Key GOP holdouts held firm against approval of a budget framework for Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” domestic policy bill even as the president continued working to quell the revolt from House fiscal hawks.

Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) said he was “not going to change my vote” and predicted the budget vote would fail if it came to the floor.

“The Senate needs to be willing to do what the House was willing to do, which is cut spending,” he said Wednesday morning. Burlison said he had met with White House staff on the issue.

Meanwhile, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a vocal leader of the holdout bloc, said in a Wednesday Rules Committee meeting that he would support bringing the budget plan to a final vote but would oppose it on the floor.

Roy, who attended a White House meeting with Trump on Tuesday, told his fellow Republicans to “stop making up math.”

“Stop lying to the American people that you can just magically put something on a board and say, ‘Oh, it all pays for itself.’ It doesn’t,” he said. “Get an eraser and a pencil, and put it out on paper and come show me — and that message from me goes to the White House, to my Senate Republican colleagues and to the leadership on this side of the aisle. Come show me the math.”

Both comments came after Trump on Tuesday night addressed lawmakers and urged them to “stop grandstanding” and “close your eyes and get there.” And on Wednesday morning, he continued to crank up the pressure in a series of social media posts.

“It is IMPERATIVE that Republicans in the House pass the Tax Cut Bill, NOW!” he said in one post.

Trump’s intense whip effort comes after he failed to move Roy and several other hard-liners in Tuesday’s White House meeting. Throughout his remarks to House Republicans at the annual NRCC dinner Tuesday evening, the president demanded that the fiscal hawks fall in line.

“In case there are a couple of Republicans out there [in opposition], you just got to get there,” he said. “It’s a phenomenal bill.”

Administration officials are intensely targeting some of the holdouts, continuing to call them to warn that opposing the plan could tank tariff-wary markets further and damage the president’s agenda, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the whip effort.

House GOP leaders are planning to try to muscle the budget plan across the floor Wednesday evening. The Rules Committee is now meeting to set up final consideration of the bill while leaders work to flip the opposition and ask Trump to lean on remaining holdouts.

Speaker Mike Johnson projected confidence heading onto the floor: “We’ll have the votes today at some point,” he said. Asked if he expected Trump to call the holdouts, he said the president had offered to but “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

Former Democratic Rep. Wiley Nickel is kicking off a bid to challenge North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis.

The attorney and former Obama administration staffer, who served one term in the House before redistricting made his seat much redder, is getting ready to nationalize the race by hitching Tillis to President Donald Trump.

“We got to stand up to Donald Trump and Thom Tillis, over and over, has been the one that has voted for the Trump agenda. He’s been the deciding vote on important confirmation after confirmation,” Nickel said in an interview.

He’s the first major Democratic candidate to kick off a bid for what is likely to be one of the few competitive Senate seats this cycle. Nickel has floated a Senate campaign since announcing he wouldn’t run for the House again. He was a member of the centrist Blue Dog Coalition during his House tenure, though he said he eschewed labels as he launched his bid for the Senate.

Democrats haven’t held a Senate seat in North Carolina since Kay Hagan lost in 2014, but they are optimistic about their chances this time. Vice President Kamala Harris lost the state in 2024 even as Democrats won the races for governor, attorney general and secretary of state.

“North Carolina is trending the right way,” Nickel said.

One wrinkle for Nickel is the potential entry of former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper into the race. Democrats have hoped Cooper, who’s been noncommittal on his future plans, would run for Senate. But Nickel sidestepped a question on whether he’d stay in the race if Cooper launched a bid.

“I have absolutely nothing but good things to say about former Governor Roy Cooper,” Nickel said. “My focus is Thom Tillis, who is voting over and over with Donald Trump on disastrous policies that are going to harm North Carolina.”

He also dodged a question on whether he would support Sen. Chuck Schumer for leader again after intraparty furor for the New York Democrat’s vote to advance a Trump-backed government funding bill last month.

“My focus is just winning the Senate race and making sure that we flip this seat from red to blue,” Nickel said.

