Category: Politics

Rep. Max Miller, the embattled Ohio Republican who faces accusations of domestic violence from his ex-wife, appears almost certain to remain on the ballot in November after a key deadline in the process to replace him passed Saturday.

Miller, who denies any wrongdoing, has resisted growing calls to drop his bid for a third term and resign from Congress.

Under Ohio law, the deadline to fill a vacancy for the November general election is Monday at 4 p.m. But there are earlier steps in the process that seemingly would have necessitated Miller withdrawing already.

Most notably, the leaders of the local Republican parties in all four counties that are part of the district must meet to choose the replacement nominee. The statute requires that the chairperson from the most populous county provide at least two days’ notice to participants to convene the meeting.

That means Miller would have had to withdraw his candidacy by Saturday to leave enough time for the selection process before Monday’s deadline. He did not.

A spokesperson for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R), who oversees elections in the state, said the office could not confirm that interpretation of the law because of the potential for litigation.

If Miller were to end his campaign after Monday, his name could still be removed from the ballot until 70 days before the November election — that deadline is Aug. 25 — but there would be no Republican nominee for the office.

Some Republican officials, fearful of putting a conservative-leaning seat at risk as the GOP fights to hold its narrow House majority, have maneuvered to pressure Miller to drop out of the race. Withdrawing after he won the Republican nomination for Ohio’s 7th Congressional District would have allowed local GOP officials to select a replacement.

Following their divorce last year, Miller’s ex-wife, Emily Moreno, accused him in court filings of throwing hot water on her from a pan of eggs he had just cooked, once holding a gun to her head, and hurting their daughter, who suffered a fractured collarbone in February. Miller claims his ex-wife fabricated those allegations because she is mentally ill, which she denies.

Public scrutiny of the abuse accusations increased in recent weeks after Moreno filed for a new restraining order, leading Miller to post a lengthy video statement online in which he blamed a custody battle for souring their relationship and vowed to press ahead with his reelection.

Last Sunday, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio), Emily Moreno’s father, broke months of silence about the situation, calling Miller “a danger” who is unfit to serve in Congress and urging him to step aside.

That set off a scramble over Miller’s fate. Some Senate colleagues, including Sen. Jon Husted (R., Ohio), and conservative organizations in Ohio joined Moreno to push Miller to end his campaign and resign from Congress.

But prominent Republicans, including President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), have stood by Miller. Most of his GOP colleagues in the House refuse to discuss the allegations against him.

Privately, Republican campaign officials express little concern about losing Miller’s seat because of the conservative tilt of this area stretching south from the Cleveland suburbs.

The Washington Post interviewed dozens of voters in the district this week and found that the scandal was barely registering.

Many were unfamiliar with the accusations against Miller, and even those Republicans who had heard were largely wary of wading into what they considered a family matter and reluctant to abandon the congressman. Only a handful of conservative voters told the Post that they were even open to considering his Democratic opponent, Brian Poindexter.

With his bruising confirmation battle behind him, Todd Blanche will soon be sworn in as the Senate-backed head of the Justice Department.

But the hardest part may be what comes next.

Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer, will officially assume the title of attorney general and take command of an agency he has led on an acting basis since April.

But he will do so under competing pressures from a president intent on seeing his enemies put on trial, a federal judiciary increasingly skeptical of those efforts, and a Republican-led Congress harboring growing doubts about Blanche’s ability to say “no” to his boss.

The Justice Department’s career staff has been ravaged by firings, departures, and low morale over the past year and a half, as its traditional independence from the White House has evaporated. And its to-do list has only grown longer, including stepped-up efforts to prosecute fraud, illegal immigration, and violent crime while pursuing the sweeping, politically charged investigations of foes that the president has demanded.

Blanche acknowledged those challenges and the difficulty of meeting Trump’s expectations as he spoke to reporters ahead of his confirmation last week.

“It’s not as if I remain blissfully unaware of what will happen if I am confirmed,” he said. “When President Trump talks about what he expects this department to do to make this country safe, I don’t think the American people should look at that as some sort of threat to me or warning to me. He wants this country to be safe.”

