Republicans went home for the summer with a plan to sell President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” to their constituents. Some are starting to find that voters aren’t buying it.

In the latest display of backlash, audience members jeered Nebraska Rep. Mike Flood at a Monday town hall, shouting “Liar!” and “You don’t care about us!” over the two-term lawmaker as he made the case for the megabill, which Trump signed into law last month. By the end, chants of “Vote him out!” threatened to drown out his closing comments.

Such scenes of angry constituents confronting lawmakers are nothing new. They were commonplace in 2009 as Democrats pressed forward with a health care overhaul and in 2017 when Republicans sought to undo it.

This time around, there is a fierce debate underway about whether the town hall explosions are part of a genuine backlash to GOP governance in Washington — one that could presage another wave election as seen in 2010 and 2018 — or just another reflection of America’s political polarization.

Many Republicans are dismissing the outbursts, concluding they have been choreographed by Democrats and groups aligned with them and do not reflect genuine voter sentiment. Some — including Trump — have claimed without evidence that paid protesters are responsible.

“I think Democrats have been organized to actually act out in town halls, and I think if you’re going to have a town hall where you’re inviting people to come in with the intent of protesting, that’s what you’re going to get,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said Tuesday.

But left-of-center activists say the GOP dismisses voters’ outrage at their peril. Groups might be helping to publicize and organize protests around lawmakers’ events, they say, but that is merely harnessing a real grass-roots backlash to what Republicans are pursuing in Washington.

“I would say the level of energy and grassroots anger at Congress is at a higher level of intensity now than it was in 2017, and I think that’s evidenced by just the numbers that you’re seeing on the ground,” said Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of Indivisible,a progressive organization that came to prominence organizing protests that year.

Evaluating the competing claims has grown more complicated because Republican lawmakers, on the whole, have been doing fewer events in the classic town hall format — in-person, with an open attendance policy.

With the GOP megabill still in its initial stages earlier this year, the chair of the House GOP’s national campaign committee explicitly urged members not to hold in-person town halls during congressional breaks. But recently, with the legislation now signed into law, the party committee urged members to get out and sell the bill’s benefits.

Even then, some Republicans say they plan to shy away from the type of town hall that Flood held on Monday — open mic, on a college campus in a relatively liberal corner of his district.

Rep. Aaron Bean of Florida, who represents a solid Republican district, said he has a busy recess schedule speaking to small GOP and civic groups. But he said he is passing on scheduling the larger public forums.

“Only people who have never supported me want me to do a town hall,” he said.

Bean insisted he wasn’t insulating himself from criticism — he said he’s fielded plenty of skeptical questions on tariffs from constituents who work in affected industries. But he said the only negative feedback he has heard on the megabill is “from left wing lunatics” who “want a place to protest.”

Rounds said he prefers to hold smaller “coffees” as opposed to a “free for all.”

“I make it very clear: One, it’s going to be organized, and two, if you want to shut the coffee down, just act out and we’ll just shut it down for everybody else,” he said. “On the other hand, if you want to ask straightforward questions or hard questions, that’s fine, but we’re going to act like adults.”

National Democrats, however, argue that Republicans who are opting for more controlled events are shirking their responsibilities as public officials — and obscuring the popular backlash to the GOP’s domestic agenda.

“Town halls are about more than just politics, they’re about good governing, which Republicans clearly don’t care about,” said DCCC spokesperson Viet Shelton, who added that the recent outbursts are “made-for-TV, viral examples of how unpopular and politically toxic” the megabill is for Republicans.

Trump administration officials remain confident that the megabill’s benefits will more than offset any costs felt by voters, especially those in GOP strongholds like Flood’s Nebraska district. They ascribe the angry questioning and heckling to partisan plants and say Republican lawmakers just need to keep on the attack

“All it is is a Democrat op,” said one senior Trump adviser granted anonymity to discuss the backlash. The person added that Trump and congressional Republicans’ approval ratings versus those of Democrats have the White House feeling bullish on the party’s chances in the midterms.

Recent polling does in fact show the Democratic Party with rock-bottom approval ratings, though it remains to be seen if that will translate into GOP votes. Democrats hold a narrow lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average for the generic congressional ballot.

NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella similarly said that GOP town halls were “being hijacked into choreographed Democrat theater packed with left-wing activists” and said the “manufactured outrage exposes just how desperate Democrats are to distract from their toxic agenda and failing candidates.”

Audience members weren’t screened ahead of Flood’s event, according to Tyler Gage, a spokesperson for the lawmaker. Flood has no plans to abandon the town hall format, Gage added, but Monday’s was the third of three such events he usually hosts each year.