A Democratic group formed to counter Donald Trump’s tax policies is launching a Tax Day-themed ad criticizing the administration and Republican lawmakers over potentially pursuing cuts to Medicaid to fund the president’s agenda.

Families Over Billionaires is putting six figures behind the ad that will run on social media and streaming platforms through Tuesday in the DMV market, according to information shared first with POLITICO.

“This Tax Day, I want to thank Republicans in Congress for having the guts to slash health care for families, seniors, and our veterans — all to give billionaires like me another tax break,” a man says in the ad as a butler hands him a refund check on a silver platter.

Democrats’ latest attack comes as the House is set to vote as soon as today on the framework to advance Trump’s sweeping border security, energy and tax agenda that cleared the Senate last week.

House Republicans are looking at major reductions to Medicaid to help fund the party-line push to enact Trump’s priorities — though the president reiterated last week that he would not approve cuts to the program.

But Democrats are hammering away at it anyway. Families Over Billionaires has launched a series of ads since its launch in late January targeting vulnerable Republicans over the GOP’s tax plans. The group counts former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), former Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young and the Service Employees International Union among its backers.

President Donald Trump is ratcheting up pressure on House Republicans to get going on a budget vote, with dozens opposing the plan or undecided. But things are looking dicey.

After a White House meeting failed to seal the deal, Trump tried one more time at Tuesday evening’s NRCC dinner. It came as House GOP leaders pushed hard to set up Wednesday’s 8:45 a.m. Rules Committee meeting to start advancing the budget resolution.

“Close your eyes and get there,” Trump said Tuesday night. “Stop grandstanding.”

With Trump bearing down, Speaker Mike Johnson is facing one of the biggest internal revolts so far this year. He has only a couple of days to turn things around before members leave town for a two-week recess and potentially rob Trump of a win as he faces a global backlash over his “Liberation Day” tariffs. While we’ve seen conservatives defy Johnson before, this time deficit hawks across the conference are digging in to get deeper cuts to federal spending.

Trump may have made things harder for Johnson on Tuesday. After meeting with holdouts at the White House, Trump declared on Truth Social that he hoped for spending cuts “in excess of $1 Trillion Dollars” — a number that isn’t going to fly with House fiscal hawks looking for more.

“I’m right now a no unless I can be convinced that the Senate actually means that they would cut $1.5 or 2 trillion in spending,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) told POLITICO.

What else we’re watching:

– Amid the tariff turmoil: House Republicans will get their crack at U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer today when he heads before Ways and Means at 10 a.m. GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (N.Y.) said she’ll press for answers on the progress Trump is making toward cutting deals with other countries. But Trump said Tuesday night that “we don’t necessarily want to make a deal with them.”

– Meta under fire: Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former director of global public policy at Facebook, will testify this morning that Meta company executives lied about their involvement with China and willingness to censor on their sites. Meta has pushed back on these claims. Senators are set to press her on Meta’s work to develop a presence in China.

– Crypto coming up: House Financial Services and Agriculture are having separate hearings today on crypto legislation that would revamp regulation of digital asset trading. House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) says: “You’ll see us use the next few weeks as a way to listen to stakeholders, get feedback from the administration.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Speaker Mike Johnson is projecting confidence about finalizing a GOP budget plan after he and President Donald Trump went to work on a group of Republican holdouts at a White House meeting Tuesday — but they still haven’t locked up the votes.

“We had a lot of members whose questions were answered, and I think we’re moving, making great progress right now,” Johnson told reporters as he arrived back in the Capitol. He has about 10 members threatening to vote no, with dozens more undecided.

Trump assured meeting attendees that he would follow through with big spending cuts even though the newly finalized Senate instructions go nowhere near the minimum $1.5 trillion in reductions that the House is targeting. Trump made a similar pledge to some Senate Republicans last week.

“We have a deficit of trust sometimes between the two chambers, but I think when the White House and the president himself expresses his resolve for this, … we take it in good faith that we’re going to do this together in a collaborative effort and deliver this agenda,” Johnson said.

