THE LOOK AHEAD – JULY 2025

Produced By:

Bret Manley (bret@elevatega.com) and David Marten (david@elevatega.com)
Elevate Government Affairs (www.elevatega.com)

Balance of Power:

Senate: 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, 2 Independents Caucusing with Democrats

House: 220 Republicans*, 212 Democrats, 3 Vacancies

  • TX-18: Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-TX) passed away on March 5th after just arriving in Congress to fill the seat long held by former Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee until she passed away last year. A special election will be held November 4th, 2025. This is a safe Democratic seat.
  • AZ-07: Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) passed away from cancer on March 13th. He had served in Congress since 2003 and as the top Democrat on the Committee on Natural Resources since 2015 until Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) supplanted him this January. The primary for this seat will be held July 15th and the general election on September 23rd. This is a safe Democratic seat.
  • VA-11: Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) passed away from esophageal cancer on May 21st after serving in Congress since 2008. A special election was held June 28th, with Rep. Connolly’s former Chief of Staff James Walkinshaw winning the Democratic nomination. This is a safe Democratic seat and he will win the special election on September 9th.
  • TN-07: Rep. Mark Green (R-TN), currently the Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, announced his final day in Congress will be July 20th, when he will resign. A special election will be called by the Governor and is expected to be held in September. This is a safe Republican seat.

Top Line Takeaways:

  • They Actually Did It: We aren’t even six months into Trump’s second administration, and it’s clear as day this isn’t a repeat of the first four years. Most in our business thought it was a little unrealistic to get a bill signed into law by July 4th given the landscape. A three-vote Republican House majority led by an inexperienced and mild-mannered Speaker of the House (with a spectacular Trump impression), a new GOP Leader in the Senate, and a new Administration would make this unlikely under pretty much any President. Sprinkle on top how this process started: the House and the Senate were trillions of dollars apart, and the House Freedom Caucus (HFC) was in front of so many microphones you’d think they were auditioning for Live Aid. At the end of the day, Speaker Johnson and President Trump simply sat back and called their bluff. Trump’s ideological fluidity certainly helped here – a win is a win is a win – as did the HFC’s wild miscalculation that they had sway over the Republican base in a head-to-head with the President. A lot of Republican moderates are surely asking themselves why they’ve been caving to the HFC all these years if they were going to fold so completely. Almost everything HFC claimed was a red line got watered down in favor of moderate members of the conference. They lost on deficit reduction, SALT, Medicaid, baseline budgeting, Social Security, SNAP, and we’re surely leaving things out. Washington Republicans, and the President in particular, are feeling good. They’re 25% of the way through the Congress, and suddenly find themselves with a lot of flexibility on the agenda.
  • D is for Debt Ceiling: Many people – very smart sophisticated types – like your hosts thought the Reconciliation package would get delayed to scoop up the debt ceiling. The idea being it’s better to have one tough vote than two tough votes. Well, we were kind of right. They just went ahead and raised the debt limit early! By $5 TRILLION. If there was any piece of the reconciliation bill that lets you know who’s in charge in Washington, this is it. The gulf between Trump (wants to abolish the debt ceiling) and House fiscal hawks (don’t think we should raise the debt ceiling at all) might as well be the Gulf of America, and they barely let out a whimper about this.
  • The Senate Makes Its Spending Move: The House, so far, has only passed the Mil-Con VA spending bill. Little known fact, you only need one bill to enable the two chambers to conference. So that bar, as low as the world Limbo record (it’s a thing!), has already been cleared. The Senate Appropriations Committee will move the Ag, CJS, and Leg Branch bills through Committee this week. The Senate, by tradition and necessity, approaches the spending process in a much more bipartisan manner. The choice of these three bills is interesting because we’ve heard from the House that it’s possible they won’t be able to move them, even through committee.
  • Time To Play Refundable Ticket Roulette: Take the Appropriations calendar and outstanding nominations and what do you get? Demands to cancel (or postpone) August recess. Had the reconciliation bill not passed, we’d have said it was probably a certainty that the first week of recess was going to get canceled. Now? Zero chance this happens. Maybe Leader Thune threatens something to the effect – which is really about getting a deal to move some nominations (no there won’t be recess appointments, more on this below) – and conservative rabble rousers to demand Congress stay and do their work – which is really about looking serious vs being serious.
  • Wither Rescissions?: Under the Impoundment Control Act, the Senate has until July 18th to pass the rescissions package the White House sent to the Hill that was passed by the House. The good news is that the Senate only needs a simple majority to pass it. The bad news is there is possibly enough resistance where it will fail. If the Senate doesn’t act the bill simply expires. Does Trump care? It’s an open question since the package was sent to Congress to quell growing online dissent over a lack of funding cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Legislative Action in July

