Speaker Johnson says Republicans will expand majority in 2026 election
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he expects Republicans to maintain or widen their majority in Congress in 2026.
Straight Arrow News
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
31 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Draws On Bartending Experience To Slam Trump's Bill
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) delivered on Wednesday a fiery breakdown of how she believes President Donald Trump's so-called Big Beautiful Bill would actually hurt service workers, drawing on her past experience as a bartender and server. She argued that the way a popular campaign proposal, 'no tax on tips,' was written in the bill meant it would have a small impact for most tipped service industry workers — and potentially come at the expense of food assistance, health care and other essential government benefits. The congresswoman spoke for around two minutes on the House floor during a period of debate on the legislation. She began by responding to an insult from Trump. 'He says he doesn't think I'm too much of a smart person,' she said. 'It doesn't take a smart person to know if you're being lied to. President Trump, you're either being lied to, or you're lying to the American people because this bill represents — in the text of this bill — the largest and greatest loss of health care in American history.' Then she pivoted: 'On this point, on tax on tips, as one of the only people in this body who has lived off of tips, I want to tell you a little bit about the scam of that text, a little bit of the fine print there,' she said. Ocasio-Cortez worked at a Manhattan restaurant to help her family make ends meet before winning her seat in 2018. She continued: 'The cap on that is $25,000 while you're jacking up taxes on people who make less than $50,000 across the United States, while taking away their SNAP, while taking away their Medicaid, while kicking them off of the ACA [Affordable Care Act] and their health care extensions. So if you're at home, and you're living off tips, you do the math. Is that worth it to you? Losing all your health care, not being able to feed your babies, not being able to put a diaper on their bottom, in exchange for what?' An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office found that the bill would likely leave some 16 million Americans uninsured. 'This bill is a deal with the devil,' Ocasio-Cortez said. 'It explodes our national debt. It militarizes our entire economy. And it strips away health care and the basic dignity of the American people for what? To give Elon Musk a tax break?' 'You should be ashamed,' Ocasio-Cortez told her Republican colleagues before walking away from the podium, inspiring a rebuke from House Speaker Pro Tempore Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) about avoiding personal attacks. An analysis by The New York Times based on an earlier version of the bill — which did not set a cap — found that the Republicans' 'no tax on tips' plan would benefit a narrower category of workers than the slogan implies. The $25,000 limit on the amount of tips that workers can claim in their deductions would shrink the benefits of the policy further. The broad idea remains popular though, both with elected officials and voters. With the Senate having very narrowly passed a different version of the 'big, beautiful bill' on Tuesday, the legislation is now back in the House for possible revisions and approval. Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Draw Massive Crowd In Red State 'Disrespectful Men': AOC Goads Republicans During Heated Medicaid Exchange AOC Says She Won't Seek Top Spot On Oversight Committee
Politico
35 minutes ago
- Politico
Jumping fuel prices are a gas, gas, gas
With help from Camille von Kaenel STEPPING ON THE GAS: Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Donald Trump are both basking in relatively low gas prices ahead of one of the country's biggest driving weekends. But California regulators and lawmakers are also desperately scrambling to keep gas prices steady in an acknowledgement that Republican political attacks on the issue are sticking. Tuesday could have been a doozy, after both the state's annual gas tax hike and closely watched amendments to the low-carbon fuel standard aimed at hastening the transition away from fossil fuels took effect — and didn't cause an immediate spike in gas prices. 'Republicans spent the last 6 months fearmongering that gasoline prices would 'increase by 65 cents on July 1,'' Newsom's office said in a press release Wednesday, pointing to data from AAA. 'Did this happen? The answer: No.' But lawmakers are getting impatient. They advanced a bill Wednesday that would have the state immediately allow suppliers to blend more ethanol into gasoline — 15 percent, up from a limit of 10 percent now. The move would make California the last state to switch to E15, a blend that a study last year by UC Berkeley and US Naval Academy economists found could lower gasoline prices by 20 cents per gallon. It's something the California Air Resources Board has been studying since 2018 but hasn't yet greenlit. Ethanol, while less carbon-intensive than gasoline, comes with separate concerns related to growing corn for production. Assemblymember David Alvarez said needs to pick up the slack. 