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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries doled out light praise for New York state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani after his stunning victory in Tuesday’s New York City Democratic mayoral primary, embracing Mamdani’s successful focus on affordability as a campaign target for 2026 Democratic hopefuls.

Mamdani’s likely win — ranked choice tabulations will be released next week — opened a new chapter for a Democratic Party that has struggled to home in on a successful messaging strategy to counter President Donald Trump and boost its own approval ratings. The 33-year-old democratic socialist made affordability the centerpiece of his campaign, hooking into New Yorkers’ frustration with the cost of living and longtime political players like former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who had been favored to win the primary.

But the stunning upset also marks a reckoning for Democrats, who face the choice of whether or not to lean into the candidate’s progressive policies to chart more party wins in 2026.

“I think what’s clear is that the relentless focus on affordability had great appeal all across the city of New York. He also clearly out-worked, out-organized and out-communicated the opposition,” Jeffries told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday. “And when someone is successful in being able to do all three things at the same time, it’s usually going to work out for them.”

Jeffries — who also represents New York City — did not endorse a candidate in the primary. He was not asked about endorsing his party’s standard bearer on his Wednesday morning appearance, and did not proactively offer his backing.

The Democratic leader skirted directly addressing the gap between Mamdani’s democratic socialist policies and the party’s status quo, instead aiming criticism at their common target: Donald Trump.

“From the standpoint of House Democrats and what our focus has been, clearly we have an affordability crisis in the United States of America, and our focus will continue to be on driving down the high cost of living in this country,” Jeffries said, when asked whether Mamdani has an “ideology” that Democratic 2026 candidates should adopt. “Donald Trump promised to lower costs on day one. Costs haven’t gone down. They’re going up.”

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White House ramps up sales pitch for Trump tax plan

The White House is stepping up its efforts to sell the GOP megabill ahead of an impending Senate vote.

The legislation is far from finalized, but the Council of Economic Advisers is sending its first analysis of the Senate bill to Congress Wednesday. The report obtained by POLITICO is based on the Senate Finance Committee draft released last week.

The analysis contrasts the economic and fiscal impact of the party’s signature domestic policy legislation with letting President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expire at the end of the year — a cliff Senate GOP leaders and the White House are leaning into as they try to sway their holdouts.

“The [One Big Beautiful Bill Act] will establish a strong foundation for economic prosperity by increasing investment, raising GDP, and boosting resources for American families in the form of higher wages and a lower tax burden,” the CEA wrote in its analysis.

The Senate tax plan would create more than $100 billion in investment and more than 1 million new jobs over the 10-year budget window, according to the report. It’s also estimating the economic growth sparked by the tax plan would create between $2.1 to $2.3 trillion in deficit reduction, as well as help decrease the overall debt.

The analysis is significantly rosier than projections from most other economists, who doubt that the Republican plan will do much for growth because the tax breaks for businesses — which have the most potential economic oomph — are relatively small, especially compared to the 2017 bill. Their tax package this time around is much more focused on cutting taxes for individuals while piling on debt that most economists believe will push up interest rates and create a drag on growth.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office hasn’t yet released a full estimate for the Senate legislation, but it recently analyzed the economic effects of the House-passed bill and concluded that any government revenues sparked by growth due to the bill would be swamped by higher debt-service costs prompted by higher interest rates.

In a boon for Majority Leader John Thune, Finance Chair Mike Crapo and other Finance Committee Republicans, the White House analysis found that making some of the business tax cuts permanent would boost investment and increase wages. Permanency is a top priority for Thune, Crapo and others, who have made the case to both the House and the White House that it is worth including even though it comes with a higher price tag.

Senate Republicans are likely to use the analysis to tout their legislation — and to rebut CBO when it releases its own findings. The CEA gave a similarly positive overview of the House’s bill earlier this year, which Speaker Mike Johnson has frequently used to argue that the bill won’t add to the national debt. That has not prevented House fiscal hawks from finding fault in it, even as they voted for it; Thune & Co. are facing similar doubts from their own conservative bloc.