The Nebraska Democratic Party publicized attendance details for Flood’s event on its social media channels. Before the event Monday, it posted, “Voters of #NE01, you know what to do!“

But Chair Jane Kleeb said Republicans were indulging in “conspiracy theories” by suggesting that attendees were paid or protested out of anything other than their own genuine outage and are otherwise “out of touch with how deeply their cruel cuts are angering the public.”

Democrats have sought to weaponize GOP members’ reticence to hold town halls. Local progressive groups have organized events to go on “with or without” their GOP representatives’ participation, and some congressional Democrats are undertaking summer tours of Republican districts.

One such member, Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, said she planned on “bringing their stories with me back to D.C. — even if their own representatives won’t.”

But the volatile politics of town halls can swing both ways. Several House Democrats have faced their own backlash at events earlier this year from voters angry about the Gaza War and what they have seen as weak pushback against Trump. The same night as Flood’s town hall, three people were arrested at a Renton, Wash., event held by Democratic Rep. Adam Smith, according to local news reports.

“I don’t know if Congress knows what’s coming for them,” Levin said. “I would say that applies to Republicans because they are backing up Trump. It also applies to Democrats who are refusing to fight back and are headed into a primary season.”

Jordain Carney, Lisa Kashinsky and Jake Traylor contributed to this report.

A woman who said she had been in a relationship with Rep. Cory Mills has accused the Republican member of Congress from Florida of threatening to release nude videos of her after she broke off their relationship, according to a police report.

Lindsey Langston, a Florida Republican state committee member and 2024 winner of the Miss United States beauty pageant, told authorities on July 14 that Mills also threatened to harm any of her future romantic partners, according to a report she made to the Columbia County Sheriff’s Department that was obtained Tuesday by POLITICO.

Her allegations were sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for review, said Steven Khachigan, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s department. The FDLE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mills, who has represented a district south of Daytona Beach since 2023, has not been charged and told POLITICO in a statement that he was unaware of the police report.

“We have not been made aware of any report or allegations from law enforcement or the alleged complainant,” Mills said. “These claims are false and misrepresent the nature of my interactions. I have always conducted myself with integrity, both personally and in service to Florida’s 7th District.”

The incident was first reported Tuesday by Blaze Media and Drop Site News.

Langston told the sheriff’s department that she was in a relationship with Mills from November 2021 until February, when she said she ended it after seeing media reports that police in Washington were called to investigate an alleged assault by the representative against a woman.

Both Mills and the woman denied that any assault took place, and Mills was not charged in the incident.

Langston said that Mills told her he was separated from his wife at the time they started their relationship. The representative is still married.

She told police that after she broke up with him, Mills contacted her multiple times threatening to release nude images and videos of them having sex, according to the report, which said she provided law enforcement with messages that allegedly backed up her claims.

Anthony Sabatini, Langston’s attorney and a Lake County, Florida commissioner who challenged Mills for Congress in 2022, said Langston also filed a restraining order against Mills. POLITICO has not independently confirmed the restraining order.

In a statement, Mills told POLITICO he believes Sabatini is “weaponizing the legal system to launch a political attack.”

The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday issued subpoenas for Department of Justice records on the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, as well as for interviews with a slate of former government officials in connection to the case.

Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) announced that he was summoning nearly a dozen former officials to appear for depositions on the Epstein investigation — a list that includes former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Former U.S. Attorneys General William Barr, Alberto Gonzales, Jeff Sessions, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder and Merrick Garland, as well as former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey were also tapped to give testimony in connection to the case.

Comer was required to send the subpoenas after a Democratic-led subcommittee vote in July.

The move is the latest in a broader battle over the Epstein files, which took the Trump administration by storm last month as anger boiled over from within MAGA circles about the administration’s handling of the case.

The committee’s subpoena of Bill Clinton in particular seems more symbolic than substantive. No former president has ever testified to Congress under the compulsion of a subpoena — and lawmakers have tried only twice before: once in 1953, when the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed Harry Truman, and once in 2022, when the Jan. 6 select committee subpoenaed Donald Trump.

Neither president testified in those instances, and the Justice Department has long cited Truman’s example — though not backed by any legal precedent — to suggest that it is improper for Congress to compel even former presidents to testify, given separation of powers concerns.

While the president has tried to brush off the growing outcry — and lashed out at The Wall Street Journal over its report of a letter he allegedly wrote to the disgraced financier for his birthday, which he denies authoring — Republicans have split over their approach to the issue.

Trump has publicly raged about the case, suggesting it was a Democratic plant to undermine him. He’s also sought to mollify his angry base, directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the release of grand jury documents amid outrage from within his own MAGA sphere, although it is not clear if there would be anything revelatory in those documents.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche also met with Epstein co-conspirator and convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell last month amid the heightened public pressure.

Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for child sex trafficking and other crimes, was moved to a minimum-security federal prison camp in Texas just days after her meetings with Blanche — a transfer that came as Trump has made clear that a pardon for the convicted sex offender is within his purview.

Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.

Donald Trump and Chuck Schumer went head-to-head last week for the first time in nearly six months. Turns out they were only shadow-boxing — and the real bout is still to come.

The president pulled the plug on a possible deal to confirm some administration nominees, while the Senate’s top Democrat — under pressure from his party to take a tougher stand — boasted afterward that Trump came away with nothing.

Now, the two men are headed toward a fall rematch with much higher stakes: whether to keep the federal government open past a Sept. 30 funding deadline.

Despite decades of history between them, their relationship is now almost nonexistent. They haven’t had a formal one-on-one meeting since Trump’s second inauguration. And they did not speak directly as part of the nominations negotiations, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss private details.

The unraveling of a typical pre-summer-recess nominations deal has many on Capitol Hill concerned about what is to come. While other congressional leaders are sure to figure into the negotiations, it’s Schumer — who will determine whether Senate Democrats filibuster spending legislation — and Trump — who has to sign any shutdown-averting bill — who will be the key players.

“It would be better if those two negotiated,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said of Trump and Schumer.

Cramer said Senate Majority Leader John Thune served last week as the “arbitrator” ferrying between the “bare-knuckled” New Yorkers during the recent nominations fight. And Speaker Mike Johnson will have his hands full trying to keep his thin majority united behind a spending strategy that will keep the pressure on Democrats.

Democrats believe the onus is on Thune and Johnson to wrangle Trump — the dominant leader of their party — and convince him to come to the table. They are using their hardball tactics over nominations as a warning shot for the fall funding fight.

“Sooner or later, Donald Trump — Mr. ‘Art of the Deal,’ or so he claims — is going to have to learn that he has to work with Democrats if he wants to get deals, good deals, that help the American people,” Schumer said late Saturday night as the Senate prepared to leave town for the summer. “Going at it alone will be a failed strategy.”

Trump’s decision to temporarily abandon his confirmations push rather than give in to what he called “political extortion” from Schumer allowed the embattled Democratic leader to do a pre-recess victory lap after taking heat from the party base for months.

Schumer came under fierce criticism in March for helping to advance a shutdown-avoiding spending bill written solely by Republicans. He warned at the time that a shutdown would only empower Trump and that the dynamic would be different come September as, he predicted, Trump became more unpopular. Nine other members of his caucus joined him.

Trump initially urged Republicans to stay in Washington until all of the roughly 150 pending nominees were confirmed — a demand that could have essentially erased the Senate’s planned four-week recess.

But Schumer and Democrats demanded that Trump unfreeze congressionally approved spending in return for consenting to the swift approval of some nominees. Trump would not pay the price.

In a post where he blasted “Senator Cryin’ Chuck Schumer,” Trump instructed senators to go home. Republicans flirted with adjourning the Senate to let Trump make recess appointments, but that would have required recalling the House — and reviving the Trump-centered drama over the Jeffrey Epstein files. Instead, they are vowing to pursue a rules change later this year to quickly push Trump’s nominees through the Senate.

Schumer relished the Truth Social post, putting a poster-sized version on display next to him as he spoke to reporters Saturday night and comparing it to a “fit of rage.”

He kept the heat on Monday, joining with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to demand a so-called “four corners” meeting with Thune and Johnson to discuss a government funding strategy lest a government shutdown hit Oct. 1. (Republicans, who accuse Schumer of “breaking” the funding process, haven’t responded.)

Though Schumer and Thune have had informal talks about September, they haven’t delved beyond the broad strokes. The South Dakota Republican, asked about Trump and Schumer, predicted the two will have an “evolving relationship.”

“At some point, obviously, there are certain things they are just going to have to figure out, because on some of these things where we need 60 [votes] there are going to have to be conversations,” Thune said in a brief interview.

Schumer and Thune joined 85 other senators to advance the chamber’s first bipartisan funding package late last week, in a show of unity that senators hope will pave the way for another package of spending bills in September. But Congress is still expected to need a short-term funding patch by Oct. 1, and there are early signs of splinters among Republicans about what that step should look like.

But the nomination fight also underscores that Trump is the ultimate wild card heading into the showdown.

At various points heading into and over the weekend, Republicans and Democrats appeared to believe they were close to an agreement and just needed Trump’s blessing, only for it to unravel.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said that Schumer’s “satisfaction” in the wake of the nominations showdown is justified but added it was impossible to predict if Trump would come to the table in September.

