President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested that he could avoid congressional approval to extend his 30-day federal takeover of Washington’s police, amid his efforts to wrest control of the capital’s law enforcement.

Trump this week invoked the Home Rule Act, effectively handing the executive branch control over Washington’s police for up to 30 days. Beyond that, Trump would have to go through Congress for an extension authorization.

But during his speech announcing the 2025 Kennedy Center honorees on Wednesday, Trump repeatedly floated circumventing Congress to maintain his hold over the city’s law enforcement.

“If it’s a national emergency we can do it without Congress, but we expect to be before Congress very quickly,” Trump said.

Trump appeared to be banking on the support of congressional Republicans to push through any attempt to extend the 30 day takeover — but maintained that if lawmakers failed to approve the extension, he would go forward with the move on his own by declaring a national emergency.

“I don’t want to call a national emergency,” Trump said, before adding, “If I have to, I will.”

Trump also announced that he was working with congressional Republicans to put forward a crime bill initially targeted at Washington but intended as a “beacon” for other Democratic cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

“We’re going to need a crime bill that we’re going to be putting in, and it’s going to pertain initially to D.C.,” Trump said. “We’re going to be asking for extensions on that, long-term extensions, because you can’t have 30 days.”

California already felt the repercussions of the Trump administration’s targeting earlier this summer, when the president deployed the National Guard to help quell protests against immigration detention sweeps in Los Angeles.

Trump on Monday announced that he was taking control over Washington’s police force and deploying the National Guard to patrol the city’s streets. Citing a rise in violent crime — which local leaders have disputed, pointing to statistics showing the city hitting a 30-year low last year — Trump declared that Monday was “Liberation Day” for the city, and invoked a never-been-used statute of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act allowing the president to take control over the local police in cases of emergency.

So far, D.C. leadership has been playing nice with the president, with Mayor Muriel Bowser calling the move “unsettling and unprecedented” — but still saying the city would comply with Trump’s order.

The president on Wednesday added that he would be “going to Congress for a relatively small amount of money” to “fix up” the nation’s capital, including fixing potholes and getting rid of medians in the city’s roads.

Asked about the prospect of D.C. statehood, which the city’s leaders have long pushed for without success, Trump called the efforts “ridiculous” and “unacceptable,” saying the overwhelmingly blue city would “pick up two senators, and that’s not going to happen.”

Washington’s locally elected government is under attack from President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans. But the capital city’s self-proclaimed “warrior on the Hill” is nowhere to be seen on the front lines.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting House delegate, issued a written statement Monday after Trump seized control of the city’s police force and moved to send in National Guard troops, calling it “counterproductive,” a “historic assault on D.C. home rule” and “more evidence of the urgent need to pass my D.C. statehood bill.”

But Norton — who has represented the city in the House since 1991 — has not been seen in public or otherwise interacted with the media since, even as other elected Democrats stepped forward to defend D.C.’s autonomy against Trump’s aggressive new actions.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser held an hourlong news conference Monday afternoon where she was flanked by city public safety officials, but not Norton. Her name was also missing from a joint statement released by members of Congress representing D.C.’s suburbs that slammed the police takeover as a “soft launch of authoritarianism.” Several of those lawmakers have since given interviews to POLITICO and other outlets.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday afternoon he had yet to speak to Norton about a response to Trump’s moves, which were announced Monday morning. The New York Democrat said he hoped to have that conversation later in the day.

Norton did not accept an interview request made through a spokesperson, who declined to identify any other interviews or public appearances she has made since Trump escalated his threats against the city late last week.

The spokesperson, Sharon Eliza Nichols, said in a statement that Norton has been “working diligently with Mayor Bowser, city officials and her colleagues discussing how to support the District’s response and prevent further federal incursions against D.C.’s right to handle its own affairs.”

“Congresswoman Norton has proven her dedication to the people of D.C.,” the statement continued. “She understands the unprecedented circumstances the District is in, and her top priority is to ensure that home rule and D.C. residents are protected.”

Norton’s back-seat response to the most serious federal threat to the city’s government in 30 years is out of step with her one-time reputation as a fierce defender of local prerogatives in the face of meddling by federal authorities. Her campaign website still promotes the “warrior” moniker she has used for decades to reflect her often fiery battles with Republicans.

But she is facing mounting questions about her plans to seek a 19th term next year as fellow Democrats privately voice concerns about her fading presence in the House. She has twice told reporters she intends to run again in 2026, but in both instances her staff subsequently said she is undecided.

A campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for an update on her reelection plans.

A person granted anonymity to describe Norton’s thinking said her low-key approach to the joint statement was in keeping with the more conciliatory approach Bowser and other city officials have taken with Trump in his second term. Norton, the person said, does not want to provoke Trump into escalating his attacks on the D.C. government.

Bowser, however, has appeared on camera multiple times since Trump’s announcement to take questions and defend the city’s public safety efforts, as have some D.C. Council members.

The person said Norton wasn’t invited or notified by the mayor’s office about Bowser’s news conference. Another person granted anonymity to comment on the sensitive situation said it was not standard practice to invite federal officials such as Norton to mayoral news conferences. The mayor’s office declined to comment.

Norton was invited to join the joint statement from the Washington-area House delegation but ultimately did not sign on for strategic reasons, the person said.

