The Senate’s deficit hawks might be raising the loudest hue and cry over the GOP’s “big, beautiful bill.” But another group of Republicans is poised to have a bigger impact on the final legislative product.

Call them the “Medicaid moderates.”

They’re actually an ideologically diverse bunch — ranging from conservative Josh Hawley of Missouri to centrist Susan Collins of Maine. Yet they have found rare alignment over concerns about what the House-passed version of the GOP domestic-policy megabill does to the national safety-net health program, and they have the leverage to force significant changes in the Senate.

“I would hope that we would elect not to do anything that would endanger Medicaid benefits as a conference,” Hawley said in an interview. “I’ve made that clear to my leadership. I think others share that perspective.”

Besides Hawley and Collins, other GOP senators including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Jerry Moran of Kansas and Jim Justice of West Virginia have also drawn public red lines over health care — and they have some rhetorical backing from President Donald Trump, who has urged congressional Republicans to spare the program as much as possible.

Based on early estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, 10.3 million people would lose coverage under Medicaid if the House-passed bill were to become law — many, if not most, in red states. That could spell trouble for Majority Leader John Thune’s whip count: He can only lose three GOP senators on the expected party-line vote and still have Vice President JD Vance break a tie.

Republicans already have one all-but-guaranteed opponent in Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky so long as they stick to their plan to raise the debt limit as part of the bill. They also view Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson as increasingly likely to oppose the package after spending weeks blasting the bill on fiscal grounds.

Meeting either senator’s demands could be enormously difficult given the tight fiscal parameters through which House leaders have to squeeze the bill to advance it in their own chamber. That in turn is empowering the senators elsewhere in the GOP conference to make changes — and the Medicaid group is emerging as the key bloc to watch because of its size and its overlapping, relatively workable demands.

Heeding those asks won’t be easy. Republicans are counting on savings from Medicaid changes to offset hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, and rolling that back is likely to create political pain elsewhere for Thune & Co., who already want to cut more than the House to assuage a sizable group of spending hawks. At the same time, Speaker Mike Johnson is insisting the Senate make only minor changes to the bill so as to maintain the delicate balance in his own narrowly divided chamber.

Thune and Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) have already acknowledged that Medicaid, covering nearly 80 million low-income Americans, will be one of the biggest sticking points as they embark this month on a rewrite of the megabill. They are talking with key members in anticipation of difficult negotiations and being careful not to draw red lines publicly.

“We want to do things that are meaningful in terms of reforming programs, strengthening programs, without affecting beneficiaries,” Thune said, echoing language used by some of the concerned senators.

Crapo voiced support in an interview for one pillar of the House bill — broad new work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries — but rushed to add that he’s “still working with a 53-member caucus to get answers” to how the program can be overhauled: “I can only speak for myself.”

Complicating their task is the fact that some in the group — namely Collins and Murkowski — have a proven history of bucking their party even amid intense public pressure. The pair, in fact, helped tank the GOP’s last party-line effort on health care, in 2017.

Leaders view them as unlikely to be moved by the type of arm-twisting Republicans are planning to deploy to bring enough of the fiscal hawks on board. And then there’s Hawley, who is playing up Trump’s own warnings to congressional Republicans about keeping their hands off Medicaid.

Hawley and Trump spoke shortly before the House passed its bill, with the senator recounting that the president said “absolutely categorically, ‘Do not touch Medicaid. No Medicaid benefit cuts, none.’”

Hawley, like Crapo, has indicated he is comfortable with work requirements, but he is pushing for two major tweaks to the House language: undoing a freeze on provider taxes, which most states use to help finance their share of Medicaid costs, and new co-payment requirements for some beneficiaries that he has been calling a “sick tax.”

The provider tax changes would present an issue with multiple senators, who fear it would exacerbate the bill’s impact on state budgets and slash funding that helps keep rural hospitals afloat. Justice, a former governor, called it a “real issue.”

“They haven’t done anything to really cut into the bone except that one thing,” Justice added. ”That’s gonna put a big burden on the states.”

Moran grabbed the attention of his colleagues when he warned in a pointed April floor speech that making changes to Medicaid would hurt rural hospitals. A “significant portion” of his focus, he said, “is to make sure the hospitals have the capability and the revenues necessary to provide the services the community needs — Medicaid is a component of that.”

