks lingering on the grounds.

The fireworks shows have also been opposed by Native American tribes that formerly controlled the Black Hills and still use the area for spiritual ceremonies. During the 2020 event, a Native American-led protest blocked the road leading to Mount Rushmore, resulting in a clash with law enforcement that ended in arrests. Charges were later dropped.

Trump reinstated the fireworks in 2020 at then-Gov. Kristi Noem’s request. He said then that “nobody knew why” the fireworks shows had ended. Trump’s Department of the Interior, which includes the Park Service, approved the fireworks again this year after the Biden administration had discontinued them.

No protesters showed up this time in a First Amendment zone designated by the Park Service. The area was about 2 miles below Mount Rushmore along a highway on the edge of the town of Keystone, in the same area as the 2020 protests.

New concerns, costs

Environmental and cultural concerns remained this year. Parts of Pennington County — where Mount Rushmore is located — are in severe or extreme drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The Park Service relied on a six-year-old environmental assessment, updated with some new information, when considering whether to approve the fireworks display this year.

The new information included a potential for negatively affecting northern long-eared bats, an endangered species, and tricolored bats, which have been proposed for listing as endangered. Both species live near the mountain and have experienced severe population declines from a fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome.

Impacts of fireworks noise on bat pups who recently learned to fly could range from temporary stress to separation from their mothers and even death, the environmental assessment said.

South Dakota’s Department of Tourism entered into a $700,000 contract in April with California-based Pyro Spectaculars to produce the fireworks show. Local, state and federal authorities will pay additional costs related to traffic control, security, wildfire prevention and other aspects of the event.

A Government Accountability Office report estimated that the total cost of the 2020 event was about $4 million, with the state’s share surpassing $1 million.

WASHINGTON — Republicans have one more opportunity to use the complex process they relied on to enact their “big, beautiful” law and provide tens of billions in additional funding for immigration enforcement — a chance that becomes less likely the more divisions over a voter identification bill splinter the party. 

Debate over a third reconciliation bill has been simmering in the background for months, though GOP lawmakers have yet to reach consensus about whether they should draft another massive package, like they approved last year, or a more narrow one that could help the party boost defense spending.

That budget reconciliation process gives Republican leaders a way to get around Senate rules that would otherwise force bipartisanship, giving them a loophole out of negotiating major legislation with Democrats. 

But it comes with several hurdles in order to get that special treatment, including that each provision in the bill have an impact on federal revenue or spending that is not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian. 

Those in-the-weeds restrictions aren’t especially important to President Donald Trump, who wants Republicans in Congress to prioritize a voter identification bill, which cannot move through reconciliation, over everything else.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., tried to find middle ground in late June, proposing lawmakers use reconciliation to create a grant program for states that implement voter identification requirements. 

Johnson acknowledged the challenges to using reconciliation amid narrow majorities in each chamber, but said he thinks Republicans can accomplish their goals if they “stick together.” 

He, however, didn’t have details to share. 

“Stay tuned. We’re working through that,” Johnson said. “Doing a reconciliation bill is a very complicated process of consensus building, where we have a collection of ideas that, I think, every Republican, certainly, agrees with in principle.”

A few hours later, sitting in the Oval Office, the president batted down the idea of any compromise on the elections bill, creating more public disagreement between the top Republicans in the country. 

“Not really. No,” Trump said when asked whether he’d “be open to a compromise measure” moving through the reconciliation process. 

Hardball tactics

Lobbying for the full bill, which would require people show proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID when casting a ballot, isn’t only coming from the president. 

Far-right Republicans in both chambers are using hardball tactics to cajole their leaders to get the legislation to Trump’s desk, even if it means delaying work on their colleagues’ priorities.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee is one of several Republicans posting on social media and holding press conferences. He recently called for Americans to “encourage your senators to resume debate on the Senate floor—with a plan to keep debating it until it passes.”

“Tell your senators: Pass the SAVE America Act,” Lee wrote in another post. “Accept no excuses or half measures.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has become somewhat frustrated with constant pressure from some of his members, who are diverting time and resources to a bill that cannot pass. 

