President Donald Trump wants the debt ceiling dealt with in the party-line package to enact his sweeping domestic agenda, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso told reporters Tuesday.

The issue, according to Barrasso, came up during a meeting earlier this month when Senate Finance Committee Republicans visited the White House to discuss the path forward for the “one big, beautiful bill” that Trump is envisioning to link an overhaul of the tax code to border, energy and defense policies.

“We’ve discussed that with the President … at the White House. He’s called for including it as part of the reconciliation bill,” said Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican who is also a member of the Finance Committee.

The topic is due to come up again later Tuesday afternoon, when Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Speaker Mike Johnson and the top congressional tax writers head back to the White House to meet with Trump administration officials about the reconciliation bill and how to harmonize the House-approved budget blueprint — which would include a debt limit hike — with the Senate’s — which is silent on the matter.

Barrasso, asked if he thinks some of his colleagues will advocate for or against its inclusion, demurred: “Every member will speak for himself,” he said.

Yet even as Trump has signaled privately that he wants a hike of the debt limit inserted into a reconciliation package — which would let him avoid having to make a deal with Democrats to avoid a catastrophic default in the coming months — congressional Republicans remain unsure if they’ll have the votes to include the policy in the bill. Some Senate conservatives have also warned against including it or cautioned they would need to see steep spending cuts to other government programs as a condition of supporting its inclusion.

Time could be running out to come up with a strategy. Congress’ nonpartisan scorekeeper, the Congressional Budget Office, plans to release its debt limit forecast Wednesday. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who will take part in Tuesday’s White House meeting, has told lawmakers he plans to send his own projection in the first half of May for when the nation will surpass its borrowing authority.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Tuesday Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer should “of course” remain in his leadership amid a backlash in the party to the New Yorker’s handling of a recent government funding vote. It’s a notable vote of confidence in Schumer from his longtime legislative partner.

Pelosi had previously criticized Schumer’s handling of the bill, saying in San Francisco last week, “I myself don’t give away anything for nothing.” Schumer and a group of Senate Democrats voted to advance the GOP-written funding bill, incensing their House counterparts who had almost universally opposed the funding bill and pushed for a short-term extension instead.

Schumer responded to Pelosi during an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday, saying Democrats had “no leverage point” and that he was prepared to take the heat for an unpopular decision: “I say to people: When you’re on that political mountain, the higher up you climb, the more fiercely the winds blow,” he said, adding, “I had to do the right thing for the country and for our party.”

Pelosi also expressed faith in House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, telling reporters Tuesday that “the more they hear from Hakeem, I think the better for our country.”

Speaker Mike Johnson at a Tuesday morning GOP Conference meeting made clear the House will not seek to impeach federal judges, said three people with direct knowledge of his remarks, granted anonymity to share details of private conversations.

Johnson noted that Congress has only voted to impeach judges 15 times throughout history. He also said the House Judiciary Committee is taking lead with hearings — the first scheduled for next week — and the full legislative body will vote soon on a bill from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to rein in nationwide injunctions.

It remains to be seen whether Johnson has a winning strategy of giving members other ways to work out their frustrations with perceived judicial overreach, with so many conservatives clamoring to pursue impeachments — a route also favored by President Donald Trump. House Republicans, however, don’t currently have the votes to impeach any federal judges, anyway.

Johnson will also meet with Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee later this afternoon.

Ray Dalio, a billionaire investor who repeatedly has warned about America’s unsustainable debt trajectory, will brief House Republicans on Tuesday morning, at the invitation of Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas).

His appearance comes as Republicans struggle with how to account for the cost of their tax cut plans, with some pushing for an accounting strategy that would zero-out the price tag and others warning that would amount to fiscal fraud.

Just in recent weeks, Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, has said that America’s debt situation could cause an “economic heart attack” and “shocking developments.”

“It is imperative that members of Congress engage with thought leaders like Mr. Dalio, who have extensive, real-world experience that can help guide us as we work to restore fiscal sanity in Washington before it’s too late,” Arrington said ahead of the briefing.

Dalio’s appearance, planned for after the House GOP conference meeting, comes as congressional Republicans are still hashing out some of the big-picture questions on a huge budget package this year, including how much a potential plan might add to deficits.

One particularly large outstanding question is whether Republicans should use a current policy baseline, which would assert that there is no cost to extending the temporary parts of the 2017 Trump tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of this year.

It’s not clear whether the Senate parliamentarian will allow such an approach in a budget reconciliation measure, which is how Republicans plan to pass their agenda. But it would give the GOP more headroom than the traditional current law baseline, which would hold that keeping the expiring provisions would cost $4 trillion or more over a decade.

The budget resolution that passed the House last month uses the current law approach.

Some House deficit hawks haven’t held back in knocking the current policy baseline — and just within recent days, a CBO analysis requested by Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) found that the federal debt would soar if the tax provisions were extended without being offset.

Congressional Republicans are furious about senior Trump administration officials using a group chat to discuss war plans. But they’re not calling for anyone’s head.

Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic he had — presumably by accident — been added to a group chat on Signal, an encrypted messaging app, that was used by several high-level Trump officials to plan the recent attack on the Houthis in Yemen.

There are growing calls within the White House for National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, who added Goldberg to the group chat, to resign. But GOP lawmakers have pushed back on the idea, with some defense hawks regarding the former congressmember and Green Beret as a key link to the administration and someone they can trust to be a serious voice in Trump’s circle.

And many Hill Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, are digging in to defend Waltz.

“He was made for that job, and I have full confidence in him,” Johnson told reporters Monday night, hours after separately shrugging off the broader issues with the Signal chat as a “mistake.”

Many lawmakers were shocked — not just because seemingly no one noticed that Goldberg was added to the chat, but that senior officials would discuss sensitive national security information on a platform that could be hacked by foreign adversaries.

“At minimum, it’s totally sloppy,” said Rep. Nick LaLota, a military veteran who previously held top security clearance. Rep. Don Bacon, a member of the House Armed Services committee, said the incident was “unconscionable.”

But Republicans largely dodged questions Monday about launching a congressional investigation, though many said they wanted a briefing. House Foreign Affairs Chair Brian Mast, a Trump ally, called the incident a “mistake” but said that he believed the White House should investigate, not Congress. House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers, when asked if there should be any hearings or probes into the issue, said he’s “still trying to find out what happened.”

Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker was more willing than others to entertain a formal inquiry, saying, “we’ll definitely look into it.”

Keep an eye on a Senate Intelligence hearing today at 10 a.m., which is set to feature testimony from some top national security officials who were reportedly part of the Signal chat: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

What else we’re watching: 

• Talking Tax: Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune will meet with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett, Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo and Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith at the White House around 4 p.m. on Tuesday to discuss the tax portion of the GOP’s massive party-line bill. 
• Johnson meets with Judiciary GOP: Johnson will speak with House Judiciary Republicans on Tuesday to discuss potential alternatives to pursuing impeachments for federal judges who rule against the Trump administration, a person granted anonymity to share details of a private meeting told Hailey. Meanwhile, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan said he briefed the president over the weekend on how his panel plans to review how the federal judiciary is working to stop pieces of the administration’s agenda.
• Schumer faces his members: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will meet with his caucus today, the first time since he sparked widespread intra-party anger by advancing the GOP government funding bill. Senate Democrats have largely quashed questions about if Schumer should step down from leadership, at least publicly. But the Tuesday lunch will still be a test for Schumer, as Democrats try to plot a path forward.

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

The Texas Republican seeking to impeach the federal judge who attempted to block President Donald Trump’s deportation flights isn’t backing down. But he said Monday he has no immediate plans to force a House vote on ousting U.S. District Judge James Boasberg.

Rep. Brandon Gill said in an interview Monday that he spoke with Speaker Mike Johnson about the matter and the two “discussed a range of options” about how to move forward. While Gill could call up his resolution targeting Boasberg as a privileged matter, he said he isn’t seeking to fast-track the effort at the moment.

He has, however, secured three new GOP cosponsors: Reps. Mary Miller of Illinois, John McGuire of Virginia and Michael Rulli of Ohio, bringing the total to 19.

Gill still said he viewed impeachment as the “proper remedy” for Boasberg’s “lawless and unconstitutional ruling” against Trump that’s blocking a key piece of his agenda: “We’re going to continue pushing impeachment.”

But Gill’s decision not to immediately force a floor vote gives Johnson more flexibility to find other release valves for the mounting pressure from Trump, billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk and the GOP base to pursue judicial impeachments.

Johnson and GOP leaders don’t have the votes to impeach Boasberg or any other judges, let alone the 67 Senate votes needed to convict and remove them. The speaker confirmed to reporters earlier Monday that he is looking “at all the alternatives that we have to address this problem,” including legislation to rein in nationwide injunctions.

GOP leaders are planning a House vote next week on a bill from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to curb national injunctions. Gill said he supported Issa’s legislation and that he was “very happy” to see the speaker move it quickly toward a floor vote.

The top two Republicans in Congress aren’t rushing to embrace calls from the MAGA right to impeach lower-court judges who have ruled against President Donald Trump.

Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, in separate comments to reporters Monday, didn’t entirely reject the impeachment push but discussed other ways the conflict between the president and the courts might ultimately be resolved.

Johnson confirmed POLITICO’s reporting that he’s looking for alternatives to pursuing judicial impeachments, which would ultimately fail in the Senate, including legislation aimed at reining in the ability of individual judges to order nationwide injunctions.

“Look, everything is on the table: Impeachment is an extraordinary measure. We’re looking at all the alternatives that we have to address this problem,” Johnson told reporters.

Thune separately indicated that impeachment is a House decision but “there’s an appeals process, and, you know, I suspect that’s ultimately how this will get handled.”

