These Republican-on-Republican disputes are keeping Congress frozen
Republican infighting is leaving Congress in legislative limbo.
While there are plenty of partisan disputes that have frustrated Capitol Hill — such as the nearly two-month shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security — divisions between House and Senate Republicans have been the more significant obstacle for a laundry list of stalled legislation that could otherwise sail to President Donald Trump’s desk.
Trump could intervene to settle many of these disputes, but he has kept his distance in most cases. That has left each chamber pushing ahead with their own proposals — and against their counterparts in the other chamber.
In the one instance where the president appears truly invested, in passage of a sweeping GOP elections bill, his fixation has only made the intraparty divisions worse.
Lawmakers will return to Washington next week with the pre-midterm legislative calendar dwindling and leaders eyeing action on at least one party-line budget reconciliation bill — a time-consuming process that could make it even tougher to find consensus on these pending items:
Housing affordability
With cost-of-living concerns dominating the pre-midterm political landscape, a bipartisan effort to address housing prices should be a no-brainer, but disputes over niche policy provisions are holding up dueling House and Senate housing packages.
The Senate passed a bill last month that includes a temporary ban on central bank digital currency as well as a provision restricting large investors from owning more than 350 homes. Both provisions face serious opposition from House Republicans, who joined with Democrats in their chamber to pass their own bill in February.
While the Senate wants the House to accept its version, House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and others in the GOP are pushing for the two chambers to go to conference — potentially adding months to the process.
Aviation safety
Legislation aiming to respond to the deadly crash near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport last year is stuck in a battle of wills among GOP committee chairs. A bill backed by Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) appeared set for Trump’s desk earlier this year until the heads of two key House committees, Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Transportation and Infrastructure Chair Sam Graves (R-Mo.), came out against it, causing the measure to fail on the House floor.
The Senate bill’s requirement for advanced aircraft location-alerting technology has been one of the biggest points of contention among Republicans, with the House version of the bill opting for more open-ended language. The House bill focuses on a different technology, which major aviation labor groups argue wouldn’t have prevented the Washington disaster.
Cruz has called the House rejection of his ROTOR Act a “temporary delay,” but the House chairs are pushing forward with their own ALERT Act, with a floor vote expected Tuesday. How the policy disputes will be settled from there remains uncertain.
College sports
Trump has taken a keen interest in college athletics, issuing a flurry of executive orders on this topic. But Congress has struggled to act on legislation tackling the controversial “name, image and likeness” regime for compensating student athletes
House Republicans last year made a push for the SCORE Act, which would create new standards for how college athletes are paid and give antitrust exemptions, before opposition from hard-liners and many Democrats put it on ice.
While there has been new chatter about putting it on the floor this month, the bill is dead on arrival in the Senate, where Cruz and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the top Commerce Committee senators, have warned the measure doesn’t have enough support. The two are discussing ways to address NIL concerns but have yet to produce a bill.
Tech regulation
The House and Senate have failed to reach consensus on a number of tech-industry flashpoints, including artificial intelligence and children’s online safety.
The House GOP largely wants to codify a Trump executive order creating a national AI rulebook, but some Senate Republicans appear concerned that the president’s plan could limit state-level regulations the White House wants to override.
There’s a similar standoff over online safety bills. The Senate cleared a privacy bill by unanimous consent, but the House hasn’t taken it up and instead is pushing ahead with a package that doesn't include key Senate-passed provisions.
One of the key differences is on state preemption — included in the House version but not the Senate version. Another dispute is over “duty of care” language in the Senate bill that requires tech companies to design their platforms with an eye toward preventing harm to children. Senate Majority Leader John Thune floated pairing AI legislation with kids online safety legislation in an interview earlier this year.
And then there’s cryptocurrency: A closely watched “market structure” bill is stuck for now in the Senate after it was excluded from a landmark crypto bill signed into law last year despite a push in the House.
The Trump administration is increasing pressure, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent saying Thursday that “Senate time is precious, and now is the time to act.”
Elections oversight
Conservative lawmakers and Trump have joined forces behind the SAVE America Act — a GOP bill aimed at fully eliminating noncitizen voting — as a top-level, must-pass agenda item even as many Senate Republicans doubt it can ever skirt their chamber’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Trump views the bill as his “No. 1 priority,” and House hard-liners are pushing for a filibuster workaround. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has pushed to force Democrats into a “talking filibuster” where they would have to hold the floor to block the bill, and the Senate will resume debate early next week with no indication of when GOP leaders will choose to hold a likely doomed vote and move on.
Some Republicans, including Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, want to try to pass parts of the bill through the reconciliation process later this fall. But hard-liners view that as a nonstarter because most of the bill likely violates the strict Senate rules governing the party-line reconciliation process.
DHS funding
There’s no bigger dispute for House and Senate Republicans to settle than DHS funding, which has already been subject to nearly a month of back-and-forth.
A Senate-passed bill delivering funding for all of the department save for immigration enforcement agencies is currently held up in the House. Republicans there aren’t enthused about a plan that would instead fund ICE and other agencies through the reconciliation process — an idea Speaker Mike Johnson called “garbage” before flipping in support.
Now, many House Republicans want their Senate counterparts to pass immigration enforcement funding before the House passes the balance of DHS spending. The hard-line Freedom Caucus has gone further, demanding GOP leaders fund all of DHS through reconciliation.
As party leaders make plans to pass a narrowly targeted reconciliation bill ahead of a Trump-imposed June 1 deadline, most Senate Republicans want the House to fund most of DHS now — or risk prolonging the infighting that even one GOP senator called a “circular firing squad.”
Katherine Hapgood, Gabby Miller, Alfred Ng, Nick Niedzwiadek and Sam Ogozalek contributed to this report.