“One of the most striking and salient facts about Donald Trump is his unpredictability,” he said.

Schumer and Senate Democrats have been trying to game out multiple scenarios in closed-door caucus meetings. They have also been discussing what demands to make in exchange for their votes to fund the government. Those could range from an ironclad commitment from Republicans that they won’t agree to more claw back more funding or seeking policy concessions, such as unfreezing foreign aid or National Institutes of Health funds, or pursuing a deal on soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act tax credits.

Democrats have their own internal fault lines to manage. Already Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman is vowing to vote to keep the government open, while others like Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts are striking a more combative tone.

Republicans’ unwillingness to commit to rejecting future spending clawbacks, she said, shows “the budget negotiations weren’t worth the paper they were written on.”

But Schumer, for now, is savoring the moment. After he wrapped up his news conference Saturday night, the smiling Democratic leader insisted his party was “more effective and more unified than the Republicans” as he kibitzed with reporters.

“What do you think — the art of the deal?” he asked, his arm around a poster-board display of Trump’s “Cryin’ Chuck” post.

Jake Traylor contributed to this report. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene asked President Donald Trump on Monday to grant clemency to former Republican Rep. George Santos, the notorious fabulist who began his seven-year prison sentence last month.

Greene, a close Trump ally and conservative firebrand, said she sent a letter to the Department of Justice asking them to present a case to Trump for clemency consideration for the former New York member of Congress.

In the letter, she said Santos’ sentence for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges “extends far beyond what is warranted.”

“George Santos has taken responsibility. He’s shown remorse. It’s time to correct this injustice,” Greene said on X.

Santos, who pleaded guilty in April and reported to federal prison in New Jersey on July 25, became a household name shortly after he was elected to Congress in 2022, when The New York Times reported several outlandish lies he told about his backstory during his congressional campaign.

The details of Santos’ falsehoods, his misuse of campaign funds and falsifying financial records were ultimately compiled in a scathing House Ethics Committee report in 2023, triggering a House vote to expel Santos later that year.

When asked on Friday about possibly pardoning Santos, Trump acknowledged the former New York congressman’s wrongdoing but didn’t rule out granting him clemency.

“Nobody’s talked to me about it,” he said in an interview with Newsmax.

Santos has repeatedly said he’s asked the Trump administration to consider pardoning him. In a social media post weeks before he reported to prison, he claimed that House Speaker Mike Johnson had “blocked” the Trump administration from granting him clemency.

While presidents in recent history have waited until the end of their terms to sign pardons and commutations, Trump has already granted clemency to many people in the first year of his term — some of whom, like Santos, hadn’t completed their sentences.

On his first day in office, Trump granted clemency to hundreds of people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol. Since then, he’s issued dozens more pardons and commutations, including to former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and to Todd and Julie Chrisley, the reality TV stars convicted of bank fraud and tax evasion.

Interest rates will be higher over the next decade because of the GOP’s megabill and drive up borrowing costs even for the federal government, Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper predicts in a new report released Monday.

In a final “dynamic” analysis of the bill President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the measure will increase the federal deficit by $4.1 trillion over a decade. Because the bill’s red ink is not offset by more spending cuts or new revenue, CBO found, the legislation will drive up interest rates.

That increase could affect investors and regular people getting loans for a range of assets, from cars to homes. But it will also hike costs for the federal government in a real way, according to thebudget office — increasing interest payments on the nearly $37 trillion national debt by $718 billion over a decade.

That’s higher than the $440 billion in extra borrowing costs CBO estimated in June, before Republicans reworked many of the bill’s policies to abide by Senate rules and woo the support of GOP lawmakers who were reluctant to vote in favor of the final product.

Congressional Republicans largely dismissed CBO’s deficit and interest rate warnings in the days before clearing the bill for President Donald Trump’s signature, arguing that the legislation would juice the economy far more than forecasters have ultimately predicted.

Building America’s Future, a PAC that has been supported by Elon Musk, is shelling out more than a million dollars to promote recent White House wins, including a GOP domestic policy package the Tesla CEO and former Trump administration employee once called “a disgusting abomination.”

The 30-second ad, titled “Independence,” is set to run nationally on Fox News and will congratulate President Donald Trump on the passage of Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which extends his 2017 tax cuts alongside other GOP wins at the expense of nearly $1 trillion in coming Medicaid cuts.

“This Independence Day, President Trump and Congress made the working family tax cuts law,” the spot, which is to debut Monday, will say. “Freeing Americans from taxes on their tips and overtime, doubling the child tax credit, and cutting taxes for seniors. Republicans know that our country is better off when working families keep more of what they earn. Now, they will.”

