Capitol agenda: Brutal day ahead for Mike Johnson
To recap: Speaker Mike Johnson headed into Wednesday confident that Trump had struck a deal with conservative holdouts to move a trio of cryptocurrency bills. But that quickly evaporated after committee chairs pushed back at hard-liners' demands to attach a central bank digital currency ban to another bipartisan crypto bill.
The impasse kept the House rule vote open for nine hours until GOP leaders finally cut a late-night deal to include a CBDC ban in the National Defense Authorization Act.
The crypto crash-out now leaves the House with a lot to do in very little time: The three crypto bills, the Defense appropriations bill and a rescissions package were all scheduled to get a vote this week. House Republican leaders wanted to punt the Defense bill to next week — but an irate Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) insisted they finish up this week. The House stayed in extra late Wednesday night for general debate and en bloc amendments.
'He is just mad — I don't blame him,' one House Republican told POLITICO about Cole, who has his eye on the 11 unpassed fiscal 2026 spending bills and the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.
Which brings us to Thursday: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told POLITICO the House will begin debating individual Defense amendments Thursday morning before finishing up that bill and moving on to the three cryptocurrency bills.
But the real must-do is recissions. The Senate finally passed a modified package around 2:30 a.m. Now the House needs to reconvene the Rules Committee, approve yet another rule on the floor and then vote on sending the $9 billion clawbacks package to Trump's desk.
That's a lot to cram into less than two days, especially with the rescissions deadline looming Friday night. If they get too close to the deadline, it's possible Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — fresh off of an eight-hour 'magic minute' speech two weeks ago — could try to blow past it.
If something's got to give, watch to see whether all three cryptocurrency bills end up getting a vote this week as planned. One possibility under discussion is passing only the Senate-approved stablecoin bill, which Trump wants to sign as soon as possible, and punting the other votes.
He called into a meeting with holdouts and key committee leaders late Wednesday after they struck a new deal — for real this time.
'He's happy with it,' a person in the room told POLITICO of the outcome.
What else we're watching:
— Senate Approps resumes: Senate Appropriations will resume its markup of the Commerce-Justice-Science funding bill Thursday morning after a fight over the future location of FBI headquarters derailed last week's proceedings.
— Bove, Pirro get a committee vote: It appears all but certain Senate Judiciary will have the votes to favorably advance Emil Bove's nomination Thursday morning, but the panel's Democrats are still expected to put up a big fight against Trump's pick to serve as a judge to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Also up for a committee vote is Jeanine Pirro, Trump's nominee to be the U.S. Attorney for D.C.
— Epstein files fallout: GOP leaders are keeping their distance as MAGA outrage grows over the releasing of files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Johnson said he was 'misquoted and misrepresented' in reports that he was breaking with Trump over whether to release the files. Senate Majority Leader John Thune dodged again Wednesday, telling reporters: 'I'm not at this point taking a position on it. I just think it's going to be a question that's left to others to decide.'
Meredith Lee Hill, Jennifer Scholtes and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.
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