President Donald Trump wanted a “big, beautiful bill.” Now Republicans are having to take some of the shine off of it.

GOP leaders on Capitol Hill signaled Thursday they are scaling back their tax-cutting ambitions after running into difficulty making deep spending cuts and facing stern warnings from Republican deficit hawks who are threatening to vote against Trump’s sprawling megabill.

On the chopping block could be a litany of Trump demands, including a permanent extension of the tax cuts passed during his first term, as well as second-term campaign promises to provide tax relief to seniors while also exempting taxes on tips and overtime earnings. Those provisions could end up getting enacted only temporarily, according to four Republican lawmakers, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.

With key committees struggling to meet a $2 trillion spending cut target, Speaker Mike Johnson told a group of House Republicans Thursday he is now targeting $4 trillion of tax cuts. That’s a half-trillion dollars less than many in the GOP had hoped, and it’s likely below the threshold needed to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent — one of Trump’s earliest demands for the party-line megabill.

“Republicans talk a big game … about reining in reckless spending,” House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) told reporters. “You won’t get the full permanency in the tax policy on all the provisions if we don’t get to the $2 trillion in savings, and that’s unfortunate.”

That cake is not yet totally baked: Republican leaders are still exploring a request from Trump to increase income taxes on the highest-earning Americans — from 37 percent to 39.6 percent, the level that prevailed before the 2017 law — in order to make room for more tax cuts elsewhere.

The House’s top tax writer, Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), is set to visit the White House Friday as GOP leaders grapple with the idea of a more modest package. Trump posted Wednesday on Truth Social that the bill would deliver “the biggest Tax Cut for Middle and Working Class Americans by far.”

“We are going to do NO TAX ON TIPS, NO TAX ON SENIORS’ SOCIAL SECURITY, NO TAX ON OVERTIME, and much more,” he wrote.

Under Johnson’s new $4 trillion tax plan, however, Smith may not be able to deliver on all of Trump’s requests. Many of the desired tax cuts might be in place for only a few years — forcing future Congresses to decide whether to keep them in place.

Time is running out for Republicans to put the puzzle pieces together. Johnson is pushing to have three key committees vote on their portions of the bill next week. And with the committees on Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce and Agriculture all currently slated to convene on Tuesday, the window to make changes to the overall package is closing quickly.

Committee rules give the Energy and Commerce Committee, which is weighing major Medicaid changes, until 24 hours before the meeting Tuesday at 2 p.m. to release final legislative language. Ways and Means is aiming to meet at the same time.

Even if House GOP leaders manage to pull the megabill together, the Senate is poised to revise many of the policies. Many GOP senators have balked at making deep cuts to Medicaid and pushing food aid costs onto the states, which could trim back the cuts further, and Senate tax writers are pushing back on the higher top-earner rate.

“I’m not excited about the proposal, but I have to say, there are a number of people in both the House and the Senate who are, and if the president weighs in favor of it, then that’s going to be a big factor that we have to take into consideration as well,” Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said Thursday in an interview with talk show host Hugh Hewitt.

Crapo has been an outspoken advocate for essentially writing off the cost of permanently extending the 2017 tax cuts and accounting only for the cost of new tax provisions. But the politics in the House are different, where a cadre of fiscal hawks are demanding that GOP leaders hold spending cuts and tax cuts in rough balance.

Smith had already indicated it would be difficult to make the 2017 bill permanent under the House’s fiscal framework, which envisioned $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion in spending cuts. (Fiscal hawks are counting on economic growth and other “dynamic” effects to make up the difference.)

Now that Johnson is planning on $500 billion less in tax cuts, tax writers on the committee will have to make some very difficult choices on what to prioritize. One tax writer, Rep. Ron Estes (R-Kan.), said Wednesday that he expects a number of tax provisions to be temporary, with some extended for four, six or eight years.

Those include various pieces of Trump’s 2017 tax law, such as tax deductions for businesses, individual tax rates and estate taxes. House Republicans have also wanted to restore three critical business provisions, which would cost more than $600 billion to make permanent. Then, Smith has to find room for enacting Trump’s campaign priorities, such as his ideas on tips, overtime and Social Security.

Even with revenue-generating proposals — such as increasing the tax on university endowments and repealing Biden-era clean energy credits — the math is not adding up for Republicans who want to fit it all in.

That’s to say nothing of the push from blue-state Republicans to increase the income tax deduction for state and local taxes. The so-called SALT Republicans presented proposals to Ways and Means members Wednesday, but they left far from a resolution that would satisfy both sides.