Trump did secure at least one vote: Rep. Ron Estes of Kansas, a Budget Committee deficit hawk, said “I’m a yes” after the meeting. But one key holdout who attended the meeting, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, said he remained opposed.

“Why am I voting on a budget based on promises that I don’t believe are going to materialize?” Roy asked, referring to the Senate plan.

Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee, who didn’t attend the meeting, also said he wanted to see a plan for spending cuts before committing his support: “Details matter,” he said. Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee said much the same: “They got to make some cuts. That’s all they got to do, is make some cuts.”

Johnson has to decide soon whether to have the House Rules Committee meet and prep the budget for a floor vote Wednesday. Key panel member Ralph Norman — one of the three hard-liners who could block further progress — said he was undecided Tuesday afternoon.

Trump and Johnson will have another chance to make their case later Tuesday, before an NRCC gala dinner where the president is expected to lean on a different group of holdouts: “We all got to go put on our tuxedos, and I think we’ll be moving forward this week,” Johnson said.

Ben Jacobs and Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.

Vice President JD Vance castigated Sen. Mitch McConnell on Tuesday over the former GOP leader’s opposition to a key Pentagon nominee — an unusual swipe at a prominent member of Vance’s own party and his former colleague.

Vance lashed out shortly after McConnell cast the only Republican vote against President Donald Trump’s pick of Elbridge Colby to be the Defense Department’s policy chief.

“Mitch’s vote today — like so much of the last few years of his career — is one of the great acts of political pettiness I’ve ever seen,” Vance wrote on X.

It’s hardly the first time the vice president has criticized McConnell. The two split over a debate on Ukraine aid last year when Vance was still a member of the Senate.

McConnell has voted for most of Trump’s nominees but Colby joins a list of notable high-profile defections, particularly in the national security space. In a lengthy statement Tuesday, McConnell argued that Colby’s confirmation would boost the isolationist wing within the Trump administration.

“Elbridge Colby’s long public record suggests a willingness to discount the complexity of the challenges facing America, the critical value of our allies and partners and the urgent need to invest in hard power to preserve American primacy,” McConnell said.

The Senate confirmed Colby on 54-45 vote. McConnell did not respond when a reporter asked him in the Capitol halls about Vance’s comment Tuesday.

Democrats moved Tuesday to force a congressional votes on President Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs — putting GOP leaders in a tough spot as the economic ramifications of the move continue to mount.

“Republicans can’t keep ducking the vote on these taxes,” said Democratic Reps. Gregory Meeks of New York, Richard Neal of Massachusetts and Rick Larsen of Washington, introducing a House disapproval resolution Tuesday. “It is time they take a vote and show their constituents whether or not they support the ‘economic pain’ President Trump is inflicting on American families.”

Their measure would terminate the emergency authorities cited by Trump in implementing the broad tariffs that have rattled markets in recent days and sparked recession fears. The Senate last week approved a similar measure targeting an earlier emergency declaration used to justify levies on Canada.

Senators introduced their own measure targeting the global tariffs Tuesday, co-sponsored by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.).

Democrats have largely united against Trump’s trade moves to hammer Republicans for potential price hikes, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries dubbing them “the largest tax increase on the American people since 1968.”

Meeks and the Democrats are bringing the legislation to the House floor through a fast-track process that can bypass committees and leadership and ultimately force a vote on the floor. But Johnson has tools to sidestep the vote, and it’s not clear that Democrats will have the votes to defeat them.

Speaker Mike Johnson moved successfully last month to block a Democratic effort to force a vote on the Canada tariffs, and he could pursue a similar maneuver to protect Trump’s latest round of tariffs.

So far, Hill Republicans have voiced concerns about the global tariffs and their effect on the markets, but there has been only limited evidence that GOP lawmakers are willing to buck Trump and party leaders to block them.

Only two Republicans, for instance, joined a bipartisan bill filed Tuesday that would require congressional review of tariffs imposed by the president. The bill backed by Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Jeff Hurd (R-Colo.) is a companion to a Senate bill backed by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and six other Republicans.

