Congress struggles to keep up with the Trump cavalcade of action
The Trump-DOGE-Musk fast-moving agenda prods Congress into action. This week, members reacted to several of the latest administrative executive orders and other moves. Loren Duggan, deputy news director of Bloomberg Government, joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to give the rundown.
Interview transcript:
Tom Temin: And Loren, there is a House vote this week on nationwide injunctions. What’s going on there?
Loren Duggan: Right. This is a reaction to what some judges have done in the Trump administration. He’ll put forward an executive order or other action and a judge will issue an injunction nationwide. So even though it’s filed in one place, it goes everywhere. And this is rankled Republicans in both chambers who want to find ways to curtail this. This is not as far as impeaching a judge or trying to remove them, but it is a way for them to try to limit what one judge can do to policies around the country. So we’re going to see a vote this week on the House floor on a bill sponsored by Darrell Issa. And then some hearings at both the House and the Senate where they’re going to look into this broader discussion about what judges are doing vis-à-vis Trump administration policies.
Tom Temin: Yeah, Darrell Issa has really risen in Republican ranks. He was out of Congress for a couple of terms and came back and has done pretty well for himself politically, hasn’t he?
Loren Duggan: He has. People might remember him as the house oversight chair taking on.
Tom Temin: Indeed.
Loren Duggan: The administrations in the past. And this time, he’s come back and has found a home in the Judiciary Committee. He’s been doing a lot of work on judge issues, including adding federal judges. That was one of the bills he was doing last year was to expand some of the federal judge ships that would then get new judges and try to handle course or caseloads around the country. And now he’s very much involved in this injunctions issue among others.
Tom Temin: And we haven’t really seen, by the way, just as a side issue, the conveyor belt of judges, as we call it, for the Trump administration really get up and cranking yet, have we?
Loren Duggan: No, we haven’t. I mean, there’s the executive nominations that have taken up a lot of time and other legislative work. I’m sure that will get to the fore at some point, though.
Tom Temin: All right. And then this proof of citizenship for voting, that is raising a lot of hackles among local voting officials. Voters wonder, ‘What do I got to bring with me?’ And so on. And what is Congress thinking about on that front?
Loren Duggan: So there was an executive order on March 25th that the president issued that would require some national aspects of this requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. This is about making that a nationwide requirement in law, which is obviously a tighter requirement. Like you say, it would require you to provide a proof of citizenship. It could be a passport, a real ID, compliant ID, some military paperwork, something like that to prove that you’re a citizen to vote now. You’re not supposed to vote if you’re not a citizen in federal elections, certainly some localities have allowed noncitizens to vote for local offices and things like that, but this is meant to tighten that. But some people are concerned it could have wider implications in the attempt to prevent noncitizens. You might make citizens without the right paperwork or who live far away from a place to show their paperwork to actually get that done. So I’m sure a robust debate on the floor on that.
Tom Temin: Yes, there are citizens that don’t drive. So they don’t have a driver’s license with real ID. They may not travel abroad if they don’ drive. It’s likely they don’t travel internationally, won’t have passport. And so you, I guess, need your birth certificate. And that’s not so easy to get your hands on sometimes either.
Loren Duggan: Right. And those are some of the arguments I think we’ll hear against it and maybe they’ll look for other ways to try and go about mitigating that. But there are some estimates that could cause a number of people to maybe have trouble registering to vote, even if they eventually get there.
Tom Temin: And over the years, the Consumer Protection Financial Bureau, did I get that right?
Loren Duggan: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Yeah.
Tom Temin: I have to see it written out to say the words in order. Some of those rules that the Trump administration is trying to kill, this is invoking Congressional Review Act discussions.
Loren Duggan: That’s right. We’re seeing two more go through the House this week. These are ones that the Senate has already passed, so they could be wins for Trump very soon. One of them is about payment platforms like Venmo or Apple Pay or things like that, that handle a lot of transactions and how they’re regulated. And then there’s one about banks that have more than $ 10 billion in transactions, overdraft rule there. So charging a fee if your account doesn’t have enough money that sort of thing. So those are two rules that could be nixed if those resolutions are passed and President Trump signs it seems very likely that those will be two more that are knocked out by that process.
Tom Temin: So these were rules that restricted what banks could do and what these payers could do in CFPB’s rules in favor of consumers, but those rules could be jettisoned?
Loren Duggan: Yep, they’re likely to be just given the widespread support among Republicans for that and that’s all they really need to get those done.
Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Loren Duggan, deputy news director at Bloomberg Government. And what about the tariffs? Is that invoked to be, I mean, there’s been a lot of conversation about that. Anything Congress can do or any members contemplating anything?