Behind the scenes, Norton has been involved in marshalling a response to Trump’s actions beyond her Monday statement. Nichols said she has been “actively reaching out to civic associations and other groups of D.C. residents” and helped organize a Monday evening conference call with Bowser and members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Norton helped open the conversation, according to four people granted anonymity to discuss the private call, where the lawmakers discussed recent steps taken by the city to address crime.

The CBC occupies a special place in the fight for D.C. voting rights and political autonomy. The group played a key role in securing passage of the Home Rule Act in 1973 creating the city’s locally elected government — one of the caucus’s first major legislative victories following its founding in 1969.

CBC Chair Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) said in a Tuesday statement that the group will “continue fighting to protect D.C.’s right to self-governance and we urge all Americans to recognize this for what it is: a test run for broader authoritarian overreach.”

“The stakes are high not just for Washington, D.C., but for the future of democracy in every corner of this country,” Clarke continued.

Most elected Democrats are loath to publicly criticize Norton given her long record of fighting for the city — including during the mid-1990s, when Congress imposed a financial control board to manage most city affairs. Norton was instrumental in pushing through legislation that recalibrated the city’s relationship with Congress and is widely seen as setting the stage for its economic rebirth and population growth over the following two decades.

Many also believe that Trump would have gone after the District regardless of what its elected officials said or did in the lead-up to his announcements Monday. But others contend that, without an actual vote in Congress, the D.C. delegate’s foremost responsibility is to rally support for the city and make the case for its autonomy to the American public.

Kinney Zalesne, a former DNC official who is running against Norton, said in a Tuesday interview that “there’s an opportunity here for the D.C. delegate to be a loud and consistent and powerful and unrelenting voice for D.C. to Congress, to the administration and to the rest of the nation.”

“One or two statements” did not meet that standard, she said: “We need to tell the truth about this federal overreach — that it’s unnecessary, inappropriate and potentially illegal.”

Norton’s Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, voiced support — even as some said they had not spoken to her amid this moment of crisis.

“I’m going to continue to support her and D.C., because many of my constituents work in D.C.,” said Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, who represents a district in the Virginia suburbs. “I know people have brought up the issue of her ability to serve. … I haven’t had a problem serving with her.”

Jeffries, speaking to reporters Tuesday in Illinois, said “I have not had a conversation with Delegate Norton as of yet, but have been in communication with Mayor Bowser [and] indicated that we are going to strongly support her efforts to defend the sovereignty and integrity of the District of Columbia.”

“I look forward to connecting with her at some point later on today,” he added later.

Shia Kapos contributed to this report from Springfield, Illinois.

Chris Murphy has been warning for months that voters want Democrats to fight. This summer, the Connecticut senator is picking a battle that puts him at odds with his Democratic colleagues.

Murphy has made surprising moves over the last month to protest bipartisan government funding talks as a member of the Appropriations Committee, demonstrating his vision of what opposition to President Donald Trump should look like and further stoking speculation about his own presidential ambitions.

The third-term senator said in a recent interview that Trump “doesn’t give a fuck what we write” into spending legislation. And so he sees no reason to participate in the drafting of funding bills if the president is going to keep withholding billions of dollars Congress already approved and goading Republican senators to claw back more.

“Every single day, there’s new evidence that our democracy is falling, and you’ve got to take stands. You have to take fights,” Murphy explained. “I just worry — every time that we go along with these appropriations bills, we’re putting a bipartisan veneer of endorsement on an illegal process that’s ultimately part of his campaign to destroy our democracy.”

As the top Democrat on the appropriations panel that funds the Department of Homeland Security, Murphy occupies a role that has historically demanded across-the-aisle collaboration. But in recent weeks, he opposed all spending measures advanced during Senate Appropriations Committee markups for which he was present, challenged his Republican counterpart on the DHS funding bill and voted “no” on the Senate’s first bipartisan funding package of the year.

“I’m nothing if not consistent. I don’t like the position I’m in,” Murphy said. “It’s lonely. 28-to-1 votes are lonely.”

So far, Murphy isn’t slamming his colleagues for embracing bipartisan negotiations, and his peers aren’t directly criticizing his approach. But they aren’t exactly praising him either.

“He has the right to his opinion,” said the top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, Patty Murray of Washington. “And I just have the opinion that the more we can do to get bills done, the better chance we have of getting better things for our country.”

Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, one of Murphy’s friends and another senior member of the Appropriations Committee, said Democrats have a duty to at least attempt to strike a cross-party compromise on federal spending ahead of the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.

“I’m not his spokesperson,” said Schatz, who is in line to be the chamber’s Democratic whip in the next Congress. “So all I can say is: We’ve been demanding a bipartisan process. So when there’s a step in that direction, I think it’s our obligation to try to be constructive.”

While Murphy has never been a moderate, he has grown rapidly into a liberal firebrand in recent years. Once best known on Capitol Hill for his advocacy for gun control and his foreign policy expertise, he’s now a frequent anti-Trump voice on cable news shows and has waded into controversial social topics like the nation’s “male identity” crisis.

But Murphy’s latest political stand against Trump comes as his name is floated for a bigger-stage battle against Republicans — this time as a presidential contender in 2028.

If the 52-year-old senator seeks the Democratic nomination in three years, his protest of government funding bills could help differentiate him as a candidate who fought the Trump administration with more than just verbal criticism.

