What 7 months revealed about the House

IN THIS EDITION

The House GOP reality in Trump’s Washington

HFC losing influence in Trump’s Washington

Republicans gamble that Texas Latino voters stay red

ICYMI: Markey on kids’ online safety, August recess

THE TOP

The House GOP reality in Trump’s Washington

Happy Wednesday morning.

Yes, it’s July 23. But if you’re a House member or staffer, August starts this afternoon around 4 p.m.

The People’s House is beginning a robust six-week recess that will stretch until Sept. 2. Some members will hold town halls. Others will head overseas as part of congressional delegations. Many will vacation. Speaker Mike Johnson has his annual high-dollar donor retreat in Wyoming.

With fly out day upon us, the House is wrapping up an incredibly busy seven months of the GOP governing trifecta. They’ve gotten 27 bills signed into law, with the OBBB, GENIUS Act and a $9 billion rescission package, being the most notable.

But we wanted to focus on what we’ve learned from Johnson’s chamber — and what it might mean from now until the midterm elections. By the way, Johnson hasn’t only declared that Republicans will keep their majority in 2026, but also swears the GOP will expand its hold on the chamber. For the record, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has predicted a Democratic victory.

1) House Republicans did a big thing. Can they do more? Let’s give Johnson and the House Republicans credit where it’s due: They did get their massive reconciliation bill through the House and Senate by July 4. We all doubted that Johnson could do it — and by “we,” that’s reporters, members of Johnson’s own leadership team and the Trump White House.

Coming off that win, Johnson floated another two reconciliation bills to cut additional spending — one in the fall and one in the spring of 2026, which, as you may already know, is an election year.

Can Johnson do it? We’re not going to explicitly say no. But we will note that Republican congressional leaders were able to jam through hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts because they had the sweetener of tax cuts to offer their rank-and-file members. What sweetener do they have this time around?

President Donald Trump floated Tuesday cutting capital gains taxes on home sales. Will that be enough to get House Republicans to further cut entitlement spending, especially heading into a midterm election where the president’s party usually loses seats?

And remember the other critical open legislative items still left to do. The highway bill comes up early next year. Premium tax credits for Obamacare expire at the end of 2025, which is a huge issue.

2) The GOP-controlled House is an arm of the White House. We don’t want to harp on this for too long because it’s so evident if you’re a Congress watcher. Under Johnson and Trump, the House simply isn’t an independent branch of government anymore. Whether it’s on Russia sanctions, the Jeffrey Epstein files or voting for a $5 trillion debt-limit increase, House Republicans do whatever Trump tells them to do.

Some of that is inevitable when the House is controlled by the president’s party. But it wasn’t long ago that a House Democratic majority turned their back on Barack Obama’s trade agenda or then-Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) derailed Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda.

3) Trump’s Epstein problem. Epstein has been dead for six years. But the disgraced financier has become more politically significant in death than he ever was while alive. And he’s playing an unusually large role in the day-to-day operations of Congress. The furor over the Epstein scandal shut down the House again this week.

The Rules Committee ground to a halt after panel Republicans refused to vote against Democratic amendments calling for the White House to release all the Epstein documents. The House Oversight Committee has approved a motion to subpoena Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former associate who is in prison following her sex-trafficking conviction. DOJ wants to talk to Maxwell too, which may complicate things.

As for the House’s Epstein debacle, there’s enough blame to go around — between the White House and GOP leadership. Johnson allowed Rules to pass a non-binding resolution last week, which seemed insufficient at the time and has proven so since. Johnson and House GOP leaders should’ve known this wasn’t going to be enough to calm the Epstein angst.

Trump is giving Hill Republicans absolutely no cover here. The White House’s posture seems to be that the House Republicans should suck it up and back Trump over Epstein.

By giving the White House the month until September to release documents, Johnson has all but guaranteed that the story continues. Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) discharge petition ripens in September.