But as Blanche assumes his new role, now with the imprimatur of Senate backing, walking a tightrope between satisfying Trump and fulfilling an attorney general’s obligations to the rule of law is likely to only grow more perilous.

Over the next several months, the Justice Department is expected to make a number of charging decisions in sensitive cases of keen interest to the president.

Prosecutors in Florida have been at work for months on what Trump allies have referred to as a “grand conspiracy” investigation of former Obama- and Biden-era officials, including former CIA director John Brennan, who they say engaged in a long-running scheme to violate the president’s civil rights through efforts to undermine his presidency — allegations Brennan denies.

Meanwhile, department investigators continue to seek evidence to back Trump’s unproven assertions that the 2020 election was stolen, that there exist broad left-wing conspiracies to oppose his second-term agenda, and that his critics, including former FBI director James B. Comey, deserve to be put in prison.

Despite concerns raised by lawmakers about Trump’s role in those probes, Blanche has repeatedly defended the president’s “right” to intervene in Justice Department business — a significant departure from long-standing norms.

“If we have discussions where we have to talk about a case and whether we’re going to charge a case or whether we have charged a case, that’s OK,” Blanche told reporters last week. “I’m not concerned about that.”

The Senate’s 50-49 vote to confirm Blanche early Saturday came in spite of reservations expressed by some Republicans over the growing politicization of the department under Trump.

In casting the pivotal votes, Sens. John Cornyn (R., Texas), Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R., La.) each said they worried about Blanche’s ability to put the interests of the American people above those of his former client.

But each said Blanche had provided them with personal assurances that had assuaged their doubts about his ability to effectively counsel Trump when the president’s instincts run contrary to the rule of law.

“I am realistic that President Trump can be unrelenting,” Cassidy said Friday, but added: “This will be true no matter who the attorney general is. And this is the rationale for having a Senate-confirmed attorney general with more leverage to push back.”

Yet, even as Blanche was making those promises to the senators last week, Trump continued to pick at some of the very issues that had stoked lawmakers’ concerns.

He threatened to revive the controversial proposal for a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate those who claim they were victims of political prosecutions, casting doubt on Blanche’s pledge to Congress that the fund was officially dead.

He insisted the U.S. attorney in D.C., Jeanine Pirro, should refile cases that she withdrew against four people previously accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, even after she determined that there was no evidence to support the charges and that a government contractor was to blame for the damage.

And, in a letter this week, the White House revived its efforts to oust Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board over unproven allegations of mortgage fraud, despite a Supreme Court ruling in June blocking that move and the fact that the Justice Department has not filed any charges despite months of investigation. Cook has denied any wrongdoing.

Publicly, Blanche has pointed to the unique relationship he built with Trump while defending him against the four criminal cases he faced in his years out of office, saying it gives him a base of trust from which to advise the president on issues tied to the Justice Department.

But Blanche has also acknowledged that he can only do so much.

“President Trump trusts me to give him counsel,” he said during his confirmation hearing in July. “Counsel does not mean a ‘yes man,’ and that’s true in my case like it should be in any attorney general’s.”

He added, though, that “the Department of Justice, like every single department in the executive, is part of the executive” branch.

Current and former members of the department’s career workforce have said they, too, once hoped that Blanche could serve as a moderating check on Trump’s most aggressive impulses, only to see those expectations dashed.

When he was confirmed last year as the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, under then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, Blanche brought to the job experience as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and, later, as a partner at a prestigious law firm.

Career officials said they expected that background had instilled in Blanche a recognition of the department’s tradition of independence and respect for the rule of law.

Their optimism quickly faded, they said, as Blanche publicly embraced Trump’s calls for disruptive change in the department and pursued legally questionable cases against the president’s rivals.

Behind the scenes, Blanche has at times demonstrated a willingness to gently push back against the president, though not always with success.

The Washington Post reported last year that he joined Bondi in advocating to save the job of Erik S. Siebert, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, who concluded in September that there was insufficient evidence to charge two top Trump targets — former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James — with crimes.

