The Archive

IN THIS EDITION

Vulnerable Republicans send a warning on Medicaid

Early battle lines for the September funding fight

Unpacking the end of quarter fundraising bonanza

The House’s reconciliation sprint takes shape

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Vulnerable Republicans send a warning on Medicaid

Welcome to The Readback, our weekend digest featuring the best of Punchbowl News this week – a quick roundup of all our scoops, analysis and Capitol Hill insight you won’t find anywhere else. We’ve also included a few of our favorite outside reads from the week.

We broke a big story this week on the new flashing warning signs vulnerable House Republicans are sending to GOP leadership over the prospect of Medicaid cuts.

A dozen swing district Republicans wrote a letter to leadership, as well as Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) saying they won’t back a reconciliation bill that includes large cuts to Medicaid for vulnerable populations.

This is just the latest sign of how hard it is going to be for Speaker Mike Johnson to please everyone in his conference when it comes to passing President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.

It’s also another example of the internal civil war inside the House Republican Conference, which we’ve written extensively about.

I’ve spent a lot of time covering the House Freedom Caucus’s antics, but it’s interesting to see moderates trying to flex some muscle too in a GOP slim majority. A battle over Medicaid reform and other spending cuts between these two ideological sides of the party is almost certain.

Unlike most HFC members though, moderates have to worry about reelection. And we’ve seen Democrats hammer Republicans – even this early out – over Medicaid, Social Security and other safety net programs that face GOP cuts.

We also know that no matter what Republicans end up doing, Democratic operatives will still point out that the GOP is working to slash these programs.

It’s a difficult position to be in if you only won your last election by five points or less. Look at some of the lawmakers who are raising these kinds of concerns.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) won his last race by less than 2 points. First term Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) narrowly flipped a Pennsylvania seat from a Democratic incumbent.

Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), who won his last race by almost seven points, voted to impeach Trump during the president’s first term. That doesn’t exactly build good will between a president known for holding long grudges and a politically vulnerable rank-and-file member.

But these members are also trying to show Johnson who won him the majority. They make that clear in the letter they sent warning him against the cuts.

“As Members of Congress who helped to deliver a Republican majority, many of us representing districts with high rates of constituents who depend on Medicaid, we would like to reiterate our strong support for this program that ensures our constituents have reliable health care,” they wrote.

These members also had a conversation with the speaker during the budget vote where they received assurances that Medicaid cuts will not impact “qualified” recipients.

But remember: Republicans’ reconciliation plan includes $880 billion that needs to be cut from the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid. Much of that massive amount will likely bleed into that program.

Guthrie and Johnson, as well as the rest of leadership, have a lot of work to do when they come back from recess.

What I’m reading: I just started “Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner. It’s a tale of grief, identity and the experience of being mixed race.

– Mica Soellner

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Early battle lines for the September funding fight

It may seem far off, but the FY 2026 government funding fight has already begun, with the Trump administration drawing early battle lines.

This week, we learned that the administration is proposing an unprecedented cut to the State Department’s budget. And DOGE has already effectively shuttered USAID, an agency whose mission has long been supported by both parties.

A few days ago, we bought you the news of a State Department push to completely overhaul the U.S. diplomatic footprint — including a proposal to shutter dozens of embassies and consulates and consolidate U.S. outposts in major allied nations like Japan and Canada.

The document also hints at how the administration will approach international organizations of which the United States has long been a member. For example, it proposes folding U.S. missions to the OECD and UNESCO — both headquartered in Paris — into the U.S. embassy.

That would significantly dampen U.S. involvement in those two organizations in particular. And President Donald Trump has yet to nominate U.S. ambassadors to either.

Another stunning proposal included in the document: The elimination of a key diplomatic outpost in Baghdad, Iraq, and reducing or eliminating the State Department’s footprint in Mogadishu, Somalia.

As we noted, the document’s header shows that the recommendations were approved by Under Secretary of State for Management José Cunningham. Cunningham only just took over the job from longtime diplomat Tibor Nagy, who jumped back into service to help the Trump administration get set up at State. After leaving the department earlier this month, Nagy sharply criticized the budget-cutting efforts.

While it’s still unclear what the appropriations process will look like, what we do know is that Democratic votes will be necessary to fund the government past Sept. 30. Senate Appropriations Committee leaders have given no indication that they’re going to stray from their objective of passing bipartisan funding bills out of committee.