Though a handful of House Republicans previously called for the impeachment of judges who had ruled against Trump, the issue boiled over last week when Judge James Boasberg of the federal trial court in Washington sought to block Trump’s effort to deport alleged gang members to El Salvador.

But some Republican lawmakers are warning that a full-blown impeachment effort would distract from what should be their main focus for their three-week stretch before the April recess: their plan to craft and pass a party-line domestic policy bill encompassing tax cuts, border security and more.

Johnson added Monday that the House will have hearings on the nationwide injunctions issue soon, including “questioning some of the judges themselves to have them defend their actions, and then we’ll see about limiting the scope of injunctions.”

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told Fox News on Monday that his committee would start holding its hearings around nationwide injunctions and Boasberg next week. The Ohio Republican added that he suspected Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) would do the same.

In the interview, Jordan did not mention impeachment but offered his support for a bill from Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) that would limit the power of district court judges to issue nationwide injunctions.

Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team urged their Senate GOP counterparts on Monday to vote swiftly on a House-approved budget framework now that lawmakers are returning to Washington after a weeklong recess.

The public nudge comes as GOP leaders on both sides of the Capitol feel pressure to show quick progress toward enacting President Donald Trump’s agenda of tax cuts, border security enhancements, energy deregulation and new military spending. First, however, they have to agree on the fiscal outlines of the package, and the House and Senate have approved competing blueprints.

Johnson & Co. said Monday that the Senate should simply take up the House version: “The American people gave us a mandate and we must act on it,” they said, noting that the House “took the first step to accomplish that by passing a budget resolution weeks ago, and we look forward to the Senate joining us in this commitment to ensure we enact President Trump’s full agenda as quickly as possible.”

“Working together, we will get it done,” they added.

But the GOP leaders on opposite ends of the Capitol are still very much divided on what to include in the package and continue to criticize their counterparts after months of disagreement. Senate Republican leaders are now deciding how substantially they want to tweak the House framework before punting it back across the Capitol.

A Senate GOP aide granted anonymity because they were not authorized to respond publicly said Monday that if House GOP leaders wanted their budget “to be a serious option,” they should have included instructions for Senate committees. “Instead, the House made theirs a performative exercise,” added the aide.

Congress is back. Lawmakers have three weeks to make major progress on their behemoth party-line bill.

Hill Republicans are focused now on advancing President Donald Trump’s border, energy and tax priorities. Speaker Mike Johnson has set an aggressive goal of finalizing a budget blueprint with the Senate and getting it passed in the House by the week of April 7 — softening his earlier ambitions to pass the final bill by Easter. The budget is necessary for enacting Trump’s domestic agenda along party lines through a process known as reconciliation.

Efforts to resolve differences between the House and Senate GOP budget resolutions are going nowhere fast. Instead, House and Senate Republicans are mired in a blame game over who is slowing down the process.

There are several major hurdles for the House side: Republicans still need to determine how much they can slash from social safety-net programs. They also need to figure out how to extend existing tax cuts while providing new tax breaks Trump has promised, all without blowing a hole in the deficit — plus agree to a fix for the state and local tax deduction.

“How can we be moving quickly when some of those foundational questions haven’t been settled?” North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis asked.

Senate GOP leaders have been careful to not provide any specific timeline on Trump’s agenda — though a person granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations said the goal is to adopt a modified budget resolution in the next three weeks. House Republicans are waiting on the Senate to agree on a fiscal outline before they draft any reconciliation bill, leaving the two chambers at a standstill.

Senate Republicans have been reluctant to hold another marathon vote series on a conforming budget resolution unless they are sure their House colleagues can actually pass a reconciliation bill with the $2 trillion in cuts Johnson promised to his hard-liners, according to three Republicans who were granted anonymity to detail their internal discussions.

“Probably what we are going to do is talk each other to death, stare at each other and then eventually, you know, confuse the issue so much that it takes two months to unravel what we agree to,” GOP Sen. Rand Paul said.

What else we’re watching:

• Rules meeting: House Rules will have a hearing at 4 p.m. Monday on an education bill that places new requirements on universities to report foreign gifts or contracts and two bills to overturn Biden-era energy standards for refrigerators and walk-in coolers under the Congressional Review Act. The House is set to bring those bills to a floor vote later this week.
• Judge impeachment alternatives: House Republicans are working through different options to appease Trump’s request for Judge James Boasberg’s impeachment. Rep. Brandon Gill’s bill to impeach Boasberg had 16 co-sponsors as of Sunday night. Meanwhile, GOP leaders are eyeing other options outside of impeachment, including Rep. Darrell Issa’s bill that would limit lower court judges’ ability to issue far-reaching injunctions, as we reported last week.
• X-date projection: The Bipartisan Policy Center predicted today that the United States will default on its $36 trillion national debt sometime between mid-July and October if Congress does not act — the first public prediction of when a so-called X-date could occur. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office plans to release its debt limit forecast on Wednesday.

Jordain Carney and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.