Trump ousted Siebert anyway, replacing him with Lindsey Halligan, who secured the indictments Trump wanted against both. Those cases were later thrown out by a federal judge who ruled Halligan had been appointed illegally.

And on Wednesday, as Trump suggested Pirro’s job could be in jeopardy over her decision to withdraw the Reflecting Pool cases, Blanche offered her his full endorsement.

“Judge Pirro is doing a great job, and our city, Washington, D.C., is a lot safer in no small part to her effort and the prosecutors’ efforts that she works with,” he said.

Still, Blanche added: “Hypothetically, if the president chose to fire a U.S. attorney, he’s allowed to do that because he’s the president of the United States.”

The same applies to attorneys general — and Trump’s relationships with those who have previously occupied the role under him have been famously fraught.

He fired Jeff Sessions two years into his first presidential term, following months of acrimony over Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the Justice Department’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign — a move that cleared the way for the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

William P. Barr, Trump’s second Senate-confirmed attorney general, resigned after publicly contradicting Trump’s claims about the 2020 election being stolen.

Trump fired Bondi in April over frustrations with her slow pace and limited success in bringing cases against his adversaries.

Blanche, speaking to reporters soon after the president chose him to replace her, contemplated that he, too, could one day find himself on the wrong end of Trump’s expectations.

If that day comes, Blanche said at the time, he would thank the president for the opportunity to serve, adding: “I will say, ‘Thank you very much. I love you, sir.’”

Jeanine Pirro swept into Washington last year as a camera-ready prosecutor and staunch ally of President Donald Trump. Suddenly she was everywhere: crime scenes and community forums, court hearings and TV interviews, TikTok-style videos and black-tie dinners.

But after more than a year in office as U.S. attorney in the nation’s capital, Pirro now finds herself at odds with Trump — with her job at risk — over scraps of blue liner that peeled off the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Pirro, who left her job as a Fox News host to become the top federal prosecutor in D.C., immediately began seeking the toughest charges possible for violent crimes. She launched criminal probes of more than a half-dozen public officials who had drawn Trump’s ire — then punted the blame to judges and juries when those efforts collapsed.

But her moves to drop several cases of alleged vandalism at the newly renovated pool contradicted Trump and blamed the administration’s handpicked contractor for botching a project the president had championed. And in the end, they exposed a crack in Pirro’s ability to balance Trump’s demands with her legal responsibilities.

“She thought she had covered all of her bases — that’s what she thought — and then, of course, things went south,” a person who has known Pirro for decades said of her current predicament with the president.

People who have followed Pirro’s trajectory as a judge, district attorney, conservative author, and TV personality say she is a prosecutor at heart who has long been passionate about fighting crime and protecting victims, and who found a renewed sense of purpose when Trump tapped her to run one of the busiest U.S. attorney’s offices in the country.

Her detractors say few in the Justice Department have been as willing as Pirro to gin up prosecutions or test the boundaries of the system in pursuit of Trump’s fixations and antagonists.

This account of Pirro’s tumultuous time as U.S. attorney, and how she has handled being the prosecutor in Trump’s backyard, is based on court records and interviews with 11 people familiar with key events. Almost all spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid assessments of Pirro while her job is seemingly on the line. Pirro, through a spokesperson, declined an interview request.

Her troubles began after the Trump administration installed a coat of blue sealant at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in anticipation of this year’s July Fourth festivities. Pieces of paint quickly started coming apart and floating to the surface, and some visitors who reached out to grab them were arrested, court records show.

Trump claimed vandals had torn up the pool’s “beautiful facade,” and Pirro initially filed criminal charges against four people, including a former Olympic canoeist who was indicted on a felony count of destruction of property. In her booming New York brogue, Pirro castigated that defendant at a news conference and said her office was “committed to protecting our national resources, our monuments, and our parks from vandals.”

But Pirro abruptly dropped all four cases weeks later, blamed the Interior Department for misleading prosecutors into filing unsupported criminal charges, and was soon inside the Oval Office to explain herself.

A former judge and district attorney who served for decades in Westchester County, N.Y., Pirro arrived at the White House on Monday with boxes of evidence showing that the Interior Department had awarded a no-bid contract to a company that misapplied the liner, according to people familiar with the matter. That evidence is detailed in an explosive, 20-page court filing that the U.S. attorney’s office submitted last week, which stated that “the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism.”