Collins, who is up for reelection in 2026, has also left the door open to supporting work requirements, depending on how they are crafted. She has also raised concerns about the provider tax provision, noting that “rural hospitals in my state and across the country are really teetering.”

Murkowski, meanwhile, isn’t as concerned about the provider tax, because Alaska is the only state that doesn’t use it to help cover its share of Medicaid spending. But she has expressed alarm over the House’s approach to work requirements, including a decision to speed up the implementation deadline to appease House hard-liners. She said it would be “very challenging if not impossible” for her state to implement.

As it is, any effort to water down the House’s Medicaid language will face steep resistance in other corners of the GOP-controlled Senate, where lawmakers are pushing to amp up spending cuts, not scale them back. Some senators, in fact, want to further tighten the House’s work requirements or reduce, not just freeze, the provider tax.

“I’d be damned disappointed if a Republican majority with a Republican president didn’t make some reforms,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “The provider tax is a money laundering machine. … If we don’t go after that, we’re not doing our jobs.”

Ron Johnson and a few others are continuing to push to change the cost split for those Medicaid beneficiaries made eligible under the Affordable Care Act. The federal government now picks up 90 percent of the cost, and House centrists nixed an effort by conservatives to reduce it.

One idea under discussion by conservatives is to phase in the change to appease skittish colleagues and state governments, but that is still likely to be a nonstarter for 50 GOP senators. Hawley warned that “there will be no Senate bill if that is on the table.”

Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.

Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst is the latest Republican to face an angry crowd of constituents, sparring with town hall attendees over President Donald Trump’s signature piece of legislation.

Constituents on Friday gathered in Butler County, Iowa, to hear Ernst defend the Trump administration’s work, including efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency and Republicans’ congressional priorities.

But when a constituent questioned Ernst about the reconciliation bill, things became heated. The woman, who said she had previously emailed Ernst’s office with her concerns, argued the bill’s proposed cuts seemed neither “compassionate” nor “fiscally responsible.” She accused Ernst of supporting a “tax shelter” for the wealthy.

As the audience applauded the woman, she continued, expressing concerns about the bill’s proposed cuts to SNAP benefits and Medicaid spending. Ernst said those who would lose Medicaid were not currently eligible for Medicaid.

“You are arguing — when you’re arguing about illegals that are receiving Medicaid benefits, 1.4 million, 1.4 million they’re not — they are not eligible so they will be coming off,” Ernst said. One audience member could then be heard shouting, “People are going to die.”

“Well, we all are going to die,” Ernst responded.

Audience members gasped and booed the senator, but Ernst seemed unbothered.

“Listen to me when I say that we are going to focus on those that are most vulnerable,” Ernst said as constituents continued to shout at her.

House Republicans passed the reconciliation bill — which Trump dubbed the “big beautiful bill” — after weeks of internal debate. Only two Republicans sided with Democrats in voting against the bill. But the bill faces another battle in the Senate, where Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) previously compared it to the Titanic and said he’s going to make sure it sinks in the upper chamber.

Initial estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has found that the bill could lead to 7.6 million people going uninsured.

“If you don’t want to listen, that’s fine but what I’m doing is going through and telling you that those that are not eligible, those that are working and have benefits elsewhere, then they should receive those benefits elsewhere. Leave those dollars for those that are eligible for Medicaid,” Ernst continued.

Republicans from around the nation have faced hostile crowds of constituents in the months following Trump’s election.

Some GOP leaders — including Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson — have offered unsubstantiated claims that people at the town halls are paid protesters. “The videos you saw of the town halls were for paid protesters in many of those places,” Johnson told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins earlier this year. “This is an old playbook that they pulled out and ran, and it made it look like that what is happening in Washington is unpopular.”

House Republicans’ campaign arm also advised members in March to not hold in-person town halls.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) denounced the Trump administration’s decision to axe temporary protected status for Afghan immigrants — the latest break by the centrist Republican from President Donald Trump’s administration.

In a joint letter with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the senator urged the administration to reconsider the cancellation of the temporary protection, which affords Afghans a work permit and legal status in the U.S.

