senate

Police spokesperson Randulf Tuano says one person has been arrested after gunshots rang out in Senate.

⁠The ⁠Philippine Senate President says that a politician wanted by the International Court (ICC) was no longer in the Senate building where he had ⁠been taking refuge, fearing his arrest.

Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody “war on drugs”, has ⁠been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of.

“The ⁠sergeant-at-arms has confirmed that he ⁠is no ⁠longer in the ⁠building,” Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano told reporters on Thursday.

The announcement comes a day after gunfire rang out at the Senate, where dela Rosa had been holed up. Confusion and chaos filled the legislature as people inside scrambled for cover on Wednesday, hours after dela Rosa, had appealed to his supporters on social media to mobilise and said law enforcement agents were planning on arresting him.

The incident caused chaos, with a heavy police presence and armed guards at the Senate. Protests were also held outside, and more than a dozen shots were fired after the Marines were called in to help the situation.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr held an emergency meeting with government and security chiefs on Thursday, as police spokesperson Randulf Tuano told DZBB radio that one person had been arrested following the shooting and investigations were under way.

“The person has provided names, but these still need confirmation,” Tuano told the radio station.

Dela Rosa has denied involvement in the illegal killings, but on Monday, the ICC unsealed an arrest warrant for him.

Duterte is also accused of crimes against humanity and has been held in ICC custody in The Hague since March 2025. The ICC estimates that between 12,000 and 30,000 people were killed from 2016 to 2019 in the former president’s “war on drugs”.

Reporting from Manila, Al Jazeera’s Jamela Alindogan said two independent, credible sources confirmed that dela Rosa had fled the building.

“He was able to escape at around 2 or 3 this morning,” she said.

Lawyer Jimmy Bondoc, who represents dela Rosa, also told reporters that he spoke to the lawmaker late at night and believed he was inside the Senate after the incident.

“As his lawyer, I asked him if you have plans to leave, he said none,” Bondoc told reporters.

In an interview that aired on DZBB radio on Thursday morning, dela Rosa said he would “exhaust all available remedies” to block his transfer to the ICC, and after learning about the conditions Duterte was being held under, he was no longer willing to fight his case at The Hague.

It remains unclear when the interview was initially conducted.

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans on Wednesday again blocked Democratic legislation that would halt President Trump’s war with Iran, but the number of GOP senators voting against the war grew.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against the war for the first time since it began at the end of February. Two other Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky, also voted against the war, as they had done previously.

The war powers legislation ultimately failed to advance 49-50, with Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania the only Democrat to oppose it, yet the close tally reflected growing unease with Trump’s war. Several other Republican senators have signaled they want Congress to weigh in on the direction of the conflict.

“There will be a day — and it might be soon, I believe — where this Senate will say to the president, ‘Stop this war,’” Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who has spearheaded his party’s tactic of forcing repeated votes on the war, said before the vote.

Even if it passes the Senate, a war powers resolution would have a slim chance of passing the House and would also certainly be vetoed by Trump. But Democrats say the votes are about building political pressure on the president either to withdraw from the conflict or seek congressional authorization to wage the war.

Trump officials downplay role for Congress

The White House, meanwhile, has asserted that it does not need congressional authorization for the war and has circumvented legal requirements to gain approval from Congress to continue the military campaign. It claims that it has “terminated” hostilities with Iran because the U.S. has entered a ceasefire.

That posture has created tension between the Republican-controlled Congress and the White House because presidents under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 are required to obtain authorization from Congress after 60 days of engaging in a conflict.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told lawmakers this week that the U.S. could start attacking Iran again without the White House seeking congressional approval. He told Murkowski during a hearing on Tuesday that the Trump administration believes it has “all the authorities necessary.”

Murkowski voiced skepticism about that argument. She pointed to the troops and war ships deployed to the region, saying, “It doesn’t appear that hostilities have ended.”

GOP leaders back the war, but unease grows

Republican leadership has continued to back the war with Iran, arguing that the stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz that has blocked most commercial shipping puts more economic pressure on Iran than it does on the U.S.

“Iran’s economy is on life support. Its leadership is eliminated,” said Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 2 Republican in leadership, during a floor speech Wednesday.

He also argued that the Democratic effort on the war is all about undermining Trump. Forcing the issue just as he arrived in China for a summit would “pull out the rug from under him,” Barrasso said.

Still, Republicans are also growing uneasy about the high gas prices, especially as the November elections draw near.

Sen. Mike Rounds, a Republican from South Dakota, said Wednesday he’d prefer that the two branches of government work out the constitutional issues instead of a congressional war powers vote or a potential challenge in court.

The two sides should sit down together and say “we have shared constitutional responsibilities,” Rounds said.

Democrats plan to keep forcing weekly votes on war powers resolutions and are looking ahead to put limitations on Trump during the debate over annual legislation that authorizes and funds the military.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat who sponsored Wednesday’s resolution, told reporters that he believes there is an “erosion of support, erosion of enthusiasm, an increase in skepticism” about the war from Republicans.

Groves writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Senate confirmed President Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, bringing new leadership to the world’s most powerful central bank at a fraught moment for the global economy.

Warsh was confirmed Wednesday in a largely party-line vote. His nomination had been thrown into doubt in recent months after Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said he would block the nomination while the Justice Department investigated Fed Chair Jerome H. Powell. The Powell inquiry was dropped in April, clearing the way for the Senate to confirm Warsh.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) urged colleagues to support Warsh during a floor speech Wednesday morning, saying it’s crucial that a Fed chair “understand not only the macro” but also “appreciate the microeconomy: and that’s the hardworking Americans, their jobs and their livelihoods.”

“Kevin Warsh is just such a person,” Thune said.

Warsh, 56, a former top Fed official, will become chair at an unusually difficult time for the independent agency.

Inflation has topped the Fed’s 2% target for five years and is now rising faster because of surging gas prices. The Fed’s interest rate-setting committee is divided and saw the most dissenting votes in more than three decades last month. And Powell, after years of personal attacks from the Republican president and an unprecedented legal investigation by the Justice Department, plans to stay on the Fed’s board even after his term as chair ends, potentially creating a competing power center.

Trump has demanded change at the Federal Reserve

The Fed has faced numerous threats to its independence from Trump, who has repeatedly attacked Powell for not cutting interest rates. Trump also sought to fire Fed Gov. Lisa Cook and launched an investigation into brief Senate testimony by Powell on a building renovation.

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said in a Fox News interview on Sunday that he believes the markets are relieved that Warsh “is going to help lower interest rates over time.”

“Obviously, data driven,” said Hassett. “I’m not putting any pressure on Kevin Warsh.”

In December, Trump said on his social media platform that he wanted a Fed chair who would cut interest rates when the stock market rose — the opposite of what traditional economics would prescribe — and added, “Anyone that disagrees with me will never be the Fed chairman!”

Trump’s comments have fueled concerns over whether Warsh will set rates based on economic conditions or seek to cut rates to appease Trump, even if doing so could worsen inflation. At Warsh’s confirmation hearing last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, derided him as a “sock puppet” for Trump. Warsh declined to say that Democrat Joe Biden had won the 2020 election against Trump, who has falsely claimed that voter fraud cost him reelection.

Still, Warsh denied at the hearing that Trump had pressured him to reduce the Fed’s key rate.

“The president never once asked me to commit to any particular interest rate decision, period,” Warsh said then. “Nor would I ever agree to do so if he had. … I will be an independent actor if confirmed as chair of the Federal Reserve.”

A critic of the Fed’s leadership in the past

Warsh has been highly critical of the Fed’s recent track record, particularly the inflation spike in 2021-22, the worst in four decades, and has called for “regime change.” Yet he has provided only broad outlines of what that change would involve.

He has called for limiting the Fed’s communications, which would be a sharp shift after decades of increasing transparency. He has argued that some of its communications tools, such as quarterly forecasts of where its key rate may head, have made it harder for officials to switch gears.

Senate Democrats also have condemned Warsh for not fully divulging the details of his extensive wealth, which disclosures show amounts to at least $100 million. His investments include stakes in Polymarket and SpaceX, but he hasn’t revealed how large those holdings are. He promised to sell all such assets within 90 days of being sworn in.

“He will be the wealthiest Fed chair in history, but he refuses to provide transparency to the American people about who he is entangled with,” Warren said.

Warsh faces difficult economic conditions

The Fed is still grappling with how to respond to the 50% jump in gas prices from the Iran war. The increase has boosted inflation, which reached 3.8% in April.

The Fed is tasked by Congress with keeping prices stable, which it seeks to do by raising its short-term rate to make borrowing and spending more expensive, cooling growth and inflation.

The Fed typically looks past temporary price increases that stem from supply disruptions, such as the war’s cutoff of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, because those prices typically level off — or even fall back down — once the supply is restored.

But the Fed also followed that approach after the COVID-19 pandemic snarled global supply chains for goods, lifting prices for things such as cars, furniture and electronics. Inflation turned out to last longer than expected, and Powell and other Fed officials have acknowledged they waited too long to raise rates. Inflation surged to 9.1% by June 2022.

The Fed’s rate-setting committee has kept rates unchanged for three straight meetings as it evaluates the effect of the gas price spike. At its most recent meeting last month, three members of the committee objected to language that suggested its next move would be a rate cut. They preferred more neutral language that would allow for a hike. Many Fed watchers saw those dissents as a warning shot to Warsh that he won’t be able to easily engineer rate reductions.

A fourth member of the 12-member committee, Stephen Miran, dissented in favor of a rate cut, as he has at every meeting since Trump appointed him to the Fed’s board last September. Miran is serving until a replacement is named, and Warsh will take his spot.

Powell, meanwhile, said at a news conference April 29 that he would remain as a Fed governor until the Justice Department closes its investigation into the Fed’s building project, the first time a chair may stay on the board for an extended period since 1948. His term as a governor lasts until January 2028.

