House Republicans voted on Wednesday to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress — dramatically escalating their fight with the Justice Department.

There was lingering skepticism just hours before the 216-207 vote about whether GOP leaders would be able to lock down the near unity required. Ultimately, nearly every Republican voted to take the largely symbolic step, which refers the attorney general to the DOJ for prosecution, with Democrats united in opposition.

Only Ohio Rep. David Joyce voted against it on the Republican side.

“As a former prosecutor, I cannot in good conscience support a resolution that would further politicize our judicial system to score political points. The American people expect Congress to work for them, solve policy problems, and prioritize good governance. Enough is enough,” Joyce said after the vote.

Garland is the first person to be held in contempt since Republicans took control of the House last year. The resolution cites his refusal to hand over audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur, who was investigating Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. It’s unlikely Garland will face charges — a decision that’s expected to be up to U.S. attorney Matthew Graves — particularly after Biden asserted executive privilege over the audio.

“I think the case is so compelling. I think A, they’ve already waived the privilege, and B, we’re in an impeachment inquiry … and we’re entitled to the best evidence,” Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who issued one of the two subpoenas demanding the audio from Garland, said in a brief interview.

Garland and DOJ officials had pushed back against handing over the audio, warning that it could negatively impact cooperation in future investigations. They also argued, contrary to GOP claims, that by handing over the transcript they didn’t waive executive privilege for the audio.

“It is deeply disappointing that this House of Representatives has turned a serious congressional authority into a partisan weapon. Today’s vote disregards the constitutional separation of powers, the Justice Department’s need to protect its investigations, and the substantial amount of information we have provided to the Committees,” Garland said in a statement after the vote.

In a recent court filing, DOJ officials also aired concerns that releasing it to the public would make it easier to manipulate the audio or create deep fakes — a fear raised by congressional Democrats who worried Republicans wanted the audio to splice it into campaign ads. That worry particularly centers around incidents in the interview when Biden reportedly had trouble remembering key details, prompting Hur to write in his report that a jury would see Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The White House has pushed back on that description, saying it was inaccurate and improper to include.

Additionally, Democrats argue Republicans’ focus on the audio is more about showing progress on their long-stalled impeachment inquiry into Biden, which has mainly focused on the business deals of his family members.

“Hearing the President’s words rather than reading them … certainly will not reveal any new evidence of an impeachable offense,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, wrote in a memo to members ahead of the vote.

That argument didn’t deter centrists from voting to hold Garland in contempt, though many have been skeptical of their party’s broader efforts to antagonize the Justice Department.

Some Republicans, including GOP investigators and members of leadership, have publicly questioned if the audio matches the transcript, which the Justice Department has already given to Congress and was released publicly. A DOJ official, in a court filing with outside groups seeking the audio, said that the audio matched the transcript aside from minor instances like the use of filler words or repeated phrases. The official noted that both Hur and FBI personnel present for the interview agreed with the assessment.

One centrist Republican, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, said they had personally told the Justice Department recently that “we should hear the audio.”

That GOP member raised Hur’s description of Biden as having a faulty memory, saying that when a then-special counsel raises that issue then “there’s a problem. That’s just the facts of life.”

The move to hold Garland in contempt is the biggest blow Republicans have been able to land on the Justice Department as they push back on a slew of charges and convictions against former President Donald Trump. And it will likely be welcome news to the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, who plans to speak with congressional Republicans near the Capitol on Thursday.

There’s more coming on Garland, too. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) has warned that she will try to hold Garland in “inherent contempt” 10 days after Wednesday’s vote if the Justice Department “doesn’t do its job.” The rarely used tool would let the House sergeant at arms take Garland into custody for a congressional proceeding. Many centrist Republicans would almost certainly oppose that effort — and several lawmakers have acknowledged they don’t really know what it means.