“This decision endangers thousands of lives, including Afghans who stood by the United States,” Murkowski and Shaheen — the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — wrote. “This decision represents a historic betrayal of promises made and undermines the values we fought for far more than 20 years in Afghanistan.”

The letter — which was sent May 23 and released Friday — comes amid reports that the State Department is shuttering the office that coordinated Afghan resettlement for those who helped with the war effort, part of an agency-wide reorganization aligning with the Trump administration’s moves to reduce foreign aid and assistance and refocus on “America First” priorities.

Murkowski has not been shy about criticizing her own party, while encouraging her fellow GOP senators to do the same. The Republican has rebuked President Donald Trump for his close relationship to Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing the U.S. of “walking away from our allies.” But she also acknowledged a reticence within Republican circles of defying Trump — saying “we are all afraid” of Trump’s retaliation.

She’s also not the only Republican to raise red flags about the cancellation of TPS protections for some immigrants, with Miami’s members of Congress also urging the Trump administration to continue the protections for Venezuelans and Haitians.

The Alaska Republican first criticized the decision on TPS shortly after it was announced by the Department of Homeland Security, calling it “concerning” in light of promises from Noem to address a backlog of asylum applications — which could dramatically increase as former TPS holders look for avenues to stay in the U.S.

But eliminating TPS has been one of Trump’s key campaign promises from the start, after calling the program corrupt and saying the legal status had been extended for too long.

The battle over TPS has made its way to the courts. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to revoke TPS protections for roughly 350,000 Venezuelans.

Murkowski has previously called out the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, which happened under the Biden administration, saying the “botched” operation endangered many who then came to the U.S. — and that ending protections would only exacerbate the problem.

“This administration should not compound that misstep by forcing them to return to the Taliban’s brutal regime,” Murkowski wrote on X earlier this month.

A judge denied a request for reinstatement Wednesday from the ousted head of the national copyright office, rejecting for now her claims that President Donald Trump had no right to fire her.

Shira Perlmutter was fired as register of copyrights earlier this month, an office housed inside the Library of Congress. In a suit filed in Washington’s federal court last week, she alleged that Trump and his subordinates overstepped in both naming a new Librarian of Congress — the only official, she claims, that can hire and fire a copyright chief.

Perlmutter asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order keeping Trump’s appointees out of the Library of Congress and keeping her on the job, but U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly denied the motion from the bench in a hearing Wednesday.

Perlmutter’s lawsuit names as lead plaintiff Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, whom Trump attempted to appoint as acting Librarian of Congress, alongside Trump and several other administration officials. Justice Department lawyers representing Blanche & Co. asserted in a court filing this week that the Library of Congress is “part of the Executive Branch and is subject to presidential control.”

“The Library of Congress is not an autonomous organization free from political supervision,” the lawyers wrote.

The White House argues that Trump has the authority to name an acting librarian and register of copyrights who can serve temporarily under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act — much as the president can name acting leaders for any other federal agency with a presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed chief.

Key lawmakers on Capitol Hill, including some top Republicans, are questioning that assertion, and it has created a standoff at the Library of Congress over the attempted takeover.

Rep. Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Administration Committee, said in a statement that the arguments in the recent administration court filing amount to “unlawful and unconstitutional efforts to wrest control of the Library and the Copyright Office from Congress and the American people.”

“The law is clear,” Morelle said. “The Library of Congress is a legislative branch agency, and the President has no authority to appoint an Acting Librarian or meddle in the Library’s personnel decisions.”

In addition to attempting to install Blanche as acting librarian, Trump also attempted to appoint Brian Nieves as acting assistant librarian and Paul Perkins as acting register of copyrights, replacing Perlmutter as director of the Copyright Office.

But Robert Randolph Newlen, who assumed the acting librarian role immediately after Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden’s removal, appears to remain in control of the library, and Blanche has not been seen at the library or sent communications to employees since the attempted takeover earlier this month.

While Kelly did not immediately grant Perlmutter’s request, her lawsuit will continue. Kelly indicated he will hear arguments in the coming weeks on whether to grant a preliminary injunction blocking Trump and Blanche while the litigation plays out.

In the meantime, the leadership of the library and copyright office will remain in limbo.