“At the end of the day, I have to deal with reality,” Thune said. “And sometimes the alternative universe that is X doesn’t reflect the facts on the ground.”

Thune said it’s been “very clear” for some time there isn’t enough support among Republicans to change the Senate rule that requires at least 60 lawmakers vote to limit debate on most bills. That legislative filibuster forces bipartisanship and gives the minority party, which could be Republicans as soon as next year, a seat at the table. 

“There are not the votes to nuke the filibuster and there aren’t going to be 10 Democrat votes to all of a sudden support the SAVE America Act,” Thune said. “Those are just hard realities and I think people at some point have to come to grips with that.”

Trump cancels signing for housing bill

West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said that despite months of effort, the voter identification bill doesn’t have the votes to become law. 

“If you can’t get to 60, you can’t pass it. I mean, that’s pretty simple,” she said. “Now, he says talk it to death and people will change their minds. I don’t think that’s a strategy that’s going to be in success. We tried that earlier this year to keep talking, we didn’t get to the end.” 

Capito said voters want to see Republicans focus on issues that can improve people’s lives, like the broadly bipartisan housing affordability bill both chambers approved this month. Trump was set to sign that bill during a ceremony on Capitol Hill but canceled at the last minute to try to push through the election bill. 

“So, yeah, they want to see us do something,” she said. “They don’t want to see us sitting up there yakking all the time.”

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, wants to use the time to avoid another government shutdown when the next fiscal year begins Oct. 1 — no easy feat following three shutdowns over the last year. 

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., hopes to reach final agreement on the farm bill in the months ahead after years of delays and stopgap measures for those agriculture and food safety net programs. 

He brushed aside demands from some other GOP lawmakers to use the budget reconciliation process to pass another party-line package.

“We had trouble with the one that we just did and that was very, very narrow. I mean, that was strictly Homeland Security,” Boozman said. “When you start doing a bigger package, like they’re talking about and you start involving various committees, it becomes a lot more issues involved that you have to work out. And so it just gets very complex.”

Boozman added that working through the several steps of that process takes weeks, which lawmakers may not have. 

Other priorities

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said the party needs to focus on legislation that would lower “the cost of everything,” in part, by eliminating taxes on gasoline and health care.  

“That’s something that would be a huge benefit to every working person out there immediately,” he said. “Let them take all health care costs off of their federal taxes, so they paid no taxes on it.”

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy said he thinks lawmakers should use the budget reconciliation process to significantly bolster defense funding. But he said “duh” when asked by States Newsroom whether the limited number of days in session would make that difficult. 

Lawmakers are set to be out of session for nearly all of August and September.

“I think if we want to get more money for defense, we have to do it through reconciliation, which means we need to start immediately,” he said. 

Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno has a lengthy list of issues he wants to see Republicans address before November, including a bill he’s set to release later this summer with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren that would shore up the Social Security trust fund. 

“It’s not really a third-rail issue, because what we’re saying is that everybody should pay the same amount of money for Social Security,” he said. “When you have something that literally 90% of Americans support, I think we should be able to get something on that across the finish line.”

The two lawmakers wrote in an op-ed published in The New York Times the bill would raise the cap that ensures people don’t pay into Social Security on earnings more than $184,500.

“Since the vast majority of Americans make less than that, most people are paying Social Security taxes on 100 percent of their earnings while the highest earners are paying on only part of theirs,” they wrote.

“Why should a middle-class nurse pay a larger share of her paycheck — than a wealthy corporate lawyer?” they added. “This is doubly unfair in an economy in which top earners’ wages, over time, have pulled far ahead of those of the average worker.”

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said he’d like lawmakers to ensure E15 gasoline, a blend that includes 15% ethanol and is usually unavailable in summer, can be sold year-round, though he hadn’t thought about any other issues the party should press for ahead of November. 

“I guess I can’t answer your question,” he said. “I just haven’t thought about it.”

A federal judge on Thursday blocked major portions of President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail, finding he had exceeded his constitutional authority.

The decision halts, at least until a nearly certain appeal is heard, efforts by the U.S. Postal Service to require states to submit the names of likely mail voters before it delivers ballots. It also stops the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from compiling lists of voting-age citizens in each state.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of President Barack Obama in Massachusetts, is the first judge to block the March 31 executive order. State and local election officials have raised concerns that its requirements would inject chaos into preparations for the November midterm elections.