'The reason this bill is needed is due to regulatory delays that we've seen from the Air Resources Board,' he said at today's hearing. CARB didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But the concept dovetails with Newsom's budget language, which gives $2.3 million to help CARB finish the job. Another idea, floated by Senate Democrats last week in a sweeping bill that also took aim at the low-carbon fuel standard, is to move away from another of the state's bespoke gasoline formulations: CARBOB, a '90s-era summer blend aimed at reducing smog, in favor of a West-wide blend that refineries in neighboring states would also produce. That West-wide fuel standard concept has garnered a surprising amount of interest among environmental and clean transportation groups. 'I do think it's something worth examining,' said Katelyn Roedner, California director for the Environmental Defense Fund. 'Do we still need a special blend?' And the E15 idea is getting good reviews, too. 'Generally speaking, it makes a lot of sense, provided we do it in a way that doesn't require expanding ethanol production capacity,' said Colin Murphy, co-director of the Low Carbon Fuel Policy Research Initiative at Davis' Institute of Transportation Studies. But neither is a quick fix. If California moves away from its low-smog formulation toward more reliance on outside sources, it would need to quickly build up its capacity to import more fuel while making sure not to undercut in-state refineries and potentially create more closures, Murphy said. It's unclear, so far, what other states think of the idea, which would hinge on their buy-in to pull off. Spokespeople for the governor's office in Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on the bill. But Arizona and Nevada rely on California for gasoline supplies and are the most likely candidates to have open ears. The governors of both states jumped into the Sacramento fray last year, lobbying against a special session bill that requires refineries to maintain backup fuel supplies for when facilities go down for maintenance. And CARB cautioned that its E15 rulemaking could still take a while. CARB spokesperson Lindsay Buckley said that process could be finished sometime in 2026, 'assuming we get the staff and are able to start the rulemaking process later this year.' — AN Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here! CEQA HANGOVER: State lawmakers are still advancing a suite of one-off bills poking holes into environmental reviews days after Newsom signed a sweeping overhaul of the California Environmental Quality Act in the name of speeding up housing development — though at least one said she's had enough. 'At least for me personally, it's going to be very difficult for me to support any CEQA exemption or streamlining bills moving forward, just because I think we need to tip the balance the other way now, just because CEQA has been really dismantled,' Sen. Caroline Menjivar said at a Wednesday hearing on several more of them. Menjivar voted for the CEQA overhaul on Monday but declined to support bills waiving more environmental reviews for wildfire prevention projects near evacuation routes and for exploratory geothermal energy projects in the Senate Environmental Quality Committee on Wednesday. Both bills passed with little to no other opposition. — CvK SUN BURN: The board of a powerful irrigation district in the desert of Southern California has had enough with solar panels replacing crops. The Imperial Irrigation District passed a resolution on Tuesday opposing new utility-scale renewable energy development on farmland in the Imperial Valley, where farmers grow alfalfa, lettuce and other crops but face increasing water restrictions that have forced some to leave their fields fallow. Renewable energy developers see potential in the desert region's open spaces and have already covered nearly three percent of the region's total farmland with solar panels. 'It's time to draw a line,' said IID vice chair JB Hamby. 'Farmland in the Imperial Valley feeds this country and anchors our economy. … We support renewable energy — just not at the expense of our future.' Hamby is currently locked in multi-state negotiations over dwindling Colorado River supplies, which irrigate the Imperial Valley's farmland. The irrigation district will pass along its recommendation to local, state and federal land use decision makers, including the Imperial County Board of Supervisors. — CvK GRID GAMES, CONT: The Public Advocates Office, an independent organization within California's utility regulator that lobbies on behalf of ratepayers, has taken its stand on a controversial grid regionalization proposal winding its way through the state Legislature: yes, if amended. The position, detailed in a letter on Friday, matters because the proposal has divided environmental and ratepayer groups, with some saying the proposal would reduce costs and improve grid reliability and others saying it could undercut California's renewable energy goals. The director of the Public Advocate's Office, Linda Serizawa, is largely taking the side of the business and utility groups who want to see state lawmakers reverse recent amendments to the bill. Those amendments gave California more control of the regionalization, but Serizawa wrote that may risk alienating other states interested in linking up with California. — CvK — Tesla posted another drop in vehicle deliveries for the second quarter of 2025. — Between rising seas and raging wildfires, California may be running out of safe places to build the housing it needs. — Recycling firm Redwood Materials is hooking up used electric vehicle batteries and solar panels to power a data center in Reno, Nevada.