“It does fit, right? These are strategies that would make sense if he’s interested in a national platform and to run for office like president,” said Hans Noel, a Georgetown University professor who studies presidential nominations.

“There’s some appeal to a lot of voters — of fighting — especially at the national stage, where he doesn’t have to worry about winning over allies for legislative progress,” Noel continued. “Murphy has been somebody who’s been talking on a national stage for a long time. It’s not completely new. But he’s somebody who’s got that kind of appeal.”

This past week, Murphy spent his birthday at an event with progressives in Arizona, where he talked broadly about the need for Democrats to balance opposition with real policy commitments: “We can’t just be against Donald Trump. We’ve got to give people a vision of something different.”

Since Trump’s election last November, Murphy has grown a beard, announced the end of his 17-year marriage and sparked rumors about romantic ties to a prominent Democratic strategist. In April, he hosted a town hall back in rural North Carolina — more than 500 miles from his blue home state. Then this summer, he launched a PAC aimed at taking on Trump and Republicans in Congress.

Murphy hasn’t always resisted negotiations with Republicans. In 2022, after a gunman left 21 people dead inside a Texas elementary school, he undertook weeks of painstaking talks that resulted in the first significant federal gun-control legislation in two decades. It was the culmination of a nearly decade-long fight for Murphy, who represented Sandy Hook Elementary School in the House at the time of that devastating 2012 shooting.

His next foray into bipartisan talks did not have a happy ending. Last year he scrupulously crafted the high-profile bipartisan border deal with Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford, in an attempt to enact Congress’ first major immigration overhaul in more than three decades. Then Trump chilled Republican support for the bill.

To Murphy, it signaled that Republicans couldn’t be trusted to be good-faith actors in negotiations to fund the government: “I think that drama was early proof that they’re never going to cross him,” he said of Republicans’ loyalty to Trump.

This belief was further cemented when Murphy’s GOP colleagues cleared Trump’s $9 billion rescission request last month targeting public broadcasting and foreign aid.

“They can say that they’re going to honor the words on the page,” Murphy said. Yet if Trump “decides to ignore the law,” he continued, “I just don’t think that my Republican colleagues are going to really fight to protect it.”

Democratic leadership’s interest in engaging in bipartisan funding negotiations, from which Murphy is abstaining, is a relatively new development. Just a month ago, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer penned a lengthy “dear colleague” letter insinuating that his members should cut off cross-party talks if Republicans accepted the White House’s rescissions package.

Nine days later, Senate Republicans banded together to pass that bill. And five days after that, Schumer stood with his House counterpart, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, to announce that Democrats still “want to pursue a bipartisan, bicameral appropriations process.”

It has left Murphy as the lone Democratic appropriator continually opposing the funding bills his colleagues are trying to advance, even as he readily admits it’s not the substance of the spending measures he’s against.

“The bills themselves are good, bipartisan bills,” said Murphy. “It’s just — I don’t believe that anything in there is actually going to be implemented.”

This is the case Murphy said he wants to get through to Sen. Katie Britt, the Alabama Republican who chairs the Homeland Security appropriations panel opposite Murphy. The two lawmakers were seen last month in a heated exchange in the well of the Senate floor after passage of the clawback request. Britt described the conversation, captured by C-SPAN cameras, as “a spirited dialogue,” vowing: “I’ll continue to work in good faith, as I always have.”

Murphy, however, said negotiations on the DHS funding bill will be meaningless if Trump and Republicans are going to undermine the spending directives when the measure becomes law. “We had an animated discussion,” Murphy said of his talk with Britt. “Obviously it’s hard to write a bill when the administration is going to stab you in the back as soon as you write it, especially in a space as difficult as immigration and DHS.”

He pointed to specific examples of how Trump has already undermined appropriators, including the president’s efforts to fund the controversial “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration detention center in Florida by diverting money Congress appropriated for “humane” alternatives to detainment.

“And you know,” Murphy continued, “he’s going to use the money in this budget to treat immigrants like animals.”

Jordain Carney, Katherine Tully-McManus and Cassandra Dumay contributed to this report. 

House Republicans moved quickly Monday to follow President Donald Trump’s lead as he took unprecedented action to target Washington’s locally elected government — further heightening the GOP’s scrutiny of the capital city and its Democratic elected leaders.

Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said he would haul Mayor Muriel Bowser, Council Chair Phil Mendelson and Attorney General Brian Schwalb to Capitol Hill next month for a hearing. The public grilling is likely to come as Trump’s takeover of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department approaches a 30-day expiration date, requiring congressional action to continue.

“For years, the D.C. Council’s radical, soft-on-crime agenda has emboldened criminals and put public safety at risk in our nation’s capital,” Comer said in a statement.

His voice was one of many in the GOP who hailed Trump’s moves Monday to seize control of the D.C. police force and deploy the National Guard in the capital. Speaker Mike Johnson, for instance, said in a post on X that “House Republicans support this effort to CLEAN UP Washington, END the crime wave, and RESTORE the beauty of the greatest capital in the world.”

While violent crime reached a 30-year low in the city last year, Republicans argue Washington is unsafe and poorly governed. A spate of carjackings and several other recent high-profile incidents have captured GOP attention on Capitol Hill, including the murder of an intern for Rep. Ron Estes (R-Kan.) and the assault last week of a Trump administration staffer.