Brian Faler contributed to this report.

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Capitol agenda: Johnson warns about a Medicaid backlash

With President Donald Trump’s July 4 deadline drawing near, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told POLITICO on Tuesday night he believes the Senate is “on a path” to start voting on the megabill Friday.

But he’s got several fires to put out first. For one, he’s under immense pressure to water down the Medicaid provisions the Senate GOP is counting on for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of savings.

Speaker Mike Johnson is warning in private that Senate Republicans could cost House Republicans their majority next year if they try to push through the deep Medicaid cuts in the current Senate version, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the matter.

That comes as Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) cautions GOP senators that those same cutbacks could become a political albatross for Republicans just as the Affordable Care Act was for Democrats.

“[Barack] Obama said … ‘if you like your health care you can keep it, if you like your doctor we can keep it,’ and yet we had several million people lose their health care,” the in-cycle senator told reporters Tuesday. “Here we’re saying [with] Medicaid, we’re going to hold people harmless, but we’re estimating” millions of people could lose coverage.

GOP leaders are trying to ease concerns by preparing to include a fund to help rural hospitals that could be harmed by the reductions, even as Thune insisted Tuesday “we like where we are.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who’s been pushing for the fund, said while that “helps lessen the impact,” she remains “concerned about the changes in the funding for Medicaid in general.”

The other drama hanging over the bill are several imminent, critical rulings from Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough. Several committees that already have rulings in hand are due to release revised text as soon as this morning, according to a person familiar with the plans. And Republicans could know as soon as Wednesday whether MacDonough will clear major parts of their tax package.

As of late Tuesday, the parliamentarian had not yet ruled on provisions linked to the so-called current policy baseline, an accounting maneuver that zeroes out the costs of $3.8 trillion of expiring tax cuts, according to two people granted anonymity to disclose the private discussions.

Make no mistake: Adverse rulings could send Republicans back to the drawing board on making their tax plan permanent or otherwise force them to go nuclear and override or ignore MacDonough altogether. There’s uncertainty from all sides about how that would play out, given the gambit has never been tried before with tax legislation.

This much is already clear: With the tax package in flux and Medicaid savings under threat, GOP leaders have a major math problem on their hands. And House fiscal hawks are watching to see, regardless of the accounting method, whether the Senate sticks to the budget deal they agreed to with Johnson earlier this year.

What else we’re watching:

— Bove on the Hill: Senate Judiciary lawmakers will convene the first blockbuster judicial hearing of the second Trump administration later Wednesday, where they will grill Emil Bove, a top Justice Department official and former criminal defense lawyer for Trump who has a shot at a lifetime appointment on the federal bench. Some even see him as a potential future Trump Supreme Court nominee.

— Vought testifies on rescissions: OMB Director Russ Vought will testify in front of the Senate’s full bench of appropriators Wednesday afternoon to justify the White House’s request for $9.4 billion in cuts of previously approved money. Expect pointed questioning from various Republicans on the panel, including Collins, who has publicly opposed cuts to PEPFAR, the HIV and AIDS foreign aid program.

— Iran briefings incoming: Senators will have a postponed briefing on the situation in Iran on Thursday, after which Democrat Tim Kaine (Va.) is aiming to call a vote on his resolution seeking to block further U.S. military action against Iran. On the House side, Speaker Johnson said that members will now be briefed Friday. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday there had been no Gang of Eight meeting yet.

Jordain Carney, Meredith Lee Hill and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.

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The Federalist Society isn’t going anywhere

President Donald Trump said the Federalist Society gave him “bad advice” on judicial nominations. He’s still appointing their members to the federal bench anyway.

On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will consider nominees for seats on the federal bench, including Emil Bove, Trump’s No. 3 at the Justice Department and an outsider to some mainstream conservative legal circles. Bove’s nomination has divided the right over whether Trump was eschewing the traditional conservative Federalist Society pipeline in favor of his own brand of loyalist nominees. But even amid a schism between Trump and the Federalist Society, the president’s orbit has continued to embrace lawyers and jurists who have ties to the most influential conservative legal group.