The two Republicans stressed that they don’t categorically oppose all of Trump’s tariffs but want to reassert congressional authority.

“The Constitution clearly gives the authority for taxes and tariffs to Congress, but for too long, we have handed that authority to the executive branch,” Bacon said.

Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said fluoride levels in water deserve “real evaluation” on Tuesday, a day after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he would direct the CDC to stop recommending fluoridating drinking water.

“I think it deserves, from what I’ve read and from what I understand, it deserves real evaluation,” he said during a leadership press conference on Capitol Hill. “There’s a concern that it may be having a negative effect on the health of children.”

Kennedy spoke to reporters in Utah on Monday afternoon after it became the first state to remove fluoride from public drinking water. He praised the decision and said he would direct the CDC to stop recommending fluoridating drinking water and that he is assembling a task force on the issue, pointing to some evidence that high levels of fluoride exposure is associated with lower IQ in children.

Last year, the NIH’s National Toxicology Program conducted a systematic review of published literature on fluoride exposure and concluded with “moderate confidence” that drinking water containing more than 1.5 milligrams of fluoride per liter is associated with lower IQ in children. That’s nearly twice the levels recommended by the CDC in U.S. drinking water to prevent cavities.

“It is important to note that there were insufficient data to determine if the low fluoride level of 0.7 mg/L currently recommended for U.S. community water supplies has a negative effect on children’s IQ,” the NIH said last year.

In Utah on Monday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also saidhis agency would review scientific data on health risks of fluoride in drinking water.

Last September, a federal judge in San Francisco sided with opponents of fluoridation in ordering the EPA to regulate the chemical.

The process could lead to a new, much lower federal limit for fluoride, which many cities and utilities have added to drinking water for decades to reduce tooth decay.

“Without prejudging any outcomes, when this evaluation is completed, we will have an updated foundational scientific evaluation that will inform the agency’s future steps to meet statutory obligations under the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Zeldin said in a statement.

Speaker Mike Johnson and District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser spoke Monday on a call to discuss a path forward on legislation to restore the capital city’s spending powers, according to one person granted anonymity to share details of the private conversation.

Still, there are no plans to bring the bill to the House floor in the coming days before the chamber leaves for a two-week recess, said three people with direct knowledge of the schedule.

That will keep city officials in further limbo as they soon need to make decisions about whether to wait for congressional action or move ahead with plans to account for a looming budget shortfall of as much as $1.1 billion — requiring dramatic mid-fiscal-year cuts to law enforcement, infrastructure improvement efforts and public education.

Johnson back in March drafted a stopgap funding measure to float federal operations through the end of September that omitted key language typically included in appropriations bills allowing the District of Columbia to continue to spend its own locally-raised tax dollars.

The Senate passed legislation to restore that provision after clearing the standalone government funding bill to avoid an imminent shutdown. At that time, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) noted the measure had support from her counterpart, House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.), as well as the White House.

President Donald Trump has since posted on social media that he wants the House to take up the funding fix, saying the chamber should vote on it “IMMEDIATELY” to “clean up our once beautiful Capital City, and make it beautiful again.”

Still, Johnson hasn’t moved the bill. People aware of internal party dynamics describe it as a casualty of unrelated floor schedule delays and an overloaded legislative calendar, where the District of Columbia budget fix just isn’t being made a priority. GOP leaders were at one point aiming to bring the measure to the floor before the upcoming Easter recess.

But Johnson is also contending with conservative fiscal hawks who aren’t fond of the capital city and its liberal leadership, and see the bill as giving away more than $1 billion away in federal funding — though that is not an accurate understanding of what the measure would actually do.

Johnson also wants to pass the measure through the regular order process, rather than jam it through under an expedited floor maneuver requiring two-thirds of those voting and present to vote in the affirmative. He is currently working to add conservative policy provisions to the underlying bill that would encourage more Republicans to come on board — though it’s unclear whether Democrats would stand for further infringements on its Home Rule authority.

A spokesperson for Bowser declined to comment.