“If Mr. Blanche assumes the role of Acting Librarian of Congress, the Executive Branch will gain access to reams of confidential information that belongs to Congress and that Congress has zealously guarded from disclosure, as well as privately owned copyright deposits,” Perlmutter’s lawyer wrote in a Tuesday filing.

Republican chairs of the House and Senate panels with oversight responsibility of the library declined a request for comment.

Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, called once again for Congress to take bipartisan action to codify full congressional control of the library, condemning the “unprecedented encroachment by the White House.”

The White House plans to send a small package of spending cuts to Congress next week, senior GOP officials told several House Republicans Wednesday.

The planned transmission of the “rescissions” bill, confirmed by two Republicans granted anonymity to describe the plans, comes after a long internal battle over how to formalize the cuts that have been made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative.

The package set to land on Capitol Hill is expected to reflect only a fraction of the DOGE cuts, which have already fallen far short of Musk’s multi-trillion-dollar aspirations. The two Republicans said it will target NPR and PBS, as well as foreign aid agencies that have already been gutted by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Speaker Mike Johnson said on X Wednesday that the House “is eager and ready to act on DOGE’s findings so we can deliver even more cuts to big government that President Trump wants and the American people demand.” He said the House “will act quickly” on a package without saying when it might be submitted or what it might contain.

Republicans on Capitol Hill have been growing impatient as they await the White House request, after the Trump administration confirmed more than six weeks ago that it intended to send a more than $9 billion package of proposed cutbacks.

It’s unclear whether the forthcoming submission will meet that target, which is itself a tiny fraction of the $1.6 trillion in yearly discretionary spending. The White House budget office did not respond to a request for comment.

“We’ve all said that we’re anxious to act on rescissions packages and hope they find a way to send them up,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in a brief interview last week before lawmakers left town for a weeklong recess.

An online pressure campaign aimed at “codifying” the DOGE cuts has gained steam in recent days, pushed by Musk-friendly Republicans including Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Many MAGA influencers on Musk’s X platform have amplified the effort.

In a CBS News interview Tuesday, Musk himself criticized the “one big, beautiful bill” backed by Trump that just narrowly cleared the House last week and is headed for the Senate. Musk said he “was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit … and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.” “A bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” Musk said in a clip of the interview published Tuesday night. “But I don’t know if it can be both.”

Trump’s top policy aide, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, responded to Musk in a late-night X post noting that the cuts Musk has been seeking could not be done in the GOP megabill but instead “would have to be done through what is known as a rescissions package or an appropriations bill.”

Senior Republicans informed some House GOP members the rescissions package would finally be coming hours later.

Whether it can pass is a separate question: Republicans have debated possible DOGE-inspired rescissions for months, and GOP leaders have been sensitive to the fact that some pieces may have trouble passing the House, according to two other Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the matter, as well as the tight 45-day timeline for consideration set out in federal law. Top appropriators have sought to weigh in ahead of any White House submission to ensure the package can pass.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who first pressed Musk almost three months ago to get Trump to pursue clawbacks, is frustrated that the Trump administration had not sent a package sooner.

“I’m very disappointed — not only in the White House, but disappointed in Congress,” Paul said in a brief interview last week. “If Congress can’t cut $9 billion, I think most of them should resign and go home.”

Thomas Manger inherited a force in crisis when he became chief of the U.S. Capitol Police four years ago. He’s now leaving a force under a microscope.

The 70-year-old law enforcement veteran came out of retirement just months after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — tasked with stabilizing a department whose officers had been physically and emotionally battered and whose protective mission had suddenly grown immensely more complicated.

But that was only the beginning of challenge for Manger, who soon found himself holding one of the most politicized jobs in all of policing. Within months, an alternative narrative about Jan. 6 took hold on the right, and with many of its proponents now in power in Washington — including President Donald Trump — he has had to strike a careful balance between standing up for his officers and heeding the lawmakers who oversee and fund his department.

“I don’t think it’s wise or necessary or useful to try and convince members of Congress what to think,” Manger said. “I think you make the compelling argument about what the Capitol Police need, about what the Capitol Police require to do their jobs and allow them to make a decision.”

