News: Top lawmakers from both parties are trying to schedule a Capitol Hill visit for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during his upcoming trip to Washington, according to multiple sources.
The crown prince will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House on Tuesday morning. The president will later host a White House dinner for the Saudi leader. We’ve already reported that the White House has invited lawmakers, top administration officials and business leaders.
A Capitol Hill visit isn’t yet locked in, but lawmakers are targeting Tuesday afternoon.
House look. The last several weeks can be viewed as Speaker Mike Johnson flexing unprecedented muscle (for him) in ruling over the House. Johnson kept the House out of session for 54 days during the shutdown. He refused to swear in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) despite Democratic outrage. Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune lobbied President Donald Trump against cutting a deal with Democrats during the shutdown.
But now, the dynamic is shifting, and rank-and-file members are getting some power back. Let’s go through the ways.
1) The House is expected to vote this week on the discharge petition demanding the Justice Department release the full Jeffrey Epstein files. The House GOP leadership says they don’t care about the petition. And now — knowing he was going to lose anyway — neither does Trump.
But make no mistake about it — this vote will be a reflection of rank-and-file Republican unhappiness over how Johnson and Trump have handled the investigation into the disgraced financier. The question then becomes what will Senate Republicans do? More below.
2) A bipartisan group of House members are trying to push their way into the Senate talks to renew the Obamacare tax credits.
3) Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) will put House Democratic leaders in an uncomfortable position when she forces a vote tonight on her non-binding resolution to have the House “disapprove” of Rep. Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.). Garcia retired and engineered his chief of staff to be the only other person on the ballot. We have to see how Republicans respond here.
4) And in a sign of the complex politics that Johnson and Thune will have to confront in the coming months, the House will vote this week on a resolution repealing a provision in the FY2026 Legislative Branch funding bill that allows senators to sue the Justice Department for millions of dollars if their phone records were obtained as part of the Jan. 6 investigation. This should pass the House with close to unanimous support.
Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Johnson said he’s talked to Thune about the issue and is convinced that the senators who inserted the language in the bill had “pure” motivations. Johnson said Senate Republicans were trying to prevent the government from snooping on lawmakers.
Johnson: “Many of them had to come out of pocket for attorney’s fees and stuff to defend themselves. But look, I think we need to adjust the dates on it so that the optics are better.”
Good luck to Johnson on getting this on an upcoming appropriations bill, however.
Let’s go deeper on Epstein. The House will vote Tuesday on the discharge petition calling on the Justice Department to release the full Epstein files.
Changing tack, Trump said Sunday that House Republicans should back the petition authored by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). Most House Republicans weren’t waiting on Trump to say this — they were planning to vote this way regardless.
Trump and the White House have been all over the map on the Epstein resolution. White House officials heavily lobbied Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to take her name off the petition. That failed, and the petition reached the magic 218-signature threshold, a stunning setback for GOP leaders. Trump’s post seems like an attempt to acknowledge the coming reality. The only question now is what the final number will be.
The House Epstein’s bill faces a very poor outlook in the Senate, where GOP leaders have no interest in holding a vote on it. But what happens if there are 400 votes in the House for this petition?
GOP apathy won’t stop Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats from trying to make Republican senators uncomfortable. We expect Democrats to offer multiple unanimous-consent requests on the Senate floor to try to pass the bill outright or at least force a roll-call vote on it. This will require an objection from the GOP side and likely a highlight reel’s worth of fiery exchanges.
MTG vs. Trump. On Friday night, Trump called for a primary challenge to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). This was a seismic shock for the MAGA movement, where MTG was one of the first and most vocal of the Trump faithful.
MTG has undergone a remarkable political transformation in recent weeks, publicly lambasting Trump and her party for failing to address affordability concerns, as well as hiding the ball on the Epstein files.
The White House chalks MTG’s newfound persona up to sour grapes that Trump didn’t back her to run for Senate or governor. MTG strongly denies this. The White House has been peeved, to put it lightly, that MTG is going on television — specifically “The View” — and railing on Trump. MTG said she’s been getting death threats since the break with Trump.
On CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, MTG told CNN’s Dana Bash that she wanted to end the “toxic fighting in politics” and regrets her own heated rhetoric — which is remarkable, because that’s what MTG’s entire career and public persona was built on.
What to make of this clash between Trump and MTG? Part of it is the conservative base vs. the White House over Epstein, a fight that’s been going on for months. MTG — who signed onto the Epstein petition — feels like she is on the right side of the scandal. Meanwhile, Trump says he is the MAGA movement, and what he says goes.
Part of this is a warning to every other House Republican. If Trump will turn on MTG, he will turn on anyone who crosses him.