U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro has dropped the government’s investigation, but she has said it could be reopened if the Fed’s inspector general office, which has looked into the renovation project since last July, finds evidence of criminal activity.

Rugaber and Cappelletti write for the Associated Press.

May 12 (UPI) — The South Carolina Senate voted Tuesday against a measure to extend its legislative session to redraw the state’s congressional map. President Donald Trump has pressured lawmakers to move forward with redistricting to give Republicans an advantage.

Five Republicans joined Democrats in voting against the resolution, which would have extended the session by a week, NBC News reported. This would have given the Senate more time to vote on a plan that would break up the state’s only Black-majority district. The legislative session ends Thursday, and the state’s primaries are June 9.

The redistricting push by Trump comes after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in late April that badly weakened a key part of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, one that had helped ensure minority groups could elect their choice of candidates.

State Sen. Shane Massey, a Republican and Senate majority leader, spoke out about the efforts before the vote, saying it’s a show of weakness to use redistricting to quash minority votes, Greenville News reported.

“My conscience is clear on this one,” Massey said. “I know what the right thing to do is.”

Massey said he’d received a call from Trump in recent days about pushing forward redistricting. On Monday night, Trump posted on social media that he was watching the vote closely.

“South Carolina Republicans: BE BOLD AND COURAGEOUS, just like the Republicans of the Great State of Tennessee were last week!” he wrote.

Last Thursday, the Tennessee state legislature passed a redistricting map that eliminated the state’s last Democrat-leaning, Black-majority district. Other Southern states have also been moving in this direction.

Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto said the vote sends a message that the state rejects a White House power grab, Greenville News reported.

“The people of this state expect us to focus on real issues affecting their daily lives, not carry out an outside political agenda,” he said.

Later Tuesday, Republican candidates for governor in South Carolina criticized the members of their party who voted against the resolution.

Rep. Nancy Mace, who’s been endorsed by Trump for the governor position, posted on social media that the state needs “a Governor who the statehouse will fear and listen to.”

“You know I’d whip every single ‘NO’ vote into shape if I was Governor,” she posted.

WASHINGTON — FBI Director Kash Patel angrily lashed out at a Democratic lawmaker at a budget hearing Tuesday, calling allegations that he drinks excessively on the job and has been unreachable at times to his staff “unequivocally, categorically false.”

“I will not be tarnished by baseless allegations,” Patel told Sen. Chris Van Hollen when the Maryland Democrat confronted him about a recent article in the Atlantic magazine that painted an unflattering portrait of his leadership of the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency. Patel has sued over the story. The Atlantic has said it stands by its reporting and will vigorously defend against the “meritless lawsuit.”

Patel shouted over Van Hollen and sought to turn the tables by accusing him of “slinging margaritas” in El Salvador, a reference to a visit the Democrat paid last year to Kilmar Abrego Garcia while he was jailed there following his arrest in Maryland.

The testy exchange occurred at an annual Senate committee budget hearing featuring Patel and other senior law enforcement leaders.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

PORTLAND, Maine — Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins says she has a benign essential tremor, disclosing the longtime health condition for the first time in her decades-long political career as she seeks reelection in one of this year’s toughest Senate races.

Collins first confirmed the tremor to WCSH-TV in Maine on Wednesday after facing questions about her health from appearances in recent videos, including her campaign announcement video.

The condition causes trembling in Collins’ hands, head and voice, and she said she has had it for the entirety of her nearly three-decade Senate career. It affects millions of Americans over the age of 40 and “does not interfere” with work, Collins said in a Thursday statement to the Associated Press. She said it is not a neurodegenerative condition.

“The tremor is occasionally inconvenient, and sometimes the subject of cruel comments online, but it does not hinder my ability to work and, as I said, is something that I have lived with for decades,” the statement said.

Health issues and candidates’ ages have drawn increased scrutiny in high-profile elections following Democratic President Joe Biden’s decision not to seek reelection in 2024 at age 81. Those questions have only lingered with Republican President Trump, who’s 79 and in recent months has been seen with bruising on the back of his hand, sometimes concealed with makeup. The White House acknowledged last year that Trump was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency.

Collins is up for reelection in a seat Democrats need to flip to have a chance to take back the Senate. Her likely opponent is Democrat Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and combat veteran, after Democratic Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign last week. Age has been an issue in the contest, with Collins, 73, and Mills, 78, more than three decades older than Platner, 41.

Platner acknowledged early in his campaign his own health problems. He has spoken openly about chronic pain in his shoulder and knees stemming from combat service, and he has said he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after serving at war. Platner has said he has a 100% disability rating from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs but continues to work as an oyster farmer.

“There are a lot of disabled combat veterans, or just disabled vets, at 100%, who still work,” Platner told WCSH last year. “It’s a very normal thing.”

Collins was first elected to the Senate in 1996 and said in her statement that she has had the condition for all of that time. Over the years, the condition has been noticeable in Collins’ debates and frequent public appearances.

As chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Collins has been at the forefront of the chamber’s many spending disputes this Congress, often leading the floor debate and providing the GOP’s closing arguments. She frequently engages with reporters in the hallways. Her streak of never missing a Senate vote is up to 9,966 and stands as the second-longest consecutive voting streak in the chamber’s history.

Tremors happen when nerves aren’t properly communicating with certain muscles. Essential tremor, sometimes called benign essential tremor, is one of the most common movement disorders, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The risk of developing it increases as people get older, but at least half of cases are inherited, meaning the tremor runs in the family, and those tend to begin at younger ages. It almost always involves shaky or trembling hands but also can affect the head, voice or lower limbs.

Whittle and Kruesi write for the Associated Press. Kruesi reported from Providence, R.I. AP writers Kevin Freking and Lauran Neergaard in Washington contributed to this report.

PORTSMOUTH, Va. — The FBI searched the Virginia state Senate leader’s office on Wednesday as part of a corruption investigation, a person familiar with the matter said. Federal agents also were seen at the senator’s nearby cannabis business.

The search at Virginia Sen. L. Louise Lucas’s district office in Portsmouth comes after the Democrat helped lead the state’s recent redistricting effort.

The FBI said only that it was conducting a court-authorized search warrant in Portsmouth. The person who confirmed the FBI’s search was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation by name and spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Besides the search at Lucas’ office, agents in FBI T-shirts also went into the nearby Cannabis Outlet, which she opened in 2021. Several entrances to its cannabis store parking lot were blocked by unmarked vehicles with flashing blue lights.

Lucas — a prominent backer of legalizing marijuana — has said the store sells legal hemp and CBD products. It has drawn scrutiny from local media amid allegations that some products were mislabeled.

Virginia has legalized pot possession, but retail sales of recreational marijuana remain illegal in the state.

A message seeking comment was left Wednesday on a cellphone for Lucas, who has been a state senator for 34 years.

State House Speaker Don Scott said he was deeply concerned by the FBI search.

“Right now, there is far more theatrics and speculation than actual information available to the public,” Scott, a Democrat, said in a statement, adding that more facts were needed “before anyone rushes to political conclusions.”

Gov. Abigail Spanberger declined to comment. Some other Virginia Democrats were quick to note that the search comes as the FBI and Justice Department have opened a spate of politically charged investigations into perceived adversaries of President Trump.

The context “must be acknowledged,” U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott said in a social media post.

Last week, the Justice Department charged former FBI Director James Comey with making a threatening Instagram post against Trump, an accusation that Comey — who for nearly a decade has drawn the president’s ire — has denied. A separate mortgage fraud case, ultimately dismissed by a court, targeted Democratic New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James, who had brought a major civil fraud lawsuit against Trump and his business.

The FBI and Justice Department have also provoked concerns among Democrats about ongoing election-related investigations, including the seizure by agents of ballots and other information from Fulton County, Ga.

Lucas has been a vocal leader of Virginia’s redistricting effort, which voters approved last month. A sign urging people to “vote yes” to “stop the MAGA power grab” still hung Wednesday on a fence separating her office’s parking lot from the parking for the cannabis shop.

Amid a national, state-by-state partisan redistricting fight kicked off by Trump’s desire to aid his fellow Republicans, Virginia voters OK’d a Democrat-backed constitutional amendment authorizing new U.S. House districts. The plan could help the party win up to four additional seats.

“We are not going to let anyone tilt the system without a response,” Lucas said after the vote. Trump, meanwhile, denounced the results.

The state Supreme Court let the referendum proceed but has yet to rule whether the effort is legal. The court is considering an appeal of a lower-court judge’s ruling that the amendment is invalid because lawmakers violated procedural requirements.

Voting districts typically are redrawn once a decade, after each census. But Trump last year urged Texas Republicans to redraw House districts to give the GOP an edge in the midterms. California Democrats reciprocated, and redistricting efforts soon cascaded across states.

Lucas, 82, has been a figure in Virginia politics since the 1980s, when she became the first Black woman elected to a City Council seat in her native Portsmouth. She now is the first woman and first African American to serve as the body’s president pro tempore.

Earlier in life, she was the Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s first female shipfitter, according to her biography in the state library. The job entails making, installing and repairing sometimes enormous metal assemblies for vessels.

In recent years, she has been the chief executive of a Portsmouth business that runs residences, day programs and transportation for intellectually disabled adults.

Tucker, Breed and Peltz write for the Associated Press. AP writers Dylan Lovan in Louisville, Ky.; Jake Offenhartz in New York; and Claudia Lauder in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson has lamented he would like to preside over a “normal Congress,” but the chamber the Republican is leading is anything but.

All-night sessions. Hours of dead zones with no action on the floor. Legislation being written on the fly, behind closed doors. Sudden votes scheduled. Spectacular failures. And, as happened this week, stunning turnarounds in which the House actually passes bills.

“Sometimes it’s an ugly process, sometimes it’s a long process,” Johnson said after House passage of a bipartisan bill to fund much of the Department of Homeland Security, ending the longest agency shutdown in history. “But we got it done.”