Pirro had personally reviewed and signed off on the filing, and it conveyed her frustration that the documents from Interior were not quickly turned over to prosecutors, as well as her view that they “demolished” any chance of building a winning case against the alleged vandals, according to people with knowledge of her thinking. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum pushed back, writing on X that the “evidence is clear” that vandalism was what damaged the pool.

One person familiar with Pirro’s thinking described her approach to the White House meeting as: “Stand her ground, be focused, make her case, and do the right thing.”

The rift between Trump and Pirro, over peeling bits of paint at a national monument, came after she had launched criminal probes into six Democratic lawmakers who criticized the administration’s military actions, as well as the Federal Reserve chair at the time, Jerome H. Powell, who refused Trump’s demands to resign or institute lower interest rates.

A federal judge rejected Pirro’s attempts to issue subpoenas in the Fed investigation, and she later closed that probe without seeking criminal charges, but Trump praised her doggedness in taking the case as far as she could. A grand jury declined to indict the Democratic lawmakers, and Trump soon moved on to other issues.

This time, Pirro’s office said in the Reflecting Pool court filing, prosecutors were voluntarily dismissing the charges. Trump said Pirro “folded like an umbrella.”

“I just think she was totally wrong,” Trump told reporters Wednesday, noting that National Park Service employees had told authorities they saw vandals in action. He described problems with the contractor as “a couple of little things” and said he hadn’t made a determination on whether to keep Pirro on the job.

Trump continued his criticism Friday, saying on social media that “U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro should revisit her hastily made decision.”

Pirro had befriended Trump decades ago in New York’s social circles, but they had never worked together, and one dynamic underlying their rare public break is that both are more comfortable calling the shots than deferring to others, said the longtime friend, who has seen them together.

“She has a lot of respect for the president,” this person said, adding, “They have a relationship that for the first time has now transformed into a professional subordinate situation.”

Pirro, 75, leads the only U.S. attorney’s office in the country with the dual mandate to prosecute local crimes and complex federal cases. Trump named her interim U.S. attorney in May 2025. She was later confirmed by the Senate, earning support from Republicans that Trump’s first pick for the job, Ed Martin, couldn’t muster.

She came into a deep-blue city where only 6.5% of D.C. voters cast ballots for Trump in the 2024 election. Protests flared when immigration raids and street arrests swept up hundreds of people after Trump declared a crime emergency in D.C. last year, bringing in teams of federal officers and National Guard troops to patrol city streets. Pirro has often been the one absorbing the blowback from heated community meetings and in court, where juries have voted down felony charges for some defendants and acquitted others of assaulting federal officers.

“The truth is that with the federal surge — whether you like it or you don’t like it — crime is down,” Pirro told the dozens of community members in the D.C. police’s Fifth District office in Northeast Washington after a tense weekend last October in which 12 people were shot.

Homicides last year declined by roughly one-third, totaling 127, according to D.C. police statistics. They have dropped another 32% this year, and stood at 66 as of Thursday. Robberies and property crimes also have declined, but assaults with dangerous weapons have risen 42% this year, to 758 instances, according to the police data.

“President Trump said, ‘I’m going to make D.C. safe and beautiful,’” Pirro added at the October meeting. “And you know what? He’s going to do it. … Every day we’re pushing. Pushing against juries, pushing against judges.”

On social media, she frequently repeats a similar message, crediting the president with making the city safer.

Those who have worked with Pirro describe her as a decisive boss, quick to grasp legal nuances and less abrasive than her brash TV persona. She has taken a particular interest in a new task force to disrupt international cryptocurrency scams, and she has called on the D.C. Council to toughen sentencing laws for juvenile crimes and partnered with Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on efforts to strengthen domestic violence legislation. Pirro, according to those who know her, is meticulous about her fashion choices, known for her sweet tooth, and on friendly terms with some of her staff, attending trivia night at a brewery/pizzeria this year.

