Several former Republican governors in the Senate have sounded alarms over a controversial House GOP plan to help pay for the Trump megabill by pushing billions in federal food aid costs to states.

Now there’s a would-be governor raising similar concerns. Behind the scenes in recent days, Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama raised issues over the provision with GOP leaders and pushed for the plan to be scaled back, according to three Republicans granted anonymity to describe the conversations.

Tuberville, who announced a gubernatorial bid May 27, confirmed his worries in a brief interview Wednesday.

“Everybody that’s going to be in state government is going to be concerned about it,” he said. “I don’t know whether we can afford it or not.”

The House provision affecting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would financially hammer deep-red states like Alabama, forcing governors and state legislatures to foot billions in new costs or cut benefits to low-income families. The Republicans say Tuberville appears to be increasingly worried about a multi-billion-dollar bill hitting his desk should he be elected governor.

Tuberville, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump who supports the House bill’s strict new work requirements for SNAP, isn’t the only Republican who’s raised concerns about the House plan. At least two dozen other GOP senators have quietly raised concerns about how their states could be hit.

Senate Republicans involved in the talks have been surprised that current GOP governors have not raised more public concern about the House GOP plan. Many House Republicans assumed the Senate would strip the proposal out of the megabill, but the Senate GOP is now considering a host of options to scale down but not fully strip out the cost-sharing measure.

Senior Republicans have discussed one option to force every state to pay five percent of the cost of SNAP benefits for the first time, adding extra penalties for states with the highest payment error rates, according to three other Republicans with knowledge of the conversations.

“I think a lot of governors are saying the Senate is not going to do this to us,” said one Republican with direct knowledge of the conversations. “No, we absolutely might.”

Republicans involved in the talks say they will likely need to maintain some version of the provision in order to achieve the needed spending cuts while also paying for a $60 billion farm bill package in the House version of the bill. The Senate parliamentarian appears likely to nix one smaller source of savings from the Agriculture bill — a provision creating a national clearinghouse to crack down on duplicate benefits across SNAP, Medicaid and other programs.

Sen. Jim Justice, who served as West Virginia’s governor until January, said both current and future governors need to “analyze this very, very, very seriously” and “voice their opinions.”

“Because if you’re asleep at the switch, and you miss what the cost is going to be … you can put a state in a tough spot,” he said.

Questions are swirling about whether the Senate’s parliamentarian will kill a major tax increase in Republicans’ megabill — potentially blowing a big hole in their plans.

Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough could decide that a $116 billion provision raising taxes on foreign companies violates the chamber’s internal rules about what may go into a reconciliation measure, which would be immune to Democratic filibusters.

Republicans are concerned that she will see the provision as tantamount to overriding tax treaties the U.S. has with other countries. If that’s the case, she could decide the matter belongs under the jurisdiction of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — which would be a problem for Republicans because their reconciliation plans never mentioned that panel.

That would force lawmakers to redraft their plans or drop the provision altogether, leaving them scrambling to cover the resulting budget hole.

“We’ll see what she does,” said Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. “I don’t want to speculate about anything.”

The issue is now being discussed behind closed doors as lawmakers eye changes to a sprawling tax package approved last month by the House that Republicans hope to push into law by their July 4 recess.

In the Senate, Republicans ordered nine other committees to produce pieces of their reconciliation plan, with much of effort focused on the tax-writing Finance Committee.

The tax provision in question, dubbed a “revenge tax,” would impose as much as a 20 percent levy on foreign companies whose governments impose taxes on US firms deemed discriminatory. House Republicans designed the tax to counter efforts by other countries to impose special taxes on American internet giants long accused of ducking tax authorities abroad.

Some tax vets see another potential problem with the provision when it comes to persnickety reconciliation rules: That it’s not a sincere effort to raise money.

The provision could be seen as less as a way to help defray the cost of Republicans’ tax cuts than as a chit to be traded in negotiations between the U.S. and other countries over how they’re taxing big multinational companies — and that too might be interpreted as a violation of reconciliation guidelines.

