Speaker Mike Johnson told Republican holdouts on the party’s crucial budget plan in a private meeting Wednesday night that they could oust him from the speakership if he doesn’t follow through with his fiscal promises, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter who were granted anonymity to discuss it.

Johnson pledged to abide by the House budget instructions, including a minimum of $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, for the domestic policy megabill that Republicans are now able to pursue on party lines after Thursday’s successful vote.

The “motion to vacate” the speaker comes up often in the House GOP conference. But the speaker’s comments, the people said, acknowledged that fiscal hawks could trigger a vote on his removal as speaker if doesn’t follow through. Several people in the room chuckled after the remark, they said. But hard-liners are planning to hold him to it.

The discussion of his ouster was seen as a concrete expression of how serious he was and displayed his enthusiasm for moving President Donald Trump’s agenda forward, according to one of the people. Some of the fiscal hawks saw it as a “blood oath,” according to another person.

A spokesperson for Johnson declined to comment Thursday.

A memorandum signed by Johnson and shared with reporters Thursday by Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina said he is “committed to maintaining linkage between provisions that result in a deficit increase … and provisions that reduce federal spending” and would deliver a “fiscally responsible product.”

Johnson’s fiscal assurance was one of the key factors that got hard-liners on board with the budget framework, which the House approved on a 216-214 vote, the people said. Some hard-liners on Thursday also cited assurances by Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune in swaying them in support of the plan.

Benjamin Guggenheim contributed to this report.

Despite a partial U-turn, Senate Democrats are vowing to move forward and put their GOP colleagues on the record on President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a lead author of a resolution that would overturn the basis for Trump’s global levies announced last week, said in an interview Thursday that Democrats still plan on forcing a vote on the measure. Trump on Wednesday put a 90-day pause on most of the tariffs on Wednesday, though he left in place a lower, 10 percent levy and announced severe retaliatory tariffs on China.

“My colleagues are telling me they want to move ahead,” Wyden said Thursday. “It’s the same trade chaos — I don’t know if you’ve seen the [financial market] numbers, but the only thing going up on the index today is volatility.”

Senate Democrats and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced the resolution earlier this week, and they are expected to force the vote once the Senate returns from a two-week break.

Four Republicans previously joined Democrats in a successful Senate vote to nix Trump’s earlier Canada tariffs. Speaker Mike Johnson moved to block a House vote on that measure and has undertaken a similar move to block a future House vote on the global levies.

Senators are wading into the thorny issue of whether to “lock the clock” — that is, end the practice of changing the time twice a year to account for the shifting seasons.

At a hearing Thursday, Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz said there was general consensus among his colleagues that Americans should stop changing the clocks by adopting permanent daylight saving time — which makes it light later in the evening and later in the morning — or permanent standard time, which does the opposite. But there isn’t agreement on which standard to embrace.

The Senate unanimously passed legislation in 2022 from Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to create permanent daylight saving time without requiring states already on permanent standard time to make the move. The bill’s passage at that time took many lawmakers by surprise, including those who said they would have hurried to the floor to block the request for speedy consideration had they known the measure was coming up for a vote. It later died in the House.

Scott said Thursday that President Donald Trump is “on board to lock the clock.” In December, Trump expressed support for ending the practice of changing time twice a year, but in March said it’s a “50/50 issue.”

He explained in remarks in the Oval Office, “If something is a 50/50 issue, it’s hard to get excited about it. I assume people would like to have more light later, but some people want to have more light earlier because they don’t want to take their kids to school in the dark.”

A White House spokesperson declined to clarify Trump’s stance further.

But Commerce Committee members also said they wanted to make sure states have latitude to make their own decisions on whether to use permanent daylight or standard time, weighing economic and health trade-offs.

“There are very real and complicated issues and countervailing arguments on both sides,” Cruz said. “There is widespread agreement on locking the clock … but the reason we’re holding these hearings is because these are real arguments and they have real impacts on people.”