Musk, who has donated extensively to BAF, assailed the megabill when it reached Congress. Calling it “utterly insane and destructive,” he promised to fund primary challengers to all Republicans who voted for the bill and declared the arrival of a new America Party” after Trump signed it.

As the pair’s rift escalated in June, Trump responded by threatening his former backer’s government contracts. And Musk, the world’s richest man, perhaps presciently wrote that Trump was in the Jeffrey Epstein files.

But the PAC that Musk has backed doesn’t agree with his assessment of the megabill.

“President Trump, Leader John Thune, and Speaker Mike Johnson all showed tremendous strength and vision to get historic tax cuts for working families across the finish line this summer, and their remarkable achievement will put America on a path to prosperity for years to come,” said Generra Peck, senior advisor to the PAC. “At Building America’s Future, we could not be more proud to stand with an administration and GOP Congress that is truly building a brighter future for America.”

As the Senate prepared to vote last week to confirm Emil Bove to a lifetime seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, one familiar name kept cropping up: Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

It will be seven years this October since senators confirmed Kavanaugh in the culmination of a politically fraught and highly emotional ordeal that tested personal beliefs and partisan loyalties. And while Bove’s confirmation process was nowhere near as explosive, Democrats and Republicans made comparisons to the Kavanaugh affair throughout.

Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley of Iowa accused Democrats of “dust[ing] off the playbook that they devised” for Kavanaugh in order to vilify Bove. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who is next in line to be the top Democrat on the committee in the next Congress, said Trump allies attempted to paper over ethical questions around Bove’s qualifications in the same way they shrugged off a sexual assault allegation against Kavanaugh.

“There’s a similarity here,” said Whitehouse. “[It] smells like political maneuver.”

It illustrates how one of the Senate’s most painful moments continues to haunt lawmakers — particularly those who sit on the Judiciary Committee, which has historically operated on a bipartisan basis at the frontlines of helping the legislative body fulfill its obligations to advise and consent.

“Kavanaugh has kinda become a verb,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a senior member of the Judiciary panel whose defense of the Supreme Court nominee in 2018 catapulted him to conservative stardom.

At least three different whistleblowers came forward ahead of Bove’s confirmation vote with allegations against the nominee, who served as President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense attorney before becoming a senior Justice Department official. Democrats pressed Bove about his role in facilitating the dismissal of federal corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams, and whether he suggested the administration ignore court orders that would undercut the president’s immigration agenda.

In Bove’s case, the allegations were markedly different from those lodged by Christine Blasey Ford against Kavanaugh, who she said sexually assaulted her in high school — an offense Kavanaugh unequivocally denied. But the tactics deployed by Democrats and Republicans in these cases mirror each other.

In the fights over Kavanaugh and Bove, Democrats and Republicans accused each other of acting in bad faith. With Bove, each party leveraged the other’s behavior during the Kavanaugh episode to undermine the opposite side’s credibility.

“I think it was an embarrassment to the Republicans, with Kavanaugh, that someone would come before us and literally tell her story under oath, a very credible presentation,” said the panel’s ranking member Dick Durbin of Illinois, who was a senior member of the panel when it considered Kavanaugh’s nomination. “I think the same thing is true of these whistleblowers.”

Blasey Ford’s allegations were submitted to Democrats long before they came to light, completely upending Kavanaugh’s anticipated glidepath to party-line confirmation. The new information forced the Judiciary Committee to regroup to hear testimony from Blasey Ford and hold another round of questioning for Kavanaugh.

Still, Democrats complained that Republicans, and the Trump administration, cut corners to expedite a final vote on Kavanaugh. Democrats, in Bove’s case, also accused Republicans of acting too hastily to confirm their nominee, including by refusing to hold an additional hearing with at least one of the whistleblowers who went public.

Conversely, Republicans accused Democrats of waiting until the immediate leadup to Bove’s scheduled confirmation vote to highlight potentially damaging claims against him.

“I felt like it was Kavanaugh-esque,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). “[The whistleblowers might have] thought at the eleventh hour, without time to complete due diligence, that maybe they could get through.”

Tillis, who is not running for reelection, had previously announced he would oppose nominees who expressed support for the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; Bove was involved in the dismissal of prosecutors who worked on DOJ cases tied to the attack and advised on White House pardons of the rioters. Tillis was seen as a potential “no” vote who might have blocked Bove from being reported favorably out of the Judiciary Committee; he ended up voting “yes.”

“When you call everyone corrupt, nobody’s corrupt; when the Democrats bring forward whistleblowers every other Thursday, coincidentally just before the vote … to confirm somebody that they oppose, people just tend not to pay attention to the whistleblowers,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “The last minute whistleblowers look contrived and are getting old.”

