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Johnson’s Q2 fundraising, plus the problems with rescissions

Happy Tuesday morning.
News: Speaker Mike Johnson will announce this morning that he’s raised more than $50 million for House Republicans this cycle.
Johnson raised $18.65 million in the second quarter. FEC filings are due today. Buckle up.
The speaker has transferred more than $14 million to the NRCC. He’s also funneled $10.5 million directly to individual House Republicans, the most ever by a GOP speaker, his team says.
We scooped Monday that CLF and AAN, two House Republican-linked groups, raised a combined $60 million through the second quarter. Johnson’s team points out that if you combine the CLF haul and Johnson’s $50 million raise, that’s a record for a GOP speaker.
Rescissions. Senate GOP leaders are still short of the votes they need to begin moving forward with a $9.4 billion rescissions package, a high-stakes fight that will dominate the Senate floor this week.
OMB chief Russ Vought will meet with Senate Republicans today as Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the White House try to win over the GOP holdouts. President Donald Trump has made support for the rescissions package a Republican loyalty test, while Democrats are saying passage of the measure could blow up the FY2026 appropriations process.
Thune had planned to hold the first vote in the process, a motion to discharge the package from the Senate Appropriations Committee, sometime today. It’s not clear yet if that will happen.
“To be determined,” Thune told us last night when we asked if he has the votes. “We’re still having those conversations.”
Moderate Senate Republicans are raising alarms over the proposed cuts to foreign aid, especially PEPFAR, the George W. Bush-era HIV/AIDS prevention program.
They also don’t like the proposed $1 billion-plus cut to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund NPR and PBS. But PEPFAR and foreign aid are by far the biggest issues right now.
Behind the scenes. There’s little doubt Trump will largely get what he wants in the end, especially after saying he wouldn’t endorse anyone who opposes the rescissions package. Trump is “keeping score,” noted one GOP senator.
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), the lead sponsor of the bill and a close Trump ally, told us he’s confident that a rescissions bill will ultimately pass in part because the president made it clear that this is a priority for him.
“It’s part of the core agenda [for Trump] — you have nominations, you have reconciliation, you have rescissions,” Schmitt said.
Yet moderate Republicans are being pushed to a place they don’t want to be. They’re not only worried about the spending cuts on paper, but they’re also concerned about what this package means for the appropriations process and the prospect of a government shutdown in the fall.
These concerns are particularly acute for Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the Senate Appropriations Committee chair. Last week, Collins asked OMB for details on how the proposed cuts will be implemented, especially on the foreign aid side. Other Republicans, including Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), spoke up in support of Collins’ request at a closed-door lunch. As of Monday night, Collins still hadn’t heard back.
“One frustration that many of us share is that we do not, still, have detailed information on many of the accounts. And we need that in order to make a decision,” Collins said Monday night. Collins declined to say whether she’ll oppose a motion to discharge the bill from her committee.
Thune was seen huddling on the floor Monday evening with Collins, along with Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.).
Here’s what Thune told us in response to Collins’ concerns:
“There’s a ton of latitude given to the administration on some of those accounts in the foreign policy space. So I don’t think that’s unusual, but I know people want more specifics.”
It’s unclear if Vought will be able to satisfy Collins and others. And it’s far from clear how Senate GOP leaders will handle amending the package, whether that’s via floor votes or with a substitute amendment. After the motion to discharge, senators will vote on the motion to proceed to the bill, which unlocks 10 hours of debate time, equally divided. After that, there’s a vote-a-rama.
The view from Dems. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), a top appropriator who’s running to be the next Democratic whip, tried to appeal to Republicans who fear that the appropriations process could unravel.
“They should do what they did in the first Trump term, which was reject a rescissions package, and it went away for the rest of the term,” Schatz said. “None of them want to do this. They are being dragged across the starting line and presumably across the finish line.”
In the House. Several House conservatives warned against potential Senate changes to the rescissions package but fell short of explicitly saying they’d oppose it.
We’ll also note that these conservatives have a history of falling in line when Trump tells them to do so.
“I’d have to look at what they do,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) said. “I probably won’t vote against it, but I’ll probably complain about it.”
Epstein fallout. In the House Rules Committee on Monday night, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) offered an amendment to pending Pentagon funding and crypto legislation that would’ve required the Justice Department to release its files on disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Republicans blocked the amendment over strong Democratic objections, although Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) crossed the aisle to vote with them. We expect more action on the Epstein front this week.
— Andrew Desiderio, John Bresnahan, Samantha Handler and Jake Sherman
Correction: In Monday’s AM edition, we wrote that New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has said “globalize the intifada.” Mamdani hasn’t said that, but he has refused to condemn the phrase. We regret the error.