Comer in his statement said his panel would also be “advancing legislative solutions to protect Americans in their capital city.” During a news conference Monday, Trump called for the reimposition of cash bail, which has been largely abolished in D.C. for more than 30 years, while U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro called for congressional action to overturn “absurd” juvenile justice laws that she said provided too much leniency for young offenders.

An Oversight Committee spokesperson said the panel would work to advance legislation introduced by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) that would limit “youth offender status” to those 18 years old or younger. Currently, those 24 or younger can qualify as youth offenders in the District.

The legislation from Donalds would also require the D.C. attorney general to publicly track juvenile crime in the city and bar the locally elected D.C. Council from passing provisions to change its sentencing rules.

The bill passed the House last year in a bipartisan 225-181 vote but did not advance in the Senate, which was then controlled by Democrats. The spokesperson said the committee was considering additional legislation but did not provide details. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), a member of GOP leadership, is also working on legislation to reverse no-cash-bail policies nationwide.

It’s unclear how soon any D.C.-related legislation might hit the House floor. Lawmakers are now on their extended summer recess, and House GOP leaders expect the Oversight Committee to start advancing a slate of bills in September. That means floor action could be delayed until later in the fall, depending on how quickly the panel works through its process, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss internal planning.

House Republicans may be forced to deal with city-related matters sooner, however. Trump’s executive action Monday commandeering the Metropolitan Police started a 30-day clock for presidential control, as provided for in the 52-year-old law establishing the city’s locally elected government.

Extending Trump’s control of the department would require congressional action — forcing the White House and GOP congressional leaders to make a decision as they also deal with messy internal fights over whether to force the release of more documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case and a politically explosive congressional stock trading ban.

In a letter sent to the Hill Monday informing of the police takeover, Trump said he would retain control “until I have determined, in consultation with the Attorney General, that the emergency has ended or for the maximum period permitted” under federal law.

Trump made no mention of seeking extended control of the department at his news conference Monday morning, where he was flanked by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Pam Bondi and other administration officials. He instead called on lawmakers to address the District’s longstanding bail policy, which allows criminal suspects to be released pending trial without putting up any money.

“We’re gonna change no cash bail, we’re gonna change the statute and get rid of some of the other things,” Trump said. “And we’ll count on the Republicans in Congress and Senate to vote, we have the majority, so we’ll vote. We don’t have a big majority, but we’ve gotten everything, including the great Big Beautiful Bill.”

Democrats, meanwhile, sharply objected to Trump’s moves in social media posts Monday, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries saying Trump has “no basis to take over the local police department” and “zero credibility on the issue of law and order.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin (R-Md.) said he would introduce legislation that would immediately end Trump’s police takeover. He, too, called it a “phony, manufactured crisis” and recalled Trump’s actions dealing with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — where a mob of his supporters assaulted police and were later pardoned.

While Republicans can likely push D.C.-related bills through the House on party lines, Democrats in the Senate could use the filibuster to keep them from reaching Trump’s desk. Vaulting that obstacle would require a 60-vote majority, and it’s unlikely that Democrats — who have long championed political autonomy for the District’s largely Democratic populace — would join their Republican colleagues en masse. But it could force some vulnerable Senate Democrats into tough votes over crime and safety ahead of midterm elections.

A spokesperson for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declined to comment on Democrats’ plans for any such legislation, pointing instead to a social media post from Schumer Monday calling the executive actions a “political ploy and attempted distraction from Trump’s other scandals.”

Nicholas Wu and Calen Razor contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump’s attempt to take over law enforcement in Washington, D.C., is once again testing the bounds of his authority to militarize a major U.S. city.

The capital, unlike other cities, is already subject to significant federal control — and Trump is invoking his emergency powers to solidify it. But the intersection of complicated laws and rules about the use of the military for domestic law enforcement, the deployment of federal agents to the streets of D.C. and the city’s own crime-fighting policies may still prompt legal uncertainty — and inevitable challenges.

Here’s what Trump can — and cannot — do:

Trump said he’s taking control of the D.C. police. Can he do that?

Yes, with limits. The Home Rule Act gives him the power to use the D.C. police force for “federal purposes” if he determines that there are “special conditions of an emergency nature.”

He can use the D.C. police for up to 48 hours, or for up to 30 days if he sends a special message to the leaders of certain congressional committees.

To use the D.C. police for longer than 30 days, he would need authorization from Congress.

In an order Monday, Trump said the D.C. police force under his control would protect federal buildings and national monuments, typically a function of federal law enforcement agencies.

Trump also said he’s deploying National Guard troops to D.C. Can he do that?

Yes. Trump has more authority over the D.C. National Guard than he has over the guards of the 50 states. Governors control the state guards (although the president can federalize the state guards in an emergency or for use in combat operations). The District of Columbia, of course, has no governor, and the D.C. guard is not controlled by the mayor. Rather, the D.C. guard is always under the direct control of the president.

Aren’t there limits on using the military for domestic law enforcement?

Yes, but those limits might not apply to the D.C. National Guard.

A federal law passed in 1878, the Posse Comitatus Act, bars the use of the U.S. military for civilian law enforcement except when authorized by the Constitution or another provision of federal law.

The Trump administration is currently on trial in Los Angeles over its deployment of the California guard in June to quell immigration-related protests in that city. That trial will test whether a federal judge believes Trump’s deployment ran afoul of that 1878 law and must be rescinded.