Lawmakers in charge of funding the government grilled President Donald Trump’s budget director on Wednesday about why he hasn’t yet sent a full request to Congress.

With less than four months left in the fiscal year — and until the next government shutdown deadline — White House budget director Russ Vought has yet to deliver key pieces of Trump’s budget request to guide Congress’ future funding decisions. And even Republicans on Capitol Hill are publicly complaining.

“Where’s the budget?” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) pressed Vought during the budget director’s testimony before House appropriators.

Vought reiterated that he plans to send the full budget request once Republicans clear the party-line tax and spending package they are trying to enact this summer. But he told appropriators that they have “all of the information that is needed to be able to write those bills” to fund the government for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1.

Republican appropriators, who are preparing to mark up the first of those bills later this week, aren’t convinced. Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.) told Vought the delay “really puts us up against the wall.”

“We don’t need another CR,” Alford said, referring to the prospect of a continuing resolution that keeps federal funding on autopilot. “And we don’t need a government shutdown. That will not be good for the president. It will not be good for Congress. It will not be good for America.”

Last week Vought sent a 1,200-page appendix, with detailed totals expanding on Trump’s earlier “skinny budget” delivered in May, to help guide lawmakers as they draft the 12 bills Congress has to clear each year to keep the federal government funded. But funding details for the Pentagon were lacking, including details like how many ships or aircraft the Pentagon aims to buy or what major weapons systems would be cut.

Vought is also holding back other essential pieces of Trump’s budget, such as projections for deficits and economic growth.

House Oversight Chair James Comer is broadening his investigation into former President Joe Biden’s mental decline.

Comer on Wednesday asked five senior Biden White House aides to appear for transcribed interviews with his committee: former senior adviser Mike Donilon, former senior adviser Anita Dunn, former chief of staff Ron Klain, former deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed and former counselor Steve Ricchetti.

“The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is investigating the role of former senior White House officials in possibly usurping authority from former President Joe Biden and the ramifications of a White House staff intent on hiding his rapidly worsening mental and physical faculties,” Comer wrote to the former White House aides.

Comer last month asked for testimony from four former senior aides — Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams and Neera Tanden — and Biden’s physician Kevin O’Connor. His inquiry into Biden comes amid renewed scrutiny in Washington over the former president’s mental fitness toward the end of his term, ballyhooed by a much-discussed book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson.

In a brief interview, Comer said some witnesses were already working with the committee. He expects some will appear for their testimony before the committee in the next few weeks.

“They’re cooperating,” he told POLITICO. “Hopefully, we’ll be able to announce some dates within the next 24 hours of when those first five will be coming in.”

The Kentucky Republican, who is mulling a bid for governor in 2027, previously led an impeachment inquiry into the former president. The House never held a vote on the matter.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is launching the confirmation process for the first judicial nominations of President Donald Trump’s second term.

The panel Wednesday morning opened a hearing for Whitney D. Hermandorfer, Trump’s nominee for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and four other district court judges in Missouri: Maria A. Lanahan, Cristian M. Stevens and Zachary M. Bluestone for the Eastern District, and Joshua M. Divine for the Eastern and Western Districts.

It is a continuation of a major priority of Trump’s first term: applying a conservative slant across the federal bench. The Senate confirmed hundreds of judges the last time Trump was in office, rewriting the rules around judicial nominations in the process. The Biden administration also confirmed hundreds of judges, leaving relatively few vacancies for Trump to fill upon his return to the White House in January. According to data from the U.S. courts, there are currently about 49 existing vacancies.

Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) opened the hearing by reminding his colleagues that some Biden nominees received bipartisan support, even though many were controversial to Republicans.

“Elections, as we all know, have consequences … I worry that partisanship will hamper these efforts,” said Grassley, appearing to take a swipe at ranking member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who recently suggested he could seek to block swift consideration of future U.S. attorney nominees.