Rather, the GOP’s fight over the audio is likely to end up playing out in court, where outside conservative groups and a coalition of news organizations have also sued for the recordings. That legal battle, which Republicans have hinted is coming, likely won’t conclude before the election.

Senate Republicans plan to almost uniformly oppose a bill that provides federal protections for in vitro fertilization, hoping to quickly shut down Democrats’ efforts to paint them as enemies of reproductive rights.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is planning to bring the bill up for an initial vote on Thursday, with GOP opposition all but guaranteeing it will fail. The bill would require 60 votes to move forward, meaning it needs at least nine GOP senators to agree to advance it.

While Republicans remain adamant that they support IVF — and have their own alternative bill they’re trying to bring up Wednesday afternoon — multiple members cited concerns about Democrats’ bill trampling on religious freedoms and states rights.

“We may have a couple of our members who end up voting for it. It’s not going to move forward,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who said he’ll be voting against advancing the bill because “it’s an exercise in futility.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said he’d be “pretty surprised” if there were enough Republican votes to advance the bill and cited concerns over the bill constituting “a lot of changes to state law.”

Schumer’s push for a vote on the IVF legislation is his latest attempt at squeezing Republicans on tough issues ahead of the November elections. Earlier this month, Senate Democratic leadership also attempted to pass a bill protecting contraception at the federal level. Before that, it was a vote on the border package that a bipartisan group of senators negotiated earlier this year.

Both of those votes failed due to GOP opposition; Republicans said Democrats were mounting insincere efforts at political messaging.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), a member of leadership, hit back at that accusation, telling reporters Wednesday that the threat to IVF “is not hypothetical.”

“We already saw the chaos and heartbreak caused when the Alabama Supreme Court upended IVF access,” she said. “Women who were days away from appointments they had waited months for and spent thousands of dollars on had their treatment canceled and their dreams of motherhood thrown into uncertainty. … Republican efforts to dismiss this vote as fear mongering are simply not going to fly.”

Schumer maintains he is putting the bills to a vote in an effort to pass bipartisan legislation on popular issues. He has denied claims that the IVF effort is a so-called “show vote,” though Republicans were not involved in crafting the legislation at hand.

Republicans led by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Katie Britt (R-Ala.) are pushing an alternative bill that would strip federal Medicaid funding from states that ban IVF services. That legislation would still allow restrictions on how embryos are stored, implanted and disposed of. They plan to try and pass the bill unanimously on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, according to a Britt spokesperson. The bill will almost certainly be blocked.

“I strongly support IVF,” Cruz said. “And I want that written in the law. That’s not what Schumer is doing this week when he’s playing political games.”

Duckworth, who herself had two children through IVF, excoriated the GOP version at a press conference Wednesday, saying it “would absolutely do nothing to protect access to IVF.”

“Calling your bill the IVF Protection Act without doing anything to protect IVF is despicable,” she added. “It is akin to an arsonist selling you fire insurance that doesn’t cover arson.”

Duckworth and her colleagues argued that it’s not just blanket bans that would make IVF inaccessible or push clinics to close their doors. They noted that even the Alabama ruling that led many providers in that state to halt services wasn’t a ban per-se — and would still be allowed to happen under the Cruz-Britt bill.

Alternatively, the Democratic version would both prevent states from imposing restrictions on IVF and make it more affordable, with specific provisions expanding insurance coverage for service members and veterans.

Still, Republicans risk handing Democrats an opportunity to use the vote in campaign attacks this cycle. Hawley, for one, said he wasn’t worried about playing into any messaging tactics from Democrats. And he expects more votes like the ones on IVF and contraception to continue through the election.

“I’m sure we’ll keep voting on abortion week after week, you know, right up till November,” he said.

Mitch McConnell stood by his endorsement of former President Donald Trump on Wednesday, shrugging off any bad blood that still lingers over their icy relationship as Trump gets ready to meet with GOP lawmakers.