But the legality of using the guard in D.C. may be different. Presidential use of the D.C. guard has rarely faced legal resistance because it has typically happened in cooperation with D.C. leaders. And the Justice Department has long maintained that the D.C. guard, unlike the other guards, can be used for ordinary law enforcement without violating Posse Comitatus. A 1989 legal opinion from the department’s Office of Legal Counsel found that President George H.W. Bush could use the D.C. guard to carry out law enforcement missions in D.C. as part of the so-called war on drugs.

If Trump’s deployment of the D.C. guard is challenged in court, a judge would almost certainly take note of the OLC opinion, but would not be bound to follow it.

Does Trump have the power to “federalize” D.C.?

Trump cannot singlehandedly wrest control of the district’s government.

The Constitution grants Congress the power to “exercise exclusive legislation” over the “seat of government” of the United States. In 1973, with the passage of the Home Rule Act, Congress created the local D.C. government that still exists to this day.

Under the act, D.C. has significant control of day-to-day local affairs. But the federal government — including federal law enforcement agencies such as the U.S. Capitol Police and the U.S. Park Police — retain control over federal land and property. And Congress has the final say on local D.C. policies: The Home Rule Act allows Congress to effectively veto any legislation passed by the D.C. Council.

The president alone has no authority to “federalize” the D.C. government; he would need Congress to amend the Home Rule Act.

Has Trump sent federal authorities into D.C. before?

Yes, Trump has tested the boundaries of his ability to use federal agents and the National Guard in Washington.

Trump has clear control and authority over tens of thousands of federal law enforcement officers who work in the area for federal agencies, including the FBI, the Marshals Service, the Secret Service, the Park Police and others. Trump deployed many of those agencies in June 2020 to clear Black Lives Matter protesters from Lafayette Park, across from the White House.

Trump also faced scrutiny for his inaction on Jan. 6, 2021 — as a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol — when it came to ensuring the National Guard was racing to assist besieged lawmakers. Though Trump aides said he previously authorized them to deploy the National Guard as necessary, witnesses said Trump made no efforts to contact his military leadership during the chaos, even as his then-vice president, Mike Pence, was urgently making calls to ensure a federal response.

Trump on Monday also encouraged D.C. law enforcement officers to hit back “hard” if instigators spit at them and get in their faces. But Trump also pardoned hundreds of people who attacked and injured those very same officers on Jan. 6, sometimes with weapons, and suggested his supporters’ actions were “minor.”

House Republicans are pushing for a second megabill. The Senate GOP’s not so sure.

After a grueling ordeal to get President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” signed into law last month, Speaker Mike Johnson and other leaders are already talking about crafting at least one more domestic policy package that can pass along party lines in the Senate.

A White House official, granted anonymity to share details about private conversations, said another filibuster-skirting reconciliation bill is under discussion. The conservative Republican Study Committee has launched a “Reconciliation 2.0” working group and is hosting staff briefings throughout the summer recess to begin generating recommendations for follow-up legislation.

And Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said he’s open to considering as many as 200 tax proposals from his members that were ultimately not included in the first megabill.

But most senators have questions about what could go into another reconciliation package — and they’re casting doubts on whether it’s even politically possible to do this all over again.

“You have to have a reason to do it,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.). “It’s not easy to do, so you have to have a purpose for doing it in the first place.”

That unifying purpose for Republicans the first time around was a desire to deliver Trump a major legislative victory early in his second term and prevent a tax hike that they feared would weaken the economy. Republican leaders’ decision to throw in a debt limit extension through 2026 as Treasury warned the nation would soon exceed its borrowing authority added a do-or-die incentive.

“Without the pressure, I don’t see how you get it done,” said one Republican senator, granted anonymity to speak freely, about prospects for passing a second reconciliation bill without an existential impetus for action. “I don’t think I see what the pressure is here.”

At the same time, despite the White House’s enthusiasm for another reconciliation bill, administration officials have not yet told lawmakers what policies they want considered, according to three people speaking on condition of anonymity.

Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — chairs of the committees on Armed Services and Budget, respectively — also said before leaving for recess they have not received guidance from the White House. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, said he still hadn’t heard from the administration about its broader set of legislative priorities heading into the fall.

At this point, the loudest reconciliation push in the Senate is coming from deficit hawks like Sen. Ron Johnson, who wants to use another bill to cut spending further than what conservatives were able to achieve in the first package.

“Leadership is telling us we’ll do one or two more reconciliations in this Congress,” the Wisconsin Republican told reporters earlier this summer. “So the clock’s ticking”

While Senate Majority Leader John Thune has left the door open to doing a second reconciliation bill, he hasn’t provided a specific timeline for doing so.

One of the three people waiting to hear from Trump said the push for another party-line package is coming not as much from the administration as from the House. There, Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) has said lawmakers should try to rework policies cut from the first reconciliation bill to comply with Senate rules. But there’s skepticism in the Senate that the House will be able to successfully relitigate those proposals.

“My sense is that there’s more enthusiasm in the House than in the Senate, and that makes sense,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.). “They can do things with 51 votes anyway, most of what we have to do requires 60. And that means that senators, if you have a desire to actually legislate, need to find ways to legislate — and reconciliation is damaging to that relationship.”

But House Republicans are also navigating their own slim margins and ideological divides. Conservatives and centrists clashed over cuts to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits in the “big, beautiful bill,” and lawmakers could have a diminished appetite for further battles over hot-button issues, especially heading into an election year.