That’s not to say Manger has been silent. He has spoken out at key junctures, criticizing Trump’s blanket pardons of Jan. 6 offenders and, just last week, the Justice Department’s decision to move toward a $5 million settlement with the family of Ashli Babbit — the Jan. 6 rioter who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer while trying to storm a room off the House floor.

But in a wide-ranging interview Tuesday — amid his last week on the job before retiring for good — Manger said it wasn’t productive for the embattled force’s chief to be snarled in political fights on the Hill, or in the larger war over the memory of the Capitol insurrection.

While Manger has felt compelled to speak up about situations that directly affect his officers, he has taken pains to stay out of other battles. He again called the pardons “an absolute slap in the face to police officers, frankly, all over this country” Tuesday, for instance, but refused to weigh in on the fate of a bronze plaque commemorating the officers who responded to the riot.

Congress ordered the fabrication of the memorial and its installation “at a permanent location on the western front of the United States Capitol” in March 2022. The plaque was cast, inscribed with “THEIR HEROISM WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN,” but after Republicans won the House majority the following November, it was put into storage in the Capitol basement.

Calling it a “very political issue,” Manger said he has not spoken to Republican congressional leaders about the plaque and declined to call for it to be installed. He said he had not seen the actual memorial, just a photograph.

“I hope they will find some middle ground,” he said. “There’s not a lot of memorials that are attached to the Capitol building, but there are certainly a lot of informational pedestals where you have little historical briefings around the campus.”

The tap dance reflects the enormous challenges of managing a department that is ultimately responsible to a web of overlapping overseers. There’s the three-member Capitol Police Board, four oversight committees and senior congressional leaders themselves — all of whom have influence over the department and how it operates.

Manger — who previously led the departments in Montgomery County, Maryland, and Fairfax County, Virginia — said dealing with the menagerie of Capitol Hill power centers was “very different” from reporting to a single elected executive and “very, very challenging.”

That, he said, has required a focus on the future of the Capitol Police and securing what the department needs to keep lawmakers, tourists and staff safe. It’s also a situation that will hang over whoever replaces Manger as chief.

“If they pick someone from the inside, they’re going to know what our mission is,” Manger said. “They’ll have that — that’s good. If they pick somebody from the outside, they’re going to have to learn about our mission, the uniqueness of it, but the structure of oversight as well, and there is a learning curve there.”

An even bigger challenge for the force, however, has been keeping up with a rising tide of threats against lawmakers. The department reported more than 9,400 in 2024, and a good number of those threats were deemed credible enough to require temporary protective details for rank-and-file lawmakers who otherwise would not be entitled to them.

That has stretched resources thin, Manger said: “We’re always robbing Peter to pay Paul to put that together. We should have the staffing to do those kinds of details.”

Manger recently made his final budget requests to Congress, asking lawmakers for $967.8 million for fiscal 2026, a 22 percent boost over the current funding level which was set in fiscal 2024. He acknowledged in hearings with appropriators that for his department’s size — about 2,300 sworn officers and civilians — a budget approaching a billion dollars is enormous. He stressed the sweeping intelligence, security and nationwide coordination mandate of the Capitol Police.

Both the Trump administration and Republicans on Capitol Hill are trying to rein in federal spending, and lawmakers tasked with spending are expected to begin writing their bills in the coming weeks. The outgoing chief warned against continuing to keep funding flat for the department he’s set to exit long before any spending deal is reached.

“It would impact our ability to address the growing number of threats against a member of Congress,” Manger said. “We’d just be crossing our fingers and saying, ‘Well, hope nothing happens,’ because there’s more that we think we can do if we had the resources.”

The job of choosing Manger’s replacement will fall to the Capitol Police Board, comprised of House Sergeant-at-Arms William McFarland, Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Jennifer Hemingway and Architect of the Capitol Thomas Austin. Top congressional leaders choose those officials and are expected to have some influence in the pick.

Manger said that anyone coming in after him has to know that the job has a much different mandate and set of responsibilities than a municipal police department. He said he would be available as a sounding board but was looking forward to retirement — some consulting work, maybe, and finally fixing the fence in his yard.

“One of the things that I really, truly want to get away from is the aggravations of being a police chief,” he said. “So whatever I do, it’s going to be something I want to do.”