Pirro has attempted to rebuild the U.S. attorney office’s ranks, which were decimated by staff departures and Martin’s purge of prosecutors who had investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Justice Department is now offering $25,000 bonuses to lawyers who sign a commitment to stay at the office for two years, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.

“I think that U.S. Attorney Pirro, over the past year and a half that she’s been there, has led an unprecedented effort to literally turn this city on its head to be a safe place for all of us to live and eat,” acting attorney general Todd Blanche said at a news conference Wednesday, a notable show of support that buoyed Pirro’s allies. Blanche added that Trump was allowed to dismiss any U.S. attorney.

Although Pirro’s office has had a mixed record with jury trials in U.S. district court over the past year, there have been no major setbacks in the office’s biggest cases. Those include the prosecutions in the killing of a 21-year-old congressional intern; the fatal shooting of a young couple outside the Capital Jewish Museum last year; the ambush-style attack in which one National Guard member was killed and another wounded; and the case of Cole Tomas Allen, who has been charged with attempting to assassinate Trump at the White House correspondents’ dinner this year. The trial of an alleged terrorist behind the infamous bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, is scheduled for this year in D.C., with Pirro’s office running the prosecution.

But critics say Pirro has curtailed prosecutors’ autonomy and jacked up their workloads by ordering them to seek the maximum possible charges in every case. Judges and public defenders have criticized Pirro’s office for bringing cases during Trump’s federal law enforcement surge that were based on incomplete or shoddy investigations, leading to multiple instances in which the U.S. attorney’s office dismissed charges after the defendants spent time in jail.

“I think many Americans have a sense that in Trump 2.0, prosecutions are being brought for reasons other than public safety,” Paul Butler, a Georgetown University law professor, said in an email assessing Pirro’s record as U.S. attorney. “We are now seeing many jurors more carefully scrutinizing cases, and that’s a good thing in terms of how the system is supposed to work.”

Longtime defense attorney Joe Flood, who practices in the D.C. area, recalled that he first encountered Pirro in the 1990s when she was the Westchester County district attorney, and he was defending people facing the death penalty in New York. She made death-penalty cases central to her political ambitions, he said, as she geared up for a potential run for state attorney general or governor, but she never got a defendant sentenced to death and eventually left elected office for her television career.

In Trump’s second term, Flood said, some U.S. attorneys in key offices have discovered that being a responsible prosecutor is sometimes a fireable offense. He noted that Erik S. Siebert, whom Trump had appointed as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was forced out last year after declining to seek criminal charges against former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Career prosecutors in both cases had said the evidence was too flimsy to take to court.

“The reality is if you’re an ethical U.S. attorney, and you won’t be bent to Trump’s will, you’re gone,” Flood said. Of Pirro’s decision to drop the Reflecting Pool cases, he added: “She gets some credit for standing up to Trump.”

Judges have also criticized Pirro’s office for wiping out the most serious convictions from the Jan. 6 riot — the seditious conspiracy cases against the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

Members of the extremist groups stockpiled firearms and led the charge into the Capitol, according to the evidence presented at their trials. Pirro this year signed on to key court filings to clear those charges as a matter of loyalty to Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. But she declines to take questions about those moves, even as federal judges bemoan the historical consequences of undoing convictions for crimes against the country.

Democratic turnout for House primaries in a majority-Black Tennessee county surged to the highest level in a decade Thursday, the latest sign that redistricting may be energizing Black voters across the South.

A fifth of active registered voters cast a ballot in three Democratic U.S. House primaries held Thursday in Shelby County, which includes Memphis. That’s more than double the turnout percentage for similar contests in 2024.

Organizers said the outpouring was motivated by anger over the Republican-led legislature’s action to break up the state’s only majority-Black congressional district after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated minority voter protections in the Voting Rights Act this year. Lawmakers dispersed the Black voters of Shelby County into three separate districts that stretch into rural white communities.

“People are pissed off,” said Kristal Knight, chairperson of the voting rights group Organize Tennessee. Memphis is “the densest part of the African American vote in the state, and people really took it personally — you are trying to come into our county, break up our county, and split our vote? And what better way to push back than to say we’re going to turn out.”

