July 7, 2025
PRESENTED BY
THE TOP
With OBBB in the rearview, here’s what’s next
Happy Monday morning.
The Senate returns Tuesday, the House is out of session until July 14. President Donald Trump is back in D.C. Trump said he’ll likely visit disaster-stricken Texas on Friday.
Texas latest. The horrific tragedy in Texas continues to unfold. The death toll is more than 80, including 28 children. Dozens of people are still missing. Trump has issued a disaster declaration for Kerr County, located in the Hill Country northwest of San Antonio. U.S. Coast Guard helicopters have been sent to the region, as well as planes capable of finding missing persons.
The tragedy has touched lawmakers personally. Rep. August Pfluger’s (R-Texas) daughters were at Camp Mystic, as well Rep. Buddy Carter’s (R-Ga.) granddaughters. All are accounted for, although Carter’s granddaughters lost a cousin in the flooding. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) represents the area hardest hit by the flood.
News here. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has written a letter to Commerce Department Acting Inspector General Roderick Anderson asking him to “investigate whether the staffing shortfalls at [National Weather Service] offices in Texas — and across the country — played a role in exacerbating the impact of this deadly flooding event.”
Rescissions. Congress has until July 18 — next Friday — to pass the White House’s $9 billion-plus rescissions package in some form. And unlike with reconciliation, that’s actually a statutory deadline. The money will be spent as appropriated if Congress doesn’t act by that date.
But just like with reconciliation, the Senate is gearing up to jam the House with a revised measure at the last minute.
The motion to discharge the rescissions package from the Senate Appropriations Committee becomes privileged today, meaning any senator can force a vote. This step is necessary because Senate GOP leaders have decided not to hold a formal markup.
Yet that vote isn’t expected to occur until next week at the earliest. That would give the Senate roughly two days to pass a revised rescissions package using expedited procedures. The process ends with a vote-a-rama — yes, another one — followed by a vote on a GOP leadership-drafted substitute amendment. Under this scenario, the House would have very little time to pass it before the July 18 deadline.
At this stage, there’s some skepticism about whether the Senate can even get 50 votes for a rescissions package that maintains the cuts the White House wants, which focus on foreign aid and public broadcasting.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) is perhaps the most prominent critic of the proposed clawbacks, especially the cuts to PEPFAR, the George W. Bush-era global HIV/AIDS prevention program. Ditto Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Others, like Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), have issues with the public broadcasting cuts.
Schumer has been telling Senate Democrats that a successful rescissions vote risks upending the FY2026 appropriations process. More on that below.
Netanyahu in Washington. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Washington for a visit with Trump, his third in half a year. Netanyahu’s alliance is incredibly important to his domestic political standing in Israel. Trump was already popular in Israel and has grown more so since the U.S. bombing attack on Iranian nuclear sites last month.
Netanyahu also said he will be meeting with members of Congress during his visit. Speaker Mike Johnson is sticking around in D.C. to meet with Netanyahu Tuesday morning. There’s also a bipartisan Senate meeting in the works for Tuesday.
Trump is very eager for a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza.
Trump tariffs: Trump has set a July 9 deadline for tariff deals with foreign trading partners. But Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday the administration is sending letters to dozens of countries this week saying that if trade deals aren’t complete by August 1, they’ll see their tariffs “boomerang” to the rates Trump outlined in April.
No matter what happens, the Wednesday deadline is a reminder for Senate Republicans that the major trade deals they’ve been pushing the administration to prioritize have not yet come to fruition.
Government funding: Now that the GOP-run Congress has finally finished with the One Big Beautiful Bill, it’s time to turn to the FY2026 appropriations process. It’s a mess so far. We’re not saying there will be a government shutdown this fall, but it’s a real possibility.
The Trump administration has taken an unprecedented – even stunning – view on the executive branch’s power over government funding. Trump ordered the closure of the Education Department and other agencies, all while firing tens of thousands of federal workers via DOGE.