The Senate minority leader, who is stepping down as the top Republican in the chamber at the end of the year, said “of course I’ll be in the meeting tomorrow” and emphasized that he hasn’t deviated at all from his long-held posture toward Trump.

“I said three years ago, right after the Capitol was attacked, that I will support our nominee regardless of who it was, including him,” McConnell told reporters on Wednesday. “I said earlier this year I supported him. He’s earned the nomination by the voters all across the country. Of course I’ll be in the meeting tomorrow.”

The remarks by McConnell signal an olive branch of sorts toward Trump, whose performance in the presidential election is not only key to delivering Republicans the White House, but also a brawny majority in both chambers of Congress next year. Most GOP senators have said they will attend, though Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — who have both declined to endorse the former president — said this week they have conflicts that will keep them from the lunch.

Speaker Mike Johnson told Senate Republicans on Wednesday that he wants to go big in a possible GOP-run Washington next year. So far, a fresh round of tax cuts is at the top of his wish list.

Exiting a meeting with the Senate GOP, Johnson said tax cuts and “regulatory reform,” shorthand for paring back government regulations, are two of his biggest priorities if his party can take unified control of Washington next year.

As for redesigning the rest of the Republican agenda, Johnson told reporters that the party is looking “creatively, and I think deliberatively” at what it can accomplish. But inside the room, GOP senators said the speaker offered scant details so far about his plans.

“It was: ‘We are working on this.’ I don’t know who the ‘we’ is, I have no idea,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), describing the meeting with Johnson as a “very broad” discussion. He said the speaker was in the room for less than 30 minutes — and spoke to a relatively small crowd of senators.

With dreams of controlling the White House and Congress for the first time in six years, GOP leaders are eager to plot an agenda for the campaign trail. If Republicans can achieve the rare trifecta in November, Johnson and the next Senate GOP leader will be eager to use the power known as budget reconciliation to circumvent the filibuster.

As Democrats did at the beginning of the Biden administration, Republicans will likely encounter a huge battle over which priorities to include — and what will be left on the cutting room floor.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) described Wednesday’s meeting as an adjustment of “expectations” for the use of budget reconciliation to circumvent the filibuster, a path that comes with narrow restraints on the topics lawmakers can tackle.

“We want to overcome frustrations,” Tillis said, pointing to Democrats’ failed attempts to add immigration policy to their own party-line legislation two years ago. Some Republicans are already gunning to include border reforms in their hypothetical future reconciliation measure — something that would likely stir another big procedural fight.

As for the GOP’s political prognosis, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said Johnson has a “real optimism” for November: “He just feels like the atmosphere is very positive.”

Across the Capitol, House GOP leaders have begun drafting their own wish list. Majority Leader Steve Scalise asked GOP committee chairs last month to compile their biggest policy demands for a Republican sweep.

It’s no secret that Republicans will be focusing on taxes, with much of the individual tax cuts in the Trump-era 2017 tax law expiring in the coming months.

“Tax cuts need to be extended. Otherwise, we’re going to have the biggest tax hikes in US history,” Johnson said.

After months of struggle (and several years of divisions), congressional Republicans are spending this week trying to coordinate clear priorities ahead of the November election and 2025 — and Donald Trump is at the center of it all.

The former president will speak with Republicans in both the House and the Senate in two separate meetings on Thursday. One day before that, Speaker Mike Johnson will head to the Senate to debate a future legislative agenda in a potential Republican-controlled Washington.

“We are all on the same team and we need to be united as we move into the fall. These are consequential elections. To me, it’s sort of natural,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). She said she wants to hear how Trump is “going to unite us and what issues we’re going to talk about.”

A major caveat here: The sudden burst of coordination is unlikely to produce any immediate, substantive result. Johnson’s talks with Senate Republicans are mainly meant to get both chambers on the same page if Trump wins back the White House this November and they can manage to take both chambers of Congress.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said this week’s meetings will “look at how the two campaigns, the presidential campaign and the Senate campaigns, can coordinate, work together and try and get optimized, get the best outcome we can.”

