Speaker Mike Johnson pitched Senate Republicans on the House’s megabill plan Tuesday. Not all of them were swayed by the overture.

Multiple GOP skeptics came out of the lunch meeting saying they planned to continue pushing for further changes to the party-line domestic policy bill — the latest sign that the bill’s challenges don’t end in the House.

“Exactly what he has told the media and his conference is what he told us,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told reporters after the meeting. “The fact of the matter is, though, that we’re not just solving this problem. What good is having the majority if we don’t use it to return to pre-pandemic level spending?”

Mike Johnson, according to GOP senators who attended the lunch, cautioned Senate Republicans against making a significant rewrite of the House’s plan. He characterized parts of the plan, including the $1.5 trillion in spending reductions and the inclusion of a debt hike, as key parameters that Republicans will have to live with.

The speaker, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said, “basically said that conservatives just have to live with raising the debt ceiling $5 trillion or $4 trillion, which is an historic amount. And I’m one conservative who won’t live with that.”

The bill is expected to face a litany of changes once it gets to the Senate. There’s a group of GOP senators, including Johnson, who want much deeper spending cuts. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday “a lot of the issue in the Senate will be … does it have sufficient spending reforms.”

Other Senate Republicans are closely watching where House Republicans ultimately land on safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP, the program formerly known as food stamps. Though House Republicans backed away from far-reaching proposals to shift Medicaid costs to states, some Senate Republicans remain concerned about a provision that could affect how states finance their share of the costs.

“I’m concerned with what they’ve got in the bill currently,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said about the House-proposed changes.

Johnson told Senate Republicans Trump was “emphatic” in the meeting to not cut Medicaid benefits. (Trump himself put it in coarser terms, saying Republicans should not “fuck around with Medicaid.”)

But many Senate Republicans said it was unrealistic to expect that the bill would remain unchanged after coming across the Rotunda: “I think most House members understand that when it comes to the Senate we’re going to make changes — hopefully improvements,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said.

Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative sought last week to gain access to the government’s central publishing operation, a congressional offshoot that provides public access to federal documents.

The Government Publishing Office is the fourth legislative branch agency that President Donald Trump’s administration has recently attempted to access. DOGE made an inquiry about placing a cost-cutting team at GPO, and leadership of the legislative branch agency declined, according to two people on Capitol Hill with oversight responsibility for the agency.

The GPO prints official documents and provides digital access to publications across the legislative, executive and judicial branches. While it services all three branches of government, the GPO is overseen by Congress and funded alongside other congressional support agencies.

A GPO spokesperson declined to comment.

GPO Director Hugh Halpern testified last month to House and Senate spending subcommittees that the agency’s head count is currently 1,644 — down from 2,284 in fiscal 2010 when its budget was 8.2 percent higher.

Last week DOGE made attempts to place a downsizing team at the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog that roots out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government, and the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights, which fields and manages complaints about discrimination, harassment, accessibility and other workplace issues. Both legislative-branch agencies declined access to DOGE teams.

“Everybody has been saying ‘get lost,’” Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, said of legislative branch agencies who have been approached by DOGE. “As they should — they have no business.”

House Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) said Monday evening that his panel already works with legislative support agencies on possible improvements.

“There’s efficiencies we can create at all these agencies while also maintaining Article One authority, so I think we’re in a good spot,” Steil said in a brief interview.

The White House also launched a purge of officials at the Library of Congress, including Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and the head of the copyright office two weeks ago and attempted to install hand-picked replacements from within Trump’s Department of Justice.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem defended the Trump administration potentially suspending habeas corpus, engaging in a public scuffle Tuesday with a Democratic senator over the definition of the legal principle that serves as a check on the government’s ability to detain people.

When asked at a Senate hearing Tuesday by Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) to define habeas corpus — the right of due process to challenge a person’s detention by the government — Noem described the term as “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.”

Hassan, a staunch critic of President Donald Trump, quickly fired back at Noem, calling her definition “incorrect.”

“Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people,” Hassan said. “If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people, including American citizens, and hold them indefinitely for no reason.”

Hassan then pressed Noem on whether she supports the legal principle, but the secretary didn’t back down.

“I support habeas corpus — I also recognize that the president of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not,” Noem said.

The Trump administration has floated suspending the legal right amid its crackdown on illegal immigration. Stephen Miller, a senior aide to Trump, told reporters that the administration was considering doing so earlier this month.

“The Constitution is clear … the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus could be suspended in time of invasion,” he said earlier this month. “So that’s an option we’re actively looking at. A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.”

The Trump administration has been barreling forward with its aggressive campaign to deport thousands of immigrants in the country illegally since Trump’s return to office in January. However, the effort has sparked various legal challenges surrounding whether Trump’s actions have exceeded the power of the executive branch and wrongfully revoked migrants’ rights to due process.

The hearing, held by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, was scheduled to discuss DHS’ budget request for the upcoming fiscal year.

President Donald Trump called Rep. Thomas Massie a “grandstander” during his visit to the Capitol Tuesday morning to whip support for his “big, beautiful bill,” after previously calling for other Republicans to wage primary challenges against the Kentucky Republican.

