Trump to the Senate: Change it up!

IN THIS EDITION

One big, beautiful headache

The GOP senator playing ‘good cop’ for Trump in Canada

Dems to weaponize reconciliation votes

Johnson on Jeffries and Dem politics

THE TOP

One big, beautiful headache

Happy Monday morning. And happy Memorial Day. The House and Senate are gone this week and we only have AM editions.

If you’re Speaker Mike Johnson or any House Republican, this may sound a bit like nails dragging across a chalkboard.

Here’s what President Donald Trump said about potential changes to the House Republican reconciliation package on Sunday night:

Now just compare that to what Johnson has been saying.

In an interview after the bill passed Thursday, Johnson told us that he went to a Senate Republican lunch last week and “shared … from the heart about how difficult” it was to cobble together a package that could get 218 votes.

“If it wasn’t obvious for them, I wanted them to know the equilibrium that we reached is so delicate,” Johnson declared.

Johnson added: “My hope and my encouragement to them is – fine tune this product as little as possible.” He likened passing the bill in the House to “crossing over the Grand Canyon on a piece of dental floss.”

Therein lies the tension for Republicans during the next phase of the reconciliation process. Senate Republicans want changes to the House-approved bill, as Senate Majority Leader John Thune told us. Trump is now greenlighting that process. And House Republicans may end up left holding the bag.

If the GOP reconciliation package shifts too much to the right – more spending cuts and or big programmatic modifications to Medicaid and SNAP – support will bleed from the middle. If the Senate tempers the Medicaid spending cuts, conservatives will bolt.

The bill’s future is so uncertain that the SALT Caucus asked Johnson to agree to fight for the House’s state-and-local-tax-deduction cap in negotiations with the Senate. Yet Republican senators don’t really care much about SALT.

For now, Trump is leaving his preferences on everything pretty vague. We assume that will change once the Senate returns next week.

Trump’s comments, though, are music to the ears of some conservative hardliners in the Senate. They want to see spending cuts far deeper than the House approved. The House Freedom Caucus pushed for that, only to run into a buzzsaw of opposition from GOP moderates, who threatened to bring the bill down.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has been on a rampage against the House package. RonJohn told us last week that he wasn’t worried about pressure from Trump, declaring “He can’t pressure me that way.

“I ran in 2010 because we were mortgaging our children’s future,” RonJohn said.

On Sunday, RonJohn told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” that he had enough Senate GOP support to block the massive reconciliation bill.

“I think we have enough to stop the process until the president gets serious about spending reduction and reducing the deficit,” RonJohn said, using language on Trump that you don’t usually hear from Republican senators.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also said he’d oppose the package over the increase in the debt limit.

“I think the cuts currently in the bill are wimpy and anemic, but I still would support the bill, even with wimpy and anemia cuts, if they weren’t going to explode the debt,” Paul said on Fox News Sunday. “They’re going to explode the debt. The House’s [debt-limit increase] is $4 trillion. The Senate’s actually been talking about exploding the debt by $5 trillion.”

But Trump, who didn’t get everything he wanted in the House bill, may try to use the Senate to try to shoehorn in some of his priorities. For example, the House didn’t close the carried-interest loophole. It’s tough to see the Senate taking up that mantle, but Trump may try.

The House also didn’t create a new tax bracket for people earning $2.5 million or more annually, as Trump wanted. Plus, the House didn’t fully eliminate taxes on Social Security.

After the events of last week, Trump seems confident that he can swing any bloc of GOP votes in the House Republican Conference. The alternative is that nothing passes, which if you’re a Hill Republican – especially a House Republican – is an absolute disaster.

It’s literally the worst scenario imaginable. They’re already going to pay the political price in what’s shaping up to be a difficult midterm election for the razor-thin House GOP majority. May as well vote for something rather than nothing – as long as Senate Republican conservatives don’t go totally crazy. But that will be Thune’s problem.

Remember: It’s May 26. Johnson and Thune want this bill passed and on Trump’s desk by July 4. That’s 39 days from now.

– Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan

WASHINGTON X THE WORLD

The GOP senator playing ‘good cop’ for Trump in Canada

OTTAWA — Five senators walked into the Canadian Parliament on Friday determined to help repair relations between two bedrock allies.

On paper, it’s a trip that very few Republicans would want to take. They’d be pressed to answer for President Donald Trump’s hostility toward a longtime U.S. ally — most notably his tariffs, which most oppose. And a meeting with new Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose defiance in the face of Trump’s antagonism helped fuel his rise to the office, might not be so pleasant either.

It was perhaps fitting that the Senate delegation’s co-leader — and the only Republican in the group — was Sen. Kevin Cramer (N.D.).

The jovial and usually unscripted Cramer, whose state shares a 300-mile border with Canada, didn’t try to defend or explain away Trump’s actions. He acknowledged that Canadians feel offended by Trump, later saying, “We have an obligation to stop the offenses.”

For any other Republican, these comments would be risky at best. Not Cramer.

“I don’t want to get in Donald Trump’s way. There’s no [trade] deal that happens without his involvement,” Cramer told us here. “But at the same time [I want to] be an encourager to Canada and their officials and try to be a partner in some way. Hopefully I navigated it OK, but I’ll find out on Truth Social.”

Leaning in. That last part was meant to be a joke, but it’s a reality Republicans have to contend with every day. Cramer is unique in that he’s among a select few Trump allies who can break with the president occasionally. Defending Trump isn’t necessarily a reflex for Cramer, despite his longtime support.

“I think the president has a high regard for Kev’s insight and loyalty — and that means the president can probably hear some things from him that, if I said it, I wouldn’t get paid attention to,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who was part of the delegation, told us here. “That’s a very helpful perspective to have at the table.”

That’s probably why to Carney, Cramer was the ideal Republican for the trip. It was led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who similarly aims to shun partisan allegiances when traveling overseas. Cramer told us that Carney’s focus on him during their hourlong meeting was “crystal clear” to him.

Cramer has long had close relationships with Canadian businesses and politicians, having previously served as North Dakota’s tourism director. He now co-chairs the Canada-U.S. Interparliamentary Group.

Cramer has a direct interest in cooling tensions between the two nations, given that more than a million Canadians visit North Dakota each year — greater than the state’s population. The recent tension has caused tourism to plummet.

What he said. Cramer is the opposite of guarded. He regularly holds court in the halls of the Capitol with reporters. That’s in addition to frequent TV appearances and local radio hits, during which Cramer takes non-pre-screened calls from listeners.

In Ottawa, Cramer didn’t shy away from — or try to dispute — the negative impacts of the Trump administration’s policies on the Canadian people and, more broadly, the U.S.-Canada relationship. It’s a sharp departure from Trump’s brash way of conducting diplomacy.

“For the moment, the United States has become an adversary to the Canadian people because of the offense that so many have felt,” Cramer said at a press conference here in response to a question from a Canadian reporter.

“What I would stress with the president would be, let’s keep our eye on the common adversary and how much stronger we can be.”

— Andrew Desiderio

THE MIDTERMS

Dems to weaponize reconciliation votes

House Democrats are planning to turn Republicans’ late-night marathon reconciliation markups into campaign-ad fodder.

There are roughly 10 vulnerable Republican members who sit on three committees that finalized their pieces of the reconciliation package. They were asked to vote on a slew of Democratic amendments, including some designed to be politically toxic.

The Democratic targets on these panels include Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) and Tom Kean Jr. (R-N.J.) on the Energy and Commerce Committee; Reps. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), Don Bacon (R-Neb.), Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) and Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.) on the Agriculture Committee; and Reps. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) on the Ways and Means Committee.

None of these amendments passed — and almost no one expected them to — but they are certainly still fair game for 30-second TV ads next fall. For Democrats, they offer a different set of attack lines from the actual reconciliation bill that passed the House last week.

