Lawmakers in the House of Representatives narrowly passed a budget resolution this week that serves as a first draft of the “big, beautiful bill” President Trump has been seeking. WSJ’s Siobhan Hughes joins Ryan Knutson and Molly Ball to discuss how Congress is working with Trump. Plus, we take a look at what impact recent rulings from the judicial branch might mean for Trump's agenda. Further Reading: - The Weight of Trump’s Agenda Sits on Mike Johnson’s Shoulders Further Listening: - Why Trump Wants Ukrainian Minerals - Trump 2.0: Shaking Up Europe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: How are the branches of government interacting under Trump's administration?
Hi, Molly.
Hey, Ryan.
Did you know that there are three branches of government?
What?
Big surprise. Right now in Washington, it feels like there is just one, and it is named Donald Trump.
Or potentially Elon Musk, yeah. But while Trump is putting on a big show, and it seems like he's doing all these things, for any of it to actually have the force of law, it has to go through Congress.
And this was a big week in Congress, right?
It was really a big week for Congress because they actually finally passed something.
And Congress isn't the only branch of government that's been busy. So has the judicial branch. There's also been some court rulings both for and against Trump's agenda.
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Chapter 2: What role does Congress play in Trump's agenda?
All right, so Molly, let's talk about Congress first. Presidents have always had to work closely with Congress. Some have done it more effectively than others. But tell us about the Congress that Trump is working with.
Well, it's a Republican Congress, for one thing. Republicans, as you may remember, when they won the election in November, also won slim majorities in the House and Senate. And they see themselves as very much Trump's team. And this is different from when Trump was first in office eight years ago. During Trump's first term, he also had a Republican Congress, including the House and Senate.
And in fact, there were bigger Republican majorities, but they were not as Trumpy. This time, Trump and Congress alike basically feel like they are there because of him. They got there on his electoral coattails. So they really feel like they are there to execute his agenda and get done the stuff that Trump and Republicans promised to do.
So let's talk about arguably the most important person in Congress right now, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson. You published a profile of him recently and spent some time with him. After a year and a half in this role now, how would you say he's settled in?
Well, I want to remind people that Mike Johnson got to be Speaker of the House kind of by accident, right? A year and a half ago, Kevin McCarthy was the Republican Speaker of the House, and he was sort of assassinated from within his own ranks, Caesar style. And There was a chaotic power vacuum where we had no Speaker of the House for several weeks.
And it was as a result of that process that they finally settled on Mike Johnson, who not a lot of people knew very well. And a lot of people, including some of his own colleagues, saw him as sort of a placeholder and didn't think that he would remain Speaker after the election.
But he hasn't just been a placeholder, though. He's actually established himself pretty well in this role. So how would you say he did that?
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Chapter 3: Who is Mike Johnson and what is his role in Congress?
So I think Johnson gets a lot of credit for really doing the work. He spent that time really shoring up his relationships with other Republican members, but really with Donald Trump. Johnson correctly assessed that his ticket to power was sticking as close to Trump as possible because it is Trump who has all the power in the Republican Party.
And because Republican voters want their members of Congress to do what Trump wants to do, Johnson, by sticking super close to Trump, has been able to ally himself with the most powerful figure in the party. And Trump has been helpful to him in return. But, you know, my reporting suggests that Trump is still a bit skeptical of Johnson. He is not sure that Johnson is tough enough.
Frankly, there's a feeling with everyone around Trump, like they're sort of walking on eggshells and could be fired at any moment. So Johnson sort of knows that he serves at Trump's pleasure and that that relationship with Trump is going to be crucial to not only his success, but really his survival.
So Trump so far has been doing a lot of things by executive orders and not so much by working with Congress in the way that past presidents have. But there is one thing that he has said that he wants out of Congress, which is a big, beautiful bill. What does Trump want in that bill?
It's basically the entire Trump agenda, this bill. They're talking about, on the one hand, funding a lot of Trump's priorities, particularly his immigration agenda, which is going to be very expensive, and a lot of things he wants to do on energy. And then they want to dramatically cut the government, make it smaller, right?
And then importantly, you know, the major legislative achievement of Trump's first term was the big tax cut bill in 2017. And most of those tax cuts are going to expire this year if they don't pass them again. So a big part of this legislative package that they're trying to do is to renew those tax cuts, keep them from expiring.
But there's also a disagreement between the House and Senate over how to get this done because, yes, Trump says he wants one big, beautiful bill, but there's also a plan B, which is two big, beautiful bills. The Senate has been trying to do two bills at the same time as the House. And so they're sort of working in parallel, sort of racing each other to see who can get there first.
But the Senate wants to put sort of all the candy in the first bill, the spending on immigration and energy and so forth, and then spend the rest of the year doing the second bill fighting over tax cuts.
So in this race, it seems like the House is ahead at this point because on Tuesday, Johnson narrowly got a budget resolution passed, which is sort of like a first draft of this big, beautiful bill. And to help us understand what was in that resolution, we have our colleague Siobhan Hughes here who covers Congress.