The reconciliation game: Johnson’s main focus, for now, is what legislative priorities Republicans could pass through so-called budget reconciliation. That allows some legislation to pass the Senate with a simple majority, and it would be the GOP’s main vehicle to enact policies like preserving the expiring Trump-era tax cuts on party-line votes — if they can win big in November.

“We’re not assuming that there will or won’t be reconciliation,” said Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho). “We’re just looking at all of the issues so that we’re just informed – so that when we know what the outcome of the elections are, then we can be better prepared to act that time.”

Reality check: The meeting with Trump is not exactly going to heal divisions regarding the former president. While some senators have kept relatively quiet about their objections to his nomination, a handful have openly expressed their distaste for their party’s presumptive GOP standard-bearer.

For example: Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) has said he won’t vote for Trump. His office declined to comment on whether he’ll attend Thursday’s meeting.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said she won’t be attending either, citing a “conflict.”

Others who joined her in voting to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial — including Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), have unsurprisingly declined to endorse him this cycle.

Romney and Cassidy both said their attendance will depend on their schedules. Collins brushed off a question about attending and said she needed to go vote.

But a handful of Senate Republicans who haven’t formally endorsed Trump yet will be going. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) plans to attend the meeting, per a spokesperson. He also said in an interview that it’s fine to describe him as endorsing Trump: “He’s our nominee, so I support him. Use whatever word you want to use. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he gets elected.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who’s also not yet endorsed Trump, said he’s “probably” going to the meeting. Asked if he plans to endorse Trump, Paul said he needs to “have some conversations with him first.”

Notably, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — a longtime Trump skeptic who tepidly endorsed the former president earlier this year — will attend the Thursday meeting. The two still have an icy relationship, dating back to McConnell saying President Joe Biden had won the 2020 election.

Of the 10 House GOP members who voted to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, only two remain in office. Rep. Dan Newhouse (Wash.) plans to attend the meeting Thursday, his office confirmed. A spokesperson for the other remaining GOP member who voted for impeachment, Rep. David Valadao (Calif.), didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Some Republicans said the flurry of sitdowns isn’t part of some grand plan, but they hoped it would serve to lay out a vision ahead of November and into next year.

“I really think it’s just coincidence that they had Speaker Johnson come in and I think President Trump decided to come in as well. But I do think it has the effect of getting us focused as a united party,” said Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who is on the short list for Trump’s vice presidential pick.

Senate Democrats are facing a fresh round of pressure from the left to begin taking concrete moves to spotlight the ethical controversies mounting at the Supreme Court.

They are responding with at least one step: Plans to seek unanimous consent for debate on their long-stalled legislation imposing new ethics rules on the high court.

But Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who’s previously ruled out subpoenaing Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, is already acknowledging that Republicans are prepared to object to that debate — leaving no path forward for the Supreme Court bill.

“I think I know the outcome, but we’re going to go through the exercise to make sure that both parties are on the record,” the Judiciary Chair and Majority Whip said on Tuesday.

Durbin revealed his move as several House progressives, and one leading liberal activist group, began nudging harder for the Senate to force recusals by the two conservative justices. Such moves would tee up a remarkable showdown between two branches of government, but liberals across the Capitol are starting to press harder.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the Democrats’ top Oversight and Accountability Committee member, in a brief interview. “I feel like the Department of Justice has within its arsenal the right to ask to petition the court for a writ of mandamus, to force recusal of two justices whose impartiality is reasonably questioned.”

Raskin and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hosted a Tuesday roundtable with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) — a chief backer of the Supreme Court ethics bill — designed to spotlight what many progressives view as a conflict of interest crisis on the court.

Whitehouse used the moment to cool House Democrats’ interest in subpoenas given divided government, warning that Republican senators would be likely to get in the way of enforcing any summons to a justice.