In the Senate: The post-BBB hangover likely means a fairly quiet July session for the Senate. And what does the Senate do when it has time on its hands? That’s right, nominations. Before leaving town for the holiday, Leader Thune filed cloture on a series of nominations, including the nominees for Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Meanwhile, the Appropriations clerks will continue to be busy as the Committee looks to advance a number of their bills before the August break.There is some suspense over how the Leader will handle the recissions package sent to the Hill by President Trump and passed by the House. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-ME) has said she opposes some of the proposed cuts, namely PEPFAR and global health programs. This could be a flashpoint in what would otherwise be a quiet month.

In the House: House Republicans cancelled the first week of the July session, much to the relief of rank-and-file Members regardless of what they tell the media. This leaves only two legislative weeks before Congress leaves for August recess. The House will likely consider Department of Defense Appropriations (and possibly Energy and Water and/or Homeland Security). Originally House Leadership wanted NDAA on the floor in July, but we think that’ll be a stretch since Armed Services has yet to hold its markup and won’t until the 14th. We’re also told that Leadership would like to schedule an energy week of sorts with bills that have been previously marked up by Energy and Commerce.

Committee Spotlight

House Appropriations: House appropriators are continuing to work through the remaining bills but a certain fait accompli has already begun to set in with staff. Several bills will never make it (though an open rule on a Labor-HHS bill would certainly be entertaining), but a lot of this work is about setting up for the eventual showdown with the Senate. Since the House has already passed the Mil-Con VA bill, they have what they need to conference, and Members are especially motivated to avoid a CR, especially since they didn’t even adopt report language last time around. The only way they avoid a CR is a deal with the Democrats and – absent Trump signing off on one – we see that as unlikely. The most likely scenario is we’re punting a CR to November or December, and we’re doing the whole thing over again…again.

House Armed Services: Armed Services will move the annual NDAA through the committee. The original plan was to have the bill ready for floor action in July but with the delays caused by Reconciliation and one fewer legislative week in July, that’ll be a stretch. Even though NDAA has passed in a bipartisan manner every year it still generates several hundred amendments and almost a full week of floor time. Traditionally Armed Services tries to move a bill out of committee in May, with Memorial Day the unofficial target date.

House Energy and Commerce: E&C is trading language with Committee Democrats on legislation to establish a national right of publicity framework for college athletics (known as NIL), which is more “pay-to-play” at this point than about kids getting shoe deals. We don’t anticipate the Committee Democrats will sign on to the Majority effort though notably the Committee is not interested in legislation floated by Conference Secretary McClain. Additionally, we’ve been told by House Leadership that the Senate version of Kids Online Safety Act is a non-starter in the House. They flat out believe it’s unconstitutional and still need to resolve the private right-of-action issue. They have however been tasked with developing a House answer to the Senate bill, so that process is ongoing.

House Transportation and Infrastructure: The Committee was prepared to mark-up a modified Coast Guard reauthorization, introduced last week, on July 9th. This will get bumped to later in the month. We can excuse our readers for not noticing through the backdrop of the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, but this bipartisan bill creates a Secretary of the Coast Guard, which would be a marked change from history and provide the service with civilian leadership to advocate for the agency and take the bows and arrows from elected leaders. Finally, the committee is also working in a bipartisan manner to reform FEMA, with potential legislation to spin it out of the Department of Homeland Security, where it has been since losing its independent status with the passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

Senate Appropriations: As noted above, the Committee will start off its markups with Ag, Leg Branch, and Commerce-Justice-Science this week. While the topline numbers included in the Fiscal Responsibility Act have expired, look for Chair Collins and Vice Chair Murray to continue a bipartisan process to get their bills out of committee and off the floor.

Senate Commerce: The spectrum auction’s been green-lit, and the FAA and Coast Guard are swimming in funding…so what’s left on the agenda for CST? Given the committee’s jurisdiction, the answer is always “a lot.” With the approval of the settlement in House v. NCAA earlier this month, the pressure is greater than ever to get to a national Name, Image, and Likeness standard. Meanwhile, with the House lining up its own Coast Guard reauthorization, the shot clock is on if the two chambers can hope to reach a deal and get it in the NDAA. We have also been told that Chairman Cruz is going to take another run at the AI moratorium and mark-up the Kids Online Safety Act.