Republicans, who face an uphill climb this election year to keep hold of their paper-thin House majority, appear at times as if they are still learning on the job, years after having returned to power in 2022, while they are also about to ask voters in November to rehire them for another term.

This week’s starts and stops — for example, five hours of delay as Johnson huddled behind closed doors to salvage his agenda, then a sudden vote tally near 11 p.m. — would typically have been the kind of situation that shocked the political and procedural senses. Now, it’s just another Wednesday.

Or two weeks ago, when a routine House Rules Committee hearing ended up becoming a midnight forum to debut a just-produced 14-page bill to revise a surveillance bill, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, before it was rushed to the floor for a 2 a.m. vote. It failed.

“House Republicans have shown again that they can’t govern,” said Rep. Ted Lieu of California, part of Democratic leadership.

“They routinely pass bills to the Senate that are way too extreme, then it ends up that we have all these floor session days where we’re just doing nothing,” he said.

House GOP’s slim majority makes leader’s job challenging

Johnson, who took over for the ousted Kevin McCarthy more than two years ago, is presiding over one of the slimmest House majorities in modern times, leaving him no room to spare if he’s trying to pass legislation on party-line votes, without Democrats.

The speaker is juggling not only President Trump’s priorities but also those of the various factions that make up his majority, from the conservative House Freedom Caucus to what remains of the GOP’s more pragmatic conservatives.

And Johnson’s own future is always in question, after Republicans chased other speakers, including McCarthy, John Boehner and Newt Gingrich, to early exits.

Last year Johnson, of Louisiana, led passage of the party’s signature achievement, a big bill of tax breaks and safety net cuts, which Trump signed into law. At the time, he quipped about the difficulty of getting it over the finish line.

“I do so deeply desire to have just a normal Congress,” the speaker said in July.

“But it doesn’t happen anymore,” he said. “Our way is to plow through and get it done.”

What’s ahead as House GOP tries to stay in power

Ahead of the fall elections, Johnson and other Republican lawmakers have discussed an agenda that includes the promise of another GOP-only budget package like the tax cuts bill that they could push through the House and the Senate, without Democratic votes.

Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said Thursday that he expects “the centerpiece” of that package “will be supporting our troops” with more than $100 billion in funding for the war against Iran as well as money to replenish defense munitions and other Pentagon-related needs.

Despite the turbulent week in the House, Arrington said what they’re calling “Budget reconciliation 3.0” should be the “next order of business.”

Yet GOP lawmakers may decide it’s better to skip the hard work of legislating, and the dramatic upheavals that tend to come with it, and hit the campaign trail to win over voters instead.

Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the chairman of the House GOP’s campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, acknowledged that trying to pass legislation with such a tight majority “can be rough. It’s ugly.”

“I’d be fine with letting us go home and campaign,” Hudson said. “But we’ve got a lot of important work still to do.”

Some of Johnson’s most ardent sparring partners, those most conservative Republican lawmakers, turned their blame for the messy process not on Johnson’s leadership but on their own GOP allies across the Capitol in the Senate, who often dismiss the House’s work.

“Yeah, sometimes, it gets a little tense,” said Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. “But we’re still getting stuff done. We’re sending it over to the Senate. So we look forward to them doing their job.”

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The White House is warning Congress that funding to pay Department of Homeland Security personnel will “soon run out,” sparking new threats of airport disruptions and national security concerns as the House slow-walks legislation to end what has been the longest-ever lapse in agency funding.

In a memo late Tuesday to lawmakers, the Office of Management and Budget said money that President Trump tapped to pay Transportation Security Administration and other workers through executive actions will be exhausted by May. It called on the House to quickly approve the budget resolution senators approved in an all-night session last week that would pave the way for full funding for the department.

“DHS will soon run out of critical operating funds, placing essential personnel and operations at risk,” the memo said.

The pressure from the Trump administration could help House Speaker Mike Johnson, whose narrow Republican majority has been stalled out, tangled in internal party disputes on a range of pending issues, including the Homeland Security funding. They have left the chamber at a virtual standstill.

The House was expected to vote as soon as Wednesday on the Senate budget resolution that is designed to unlock a multistep process to eventually fund the department. But by midday, House action again screeched to a halt. The administration has warned GOP lawmakers off making changes that could prolong passage.

“Restoring funding for the Department of Homeland Security has never been more urgent, as demonstrated by recent events,” the memo said, a nod to the situation over the weekend when a man armed with guns and knives tried to storm the annual White House correspondents’ dinner that Trump, the vice president and top Cabinet officials were attending.

Homeland Security shutdown is longest ever

Homeland Security has been operating without regular funds for more than two months after Democrats refused to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol without changes to those operations after the deaths of Americans protesting Trump’s deportation agenda.

While immigration enforcement workers have largely been paid through the flush of new cash — some $170 billion — that Congress approved as part of Trump’s tax cuts bill last year, others, including TSA, have had to rely on Trump’s intervention through executive action to ensure their paychecks.

But with salaries topping $1.6 billion every two weeks, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said recently, those funds are drying up.

More than 1,000 TSA officers have quit since the shutdown began, according to Airlines for America, the U.S. airlines trade group that called Wednesday on Congress to fully fund the agency.

“The urgency to provide predictable and stable funding for TSA is growing stronger by the day,” the group said in a statement. “Time and time again, our nation’s aviation workers and customers have been the victim of Congress’ failure to do their jobs.”

Complicated budget strategy ahead

House and Senate Republicans have embarked on a go-it-alone strategy, attempting to approve funds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol without Democrats. They want to provide $70 billion for those immigration operations for the remainder of Trump’s term to ensure no further interruptions.

It’s a cumbersome process, the same that was used last year to approve Trump’s tax cuts bill, that will play out over several weeks.

The Senate launched the process last week, and is now waiting on the House to act. Once that budget resolution is approved, both the House and Senate are expected to draft the actual funding bill, a process that can take weeks.

In the meantime, Johnson is next expected to quickly turn this week to legislation that would fund the other parts of Homeland Security, including TSA, the Coast Guard and other agencies.

That bipartisan bill has support from Democrats and already passed the Senate a month ago, when Republicans reluctantly agreed to carve out the immigration-related funds that Democrats had opposed. But it has been stalled out in the House, as Republicans in that chamber disagreed with the Senate’s approach.

Mascaro writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The Senate Banking Committee voted on party lines Wednesday to approve Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Federal Reserve to replace Jerome Powell, a longtime target of President Trump’s insults for not cutting borrowing costs as far as the president wanted.

The vote was 13-11, with all Republican senators voting in favor and Democrats opposed.

Warsh is a former top Fed official but has also been a sharp critic of the institution and Powell’s leadership. He has called the inflation spike to 9.1% in 2022 the central bank’s biggest policy mistake in four decades. A vote on his nomination probably won’t take place until next month, but he could be confirmed by the time Powell’s term as chair ends May 15.

The Senate Banking vote is the first of two key events surrounding the future of the Fed’s leadership. Also Wednesday, Powell is presiding over what will probably be his last meeting of the Fed’s interest rate-setting committee. At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Powell may indicate whether he will remain as a member of the central bank’s board of governors after his term as chair ends.

It would be unusual for Powell to stay, but doing so would deprive the Trump administration of an opportunity to appoint a new member to the board. Powell may choose to stay if he sees it as necessary to protect the Fed’s independence, which has become part of his legacy as its leader.

Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican and chair of the committee, said Warsh is “battle tested” and added that, “It is incredibly important that we break the bind of Bidenomics on households across this nation.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, criticized the banking panel for voting on Warsh’s nomination. Doing so “will bring the president one step closer to completing his illegal attempt to seize control of the Fed and artificially juice the economy,” she said, citing Trump’s effort to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook and investigate Powell.

The Fed on Wednesday is widely expected to leave its key rate unchanged at about 3.6% for its third straight meeting, defying Trump’s calls for lower rates.

Warsh has called for “regime change” at the Fed and could alter many of its practices, including the economics models it focuses on, how it communicates with the public, and how large its bondholdings will be in the long run.

Those changes could affect financial markets, but otherwise won’t necessarily be visible to the general public. But Warsh has also advocated for additional interest rate cuts, which could potentially lower borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, and business loans. He will face barriers to implementing those cuts anytime soon, however, largely because the Iran war has caused a spike in gas prices, pushing inflation to a two-year high of 3.3%.

The Fed typically keeps rates elevated, or even raises them, to combat worsening inflation.

Most of the other 11 members of the Fed’s rate-setting committee have indicated they would prefer to wait and evaluate where inflation and the economy are headed before making any changes to rates. It could take time for Warsh to build up enough influence to push for rapid rate cuts. He will also replace Stephen Miran, a member of the Fed’s rate-setting committee who was appointed by Trump last September and is the most consistent advocate for rate reductions at the central bank.

Warsh also faces questions about his independence from the White House, a key issue that dogged him during a Senate Banking hearing last week. On Wednesday, Warren said, “Mr. Warsh is a Trump sock puppet who is so cowed by the president that he could not even say that Trump lost the 2020 election.”

Last December, Trump called for much lower interest rates in a social media post, and added that “anyone who does not agree with me will never be Fed chair!” And just last week he told Fox Business that he expects rates to head lower, “when Kevin gets in.”

Warsh denied at his hearing, however, that Trump had ever pressured him directly to cut rates.

Rugaber writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — In the hush of his office, John Francis Seymour is working what he calls “the levers of power” like a 53-year-old kid running an imaginary earthmover.

His fists grip invisible levers, pushing them back and forth. He bounds forward in his leather chair. His voice rises until it cracks. All that is missing is the grind of an engine.

California’s appointed senator is explaining the thrill of maneuvering a bureaucracy, which excites this self-described real estate millionaire as much as buying and selling the California Dream.

“That is a fantastic challenge!” he crows. “I mean, you gotta be good to succeed in the private sector. But if you’re gonna succeed in getting things done in the public sector, you gotta be better than that! That’s the challenge!”