And the larger question for the White House is whether House Republicans will break with the president here – and if they do, where else will they split with Trump?

4) Broken record alert: Government funding will be a mess. We’ve been writing about this for months now: Congress is charging headlong into a government-funding showdown. In fact, the last time Congress did anything resembling the normal appropriations process was two-and-a-half years ago.

The House is leaving town having passed just two funding bills. The Senate’s bills are markedly different — they’re bipartisan. But they’re still only on the first one.

Hardline House conservatives like Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) are pushing for a yearlong CR, which would memorialize Biden’s funding levels for yet another year. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has already said she won’t vote for a CR.

Again, we ask: Is there any CR that Trump will sign that Democrats will vote for?

5) The House GOP leadership. The soap opera that is the House Republican leadership is decidedly less publicly dramatic this Congress. Eric Cantor and John Boehner, Steve Scalise and Kevin McCarthy this is not.

Speaking of Scalise, several key staffers have left his office. And some in the GOP leadership privately gripe at Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s vote-counting operation. There’s also the perennial question of whether Trump will ever get tired of Johnson like he has every other GOP leader he’s worked with. Only time will tell.

– Jake Sherman

CONSERVATIVE CORNER

HFC losing influence in Trump’s Washington

The House Freedom Caucus has a reputation for wreaking havoc. But the far-right group is falling flat in Donald Trump’s Washington.

Just a few recent examples:

– This week, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) — an HFC member next in line to chair the Homeland Security Committee — was passed over for leadership in favor of ally Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), seventh in seniority on the panel.

– Last week, HFC lawmakers tried to block a procedural vote on crypto legislation, a maneuver that resulted in a 10-hour standoff with GOP leaders and a multi-day mess on the floor. But the package passed with the group getting little in return.

– And everyone remembers how the Freedom Caucus threatened to tank the massive GOP reconciliation bill, only to fold and fall in line in the end, all by Trump’s July 4th deadline.

After ultimately succumbing to Trump and House GOP leaders on every bill they vowed to oppose – including voting multiple times to raise the debt limit by trillions of dollars – the HFC is in danger of becoming the caucus that cried wolf.

“They’re delusional,” Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) told us. “The drama that comes from a small group of Republicans voting procedurally with the Democratic Party is costing us valuable time and creating resentment in the conference.”

That was then. Last Congress, the HFC used its leverage to secure seats on plum committees and dictate the legislative agenda. But with Trump demanding total Republican loyalty – and getting it – the group no longer has the sway it once had.

The question is what does this mean moving forward for the House Republican Conference – held hostage by Freedom Caucus mayhem for the last decade-plus – and the hardline group?

“They’ve done a good job of slowing things down in the House,” Rep. Troy Downing (R-Mont.) said. “There’s a whole lot of noise there and they’re not getting a lot of changes.”

The Trump factor. Trump has criticized the HFC for causing him problems, going as far as to demand in December that someone primary Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), the group’s second highest-ranking member. Roy made a lot of noise before key reconciliation votes, but he eventually fell in line like the rest of the HFC.

After the HFC members held up the crypto vote, Trump said he was “tired of making phone calls” in the early morning to the same dozen members.

Yet in conversations with more than a half-dozen HFC members, many in the group remain confident of their standing with Trump. These hardliners also believe they’re making legislation better.

“Our relationship with Trump is great,” Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) said.

Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.) acknowledged there’s sometimes tension between HFC and the White House. But at the end of the day, Tiffany said, Trump wants people around him who can tell it to him straight and are dialed into the GOP base.

“You need people who are going to tell you the truth,” Tiffany said. “There’s frustration at times when we’re herding cats in this building and they just want to get to yes, but that’s not how we operate.”

– Mica Soellner

THE LONE STAR STATE

Republicans gamble that Texas Latino voters stay red

Republicans are placing a big bet on Latino voters in their Texas redistricting gambit.