Get Smart – Recess Appointments, And Why They Don’t Happen

A lot of ink was spilled before Trump was even President about how he was going to get – through subjugation or force depending on your political persuasion – the cabinet of his dreams by making recess appointments. We aren’t going to get into the specifics of why that particular argument was a waste of time (it starts with the fact that Trump wasn’t even President yet), but we will approach why it’s (probably) still a waste of time!

Dumb Question Here, But What is a Recess Appointment?: In essence, it’s when the President appoints someone to a vacancy that would normally require approval of the Senate, during a period of time when the Senate is unable to act on the nomination…aka a recess. It’s hard to imagine, especially in a political climate that treats 2016 as the beginning of history, but Congress used to spend much more time out of session. We won’t get into the historical timelines (you can look that up) but it’s hot here in the summer and cold in the winter. Planes, trains, and automobiles weren’t available for much of U.S. history. When California was admitted to the Union, a newly minted Congressman would need 4-6 MONTHS to get to D.C. So yeah, there needed to be a way that Presidents could appoint people to run the government while they waited to see if the western delegations would die from dysentery on their way to town.

So Tell Me, They Like…Wrote Down the Definition of Recess, Right?: Congressional recess, you’ll be surprised — nay, shocked! — to learn, is defined by a combination of the Constitution, and Supreme Court decision. Pretty straight forward if you ask us!

Let’s Start With the Constitution. What Does It Say?:

  • Article 1, Section 5, Clause 4: “Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.”
  • Article 2, Section 2, Clause 3: “The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”

So You’re Telling Me The House and Senate Need PERMISSION From the Other House to Adjourn For 4+ Days?: Correct, for the House or the Senate to adjourn during the middle of a session (a Congressional term has two sessions, which in modern times roughly conforms to a calendar year), they need to ask the other chamber to pretty, pretty please let them leave for like five days so they can catch a tan or something in Key West.

But Three Days Qualifies as a Recess Right?: No.

Why Not?: Let us take a trip down memory lane, to pre-historic times, when Barack Obama was President to find our answer. It turns out the question had never really been put to a serious challenge, everyone was sort of operating under the assumption that the word “recess” was pretty self-explanatory. Then, in January 2012, then-President Obama named three people to vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board while the Senate was adjourned, having successfully filibustered the picks in December meaning the NLRB was short a quorum to act. A soda bottler named Noel Canning (really) appealed an NLRB decision using the argument that three of its members were unlawfully appointed and thus lacked quorum to act. NLRB v. Canning was decided in 2014 and the Supreme Court sided unanimously with Noel, upending every decision the NLRB had made with those three now improperly appointed members.

What Did the Supreme Court Say?: They said that since the House and the Senate had not agreed to adjourn, that the Senate was holding Pro Forma sessions every three days to comply with the Constitution then they were not in recess to allow for a recess appointment. Since the Senate can conduct business in a Pro Forma session and just chooses not to, it is in session. Therefore, the President lacked the authority to make appointments under the recess appointments clause.

Did They Say What a Recess Was At Least?: While the court ruled 9-0, there were two different opinions. The controlling opinion, authored by Justice Breyer and joined by Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan (hey remember when the Court had a liberal majority?) decided that a recess needed to be at least 10 days. They also said a vacancy need not occur between sessions of Congress. The whole Intra vs Inter-session issue. Why 10 days? As far as we can tell that’s just a number they came up with, though coincidentally the timeline for a pocket veto is also 10 days.

You Said There Were Two Opinions, Is That Important?: It might be! The concurring opinion, written by Justice Scalia and joined by Roberts, Thomas, and Alito said that a recess can only occur between sessions, and the vacancy must have been opened during the recess. In other words, the conservatives on the court, who now have a majority, want to restrict recess appointments further.

Ok, But They Always Leave in August for Like Six Weeks: While true, there is always some sucker – or several suckers usually from the Mid-Atlantic states – who saunters up to D.C. every three days to bring Congress into Pro Forma session until session resumes in September. They literally walk up to the dais, gavel in for approximately a minute or two, and gavel out. However, this does allows Members to introduce bills during August or other “recess” periods. In other words, they can conduct work, which is the main crux of the Breyer opinion.

So You’re Saying There Hasn’t Been a Recess Appointment Since 2012?: Correct, and one hasn’t even been attempted.

But I’m Really Invested in the Deputy Assistant Vice Undersecretary to the Principal Assistant of Legislative Affairs at the VA: If Congress were to recess officially and thus allow President Trump to make a recess appointment under the Breyer decision, President Trump could appoint anyone to any vacancy. We doubt the Congress will break the 13-year streak, even for something as illustrious as the DAVUPALAVA.

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