Trump's agenda is on the brink

IN THIS EDITION

Trump’s agenda teeters after all-night voting session

The HFC also hates the reconciliation bill

The Vault: Who is the average crypto voter?

Allred launches another Texas Senate bid

The Future of Energy: The Legislative Landscape

THE TOP

Trump’s agenda teeters after all-night voting session

Happy Tuesday morning.

President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda is in a state of flux on Capitol Hill.

As of press time — roughly 19 hours into a vote-a-rama — Senate Majority Leader John Thune was struggling to round up enough GOP votes to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) are opposed to the package, while Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) haven’t yet been convinced to vote for the sprawling legislation. Republicans can’t afford to lose more than three votes.

Senate GOP leaders were dealt a major blow by the parliamentarian in the early morning hours that moved Murkowski into the “no” column, causing a mad scramble on the Senate floor overnight.

Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough — already a controversial figure in Trump’s orbit — ruled that a revised provision aimed at shielding Murkowski’s home state of Alaska from the reconciliation bill’s Medicaid cuts does not comply with the Byrd Rule. Separately, MacDonough upheld a provision intended to assuage Murkowski’s concerns about cuts to the SNAP program.

Thune and Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso huddled with Murkowski on the Senate floor as they tried to win her over. Murkowski could be seen repeatedly shaking her head. Off to the side, Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) appeared to be livid. Murkowski and Thune left the floor just before 4 a.m. to meet briefly in Thune’s office.

After a 15-minute meeting in the GOP leadership suite, Thune said he and Murkowski were just “chatting” and declined to say whether they had a deal to move forward. Just before 5 a.m., Thune said, “We’re getting to the end here.” It’s unclear if Thune has the votes necessary for passage, or if he’s prepared to plow ahead with a final vote anyway.

Murkowski then huddled with Thune and members of the Senate Finance Committee on the floor just after 5 a.m.

This is how bad things appear to be at the moment – not only is the Senate still voting on amendments with no end, but Collins floated reverting to a two-bill approach the Senate initially preferred. This was an issue hashed out months ago in favor of the “one-bill” process.

At one point, Paul was summoned to Thune’s office where he met with the majority leader, Graham and Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho). When asked if he would accept an offer to switch his vote, Paul responded: “I don’t want anything.” Paul opposes the bill because of the $5 trillion debt-limit increase and has separately proposed lowering that number to just $500 billion.

A $500-billion debt-limit hike would play into Speaker Mike Johnson’s hand, although world financial markets wouldn’t like it and could potentially align a debt fight with a government-spending showdown. Johnson has said he wants to pass another reconciliation bill in the fall to deal with entitlements and the deficit., although this is seen as a longshot.

But Thune and Barrasso are prioritizing flipping Murkowski. And Republican senators think Paul’s proposal is a bad idea. Not only will Trump hate it, but it would give Democrats leverage because of the filibuster.

Collins’ proposal and the meeting with Paul shows you the logjam Thune faces is in. Thune could get onto the OBBB, yet he’s unable as of now to bring it to a close. He’s still more likely than not to get there, but the landing is very ugly.

Separately, the Senate passed a bipartisan amendment by Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to strip out a controversial provision to restrict state-level regulation of AI for a decade from the bill.

Blackburn and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who supported the moratorium, had a deal for a shorter moratorium, but Blackburn pulled out from that agreement because she said it lacked protections for children and consumers. The Senate then approved the Blackburn-Cantwell amendment by a 99-1 margin. This is a big setback for Cruz.

OBBB and the House. The Senate was supposed to be the easy part. This GOP reconciliation bill is going to hit even choppier waters in the House.

Speaker Mike Johnson is dealing with simmering frustration across the House Republican Conference.

Why? Because this bill does not fulfill the promises that the speaker made to the House Republican Conference. It cuts $1.5 trillion in exchange for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts – $500 billion short of the savings Johnson vowed to achieve in this scenario.

There are more problems than this. The Senate’s Medicaid cuts total close to $1 trillion, irking GOP moderates.

This is why Johnson’s leadership team spent the last few days trying to convince Thune to use the “wraparound” amendment at the end of the vote-a-rama to restore the House’s version of the provider tax, change SNAP language and even add more spending cuts.

This was highly unrealistic. Johnson’s leadership team — and, in fact, Johnson himself — left open the possibility all Monday that the Senate package would revert closer to the House’s language. House Republicans spent all day telling us that they were holding out hope that Thune would change the bill to mollify conservatives.