Talwani ruled that Trump had asserted too much control over elections in several parts of the order as he directed federal officials to quickly take actions that he argues are needed to prevent noncitizen voting, which rarely occurs.

“The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Talwani wrote.

Order overpowered states

The executive order directed Postmaster General David Steiner to put forward a rule requiring states, at least 90 days before a federal election, notify the Postal Service whether they intended to allow ballots to be sent through the mail. States would then have to submit to USPS a list of voters planning to vote by mail at least 60 days before the election.

Talwani wrote that the Postal Service lacks any authorization by Congress to put forward binding regulations on mail-in voting. The Constitution, she wrote, “reserves the power to determine voter eligibility to the States alone.” 

The executive order also required the Department of Homeland Security, with help from the Social Security Administration, to compile a list of voting-age U.S. citizens living in each state and then provide that information to state officials at least 60 days before each federal election. The order does not tell states how to use the data.

The list of citizens would be drawn from naturalization and Social Security records, according to the order. It would also include data from SAVE, a powerful computer program maintained by Homeland Security that verifies citizenship by checking names against information in federal databases. 

The executive order pointed to no relevant constitutional or legal authority supporting the compilation of the citizenship lists, Talwani wrote. Trump “lacks any authority to compile voter lists for each State,” she wrote.

A day before the decision, Steiner told a U.S. Senate committee that a proposed Postal Service rule to implement the executive order would lead to non-delivery of ballots in states that don’t provide lists of anticipated mail voters — a position condemned by Democrats.

“Today’s decision is a very significant victory for free and fair elections and a defeat for Donald Trump’s vile efforts to make it harder for people to vote,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a statement.

“Once again, the courts have reaffirmed that Trump’s efforts to subvert the election are patently unconstitutional.”

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement that the Trump administration remains confident the executive order will be implemented by the November election.

“The entire Trump Administration will continue lawfully enacting the agenda President Trump was elected to enact – which includes the safety and security of American elections,” Jackson said.

Latest setback

Trump has suffered a series of setbacks in recent days in his efforts to influence the administration of state-run elections. 

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the Department of Justice wasn’t entitled to state voter rolls. Senators also continues to rebuff the president’s attempts to pressure them into passing the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show documents proving their citizenship.

Talwani’s decision came in a lawsuit brought by Democratic state attorneys general. It is the second major district court ruling over the executive order, after a judge in Washington, D.C., declined to stop the order because the Trump administration hadn’t taken enough action to implement it.

Under Thursday’s decision, federal officials must notify their employees within a week that sweeping portions of the executive order are void.

And on Monday, a judge blocked the use of SAVE to search for noncitizen voters.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans walked into a lunch with the president on Wednesday looking for ways to unify, but they left the closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill as fractured as ever about policy goals. 

President Donald Trump said after the huddle that he was “very proud of the party” but didn’t offer any concrete steps forward amid deep divisions on a nationwide voter identification law or other issues that don’t yet have enough GOP support to reach his desk. 

“For the most part we have a really well-unified party,” Trump said. “And I said it very strongly, we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.”

Republican senators said during hallway interviews after the meeting ended that it wasn’t entirely productive and didn’t create much, if any, goodwill. 

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy somewhat jokingly said the meeting went “swimmingly” before detailing a confrontation he had with Trump over the lack of information on the Iran war. Senators have repeatedly asked for a classified briefing from administration officials, but haven’t yet received one. 

Cassidy, who lost his May primary after Trump endorsed an opponent, said the exchange began when Trump asked why four Republican senators voted with Democrats to approve a War Powers Resolution earlier this week. Along with Cassidy, they were Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine.

“I said, ‘Well, we’ve not been briefed on how it’s going, that the stated objectives don’t appear to be achieved, and it appears as if … it’s not going as well as we’re being told,’” Cassidy recalled. “At which point I think the president said something negative about me. I perceived it as attempting to bully me from asking a question that I think the American people need to know. 

“And I’m not going to be bullied when I feel like I’m asking a question the American people need to know. And so at that point it began to escalate. And at some point it de-escalated.”