There is no doubt in Seymour’s mind that he is up to the challenge. Four months after he was wrenched from a Sierra vacation to assume the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Pete Wilson, the diminutive Republican is plying the elegant marble halls of the Capitol with an effusiveness unfettered by humility.

If most of Washington’s power is dispensed in cool and bloodless strokes, Seymour is playing the opposite game. His approach is a blend of gee-whiz and “let’s make a deal”–an assertive, bartering politics that spares no time on the notion that freshmen senators should be seen more than heard.

His is the ambition of a man who has chased success since childhood, sure enough of himself to have set his sights on high statewide office the night in 1978 that he was elected mayor of Anaheim.

His rapid rise in the Legislature in Sacramento left Seymour with the image of a politician who cut deals with relish–helping his supporters in the process–and switches alliances as the need arises. Now that the job of his dreams has been dropped into his lap, Seymour faces the grueling prospect of a contentious and costly campaign in 1992 to win it outright.

In the struggle, Seymour will be almost clinically dissected.

His friends say that he embraces challenges and is unafraid to admit when he is wrong. His foes call him self-serving and accuse him of selling out on principles. His friends say that he is stubborn and tenacious. His foes add that he is relentless and shrill.

Despite an admittedly stumbling start that has inspired his critics to doubt his chances next year, Seymour is brimming with confidence.

He dismisses his critics as jealous, scorning particularly those of his own party who disapprove of the deals he has spent a lifetime cutting. He says that he is a political pragmatist, a born optimist who believes that anybody, anywhere in California, can make it good, just like he did–that anyone can grasp the levers of power.

To most California voters, this man sitting in the U.S. Senate is unknown. Rarely, in his eight years in the California Senate, did Seymour surface amid the state’s telegenic political stars.

He came closest to the spotlight last year, when he fought unsuccessfully for the lieutenant governorship. That campaign broke into the news only occasionally and left Seymour with an image that dogs him to this day–that of a man who changed his tune on two defining issues, abortion rights and offshore oil drilling.

On both, he abandoned long-held conservative views, adopting positions that favored abortion rights and opposed offshore drilling. Because the changes came before an election year and put him in the mainstream of California voters, they inspired charges, which Seymour denies, that the moves were politically motivated.

Suspicion of his motives is a sore spot for the senator and those close to him. When asked what his father stands for, Seymour’s son Jeff, 24, launched into a defense of his integrity.

“People misunderstand who John Seymour is,” he said. They think indecisive, flip-flop. . . . Which just isn’t true. He’s been misunderstood.”

It is tough to see, on some levels, how Seymour could be misunderstood by anyone, for he can be unnervingly blunt.

If the subject is the influence of money on politics, he tells an audience that he qualifies “in that nasty group of millionaires.” Discussing negotiating techniques, he offers that he has angrily stomped out of rooms in attempts to intimidate opponents. His gestures are theatrical, his words expressed in exclamations.

But his statements and actions at times distort reality in a way that serves to protect the image of success Seymour has so carefully created.

Long after he was unceremoniously stripped of a party leadership position in 1987, he insisted that he had intended all along to quit. In a recent interview, he gruffly acknowledged that the job had been taken from him “before I was ready to go.”

He is, acquaintances say, sensitive to public knowledge that he smokes, a habit that he practices in private and has long tried to quit.

His campaign literature notes that Seymour has six children and that “he and his wife, Judy, have lived in Anaheim for more than 25 years.” They have–but not together. Until their divorce 19 years ago, Seymour lived there with his first wife, Fran, the mother of three of his children.

On occasion, Seymour’s directness appears to be an outgrowth of his political ambitions. In the throes of the 1990 lieutenant governor’s primary, he publicly asked to be allowed to watch the state’s planned execution of double murderer Robert Alton Harris. According to him, it had nothing to do with the publicity he would garner; rather, he argued that supporters of capital punishment should be prepared to see it. The request was turned down.

His open quest for success has sometimes put him in conflict with fellow politicians, particularly more conservative Republicans who see him as willing to sacrifice them to his upward climb. It has also earned him the friendship of Democrats, who appreciate his willingness to work with them on major issues.

“I would characterize John Seymour as a deal maker in both the good and bad sense of the word,” said state Sen. Bill Leonard (R-Big Bear), a conservative now second-in-command among GOP members in the upper house. “He wants to be productive. He thinks that people can sit and talk long enough about their cares and concerns that consensus can be built. . . . The bad sense is there’s a time to compromise and a time to hold fast.”

The art of the deal is bred into Seymour’s bones. From his youth, every job he has held has been in sales, following the steps of his father, his uncles and his grandfather. To politics, he brought tactics honed in real estate, selling legislation as he once sold homes and keeping in mind a real estate dictum: Make the sale, or there’s no commission.

“Never have been one to go around dying on my philosophical sword. That is not productive,” he said during a conversation in his office. “I have seen too many in politics go back home and beat their chests over how they fought the battle but they lost the war. And that’s not my idea of why people elected me.”

Seymour sells and compromises with a rare intensity, instilled by a family that valued tenacity.

“An ethic of work, an ethic of discipline, an ethic of positive thinking,” Seymour describes his youth. His father, Jack, and mother, Helen, who live in Garden Grove, moved from Seymour’s birthplace of Chicago to Toledo, Ohio, and then to Mt. Lebanon, Pa., by the time Seymour was in high school.

From the time he was a boy, he had set a goal–to make $1 million. It was his first definition of success.

Seymour recalls his father demanding, when he was merely 10 years old: “What are you going to do when you grow up? What are you going to do when you grow up? What are you going to be? What are you going to do?”

It left an impression.

“You can’t expect a kid to decide what their lifetime career is going to be,” Seymour said. “But I did know I wanted to go into business and I did know that I wanted to make a million. . . . So it was sort of in my head, you know, way back. It never left.”

Seymour says that he did become a millionaire–a claim that has not been independently verified–through his Anaheim-based business, which he started with his parents after a tour in the Marines and a business degree from UCLA. The Marines, he says, turned him around, transforming a poor student into a good one, proving to him that he could make it in the toughest of climates.

His four-year hitch began after his parents suggested that he was not ready for college, and his father, using some home-grown psychology, announced that the military would undoubtedly reject him. Seymour, 17, promptly signed for the maximum enlistment.

Asserting himself in the face of challenge is a Seymour theme, in part a defiant response to his 5-foot, 6-inch stature, those around him suggest.

“Short people fight harder,” his father said. “If you notice on TV . . . it’s usually the big, tall guy that’s successful. You’re always competing with someone tall. Which makes you fight harder.”

Seymour denied being teased because of his height, but sensitivity about it clearly left its mark. In the ninth grade, he was head and shoulders shorter than his teammates–”That was the end of my basketball career,” he said wryly. His football career had ended a year earlier.

“To be a Marine,” he said, his voice sarcastically deepening to mimic a military recruitment commercial, “You’ve got to be six feet tall and able to lift 450 pounds or whatever. And I knew I couldn’t do that.

“But what does that mean? In sports, I remember in high school, in order to compete I had to try harder. In college, in order to get good grades I had to study longer. It just took more hours for me. In order to succeed in business I had to work longer hours–and so it’s just sort of a natural habit. Anything I do, whether it’s recreational or work, it’s never at 80%. It’s always at 110.”

And 110% to win–or Seymour is tempted not to compete at all. “He doesn’t arm-wrestle me now, because he knows I’ll beat him,” said his son Jeff.

“He does not like to be defeated,” said Seymour’s mother, Helen. “He always loves to win.”

Politics did not present itself as a natural extension of Seymour’s drive for success. The way he explains it, he began volunteering for city commissions much in the same way he served on the boards of the Chamber of Commerce and YMCA. In 1974, he was elected to the City Council.

“At that particular point, I don’t believe I had ever contributed to somebody’s campaign, never worked in a campaign, was not active in the Republican Party,” he said.

That would soon change. In 1978, he spent more than $55,000 in an unopposed campaign for mayor, according to reports at the time. The same year, he helped negotiate the deal that brought the Los Angeles Rams to Anaheim. He also backed Wilson’s unsuccessful run for governor, which would both whet Seymour’s appetite for statewide politics and tighten links between the two that would pay off handsomely 13 years later.

By 1982, aided by strong name identification in central Orange County and by his fund raising–he outspent all competitors combined by a 40-1 margin–Seymour was elected to the state Senate. From the outset in Sacramento, it was clear that Seymour was not wasting time.

“He never went through the usual freshman period of being seen and not heard. And not everybody liked that,” said Robert Naylor, a Seymour supporter who was GOP Assembly leader when Seymour came to Sacramento. “He had the reputation of being a little abrasive because he was not willing to sit back.”

What ranks in many minds as a defining moment came little more than a year after Seymour joined the Senate, when conservatives led by state SenL. Richardson labored to oust Republican leader William Campbell.

“He was perceived as part of the Campbell group, but I needed the votes to put together the overthrow,” said Richardson, now a consultant to U.S. Rep. William E. Dannemeyer of Fullerton, who is opposing Seymour in his bid for a first elected term. “The only way to do it was to promise him the caucus chairmanship.”

The caucus chair is the second-ranking party leadership position and a heady role for a freshman. The political plum dangled before him, Seymour switched his vote and moved with the majority to strip Campbell of his power.

Shrugging off fellow legislators’ anger, Seymour said that he was simply doing business the way it is done in Sacramento. Whatever his motives, the move made it easier years later for Seymour to be accused of expediency when he switched to popular positions on abortion rights and offshore oil drilling.

Seymour said he decided to favor abortion rights and oppose coastal drilling only after the circumstances surrounding both issues had changed. His abortion switch followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1989 decision allowing states to regulate the practice. His decision that same year on drilling came after oil spills despoiled Alaska’s Prince William Sound and Huntington Beach.

