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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is using President Trump’s legislative agenda to “secretly explode” the Pentagon’s budget by adding $150 billion in military spending onto the national debt. “This bill is going to spend $300 billion in the first two years … $300 billion on military and border,” Paul, a critic of the House-passed version of the GOP mega bill, told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow in an interview on Wednesday. Paul said the spending cuts in the bill amount to $1.5 trillion over 10 years or about $150 billion per year. “In the first year...

Republican lawmakers are breathing a sigh of relief that the courts are putting the brakes on President Trump’s trade war, which has pummeled markets, created economic uncertainty and taken a bite out of Trump’s approval ratings. It’s unclear who will win the final legal battle, which could end up in the Supreme Court. But Republicans for now are mostly hoping Trump takes a political win in the form of judicial decisions that could hold back his trade war or even put the tariffs on ice. “I’m sure that Republican senators are secretly rooting for the Supreme Court to uphold the...

The fiscal impact of President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which one prominent budget hawk called a “debt bomb,” is becoming a significant political concern among Republican lawmakers who have made little progress toward offsetting the $3 trillion projected cost of the legislation. Some GOP senators fear that the bill’s failure to rein in federal spending in a substantial way over the next decade is fueling jitters in the bond market, where soft demand for U.S. debt has caused yields to climb in recent weeks. And they worry that if Republicans pass Trump’s bill on party-line votes in both chambers, they...

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) immediately announced his opposition to the House-passed bill Thursday, vowing to vote against it unless Senate Republican leaders remove a provision to raise the federal debt limit by $4 trillion over the next two years. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), an outspoken fiscal hawk, said Thursday that there are four Senate Republican conservatives who will vote against the House bill as currently drafted, which would be enough to sink the bill if there is full attendance. Johnson said: “I think I’ve got at least four right now that this is not going anywhere.”

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman (D) says former aides who voiced their concerns about his mental health have a “bizarre grudge” against him. Fetterman, who was hospitalized in 2023 for clinical depression, nine months after he suffered a stroke, says he’s doing well and plans to serve out the rest of his Senate term, despite a warning from his former chief of staff that he’s acting erratically and could pose a danger to himself. “For me, it’s like in the ‘Goodfellas’: everyone takes a beating sometimes,” he told video journalist Nicholas Ballasy when asked about allegations of erratic behavior made by...

Republican lawmakers say there’s a good chance that President Trump’s trade war will boomerang on Republicans politically in 2026, as rising prices and shrinking growth could offset other accomplishments by the GOP. Republican senators are pointing to the 1932 and 1982 elections as historical examples of when trade wars and resulting price inflation hurt their party at the ballot box, and they are worried that history could repeat itself. Many Republican lawmakers view tariffs as a tax hike on American consumers, and some note that the last two times Congress enacted tax hikes on the scale of Trump’s recent tariffs,...

Senate Republicans want Elon Musk to stop talking about Social Security, and the Department of Government Efficiency to leave it alone. Musk’s statement that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme,” and his plans to cut up to 12 percent of the Social Security Administration’s workforce, are giving GOP lawmakers heartburn. They warn that Social Security reform is known as the “third rail” of politics for a reason: Any party that touches it is likely to get zapped come Election Day. And Republicans fear that reductions in staff and field offices will boomerang on them, predicting constituents will grow frustrated if...

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has been the target of scathing criticism from members of his own party after voting for a Republican-drafted stopgap spending bill that cut many nondefense programs, says things are looking good for the Democratic Party, which he says has “a real direction now.” Schumer told The New York Times that President Trump’s agenda of slashing the federal government to pave the way for trillions of dollars in tax cuts has underscored the Democratic Party’s identity as the party of workers, even though some Democrats fear that’s no longer seen as true. “I don’t...

Senate Republicans are panning President Trump’s proposal for the United States to take over war-torn Gaza and push nearly 2 million Palestinians in the region to resettle elsewhere, with several GOP lawmakers dismissing the plan as unrealistic. Even so, some GOP lawmakers are praising Trump for coming up with “fresh ideas” to address a bloody conflict spanning decades that has defied years of American effort to broker peace. Republican senators say Trump’s proposal to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East” is gaining little traction on Capitol Hill and predict it won’t go anywhere, just like his plans...

