The Senate is in this week, the House is out.
House Republicans are in Doral, Fla., at the Trump National Doral for their annual legislative retreat. President Donald Trump will be speaking to House Republicans this evening in, where else, the Donald J. Trump Ballroom at his club.
Speaker Mike Johnson’s Republican Conference retreat will feature a number of conservative pundits, including Scott Jennings and Ben Shapiro. White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair and Chris LaCivita, a top Trump political adviser, will also speak. National Economic Adviser Kevin Hassett, who didn’t get the rose for Federal Reserve chair, will take his spiel from television to Miami. We’ll have coverage from south Florida all week.
Reconciliation 2.0 will be a major topic of conversation during the retreat, as we previewed for you last week. Johnson and House GOP leaders will see whether they can begin coalescing around some policies for a second reconciliation package. House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) will present potential budget cuts, including targeting “waste, fraud and abuse.”
Iran and SAVE Act. We’re opening up the week focusing on Iran and Trump’s long-running effort to end the Senate filibuster.
Seven Americans have now been confirmed as killed during the U.S. war on Iran. Iranian casualties are estimated at more than 1,300, although this hasn’t been independently confirmed.
Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — killed by an Israeli missile strike on the opening day of the war — has been selected as Iran’s new supreme leader. The younger Khamenei isn’t well known outside Iran. But his ascension signals that Iranian leaders have no intention of caving to U.S. or Israeli military pressure.
Israeli strikes on oil depots have turned Tehran into an apocalyptic landscape. Top Senate Democrats are calling for an investigation into whether a U.S. strike tragically killed dozens of Iranian schoolchildren during the opening days of the war.
The war has spread throughout the Middle East, including dueling strikes on water desalination plants, a nightmarish scenario for millions. U.S. forces are fighting in Iraq once again, while hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled the fighting in southern Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah. U.S. diplomats have been ordered out of Saudi Arabia by the State Department following Iranian drone strikes on the embassy complex in Riyadh.
If you’re a Republican, the politics of this conflict have to worry you. With the Strait of Hormuz closed, oil prices have soared to more than $100 per barrel (from just under $70 per barrel 10 days ago.) There’s been a huge spike in gas prices nationally. The Wall Street Journal called it “the most severe energy crisis since the 1970s and threatening to derail the global economy.” The G7 nations — led by France — are eyeing the release of as many as 400 million barrels from their strategic reserves in order to calm the situation. Asian and European markets were getting rocked early Monday.
Trump responded to soaring gas prices this way on Sunday: “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”
Meanwhile, Americans will pay a lot more to fill up their SUVs and pickup trucks.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has a closed briefing on Operation Epic Fury on Tuesday at 9:30 a.m. So we’ll get some more information then.
SAVE Act latest. Senate Majority Leader John Thune can’t escape the unrelenting MAGA fervor over the SAVE America Act, the House-passed bill to require photo ID and proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections.
In a Truth Social post Sunday, Trump declared he wouldn’t sign any legislation until that bill reaches his desk. Trump also demanded that several additional provisions be added to the measure — including significant curbs on mail-in ballots, complicating the effort even further.
As we’ve reported, there isn’t enough Senate Republican support to sustain a “talking filibuster,” the mechanism proponents like Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) are urging Thune to back. Lee was calling GOP senators over the weekend in a bid to round up additional votes, but there remained some very strong opposition, we’re told.
Even White House aides are having a difficult time explaining the competing priorities here.
During an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Senate should “quickly” confirm Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) as Department of Homeland Security secretary and pass a funding bill to end the DHS shutdown, now in its 23rd day (U.S. airports are heading toward a crisis situation.) Neither of those things can happen if Trump wants the SAVE America Act to be the next order of business via a talking filibuster, which could take weeks or months to execute — if it works.
This storyline continues to be an unmitigated disaster for Senate GOP leaders, who are in a no-win position here. Trump has primed his base to believe that failure is not an option, which is just more evidence that this is all designed to gut the legislative filibuster. Some Senate Republicans are lobbying White House aides behind the scenes, urging them to get Trump to tone down his rhetoric.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso — a top Trump ally and SAVE Act supporter — didn’t endorse the talking filibuster during his own Sunday appearance on Fox News.
“That’s one way to do it,” Barrasso said of the talking filibuster and the SAVE Act. “Members are having meetings right now to say what’s the best way that we can actually get this passed.”
A huge week! The Conference, our annual day-long summit, is on Tuesday. The full lineup includes tons of CEOs, members of Congress and key figures in national politics.
New: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer will appear on stage with Punchbowl News Founders Anna Palmer and Jake Sherman. And we just added a live taping of Fly Out Day with Amy Walter of “The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter” and our very own Ally Mutnick.
We’ll put the full lineup in our Tuesday AM edition.