Lawmakers heard Thursday from advocates on both sides of the issue, including the CEO of the National Golf Course Owner’s Association favoring permanent daylight saving time and a sleep medicine expert backing permanent standard time. Jay Karen, CEO of the NGCO, said that late afternoon golf activities account for a high share of revenue and that permanent daylight saving time would be a boon for outdoor recreation generally, leading to health benefits.

Karin Johnson, the sleep medicine doctor and member of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s advocacy committee, said permanent daylight saving time would be a “hidden mandate” that would wake Americans earlier and disrupt their circadian rhythms. She also pointed out that previous attempts to make this switch were abandoned. Permanent standard time would also lead to lower rates of depression and better sleep, she argued.

Cruz didn’t take a clear stance on whether he sided with permanent daylight saving time or standard time, but he argued that changing the clocks twice a year can indeed disrupt sleep.

“This leads to increased risks of health problems, including higher rates of heart attacks, strokes, and even car accidents immediately following the time change,” Cruz said.

Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) said it’s important lawmakers be “thoughtful” about how time changes work state by state.

“What works in my home state of Delaware may not work in Washington state,” Blunt Rochester said. “It’s time to figure this out. People across our country are tired of the constant cycle of falling back and springing forward.”

House Republican who derailed a critical budget vote will meet Thursday morning to plot their next moves, as they try to extract deeper spending cuts in the framework for President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

The clock is ticking as Speaker Mike Johnson plans to bring the House back to the floor within the hour to vote on the resolution after he canceled consideration last night.

Some of these holdouts, and GOP leaders, believe incoming public commitments from Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune for $1.5 trillion in cuts will flip enough votes for the budget resolution to advance today — without changes to the underlying measure.

Johnson and Thune will also address the press this morning to share updates and project unity. Meanwhile, Trump is up with a new social media post also expressing confidence that members could come up with a deal before leaving for a two-week recess.

“Great News! ‘The Big, Beautiful Bill’ is coming along really well,” he wrote. “Republicans are working together nicely. Biggest Tax Cuts in USA History!!! Getting close.”

Democrats are plotting a fresh round of town halls in GOP-held districts to hammer Republicans for scaling back open forums amid backlash to the Trump administration’s cuts.

Top of their town-hall target list over the upcoming recess, according to information shared first with POLITICO: the North Carolina district of NRCC Chair Richard Hudson, who told GOP representatives last month to stop holding in-person town halls.

The April 24 event in Hudson’s district is one of five “People’s Town Halls” the DNC, DCCC and Association of State Democratic Committees are organizing in vulnerable Republicans’ districts over the two-week recess. The others are slated for the districts of Reps. Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, Gabe Evans of Colorado and Ann Wagner of Missouri.

Democrats expected to participate in the town halls include Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Cory Booker of New Jersey, as well as Reps. Greg Stanton of Arizona, Greg Casar of Texas and Maxwell Frost of Florida. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has encouraged his members to take part.

Democrats have held 71 town halls in 35 states over the past three weeks in an effort to harness anger over Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s deep cuts to government agencies and services. They’re also warning of the potential for more cuts to federal jobs and services as part of congressional Republicans’ party-line push to enact the president’s border security, energy and tax agenda. Trump and GOP leaders insist they won’t cut benefits like Medicaid.

“While vulnerable Republicans continue to run scared because they’re voting to raise costs, gut Medicaid, and threaten working families livelihoods, we’re going to make sure voters know they don’t have to wait until Election Day to hold them accountable,” DCCC Chair Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) said in a statement.

Donald Trump and Mike Johnson failed to convince enough deficit hawks to back the latest budget plan for the president’s agenda — forcing the speaker to punt his planned Wednesday vote on the resolution and sending House leadership scrambling for a compromise that could satisfy hard-liners’ demands for more spending cuts.

Now, the speaker is staring down two potential options to get holdouts to come on board.

Plan A: Rules — GOP leaders “tentatively” plan to bring the budget blueprint back to the Rules Committee Thursday morning, Johnson said as he emerged from a meeting late Wednesday. They would tack on an amendment that would guarantee more spending cuts in the party-line package of tax cuts, border security investments, energy policies and more.