The White House sent Congress a cursory “skinny budget” for FY2026 that calls for more than $160 billion in domestic spending cuts while boosting the Pentagon and border security (The OBBB including $325 billion for these).
OMB is withholding tens of billions of dollars in spending, defying Congress and ignoring the long-term CR that Trump signed in March.
House Republicans have begun drafting FY2026 appropriations bills at the Trump budget level. Democrats are vehemently opposed to the GOP-drafted bills, and they’re not going anywhere in the Senate. We’re also not even sure how many Johnson can pass.
The Senate Appropriations Committee is marking up three bills at the full-committee level this week. Collins and Patty Murray (Wash.), the ranking Democrat, haven’t said what those will look like yet, but they’re at some modified FY2025 spending level. Which isn’t going to fly with House Republican leaders.
Johnson’s new goal: Two more reconciliation bills. Johnson also said on “Fox News Sunday” that he wants to do two more reconciliation bills: one in the fall and one in the spring. We see this as exceedingly unlikely. Johnson didn’t give any details of what these packages may include, but we’ll note that a fall reconciliation bill would come just as the government funding battle unfolds, so it’s hard to see that happening simultaneously.
— John Bresnahan, Jake Sherman and Andrew Desiderio
Tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. ET, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) will join Punchbowl News Founder and CEO Anna Palmer. Rounds will discuss the news of the day, financial services innovation and payments security. There’s still time to RSVP!
Senior staffers: Medicaid, SNAP cuts will hurt GOP
A majority of top Capitol Hill staffers say the reconciliation bill’s cuts to Medicaid and SNAP will hurt Republicans in the midterms, according to our latest Canvass survey.
While the new law is a win for President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, the program cuts could leave millions without health insurance or food assistance, according to the CBO.
The polling results show that 85% of respondents said the cuts to Medicaid could cost the GOP victories in the next midterms. That included 73% of Republican staffers surveyed.
On SNAP, 75% of respondents said the funding cuts would harm Republicans next year.
Republicans have a razor-thin House majority and a newly challenging Senate map. And historically, the president’s party doesn’t do well in midterm elections.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) railed against the bill’s Medicaid cuts before announcing he wouldn’t seek reelection. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) was another wild card over Medicaid concerns before receiving a last-minute carve-out for her state.
The Canvass Capitol Hill was conducted June 9-27 in partnership with independent public affairs firm, LSG.
Want to take part in The Canvass? Our survey provides anonymous monthly insights from top Capitol Hill staffers and K Street leaders on key issues driving Washington. Sign up here if you work on K Street. Click here to sign up if you’re a senior congressional staffer.
– Kenzie Nguyen
Tech: Cassidy wants to help gig workers
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) wants to make it easier for gig workers, such as Uber and Lyft drivers, to access benefits like health insurance and retirement accounts.
Cassidy is introducing the Unlocking Benefits for Independent Workers Act today. The bill creates a safe harbor under federal law so businesses can offer independent contractors portable benefits without them being classified as employees.
The bill is part of a larger GOP package with Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to make it easier for the 27 million independent contractors in the United States to access workplace benefits. Cassidy chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
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If “the entity with which they contract is going to provide them benefits as if they were an employee, but they don’t want to be an employee, we’ve got to create the safe harbor,” Cassidy said.
Democrats in Washington tend to reject portable benefits for gig workers as they say it would be better for workers to simply be classified as employees. As employees, workers are entitled to federal labor rights like overtime, workers’ compensation and other protections. They’re also able to unionize.
Some of the portable benefits programs provided by app-based companies have been criticized by left-leaning groups.
Federal unions have long pushed to allow independent contractors to organize, targeting workers such as Uber and Lyft drivers. The PRO Act, Democrats’ marquee labor bill, would make it easier for gig workers to join unions.
But Republicans have historically rejected that. They say independent contractors choose that line of work for the flexibility that comes with not being an employee.
