Congress: The Senate & The House

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💣 GOP powder keg

Sens. Mike Lee and Rick Scott have teed up what could be a tense, confrontational lunch tomorrow with President Trump and Senate Republicans.

• The two spent months pressuring Senate Majority Leader John Thune on the SAVE America Act. Now Trump will be in the room with them.

Why it matters: Trump is fixated on passing the SAVE Act to help Republicans in the midterms. But Thune is insistent that Republicans don't have the votes.

• "There are not the votes to nuke the filibuster, and there aren't going to be 10 Democrat votes to all of a sudden support the SAVE America Act," Thune told reporters today.
• SAVE would require voter ID and proof of citizenship, while imposing new restrictions on mail-in voting.

Zoom in: Scott invited Trump to attend the weekly lunch put on by the conservative Senate GOP Steering Committee.

• Thune laughed when asked whether Scott checked with him before extending the invite. "Well, he told me he did it," Thune told reporters.
• Scott sent a letter to senators yesterday outlining what he thinks the chamber's focus should be — including passing the SAVE America Act or parts of it, according to a copy we obtained.

Between the lines: Senate GOP leadership has largely learned to negotiate with and work around staunch conservatives like Lee and Scott. But some senators are losing patience.

• "I never speak ill of members when they want to be professional," Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) told reporters today after accusing Lee of "naivete" or wanting "to get more likes on social media posts."
• "But when you do some of the bullshit [Lee has] done on social media, that's why he gets these comments out here," he added.
• "I think Mike Lee is contributing to this fantasy that somehow it's going to happen," Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters.

The big picture: The SAVE Act got 48 votes earlier this month when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) tried adding it as an amendment to the budget reconciliation bill.

• Former GOP leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Tillis voted against it.
• The closest the GOP got was 53 votes for a narrower amendment requiring photo ID to vote. Three other amendments requiring IDs for registering to vote or requiring proof of citizenship failed to get more than 50 votes when they came up in April and June.
• "The will is not there, and the votes aren't there. ... I'm into reality," Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told us when asked about Lee and Scott's efforts.

But Scott and Lee are publicly pushing leadership to use aggressive procedural tactics until the bill passes.

• "Let's pass the SAVE America Act now," Lee replied yesterday to a post from Thune's X account. "As I've been asking you to do for months, please bring it up now and announce that we will debate it until it passes."
• Thune retorted today: "Sometimes when something hasn't been done in 100 years there's a reason for that."

— Stef Kight

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War powers

In a rare bipartisan move, the Senate on Tuesday voted to limit President Trump's war powers by directing him to remove US military forces from the conflict in Iran. The measure sends a clear signal that many lawmakers remain uneasy about deeper US involvement. President Trump, meanwhile, called the vote "poorly timed and meaningless." Read more.

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🤬 Summer from hell

President Trump is making life hell for Senate Republicans, and they're returning the favor.

• "I make no apologies for standing up to the president," Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) told reporters after he got into a shouting match with Trump today at a Senate GOP lunch. "I made it clear that I wasn't going to be bullied."

🤬 Why it matters: One of the deepest GOP ruptures of Trump's second term has opened over his push for a pre-midterm elections crackdown via the SAVE Act.

• To his fury, Trump is finding that senators he's written off, alienated or even helped defeat in primaries are choosing Senate traditions over his political demands.
• In the middle is Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who's been blunt with the reality that Trump doesn't have the votes to get what he wants.
• "I'm certainly not giving my consent to that," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told reporters today about ending the filibuster.

‼️ Zoom in: Trump's lunch today with Senate Republicans only seemed to move White House-Senate relations from bad to worse.

• It became a shouting match with Cassidy over the administration's lack of information-sharing with the Senate on Iran.
• Trump rubbed Cassidy's primary defeat last month in his face during the closed-door meeting, sources told us.

🛑 Just before the lunch, Trump canceled an event to sign and tout a bipartisan housing package — a bill the White House praised yesterday as "one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history."

• Trump said he would not sign the bill until the SAVE Act, requiring voter ID and proof of citizenship to vote, is passed.
• Last week, Trump delayed the Senate confirmation process for Jay Clayton, ensuring Bill Pulte would serve as acting director of national intelligence, at least temporarily.
• The president has continued his long campaign against the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass most legislation in the Senate, and the blue slips process, which allows senators to block judicial nominations in their state.

👎 The other side: The bloc of GOP senators willing to defy Trump has grown.

• Cassidy and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) have been far more willing to speak their mind since losing recent primaries to Trump-backed candidates.
• They join Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who are leaving the Senate and have less reason to fear Trump's political blowback.
• That's on top of the usual suspects like Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Murkowski, who have long been willing to vote against their party.