Massie said he’s unbothered — and still a “no” on the legislation House GOP leaders hope to pass later this week.

“I don’t think he wants to talk about cutting spending,” Massie said of the president’s presentation to the House Republican Conference. “He just said, ‘go after waste, fraud and abuse.’ … It means: ‘Quit talking about it, Freedom Caucus.’”

Fiscal hawks like Massie — who is not a formal member of the Freedom Caucus but is aligned with its demands — have been agitating for leadership to make steep cuts to Medicaid to find savings for the party-line tax and spending package central to enacting Trump’s biggest legislative priorities. That effort has run up against resistance among Republicans across the ideological spectrum who worry about the political fallout of making changes to the safety-net program that could result in millions of Americans losing benefits.

“He does not want to cut Medicaid. … I think he genuinely doesn’t want to cut Medicaid,” said Massie. “He probably wouldn’t take off one beneficiary who’s not an illegal alien or felon. … I don’t think he cares about work requirements. If he did, they would be real and they would kick in now.”

Trump, indeed, told House Republicans “don’t fuck around with Medicaid,” according to people who were in the room for the meeting.

The president also told reporters, as he headed into the private confab with members Tuesday morning, “I don’t think Thomas Massie understands government. I think he’s a grand stander,” and reportedly made similar remarks to Massie directly inside the room.

Massie said afterward he was aware that Trump called him out by name, and that “no,” he was not bothered by it — but he said he wasn’t familiar with specific accusations of not understanding politics.

Asked by one reporter how it felt to be “called … a grandstander to your face in there,” Massie replied, “it’s fine … he says my hair is nicer than [Kentucky Republican Sen.] Rand Paul’s.”

But Massie also conceded Trump “probably did a pretty good job in there. Like, if his job was to go in there and convince the Freedom Caucus and the blue-state Republicans, I think he did a good job. And he made a decent effort at convincing me — directly.”

GOP leaders can only afford to lose a tiny handful of votes and still pass the party-line package.

Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) announced he would seek a fifth term in the House on Tuesday, ending speculation that he could run statewide instead.

Golden has held a battleground district won by President Donald Trump three times since he first flipped the seat in 2018 — making him a prime target for the Republican Party ahead of the 2026 midterms.

“While I have considered many options for how best to continue serving the people of Maine, I have decided to run for re-election because the surest way to restore balance in Washington is for Democrats to win back the House of Representatives,” Golden said in a press release on Tuesday.

He was viewed as a potential statewide candidate in Maine. The state has an open governor’s race, and Democrats are again looking to target Republican Sen. Susan Collins — although Golden once worked for her, and many Democrats believed he ultimately wouldn’t challenge his former boss.

Golden’s announcement comes after Republican Paul LePage — who served as governor of Maine from 2011 to 2019 — entered the race earlier this month.

“I do not need a job, I am running to protect our Maine jobs,” LePage said in a statement on social media announcing his campaign. “I am running to serve the people of Maine and help the president fix Washington.”

Golden criticized LePage in his announcement, saying he was “going to do what it takes to make sure no one like Paul LePage blusters his way into Congress.”

Golden, who did not endorse former Vice President Kamala Harris for president last year, has faced backlash from Democrats for siding with Republicans at times on issues like gun control.

Senate Republicans will move this week to nix California’s vehicle emission waivers, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said, setting up a high-stakes fight over the chamber’s rules.

Thune said in a Tuesday floor speech that he will move forward with three House-passed resolutions that use the Congressional Review Act to roll back EPA waivers that effectively let California set its own emission standards. Thune’s announcement comes after weeks of internal deliberations within the conference and public pressure from members of his leadership team to hold a vote.

That’s because the Government Accountability Office has found that the California waivers aren’t a rule and thus aren’t subject to the CRA, which allows Congress to nix regulations with only a simple majority, bypassing the threat of a Democratic filibuster. Crucially, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has backed up that finding.

Democrats have warned GOP leaders that they view moving forward with the disapproval resolution over MacDonough’s guidance to be akin to deploying the “nuclear option” undermining the filibuster.

Thune declined after his speech to detail how Republicans will get the resolution to a final vote, saying that it’s still a “little early.” Several GOP senators acknowledged this week that they were working through “options.” He and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) met with four potential GOP swing votes on Monday night — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, John Curtis of Utah and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — to talk about the procedural mechanics of the resolution.

It’s unclear how Democrats will respond after issuing their dire warnings. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) announced Tuesday that he would slow-walk four EPA nominees in response to Republicans pursuing the disapproval resolutions.

“If my Republican colleagues open this door and overturn the Parliamentarian’s wise safeguards on this type of abuse, there would be no practical limit, and the Senate could be forced to vote repeatedly on such matters that are clearly not ‘rules’ notwithstanding the plain language of the CRA,” Padilla said in a statement.

Republicans have brushed off criticism by noting that most Senate Democrats previously voted unsuccessfully to create a separate exception to the 60-vote legislative filibuster.