On Thursday evening, New York Republicans Andrew Garbarino, Nick LaLota, Mike Lawler and Elise Stefanik rejected one House GOP idea under discussion: increasing the SALT deduction from $10,000 to $30,000. They called the number “insulting.”

“We were on the 25-yard line with about 75 yards to go,” LaLota told reporters Thursday. “We got sacked at that meeting. We probably lost five to ten yards.”

Meanwhile, House GOP efforts to amp up spending cuts have largely faltered. On Medicaid — which had been targeted for as much as $600 billion in savings — Republicans have found consensus on only the more modest proposals, such as adding work requirements in the program, strengthening eligibility checks and booting noncitizens from the rolls.

Johnson ruled out one of the most controversial Medicaid cuts GOP leaders had been pursuing, slashing the federal cost share for the joint federal-state program, after meeting with moderates Tuesday evening. And House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) said a policy intended to lower drug prices in the program that the White House has pitched is likely off the table, too.

Another ambitious cost-cutting proposal — capping the federal payments for at least some Medicaid enrollees — remains an option, though it’s politically explosive.

Ultraconservatives are demanding those kinds of “structural” changes, but moderates are wary. In a report requested by Democrats, the Congressional Budget Office estimated Wednesday that a similar policy to what is being discussed could lead to 3.3 million people losing Medicaid coverage and 1.5 million people going uninsured. It would, however, generate $225 billion in savings.

“It’s a sensitive thing,” Johnson conceded Thursday.

House Republicans also still need to convince centrist holdouts to back a controversial proposal to shift some costs of food aid under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to states for the first time ahead of the scheduled House Agriculture Committee meeting.

While the pared-down tax cuts might represent a setback for the Trump agenda, some in the White House have been relieved that Congress has stepped back from the most far-reaching proposals for safety-net cuts, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the private reactions, and are privately rooting for the swing-district moderates to win out over hard-liners.

Trump has promised the “largest tax cuts in history,” but he’s also repeatedly pledged not to cut Americans’ government benefits — and he’s recently grown uncomfortable with proposals for far-reaching Medicaid cuts.

Brian Faler and Robert King contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — The subtext of President Donald Trump’s recent reelection endorsement of Rep. Mike Lawler appeared clear enough: Stay, fight and keep your battleground New York seat red. Also, shelve your ambitions to become governor.

But Lawler isn’t interpreting the president’s Truth Social post as the decree others have.

The suburban Republican, after all, has doggedly built his brand as an independent and has long sought to be the first in a generation from his party to win statewide office in conventionally blue New York.

“Ultimately, my decision is going to be my decision,” Lawler told POLITICO in an interview the night after Trump’s endorsement. “It’s going to be based on whether or not I believe there’s a pathway in the general election.”

He said he has no interest “in a kamikaze mission” and will make his call by June. In the meantime, the 38-year-old second-term House member has plenty to tackle in Congress, including raising the state and local tax deduction cap, his calling-card cause. He’s calculating that a win on SALT could boost his viability statewide, and he’s also factoring in how potential cuts to Medicaid, federal immigration policy and the impact of Trump’s tariffs might impact his political future. But his stated priorities won’t be easy to secure. Republicans are locked in increasingly tense negotiations central to Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill.

Even if he does score key policy wins in the coming months, Lawler will still have a fight on his hands — regardless of which office he pursues next year.

Option A: Republicans want to topple Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, but without the messy GOP primary of 2022. Aside from Lawler, upstate Rep. Elise Stefanik and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman are top gubernatorial contenders, and their allegiances to Trump would likely give one of them a primary edge over Lawler. Then, of course, there’s the general election, which would be an uphill battle in its own right, but would likely favor Lawler, the moderate, over Stefanik or Blakeman.

Option B is also tricky: If Lawler opts to seek a third term in purple Hudson Valley, he’ll do so as one of the country’s most vulnerable House Republicans. The stage for the midterms has been set with town halls packed by constituents outraged over Trump’s agenda and a burgeoning field of eager Democratic challengers sharpening their claws.

Trump — whose Truth Social posts can make or break political careers — looms over it all. The president is seeking more influence in his home state, where he built his real estate and TV businesses — and where Democrats successfully prosecuted him.

Several New York Republicans told POLITICO they see his glowing endorsement of Lawler’s House bid as clearing the path for Stefanik to run for governor.