Cassidy acknowledges those workers who once joined app-based occupations as a gig increasingly choose that for their main income stream. That should prompt an update to federal law, he said.
“The workforce is evolving much faster than our federal laws are, and we’re just trying to catch up,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy admits that the package is a long shot in the Senate where at least seven Democrats would be needed to turn a bill into law. But he’s hopeful that the action in blue states – Democratic governors like Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania have supported portable benefits programs – could change the mood in Washington.
It “gives me some hope that some Democrats in Congress will also support because it’s where the people are,” Cassidy said.
–Diego Areas Munhoz
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The Vault: Crypto group says Trump attacks aren’t breaking through
First in The Vault: A majority of Americans say they’re not aware of the Trump family’s crypto investments, according to a poll commissioned by a dark money group with ties to the digital asset industry.
Roughly 57% of respondents said they had not “seen, read, or heard anything recently” about President Donald Trump’s meme coin, for instance. Trump’s net worth has swelled by roughly $620 million in crypto wealth since returning to office, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Those funds are tied to a growing number of investments in crypto ventures.
The number grows to more than 60% both for Americans who say they haven’t heard about “the President’s family running a cryptocurrency business … or that the President has made millions of dollars from said business,” according to a memo prepared by the Cedar Innovation Foundation.
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Read the full memo here.
Many congressional Democrats have criticized Trump for his ties to the crypto world. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) made the issue a focal point of her opposition to the GENIUS Act, the stablecoin bill that cleared the Senate in June.
But for now, the industry — via a group with ties to the Fairshake super PAC network — says these attacks haven’t broken through to voters. The poll was conducted by the Global Strategy Group via online surveys at a 3.1% margin of error.
Josh Vlasto, spokesperson for the Cedar Innovation Foundation, said Democratic voters are more interested in seeing crypto regulated at the federal level.
“There’s no upside to the far left political posturing around crypto legislation and a clear path to reaching voters that Democrats had lost,” Vlasto said. This isn’t the first time crypto has tried to tell Democrats the industry has public support in, say, competitive swing districts.
The memo also notes that “a clear majority of Americans say that there should be clearer rules and regulations for the cryptocurrency industry as opposed to leaving the industry largely unregulated” — a bloc of 57%.
Democrats aren’t opposed to regulation of crypto, but a majority of Senate Democrats voted against the GENIUS Act, arguing the bill did not apply strong enough ethics standards.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Warren argued the GENIUS Act “will accelerate Trump’s corruption by supercharging the size of the stablecoin market” — a type of asset the Trump family owns a stake in via World Liberty Financial.
– Brendan Pedersen
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THE CAMPAIGN
News: James Osyf is gearing up to launch a campaign to unseat Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.) in Virginia’s 2nd District. Osyf, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, served on the USS Norfolk. He’s currently a Navy reservist and works at Lockheed Martin.
Osyf’s veteran background will be vital in the battleground district, which encompasses the military hotbeds of Virginia Beach and Norfolk. Kiggans is one of the top Democratic targets this cycle.
Osyf is already assembling a team of consultants with experience winning competitive seats. Berlin Rosen is handling Osyf’s mail, Thematic Campaigns is the media consultant, Jones Mandel is on research and the campaign is using SBDigital.
On the air. PBS is running a series of television ads in Maine, Utah, West Virginia and South Dakota urging Congress not to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund NPR and PBS. The spot highlights the local PBS affiliates in those states – home to some key GOP senators in this debate – and is running in local markets. The Trump administration wants to cut $1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as part of its $9 billion-plus rescissions package.
PBS is also running a national ad in Fairbanks, Alaska; Baton Rouge, La.; San Diego, Calif.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Missoula, Mont.; Butte, Mont.; Charlotte, N.C.; Peoria, Ill.; Paducah, Ky.; and Harrisonburg, Va.
Here’s the spot in Maine.
— Max Cohen and Jake Sherman
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