“I don’t believe that it’s nuking the filibuster,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), criticizing Democrats who previously voted for a civil-rights carve-out now raising a “hue and cry about nuking the filibuster.”

Still, multiple GOP senators have raised questions privately about if sidestepping the parliamentarian would be weakening their own chamber’s rules and setting a precedent about what qualifies under the Congressional Review Act that would come back to bite them the next time Democrats are in power.

But GOP leadership and supporters of the resolution are trying to turn the internal debate from the parliamentarian, whom many of them are wary of openly defying, to the role of the Government Accountability Office. Some have accused the agency of making a politically motivated decision.

Collins, after the meeting in Thune’s office, said that senators were still discussing the procedural path for the resolution but added that “I definitely want to see the rule overturned.”

President Donald Trump took a surprising swipe Tuesday at efforts to increase a key tax deduction — underscoring that the main beneficiaries would be Democratic “governors from New York, Illinois and California.”

His comments, during a visit to Capitol Hill to rally support for his policy meagabill, came as House Republicans from blue states are holding out for a major increase in the federal deduction for state and local taxes, or SALT.

“Well SALT is a very interesting thing. The big JB is going nowhere, probably right now, he could be the worst governor in the country, but Illinois and Gavin ‘Newscum,’ those are the people that want this, and they’re Democrat states,” Trump told reporters at the Capitol, referring to Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and using a pejorative for California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

The comments stood in stark contrast to remarks Trump made during his presidential campaign to “get SALT back.” New York, New Jersey and California Republicans have often cited Trump’s remarks to push for an increase in the current $10,000 cap on the deduction.

But now, Trump appears to be exerting pressure on the group to wrap up negotiations as House GOP leadership pushes to put the GOP’s marquee energy, border and tax legislation on the floor as soon as Wednesday.

The fight over SALT has been one of the key battles holding up progress on the legislation. The group of so-called SALT Republicans have said they’re not satisfied with a proposal in the current GOP tax legislation that would pump the cap up to $30,000, albeit with a new restriction limiting the higher deduction to those making below $400,000.

House Republican leaders are bringing in their biggest gun Tuesday as they race to pacify critics and pass their “big, beautiful bill” in the coming days.

Where things stand: Blue-state Republicans emerged from a late Monday meeting with Speaker Mike Johnson without a deal on a state-and-local-tax deduction, feeling uncertain if they could clinch a final agreement. It’s one of many hangups GOP leaders have to resolve before Rules meets on the bill at 1 a.m. Wednesday, with a House floor vote to eventually follow.

Now Johnson’s finally playing the Trump card. The president is expected to speak to members during Tuesday’s 8:30 a.m. conference meeting. “I think you’re going to see the squeeze come,” Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) predicted in an interview with former Rep. Matt Gaetz Monday night.

GOP leaders hope Trump can dissuade some hard-liners from putting up a bigger fight over requests like deeper Medicaid cuts and a complete repeal of IRA clean-energy tax credits, while convincing the SALT crew to finally take a deal.

Johnson said Monday night he expects “lots of encouragement to get this thing done” from the president Tuesday. Asked if he wants Trump to give direction on Medicaid, Johnson said, “I think he already has.”

They might need some more clarification. After a meeting with moderates, Johnson said so-called FMAP changes affecting state reimbursement rates aren’t on the table — and haven’t been for some time. But Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris said he thinks FMAP is “the simplest way” to meet hard-liners’ Medicaid demands and suggested they’re ready to hold out longer to get what they want.

Some good news for Johnson: The early-morning Rules meeting might not be a roadblock, after all. Republicans can lose two votes on the committee, and South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, one of four Republicans whose initial opposition to the megabill delayed a Budget Committee vote, said Monday he would advance it in Rules. (Texas Rep. Chip Roy, another hard-liner on the committee, told Mia he still has “major issues.”)

But the speaker still faces tough math on the floor — and tough dynamics as he tries to close a deal. Giving one faction what they want on SALT and Medicaid could drive another faction away from an agreement. “The more SALT that they want, the more my appetite for finding savings in other places [grows],” Freedom Caucus Rep. Eric Burlison said Monday.

What else we’re watching: 

— House Judiciary ICE hearing: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his leadership team are slamming the DOJ for charging Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.) with assault Monday in connection with a chaotic confrontation outside an ICE detention facility in New Jersey earlier this month. That’s setting up a contentious House Judiciary hearing Tuesday examining ICE operations.

— Billy Long on the Hill: Former Rep. Billy Long will testify in front of Senate Finance Tuesday in his quest for confirmation as IRS commissioner. Republicans are expected to press Long about his past work pitching a certain pandemic-era tax credit known as the Employee Retention Credit, which was found to be rife with fraudulent claims.

— Thune contemplates CRA: Senate Republicans will announce as soon as Tuesday whether to bring up a Congressional Review Act disapproval resolution that nixes California’s emissions standards waiver. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the GOP sponsor of the Senate’s resolution, met Monday night with four Republicans viewed as potential swing votes: Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and John Curtis of Utah.

Hailey Fuchs and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.