The bottom line: It's a midterm year. Republicans want to talk about affordability and hammer democratic socialists.

• Instead, they're sitting through presidential rants about the filibuster and legislation with no clear path through the Senate.

— Stef Kight

Go deeper

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Dems fear their own Freedom Caucus

Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios

House Democrats are preparing for a caucus in 2027 that is expected to be significantly more outspoken and left-wing than the one they have now. Why it matters: It wasn't all that easy to integrate the four-member "Squad" into the Democratic fold. Now, party leadership anticipates it will have to contend with a much larger cohort of rabble-rousers. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) predicted "it will be difficult" to rein in these newly elected democratic socialists: "I think people that follow that [ideology] will cause problems." "If they're actually serious legislators, then they're going to have to be able to work with people," a House Democrat told us. "If not, then they'll just be the Freedom Caucus of the left." Driving the news: The number of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members in Congress is set to more than double following yesterday's New York primaries. State Assembly member Claire Valdez won the seat of retiring Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.), and activist Darializa Avila Chevalier unseated Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.). They join Pennsylvania state Rep. Chris Rabb, a DSA member who won the primary to succeed Rep. Dwight Evans (D-Pa.) last month, along with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). Zoom out: Factoring in left-wing candidates broadly aligned with the DSA, the numbers get even more daunting for the party establishment. The primary wins of now-Rep. Analilia Mejia and Adam Hamawy in New Jersey, the Rev. Frederick Haynes III in Texas, Randy Villegas in California and Matthew Dunlap in Maine were all major victories for the left. Several other progressives are seen as well-positioned to potentially unseat incumbent House Democrats: Mai Vang and Angela Gonzales-Torres in California, Melat Kiros in Colorado, Elijah Manley in Florida, former Rep. Cori Bush in Missouri, and Donavan McKinney in Michigan. What we're hearing: These candidates are already communicating and coordinating with each other in various text chains, with several telling us they plan to continue to work together as a bloc in Congress. "We have to deliver something, and whether it's being a part of the Congressional Progressive [Caucus] or maybe doing our own thing, I don't know," McKinney said. "We have to just push and people have to see us fighting." Said Vang: "As a new cohort of progressive elected, we have leverage ... so [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries needs to be aligned with that. And when I get to the halls of Congress, I do look forward to organizing with my colleagues." Jeffries "knows how to pull people together," said Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), who is a member of Democratic leadership, noting that Ocasio-Cortez "has been a part of our caucus for a long time." — Andrew Solender

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🏛️ Trump visit goes off rails

President Trump abruptly scrapped the signing of a blockbuster bipartisan housing bill yesterday before walking into a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans and getting into a shouting match over Iran, Axios' Stef W. Kight writes.

• Why it matters: Trump's demand that the Senate gut its own rules to pass a pre-midterm voter ID crackdown has opened one of the deepest GOP ruptures of his second term.

Just before the Senate GOP lunch, Trump canceled an event to sign and tout the bipartisan housing package — a bill the White House praised just yesterday as "one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American history."

• He said he won't sign until senators pass the SAVE America Act, which requires voter ID and proof of citizenship to vote — holding hostage a bill that passed with astonishing bipartisan margins.

👀 Inside the room: The lunch erupted into a clash between Trump and outgoing Sen. Bill Cassidy — one of four Republicans who voted Tuesday for a war powers resolution to rein in Trump's military campaign in Iran.

• Trump kicked things off by calling out all four senators who backed the resolution.
• Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump after Jan. 6, told Trump, "You have not told the American people what's going on" with the Iran war. "It was supposed to last four weeks. It's lasted four months," the senator told reporters afterward.

Via X

From there, the meeting went off the rails. The president twisted the knife, bringing up Cassidy's recent primary loss to a Trump-backed challenger, which effectively ended Cassidy's political career.

• "If someone tries to bully me … I ain't going to put up with it," Cassidy told reporters.
• Hours later, Cassidy struck a warmer tone, thanking Vice President Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff for an Iran briefing after receiving a "quick invitation to the White House to address many of my concerns."

🗳️ Late last night, Senate Republicans tried to appease Trump: They reversed themselves on Tuesday's vote rebuking him on the Iran war, giving him a symbolic win. Get the latest.

• Go deeper: Inside the Trump-Senate meltdown ...

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Senate Republicans reject war powers resolution after Trump berates them Senate Republicans held the late-night vote Wednesday to try to appease the president, after he harangued them face to face earlier in the day for allowing a vote to block his war in Iran on Tuesday. Read more.