Ultimately, Bove was confirmed last week in a narrow 50-49 vote, over objections from two Republicans, Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. Notably, neither of them formally opposed Kavanaugh on the Senate floor, with Collins deciding to support him and Murkowski voting “present.”

As the shadow of the Kavanaugh saga lingered over the Bove proceedings, it’s possible the bad feelings between the two parties from both episodes will continue to worsen: Democrats are already bracing for the possibility that Trump could be in a position to appoint another justice on the Supreme Court if a vacancy occurs, which would set up another monumental political battle.

And while the confirmation of conservative jurists was a key pillar of Trump’s first term, Trump is making clear that, in his second term, loyalty is the driving factor in his selection process, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

Trump is also now pressuring Grassley to abandon the practice of allowing home state senators to effectively veto potential U.S. attorneys or district court judges for their own state, and Senate GOP leadership is considering changing the chamber’s rules in the fall to speed up the process for confirming some nominees. Both would further shake up institutional precedent just as Democrats say the Kavanaugh and Bove cases challenged the status quo.

“I do think that the sense of frustration and even anger has become more pronounced simply because there are so many rules and norms that they are defying and disregarding without even a pretense of fairness,” Blumenthal, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said of the chamber’s judicial confirmation process.

“I think the partisan divide may have deepened somewhat,” he continued. “The issue is the same –that is, the denial of a full and fair investigation of the nominee, whether it was Kavanaugh or Bove.”

When the House and Senate return from their month-long August recess, lawmakers will have just four weeks to avert a government shutdown — and some kind of kick-the-can funding patch is all but guaranteed.

Before the Senate adjourned Saturday evening, the chamber passed the first bipartisan spending package of the year. But on the other side of the Capitol, House Republicans have yet to welcome government funding negotiations with Democrats, after spending the summer stiff-arming them by advancing bills with steep cuts and conservative mandates.

The mood on Capitol Hill already wasn’t ripe for a major bipartisan breakthrough this fall on government funding, given the Republican capitulation to President Donald Trump’s moves to undercut billions of dollars Congress has already approved. Now fiscal conservatives say House GOP leaders promised them no funding will be increased, while dozens of Republicans are demanding earmarks and Democrats are weighing ultimatums like re-upping Obamacare funding as a condition of passing legislation in September to keep federal operations afloat.

“It’s a lot of uncharted territory here in terms of the posture of the minority and the majority, and the president’s priorities,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said in a brief interview. “If you like chaos, then you’re seeing a lot of it.”

Adding to the bedlam on Capitol Hill ahead of the Sept. 30 shutdown cliff, White House budget director Russ Vought is vocalizing plans to sabotage the bipartisan funding negotiations he openly scorns. His tool of choice could be to send more requests to claw back funding lawmakers previously enacted after reaching cross-party compromise.

Vought is privately strategizing with members of the House Freedom Caucus and the right flank of the Senate GOP conference, while Democrats and even some Republican senators warn such a move would poison the well before the Oct. 1 shutdown deadline.

“It’s hard to imagine someone being more disruptive of the appropriating process than the current OMB director,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a top appropriator, said in an interview. “If he is determined to drive us into a partisan shutdown, he ought to just tell the country. In the meantime, on a bipartisan basis, the senators of the Appropriations Committee are continuing to try and do our jobs and keep the government open.”

The best-case scenario for lawmakers rooting for a bipartisan compromise is that the Senate’s passage of a three-bill package on Friday ends up spurring a deal with the House this fall. Then Congress could clear a hybrid bill that provides a full year of fresh funding for some agencies and runs the rest of the government on autopilot budgets for a few weeks or months, buying more time to wrap up the full slate of a dozen bills that fund the government each year.

The top Senate and House appropriators, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, are expected to negotiate over the next month, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he will be in touch with Speaker Mike Johnson to prepare for the fall funding fight too.

GOP leaders are also talking with the White House. But nobody has locked in a government funding plan they can present to congressional Republicans for buy-in.

House conservatives would likely harangue Johnson if he agrees to go along with any package that doesn’t cut or at least freeze funding. They are also demanding that funding clawbacks are not counted toward topline spending reductions.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said on social media last month that the “deal” to get House fiscal conservatives to support final passage of the GOP domestic policy megabill in July was that funding for the new fiscal year would be “at or below” current levels. “That is already negotiated,” insisted Roy, a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

The House and Senate are already endorsing drastically different funding levels in the appropriations bills they have been able to advance so far. The funding measures House Republicans rolled out earlier this summer would meet spending-cut demands by cleaving non-defense agencies by almost 6 percent overall and keeping the Pentagon’s budget flat. Senate lawmakers, on the other hand, have proposed $20 billion more for the military and at least modest funding increases for most non-defense agencies.