Of course, these potential ads only apply to the Republican members of these respective committees. But remember, Democrats need to net only a few seats to flip the House.

Here is a breakdown of what Democrats believe to be some of the most potent votes, per our conversations with party strategists and aides:

– The hit: Republicans defunded Planned Parenthood and refused to help pregnant women keep their health care. GOP members defeated an amendment from Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) that would require Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program to offer a year of full benefits to people who are pregnant.

Another amendment from Rep. Lizzie Pannill Fletcher (D-Texas) would strike a section from the bill that defunds entities providing family planning services.

Kean and Evans voted against Kelly’s amendment. Miller-Meeks skipped the vote. Both Miller-Meeks and Evans skipped the vote on Fletcher’s amendment, while Kean voted against it.

“It makes no sense,” Kelly told us. “It does save lives.”

– The hit: Republicans refused to cap insulin costs at $35 a month. Rep. Kim Schrier (D-Wash.), a doctor and Type 1 diabetic, introduced an amendment requiring such a cap on out-of-pocket costs for private insurance plans. More than 38 million people have diabetes in the U.S.

Kean voted against this. Miller-Meeks and Evans skipped the vote.

– The hit: Republicans refused to protect veterans and Gold Star families from cuts to food aid programs. An amendment from Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.) would ensure that no veterans or family members of those who died in the line of duty lose access to SNAP.

Nunn, Van Orden, Bacon and Bresnahan voted against this.

– The hit: Republicans refused to block President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), on Energy and Commerce, and Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.), on Ways and Means, introduced similar amendments that would move toward terminating the tariffs.

Miller-Meeks and Evans voted against this in the Energy and Commerce markup, while Kean skipped the vote. In the Ways and Means markup, Schweikert and Fitzpatrick also voted no.

Of course, Republicans have their own reasons for voting against these amendments and dismissing the Democratic attempts as performative.

“While they twiddle their thumbs trying to figure out messaging, Congressman Gabe Evans is delivering for working families to make Colorado a place where the American Dream is a reality,” said Delanie Bomar, an Evans spokesperson.

— Ally Mutnick

THE SPEAKER

Johnson on Jeffries and Dem politics

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries thundered from the floor last week that passing the reconciliation bill “may very well turn out to be the day that House Republicans lost control of the United States House of Representatives.”

It was just one of a few broadsides that Jeffries delivered during a 40-minute speech against the “One Big, Beautiful Bill.”

Jeffries also shot back at Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) – the presiding officer – after he warned Jeffries to direct his remarks to the chair during floor debate. Jeffries accused Womack of unfairly singling him out and ignoring Republicans engaged in similar behavior.

None of this was unusually sharp for a heated congressional debate over the biggest bill of the 119th Congress. But it was still notable.

We asked Speaker Mike Johnson about it during a wide-ranging conversation after the vote. The speaker said he did not take umbrage at Jeffries’ remark. Johnson said of Jeffries, “he’s gotta say” that Republicans are going to lose the House over this vote.

Democrats are favored to take the majority in 2026, even though Johnson thinks that the GOP will pick up seats.

“Hakeem and I are actually good friends, as you know, and we talk offline, of course, and I have a, we have a lot of, I think, empathy for one another, because I understand his challenges, he understands mine, and he’s got to play a political role and all that,” Johnson told us.

Johnson said he and Jeffries have worked together to “keep the temperature as low as possible, because we’re already in times of high anxiety and anger and frustration.”

It’s difficult to see just how Johnson and Jeffries are keeping temperatures low. The House is as rough-and-tumble as it’s always been – if not more. But it’s good to know they are trying.

– Jake Sherman

DOWNTOWN DOWNLOAD

The Atlanta Braves baseball team has hired Alston & Bird to lobby on “[i]ssues related to the taxation of publicly traded professional sports teams.” The Braves are a publicly traded company. The House Republican reconciliation bill sought to tighten tax treatment of sports teams.

– Jake Sherman

MOMENTS

CLIPS