President Trump’s sweeping pardons of more than 1,500 people charged with crimes related to the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, including individuals who assaulted police officers, stunned Republican lawmakers who witnessed firsthand the chaos on Capitol Hill four years ago. Trump’s action, which defied assurances from his allies that he would examine convictions on a case-by-case basis and not grant clemency to people who committed violence, divided GOP senators and overshadowed talk about his first-100-days agenda. GOP lawmakers are largely willing to overlook the hundreds of people who entered the Capitol illegally four years ago, which disrupted the certification...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told a bipartisan group of senators Thursday that he could bring Russia to the negotiating table next year if the Biden administration speeds up shipments of weapons to Ukraine and greenlights missile strikes deeper into Russia. In a closed-door meeting that lasted about 90 minutes, Zelensky told senators that he needs more F-16 fighter jets and long-range missiles with capability to strike more than 100 miles into Russia, promising that Russian President Vladimir Putin would negotiate a peace deal if his own country faces a greater military threat. “He’s saying that within the [military aid] package...

Senate Republicans are feeling frustrated and disappointed by former President Trump’s debate performance and his inability to resist taking the bait from Vice President Harris on side issues such as people leaving his rallies early. GOP lawmakers fear Trump’s irate rants onstage will be the main takeaway for many undecided voters who tuned into the 90-minute debate, and some senators are hesitating over whether Trump should even agree to another one. GOP senators are also distancing themselves from Trump’s false claim that he won the 2020 election, which he repeated Tuesday evening. And they feel bewildered by his wild claim...

Former Sen. Pat Toomey (R), who represented the key state of Pennsylvania for 12 years in the Senate, says he won’t vote for former President Trump or Vice President Harris in November’s election. Toomey noted during an interview on CNBC that he voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but can’t bring himself to support Trump again because of his efforts to overturn the results of the last presidential election. “When you lose an election and you try to overturn the results so that you can stay in power, you lose me. You lose me at that point,” Toomey said...

Some Senate Republicans are expressing concerns over former President Trump’s calls for political vengeance after the 2024 election, warning that retaliatory prosecutions will lead the country down a bad road. The Senate GOP’s top leaders — Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Whip John Thune (S.D.) — have shown no desire to embrace Trump’s calls to prosecute senior Biden administration officials or his longtime nemesis Hillary Clinton. And some GOP senators are pushing back against conservative colleagues who want to freeze Justice Department funding or defund special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal prosecutions of Trump. They don’t want to stumble into a...

Sen. JD Vance’s (R-Ohio) surprise appearance at a Manhattan courthouse to support former President Trump, and his qualified answer about supporting the results of the 2024 election, show he’s challenging Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) as the Senate front-runner to be Trump’s running mate in the fall. GOP senators and strategists say it’s hard to predict whom Trump will choose, but they say Scott and Vance are viewed as the two most likely choices within the Senate GOP conference. Vance and Scott are stepping up their efforts to grab Trump’s attention by staying close to his orbit and showing off their...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who voted twice to convict former President Trump on impeachment charges, is ruling out voting for Trump in 2024, citing a court’s finding that the former president sexually abused E. Jean Carroll in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the 1990s. Romney’s announcement that he won’t vote for Trump isn’t surprising. But it does show him sharpening his rhetoric against the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination by saying the reason for his opposition is a Manhattan jury’s finding last year that Trump sexually abused and defamed Carroll, awarding her $5 million in damages. A New...

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2-ranking Senate Democrat, called on embattled Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) to resign Wednesday. Durbin had declined to call for Menedez to step down during a television interview Sunday but he changed course Wednesday after 22 Senate Democrats called for Menendez to leave office. “Leaders in New Jersey, including the Governor and my Senate colleague Cory Booker, have made it clear that Sen. Menendez can no longer serve. He should step down,” Durbin wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Republican senators say they’re worried that conservative populism, though always a part of the GOP, is beginning to take over the party, becoming more radical and threatening to cause them significant political problems heading into the 2024 election. GOP senators are saying they’re being increasingly confronted by constituents who buy into discredited conspiracy theories such as the claim that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election or that federal agents incited the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Growing distrust with government institutions, from the FBI, CIA and Department of Justice to the Centers for Disease Control and National...

Senior Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are raising concerns about what role Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon will have in handling the case the Department of Justice is bringing against former President Trump. Cannon, a member of the conservative Federalist Society who was confirmed to sit on the district court for the Southern District of Florida shortly after the 2020 election, made headlines last year when she ruled that an independent arbiter must review the 13,000 government records seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in August. Her decision was later struck down by a three-judge panel made up from members...

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said Republicans shouldn’t have let Democrats confirm so many Biden nominees to the federal courts when the Senate was evenly split during Biden’s first two years in office. “The truth is the leadership squandered a 50-50 Senate. They could have at the committee level made a major push to vote together and to stop at least the circuit court nominees. Every single one of them would have required a discharge petition. We didn’t do that,” Hawley told The Hill. “There was no concerted effort made whatsoever,” he added. “Say what...