His positions changed, Seymour said, after deliberative discussions with representatives from both sides–a contention supported by friends who consulted with him.

“Times change, people change, conditions change. And thank God they do,” Seymour said. “Changing the mind in a changing environment–I don’t know that there’s anything wrong with that.”

Whatever its repercussions among Republicans, Seymour’s flexibility made him a player in Sacramento. Early on, he was part of the team that framed SB 813, the landmark education reform bill of 1983. Democrat Gary K. Hart of Santa Barbara, a Senate powerhouse on education matters, said he found Seymour “easy to work with–and more than anything else, a good negotiator.”

Seymour’s support for increased money for teachers and his interest in special education and vocational education were not common among Republicans at the time. He also took on, early in his tenure, other issues that won notice on both sides of the aisle.

As early as 1983, he pressed for new programs in child care, ranging from cash payments to poor parents who could not take advantage of child-care tax credits to placing pressure on the insurance industry to offer liability policies to providers of child care.

“It’s not the kind of legislation that you would normally expect from a Republican male,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), a former assemblywoman who engaged in some heated battles with Seymour on other issues.

“That stands out in my mind–and maybe one or two other issues–that seemed nonpartisan, almost like he was just truly interested in the issue. . . . He worked on them and he seemed sincere about them.”

But as often, Seymour aimed his attention at traditional Republican constituencies. Seymour, whose campaigns have been heavily financed by the real estate industry, pressed bills that would benefit developers and brokers, and was a particularly fierce opponent of rent control.

That Seymour trait–helping industries that helped finance his campaigns–recurred throughout his career. Seymour, in an interview, said he would only support a bill out of genuine personal belief, not because it could help his benefactors.

For eight years in Sacramento, Seymour rolled up reelection victories and built an impressive statewide fund-raising network. Still, few saw him as U.S. Senate material.

“Look, John’s where he is today because of one individual’s ability to put him there,” said Steven A. Merksamer, former chief of staff to Gov. George Deukmejian and a Seymour friend. “It could have just as easily been someone else. Politics is so much of a crapshoot.”

For months, Wilson pondered whom to appoint to the U.S. Senate. He interviewed several contenders and watched as others took themselves out of consideration. He and Seymour never discussed the Senate seat, Wilson said, not even in a 90-minute conversation held 10 days before Wilson offered Seymour the job.

Wilson said he based his decision on their similar views on issues, and on Seymour’s personal characteristics.

“He is honest, he is smart, he is tough-minded and he is tenacious,” Wilson said.

But none of those qualities fully prepared Seymour for his early days in office, he conceded recently as he strode through the Capitol.

“I felt like I was standing in the surf of a tidal wave, one wave after the other just crashing over my head and hardly being able to keep up, keep from drowning in all of it,” he said.

Sometimes it showed. More than a month after he was appointed, Seymour met with former President Ronald Reagan. Publicized by Seymour’s staff, the meeting was an opportunity for the senator to court, by extension, the conservatives who idolize Reagan and disdain Seymour.

After the meeting, Seymour bounded out of the elevator at Reagan’s Century City offices. Reagan, he said, deserved the credit for the military buildup that propelled the Persian Gulf effort–and in return, he suggested, the Strategic Defense Initiative that Reagan championed should be approved by Congress.

But the Bush Administration had significantly scaled back this so-called “Star Wars” initiative. Which version did he support–Bush’s or Reagan’s, Seymour was asked?

“Well, to be honest . . . I haven’t had the opportunity to review the details of it,” he said.

Occasionally, he still stumbles. Seymour’s bill to help the state deal with the drought would allow the secretary of the Interior to defer payments incurred by users of the federal water system. No interest would be charged to agricultural users, but others would have to pay interest at current rates.

Asked why he would hold farmers and urban areas to different standards, Seymour said he was “not aware” that that distinction was in the bill.

“It doesn’t sound logical to me,” he said. “Maybe I ought to check on that.”

As he has acclimated, Seymour has displayed increasing ease.

At a recent Capitol luncheon with other senators and reporters, he analyzed a host of measures, including the Endangered Species Act and the Social Security payroll tax. Often, he said, he had not come to a decision on particular issues, but he did grasp the arguments on both sides.

Seymour’s friends and political allies say that there can be no underestimating the overwhelming transition he has had to make into federal office, without benefit of a lengthy campaign to hone his positions and reflexes.

“Most people, when they arrive in the Senate, do so after seeking the post. He did not seek it. It was thrust upon him, without warning, and suddenly he was literally within a matter of days cast into an arena without having had any preparation,” Wilson said.

“He’d never dealt with SDI, never dealt in defense or foreign policy matters. These are new and they are complex, and John is not a hip-shooter,” the governor said.

Seymour is a product of the California where all seemed possible, where a young Marine could come West, set down roots and get rich. His view of the state virtually glows with possibilities. It is not a place of traffic jams and smog and urban chaos. Asked his vision of California, he cited “California Gold,” a John Jakes novel about the post-Gold Rush frontier.

“My dream, my vision for California, is the California Dream,” he said. “It is an environment in which the individual has the opportunity to become everything they’ve ever dreamed of–if they’re willing to try hard and if society is willing to give them half a chance. That’s the California Dream–it’s the epitome of the American Dream.”

His friends and political allies say that Seymour has consciously tried to broaden himself beyond the stereotype of Orange County Republicans, a mostly white, mostly male, mostly wealthy class. Seymour said he feels “very close” to the state’s poor and its minority populations. He points to his support of child care, vocational education and drug treatment.

Republican state Sen. Becky Morgan of Los Altos Hills, who served with Seymour on the substance abuse committee Seymour headed, said its hearings helped the senator understand poverty.

“While he does not live the life of the poor,” she said, “he has empathy.”

But Seymour has not always reinforced that image. He has long targeted welfare as a way to cut back government spending–most notably at February’s state GOP convention in Sacramento, where he came under criticism for appearing to equate welfare with a luxury item.

“Sometimes you lose your job,” he said. “Maybe you’ve got to sell your boat to keep your family going.”

Today, Seymour argues that he was unfairly criticized, and draws a distinction between yachts and mere boats.

“I wasn’t speaking of yacht owners,” he added. “ Boat owners! There’s hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions (of boats) in California.”

But Seymour’s son Jeff hints at a more personal reason for Seymour’s attitude toward welfare–and by extension, the poor.

“I think what he has said is–there are enough jobs out there. People just don’t want to take the jobs that are out there,” he said. “He can feel for the little man and the nobody–he was at one time a nobody. . . . He feels that anyone can do it.”

In 13 months, Seymour faces his first race for the U.S. Senate in the Republican primary. If he survives that, the general election will follow five months later.

At this early date, Seymour is feeling pressure from two quarters. On his right, Dannemeyer has already christened Seymour with a pejorative–”Senator Flip-Flop”–because of Seymour’s changed positions. From his left, Seymour is being challenged by Democrat Dianne Feinstein, who closely trailed Wilson in 1990’s tight race for governor. More combatants may follow.

What Seymour can accomplish before Election Day will be minimal, officials in Washington suggest, but he should be able to begin sketching his image for Californians.

Already, he has pushed for compromise on long-fought legislation to preserve millions of acres of California desert, which was ditched last year in a dispute between its sponsor, Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), and then-Sen. Wilson.

“I think he looks on this as a chance to show that he can accomplish,” Cranston said.

Moderate moves on some social issues, along with conservative positions on crime and foreign policy, seem likely to achieve the same sort of image for Seymour that Wilson enjoyed through two Senate elections.

“I have to say, I think he will be more formidable than some have estimated he might be,” said U.S. Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento). “He is not going to be, however, at any time, unbeatable. He is not a guy with a great deal of visibility even now.”

Seymour is trying to change that, traveling to California virtually every weekend, visiting a military base here, a schoolyard there, talking to farmers about the drought, and to business leaders about the recession.

Sometimes, in the subtle sweetness of a spring afternoon in the capital, the sun glinting off the Washington Monument down the Mall, he floats on the “constant high” the Senate has provided him.

“I tell you, I love it!” he said. “Love every minute of it! All of it!”

The protracted uncertainty over control of Congress reverberated through both major political parties on Wednesday, as Democrats basked in the relief of the red wave that wasn’t and Republicans became increasingly clear-eyed that the lingering influence of former President Trump had hamstrung their party.

President Biden’s emphasis during the campaign season on the extremism of “MAGA Republicans” had been greeted skeptically by many. In the Democratic Party’s better-than-expected showing, though, he saw vindication of his appeals for civility and normalcy.

“This election season, American people made it clear: They don’t want every day going forward to be a constant political battle,” Biden said at a White House news conference. “The future of America is too promising to be trapped in endless political warfare.”

Amid high inflation and Biden’s lackluster approval numbers, Democrats’ hopes had hinged on voters being more put off by Trump’s imprint on the Republican Party — be it the divisive candidates he endorsed, the political violence that festered from his lies about election fraud, or the reversal of federal abortion protections made possible by justices he appointed to the Supreme Court.

“We knew going into the cycle that there was going to be an opportunity to rally a moral majority that is an anti-MAGA coalition,” said Tory Gavito, president of Way to Win, a progressive donor network. “When I say that, I include everyone from [GOP Rep.] Liz Cheney to [democratic socialist Sen.] Bernie Sanders. Think about that spectrum of the middle to the left coming together to say Republicans are just too damn extreme.”

If recent history is any guide, Trump’s not going anywhere. The once and likely future presidential candidate is unpopular, but he continues to exercise outsized sway over the Republican base, and could hobble the party for the next two years and beyond.

“While in certain ways yesterday’s election was somewhat disappointing, from my personal standpoint it was a very big victory,” Trump said on his conservative social media network, Truth Social, pointing to the record of candidates he endorsed. “219 WINS and 16 Losses in the General – Who has ever done better than that?”

The specter of the former president hampered the GOP’s ability to frame the midterm as a referendum on Biden, said Ken Spain, a GOP strategist and former spokesman for the party’s House campaign arm.