Rep. Lloyd Smucker has proposed tying the tax cuts to spending cuts — something he said would get him to “yes.” Another option is more straightforward: Language to the budget resolution that would require that a certain level of spending cuts be achieved in a final product that hard-liner holdouts want.

“There’s a mutual commitment that we’re going to find real savings in federal spending, because we have to do that,” Johnson said Wednesday night.

But that would kick the budget blueprint back to the Senate, which already tweaked this version of the budget once and has also held two all-night vote-a-ramas in less than six weeks. Senate Majority Leader John Thune was deeply unenthusiastic about holding a third: “I think everybody realizes that we’re at the time that we’ve got to move,” he said.

Plus, Thune would have to get key senators on board yet again. And many House moderates were privately counting on the Senate’s spending levels to avoid the steep $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion cuts proposed by the House.

Johnson is already trying to reassure them. He reiterated Wednesday night that House Republicans would not cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits, even as their framework makes Medicaid cuts likely to meet their massive deficit reduction targets.

Plan B: Conference Committee — Heading straight to conference would be a rare and time-consuming process that would require House and Senate leaders and committee chairs to hash out the differences between their chambers’ plans. It’s a last resort, but one that some hard-liners have pushed in recent days to avoid a failed floor vote and force more concessions on spending cuts.

Meanwhile, the House also hasn’t played the full Trump card (even after the president Tuesday told House Republicans to “stop grandstanding”). Johnson said he stepped out of a meeting with holdouts Wednesday night to speak with Trump, who’s closely monitoring the situation.

“The president is very anxious, as I am, for us to get this done,” Johnson said after a late Wednesday meeting.

A note for your calendars: Johnson said it is not his “intention” to leave for the scheduled two-week Easter recess before adopting a budget resolution — though he noted that Passover starts this Saturday and he doesn’t want voting to stray into the holiday. The speaker said “the calendar is not our friend,” but “if we have to come back next week, then we’ll do that.”

What else we’re watching:

— GOP senators back Biden-era tax credit: Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and John Curtis are leading a letter to their leadership, alongside Sens. Thom Tillis and Jerry Moran, asking that clean-energy tax credits created by the Democrats’ 2022 climate law not be repealed as part of the GOP bill enacting Trump’s agenda. The senators say the credits are essential to the president’s goals of spurring American energy and manufacturing dominance.

— Michelle Bowman hearing: Trump’s pick to be the Federal Reserve’s top regulatory official faces Senate Banking this morning to pitch an overhaul of how the Fed supervises banks and argue for a “tailored approach” to regulation that makes it easier for financial institutions to innovate. Her industry-friendly approach broadly echoes the roadmap that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlined this week for easing bank regulations.

Katherine Tully-McManus, Jennifer Scholtes and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

The House passed legislation Wednesday that would limit the power of lower court judges to issue orders with broad national implications amid a rash of rulings to halt the Trump administration’s agenda.

Members voted 219-213 on the No Rogue Rulings Act, with just one Republican joining Democrats in opposition. It represents House GOP leadership’s latest response to President Donald Trump’s growing anger at the federal judiciary, which has served as the primary obstacle for his administration’s sweeping efforts to transform the government and implement aggressive immigration policies.

Trump and his base have increasingly called for the House to impeach judges who have ruled against him. But without the votes to do so, House leadership has been looking for alternatives to placate the right flank of the GOP — including with this bill from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

“In recent years, it has become glaringly obvious that federal judges are overstepping their constitutional bounds,” said Issa on the House floor during debate Tuesday. “This is not a partisan issue. It may be a timely issue for this president, but that does not make it partisan.”

Still, the bill is almost certain to fail in the Senate, where Republicans must accrue enough support from their Democratic colleagues to meet the 60-vote threshold. The lack of enthusiasm among House Democrats for this proposal signals it’s highly unlikely Republicans across the Capitol will find necessary bipartisan support.