If House conservatives get their way in September, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will be under intense pressure from his base to threaten a government shutdown unless the GOP agrees to some concessions. Republicans need Democratic votes in the Senate for any legislation to clear the 60-vote procedural hurdle to move forward, and the New York Democrat already endured a political drubbing in March after helping advance a Republican funding bill days before the start of a shutdown he worried would end up empowering Trump.

“If we have to swallow a House-only radical Republican bill, that’s going to be a problem,” said Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

Schumer has to balance the desires of his progressive base with the demands of his more centrist flank. In a floor speech Saturday morning, he praised the Senate-passed funding package as “an example of how the funding process could work if the other side is willing to work in good faith, instead of listening all the time to Donald Trump and Russell Vought and the extreme right.” But he also warned, “the onus is on the Republican Majority … to ensure this process stays bipartisan in the fall.”

And least one member of his caucus said he’s not interested in Democrats playing hardball: Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has vowed, “I’m voting to keep the government open.”

In the meantime, Thune is already mulling how to pass a second tranche of funding bills. That next bundle could include some of the largest, and most contentious, appropriations measures containing money for the Pentagon, as well as dollars for key Democratic priorities like labor, education and health agencies. He is also predicting that the Senate bill will, on the whole, freeze or cut funding compared to current levels — a possibly winning pitch to his own fiscal hawks and those in the House.

Yet even with signs pointing to future conservative strong-arming, Senate Democrats are warily leaning into bipartisan funding negotiations after Republicans burned them last month by passing Trump’s request to claw back $9 billion from public broadcasting and foreign aid.

“We have been demanding bipartisanship, and we’ve been demanding to mark up bills,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), a top appropriator. “That’s not to say that Republicans have done everything right, or that we’re not still angry about various things. But when they behave well, I think it’s on us to reward them.”

Though Democrats are worried that any bipartisan agreement will be undermined by the Trump administration clawing back more funding, many are skeptical they could get Republicans to swear off approval of more rescissions packages as a condition of Democratic support.

“I think that is probably a bridge too far for them,” Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii said.

Instead, Democrats are discussing how they might net more tangible wins, such as extending soon-to-expire health care subsidies that help millions of low- and middle-income Americans and are set to expire at the end of the year. Senate Democrats are going to use the summer recess to preview their messaging strategy, including holding health care events.

Congress’ fiscal conservatives are beginning to hone their strategy for demanding conditions too. Members of the House Freedom Caucus are now pushing to fund the government at current levels for a year and are willing to allow earmarks in the final package as a way to avoid a massive year-end spending package filled with extraneous items they would otherwise oppose. Those earmarks are a priority of the business-friendly Main Street Caucus and its 83 GOP members.

“We’ve been very clear with the speaker: An overwhelming majority of our members want community project funding in this budget,” Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.), the new chair of the Main Street Caucus, said in an interview.

Republicans who are typically reluctant to vote for a funding patch are now making it clear that the vehicle for funding the government — a continuing resolution or a long-term package — doesn’t matter as much as what concessions Republicans can extract.

“I think you better not call it a CR, let’s put it that way,” Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), who warned in March that he wouldn’t support another stopgap, said in a brief interview before leaving town for August recess. “It’s got to have some wins in it for us.”

Mia McCarthy and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report. 

As chair of the Senate appropriations subcommittee overseeing energy and water programs, Sen. John Kennedy is among the rarefied group of “cardinals” — the 12 gavel-holders who tend to take a clubby, I-scratch-your-back-you-scratch-mine approach to the trillion-dollar government funding process they manage each year.

Lately, though, Kennedy has hardly been acting like one of the gang.

The Louisiana Republican has accused the Senate of “playacting” through this year’s bipartisan spending talks — a process, he says, that is actually as “dead as Jimmy Hoffa.” This past week, he contributed to a days-long holdup on an initial package of fiscal 2026 spending bills — insisting he get a chance to vote against funding for Congress itself.

And he’s flirting with a second act this fall, delaying his own bill to fund energy and water programs as he pushes for a spending cut. He’s also drawing red lines that could leave a separate bill funding the Interior Department hanging in limbo.

Kennedy’s assessment that the government funding process is “broken” isn’t playing well with colleagues. That includes Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Appropriations Democrat and a veteran of hard-nosed partisan fiscal negotiations.

“He’s breaking it,” Murray said in a brief interview.