“Trump was always a looming shadow over this election, more than Republicans probably wanted to admit,” he said. “This essentially became a choice election between an unpopular president and an even more unpopular Trump.”

There were signs that patience was running thin among Republican power brokers. Notably, Trump’s much-beloved New York Post, the tabloid owned by conservative media magnate Rupert Murdoch, featured Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on its cover Wednesday with the headline “DeFuture.” DeSantis is widely considered Trump’s biggest threat for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Republicans still had a chance of winning both chambers of Congress as vote-counting continued Wednesday. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) projected confidence that his party would win the five additional seats necessary to take the majority there, and announced his intention to run for speaker of the House.

Whether he secures a majority may come down to his home state. California’s 11 competitive races remained unsettled as of Wednesday evening, with results trickling in slowly, as is common with the state’s methodical ballot-counting procedures.

Republicans had targeted incumbent Democratic Reps. Katie Porter and Mike Levin in Orange County, as well as an open seat in the Central Valley, as possible pick-ups. But Democrats were also watching the returns for the potential to oust vulnerable GOP Reps. David Valadao of Hanford and Ken Calvert of Corona.

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin notched a close win over Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes, giving Republicans a 49-48 advantage in the Senate, with races in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada yet to be decided.

With neither candidate in Georgia winning more than 50% of the vote, the race will go to a Dec. 6 runoff, like the one that decided Senate control in 2020. A 50-50 split in the Senate would let Democrats maintain control with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote.

Republicans made some successful pushes into blue territory; in New York, for example, they appeared likely to win four Democratic-held House seats. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a New York Democrat who led his party’s efforts to keep the House, conceded his own race Wednesday morning to Mike Lawler, a Republican state assemblyman.

Still, the night was distinctly underwhelming for a party that contemplated a blowout win in the House and an assured majority in the Senate.

“Definitely not a Republican wave, that’s for darn sure,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Tuesday night on NBC as he predicted a narrow win for Republicans in the Senate.

Paradoxically, a small Republican majority in the House would likely give Trump more leverage there, as McCarthy would have to depend on continued support from acolytes of the former president, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, to exercise the GOP’s majority power.

Biden, speaking at the White House on Wednesday, said he had not had much occasion to interact with McCarthy but planned to talk with him later in the day. The president promised to work with Republicans in Congress, but noted pointedly that the American people had also sent the message that they wanted the GOP to show similar cooperation.

The president was happy to point out that his party had defied expectations, noting that “while the press and the pundits [were] predicting a giant red wave, it didn’t happen.”

National exit polls gave a glimpse into why Republicans fizzled. The surveys showed inflation was a top concern among voters. But abortion ranked second. That, and the relative weakness of Trump-backed candidates, helped Democrats stay in the fight.

Many voters appeared willing to swallow their disappointment with Biden. An NBC exit poll showed Democrats narrowly winning — 49% to 45% — among voters who “somewhat disapprove” of Biden’s performance.

Results in Michigan underscored the extent of the Republican Party’s disappointments. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whom Trump had attacked relentlessly, defeated his endorsed candidate, Tudor Dixon, and Democratic incumbents held on to the state’s attorney general and secretary of state posts and gained control of the Legislature as well.

The GOP failed to oust Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a vulnerable Democrat in a Michigan swing district that barely backed Biden two years ago. Elsewhere in the state, a Trump-backed candidate — who in the primary beat Rep. Peter Meijer, a Republican who had voted to impeach the former president — lost in the general election, costing Republicans a seat in the surprisingly tight battle for control of the House.

Michigan voters also approved a ballot measure striking down a 1931 ban on abortion, and voters in Kentucky rejected an initiative that would have amended the state constitution to make clear it did not protect abortion rights.

The Republicans’ loss of a Senate seat in Pennsylvania could prove the most consequential if Democrats keep the chamber. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman defeated Mehmet Oz, a television doctor and first-time candidate backed by Trump. Fetterman, still recovering from a stroke, painted the untested Oz as an elite carpetbagger.

Many of the gubernatorial candidates Trump backed also lost or were in danger of losing as of Wednesday afternoon. DeSantis’ double-digit win in Florida, as well as his strong coattails for Republicans in the House, served as a stark contrast. But Trump has said he will run again even if party leaders prefer DeSantis. Opinion polls, at least for now, show the former president as the prohibitive favorite to capture the party’s nomination.

Jason Miller, an advisor to Trump, told the BBC on Wednesday morning that he was urging Trump to postpone an announcement that he will run again from next week — as he has been teasing — to December, to avoid distracting from a potential Senate runoff in Georgia. But Miller said he remained 100% certain that Trump would run.

“Many of the people who are championing Ron DeSantis for president are the same people who were skeptical of President Trump ever since he came down the escalator in 2015,” Miller said, recalling Trump’s improbable announcement for the 2016 race.

Miller predicted that Trump would “have his hands full” but would ultimately win the nomination again.

Mason reported from Los Angeles and Bierman from Washington. Times staff writer Erin B. Logan contributed to this report from Washington.

April 23 (UPI) — Senate Republicans were up all night voting, eventually adopting a budget reconciliation package Thursday morning to prepare to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

The Senate plans to fund the department without Democrats’ help. The resolution was adopted at around 3:30 a.m. EDT Thursday by a vote of 50-48 after about six hours.

The only Republicans to vote against the resolution were Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Rand Paul, R-Ky. The bill now goes to the House. If the House adopts the resolution, the final funding bill can be written and voted on by Congress.

They are following a deadline of June 1 set by President Donald Trump.

“We have a multistep process ahead of us, but at the end Republicans will have helped ensure that America’s borders are secure and prevented Democrats from defunding these important agencies,” said Senate Republican Leader John Thune, R-N.D.

Thune told fellow senators to keep the package narrow to ensure speedy passage.

Since the January deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, both shot and killed by DHS officers, Democrats have refused to support funding the department without reforms. The department has been shut down since Feb, 14, though Trump told the department to use emergency funds to pay essential workers.

Just before the Easter recess, the Senate passed a bill that would fund most of DHS but not ICE and Border Patrol. But the House rejected it.

Republicans are hoping to fund the department through 2029 at a cost of between $70 and $80 billion.

The late-night vote-a-rama included votes about amendments that could be added to the resolution. Two Republican Senators who are vulnerable in the November elections — Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska — broke ranks on some amendments.

Collins and Sullivan voted for amendments to lower health care costs, to reverse last year’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cuts and to tackle insurance companies that delay or deny medical care. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., joined with Collins and Sullivan on the latter.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., also sponsored an amendment that would tell the budget committee chair to help cut prescription drug prices by half. Hawley, Collins and Sullivan supported Sanders on it. Sanders said his amendment would codify ensuring that Americans wouldn’t pay more for prescriptions than Canadians or Europeans.

The amendments wouldn’t have the power to force Republicans’ hands, but they would make Republicans go on record about their views of these items.

“This reconciliation, or this budget act, will show who’s on whose side, and clearly if Republicans vote against our amendments, they’re not on the side of the American people,” Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor.

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Fox and Friends on Tuesday that the department will run out of money for salaries next month.

“I’ve got one payroll left, and there is no more emergency funds so the president can’t do another executive order because there’s no more money there,” The Hill reported he said.

The resolution does not include the SAVE America Act, the voter security bill that Trump and other Republicans have pushed for. Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., sponsored an amendment to add similar restrictions, but it failed 48-50. Collins, Murkowski, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-S.C., and Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., voted against it.

April 23 (UPI) — Senate Republicans have again blocked the Democrats from curbing President Donald Trump‘s ability to wage war with Iran, as negotiators try to find a diplomatic end to the conflict during the fragile cease-fire.

The Senate voted 51-46 on Wednesday afternoon against Sen. Tammy Baldwin‘s War Powers Resolution, the fifth time since March 4 that the Senate has voted against directing the removal of U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities with Iran until authorized by Congress.

As with previous votes, Wednesday’s was mostly along party lines with Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky again voting with his Democratic colleagues, and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania again voting with the Republicans.

“This entire war has been unnecessary, illegal and unwise. And we need to put a check on this president before it gets even worse,” Baldwin said from the Senate floor on Wednesday.

“Unfortunately, the president has shown us that he did not have a plan after day one. The president said the war would be over in a matter of days; we are coming up on the two-month mark with no real end in sight. And over the course of 50-plus days we have seen nothing short of a disaster.”

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., a veteran, vowed in a statement that the Democrats will continue to do all in their power to end the war.

“It’s infuriating that Senate Republicans keep shirking their oaths and giving Donald Trump the green light to plunge our nation even deeper into his war of choice, further endangering our troops abroad and surging prices at home,” she said.

“This wanna-be dictator keeps breaking every single promise he’s made to the American people who are sick and tired of watching Republicans duck their responsibility to stop this chaos.”

The war began Feb. 28 with the United States and Israel attacking Iran.

Since then, 13 Americans have been killed. At least 3,646 people have been killed in Iran, according to HRANA.

Gas prices have surged as Iran has restricted access to the important Strait of Hormuz energy transportation route, and the United States is enforcing a blockade of Iran’s ports, cutting it off from sea-based trade.

The vote was held as a two-week cease-fire was to end before President Donald Trump announced an indefinite extension amid negotiations. On Wednesday, Iran’s military claimed to have seized two cargo ships in the conflict over the waterway.

Since the war began, Democrats have been seeking to rein in Trump’s war powers, arguing the ongoing war with Iran violates the Constitution, which mandates that only Congress has the power to declare war.

Democrats in the Senate have pledged to use their powers to force weekly debates on the war as well as weekly votes, forcing Republicans to repeatedly and publicly state their position on the conflict.

The vote was held less than a week before the 60-day limit of the war passes. On April 28, the War Powers Act will compel Trump to seek congressional authorization for the war.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has said that Trump should have sought Congress’ authorization, and appears to be leading Republican efforts to draft legislation for the continuation of the use of military force as that deadline comes.