President Donald Trump has pushed red states to draw new congressional districts to help the GOP maintain control of the House in elections this fall. The Supreme Court’s gutting of protections in the Voting Rights Act made that easier. Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee quickly drew new maps that dilute Black voting power, raising fears that the civil rights gains of the past 60 years are being destroyed.

But the actions have galvanized Black voters, who have mobilized protests in many states and turned out in historic numbers in primaries in South Carolina. That turnout helped prompt the South Carolina legislature to abandon plans to dissolve a majority-Black district. The Georgia legislature also opted not to act after an outpouring of opposition.

“People are really amped up about … what is happening across the South,” Knight said. “People need to show the rest of America, this is not the way you treat voters.”

Democrats and voting rights organizers had worked overtime in Tennessee over the past few weeks to ensure a big presence in primary elections there for governor, a U.S. Senate seat, and the state’s nine House districts, even though Republicans are heavily favored to win those races in November.

“A night like last night lets you know it’s not all in vain,” said the Rev. Earle Fisher, pastor at Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church in Memphis, who was among an outspoken, ardent group of faith leaders in the city who ramped up turnout efforts after redistricting.

Memphis resident Harmony Lucas, 26, was one of the young voters who helped to boost turnout — urging friends, family, and even co-workers to join her at the polls. Lucas said she has voted in the past, but the GOP effort to break up the state’s only majority-Black district “made me realize I had to get more serious that my voice is heard. It matters.”

Ian Randolph, who founded the Shelby County Voter Alliance to boost voter participation, attributed the jump in turnout in part to such efforts, including by unions and other civic organizations. In recent months, they have had poll parties, done texting and phone banking, and gone door to door to canvass voters.

“Everything that touches a voter, we are involved in,” Randolph said. “Working those things got us a better turnout.”

Rep. Steve Cohen, Tennessee’s lone Democratic congressman, decided not to seek reelection after the 9th District, which he represents, was overhauled. Justin Pearson — a charismatic Black preacher who received national attention in 2023 for his expulsion from the state legislature after protesting at the Capitol in Nashville — won the Democratic nomination to wage the uphill battle to replace Cohen.

In his victory speech Thursday night, Pearson depicted his candidacy as an act of defiance against redistricting and the undermining of the Voting Rights Act, calling those steps “a blatant attempt to keep people like us out of power and an attempt to make us quit.”

GOP strategist Ward Baker, who is working in the 9th District with Republican nominee Brent Taylor, disputed the idea that Black voters are turning out in bigger numbers out of anger over redistricting.

“It’s the first time there’s a contested primary in a long time, and several people are running,” Baker said. He pointed out that Republican voters overall still outnumber Democrats by a wide margin.

Beyond redistricting, Randolph said voters in the majority-Black county have been energized by other issues including an attempted state takeover of Memphis-Shelby County Schools and the presence of federal immigration agents and the National Guard in the city.

Democrats’ task gets harder heading into general elections this fall. Tennessee’s 9th District, which had been the state’s only blue seat, is now rated Solid Republican by the Cook Political Report and went for Trump by 21 points in 2024.

“Everyone that came out last night — that needs to double for November,” Knight said.

Fisher said he and other pastors have been planning another “Souls to the Polls” rally like the one that drew more than 1,000 people this spring. Thursday’s show of force gives him cautious optimism for November.

“At least some of what we did worked,” Fisher said. “It’s one of those instances where you can log it as a win and build on it, but it’s not like a victory lap.”

The Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure early Saturday to fund the government through Dec. 11 and temporarily block the White House from giving political appointees more control over federal grants.

The 90-6 vote came after Republican leaders worked for hours through the night to reach an agreement that would allow them to vote on multiple priorities before leaving town for the five-week August recess.

Just 6 senators — Bill Cassidy (R., La.), Tim Kaine (D., Va.), Ed Markey (D., Mass.), Rand Paul (R., Ky.), Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) — opposed the funding measure, which would avoid a politically perilous shutdown ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections. But it still must be approved by the Republican-controlled House, where the appetite for rebuking the White House on grant funding was unclear.