As Kennedy tells it, his colleagues need to accept reality: Washington will be running on short-term spending patches, known as continuing resolutions, for the foreseeable future given the political hurdles to any workable agreement between President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats.

“There hasn’t been a point for a while,” Kennedy said in an interview about the government funding process. Hence, he says, the “playacting.”

It’s bleak talk for someone best known around Capitol Hill for his entertaining if sometimes contradictory approach to lawmaking.

A Rhodes Scholar skilled in dealing out down-home aphorisms to congressional reporters, he’s gaining a new reputation as a persistent headache for GOP leaders when it comes to government spending — and as an odd fit on a panel that is typically home to pragmatic senators who band together to cut deals even if they don’t love every piece.

By no means is he the only member on the committee who has thrown up roadblocks. Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, for instance, forced leadership to drop its plan to include a bill funding the departments of Commerce and Justice over Trump’s move to cancel plans for relocating FBI headquarters to his home state of Maryland.

But Van Hollen and others with parochial concerns haven’t questioned the bipartisan appropriations process itself, and even Senate Majority Leader John Thune exhibited surprise at Kennedy’s broadsides.

“We’re just going to do what we can to get the appropriations process moving again, and that’s something we haven’t had here in quite a while,” Thune said. “So there’s a lot of muscle memory we’re trying to engage.””

The Senate is “trying to find a sweet spot,” Thune added.

Kennedy ultimately reached a deal with leadership this week to get a separate vote on funding for Congress. He said he wanted to be able to vote against the Legislative Branch bill without having to oppose a two-bill package focused on the departments of Veterans Affairs and Agriculture. He’s angling to make a similar protest vote against the bill funding the Department of Interior and environmental projects, which would complicate Thune putting it in a second spending package that he wants to bring to the floor next month.

But Kennedy’s position frustrated colleagues who say he didn’t articulate any policy concern with the congressional funding bill beyond believing it spent too much money. And his willingness to take a verbal sledgehammer to the Senate’s talks is grating on some fellow Republicans who are straining to keep them on track.

“What we’re seeing is different, and I don’t know why,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said about recent tactics from Kennedy and other senators. “When I came on the Appropriations Committee, it was kind of like an unspoken rule, if you will — that we would be there to not only support the Republican bills, but as appropriators, we kind of held together … and we made the process work.”

“We don’t have that right now, which is unfortunate,” she added.

Besides publicly badmouthing the bipartisan process, Kennedy made other moves to rankle his Appropriations colleagues — starting with his vocal support for Trump’s pursuit of “rescissions.”

Those spending clawbacks essentially serve to undo the spending panel’s work. Not only did Kennedy vote for a first $9 billion package last month, he has also been backchanneling with White House budget director Russ Vought about additional requests.

Democrats, and some Republicans, are warning that would blow up the appropriations process, but Kennedy called it “naive” to think if the White House held off that Democrats would want to “share a cup of hot cocoa and a hug with us.”

Meanwhile, his frequent claim that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is responsible for breaking the government funding process has particularly rankled Democrats. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who is on the Appropriations Committee and likely to be Schumer’s next No. 2, said the idea that “you’re going to blame the Democratic leader, and you control both chambers and the presidency, is plainly goofy.”

“If he wants to vote no on his own bill, I suppose he’s entitled to do that. It’s a little weird, but he’s entitled to do it,” Schatz said. “But there’s no reason he should block the Senate from considering the legislation that he’s presumably helped to craft.”

That’s a reference to the ongoing standoff Kennedy’s in with Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins of Maine over the energy and water bill, which last year directed nearly $60 billion in annual taxpayer spending — much of it on the nation’s nuclear weapons program.

Collins and Murray agreed on a topline spending number for the bill Kennedy oversees. But the Louisianan wants to go lower — something Democrats consider to be a breach of the overall bipartisan agreement on the committee.

“Just because Patty gives me a number doesn’t mean I have to accept her number. She’s got one vote, and I’ve got one vote,” he said.

Murray, who is also the top Democrat on Kennedy’s subcommittee, said she is working with Collins on a plan to advance that bill out of committee over Kennedy’s insistence that it include less funding than the panel’s leaders have prescribed.

Kennedy credited Collins with “doing the best she can.” But he said he wants to cut spending and rated the chances of that happening through the bipartisan spending process as about as high as the likelihood that “donkeys may fly someday, too.”

Last Congress, he recalled, panel leaders made the case that Senate appropriators needed to “come together” and “sing ‘Kumbaya’ and ‘We Are the World.” The pitch hasn’t changed this year, he said — he’s just unmoved.

“I love ‘We Are the World,’ it’s a beautiful song,” Kennedy added. “But it’s not reality.’”