Loren Duggan: There are members who say that Congress should take back some power here and try to stop it, including some Republicans. What we’re likely to see this week is a Senate vote on a resolution that would cancel the emergency that Donald Trump put in place to put some of the candidate tariffs in place. They can force a vote as the minority under the rules of the Senate. It’s unlikely to pass and unlikely to get through the House at this point. But it’s at least a release valve for people to vote on something and talk about it. I think that the discussion will be heavy all week on this, especially as they’re due to take effect in the middle of the week and we’ll see what happens there. But tariffs will be on the minds of a lot of people and probably getting a lot of questions as members of Congress about that.
Tom Temin: And I’m curious as to how you actually administer tariffs. Who collects it? Who counts it? How does it get into paperwork? How does get enforced on who collects the money when a shipment comes in? I don’t think any of that’s in place.
Loren Duggan: Well, there’s supposed to be an External Revenue Service coming. That’s one of the president’s ideas. He’s talked about in some of his administration folks. There’s obviously ways to collect tariffs that are in place now. But we’ll see if there’s a more discussion about that External Revenue Service as part of this big push and rollout this week from the administration. But that’s not in place yet, obviously.
Tom Temin: All right, and what about hearings on, there are still a few nominations left and a few hearings on some of the people that are lightning rods, you might say?
Loren Duggan: Yeah, more than a few nominations left. We’re looking to see General Caine, who’s been nominated to be Joint Chief of Staff. He might get a hearing this week and the next director possibly of the Office of Personnel Management, which that definitely will be in the spotlight when he goes to the committee, given all the moves on personnel across the administration. So we have a lot more to go. There’s still some agency heads and then deputy directors, deputy secretaries, things like that. So a lot to go and really taking up a lot of the Senate’s work time there.
Tom Temin: And that OPM nominee is Scott Kupor of Andreessen Horowitz. But what are we hearing about things like the Education Department, so-called dismantlement, because members have said, ‘Well, only Congress can do that because Congress created it statutorily.’ But are they doing anything in Congress? I mean, they seem to be relying on the courts to carry out the will of Congress, which is an odd situation.
Loren Duggan: It is and there are members who have long ago voted to dismantle the Education Department. It’s just they have a president now who is working with them to do that. They will have to pass legislation for some of this. They can move things around administratively. What we may see is when they have to write the next budget for the Education Department as part of the fiscal 2026 spending bills, there could be some language around that. And they’re going to have to grapple with the fact that they need to write a funding bill for a department as it exists and not as it may have existed in the past. So we’ll have to see what they do there. You’re right, there is a role for Congress here who created this agency by law back in 79.
Tom Temin: And they did burn away the heavy curtain behind them of getting a 2025 budget done by just having a yearlong continuing resolution. But now at some point, the administration will generate its 2026 proposal and what will that invoke and when might they get around that because summer is coming soon and next thing you know, it’s Christmas break.
Loren Duggan: Right. I think they’re looking to use the summer for appropriations like they usually do, but they do want to get that document from the administration as a starting point. We’ll probably have a very busy, truncated summer period on that. And there’s still some hangover from 25, whether it’s Susan Collins and Patty Murray being mad about the cancellation of emergency funds that the administration put forth or dealing with the local D.C. Budget, which Congress didn’t approve for this year and may have to go back and pass legislation there. The Senate did, the House hasn’t yet. Trump called for them to do it. So. There’s still fiscal 2025 hangover even with 2026 around the corner.
Tom Temin: And now we’re hearing talk of merging the Drug Enforcement Administration together with the (Bureau of) Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. So everything we indulge in would be in one agency. And golly, that would imagine have some of the oversight people in Congress get their tackles up because agencies equal power for committees.
Loren Duggan: Right. And there’s been a lot of proposals to downsize or strip away. And like you mentioned with the Education Department, so Congress has hearings coming up when they do get the budget. They always have hearings with these agency heads and we’ll have a chance to question this. We’ll have to see what it turns into legislatively or in appropriations or something like that, how they respond. But I’m sure there will be a lot to be said, especially as they get in front of Congress later this year.
Tom Temin: And not that the politics are our concern here, but it is interesting to see that there are challenges to the leadership of Chuck Schumer on the Democratic side. Could that slow down things or could that make a little bit easier running field for the Republicans, do you think, short term?
Loren Duggan: Possibly. I mean, some of that seems to have faded since it was most intense around the continuing resolution vote a couple of weeks ago. And we’ll also be watching to see these special elections in Florida this week, how well Democrats do versus Republicans. And if Democrats are buoyed by that, maybe they won’t be as urgent to change. But politics always infuses what goes on in Capitol Hill and this will be no different.
Tom Temin: Imagine that.
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