In a sign of the continued alignment between the Federalist Society and the administration, the Senate Judiciary Committee will also vote Thursday on a different slate of judicial nominees, all five of whom are members of the Federalist Society, according to their disclosures and the Federalist Society website.

“The Federalist Society is just interwoven into the conservative legal establishment,” said Russell Wheeler, a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies the judiciary. For all Trump’s indignation, the majority of his picks thus far are “not only Federalist Society members, they’re proud Federalist Society members,” Wheeler said.

The Federalist Society is an influential conservative legal group whose ranks have included some of the nation’s most powerful judges, and its chapters on law school campuses have operated as a training ground for future conservative jurists. In Trump’s first term, the organization’s former Executive Vice President Leonard Leo served as a key adviser to the president on judicial nominations. The White House ultimately nominated and confirmed hundreds of judges to the federal bench, including three Supreme Court justices.

As some of the judges Trump nominated have ruled in ways he doesn’t like — and in particular in the wake of a ruling from the U.S. Court of International Trade that nullified Trump’s tariffs — the president announced in a post on Truth Social that he had cut ties with Leo. He called his onetime adviser on Supreme Court nominees a “sleazebag” and lamented his disappointment in the Federalist Society for the people the organization had recommended.

But it does not appear Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee — even some of the president’s staunchest allies — share Trump’s new animosity towards the Federalist Society.

“We’ll go to people that I’ve always relied upon to give me advice,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a current member and former chair of the committee. “The Federalist Society, I’ve known for a long time, I’ll still keep talking to [them].”

“I’m going to work with people that want to talk to me,” echoed Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the committee. “Would we sit down and talk to them and have discussions with them? The answer is, we’ll talk to anybody.”

And others warn that most qualified candidates are still going to come from the group. “Unless they use Federalist Society association as something that actually stops someone from getting a nomination, I don’t think it’s going to make a difference, and if they did take that step, the talent pool would shrink dramatically,” said an individual familiar with the administration’s judicial selection process granted anonymity to speak candidly.

A White House official said in a statement that Trump relies on “his senior advisors, White House Counsel, and the Department of Justice” in the judicial selection process. “The mold by which President Trump chooses judges is that of Justices [Clarence] Thomas and [Samuel] Alito and the late Justice [Antonin] Scalia,” the official said. “Outside entities, including hometown senators, think tanks, and others, are always free to share their recommendations, but the President and his team will be the ultimate decision-makers.”

There has been a notable exception to the administration’s continued affinity for Federalist Society-approved lawyers. Bove, who if confirmed would hold a lifetime seat on the powerful Third Circuit Court of Appeals, has come under scrutiny for his controversial maneuvering to fulfill Trump’s political agenda at the Department of Justice. The president’s one-time criminal defense attorney, not a typical Federalist Society candidate for the federal bench, is facing allegations by a former lawyer at the Department of Justice that he suggested the administration should go against court orders. Some in the conservative legal sphere have questioned his nomination out of concern that he would unduly prioritize loyalty to the president.

Michael Fragoso, former chief counsel to Mitch McConnell, who as Senate Republican leader shepherded the hundreds of nominees that Trump confirmed in his first term, underscored that if the most qualified candidates were Federalist Society members, Trump would still choose them. “If you look at who’s being nominated by and large really, I think Emil [Bove]’s probably the only exception,” said Fragoso, adding that Trump’s second term judicial picks are for the most part, “pretty traditionalist Federalist Society people.” Fragoso is supporting Bove’s nomination.

Behind the scenes, the Federalist Society has continued to angle for influence, despite Trump’s frustration.

Mike Davis, an outside adviser to the White House on judicial nominations, said the Federalist Society’s new president, Sheldon Gilbert, reached out to him around the time he took over the organization in early 2025. Gilbert expressed that he wanted to mend fences with Trump’s orbit, and the two ate lunch together, Davis said. The Federalist Society did not respond to a request for comment.