The bill, like a similar House measure passed last month, would fund the government past a Sept. 30 deadline. The Senate bill also would finance a number of requests from the White House, including funds for housing and nutrition programs. And it would extend expiring authorization for veterans’ healthcare programs.

But the big difference between the House and Senate bills is the Senate’s decision to include a provision regarding federal grants. That provision would temporarily block the White House budget office from adopting a rule change to give political appointees more power over discretionary grant funding, diminishing the power of independent peer reviewers.

Proposed in May, the rule change would require political appointees to review grants before they are awarded to ensure they advance the president’s priorities and do not support projects the administration opposes, including those that “fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate” diversity, equity, and inclusion principles or “deny the biological reality of … the sex binary.” It also would give agencies the power to end grants at any time.

Trump administration officials say the rule would add needed oversight to federal grant-making, ensuring federal funds aren’t wasted or misused. But Senate Appropriations Committee Chairperson Susan Collins (R., Maine) said it has the “potential to politicize grants and harm small, rural communities, families, and biomedical research.”

Collins and Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), the lead Democratic appropriator, worked together to craft the bipartisan Senate measure. House lawmakers could take it up after they return from recess at the end of August.

If the provisions added by the Senate draw backlash, however, lawmakers could quickly find themselves in a rush to negotiate a compromise before the government runs out of funding on Sept. 30.

Senate Republicans also initially hoped to hold a vote on a separate $150 billion budget framework to help fund the Iran war and impose new restrictions on voting ahead of the midterm elections, but Republicans scrapped that plan late Friday night.

Republicans grappled during a two-hour closed-door meeting Friday night with whether to take up the budget framework, with which several Republicans had expressed concerns.

A small group of Republicans spoke with Trump after the meeting and agreed to push off the vote until September, according to Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), the chairperson of the Senate Budget Committee.

“We’re in total agreement,” Johnson told reporters. “There was no argument about it.”

The Senate also agreed early Saturday morning to vote in September on legislation to regulate college sports led by Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.). The back-and-forth over whether to vote on the bill before leaving for recess was one of several interlocking issues that kept the Senate in session late into the night.

Senate Democrats blocked a bill during the early Saturday vote series that would require voters to show photo identification. Senate Republicans held a procedural vote on the measure in lieu of voting on the Save America Act, a more expansive bill that would impose stricter election rules which President Donald Trump had demanded the Senate pass before leaving Washington. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) has said repeatedly that the Save America Act does not have enough support to pass.

The decision to postpone the vote on the budget resolution came hours after Republicans unveiled the $150 billion spending framework, which was significantly larger than a $95 billion plan approved last month by the House. Johnson said Senate leaders intend to spend only about $105 billion.

The smaller number tracks closely with the House package. Both would allot $60 billion to the Pentagon, which faces an urgent budget shortfall caused largely by the war with Iran, and $13 billion for intelligence needs related to the war. They also would provide $12 billion for farmers struggling to keep pace with inflation.

Senate Republicans will seek to use up to $20 billion for election-related measures, Johnson told the Washington Post. That’s twice the amount provided in the House package. Republicans hope to use that money to pass some parts of the Save America Act, although it’s unclear how much of it would be allowed under reconciliation, the special process Republicans would use to pass the bill without Democratic votes.

The delay in considering the measure will give Republicans time to revise their plan and win over skeptical senators.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) has said he will not support a package that included elements of the Save America Act. Sens. Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) also signaled opposition to the budget resolution, while Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.) complained about the lack of budget cuts to cover the cost of the new spending and avoid adding to the nation’s $39.9 trillion debt.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.), the chairpersons of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and other Republicans, meanwhile, have called for increasing the amount of funding for the Pentagon.

The budget framework is the first step in the reconciliation process, which would allow Republicans to evade a Democratic filibuster and move the bill with a simple majority instead of 60 votes. But both chambers must approve identical budget frameworks to set funding levels before beginning work on the actual legislation — and time is running out before the midterms.

The Senate is set to recess until Sept. 14 and is scheduled to be in session for only three weeks before recessing again. Congress already faces a towering agenda during those weeks.