No segment of the electorate is poised to play a bigger role in the 2026 midterms. Prodded by the White House, Texas Republican lawmakers are preparing to muscle through a new congressional map that squeezes out five new seats for the House GOP.

People close to the redistricting process insist they can do this without spreading their voters too thin and endangering the 25 House GOP incumbents in Texas. A huge part of the reason: Democrats no longer have a lock on the fast-growing population of Latino voters.

“They love Donald Trump because Donald Trump loves the Latinos,” said Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), “and he puts them first.”

Big shift. Dozens of Texas congressional districts moved to the right at the presidential level between 2020 and 2024, some by double-digits.

Consider this: the shift is so stark that GOP mapmakers could draw a host of Hispanic-majority districts that Trump would have won in 2024.

So the central question of 2026 will be whether Republicans can convert pro-Trump Latinos into reliable GOP voters?

If this Latino-driven realignment continues, Republicans can unlock vast new territory. But if those voters don’t turn out when Trump is off the ballot — or revert back to Democrats — the map could turn into a mess for the GOP.

“The Hispanic vote is the future of the demographics in Texas,” Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) said. “It’s no longer that a single party controls it. But it’s proven that more and more are voting Republican.”

Competing arguments. Democrats believe many of Trump’s supporters won’t turn out in midterms — and that Latinos in particular may be disillusioned by his policies.

“That is very risky,” Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas) said, “especially in light of the ICE raids and the abusive manner in which they’ve been detaining and deporting people and businesses in South Texas.”

And Democrats note, correctly, that many of their incumbents on Hispanic turf in Texas won reelection, even as Trump carried their districts.

But Republicans argue the realignment is far bigger than just Trump. They can draw Latino districts that also backed Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn during their last reelections.

“The border counties are going Republican for a good reason,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said. “Doesn’t change based on Trump.”

– Ally Mutnick and John Bresnahan

PUNCHBOWL NEWS EVENTS

ICYMI: Markey on kids’ online safety, August recess

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) discussed his ongoing efforts to push for legislation that makes the internet safer for children at a Punchbowl News event Tuesday.

Markey’s bill, Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA 2.0, has bipartisan support and the backing of Google and has already advanced out of the Senate Commerce Committee. However, Markey said there are still “people right now in this city” working to ensure it never becomes law.

Markey also weighed in on TikTok and the possibility that the Senate’s August recess is cut short.

You can watch the full recording here.

– Diego Areas Munhoz

… AND THERE’S MORE

We’ve got several scoops for you this morning. First, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) is introducing a new bill aimed at getting companies to bring in more employees as stockowners. It’s a fresh take on Democrats’ focus on trying to shrink the wealth gap but with a more centrist spin.

The legislation incentivizes companies to distribute at least 5% of their stock to the lowest-paid 80% of their workforce by offering a 3% corporate rate cut in exchange. A previous version of the bill took a different approach.

Suozzi’s new tack is winning bipartisan buy-in. Rep. Mike Kelly (Pa.), the top Republican on the Ways and Means Tax Subcommittee, is co-leading the effort. Nine other Ways and Means Committee members from both parties are signed on, including GOP Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Nicole Malliotakis (N.Y.) and Claudia Tenney (N.Y.).

Dem news. The NewDem Action Fund raised $600,000 at an event held Tuesday at District Winery for members of the New Democrat Coalition on the DCCC’s Frontline program. The hosts: Reps. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.), Sharice Davids (D-Kan.) and Hillary Scholten (D-Mich.).

Ad news. VetVoice Foundation is launching a digital ad campaign going after Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) over his now-defunct public lands proposal. During the reconciliation process, Lee backed down from a plan that would facilitate the sale of millions of acres.

In the ad, a Marine veteran slams Lee’s plan as a “direct attack on our culture.”

The digital ad buy is backed by $3,000 and will target Utah voters. Lee isn’t up for reelection until 2028.

— Laura Weiss, Max Cohen and Ally Mutnick

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