Trump ratchets up pressure on sanctions, clawbacks
FIRST IN INSIDE CONGRESS: MIKE LEE RANKLES THE MORMON CHURCH — Samuel Benson is out with a deep dive this morning on how Sen. Mike Lee's extremely active and politically provocative social media presence is fraying his relationship with some fellow members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Most recently, several senior church leaders were concerned over Lee's postings about last month's shootings that killed a senior Minnesota state lawmaker, Sam reports.
RUSSIA BILL DRAMA — President Donald Trump's desire to have unchecked authority over the next wave of Russia sanctions could throw a wrench in the Senate's hopes of passing a bipartisan sanctions bill before August recess.
The legislation from Sens. Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal now has 85 backers in the Senate, including 42 Democrats. But Democrats are signaling they might rethink their support if the bill is changed to further shield the president from congressional intervention if he doesn't implement the sanctions.
'That, I would have some problem with,' Sen. Tim Kaine, a co-sponsor and member of the Foreign Relations Committee, said about a potential blanket waiver. 'The notion of some waiver in the sanctions bill is pretty normal, but I would just like to have it be for specified criteria, rather than just open-ended.'
Trump is confident he's getting what he wants.
'It's a bill that the Senate is passing that very respectfully lets the president do whatever he wants, as you know,' he said in an NBC interview released Thursday evening. 'In other words, it's at my option if I want to use it.'
Senators don't have much time to figure it out. Senate Majority Leader John Thune is hoping to take up the bill as soon as the week of July 21, two people granted anonymity to discuss the plans told our Jordain Carney, though in the event of a deal the House could move first.
Right now the bill's lead co-sponsors are publicly addressing the issue in remarkably different ways, our Joe Gould and Connor O'Brien write in. Graham said Wednesday that Trump is 'in control of how you implement these sanctions,' and that, for the first 180 days, 'it's completely up to the president with no congressional oversight.' Blumenthal characterized the waiver authority in the bill as 'very limited and constrained.'
Sen. Chris Coons, another Democratic co-sponsor, told Mia that Trump needs to 'decide that he's actually going to show strength in challenging [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.'
'If [Trump's] going to try and essentially take the force out of a strongly bipartisan sanctions bill, that means he hasn't yet figured out how badly Putin has been playing it,' Coons said.
TGIF. Reach your Inside Congress crew at mmccarthy@politico.com, crazor@politico.com and bguggenheim@politico.com.
WHAT WE'RE WATCHINGWith help from Jordan Williams.
The House and Senate are not in session.
Next week: The House returns. It will take up cryptocurrency legislation and work through appropriations bills. The Senate will consider Trump's rescissions request and more Trump nominees, including Luke Pettit, an aide to Sen. Bill Hagerty, to be assistant secretary of the Treasury and Joseph Edlow to be the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at DHS.
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THE LEADERSHIP SUITE
Funding fights galore for GOP leaders
Senate GOP leaders are hitting big roadblocks in their efforts to codify billions in spending cuts sought by Trump and pass funding bills to avert a fall shutdown.
Congress has one week left to approve the president's request to claw back $9.4 billion in foreign aid and public media funding, and Trump is ratcheting up pressure on GOP holdouts. He said on Truth Social Thursday evening that any Republican who opposes the plan 'will not have my support or Endorsement.'
Thune told reporters Thursday that the Senate will likely start voting Tuesday on rescissions. After an initial vote, the tentative plan is for up to ten hours of debate (which Republicans and Democrats may use evenly), followed by a mini vote-a-rama on amendments.
Sens. Susan Collins, Mike Rounds and Lisa Murkowski are among the Republican critics who have signaled they'll try to revamp the rescissions bill.
'I don't like the whole exercise of rescissions, particularly at a time when we're actually trying to advance appropriations,' Murkowski said Thursday. 'To me, we've got a disconnect here.'
Murkowski on Thursday helped derail a Senate Appropriations markup of the Commerce-Justice-Science funding bill when she crossed party lines to support an amendment from Sen. Chris Van Hollen that would restrict the Trump administration from overriding a plan approved by Congress to move the FBI headquarters to suburban Maryland. It spurred several Republican senators to withdraw support for the bill, leaving appropriators at an impasse.
Collins, the Appropriations chair, said afterward she was 'hopeful' the stalled bill could be revived but 'we've got other bills we can go on to.'
Jeffries bashes Johnson at home
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is bringing his campaign against Trump's 'big, beautiful' law to Speaker Mike Johnson's home state of Louisiana, which has the second-largest number of Medicaid recipients in the country.
Jeffries called out Republicans in a town hall Thursday evening alongside Rep. Troy Carter and Steering and Policy co-chairs Reps. Robin Kelly, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Nanette Barragán. The group will hold a press conference in Louisiana this morning at 11:15 a.m. ET.
Jeffries said Louisiana is the first stop in a nationwide tour 'to make sure we continue to set the record straight as it relates to this One Big Ugly Bill.'
POLICY RUNDOWN
WHAT FINANCE MEMBERS WANT IN MEGABILL 2.0 — Senate Finance Republicans are already looking at tax and health policies that could be shuttled into a second budget reconciliation package this fall. Sen. James Lankford told Benjamin Thursday he'd like to overhaul the practices of pharmacy benefit managers, which negotiate drug prices between insurance companies and pharmacies, after bipartisan efforts to establish new PBM requirements faltered this spring.