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Chapter 4: What is the 'big, beautiful bill' and what does it include?
Great to see you.
You too.
So, Siobhan, tell us about this big, beautiful first draft, this budget resolution. What was in it and what wasn't in it?
So, what was in it is something that's just in very, very broad brushstrokes. This is not the package that Congress is going to ultimately vote on. These are the marching orders. And they tell various committees, most predominantly the Tax Writing Committee, the House Ways and Means Committee— that it can cut taxes by a certain amount, essentially.
And then it gives marching orders to other entities like the House Energy and Commerce Committee to find a certain amount of savings. And so the action is going to be in these committees where we figure out, for example, does the House Energy and Commerce Committee decide to really make big cuts to Medicaid?
And the Ways and Means Committee, how does the chairman, Jason Smith, get around these constraints on how much in taxes he's able to cut and still extend those 2017 tax cuts?
So, Siobhan, the Senate has also been working in parallel. How different is what the House passed from what the Senate's done so far?
These are worlds apart because it's starting out with this narrow package focused predominantly on border security and military spending. It's just going to put money into those areas, popular programs among Republicans, and then come back and work out the difficult details of a tax package later. And so these two are on a collision course.
Mike Johnson's theory of the case is that if you do everything in one big, beautiful bill, everybody gets something and you smooth over these interparty tensions, get it done in one shot, and you can all move on. And the Senate Republicans' theory of the case is that
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Chapter 5: How is the House's budget resolution different from the Senate's plan?
So which of these approaches do you think is going to prevail? Well,
The theory of the case had been that House Republicans were going to land smack on their face. And at least with that vote on Tuesday, they showed they were able to start the process.
The vote on Tuesday being they got it passed.
They got it passed. It was a nail-biter. It squeaked through. If one Republican had gone a different direction, this would not have passed. But they got it done. And as Molly points out, the reason they got it done was because they brought in their heavy hitter.
They brought in Donald Trump, who was on the phone while House members were on that floor, twisting arms and sort of saying, hey, you've just got to open this process.
And I do think it's important to give credit to Mike Johnson. This is a big win for him, right? He still has a lot of doubters who don't think he's very good at his job, but his strategy worked.
And his strategy is just stick as close to Trump as possible and get Trump to do the heavy lifting when necessary because Republicans in the House and Senate want a lot of things, but they do not want to be seen as defying Trump or rebelling against him and So if Trump comes in and says, I'm going to go after you if you don't do what I want, they're going to do what he wants.
Yeah, Molly's right. I mean, sometimes in politics, you don't have to get every single thing right, but you do have to have one good insight or idea. And Mike Johnson's key insight, the key to all of this is Donald Trump has proved right.
This budget resolution, though, I mean, as you were saying, it was the narrowest of margins, 217 to 215 in the House. How much of a victory is that? I mean, is Mike Johnson going to be able to hold this together to actually get this all the way across the finish line and turn it into law eventually? Or does this say that it actually might be more tenuous?
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Chapter 6: Will Mike Johnson's strategy be successful in passing the bill?
They don't think that the Republican grassroots are opposed to what is coming and that instead you've got Democrats riled up grabbing the microphone and that once the dust settles, things are going to be OK. But, you know, beyond that, there are some real concerns on the part of Republican voters.
I was talking to a congressperson down in Florida who talked about how when some of her Republican officials had been meeting with the government about where they were going to get money to rebuild after hurricanes, they were told, look, we don't know if you're going to be able to get the money. Everything's kind of on pause. We're not sure we're going to deliver for you.
And once those real-world issues start to hit in a very personal way, That's what can be the game changer. And that's certainly what Democrats are banking on.
The phones in Congress have also been literally ringing off the hook, right?
Oh, absolutely. They've been ringing off the hooks to the point that you couldn't get through. Things almost got frozen up.
One thing that some people in these town halls have been bringing up is this idea that the president is overstepping his authority and that Congress is sort of getting steamrolled by all these executive orders. So how does Mike Johnson, as the Speaker of the House, see these separation of powers questions that have been coming up in the Trump administration?
It's a great question, and it was a major topic of my conversation with Johnson when I interviewed him for this piece. You know, Mike Johnson's background is he's a constitutional lawyer, and he will tell you he's a big Article I guy. Now, what is Article I? Literally the first thing in the Constitution is Congress, and the president comes after that.
And so Congress, members of Congress will often point to this to say, actually, you know, we're more important. And the Constitution does suggest that the legislative branch is the primary locus of power when it comes to setting policy, and the president is sort of secondary.
So you would think that there would be a lot of tension, right, at a time when the president is doing a lot of things that critics and some courts think go beyond the power that the Constitution gives him. Shouldn't it be up to Congress to push back against that, to rein him in, to say, no, actually, that's our job? But Johnson believes that Trump is not doing anything to take away from Congress.
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