“My focus is on the safety of America’s armed forces and the American civilians who are on the ground in the Middle East,” she said in a statement in early March, just days after the war began.

“At this point, we have little choice but to continue the military operation to degrade and destroy Iran’s capability for nuclear weapons.”

Bill Cassidy’s roles as a lawmaker, a doctor and a political candidate will collide on Wednesday as he questions Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in two high-stakes Senate hearings.

The Louisiana Republican chairs one of the Senate committees that oversees Kennedy’s department and sits on another, giving him two chances to interrogate the secretary about his plans for an agency responsible for public health programs and research. As a doctor, Cassidy has clashed with Kennedy’s anti-vaccine ideas even though he provided crucial support for the health secretary’s nomination last year.

At the same time, Cassidy is fighting for his political future in next month’s primary in Louisiana, where President Trump has endorsed one of his opponents in an unusual attempt to oust a sitting senator from his own party.

How Cassidy handles the hearings could affect his chances at a pivotal moment of his reelection campaign and set the tone for how Congress oversees the nation’s health agenda at a time of rampant distrust and misinformation.

Cassidy hasn’t faced Kennedy in public since September. In the subsequent months, Kennedy has attempted a dramatic rollback of vaccine recommendations that, if not blocked by an ongoing lawsuit, could undermine protections against diseases like flu, hepatitis B and RSV.

After a backlash, Kennedy has also pivoted to spending more time talking about less controversial topics like healthy eating — albeit with his own spin, including sharing exaggerated claims that various ailments can be cured by diet alone.

Cassidy will have to decide on Wednesday whether to grill Kennedy on vaccines, an issue deeply important to him, or put their differences aside and prioritize loyalty to the Trump administration.

“He’s taken a risk showing any sort of resistance to RFK,” said Claire Leavitt, an assistant professor at Smith College who studies congressional oversight. “He may pay an electoral price for that.”

Cassidy has long advocated for vaccines

Cassidy has spent years walking a political tightrope. He’s one of the few Republican senators who voted to convict Trump during an impeachment trial after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

As a liver doctor, he advocated for babies to receive hepatitis B vaccines shortly after birth, a step that could have prevented the disease in his patients. But when Trump nominated Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, Cassidy supported him. He did so after securing various commitments, including that Kennedy would work within the current vaccine approval and safety monitoring system and support the childhood vaccine schedule.

The vote for Kennedy did not appear to mollify Trump. The president endorsed U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, one of Cassidy’s two primary opponents.

Cassidy also faces opposition from Kennedy’s allies in the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, a group that includes both anti-vaccine activists and a wide variety of other crusaders for health and the environment. The MAHA PAC, aligned with Kennedy, has pledged $1 million to Letlow’s campaign. While the organization hasn’t publicly said so, some have questioned whether the support is partly in retaliation against Cassidy for criticizing Kennedy’s vaccine policy agenda.

“I’m not really sure what MAHA’s beef is,” Cassidy told reporters earlier this month. “Let me point out that I am the reason that Robert F. Kennedy is now the secretary of HHS. He would not have gotten there otherwise.”

Cassidy argues that he has “strongly supported” the MAHA agenda, especially when it comes to the fight against ultraprocessed foods. However, the physician-turned-senator acknowledged that he and MAHA have “disagreed on vaccines.”

“We’ve seen, frankly, that I am right,” Cassidy added, pointing to recent measles-related deaths of children who were not vaccinated.

At a hearing in September, he slammed Kennedy’s decision to slash funding for mRNA vaccine development. He interrogated Kennedy over his attempt to replace members of a vaccine committee, suggesting the new members could have conflicts of interest. He also raised concerns that Kennedy’s vaccine policy decisions could be making it harder for Americans to get COVID-19 shots.

Later that month, Cassidy convened a hearing featuring former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez, who was ousted by Kennedy less than a month into her tenure after they clashed over vaccine policy, and former CDC Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry, who resigned in August citing an erosion of science at the agency.

“I want to work with the president to fulfill his campaign promise to reform the CDC and Make America Healthy Again. The president says radical transparency is the way to do that,” Cassidy said at the time.

Experts say Cassidy’s vaccine stance might not hurt him

Political consultants said they expect Cassidy’s primary opponents, Letlow and Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming, to seize on any sound bites from Wednesday’s hearings that can make Cassidy seem at odds with the Trump administration.

But Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law expert at UC Law San Francisco, said the political risk of advocating for vaccines may not be as strong among Republicans as some people assume.

“He’s probably not alienating voters by focusing on the issue and calling it out,” she said.

Louisiana political consultant Mary-Patricia Wray said she thinks most diehard MAHA voters already know who they are voting for, and it’s probably not Cassidy.

Instead, she said, he may still be able to appeal to Democrats who switch their party registration to vote in the primary, as well as a wide swath of still-undecided Republican voters who care about the same health care affordability issues he advocates for every day in Congress.

“If I was advising Bill Cassidy, I would tell him your goal here is not to get out unscathed,” Wray said. “Your goal is to prove that your consistency on issues regarding public health is an asset in your campaign, not a detriment.”

Election outcome will shape future oversight of HHS

Also at stake if Cassidy doesn’t make it to November’s general election is what will happen to his responsibility to oversee the massive U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.

Leavitt, the Smith College professor, said seniority typically plays the most important role in who chairs Senate committees. She said another Republican in today’s increasingly hyperpartisan Congress may not be as willing as Cassidy to check Kennedy’s power.

Reiss, the vaccine law expert, said she wishes Cassidy had done more hearings or introduced legislation to rein in Kennedy. And she said the senator bears the blame for allowing Kennedy to bring unfounded vaccine fears into the government in the first place.

“His original sin, of course, was voting for Kennedy at all,” Reiss said.

Swenson writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Sara Cline contributed to this report.

Kevin Warsh, the man nominated to lead the Federal Reserve, the world’s most important financial institution, told the US Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday that he had made no secret agreements with the White House over interest rate policy, defending his professional integrity.

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He said he would act independently if confirmed to succeed Jerome Powell, despite continued public pressure from US President Donald Trump for lower borrowing costs.

The question of that independence was put sharply to him during the hearing, when Republican Senator John Kennedy asked whether he would be Trump’s “human sock puppet”. Warsh replied: “Absolutely not.”

His comments came amid broader concerns on Capitol Hill about the future direction of the central bank, with lawmakers divided over his past record and approach to monetary policy.

Warsh insisted that the President had never asked him to commit to any specific interest rate path and said he would not have agreed to such a request.

The hearing highlighted the significant pressure facing the Federal Reserve as it maintains its independence while addressing inflation, which remains at 3.3%.

Just hours before the session began, US President Donald Trump stated in a CNBC interview that he would be disappointed if Warsh did not immediately implement rate cuts.

This current friction suggests that the White House may struggle to secure the necessary votes to confirm Warsh before Powell’s term as Fed Chair expires on 15 May.

Democratic opposition and Republican dissent

Democratic senators were particularly vocal in their scepticism, accusing Warsh of shifting his economic stance to suit the political climate.

US Senator Elizabeth Warren labelled the nominee a “sock puppet”, suggesting his installation would facilitate an “illegal takeover” of the institution.

Critics also pointed to his historical record, alleging that he favoured higher rates during Democratic administrations but has become more dovish under Republican leadership.

US Senator Ruben Gallego cited reporting from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), which claimed the President had previously urged Warsh to reduce borrowing costs. Warsh responded by stating that such reports were based on inaccurate sources and reiterated that the independence of the Fed is “essential” for economic stability.

Despite Trump’s backing, the nomination also faces a critical roadblock within the Republican Party.

US Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, reiterated his refusal to support Warsh as long as a Department of Justice investigation into Jerome Powell continues.

The probe, led by Assistant US Attorney Jeannine Pirro, is examining whether Powell committed perjury during testimony last year regarding the budget of a Federal Reserve building renovation project.

Tillis and other Republican colleagues have expressed their support for Powell, arguing that the investigation is meritless. According to Tillis, he will not vote for a successor until the “investigation is dropped,” a stance that effectively freezes the nomination in a closely divided committee.

Federal prosecutors have reportedly continued their efforts to access Fed records as recently as last week, even after a judge previously found no evidence to support the charges.

Legal and ethical hurdles

The proceedings also delved into Warsh’s personal financial interests and the logistical challenges of a potential leadership transition.

US Senator Elizabeth Warren raised questions about the nominee’s investments in private entities, including SpaceX and Polymarket, noting that the specific size of these holdings had not been fully disclosed to the public.

Warsh defended his position by stating that the Office of Government Ethics has already approved his plan to divest all assets within 90 days of his confirmation.

Compounding the uncertainty is the unique situation involving Jerome Powell.

Unlike most departing Chairs, Powell has indicated he intends to remain on the Federal Reserve’s governing board until his separate term ends in 2028, or until the perjury investigation is concluded.

This could create an awkward power dynamic where the former Chair sits alongside his successor, a scenario not seen in Washington since the late 1940s.

While US President Donald Trump has threatened to remove Powell from the board entirely, legal experts suggest such a move would be difficult, particularly given recent US Supreme Court precedents relating to the protection of Fed governors from political dismissal.

WASHINGTON — Democrats who once saw retaking the U.S. Senate as a long shot in 2026 have newfound hope thanks to an unpopular president and a California donor machine that has snapped into action.

Californians provided the most out-of-state cash to Democrats in nearly every hotly contested race, and in several cases gave more than in-state donors, according to a Times analysis of campaign finance filings covering the first three months of 2026.

Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, who took in more than $14 million overall, received nearly as much from California backers as from supporters in his home state among donors who contributed at least $200 and whose identities were disclosed.

James Talarico, a Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, has raised a staggering $27 million so far this year, with California donors contributing just under $1.2 million to back his campaign — second only to Texas supporters among those donors whose names were disclosed.