Some House GOP aides were alarmed earlier this week when a hard-line think tank, the Economic Policy Innovation Center, pitched an extended moratorium on Medicaid funding for large abortion providers in a Republican Study Committee staff briefing.

RSC leadership has stressed its megabill working group is designed at this point to generate ideas and put down markers, but EPIC’s recommendation could be a harbinger of other disputes to come.

Meanwhile, Republicans are already struggling to sell voters on the first megabill back in their home states and districts, where town halls and other constituent events in the early weeks of recess have so far been rocky.

One House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said there would be some “hesitancy” to dive back into reconciliation.

“We did so much in the first,” the member said. “It’s going to be harder to do a second one.”

Benjamin Guggenheim contributed to this report.

China is watching as President Donald Trump pushes for a diplomatic solution to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, Sen. Lindsey Graham told NBC’s Kristen Welker in an interview that aired Sunday.

The stakes?

“If it ends in a way that looks like that Putin’s overly rewarded, there goes Taiwan,” Graham (R-S.C.) said on “Meet the Press.”

Trump’s latest gambit to end the war, now more than six months into his new term, will see him meet with Putin in Alaska this Friday, the first time Russia’s president will set foot in the U.S. in roughly a decade.

It comes after Putin last week presented special envoy Steve Witkoff with a ceasefire offer, and Trump on Friday suggested “there’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both” sides in peace talks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday morning flatly rejected the idea that Kyiv might part with territory in negotiations to stop the fighting.

Graham, who told Welker he hopes “Zelenskyy can be part of the process,” said other elements of peace talks will govern whether a deal makes sense for Ukraine and its partners.

“What would a good deal look like? Making sure that 2022 doesn’t happen again,” he told Welker, referencing the start of the current war. “On Biden’s watch and Obama’s watch, Russia invades. The goal for me, and I think President Trump, is to end it forever. Now, what would that look like? You’ll have some land swaps, but only after you have security guarantees to Ukraine to prevent Russia from doing this again.”

China, a major purchaser of Russian oil, is on the president’s mind, Graham said, just days after the White House announced that tariffs on India would be hiked to 50 percent for its own consumption of oil from Russia.

“I am here to tell you that President Trump will end this war in a way to prevent a third invasion and not to entice China to take Taiwan,” Graham said. “We’re not out to humiliate Putin, we’re out to get a deal to make sure there’s no third invasion.”

A federal appeals court panel shot down a Trump administration bid to make secret a public database of federal spending that researchers say is crucial to ensure the administration is not flouting Congress’ power of the purse.

In an order issued Saturday evening, the three-judge D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel voted unanimously to give the administration until Friday to put the data back online.

Two of the three appeals judges assigned to the matter also signed onto a forceful opinion declaring that the administration’s bid to conceal the data was an affront to Congress’ authority over government spending, one that threatened the separation of powers and defied centuries of evidence that public disclosure is necessary for the public good.

“No court would allow a losing party to defy its judgment. No President would allow a usurper to command our armed forces,” Judge Karen Henderson, a George H.W. Bush appointee, wrote in support of the decision to deny the Trump administration’s request to keep the data under wraps while litigation over the issue goes forward. “And no Congress should be made to wait while the Executive intrudes on its plenary power over appropriations.”

The Trump administration ignited the legal battle when it decided in March to abruptly shut down the database, claiming the widely available public data threatened the president’s ability to manage federal spending. Henderson noted that the decision came amid a torrent of lawsuits questioning whether the administration was preparing to illegally “impound” — or withhold — congressionally mandated spending required by law to disburse. The administration claimed the database also forced the disclosure of information meant to be shielded from public view.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan rejected that view out of hand last month, in a lawsuit brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Protect Democracy group. The Clinton-appointed judge ordered the administration to immediately restore the website. The Justice Department quickly appealed and won a short-term pause of Sullivan’s decision. But Saturday’s ruling by the appeals court panel ends that pause.

Henderson agreed with Sullivan, saying Congress’ power is “at its zenith” when it comes to both approving federal spending and requiring details of that spending to be publicly disclosed. In other words, only Congress — not the administration — could decide to shut down the database.

Judge Robert Wilkins, an Obama appointee, joined Henderson’s 25-page opinion. The third judge on the panel, Biden appointee Bradley Garcia, voted with Henderson and Wilkins but did not join her opinion.

The ruling lands just as a simmering fight over Trump’s authority to dictate federal spending has been ramping up on Capitol Hill. Trump has long flirted with the notion that the president has the power to impound funds that he views cut against Executive Branch priorities, and courts have eyed warily his administration’s decision to mass-terminate federal grants and contracts representing billions of dollars in congressionally required spending. The Justice Department has argued that the funds for those terminated programs could be reissued in plenty of time to satisfy Congress’ requirements, but Trump budget officials have floated workarounds that have made some lawmakers uncomfortable.

The decision Saturday is not a final ruling on the underlying legal question about whether the administration is obliged to make the data public. But unless the full bench of the appeals court steps in or the administration gets relief from the Supreme Court, the ruling means the data is likely to be public within days. The panel agreed to give the administration until Aug. 15 to restore the database.

The last time House Democrats held the majority, they made a sweeping package of good-government reforms — including an attempt to end partisan gerrymandering — a centerpiece of their legislative agenda.