“Having new leadership is an important step in the right direction, but the problem with [the Federalist Society is] they need to stop being the string orchestra on the Titanic,” said Davis, a former staffer to Grassley. “They want to look majestic as the ship is going down.”

In other words, the Federalist Society needs to supply lawyers who will contribute meaningfully to the president’s legal aims, Davis said.

Trent McCotter, a former Justice Department official and Federalist Society member who worked on judicial nominations during Trump’s first term, feels similarly. He said the number one priority for judicial nominees going forward should be a “proven track record of doing conservative work.”

“Membership in the Federalist Society is a signal, but it’s a relatively weak one,” McCotter said. “What you’ve been doing, putting your name on and filing, arguing in court for the last year or five years or 10 years, those are things that demonstrate much more what a person thinks about the law.”

“There will presumably still be nominees who are members of the Federalist Society,” he said. “It just won’t be the same kind of signal that it used to be.”

Tessa Berenson Rogers contributed to this report.

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The megabill’s math isn’t adding up for Senate Republicans

Republicans are running into a major issue as they try to finalize their sweeping domestic-policy bill: arithmetic.

With just days until Senate GOP leaders want to start voting, they have been hit with a mathematical double-whammy: Tax writers are proposing a package that’s hundreds of billions of dollars more costly than what House Republicans have proposed, while senators struggle to finalize a larger package of spending cuts to offset it.

As deadline pressure from President Donald Trump intensifies — he reiterated Tuesday he wants the bill done by July 4 — Senate Majority Leader John Thune and GOP colleagues appear ready to call one of Capitol Hill’s best-known plays: daring fiscal hawks to stand in the way of Trump’s top legislative priority.

“When the House … is confronted with a binary decision of yes or no,” Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said Tuesday, “yes is going to be a better answer than no.”

But an array of House Republicans is making clear the our-way-or-the-highway approach could be a recipe for division and delay — including from members of the House Freedom Caucus and other conservatives who have long warned they will not swallow a Senate product that adds further to the national debt.

“They got a problem,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a Freedom Caucus member. “The conservatives have got a real problem if it’s not doing what we thought we had in the House.”

That mismatch was underscored by a new nonpartisan analysis released Monday night from the Joint Committee on Taxation, which found that the Senate’s tax package would cost some $400 billion more than the House’s in an apples-to-apples comparison.

That figure reflects pet priorities for Thune, Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and other Senate Republicans who want to make sure costly business tax incentives are made permanent. Notably, the JCT figure does not reflect a House-brokered deal on the state-and-local-tax deduction — something that is crucial to a handful of blue-state Republicans but is otherwise disposable as far as the Senate GOP is concerned.

Adding in the SALT language from the House-passed bill — which a handful of GOP lawmakers are insisting on — would add another $350 billion to the cost of the bill.

The ballooning tax cut package is important because House conservatives cut a deal with Speaker Mike Johnson as part of budget negotiations earlier this year that directly linked the size of the spending cuts to the overall price tag of the bill. Johnson even told hard-liners they could seek to remove him as speaker if he didn’t follow through.

Under that agreement, Republicans are permitted to enact $4 trillion in tax cuts as long as they muster $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. Any tax cuts that Republicans pile on above that amount needs to be offset dollar-for-dollar with additional spending cuts.

Thirty-eight House Republicans, led by Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.), wrote a letter to Thune in early June reminding him as much.

“Our position has been very clear for months now,” Smucker said in a brief interview Tuesday.

“I’m confident that Senator Thune has received multiple messages, not only from members, like the letter, and myself, but also with our leadership, who made the commitment,” added House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas).

Technically, the deal is only binding in the House, and Republicans there can waive the budget provision with the same simple-majority vote they need to pass the bill. Still, asked on Tuesday, Johnson said he expects the final bill to comply with the House budget instructions.