Yahoo
37 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Republicans round up votes for a ‘big, beautiful' blur
As Republicans scrounged for House votes to pass their far-reaching tax and spending bill on Wednesday, hours ahead of the presidentially-preferred July 4 deadline, they pointedly avoided getting into some details of what exactly they'd passed. 'Our Country will make a fortune this year, more than any of our competitors, but only if the Big, Beautiful Bill is PASSED,' President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social. Republicans found themselves promoting pieces of the bill that had already been taken out or watered down. They defended its reductions to Medicaid funding, on the basis that they might get reversed by a future Congress; they lauded its breaks for Social Security, even though they were relegated to simply offering a tax deduction to people who happen to also receive Social Security. GOP leaders pushed into the night to get the votes needed for final passage, which could still come as soon as the late hours of Wednesday. In the meantime, Democrats who might have supported parts of the bill in a vacuum instead tried to sort fact from hyperbole, and were set on voting against all of it. 'The taxes for the wealthy and special interests are permanent, but the new tax cuts aren't,' said Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del. 'It's just ridiculous.' Beneath the confusion is a familiar reality for Trump: His 'big, beautiful bill,' which would extend a suite of 2017 tax cuts, add new ones, and cut health care spending to make up some of the difference, does not achieve some of what he ran on. That has not stopped him — or GOP lawmakers — from saying it does. One promise, of 'no taxes on Social Security,' had been bent into a four-figure tax deduction — $4,000 in the House's version of the bill, $6,000 in the Senate version that may replace it. But a fact sheet shared by House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday repeated the claim the bill simply ended Social Security taxes outright. Another Trump promise, to not cut Medicaid, morphed into work requirements designed to remove people from the program, on the assumption that they might find jobs and get insurance coverage that way. Republicans like Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who had inveighed against Medicaid cuts, dropped their opposition. To sell the bill, Republicans separated Medicaid recipients into two camps, as delineated by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise. Republicans distinguished between the 'truly disabled and needy,' whom they argue the 60-year-old program was designed to help, and those who should be paying or working for their health care. That second group includes noncitizens covered by state health care programs, as well as people in states that had adopted the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion. But the Senate-passed version of the bill did not actually cut off Medicaid for noncitizens — another source of confusion. A memo from the House Freedom Caucus that urged party leaders to add back 'protection against illegals getting Medicaid,' linked to a study of noncitizens receiving nutrition assistance, not Medicaid. And a House proposal to create savings funds for children — first named MAGA accounts, now named TRUMP accounts — lost a requirement that the parents have a Social Security number on the way to Senate passage, theoretically allowing undocumented parents to take advantage. 'I don't like that,' South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, one of the House Freedom Caucus members who wanted more changes in the bill, told Semafor of that change. 'Illegals shouldn't get a paycheck.' Several of the changes that House Republicans obscured — and lamented, at turns — on Wednesday came thanks to the Senate's nonpartisan parliamentarian, a referee who has similarly trimmed Democratic ambitions in the past. Yet that didn't help party leaders' case as they kept pushing into Wednesday night. As in 2017 and 2021, the party with full control of government in Washington was using the budget process to pack as much as it could into a package that only needed 51 votes to get through the Senate. Like the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and the 2021 American Rescue Plan, it would transform the country with a mix of cuts, benefits, and incentives — and by undoing the opposition party's most recent work. Republican resistance to final passage on Wednesday was largely about whether the bill would do enough to undo former President Joe Biden's legacy. 