Durbin defended his threats by pointing to similar tactics deployed by Vice President JD Vance when he was a Republican senator from Ohio, during which time he moved to slow-walk confirmation of former President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees.

The two committee leaders also sparred Wednesday over the Trump administration’s decision to stymie the American Bar Association’s influence on the judicial selection process, which stipulates that the nominees will no longer be required to respond to the ABA’s questionnaire or conduct interviews with the organization prior to confirmation.

Durbin argued the administration’s decision could prevent senators from knowing whether the nominees are qualified for their roles. Grassley maintained that the ABA could still send letters to the committee, like other organizations, but criticized the group as a “partisan progressive organization.”

The top two congressional Republicans rebutted Elon Musk’s criticism of their “big, beautiful bill” Wednesday as the tech mogul and former Trump administration cost-cutter continued attacking the GOP legislation overnight.

Speaker Mike Johnson spent several minutes during a closed-door House Republican Conference meeting on Wednesday morning pushing back on Musk and trying to reassure Republicans after Musk signaled that he thinks lawmakers who support the megabill should be ousted next year, according to three people in the room granted anonymity to describe the private meeting.

Johnson told his conference that he’s tried to call Musk to explain the process behind the megabill, as well as a separate bill to claw back billions in spending. Johnson’s message, in the meeting, according to the attendees: People will have differences of opinion; don’t take it personally.

“I think he’s flat wrong, and I’ve told him as much,” Johnson said at a news conference after the meeting.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune downplayed the impact that Musk’s criticism would have on his whip count. Republicans can afford no more than three defections in the chamber, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is already expected to oppose the bill.

“Obviously he has some influence, got a big following on social media,” he said. “But at the end of the day this is a 51-vote exercise here in the Senate, and I think it’s going to be the question for our members is going to be would you prefer the alternative. And the alternative isn’t a good one.”

Thune said he had spoken to Musk “a couple of days ago,” ahead of his latest attacks. Musk called the bill a “disgusting abomination” yesterday, and he continued attacking the bill and the GOP Congress overnight for not doing more to address “massive deficit spending.” The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated Wednesday the bill will add $2.4 trillion in deficits over the coming decade.

“There are going to be a lot of people who share commentary about this, and we just got to make sure we’re doing everything we can to get our arguments out there,” Thune added.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise also downplayed Musk’s potential threats to GOP members in a brief interview, saying that the party is “continuing to see fundraising goals get exceeded” ahead next year’s midterms.

“The speaker, myself, our whole team continues to exceed fundraising goals, because people know what’s at stake next year,” he added. “And President Trump’s all in, by the way, too, helping us hold the House. … He’s been our best, most effective deliverer of support.”

Johnson said at the news conference that Trump is deeply unhappy about Musk torching the centerpiece of his legislative agenda — reiterating comments he’d made inside the closed-door meeting: “As you know, he’s not delighted that Elon did a 180 on that.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and his tax writers will huddle with President Donald Trump at the White House on Wednesday as Republicans race to resolve a growing list of tax policy disputes in their megabill.

Thune detailed what to expect in an exclusive interview with POLITICO:

BUSINESS TAX PERMANENCE: Thune emphasized that one of the biggest tax issues for him and other Finance Republicans is making key business tax incentives, such as full expensing for research and development costs, permanent.

“There’s a lot of interest in growth in the economy among our caucus,” Thune told POLITICO. “Permanence, I have been told by a number of our members, is a red line for them.”

But it’s a costly ask, and senators have been cagey on how they’ll make the numbers work.

TAXES ON TIPS: One long-shot idea that could come up is from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who suggested to POLITICO that the $40 billion “no tax on tips” proposal could drop out of the bill and get passed later on a bipartisan basis.

Don’t expect Trump to jump at the idea. Trump campaigned on making tips tax-free, and it’s one of his top priorities in the megabill.