Senate Republicans are hoping to exceed the House’s $1.6 trillion of spending cuts, but are running into major headaches this week.

Some of them are political: A swath of GOP senators, not to mention House moderates, are uneasy with a Crapo-led plan to hold down Medicaid costs by targeting provider taxes, which most states use to leverage federal matching dollars and fund their programs. Senate GOP leaders have sought to allay concerns about threats to rural hospitals by creating a separate rescue fund, but lawmakers are continuing to push for less drastic House language that merely freezes the provider taxes instead of rolling them back.

Other headaches have been procedural, amplified by Senate budget rules: To skirt a filibuster and pass the bill on party lines, leaders need the chamber’s parliamentarian to sign off on various cost-saving provisions, and some have not passed muster — at least not yet.

Those include a $41 billion provision that would shift some food-aid costs to states for the first time. The measure was ruled ineligible over the weekend; but Republicans were informally advised Tuesday a tweaked version could likely remain in the bill.

Asked if he still thought the Senate could find deeper savings than the House, Thune said, “I hope so” while adding that what number the Senate would ultimately land on is “not certain” while the parliamentarian rulings are pending.

Also pending is a final resolution of the SALT issue. Blue-state Republicans who pushed for raising the cap on deductions have said they’re not willing to budge on the House-passed proposal. But Arrington said that the Senate’s extra tax cuts, including the permanent business tax provisions, are “going to probably put downward pressure on what we do with SALT.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who attended Tuesday’s closed-door GOP policy lunch on the Hill, told reporters afterward that he expected a resolution of the SALT issue in the coming days. But it could remain live until the very end of the “vote-a-rama” senators are aiming to undertake this weekend as the megabill is debated and potentially amended.

Besides SALT, House GOP leaders will likely push for several further modifications in a final “wraparound” amendment before the Senate passes the bill if it appears poised for failure in the House, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Asked about the burgeoning House opposition to the Senate bill, Johnson said “it’s premature to judge a product that hasn’t been delivered or decided upon yet.” He said he expects the bill to abide by the House budget parameters and that he spoke Tuesday with Thune to ensure “we have a product that both chambers can agree on.”

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MTG suggests a link between JFK’s assassination and his opposition to Israel’s ‘nuclear program’

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Tuesday appeared to suggest in a post on X that former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated over his opposition to Israel’s nuclear program.

“There was once a great President that the American people loved. He opposed Israel’s nuclear program. And then he was assassinated,” Greene posted on X as she defended her dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump’s weekend strike on Iran. Greene’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment asking for clarity on the remarks.

In the early 1960s, Kennedy was an ardent opponent of Israel’s nuclear program, worried it was a serious proliferation risk, according to declassified documents published in 2016 by the National Security Archive. At the time, Kennedy insisted that Israel permit periodic inspections to mitigate the danger. Israel has remained ambiguous about whether it has a nuclear program.

Wild conspiracy theories have proliferated in the years since Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, but both the FBI and the Warren Commission, a presidential commission set up to probe Kennedy’s killing, found that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the murder.

Greene posted her claims in response to conservative commentator Mark Levin, who on X called the Georgia representative “stupid” and told her to “keep banging your head against the wall” over her objections to the Trump administration’s weekend strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites.

“I’m not going away. You’re on my radar,” Levin said.

“This is extremely sick and disturbing,” Greene said in her post before accusing Levin of using the same tone and language as the “psychopaths” that send her death threats “every single day.”

She continued on to discuss Jesus and his teachings, including to “pray for your enemies.”

“I will do my best to pray for you. But I will be watchful now,” Greene said before launching into the Kennedy section. “I am for peace. I oppose war including wars Israel wages. Should I feel that my life is in danger now too? What about President Trump who strongly rebuked Israel this morning for continuing to attack Iran?”