Johnson even said this to us on Monday evening.

“I have prevailed upon my Senate colleagues to please, please, please, put it as close to the House product as possible,” Johnson said.

Johnson has been saying for weeks that he was confident the Senate’s bill would closely mirror the House’s legislation. Of course, that was never realistic. Most people realized that. That was poor expectation-setting on behalf of Johnson and the GOP leadership.

The House Rules Committee is slated to come at noon to begin to prepare the bill for floor consideration. The full House is expected back Wednesday.

— Andrew Desiderio, Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Diego Munhoz

Event next week! Join Punchbowl News on Tuesday, July 8, at 8:30 a.m. ET for a conversation with Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) about the news of the day, financial services innovation and payments security. RSVP here.

CONSERVATIVE CORNER

The HFC also hates the reconciliation bill

Even before the Senate started flailing over the reconciliation endgame, hardline House Republicans were warning their leaders, the Senate and the White House that they were prepared to take down President Donald Trump’s domestic legislative agenda because of what they considered inadequate spending cuts.

After backing down under pressure from Trump several times already this year — the floor fight for speaker, government funding and the first reconciliation vote — the House Freedom Caucus seems more dug in than ever.

The HFC, which has been a thorn in Trump’s side at times, put out a statement on Monday arguing that the Senate’s bill will add $651 billion to the deficit, far more than what the House initially passed.

In a post on X, HFC members said the Senate “should at least be in the ballpark of compliance” with the budget framework for them to consider voting for the reconciliation package.

“The House budget framework was clear: no new deficit spending in the One Big Beautiful Bill. The Senate’s version adds $651 billion to the deficit — and that’s before interest costs, which nearly double the total,” the group said. “That’s not fiscal responsibility. It’s not what we agreed to.”

Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas), Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) and HFC Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) have publicly said they’re a “no” on the bill.

Roy released a lengthy statement over the weekend complaining that the Senate will not only increase the deficit, but will lift the debt limit by an additional $1 trillion and leave almost 50% of the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies in place. Roy has been calling for a complete removal of all IRA subsidies.

Roy, the HFC’s policy chair, wants the House to have more time to talk to their Senate GOP counterparts, saying he “can’t vote yes” just because of the GOP’s self-imposed July 4 deadline.

But beyond the members that have publicly come out as no, there are several other HFC members who have expressed major frustration with the Senate too. We’ve been tracking this in our Big Mad Index, in case you missed it.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who has been heavily involved with talks between House and Senate conservatives, posted on Monday that every member of Congress is “duty bound” to get the country out of $37 trillion of debt.

White House dialogue. White House officials are working hard to persuade HFC members to support the package, arguing that it includes the bulk of Trump’s legislative agenda, including extending the 2017 tax cuts.

While Trump has been vocal about wanting to meet his July 4 deadline, he’s softened his comments in recent days.

White House liaison James Braid and Deputy Chief of Staff for Legislative, Political and Public Affairs James Blair have been the most directly involved with HFC talks. Braid, once a top HFC staffer himself, has appeared at several of the group’s weekly meetings.

Blair also disclosed he met with Harris last week when he attended the Republican Study Committee’s lunch with White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

The group also had a collective call with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller last week.

The HFC hasn’t put out an official statement as a group, aside from a breakdown of how the Senate bill breaks the House budget agreement.

And we’ll remind you that every single HFC member, with the exception of Harris, voted to pass the House bill after initially threatening against doing so. Harris voted present, but has been signaling that he’ll be a “no” this time.

One thing we can say for sure is that any member that does dare to vote to further stall Trump’s agenda is likely to get an angry message from the president. And perhaps a primary challenger in 2026.

– Mica Soellner

The Vault: Who is the average crypto voter?

We hear a lot about “the crypto voter.” The industry has talked about them plenty on their road to power in Washington.

But we’ve never felt like we know much about these people. Until now!

First in The Vault: We obtained a survey of 4,000 crypto users that runs the demographic gamut — from race, politics, news habits, social habits and more. The survey was conducted by Echelon and was commissioned by the investment firm, Paradigm.

It’s fair to be skeptical of this bloc’s electoral might. We think the hundreds of millions of dollars in super PAC ad spending tends to be more persuasive, and government surveys of crypto ownership have always lagged well behind the industry’s own estimates.