Donors who give less than $200 are not required to be identified in campaign finance reports and made up a significant share of the donors to Ossoff’s and Talarico’s campaigns.

Republicans currently have control of the Senate with 53 of the chamber’s 100 seats. This year 35 seats are at play, including special elections in Florida and Ohio.

GOP still winning a key cash race

While more of the seats up for grabs are in Republican hands, polling showing the potential for tight races in several of them has given Democrats hope that they might be able to shrink or reverse their deficit in November.

Top Democratic candidates have out-raised their GOP rivals in the most competitive Senate races, but Republicans are winning the cash race among big-money committees that can accept checks far larger than the $7,000 cap on donations to candidate committees.

Those Democratic candidates have continued a tradition of relying on donors in the country’s most populous state to bankroll their campaigns.

“California has been a rich gold mine for many a candidate and continues to be that,” said Michael Beckel, director of money in politics reform at Issue One, a bipartisan advocacy group.

Democratic Senate candidates in a few races raised more from California donors than from donors in their home states, according to campaign finance reports filed Wednesday.

Democratic former Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska, who is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, brought in nearly $900,000 from California donors who had contributed at least $200. Alaska donors contributed just over $520,000 to Peltola in the same time period.

Two of the three leading Democratic hopefuls in Michigan’s open Senate race, Rep. Haley Stevens and physician Abdul El-Sayed, reported taking in more from California donors than from donors in Michigan. California was the second biggest bank of support for the other top Democratic contender, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow.

And in Nebraska, independent Dan Osborn, who is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, took in $80,000 more from disclosed California donors than from Nebraskans.

Dozens of California donors gave to at least five Senate candidates across the country, according to The Times’ analysis of the filing data.

Burbank playwright and screenwriter Winnie Holzman has donated to Democratic candidates in nine key races and said she has been inspired to give to them — and other candidates and political groups — because of concerns about the policies of President Trump’s administration and what she sees as its violation of the law.

“This isn’t just about who is in the Senate,” said Holzman, who wrote the script for the play “Wicked” and co-wrote its movie adaptations. “But if enough Democrats were in the Senate right now, there would be a lot more ability to push back on this.”

The impressive fundraising hauls by Democrats come with a significant caveat.

The two most prominent political committees that support Republican Senate candidates — the party-affiliated National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Senate Leadership Fund super PAC, have both outraised rival Democratic groups by a significant margin this cycle.

For the NRSC, an $11.5-million fundraising advantage since the start of 2025 has translated to a modest $2-million advantage in cash in the bank through the end of February compared with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

But the Senate Leadership Fund, which can accept unlimited amounts of cash from donors, had $91.6 million more to spend at the end of March than the Democratic rival Senate Majority PAC.

And the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc. had a stunning $312 million in the bank at the end of February.

Money raised by candidate campaign committees does, however, bring some advantages over money raised by other committees. Most significantly, candidates are able to buy advertising at cheaper rates than other political committees.

That is an important distinction in a year when advertising spending in Senate races is expected to top $2.8 billion.

The Senate map

While political analysts expect that Democrats will likely perform well in congressional races — with early signs pointing to a strong possibility that the party regains control of the House — winning control of the Senate would be a much taller order.

“The Senate is going to be won or lost in red states,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

Even in the best-case scenario for Democrats, to retake control of the chamber they would probably need to win in at least two states such as Iowa, Alaska, Ohio or Texas, all of which went to Trump in the 2024 presidential election by double-digit margins.

With the vast sums likely to be raised — and spent — by both sides, Kondik said that fundraising can reach a point of diminishing returns.

“You’d rather have more than less, obviously, but the actual effect is pretty debatable,” he said.

And history shows that fundraising prowess doesn’t necessarily translate to electoral success in November.

Take the example of Texas Democrat Beto O’Rourke.

In his 2018 challenge of incumbent Republican Ted Cruz, O’Rourke brought in more than $80 million, more than double Cruz’s fundraising haul of $35 million.

But it wasn’t enough to put the then-congressman from El Paso over the top.

O’Rourke lost the race by about 2.5 percentage points.

WASHINGTON — The Senate approved a short-term renewal until April 30 of a controversial surveillance program used by U.S. spy agencies, following a chaotic, post-midnight scramble in the House to keep the authority from expiring.

The measure cleared the Senate by voice vote, without a formal roll call, as Congress raced to meet a Monday deadline. It now heads to President Trump, who had pushed for a clean 18-month extension, for his signature.

GOP leaders in the House rushed lawmakers back into session late Thursday with a series of back-to-back votes that collapsed in dramatic failure, before they quickly pushed ahead the stopgap measure as they race to keep the surveillance program running past Monday’s expiration date.

First they unveiled a new plan that would have extended the program for five years, with revisions. Then they tried to salvage a shorter 18-month renewal that Trump had demanded and Speaker Mike Johnson had previously backed. Some 20 Republicans joined most Democrats in blocking its advance.

Shortly after 2 a.m. they quickly agreed to the 10-day extension, which was agreed to on a voice vote without a formal roll call. It next goes to the Senate, which is gaveling for a rare Friday session, as Congress races to keep the surveillance program running.

“We were very close tonight,” said Johnson after the late-night action.

But Democrats blasted the middle-of-the-night voting as amateur hour. “Are you kidding me? Who the hell is running this place?” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., during a fiery floor debate.

At the center of the standoff that has stretched throughout the week is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI and other agencies to collect and analyze vast amounts of overseas communications without a warrant. In doing so, they can incidentally sweep up communications involving Americans who interact with foreign targets.

U.S. officials say the authority is critical to disrupting terrorist plots, cyber intrusions and foreign espionage.

Surveillance program fight is a debate over privacy and security

Its path to passage has teetered all week in a familiar fight, as lawmakers weigh civil liberties concerns against intelligence officials’ warnings about national security risks.

Opponents of the surveillance tool point to past misuses. FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when searching intelligence related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and racial justice protests in 2020, according to a 2024 court order.

Trump and his allies had lobbied aggressively all week for a clean renewal of the program, without changes.

A group of Republicans traveled to the White House on Tuesday, and on Wednesday CIA Director John Ratcliffe spoke directly with GOP lawmakers. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Thursday there had “been negotiations late into the night with the White House and some of our members.”

“I am asking Republicans to UNIFY, and vote together on the test vote to bring a clean Bill to the floor,” Trump wrote on Truth Social this week. “We need to stick together.”

The result of days of negotiations

Thursday’s proceedings came to a standstill as lawmakers retreated behind closed doors and Johnson reached for an agreement to resolve the standoff.

Shortly before midnight GOP leaders announced a new proposal, a five-year extension, with revisions. The changes were designed to win over skeptics of the surveillance program who have demanded greater oversight to protect Americans’ privacy.

Among the changes are new provisions to ensure that only FBI attorneys can authorize queries on U.S. persons, and to require the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to review such cases, said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., during the debate.

But the final product, a 14-page amendment, did not go far enough for some holdouts in either party.

With Johnson controlling a slim majority, he has little room for dissent. As the Republicans fell short on both efforts before the short extension, a handful of Democrats stepped in to try to help them advance the longer extensions, but most Democrats were opposed.

“We just defeated Johnson’s efforts to sneak through a 5-year FISA authorization tonight,” said Democratic Rep, Ro Khanna of California. “Now, they will have to fight in daylight.”

Cappelletti and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.

April 14 (UPI) — A budget resolution to fund federal immigration enforcement could hit the Senate floor by next week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday, as Republicans seek to bypass Democratic demands for reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol.

Federal funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol lapsed on Feb. 14 after Republicans agreed with the Democrats to remove the Department of Homeland Security from a larger spending package and avert a government shutdown.

Neither agency has been funded through regular DHS appropriations since, though they continue operating through other, emergency funding.

Democrats began demanding reforms to the federal immigration enforcement agencies before agreeing to restore funding after two U.S. citizens were killed by federal immigration officers amid President Donald Trump‘s aggressive immigration crackdown.

Amid a stalemate in negotiations, Republicans are considering passing three years of funding for the agencies through a complicated legislative mechanism called a budget reconciliation bill that permits certain spending legislation to pass with a simple majority rather than 60 votes, Thune told reporters Tuesday in the Capitol.

“Republicans are going to stand with our Border Patrol, with our law enforcement agencies and we’re going to ensure that they are funded, not only today but well into the future,” Thune, R-S.D., said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is preparing the resolution to fund the agencies that will be followed by the reconciliation bill “to ensure the job gets done,” he said.

Democrats have blocked funding for ICE and Border Patrol until reforms — including requiring judicial warrants and banning officers from wearing masks — are made, but the reconciliation bill tactic could ensure funding without any votes from Democratic lawmakers.

The same tactic was used last year to pass Trump’s sweeping spending and tax cut bill, which provided $75 billion for ICE.

“All of the things that the Democrats made this about, which was supposed to be about reforms to the way that ICE and Border Patrol operate — they get none of that,” Thune said.

“And now, we’re going to fund those agencies for three years into the future. The only thing the Democrats got out of this was they now own the issue of open borders and defund law enforcement.”

Republicans hold a narrow 53-47 majority in the Senate, with two independents caucusing with the Democrats, as well as a 218-213 majority in the House.

The Senate has twice passed bipartisan bills to fund DHS aside from ICE and Border Patrol, which the House has balked at. Democrats blame the Trump administration’s influence on the lower chamber.

“Republicans are dragging the Senate through a partisan circus just to avoid basic accountability for ICE and Border Patrol,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters at the Capitol during a separate press conference on Tuesday.

He said Democrats will continue to push for immigration enforcement reforms.

“So, the pattern, unfortunately, with this administration is clearer and clearer,” the veteran New York Democrat said. “Chaos abroad — the war; chaos at home with not funding DHS with reforms. A failed war overseas, a manufactured crisis here in Washington — in both cases Republicans aren’t leading, they are following orders.”