Trump declined to directly answer a question before the meeting began about whether he believes the voter identification law he advocates, which doesn’t have the votes necessary to advance in the Senate, is more important than a broadly bipartisan housing bill. The housing package would have given Republicans a legislative victory on the campaign trail roughly four months before the midterm elections.

The president was scheduled to sign that housing measure just before he met with Senate Republicans, but he canceled to press for the election bill, called the SAVE America Act.  

The bill would overhaul how Americans register to vote and cast ballots in federal elections, such as requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and requiring a government-issued photo identification at polling locations. 

“Every election is important. We’re doing very well,” Trump said. 

“They want a lot of communists to come in,” he said, referring to Democrats. “I’m saying it a little bit differently but the people that they’re pushing are communists. And this country is not going to have communists.” 

Trump ‘mad as a murder hornet’ about Iran vote

Florida Sen. Rick Scott said he hoped the meeting would help Republicans build consensus, though he acknowledged it led to tension. 

“You’ve been around the president, he was pretty forceful about what he cares about,” Scott said, later adding his goal in organizing the meeting was “to try to bring people together.”

Scott said Senate Republicans didn’t talk with Trump about using the complex budget reconciliation process to establish grants for states that implement certain voter identification requirements. House Speaker Mike Johnson put the idea forward earlier in the day as one way to promote elements of the SAVE America Act. 

Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy said he appreciated the president’s “candor” during the meeting before saying Trump was “mad as a murder hornet about the war powers vote.”

“And I don’t blame him,” Kennedy said. “Put yourself in his shoes, he’s right in the middle of delicate negotiations and the Senate votes to get out of Iran. And it upset him.”

Kennedy said the president also pressed for the SAVE America Act, though he somewhat dismissed Johnson’s proposal to provide grants to states instead of enacting the entire bill.

“I don’t think that’s going to satisfy the president,” Kennedy said. 

‘Like a hospital board meeting,’ with yelling

West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice said both Trump and Cassidy “expressed their feelings and didn’t hold back, but at the same time, it ended up respectful.” 

“It was, I wouldn’t say super combative, but very passionate — very passionate,” he said. 

Justice noted that “very, very few questions” were asked at the lunch.

Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall described Trump and Cassidy’s exchange as “very much like a hospital board meeting when a bunch of doctors are yelling at each other. But at the end of the day, we’ll figure out a way to get along.” 

Trump, he said, was “very disappointed” by the four GOP senators voting this week to try to limit any additional military action against Iran. 

“They’re trying to negotiate that and they feel like that vote from Republicans chopped their legs out from under them,” Marshall said. “And they’re making such incredible progress on this deal. So it’s hard for them to negotiate it when there’s two messages coming out of Washington.”

Pressed on the confrontation between Cassidy and Trump, Sen. Tommy Tuberville said the two “just had some differences of opinion about Iran.” 

The Alabama Republican said “it was very cordial — it wasn’t over the top.”

Not many questions

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis acknowledged there was some contention in the meeting over the voter identification bill.

“I know there’s frustration over the SAVE America Act passage, but we simply don’t have the votes because we’re not gonna nuke the filibuster, so it’s more a matter of how do we move forward,” he said. “Not all of the meeting was contentious, but there’s a general consensus that we on Capitol Hill have to start getting in lockstep.” 

When it comes to the bipartisan housing bill, Tillis said it being signed into law is “up to the president, we’ve done our work.”

South Dakota’s Mike Rounds declined to give details about the meeting but said that Republicans “had a good talking to,” and that senators did not ask the president many questions. 

Rounds said while Trump pushed for the SAVE America Act, there was little acknowledgment that the Senate lacks the votes to pass the bill. 

Texas Sen. John Cornyn said there “wasn’t really a lot of opportunity” to ask questions during the meeting. He said Trump spoke for one hour and 15 minutes. 

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said the president repeated some of the comments he posted on social media earlier in the day when he said he would refuse to sign the housing affordability package until Congress approves the election bill. 

“He’s here to talk about whatever it is he wants to talk about,” Hawley said. “And without speaking for him, I think it’s safe to say that what he posted this morning is what he talked about.”