Keep in mind, too, that White House budget proposals are usually just messaging documents. But Trump could threaten to veto funding bills that don’t match up with his submissions to Congress — a prospect lawmakers fear is becoming more likely.

What I’m reading: This New York Times interactive story on the secret history of the Ukraine war is one of the most fascinating pieces I’ve read in a long time.

— Andrew Desiderio

Unpacking the end of quarter fundraising bonanza

Campaign journalists view the world through quarters. Every three months, political candidates have to publicly disclose how much money they raised in their campaigns.

After spending much of the race projecting public confidence and blustering about their strength, the quarterly filing time is a much-needed reality check for candidates. The numbers don’t lie. In modern politics, if you’re not raising money at a competitive rate, you’re likely in for a tough time come election day.

On April 15, all candidates had to report how much money they brought in from January until the end of March. For many House Republicans who will face potentially career-ending reelection bids in November 2026, it was go time on the fundraising front.

Over the first quarter of 2025, eight of the NRCC’s designated most vulnerable GOP incumbents raised more than $1 million. That’s a staggering amount of money to raise in a House race over a year and a half out from Election Day.

Consider that in the first quarter of 2023, only six House candidates broke the million-dollar mark. Fast forward two years later, that number is 12.

While eight GOP incumbents raised more than $1 million, only one vulnerable Democratic incumbent did — Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-Va.). Why the discrepancy between parties?

One theory is that Democratic donors are engaged, but just on different fundraising targets. For instance, Democrat Josh Weil raised well above $10 million in his special election campaign in a deep-red Florida seat. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) brought in over $9 million in her best quarter ever.

There are plenty of Democrats fundraising well right now. But an angry base wants to give to people who are showing “fight,” which doesn’t exactly describe quiet, politically cautious frontliners.

What I’m watching: I’ve been catching up on “Planet Earth: Blue Planet II.” What happens on the ocean floor is absolutely incredible.

– Max Cohen

The House’s reconciliation sprint takes shape

Republicans’ effort to pass President Donald Trump’s agenda is about to kick into high gear, and we’ve had all the news for you on what that looks like over the next few weeks.

In Friday’s AM edition, we laid out reconciliation markup plans for the involved House committees in this handy chart.

We’ve been closely following the scheduling moves from the House GOP leadership and committees for a few reasons.

We know that everyone following the tax, spending cuts, border and defense funding, and energy policies going into this bill need this scheduling information. Plus, it’s important for understanding Republicans’ strategy as they try to pull off a massive legislative feat.

So let’s talk a little bit about what we learned this week.

First, the House Republican leadership’s strategy for getting the reconciliation package to Trump’s desk has been to force downhill momentum. With this markup schedule, they’re betting on that play again.

By asking committees to take up their pieces of the bill over the weeks of April 28 and May 5, the leadership can still keep to Speaker Mike Johnson’s goal of passing a bill by Memorial Day.

Of course, that’s a deadline that Johnson set, in part to keep things moving. But there aren’t really consequences if Republicans miss that target. The bigger looming issue for the GOP’s timeline is the debt limit. Whenever that comes due, Republicans will have to act.

Republican leadership is having the committees with less complex and politically fraught policies go first with markups, asking them to get moving the week of April 28, as we scooped. That includes the panels tasked with new border and Pentagon spending.

Also included are committees like the House Financial Services panel, which is tasked with cutting spending by at least $1 billion in the bill, a relatively lighter lift.

But the timeline is also an acknowledgement of where the real trouble and biggest amount of work will be for Republicans. Those committees, including House Agriculture, Energy and Commerce, and Ways and Means are allowed some extra time to mark up.

E&C — which has jurisdiction over Medicaid — is targeting a May 7 markup, as we scooped. That’s a very ambitious timeframe for the committee, which is asked to find $880 billion in cuts in the House reconciliation instructions. Conservatives are adamant about slashing this much — which would largely have to come from Medicaid — to meet spending-cut goals. But it’s going to be a huge problem for more centrist Republicans who are against massive cuts to Medicaid.

Ways and Means is expecting to hold its markup later in May — not the week of May 5 or any sooner. The tax committee has a huge role to play in shaping the bill. Vastly different instructions for the House and Senate tax panels complicate the process. This is going to be a multi-trillion dollar tax package with complicated issues to settle like SALT and striking clean energy tax credits.

What I’m watching: The new season of “The Last of Us.”

– Laura Weiss