A representative for Levin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It is not the first conspiracy theory related to Jews or Israel that Greene has espoused. In 2018, Greene promoted a conspiracy theory on Facebook where she speculated California wildfires could have been caused by lasers shot from space generators funded by the Rothschild investment group. The comments were condemned by Jewish groups as antisemitic.

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Most House Democrats vote to kill Al Green’s impeachment measure

Most House Democrats joined with Republicans on Tuesday to quash an effort to impeach President Donald Trump over his weekend Iran strikes.

Rep. Al Green’s impeachment resolution was tabled on a 344-79 vote, with 128 Democrats joining all 216 Republicans to kill the measure.

Those included House Democratic leaders, who have been wary of pursuing new impeachments after two prior Trump impeachments failed during his first term. Still, dozens of Democrats voted to keep Green’s resolution alive.

Green introduced the measure lambasting Trump for striking Iran without congressional approval Tuesday and used a fast-track process to force a quick vote. GOP leaders moved first with the motion to table.

Some Democrats — most prominently New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — called for Trump’s impeachment in the aftermath of the strike, though there’s little appetite in the rest of the caucus for impeachment. Michigan Rep. Shri Thanedar yanked a prior impeachment measure he sponsored last month before it even came up for a vote after facing fierce blowback in the caucus.

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Congressional briefings on Iran conflict are postponed

A pair of planned congressional briefings on the volatile situation in the Middle East have been postponed, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the private plans.

The House and Senate were set to receive separate all-member briefings Tuesday afternoon from a group of top aides to President Donald Trump, including Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Joint Chiefs Chair Dan Caine.

The Senate briefing has been rescheduled for Thursday, one of the people said. The rescheduling comes as a Trump-brokered cease-fire between Iran and Israel hangs by a thread and as Trump and other top national security officials travel to the Netherlands for the yearly NATO summit.

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Robert Garcia elected to lead House Oversight Democrats

California Rep. Robert Garcia will be the next top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee after beating Massachusetts Rep. Stephen Lynch in a 150-63 caucus vote Tuesday.

Garcia, 47, won a first-ballot majority after winning the backing of the caucus’ powerful Steering and Policy Committee on Monday evening.

Serving just his second term in Congress, Garcia has quickly risen through the ranks. He’s currently a member of Democratic Caucus leadership and served as a co-chair of Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign.

In a contest that had tested House Democrats’ desire to set aside its penchant to reward seniority in favor of promoting younger voices, Garcia had pitched himself to his colleagues as a consensus candidate with managerial experience as a former mayor of Long Beach.

In a previous interview with POLITICO, he called it “premature” to impeach President Donald Trump without buy-in from other Democrats — a contrast with other young progressives who have sought to kick-start the process. And he’s emphasized that the committee under his leadership would do more than probe the Trump administration.

Democrats have been maneuvering for the top Oversight job since April, when Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly announced he would step aside from the job amid a battle with cancer. He died in May at 75.

For weeks, the race pitted two senior Democrats — Lynch, 70, and Maryland Rep. Kweisi Mfume, 76 — against two insurgent young progressives — Garcia and Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, 44. Crockett and Mfume dropped out of the race Tuesday after falling short in the Steering test vote.

“If you are going to be in leadership, you need to know that you have a team that is ready and willing to work with you,” Crockett told reporters Tuesday. “It was clear by the numbers that my style of leadership is not exactly what [Democrats] were looking for, and so I didn’t think that it was fair for me to push forward and try to rebuke that.”

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s decision not to run a second time for the Oversight post and to instead stay on the Energy and Commerce Committee helped open up the field.

Connolly’s race last year against the 35-year-old Ocasio-Cortez was similarly seen as a generational challenge within the caucus. But senior Democrats — including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi — lined up behind Connolly, quashing efforts for a changing of the party’s old guard.

This time, the party’s elders were split in the race. Pelosi never endorsed Garcia, but she had met with her fellow Californian as the contest ramped up and was widely seen in the caucus as a Garcia ally.

“I’m a Californian,” she said as the voting was underway Tuesday. “I’m partial to mayors.”