What to know: In the meeting, President Donald Trump exchanged particularly harsh words with Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of four Republicans who had voted with Democrats on the measure. Cassidy later changed his position after he received a White House briefing on the war.    Trump also called off a scheduled signing ceremony on a bipartisan housing bill that GOP lawmakers were touting as an election-year achievement. Trump said he wouldn’t sign the legislation until they send him the SAVE America Act, his bill to require proof of citizenship for all voters. North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis said he doesn’t know why Trump is holding the housing bill “hostage” for the voting bill that “will never pass in this Congress.”

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‼️ Mods on "war" footing

Darializa Avila Chevalier, a democratic socialist who won a Democratic House primary in New York, during a rally last week. Photo: Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Moderate House Democrats are warning they're prepared for "war" if incoming progressives and democratic socialists try to hijack the House floor to secure ideological concessions. Why it matters: This strategy would mean even more work for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to keep his caucus unified come 2027. "Clearly, there has to be organization," one centrist House Democrat told us. "You can't just wring your hands on this stuff." "There's going to be a war," a second centrist lawmaker said, calling the incoming leftist members "bomb-throwers, not problem solvers." State of play: The New York congressional primaries on Tuesday were a wake-up call for many Democrats on Capitol Hill. DSA members Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez won hotly competitive primaries, and progressive Brad Lander ousted Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.). The trio joins over half a dozen other left-wing candidates who have won primaries this year and another half-dozen vying to unseat more moderate Democratic incumbents. Add that to the current "Squad" members in the House and their allies, and you would start to get Congress' most sizable left-wing bloc in the 21st century. Between the lines: There is a good chance these lawmakers, moving en bloc, would be able to kill party-line votes to get their demands met. The right-wing House Freedom Caucus has used this strategy repeatedly over the last few years, taking advantage of slim GOP majorities to try to get concessions from leadership. Mid-decade redistricting has reduced the historically small number of battleground House seats, meaning any Democratic majority in 2027 would likely be small. What they're saying: "What you're seeing in these elections across the country is voters who are saying, 'I am sick and tired of your loyalty to the establishment,'" progressive Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) said in an interview. "We have some real fighters that will stand up for what's right," said Adam Hamawy, the Democratic nominee in a safely blue House seat in New Jersey. What we're hearing: Moderate Democrats say they are prepared to use their own large numbers to enact the same strategy. "If we have a tight enough majority, you're going to see a group of moderates do exactly the same thing: 'We won't vote for X unless we get Y,'" said the second centrist House Democrat who spoke to us anonymously. A senior House Democrat, asked about the possibility of the left moving collectively to force concessions, similarly said "you'll see Blue Dogs" do the same — referring to the centrist Blue Dog Coalition. The intrigue: Some Democratic centrists are also floating breaking a potential logjam by doing what their moderate GOP counterparts have done repeatedly under Speaker Mike Johnson — signing onto discharge petitions. "The margins may force bipartisanship — you already see what's happening on the floor with discharge petitions," a third Democratic centrist told us. The lawmaker argued that leadership should go along with it: "Negotiating with these guys [on the left] never works out well because they'll never be satisfied." The bottom line: "At the end of the day, Hakeem's got to realize what his real base is," the third centrist lawmaker said. — Andrew Solender

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🏆 Johnson's dual wins

Speaker Mike Johnson emerged from a White House meeting with two much-needed wins:

1. President Trump publicly urged House Republicans to stop tanking procedural votes, which could help unstick the House floor.
2. Johnson officially transmitted the bipartisan housing bill to the White House, a sign of confidence that it's on track to become law after Trump had refused to sign it just a day earlier.

Why it matters: The SAVE America Act has consumed the House GOP, with some Republicans frustrated that a bill they've already passed three times is now paralyzing their agenda.

• Johnson was forced to scrap votes and end the House's workweek early after conservatives made clear they would tank rule votes on the floor over the Senate's failure to act on SAVE.

Driving the news: "I think it's a shame that it got canceled yesterday," Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) told us of the housing bill signing ceremony.

• "I totally disagree with the tactic. These are his New York real estate leverage tactics he's trying to apply to the government, and I don't agree with it," Fitzpatrick added.
• "He should sign it. ... This is a win, and the House already voted on this SAVE Act three times," Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told us, adding that Republicans should work with Democrats on a bipartisan version of SAVE.

Zoom in: The repeated shutdowns of House floor action are wearing on members across the conference.

• "The SAVE America Act? It's over there," Rep. Carlos Giménez (R-Fla.) told us, gesturing toward the Senate.
• "What I don't like about holding the rule hostage ... is that it denies me, and the 750,000 people I represent, a vote," House GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) told us.
• "With them being obstructionist like they are, that's unfortunate, because we can't get our work done," Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) told us.

The bottom line: Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) told reporters today she isn't promising to support next week's rule if leadership blocks her effort to attach SAVE to the annual defense bill.

— Kate Santaliz