Trump is closely aligned with the 40-year-old Stefanik, whose nomination for United Nations ambassador he abruptly yanked in March to protect Republicans’ slim House majority. Stefanik, a member of House GOP leadership, and Lawler briefly feuded over their preferred candidates for her House seat, but both their camps said they’ve since mended fences.

Did Stefanik ask Trump to weigh in this week on Lawler’s future? She declined to say.

Would Lawler run for governor without Trump’s blessing? He won’t say.

“He knows I’m considering it,” Lawler said. “Look, obviously, his voice matters, and his thoughts on a prospective campaign matter, but that’s a conversation I will have with him at some point.”

Lawler told POLITICO he’s spoken with White House officials but not the president himself since Trump’s Tuesday night Truth Social post.

In it, the president lauded Lawler as a “true America First Patriot” fighting to secure the border and grow the economy, proffering a “Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election.”

Lawler is widely viewed as a media-savvy workhorse and the best contender to keep his district out of Democratic hands — and he has toed the line with Trump. But he’s made exceptions. His willingness to buck his party has included standing up for Ukraine, opposing provisions that would defund Planned Parenthood and voting with Democrats against a GOP effort to block a measure allowing lawmakers with newborns to vote remotely.

Being tied too closely to the president would hurt him in either general election he’s eying.

Lawler said he’s grateful for the president’s endorsement, but as of Thursday night had yet to promote it on his own social media accounts. Democrats are spreading the word for him.

“Mike Lawler just received a presidential-level snub from Donald Trump,” Democratic Governors Association spokesperson Kevin Donohoe said in a statement. “Donald Trump, and no one else, will choose New York’s next Republican gubernatorial nominee — and it’s not going to be Mike Lawler.”

Republicans who know him said Lawler isn’t afraid to go his own way.

“The only person who will tell Michael whether or not to run for governor will be Michael,” said Dave Catalfamo, a GOP strategist and former top aide to New York’s last Republican governor, George Pataki. “I truly believe that what has made Mike so successful and what has made him attractive as a candidate is his independence.”

For his part, Lawler has continued to stress his bipartisan record — even though its mention has invited jeers at the hostile Hudson Valley town halls he holds in defiance of GOP guidance. Livid attendees have railed at him over proposed cuts to Medicaid and Trump’s deportation plans, with some saying his record doesn’t match his rhetoric and protesters calling him “MAGA Mike.” One constituent in her 60s was forcibly removed at his most recent forum. Lawler has said he opposes cuts to Medicaid for “eligible” recipients. Ever the political animal, he’s blasted the disruptors as activists and even fundraised on the acrimony by encouraging supporters to text “CRAZY” to a campaign number.

In Washington, with the stakes high over ironing out the Republican spending bill, Lawler’s moderate Democratic colleagues have shown an appreciation for him. This week, he and Long Island Rep. Laura Gillen reintroduced a bill to codify the right to access in vitro fertilization.

At their joint news conference, she suggested he bend Trump’s ear on the legislation as he has on SALT, saying, “He probably talks to the president more than I do and maybe he can put in a good word.”

Lawler replied good-naturedly, “You got it.”

Senate Democrats on Thursday voted down a procedural motion that would allow the upper chamber to take up landmark GOP-led cryptocurrency legislation, delivering a stunning blow to Republicans on one of their first major policy pushes since clinching a trifecta.

The upper chamber voted 48-49 not to proceed on the crypto bill, squashing the effort following a chaotic week of negotiations in which the GOP backers of the legislation sought to win over a group of key Democratic holdouts.

All Democrats and three Republicans — including Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Josh Hawley of Missouri — voted against the effort, which required 60 votes to advance. Democratic negotiators pushed to delay the vote until next week to give them more time to circulate potential changes with members, but GOP leaders plowed ahead.

The head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency was fired Thursday morning, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.

Cameron Hamilton, FEMA’s acting administrator, has told people that he was terminated, leaving the nation’s disaster agency without a top official three weeks before the start of the Atlantic hurricane season and as Congress scrutinizes FEMA’s proposed budget for fiscal 2026.

Hamilton was summoned to Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Washington on Thursday morning and told of his termination by Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Troy Edgar and Corey Lewandowski, a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump, according to a person with direct knowledge.

Hamilton was driven back to FEMA headquarters a few miles away, where he cleared out his desk and left, the person told POLITICO’s E&E News.

FEMA confirmed the news.

The firing occurred one day after Hamilton told a House Appropriations subcommittee that the nation needs FEMA, which Trump has suggested abolishing or shrinking.

“I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Hamilton said at the hearing.