US president urges congressional Republicans to use budget reconciliation procedure to enact his priorities
Donald Trump has demanded that congressional Republicans get to work on a party-line measure that would ensure defense spending reaches its highest level in decades and also make a likely fruitless attempt to impose a host of new restrictions on voters nationwide.
In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, the president said he was “calling on Republicans in Congress to IMMEDIATELY advance and pass the forthcoming $350 Billion Reconciliation Bill”, which would also include the Save America Act, a rightwing makeover of elections that his allies in Congress have sought to pass for months, without success.
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© Photograph: Aaron Schwartz/Pool/Aaron Schwartz - Pool/CNP/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Aaron Schwartz/Pool/Aaron Schwartz - Pool/CNP/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Aaron Schwartz/Pool/Aaron Schwartz - Pool/CNP/Shutterstock
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The US supreme court has published its opinions, but none of the cases we’ve been watching for were part of the decisions today.
In comments reported by NBC News, House speaker Mike Johnson has said it is “stunning” to him that “House Democrat leadership has put out a statement saying that they’re willing to allow the number one national security tool to go dark over some political disagreement over a very short-term temporary appointment”.
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© Photograph: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
© Photograph: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
© Photograph: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images
For months, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, had championed legislation to send additional security aid to Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia’s invasion. The proposal, however, was stuck: House Republican leaders refused to consider it, and so the bill languished.
Last month, however, it became unstuck: Proponents of the legislation managed to go around the GOP leadership thanks to a discharge petition — a tactic that allows members to bring a bill to the floor if it’s formally endorsed by a majority of the House. As MS NOW reported last week, the Ukraine aid package cleared the House with 226 votes, including 18 Republicans.
This week, it happened again. NBC News reported:
The House tonight passed another Democrat-led bill that made its way to the floor after a group of Republicans bucked their party’s leadership and joined Democrats in forcing a vote.
The Faster Labor Contracts Act, which would force employers to start negotiating with a newly certified union within 10 days of receiving the request, passed with the support of 20 Republicans and all Democrats.
Critics will note that both this bill and the Ukraine aid still have to clear the Senate, where the measures’ fate remains uncertain, and they would still need Donald Trump’s signature to become law. It’s a fair point.
But let’s not miss the forest for the trees. Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania said in an online written statement, “If the House Floor was managed properly, discharge petitions would never be needed. A successful discharge petition is clear and direct evidence of a poorly managed House Floor — because it demonstrates that the will of the majority of the People is being thwarted by the privileged few.”
Fitzpatrick didn’t mention House Speaker Mike Johnson by name, but given the context, he didn’t have to.
Indeed, it might not be immediately obvious just how embarrassing these latest developments are for the Louisiana Republican and his leadership team.
In the past century or so, successful discharge petitions have been very rare. The reason is simple: Such petitions have long been seen as a slap in the face of a sitting House speaker.
As New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore recently explained, “Indeed, prior to Johnson’s ascent to the Speakership, only two 21st-century discharge petitions achieved the 218 signatures needed to trigger a floor vote.”
This roughly once-per-decade average has undergone a dramatic revision under the Louisiana Republican’s tenure. In the last Congress, which ended in early January 2025, there were two successful discharge petitions, which was itself a significant total. Meanwhile, in the current Congress, which is far from over, there have been six successful discharge petitions, which The Hill accurately described as “extraordinary.”
The first came in March 2025, and it dealt with proxy voting for new parents serving in Congress. In November 2025, another discharge petition advanced the Epstein Files Transparency Act; five days later, a measure to repeal an executive order that gutted federal workers’ union rights also received 218 signatures.
The list grew longer as discharge petitions related to extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, providing temporary protected status for Haitian migrants and extending aid to Ukraine all crossed the necessary threshold.
Usually, members embarrass Johnson by ignoring his wishes and voting against legislation he has urged them to support. But this flurry of successful discharge petitions, which has no modern precedent, makes the House speaker appear even more diminished.