Some of the most powerful blocs in the party opted to remain on the sidelines. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus endorsed Garcia, who was the sole Latino candidate in the race and will be one of two Latino committee leaders along with Rep. Nydia Velázquez (N.Y.). But groups like the Congressional Black Caucus, New Democrat Coalition and the Congressional Progressive Caucus did not make endorsements.

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Capitol agenda: Thune’s 48-hour megabill scramble

Senate GOP leaders want to start voting on the “big, beautiful bill” in just two days. Right now, they’re scrambling to rewrite critical pieces of it while major policy disputes remain unresolved.

Catch up quick: Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.) met separately with Donald Trump at the White House on Monday as the president ramps up pressure on fiscal hawks to fall in line. Trump told Scott he wants a repeal of green credits under the Biden-era climate law and supports a balanced budget, the Florida senator said. The trio relayed Trump’s message to House Freedom Caucus members Monday night but were publicly mum on other details.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) signaled progress in closing the chasm between chambers over the state and local tax deduction, suggesting the Senate could keep the $40,000 cap negotiated in the House but change the income threshold. The rub: That combination was publicly rejected by the House’s SALT Republicans days ago.

Meanwhile, Senate GOP leaders are floating a fund to help offset the effects of Medicaid changes on rural hospitals — a major pain point among “Medicaid moderates” balking at Senate Finance’s push to slash the provider tax.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told reporters he’s “absolutely happy with a rural fund” but cautioned, “I don’t know” if it will solve the issue. House GOP leaders are also warning it won’t pass their chamber.

GOP senators also have to keep in mind the 38 House Republicans who recently warned that Senate Majority Leader John Thune must adhere to a strict linkage between spending cuts and tax cuts in the bill. House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) told POLITICO on Monday he thinks Senate Republicans are already straying from the House-passed plan.

“It looks like right now, with some of the scoring, it’s not working out,” Harris said. “If it should pass the Senate in its current rumored form, it probably would have trouble in the House.”

What to watch Tuesday: Committees will finish holding meetings with parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough. Her last rulings on what can skirt the filibuster are expected as soon as Wednesday. Final text will follow once that process — known as the “Byrd bath” — wraps up.

Those Byrd droppings have multiple committees racing to redraft their portions of the megabill. Senate Agriculture Republicans believe they can salvage their cost-sharing plan for food aid. Senate Banking Republicans are reworking a proposal to cut funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

And Lee is now floating a narrower version of his plan to sell millions of acres of public lands after MacDonough deemed his initial proposal — which had drawn fierce opposition from a quartet of western-state GOP senators — noncompliant. Lee’s effectively halving his old proposal by removing Forest Service lands.

Thune still hopes to hold an initial vote on the megabill Thursday, but acknowledged the parliamentarian’s process is “taking a little bit longer” than anticipated. The raft of unresolved policy disputes have some senators openly doubting he can pull it off, with some predicting the first vote could slip to Friday.

“We’ll eventually pass something,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told reporters Monday. “I just can’t tell you when.”

What else we’re watching:

— Dem Oversight election: Democrats will vote Tuesday morning to decide the top Democrat on the Oversight committee. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) is the front-runner after the Californian clinched a majority of votes from the steering committee on the first ballot.

— War powers resolutions: Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) told Speaker Mike Johnson that he will no longer advance a resolution seeking to block U.S. involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict if the ceasefire that Trump announced holds. But in the Senate, Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said he’s forging ahead with forcing a vote on a similar resolution regardless of the ceasefire and expects a vote sometime between Wednesday and Friday.

— Cassidy’s latest vaccine push: Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) criticized the top vaccine advisers of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday for lacking experience and urged the agency to delay a scheduled meeting with them. Cassidy said a meeting with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices scheduled for Wednesday should not proceed “with a relatively small panel, and no CDC Director in place to approve the panel’s recommendations.”

Garrett Downs, Nicholas Wu, Hailey Fuchs and Kelly Hooper contributed to this report.