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THE SENATE
Waltz returns to Hill for Senate grilling
Senate Democrats plan to hammer former National Security Adviser Mike Waltz later this morning over Signalgate and much more during the former GOP lawmaker’s confirmation hearing to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats, led by ranking member Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), plan to use Waltz’s nomination to make a broader case against the Trump administration’s foreign policy moves, from foreign aid cuts to State Department firings.
Shaheen even plans to praise Waltz for making the case that President Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to U.N. funding are misguided and will cede global influence to China.
“The situation at the United Nations is especially alarming,” Shaheen will say, according to prepared remarks shared with us. “Mr. Waltz, with your past support for Ukraine and clear-eyed view of threats like China, I hope you will push back on the administration’s early missteps and some of your more misguided colleagues like Secretary [Pete] Hegseth.”
The role Waltz is being nominated for is traditionally a Cabinet-level job, so the hearing is a rare opportunity for Democrats to lay out their case in a more high-profile setting. And it comes as the Senate is considering a $9.4 billion rescissions package this week, most of which centers on huge cuts to foreign aid.
Democrats will note, as they did in a recent SFRC report, that the Chinese Communist Party is already filling gaps created by a pullback of U.S. soft power, a key national security component.
Shaheen will warn that with the United States becoming more isolationist, international organizations will become increasingly dependent on China.
Other Democrats are certain to press Waltz on his role in Signalgate. Waltz and other top administration officials – including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – discussed sensitive military planning, including U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis, on the encrypted messaging app Signal. The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally added to the Signal chat.
Waltz, a former House Republican from Florida, lost his job as Trump’s national security adviser over the incident. Trump later tapped Waltz to serve as the top American envoy to the United Nations after the president withdrew Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) nomination for the role.
The Defense Department’s inspector general has been investigating Signalgate, which could give Waltz an out from answering questions about it directly.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, plans on pressing Waltz about it. Duckworth said Waltz’s nomination makes clear he’s “failing up.”
“Waltz, Hegseth and every other official who was included in this group chat should be fired — not promoted,” Duckworth said.
— Andrew Desiderio

Weekday mornings, The Daily Punch brings you inside Capitol Hill, the White House, and Washington.
Listen Now
The Vault: Emmer is more than ready for crypto week
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer has been waiting a long time for this week.
Emmer is one of Washington’s oldest supporters of the crypto industry. Now, the sector is on the verge of some major legislative triumphs.
Emmer talks about crypto like few other lawmakers. The Minnesota Republican came to believe in the sector long before its government advocates professionalized.
“This is an incredibly disruptive, and potentially destructive, technology,” Emmer told us.
We sat down with Emmer Monday evening to talk about crypto, Washington writ large and President Donald Trump’s expanding crypto empire.
The stakes. Emmer has been pushing crypto legislation for a while.
“Over the past four years, I think you saw what not having that clarity did,” Emmer said. “You had every single regulator claiming jurisdiction over every single project, it seemed like. That just has a needless amount of confusion.”
What does that actually mean for everyone else? We asked Emmer what his vision for the financial system was post-crypto legislation. Could crypto replace the traditional financial system?
The majority whip answered in two parts. Emmer first said that crypto could enhance the existing financial system.
“It’s imperative that we make sure that our existing two-tier legacy financial system, with the best capital markets the world knows, are allowed not only to exist, but to have a chance to evolve into the 21st century,” Emmer said.
But Emmer doesn’t have too much love for the current framework either.
“I don’t think we should be in the business of trying to protect, forever and ad nauseam, in perpetuity, the existing system,” Emmer said. “But you have to have some guardrails.”
The Senate. House leaders, Emmer included, pushed to make changes to the GENIUS Act before sending the stablecoin bill to the White House. Ultimately, the House settled to vote on an unchanged GENIUS Act this Thursday. But the latest version of the CLARITY Act contains tweaks to GENIUS.
Emmer’s not worried about the rigmarole. “Everything in the GENIUS Act, and everything in the CLARITY Act, I understand has been signed off on by the White House,” the majority whip said.
After this week, if the House passes the CLARITY Act, major crypto action will shift back to the Senate. Emmer is nonplussed.
“Give them an opportunity to digest it and if they think there are some nuances, some minor things that need to be done, great,” Emmer said. “We just need to have them both.”
The president. We asked Emmer to weigh in on the Trump family’s crypto investments.
Specifically, is it harmful to the crypto industry to have the president’s family fortune increasingly entrenched with it? Did Emmer have any reservations?
“I know it’s your job to ask these questions,” Emmer replied. “But I’ve got to tell you, Trump’s family was incredibly successful before Donald Trump was president.”