'If we can't get that done in a bipartisan way, we need to move it,' Lankford said. He noted he'd like to reform 'tiering' for drug prices and the practice of 'spread pricing,' where PBMs charge insurers a higher price for medications than what they reimburse to pharmacies.
Sen. Steve Daines, who also sits on Senate Finance, said he would endorse Sen. Ron Johnson's idea to go 'line by line' to find at least $2 trillion in spending cuts as part of the committee's work in a possible second party-line policy package.
SPEAKING OF THOSE SPENDING CUTS — Ron Johnson met Thursday with Office of Management and Budget officials and believes he has the administration's blessing for establishing a budget review task force, Jordain writes in.
The task force's aim will be to identify significant cuts and chart a path for returning spending back to pre-pandemic levels — a longtime priority Johnson was repeatedly pushing to include in the 'big, beautiful bill.' Those cuts, in Johnson's vision, could then be enacted as part of future reconciliation measures.
Johnson said the effort will be a 'task force within the Budget Committee,' and that he and Sen. Rick Scott and Budget Chair Graham will represent the Senate, joking that Graham 'is our centrist.' They are expected to work with a group of three House Republicans as well as administration officials.
'This is gonna be very detailed behind the scenes, working very cooperatively with the department heads and secretaries,' the Wisconsin senator told reporters.
DOUBLING DOWN ON NEW GAMBLING TAXES — Republicans blocked an effort by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto Thursday to get a unanimous consent agreement on the Senate floor for restoring full tax deductions for gambling losses, which were limited to 90 percent in a little-noticed provision tucked into the GOP megabill.
The provision is prompting some speculation that the gambling industry lobbied for its inclusion, since the new tax laws greatly limit the upside for professional gamblers. A spokesperson for DraftKings, the sports betting site, told Benjamin it supports legislation from Reps. Dina Titus and Ro Khanna that would undo the change to gambling deductions in the House.
Best of POLITICO Pro and E&E:
CAMPAIGN STOP
ERNST RETIREMENT WATCH — Senate Republicans are increasingly worried that two-term Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst will retire rather than run for reelection next fall, giving Republicans another seat to defend, Jordain and Rachael Bade report. She'd be the fourth Senate Republican to retire ahead of the midterms.
'I'm doing everything I can to encourage her to run for reelection,' Thune said in a brief interview Thursday. 'Ultimately that's a decision she'd have to make.'
Thune and Trump met Wednesday night and discussed the midterm map, according to Thune.
Should Ernst bow out, Rep. Ashley Hinson – a formidable fundraiser and former TV news anchor – is expected to enter the race. On Democrats' side, the field is crowded, including bids from state Sen. Zach Wahls and state Rep. J.D. Scholten.
TUNNEL TALK
KEEP THE TRAINS RUNNING — Sen. Katie Britt made a plea Thursday as Senate Appropriations marked up the bill to fund the operations of Congress: Could there please be more money to improve the Senate subways, which are notorious for breaking down?
Britt, stepping out of a stuck train car on her way to a vote Thursday, told our Katherine Tully-McManus she used her time trapped alongside Sen. John Hickenlooper to find common ground.
'John and I just worked together to figure out what we could work on together, so we used the time well,' she said.
The chair and ranking member of the legislative branch appropriations subcommittee — Sens. Markwayne Mullin and Martin Heinrich — were also trapped together in a stalled car on Thursday.
'There has to be a way for us to work forward on this. And we will,' Mullin said about whether appropriators could find money for subway maintenance. He then turned to Heinrich: 'Not that I don't like spending time with you — just not stuck on a train.'
THE BEST OF THE REST
UK's Man in Washington Reveals Covert Push to Kill 'Revenge Tax', from Lauren Vella and Kate Ackley at Bloomberg Government
Congress scrutinized this CEO's company 6 years ago. He's now a major political donor., from Hunter Wooddall and Eleanor Watson at CBS
JOB BOARD
Jaylene Kennedy is now a legislative assistant for Rep. Brian Mast. She previously was a legislative assistant for Rep. Cory Mills. Ross Dietrich is now deputy chief of staff for Mast; he previously was legislative director.
Sen. Bill Hagerty's office is adding Robert Donachie as deputy chief of staff for comms, Tiffany Delgado as deputy chief of staff for operations, Michael Sullivan as senior adviser, Alec Richardson as state director and Kalleigh Ahern as press and digital assistant.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Sen. Ed Markey … Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet … Scott Graves … Chris Maloney of Black Rock Group … Emily Benavides … Matt Lahr of Sen. Todd Young's office … Nora Connors … Michael Wong of the Bank Policy Institute … KayAnn Schoeneman … Paige Rusher of Seven Letter … Anne Sokolov … Ishmael Abuabara of Rep. Joaquin Castro's office … Joe Wall … Chris Vaeth … Ali Schmitz of PBS NewsHour … Stephen Hostelley … Jamie Stiehm
TRIVIA
THURSDAY'S ANSWER: Bill Geary correctly answered that Porter Stewart was the only Supreme Court justice to be confirmed by a 98-member Senate.
TODAY'S QUESTION, from our Ben Jacobs: Next week Adelita Grijalva is hoping to succeed her late father Raul Grijalva in a congressional special election. When was the last time someone successfully succeeded a family member in an Arizona special election and who was it?
The first person to correctly guess gets a mention in the next edition of Inside Congress. Send your answers to insidecongress@politico.com.
CORRECTION: Yesterday's newsletter misstated the House plan to vote on a crypto regulation proposal. Our apologies.
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