'They jammed in the provision that guts the Green New Scam reforms that we put in place,' Texas Rep. Chip Roy told Steve Bannon, bemoaning that the final bill might not wipe out the Biden-era clean energy projects and tax credits that Republicans had overwhelmingly opposed. Led by the president, Republicans advertised the parts of the bills that polled the best — tax cuts, including an end to a tax on tips that began as a bipartisan effort to shore up Social Security in the 1980s. The bill could achieve a decade-long goal of rolling back the Affordable Care Act, but the president preferred to talk about it as a zero-cost reform. 'We're cutting $1.7 trillion in this bill, and you're not going to feel any of it,' he said at the White House last week. No congressional Democrat was considering a vote for the bill; House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a Wednesday rally that his party would vote 'hell no.' Outside of Washington, Democrats were pre-emptively warning that any benefit cuts voters might face would be Trump and Republicans' fault, not theirs. 'Hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their health care if this gets signed into law,' Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker said on Tuesday. 'The state of Illinois can't cover the cost. No state, in the country, can cover the cost.' Democrats, frequently distracted by fights inside the party or by other Trump decisions, had spent weeks trying to bring the national conversation back to Medicaid. That effort even included Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral nominee in New York City, who responded to Trump's musing about whether he could deport him by accusing him of trying to distract from the GOP bill. 'I fight for the same people that he said he was fighting for,' Mamdani told reporters. The Trump administration started with a multipart premise that was always going to be impossible to meet: The 2017 tax cuts could be made permanent. New tax cuts could be delivered for blue-collar workers. And this could be paid for by repealing the 'Green New Scam' and getting rid of government waste. 'How much do you think we can rip out of this wasted, $6.5 trillion Harris-Biden budget?' future Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick asked Elon Musk at Trump's pre-election Madison Square Garden rally. 'Well, I think we can do at least $2 trillion,' said Musk. By DOGE's own estimate, it fell 90% short of that goal, finding $190 billion in spending cuts — a number that's been frequently disputed. An updated argument, which you could hear on the House floor this week, was that extending the 2017 tax cuts prevented a budget-busting recession. Tax cuts are free; health care is expensive, and anyone who might lose their health care coverage could be taken care of by the private sector. This has been a hard sell, even in a media environment where the president's critics on the right struggle to break through. Pro-Trump groups have found that voters support new tax cuts; other pollsters have found a lot of agreement with Democrats' criticism that Republicans are cutting benefits to pay for tax cuts for the rich. And the rapid process of moving this bill has led to confusion about what's actually in it. Whatever passes — if it passes — will achieve generational Republican goals, lowering taxes (most for wealthier Americans) and curtailing the post-Obama welfare state. But the Trump campaign had previously suggested that it could cut taxes without curtailing much of , besides tax credits for solar panels and Medicaid fraud. Before he quit the administration, Musk suggested that Americans might get a $5,000 DOGE dividend check from all the savings — an idea that still circulates in GOP fundraising emails. How popular is the reality of all this? I was struck at a Tuesday night rally for Virginia's GOP statewide ticket helmed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin that there was no mention of the mega-bill moving through Congress, 15 miles away. Just two months earlier, Youngkin joined most Republican governors on a letter that urged passage of whatever ended up being in the 'big, beautiful bill.' In the New York Times, Jacob S. Hacker and Patrick Sullivan the liberal case against the bill: 'Americans have yet to fully understand the special alchemy of inegalitarianism that defines it.' In Quartz, Joseph Zeballos-Roig the 'TRUMP Accounts' change. In the Wall Street Journal, the editorial board that the 'meh' bill 'has to pass,' despite some issues. 'The bill is more than anything the triumph of GOP political necessity, and the end of tax uncertainty is its main virtue.' For the progressive watchdog group Media Matters, Matt Gertz that since Trump took office again, Fox News mentioned 'Medicaid' only as frequently as it mentioned Joe Biden. 'While Fox personalities have at times defended or downplayed the bill's proposed Medicaid cuts, our data shows that the network is largely trying to avoid discussing them altogether.'