Democrats have argued that the courts acted appropriately to curb the overreach of the Trump administration’s powers, and national injunctions are necessary for the federal judiciary to serve as a check on the executive branch.

“Here’s a message: if you don’t like the injunctions, don’t do illegal, unconstitutional stuff,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). “Nationwide injunctions play an essential role in protecting our democracy and holding the political branches accountable.”

Trump has also asked the Supreme Court to limit lower courts’ abilities to issue injunctions that broadly block his administration’s actions. His administration’s request is pending before the Court, which could issue a ruling at any time.

House Republicans are making new moves to ensure a slew of clean energy tax credits benefitting red districts and states around the country are preserved in a final party-line package.

House Conservative Climate Caucus Chair Mariannette Miller-Meeks met earlier this week with House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) to underscore the importance of leaving intact many of those tax credits created by the Democrats’ 2022 climate law, the Iowa Republican said in an interview.

It went “very well,” said Miller-Meeks, adding that she told Smith to “thread the needle” in his approach to evaluating which tax credits to keep and scrap.

Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), who has helped lead the charge among House Republicans to protect the credits, said he was pursuing his own meeting with the House’s top tax writer, too.

“There’s absolutely more than 21,” he said in an interview of colleagues who want to keep at least parts of the climate law. “Now, it’s worth starting discussing with the committee what thoughts they have and what thoughts we have, and so we’re looking forward to that initial meeting.”

Smith’s committee would be responsible for finding massive savings for the package of tax cuts, beefed up border security, energy policy and more. Conservative hard-liners are agitating for spending cuts to be found in gutting Biden-era programs to incentive wind, solar and carbon-reduction business endeavors.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misspelled Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ name.

Rep. Elise Stefanik said Wednesday she will rejoin the House Republican leadership, albeit at a lower rung, after being forced to abandon her nomination as ambassador to the United Nations.

Stefanik previously served as GOP conference chair, the No. 4 leadership position, before abandoning the post when Donald Trump tapped her last year as president-elect for the U.N. Her nomination was pulled in late March to help pad the House GOP’s thin majority. Speaker Mike Johnson quickly promised her a role back in leadership, though not in her old position, which Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) now holds.

The new post, Stefanik said in a statement, is “Chairwoman of House Republican Leadership” — where she will “lead House Republicans in implementing President Donald Trump’s mandate from the American people for an America First agenda that includes securing our borders, strengthening our national security, growing our economy, and combating the scourge of antisemitism across our country.”

The new position will focus on strategy and communications, and she will also serve on the powerful GOP Steering Committee, according to the statement. She compared the role to previous unelected but influential leadership positions, such as the post former Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) recently held as chair of GOP’s Elected Leadership Committee under Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Stefanik also said she will be returning to the Intelligence, Armed Services and Education and Workforce committees, in addition to being appointed to the boards of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China and the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. She will keep her seniority on the Intelligence Committee, she said.

House Republicans want to ratify President Donald Trump’s efforts to rename the Gulf of Mexico. Democrats have other ideas.

At a House Natural Resources Committee markup Wednesday of legislation from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to formally redesignate the oceanic basin as the “Gulf of America,” Democrats threw out alternative suggestions, forcing Republicans to take amendment votes to name it something else.

One amendment would have renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of Ignorance.” Another would have dubbed it the “Gulf of Helene,” after a major hurricane that wreaked havoc off the coast of Florida last year.

In a similar vein, Democrats threw out calling it the “Gulf of American Should Rejoin The Paris Accord” — the global emissions reduction pledge from which Trump has on two separate occasions withdrawn the United States.

The most dramatic proposal from Democrats was to simply just rename the entire planet after Trump.

“Let’s skate to where the puck is going” said the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Jared Huffman of California, noting that Congress should forget about simply renaming one body of water and think bigger.

He said his amendment offered an opportunity for Republicans to “show how mindlessly cultish you are.” He offered these thoughts next to an illustration of a golden statue of Trump on horseback.

Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), the chair of the committee, suggested that that particular amendment was not germane. Huffman did not disagree.