“The people should choose their politicians,” then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in 2021, moments before the House passed the bill that would later die in the Senate. “Politicians should not be choosing their voters.”

Now, as President Donald Trump pushes Republicans in red states to redraw congressional district lines to their benefit, some Democrats are abandoning their past push for reforms. Instead, they’re cheering on leaders like California Gov. Gavin Newsom who say their party must fight fire with fire.

Pelosi, in a statement to POLITICO, said she backs Newsom’s effort to overrule a bipartisan California map and counter GOP attempts to “rig the elections in their favor.”

Her U-turn is emblematic of the larger rethinking underway within the Democratic Party, where leaders who once embraced anti-gerrymandering initiatives and feared a race to the bottom in partisan warfare between red and blue states are now increasingly willing to set aside their lofty goals — at least temporarily.

It’s another facet of the dilemma that’s vexed Democrats since Trump first won the presidency. They’ve tried to present themselves to voters as “adults in the room” willing to set aside partisanship for the public good. But now that they’re being confronted with a potential existential threat to regaining power in 2026 or beyond, they’re entertaining bare-knuckle tactics.

That includes some groups who have long advocated for high-minded changes to the political system, such as the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group founded in 2017 by former Attorney General Eric Holder.

“This organization is taking a posture that we’re not going to oppose states taking corrective and temporary measures,” said its president, John Bisognano.

And it’s happening in the House, too, where the reform agenda promoted under Pelosi has fallen by the wayside. While Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and members of his leadership team continue to advocate for voting rights advancements and other key policies, they’ve not made them central to their opposition to Trump and his Republican allies in Congress.

Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the committee overseeing federal elections, called Trump an “anomalous figure” requiring an emergency response — including when it comes to gerrymandering.

“I will be an advocate for continuing to try to create national standards, but until those national standards are agreed to by everyone, I think it’s going to make it increasingly difficult for states to continue to engage in a more nonpartisan system of redistricting,” he said in an interview. “As with so many things, Donald Trump shatters the norms and the standards that we have lived for, and as we try to improve our democracy, he is just shattering it. We have no choice but to respond in kind.”

The rethinking has been prompted by Texas Republicans’ decision to respond to Trump’s push to launch an unusual mid-decade redrawing of congressional lines in a special legislative session called last month by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. The effort is now on hiatus with Democratic state lawmakers having fled the state to deny Republicans a quorum in protest of what they see as a partisan power grab.

Other Republican-controlled states such as Missouri, Ohio and Indiana could follow Texas’ lead and rework their own congressional maps to shore up the three-seat House GOP majority ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Confronted with claims of partisan overreach, Republicans gladly point to Democratic states that have drawn their own gerrymanders. Illinois’ 14-3 map in a state where Trump won 44 percent of the vote has been excoriated by good-government advocates. New York’s move to sidestep an independent map ended up in the courts and threw the 2022 midterms into chaos.

Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley, asked by a POLITICO reporter Thursday at an event in his hometown of Chicago, said he is “aware that our maps in Illinois are gerrymandered.”

“Look, in an ideal world, these maps are drawn by nonpartisan commissions, and they represent what the Constitution said we should do,” he said. “We’re not there yet. … So you can’t be a Boy Scout in a situation like this — you have to be as tough as they are.”

Enter Newsom, who has triggered the effort to expand Democrats’ advantage in California by overriding the map and sifting as many as five seats away from Republicans — which could entirely offset the Texas redraw.

The effort has rekindled the war over redistricting inside the Golden State, which has been done by an independent citizens commission since a successful 2010 ballot initiative. Before the vote, Pelosi and other prominent California Democrats — including then-Rep. Adam Schiff, then-state Sen. Alex Padilla, who are now both U.S. senators — opposed stripping line-drawing power from elected officials and backed a measure to maintain state lawmakers’ control.

Foes of independent California redistricting, like Pelosi, tried to persuade voters it wasted tax dollars on unaccountable bureaucrats. But their opponents countered that officeholders were motivated to protect their turf.

“Elected officials don’t like to change the system that got them elected unless they can be super sure about what comes out of that and that they’re going to be okay,” said Eric McGhee, a Public Policy Institute of California expert who has written extensively about redistricting.

Only later did California’s most prominent Democrats embrace independent redistricting as a national matter. Now, they’re back on familiar ground, defending their party’s right to undertake its own power play in the face of GOP efforts elsewhere.

“While we continue to support enacting legislation to create nationwide independent redistricting commissions, Democrats must respond to Republicans’ blatant partisan power grab,” Pelosi said in her statement. “Democrats cannot and will not unilaterally disarm.”

Her fellow House Democrats don’t have any remorse about the political capital spent trying to pass the voting rights legislation in previous Congresses, though some are wistful about their failure in light of their current predicament.

Both their sweeping campaigns-and-elections package, dubbed the For the People Act, and a narrower measure aimed at restoring the 1965 Voting Rights Act, named after the late Rep. John Lewis, ran headlong into the Senate filibuster and now have zero path to passage under the GOP trifecta.

“This is an example of why we need it,” said Missouri Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, whose Kansas City–area district could be redrawn by the state GOP in the coming weeks.

Quigley said that Democrats should continue “pushing and advocating” for national redistricting standards, “educating the public of where we can be and why it matters” — even as they pursue their own partisan lines.