Durbin, who declined to endorse Raskin’s proposal, described it as “kind of a reach” but said he would keep discussing it with him out of “respect” for the constitutional law professor’s expertise. He added a subtle hope that further reporting on the high court might change the political dynamics that have prevented Senate Democrats from moving forward with their 51-vote majority.

“Maybe some new evidence comes out,” Durbin said.

Previous reports in The New York Times and ProPublica have already trained harsh scrutiny on Alito and Thomas. Alito declined to recuse himself from cases related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot after reports on an upside-down American flag displayed at a family residence, as well as another flag that some associate with Christian Nationalism.

In addition, reports on Alito and Thomas’ ties to wealthy GOP donors have sparked fury on the left. This week, attention returned to the high court after the release of tapes of Alito and his wife, who were recorded by a liberal activist and documentary filmmaker posing as a conservative in order to prod them into addressing sensitive topics.

Senate Democrats’ high court ethics bill would establish more stringent rules for gift and travel disclosure, clarify recusal rules and allow lower court judges to review ethics complaints submitted by the public. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has not committed to floor time to the measure, likely because it could not overcome a GOP filibuster, so Durbin’s plans to seek unanimous consent are largely symbolic.

With pivotal cases related to former President Donald Trump and Jan. 6 potentially going before the Supreme Court soon, at least one prominent progressive activist said Senate Democrats need to do more — including subpoenas.

“There’s a dangerous strain of defeatism,” Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, said in an interview. “We are baffled. This is both good policy, good government and good politics. Why not do it?”

“The minute that Durbin gets off his butt … the people will be with him. The general public does not like what’s going on the Supreme Court,” added Levin.

Instead, Democrats are placing the onus elsewhere — focusing on the doomed Supreme Court ethics bill and insisting that Chief Justice John Roberts also hold Alito and Thomas accountable.

“Chief Justice Roberts must intervene for the sake of the court, because nothing is going to happen in Congress” ahead of major new decisions on Jan. 6 and other cases, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) said in an interview late last month. “And if he does rule on these cases, it will cause irreparable damage to an already damaged Supreme Court.”

Yet Roberts declined Durbin and Whitehouse’s request for a meeting on the matter. And even Whitehouse, known among his colleagues for pugnacious pursuit of judicial reform, has not sounded particularly enthusiastic in recent days about Senate Democrats making further headway in forcing the court to address its own internal ethical processes.

“I hope and pray that the time will come when the House is issuing subpoenas that are not subject to the Senate filibuster,” Whitehouse said on Tuesday.

Speaker Mike Johnson will attend the Senate GOP’s lunch on Wednesday to discuss ideas for future party-line legislation if former President Donald Trump wins in November, according to a person familiar with the plans.

Johnson is attempting to put together a package of conservative policy priorities that could — in theory — pass during a second Trump term, should Republicans win big this fall. Passing legislation through the so-called reconciliation process only requires a simple majority in the Senate, avoiding the 60 votes required to break a filibuster.

But the power of reconciliation comes with limits: Measures in the bill must be deemed relevant to the national budget, a standard that can be difficult for lawmakers to pinpoint.

Historically, issues like tax and health care reform have been ripe topics for reconciliation. Senate Democrats passed a reconciliation package last term, known as the Build Back Better Act, which included a number of climate and social policy efforts that would have otherwise failed to pass in the then-evenly divided Senate.

Any effort to pass a reconciliation package without complete GOP control of Washington next year is highly unlikely. Nonetheless, Johnson’s meeting with Republicans this week shows an intentional effort at early negotiations around any potential deal, theoretically teeing up a bill for Trump to act on quickly should he retake the White House.

Notably, Trump is also slated to meet separately with House and Senate Republicans on Thursday to discuss the party agenda. The former president’s input is likely to play a significant role in any sort of policy formations.

Punchbowl News first reported the Johnson appearance.