While congressional Republicans have coalesced around a plan to fund immigration enforcement, there are plenty more intraparty battles that will make for rocky legislating for the summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the crux of many of the disputes is anxiety about the looming midterm elections that threaten to erase the GOP\u2019s majority. That\u2019s driving some Republicans to argue they should be as aggressive as possible while they have unified control of power, but it\u2019s causing those in purple districts to worry about backlash from swing voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are five GOP battles that will drive the House this summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fiscal hawks vs. purple district members<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The biggest item on Republicans\u2019 wish list this year is Reconciliation 3.0 \u2014 a way to advance partisan priorities through the special budget reconciliation process that bypasses the threat of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. That mechanism, however, can be used a limited number of times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The process was used to advance the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of President Trump\u2019s tax cuts last year and is in the process of being used on a \u201cskinny\u201d reconciliation package to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, which Democrats had refused to fund without reforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other Republicans are hoping to use their third and final shot at reconciliation to combine supplemental funding toward the Pentagon for the Iran war with cost-cutting measures that they say will take aim at rooting out fraud in federal programs. Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is working with House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), a major fiscal hawk, to craft such a proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moving such a big package through the narrow majority, though, is a tall order as swing-district Republicans see risks in pursuing big spending cuts as they aim to woo voters \u2014 leading to pessimism that such a package will get across the finish line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Privacy hawks vs. Intel Republicans<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Battles over reforms to the nation\u2019s spy powers that have been brewing for months are far from settled and are set to come up again in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Privacy hawks defied GOP leaders and the White House by preventing an 18-month \u201cclean\u201d extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which authorizes the government to surveil foreign targets on foreign soil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those privacy hawks are demanding more reforms to prevent any Americans\u2019 communications swept up in the surveillance from being accessed without a warrant. Intel-minded Republicans, meanwhile, say such a requirement would tie the hands of law enforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The House in April passed a package with some modest reforms while extending the authorization for three years \u2014 while tacking on an unrelated measure to ban the Federal Reserve from creating a central bank digital currency (CBDC), another measure of concern to privacy hawks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Senate Republican Leader John Thune (S.D.) has said the CBDC measure is \u201cdead on arrival\u201d in the upper chamber, and Congress passed a 45-day extension as the Senate grapples with the House package and is likely to return it to the lower chamber with changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That means more chances for the privacy hawks to demand changes before the FISA authorization expires June 12.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MAHA vs. deregulation advocates<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For decades, the Republican Party has built its brand around a pro-business agenda that\u2019s largely rejected government regulations \u2014 particularly those related to environmental protection \u2014 that might hurt corporate bottom lines. The arrival of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement, however, is challenging those conventions, as a small but powerful group of populist Republicans \u2014 influencers and lawmakers alike \u2014 press for tougher rules on corporations and their toxic products in the name of protecting public health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump won the favor of many in the healthy living movement when he tapped Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a MAHA standard-bearer, to lead his Health and Human Services Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The clash has turned the politics of deregulation on its head, aligning conservative MAHA activists and liberal environmentalists, who want tougher rules, against traditional, pro-business Republicans who are warning of the economic harm of government encroachment on free markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That squabble was front and center during the recent farm bill debate in the House, where Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and other MAHA-friendly Republicans pushed hard to amend the initial package by removing a provision that would have shielded pesticide makers from lawsuits related to the labeling of their products. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, conservative columnist Kimberley Strassel attacked Luna for exhibiting an \u201cideological confusion\u201d that abandons the \u201cfoundational principles\u201d of conservatism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen you reject federalism, free markets and choice you end up with \u2026 Democrats,\u201d Strassel wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The House approved Luna\u2019s amendment, greasing the path to passage in the lower chamber. But there are already rumblings that pro-business Republicans in the Senate will strip it out to protect the pesticide makers. That would infuriate the MAHA group in the House \u2014 and set the stage for yet another tense battle over the fate of the farm bill later in the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo the Senate: don\u2019t,\u201d Luna warned in a post on social platform X. \u201cIf this comes back with those protections included, we have the votes to kill it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Corn-state vs. oil-state Republicans<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A vote long sought by corn-state Republicans to codify year-round sales of E15, a fuel blend with 15 percent ethanol and 85 percent gasoline, complicated the passage of the farm bill in April \u2014 and could bubble up again soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sales of E15 have been typically restricted for parts of the year because of smog concerns, though Trump has used executive action to allow E15 sales this summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
House Republican leaders had initially tied a year-round E15 bill to the farm bill, but Republicans from oil-producing states had concerns about the E15 bill and refused to allow GOP priorities to move forward, citing concerns about how the legislation would affect small refineries in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While a compromise decoupled the E15 bill from the farm bill, it is still expected to come up for a vote in the House as soon as this week \u2014 with E15 advocates hoping it will put pressure on the Senate to pass it too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two prominent House Freedom Caucus members pushed back at E15 advocates in an op-ed for The Hill this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cProponents of a fuel blend containing 15 percent ethanol year-round pitch its sales as a form of deregulation and consumer choice. In truth, \u2018E15,\u2019 as it is known, is the ethanol lobby\u2019s Trojan horse to expand one of the most costly and destructive federal mandates in U.S. history: the Renewable Fuel Standard,\u201d Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iran skeptics vs. hawks<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump\u2019s extraordinary political rise a decade ago was partially attributed to his attacks on \u201cforever wars\u201d in the Middle East \u2014 and a promise not to entangle the United States in more military adventures overseas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Iran war has defied that promise, and it\u2019s splintered the MAGA faithful into starkly opposing camps, pitting those defending the conflict in the name of national security against others accusing the president of abandoning his commitment to \u201cAmerica First.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Much of that fight is happening outside of the Beltway, where conservative pundits who were once united behind Trump are now clashing over the wisdom and justification of the attacks on Tehran. Some of the detractors, like former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Tucker Carlson, have abandoned Trump altogether and apologized for ever supporting him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Capitol Hill, the divisions are hardly as dramatic. But there are disagreements within the GOP over how much power Trump should have to continue the fight against Tehran. And the list of concerned voices is growing as the cost of gas has spiked, top Trump officials have struggled to define an exit strategy, and the conflict passed the 60-day mark \u2014 a key deadline under the War Powers Act of 1973.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) has introduced a war powers resolution designed to end the conflict until Trump can win Congress\u2019s explicit approval. And this week, GOP Rep. Tom Barrett (Mich.), an Army veteran, unveiled a separate resolution, known as an Authorization for Use of Military Force, which would empower Trump to continue the fight under certain strict limits in scope, but also require the operations to cease at the end of July.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s unclear if any of the efforts to rein in Trump\u2019s use of military force have the support to pass through Congress. Previous war powers resolutions have repeatedly been blocked by Trump\u2019s GOP allies in both the House and Senate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the growing appetite among Republicans to do something to end the conflict will be a continuing headache for Johnson and other GOP leaders, who have deferred to Trump throughout the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n