“I’d prefer to focus on the fact that when we talk about digital assets, whether that’s crypto or other, this is not a Republican or Democratic issue,” Emmer added. “This is an American issue.”
– Brendan Pedersen
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SPECIAL PROJECTS
The Future of Energy: The Players

As we wind down our series, The Future of Energy, we want to highlight some of the key people and institutions driving the sector into the 21st Century.
The Players are lawmakers in Congress, top executives, key agencies and influential trade groups. The industry’s future will depend on how these leaders respond to the growing energy demand while accommodating conflicting views on power production.
They will have to contend with how artificial intelligence, the increased electrification of transportation modes and the Trump administration’s push to revive domestic manufacturing add pressure to the power sector.
Over the last several weeks, we’ve explored how the industry is navigating the changing demands and an evolving regulatory regime. The increased energy demand poses new challenges for global decarbonization efforts and in the United States, puts Republicans and Democrats at loggerheads. Lawmakers and the industry are also grappling with a complicated permitting process that all agree needs an overhaul.
Check out each segment:
The State of Play: An overview of the state of the energy sector and what’s in store for the future.
The Regulatory Landscape: How regulators and lawmakers are steering the energy sector and balancing the competing factors driving it into the future.
A Leading Voice: A key lawmaker provides a perspective on how Congress is approaching the issue.
The Players: The leading people and institutions shaping the direction of the energy industry.
– Elvina Nawaguna
THE CAMPAIGN
A special primary election today in Arizona will offer the latest temperature check of the Democratic Party.
Arizona’s 7th District, left vacant by the death of the late Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva in mid-March, is a safe blue seat where winning the primary is tantamount to winning the general election. The former incumbent’s daughter, Adelita Grijalva, is the frontrunner but Deja Foxx, a Gen Z influencer, had a late surge in the polls.
Foxx spent the most on ads, dropping $742,000, per AdImpact. Former Arizona state Rep. Daniel Hernandez spent $526,000 and Grijalva spent $413,000, though she had some air cover from outside groups.
Polls close at 10 p.m. ET.
On the airwaves. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) is going on TV with a new ad — eight months before the Illinois Senate primary. In the spot, which will run statewide, Krishnamoorthi vows to take on President Donald Trump.
Fundraising. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) will report raising $3.16 million in Q2 and another $140,000 for his leadership PAC. Kelly is not up for reelection until 2028.
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) will report raising $2.5 million in the first two quarters of this year through his campaign, joint fundraising committee and leadership PAC combined. Moreno also transferred $480,000 to the NRSC.
GOP Rep. Andy Barr, who is running for Senate in Kentucky, raised $1.4 million and has $6.1 million in the bank.
Launch pad. Democrat Jessica Killin, previously a top aide to former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, is launching a run in Colorado’s 5th District. Rep. Jeff Crank (R-Colo.) currently represents the district, which Trump won by 9 points in 2024.
Hallie Shoffner is running as a Democrat against GOP Sen. Tom Cotton in Arkansas. Shoffner is a sixth-generation farmer whose launch video focused on her family farm shutting down this year.
Immigration: Reps. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.) and Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) will introduce their bipartisan immigration bill, the Dignity Act, today. The bill aims to strengthen border security while also offering pathways to legal status for longtime undocumented immigrants living in the country.
— Mica Soellner, Ally Mutnick and Andrew Desiderio
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MOMENTS
ALL TIMES EASTERN
10 a.m.
The House will meet for morning hour debate.
10 a.m.
House GOP leadership will hold a post-meeting press conference.
10:45 a.m.
Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (Calif.) and Vice Chair Ted Lieu (Calif.) will hold a post-meeting press conference.
Noon
The House will meet for legislative business.
12:30 p.m.
President Donald Trump will depart the White House en route to Pittsburgh, Pa.
2:30 p.m.
Trump will participate in the inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit.
5:40 p.m.
Trump will depart Pittsburgh en route to the White House, arriving at 6:50 p.m.
CLIPS
WaPo
“ICE declares millions of undocumented immigrants ineligible for bond hearings”
– Maria Sacchetti and Carol D. Leonnig
Bloomberg
“Nvidia to Resume H20 AI Chip Sales to China in US Reversal”
– Mackenzie Hawkins
FT
“Benjamin Netanyahu’s government teeters as ultra-Orthodox party quits coalition”
– Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv
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Learn more about Walmart’s commitment to U.S. manufacturing.
*See website for additional details.
Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. Political ads courtesy of AdImpact.
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Meet some of the 55 million Americans using crypto to shop, save, invest and build. They span ages, genders, professions, incomes, regions and political affiliations but have one thing in common: they own and use crypto.