CLEAN-ENERGY CREDITS: Tillis also plans to raise concerns Wednesday about House Republicans’ plan to gut clean-energy tax credits, amplifying the warning he and GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), John Curtis (Utah) and Jerry Moran (Kan.) previously delivered to GOP leaders that a full-scale repeal won’t fly in the Senate. Democrats are working to drive a wedge on the issue.

SALT: Some GOP senators are pushing back against the deal House GOP leaders struck with blue-state moderates to quadruple the state-and-local-tax deduction cap to $40,000. Thune signaled to POLITICO that the Senate is likely to scale it back.

“It would be very, very hard to get the Senate to vote for what the House did,” Thune said.

But SALT Republicans are digging in. Rep. Nick LaLota (N.Y.) told POLITICO on Tuesday that such a move could “unwind many of the other connected policies” in the many interlocking deals Speaker Mike Johnson negotiated to muscle the first draft of the megabill through his narrower majority.

“It would likely stall the bill,” LaLota warned.

Meanwhile, Thune seems optimistic as he works to douse other flare-ups within his conference (Medicaid, food aid) and outside of it (hello, Elon Musk).

The majority leader also told POLITICO he expects every committee to release its bill text by the end of next week as he pushes toward a pre-July 4 vote. Armed Services kick-started that process Tuesday with draft text that increases funding for nuclear weapons, munitions production and new technology beyond what the House GOP proposed.

POLITICO Pros can dive deeper into the full Thune Q&A.

What else we’re watching:

— Vought hits the Hill: OMB Director Russ Vought testifies Wednesday in front of House Appropriations on the OMB budget. Expect plenty of questions about rescissions, impoundments and other cuts to come as House Republicans prepare to vote next week on the $9.4 billion rescissions request Trump just sent over.

— In the DOGE-house: A House Oversight subcommittee will scrutinize fraud risk in the Defense Department during a hearing Wednesday morning, with testimony from a deputy Pentagon inspector general and an official from the Government Accountability Office. It comes after a GAO report found $10.8 billion in fraud within DOD for fiscal years 2017 through 2024.

— Trump’s attempt to reshape the courts: Nearly six months into Trump’s second term, the Senate will finally start to consider his nominees to fill vacancies across federal courts. On Wednesday, Senate Judiciary will consider picks for vacancies in Missouri and on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Jordain Carney, Brian Faler and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.

Elon Musk’s bashing of President Donald Trump’s megabill sparked some conflict with congressional Republicans. But some deficit hawks were thrilled.

Several hard-liners rejoiced at Musk’s comments on X on Tuesday — calling the House-passed GOP megabill a “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill” and a “disgusting abomination.”

“These numbers are nothing short of stunning,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) responded. “Congress has hollowed out America’s middle class through reckless deficit spending and the inflation it causes.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who has reiterated his opposition to the bill, said to reporters on Tuesday that Musk “has some of the same skepticism” as him that the bill is “just not conservative.”

Musk’s comments came less than two weeks after Speaker Mike Johnson carefully threaded the GOP megabill through his razor-thin majority. He managed to garner enough support from conservative hard-liners concerned over the bill’s multi-trillion-dollar deficit impact. But Musk’s comments reignited the conversation as the bill heads to the Senate.

The two hard-right House Republicans who voted against the bill quickly praised Musk for speaking out. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) called Musk’s post “The Big Beautiful Tweet,” while Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) responded, “He’s right.”

But most Republican senators — even very conservative ones — didn’t appear to share Musk’s assessment that the bill was hopeless. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said he believed it would be salvageable with some adjustments.

“I think the Senate should make the bill substantially better, and I hope and believe we’ll do that,” Cruz said.

Any opponents will have to face Trump, who has already publicly bashed Paul and Massie on Truth Social for their prior comments. The president is pushing for the bill to pass with components, such as raising the debt ceiling and border wall spending, that the members have criticized.

“Sure, it helps bolster the case,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a key Senate deficit hawk, said about Musk’s post. “But again, the president wants to balance the budget as well.”