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, also argued for reviving Democrats’ voting bills in a future Congress and for eventually going even further by implementing multi-member congressional districts and ranked-choice voting.

But he acknowledged the reality of the situation Democrats face.

“I would rather fight fire with water and put gerrymandering out of business,” he said. “But if the Republicans are going to plunge us into a race to the bottom, then we have to fight back with every means at our disposal.”

Shia Kapos, Nicole Markus, Jeremy White and Liz Crampton contributed to this report.

Rep. Cory Mills has recently faced accusations that he has benefited from federal contracts while in office, that he assaulted a onetime girlfriend in his Washington apartment and, just this week, that he threatened another ex with the release of nude videos.

So far, the drumbeat of tawdry allegations has raised eyebrows in Washington, but it has not translated into any overt effort to sideline the two-term Florida Republican.

GOP leaders in the House and in his home state appear to be betting that Mills’ various messes will sort themselves out without blowing back on the party more broadly — and potentially threatening its hold on power.

President Donald Trump won Mills’ district by 12 points last year, and Mills himself won reelection by a slightly higher margin. Because national party operatives view his seat as safe, there is little incentive for GOP leaders to engage as the accusations swirl. A spokesperson for Speaker Mike Johnson did not return a request for comment.

Mills, 45, has denied wrongdoing in the contracting matter, which is now under a House Ethics Committee review, as well as the new claims of personal threats first made in a July police report and made public this week. The third incident was resolved after the ex-girlfriend who initially told police in February that Mills had assaulted her withdrew the allegation.

In a statement Tuesday, Mills said the latest accusation was a “political attack” concocted by a political rival, “all to score political headlines.”

“These claims are false and misrepresent the nature of my interaction,” he said. “I have always conducted myself with integrity, both personally and in service to Florida’s 7th District.”

While Republican leaders appear poised to give Mills space, plenty of others see a potential political mess in the making — starting with House Democrats, whose campaign arm recently put his seat on their list of “Districts in Play” for the midterms despite the bearish 2024 results. At least three Democrats have already announced they plan to challenge him.

“Floridians deserve leaders who protect people, not threaten them,” said Noah Widmann, one of the three. “Cory Mills is unfit to serve.”

Among House Republicans, quiet concerns have been brewing for months about whether Mills’ behavior could give Democrats a real opening. Some of his GOP colleagues are wondering if they should start looking for another candidate to back in the district, according to three Republicans granted anonymity to describe private talks.

“What if he is arrested for real?” said one of the three, a member.

Another House Republican, also granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, said other controversies — including an allegation of unpaid rent that Mills dismissed last month as a misunderstanding with building management — have also surprised lawmakers.

A recent NOTUS report questioned whether Mills has been honest about his military service for which he was awarded a Bronze Star; Mills acknowledged “different recollections during chaotic wartime events” but said he was entitled to the honor. And as House Ethics probes his businesses’ contracts, which concern the sales of weapons or other equipment, Mills continues to sit on the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees.

“And then this whole other issue is disturbing,” the lawmaker said about the new accusations of personal threats.

Those are rooted in Mills’ relationship with Lindsey Langston, the 2024 Miss United States. She told authorities last month that Mills contacted her multiple times threatening to release nude images and videos of them having sex and harm her future romantic partners after she broke off the relationship earlier this year, according to a police report obtained this week by POLITICO. The report said Langston shared messages with Mills backing up her claims.

The Columbia County, Florida, sheriff’s department forwarded the report to the state Department of Law Enforcement for investigation. The agency confirmed Wednesday it received the request but declined to comment further.

Langston’s allegations have been complicated by the involvement of Anthony Sabatini, a hard-right former Florida legislator who ran against Mills in 2022 and is now serving as Langston’s lawyer.

Mills suggested this week that Sabatini was engaged in a political vendetta, but the attorney said Wednesday that he no longer lives in Mills’ district and has no plans to seek his seat. The evidence of Mills’ actions speaks for itself, he said.

Sabatini said he plans to take Langston’s allegations directly to the House Ethics Committee, which he said has “the independent authority to investigate this on its face.” A spokesperson for the panel declined to comment.

“If they don’t do it, it’s only because [of] the margins,” he said.

Meanwhile, in Florida, conversation has surrounded just what Mills’ future in GOP politics might look like. One top Republican operative in the state said, even before the latest reports, Mills had been “extremely frustrated” in the House and “there are people out thinking about running for the congressional seat” if he does not run for a third term.

“He didn’t know if he wanted to continue in Congress,” said the operative, who was granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Mills first won his seat in 2022 after post-Census redistricting created new GOP-friendly lines for the 7th District, stretching from Orlando’s north suburbs to the Atlantic coast — prompting Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy to retire.

His campaigns in both 2022 and 2024 were run with the aid of James Blair, a GOP consultant who now works as a deputy chief of staff for Trump and plays a key role in pushing the president’s agenda on the Hill.

Earlier this year, Mills was talking openly about running for the Senate seat that was vacated by Marco Rubio when he resigned to become secretary of State. But Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody instead, and Trump likely snuffed out any chance of a successful primary challenge by endorsing her late last month for next year’s special election.

In his statement, Mills said he would “remain focused on serving my constituents and advancing America First policies” and had no plans to comment further on Langston’s allegations.

“My team and I will fully cooperate to ensure the truth is made clear,” he said.

Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.