Kilgore’s recent piece added, “Signs of weakness invite further revolts by House members who fear voters more than this mild-mannered former backbencher from Louisiana, whose authority is totally dependent on Trump’s backing, which can be erratic during times when the president is distracted by nonlegislative matters like ending wars and naming things after himself. Politicians, like guard dogs, can smell fear and irresolution.”
The question, then, is less whether we’ll see more successful discharge petitions and more a question of when, as Johnson’s weak hold on power unravels further.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
The post The more lawmakers go around Mike Johnson, the more obvious his weakness becomes appeared first on MS NOW.
In the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, 2021, Senate Republican leaders knew that Donald Trump was pressuring their members to reject certification of Joe Biden’s victory, but they pleaded with GOP senators to discard the outgoing president’s wishes. In fact, Senate Republican leaders told members there wasn’t even any point in trying, since the radical scheme wouldn’t work anyway.
Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the then-majority whip, publicly conceded in December 2020 that the plan to reject election certification “would go down like a shot dog.”
Trump wasn’t pleased. In fact, the defeated president labeled Thune a “RINO” — “Republican in Name Only” — on social media, adding, “South Dakota doesn’t like weakness. He will be primaried in 2022, political career over!!!”
In 2022, Thune ran unopposed — in both the primary and the general election. What’s more, his career was far from over, and he became the Senate majority leader early last year.
In 2026, there’s a relative détente between Thune and Trump, though in recent weeks, it’s become increasingly clear the two Republican leaders are not on the same page.
“Thune has to say ‘no’ to Trump a lot,” Punchbowl News reported. “And second-term Trump clearly doesn’t like this at all.”
Consider the developments from the past few weeks:
To be sure, the president hasn’t thrown any recent tantrums about the South Dakotan, but with the way things are going, it’s hard not to wonder if the dam might soon break.
The post With increasing frequency, GOP’s Thune and Trump are not on the same page appeared first on MS NOW.
As 2026 got underway and much of the country was mortified by the deaths of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, the public backlash was swift and quantifiable. An Economist/YouGov poll found that a 47% plurality of Americans said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was making Americans less safe, while a 46% plurality said ICE should be abolished altogether.
A Quinnipiac poll released at about the same time found that 57% of Americans disapproved of the way ICE was enforcing immigration laws.
The need for reform seemed obvious. In fact, an NBC News poll released in February found that almost 3 in 4 U.S. adults supported either “reforming” or “abolishing” the agency.
Democratic officials seized on those public attitudes and demanded that Congress impose new restrictions and safeguards on federal immigration agencies as part of pending spending bills that fund ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Four months later, the Republican majority ignored the polls, circumvented Democratic lawmakers and narrowly approved a spending package that will fund ICE and CBP for the remainder of Donald Trump’s second term, throwing an additional $70 billion at immigration enforcement. (The party used the budget reconciliation process, which prevented Senate Democrats from imposing a 60-vote threshold in the upper chamber.)
GOP leaders beat back efforts to include a provision formally killing off the idea of a White House compensation fund, but that wasn’t the only thing missing from the package: The legislation includes literally nothing in the way of new safeguards or restrictions on federal immigration agencies or their enforcement tactics.
In other words, polls showed strong public support for changes to the status quo. Republicans decided they did not care.
In a written statement, Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said, “House Republicans are choosing to hand over $70 billion more in taxpayer dollars to fund ICE and Border Patrol’s chaos in our communities. This is on top of the $140 billion they already gave ICE in their ‘Big, Ugly Bill.’ MAGA Republicans refused to negotiate on popular and essential reforms to responsibly enforce our immigration laws while respecting the civil liberties of our people. I voted hell no.”
The Maryland congressman added, “ICE and Border Patrol aren’t targeting ‘the worst of the worst.’ College students, nurses, babies and children, pregnant women, cancer patients, and even American citizens have been rounded up in their lawless, brutal raids. This corrupt agency is making all of us less safe. We need affordable health care, not an open money spigot for ICE corruption and masked federal agents killing American citizens and disappearing our neighbors from the streets.”
The president is expected to sign the package into law, probably as early as Wednesday.
The post Republicans ignore public calls for reforms, throw another $70 billion at ICE and CPB appeared first on MS NOW.
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