But the data here is an interesting political snapshot of the crypto bloc, size notwithstanding.

The basics: The Echelon survey showed an even-ish partisan split among crypto owners – 37% Republican, 36% Democratic and 24% who claimed to be independent.

The ideological breakdown of crypto owners leans more to the left than national tracking polls. The largest group, 37%, identify as moderate, and 31% identify as liberal. Just 29% identified as conservative, compared to 37% of Americans nationally per Gallup.

The demographics of crypto ownership still skew white. A wide majority of holders, 62%, identify as white. But Black crypto owners are strongly represented here, coming in at 19% of respondents while only being 14% of the U.S. population. Other groups, including Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans and Native Americans, mostly hew to their national demographics.

The gender split is about what you’d expect: 64% of crypto owners are men, 36% are women.

It’s a lifestyle? Survey respondents were asked if owning crypto was a big part of their identities. Nearly a third, or 28%, agreed that owning crypto assets said “a lot about who they are,” plus 31% who agreed crypto ownership said “a little” about them.

Crypto owners also like to talk about crypto. Almost a quarter of all owners said they like to bring crypto up in conversation — a number that rises to 45% among those who considered crypto to be an important part of their identities.

News they use: Crypto users overwhelmingly get their crypto news from social media, particularly YouTube. Fully 50% of crypto owners reported getting much of their news from YouTube. They’re also partial to industry-specific publications like CoinDesk and Bankless, versus mainstream news outlets.

A smaller, but still significant, group of crypto owners said they get most of their industry news from platforms like Telegram, Discord or other kinds of group chats – a total of 22%. A similarly sized group said they used AI platforms like ChatGPT.

– Brendan Pedersen

THE CAMPAIGN

Allred launches another Texas Senate bid

Former Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) is running it back.

Allred, a former NFL linebacker who served three terms in Congress, is launching a Senate bid against Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) just eight months after losing to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

But 2026 is a different cycle. It’s another midterm under President Donald Trump. And Cornyn is locked in a battle for his political life with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a far-right firebrand who is beloved by the base of the GOP.

Allred’s launch video notably mentions both Cornyn and Paxton. It heavily features his time in the NFL and notes that it took him multiple tryouts to get onto a team — a subtle homage to his second attempt at the Senate.

“At heart, I’m still that undrafted kid, fighting for what’s right. I’m still that guy showering after work instead of before,” Allred says in the video.

Private Republican polling has indicated Paxton is a worse general-election candidate than Cornyn — and some surveys have even shown Allred beating Paxton.

Democrats have repeatedly claimed each election cycle is the one where Texas will turn blue. There are certainly reasons to be skeptical this time, but several factors are converging in their favor.

The 2026 Senate map is small. Democrats will have to put red Senate seats in play to put themselves in a position to win a majority in 2028.

One note of caution for Democrats: A primary is brewing. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), state Rep. James Talarico and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) are also considering runs. The three of them and Allred had a virtual meeting to discuss 2026, the Dallas Morning News reported, and all wanted to run for Senate.

But Allred is the first to get in. It’s not clear whether any of the others would be willing to actually challenge him in a primary. Former astronaut Terry Virts is already running but lacks the statewide stature of the other names.

Senate Fundraising. Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow raised more than $2.1 million for her U.S. Senate race in Q2, according to her campaign.

McMorrow brought in donations from more than 28,000 individual donors. Her campaign says she is not taking any corporate PAC money.

McMorrow is competing against several candidates in a crowded Democratic Senate primary to succeed retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and former Michigan public health official Abdul El-Sayed are other contenders in the race.

McMorrow went viral for a fiery floor speech in 2022 that attacked Republicans on a series of issues, including LGBTQ rights. She has since cultivated a strong online following.

– Ally Mutnick and Mica Soellner

SPECIAL PROJECTS

The Future of Energy: The Legislative Landscape

The second segment of our series, The Future of Energy, explores the legislative and regulatory moves shaping the industry.

This reconciliation bill, making its way through Congress, will be pivotal to how the Trump administration and Capitol Hill drive energy policy, perhaps for generations.

We also look at the Trump administration’s efforts to scale back green energy policies and funding and expand domestic energy production.

The segment also dissects how the House and Senate are using the legislative process to speed up permitting for energy projects.

You can read the segment here and make sure you look out for the accompanying podcast.

– Mica Soellner

MOMENTS

CLIPS