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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says he does not support President Trump’s proposal for Republicans to “take over” voting procedures in more than a dozen states and “nationalize” the midterm elections, declaring Trump’s call to action as blatantly unconstitutional.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says he “saw no evidence” to back the claims of senior Trump administration officials that Alex Pretti was attempting to assault law enforcement officers and instead “saw a man that was retreating” when he was shot and killed by federal officers in Minneapolis. “I saw no evidence — I saw a man that was retreating. He went to the middle of the street, he didn’t even obstruct traffic, he let a car go through. As the agents advanced on him, he retreated to the side of the street. A woman is violently...

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has sent letters to the heads of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to testify before his committee amid growing public controversy over immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis and other communities. Paul informed the leaders of President Trump’s immigration agencies in a tersely worded letter that “Congress has an obligation to conduct oversight” of what he called the “exceptional amount of funding” the Republican Congress has allocated to secure the borders and enforce immigration laws. “Congress has an obligation to conduct...

The move by the five GOP senators to curtail Trump’s powers as commander in chief represents one of the biggest schisms between the Senate Republican Conference and the White House during the president’s first year of his second term. The votes enraged Trump, who lashed out at Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), one of the five Republicans, in a “profanity-laced” phone call after she supported the measure, reading her the riot act, according to one source. The Senate will vote this week on a motion to proceed to the war powers resolution and spend a chunk of the week debating it....

Republican senators are warning Attorney General Pam Bondi not to slow-walk the public release of records and documents related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following votes by the House and Senate demanding the documents. The calls come amid speculation that the Justice Department may cite ongoing investigations or other reasons to hold back material. Bondi said Wednesday that “new information” obtained by investigators had spurred the Justice Department to reverse its earlier decision to close investigations related to Epstein. Democrats are warning that new investigations into high-profile associates of Epstein, such as former President Clinton and former Treasury...

At least eight moderate Senate Democrats are meeting in hopes of finding a deal to end the monthlong government shutdown, but sources familiar with the closely held conversations say they will need strong assurances from the GOP before voting to reopen the government. The eight Democrats, who include Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) and Jon Ossoff (Ga.), the latter a top Republican target in 2026, will need to feel comfortable with whatever is offered by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), and they may need to hear from President Trump himself, sources told The Hill. The group huddled in the Capitol...

Republican senators are increasingly uneasy about President Trump’s standoff with Democratic governors over deploying National Guard troops from other states to Portland, Ore., and Chicago. The conflict between federal and state authorities escalated dramatically over the weekend when Trump moved to send National Guard soldiers to Oregon and Illinois despite opposition from their respective governors, Tina Kotek and JB Pritzker. Trump’s use of military forces was all the more controversial because a Trump-appointed federal judge for the District of Oregon ruled Saturday that the administration could not federalize Oregon’s National Guard to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in...

Senate Republicans are growing increasingly exasperated over President Trump’s refusal to give them permission to move tough bipartisan sanctions legislation against Russia and countries that buy its oil. Trump pressed European allies over the weekend to levy harsher sanctions against Russia, but he has dragged his feet on the bipartisan sanctions bill, which Republican senators were hoping to get done in July. The failure to act is fueling growing disillusionment among some Senate Republicans that Trump is not serious about helping Ukraine. One Republican senator who requested anonymity to comment candidly on the stalemate over the sanctions legislation questioned whether...

Republican senators were appalled by President Trump’s rough treatment of 91-year-old Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the Senate’s most senior Republican, on social media and are pushing back on Trump’s attempts to squeeze the senator into abolishing an arcane procedure known as the Senate blue slip. GOP senators were not pleased that Trump piled so much pressure on Grassley, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to get rid of a long-established Senate tradition. Trump piled on by reposting on Truth Social posts accusing Grassley of being a “RINO” and “sneaky” and standing in the way of Trump’s agenda. Sen. Thom...

Republican senators aren’t happy about how President Trump treated Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), whom the president blasted last week on social media after Tillis said he wouldn’t vote for Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” Tillis is highly regarded among colleagues as a team player focused on getting results, and many Republicans thought he would have had the best chance of keeping the North Carolina Senate seat in GOP hands.

Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has unveiled a plan to override Homeland Security Committee Chair Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) proposal to fund border security and immigration enforcement activities at roughly half the amount favored by Senate and House Republican leaders. Paul created an uproar two weeks ago when he unveiled his portion of the Trump agenda megabill that would spend $6.5 billion on completing President Trump’s border wall and $22.5 billion on expanding detention facilities for migrants. Now Graham has answered with a move of his own, unveiling a proposal to restore funding for the border wall and Immigration...

The Senate parliamentarian has rejected several more provisions in the Republican megabill to enact President Trump’s agenda, including language authorizing states to conduct border security and immigration enforcement, which traditionally have been duties of the federal government. Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough also ruled against language in the bill that would increase the Federal Employees Retirement Systems contribution rate for new civil servants if they do not agree to give up civil service protections to become at-will employees. Additionally, the parliamentarian advised against a section of the bill that would allow the executive branch to reorganize federal government agencies — or eliminate...

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...