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Today on the Playbook podcast, Congress is back and it's a miserable week ahead for John Thune and Mike Johnson. We've got another big day of primaries looming tomorrow. We'll tell you why Chuck Schumer's watching one in particular with baited breath. And what's going on with Iran? Is anything ever going to change? We'll try and figure that out for you, too. Hello, I'm Jack Blanchard. And I'm Dasha Burns. It is Monday, June 1st. Wow, it's June, Jack. We are nearly halfway through 2026, Dasha. That is some crazy thing going on. Longest year on record? Longest year on record and yet one that's gone by in the blink [snorts] of an eye once again. Um, yeah, incredible.
Um, it's going to be a long week, I think it's fair to say for the uh Republican leadership on the hill. The uh the Senate is back today. House is back in later this week. They've obviously been away on recess. There is a ton of stuff for these guys to deal with. It looks really difficult. A load of things that essentially got parked just before they all went away. Uh still waiting for them now they come back. The biggest challenge, Dasha, this big immigration enforcement spending package that was supposed to breeze through last month didn't breeze through because of the sudden appearance at the 11th hour of Donald Trump's 1.8 billion-dollar what he calls an anti-weaponization fund, what Democrats call a slush fund. There is a huge row
going on in Congress over there. Um, and there's still all the row ongoing about the ballroom as well. And somehow, now that they're all back, um the leadership have to unpick this and somehow get this bill through this week. Good luck, guys. I don't think anyone envies uh Thune or Johnson at this point because they have twisted and turned and done crazy gymnastics to try to make this work. And just as they were close to finally getting the entirety of government funded after what has been a record, like I mean, record beyond record of the DHS shutdown. A enters uh the president. And just a helpful president with a new policy.
Um, and they, you know, it is a really tough place to be in to be between Trump and what he wants while also trying to make government work. I thought we saw the light at the end of the tunnel before they left and then those lights were turned off pretty quickly um and everyone left the building and so um it'll be fascinating to see how they pick things back up here. Um our congressional uh colleagues at Politico reporting this morning that there is some hope or nay expectation that the administration is going to modify the fund so that they can try and get this bill finally through this week.
If somehow the administration manages to tweak or indeed kill that fund uh all together, then they are hoping in the Senate leadership that they can get voter aroma going in the middle of this week. But we shall see. It's not the only thing looming. There is a war powers vote looming, too, and we've seen a few of these now getting closer and closer to a big wrap on the knuckles for Donald Trump. That could happen this week, although of course he will ignore uh anything that Congress tells him on that. And we've got uh the deadline looming on the spy powers bill as well. They need to find a solution to that. And I think what's really interesting about the Senate coming back to date,
Ashleigh, is of course that this will be the first time senators are returning since the primary uh in Texas last week when John Cornyn, of course, was well beaten uh by his opponent Ken Paxton and the mood among Republican senators is not good. We know Bill Cassidy's upset, of course, after being ousted just a few days before that. And are we going to see some real pushback now from the Republican Senate in the way that we haven't seen towards the White House really over the past 15 months? That's other thing on Thune's hands is, you know, they are thinking about the midterms in Congress, in the Senate and in the House. And now President Trump has lost a number of Republicans that used to vote with him now are much
more liberated to do whatever they please. They feel beholden to him anymore. Now, Cornyn, I mean, look, he might not turn around and snub Trump at every turn, but certainly the leverage that used to be there isn't anymore, and that's one of the things that I've been hearing from Republican sources is he's he's just made getting his agenda through Congress a lot more difficult with this revenge tour that he's successfully gotten his vengeance, um but he might now not get what he wants uh from the Hill. We heard from Donald Trump last week that he doesn't care about the midterms as he probably put it bluntly put it, although he was talking in the context of Iran to be fair to him, but still um you do wonder how much he even cares
about getting his, you know, his stuff through Congress compared to how much he cares about getting revenge on Republicans who crossed him and proving his authority on going over this party. Feels like that's the most important thing to him at least judging by the way he's been acting. But look, one of the big concerns for people around the president that do want to enact his agenda is holding Congress, and if they lose the House, that makes things more difficult. Certainly they don't want to even think about losing the Senate, um although that looms, but even that aside, I mean, they know they are guaranteed to have the House and the Senate for the rest of
this year, right? But that was already challenging given how thin the margins were, and now you've got people that are way more willing to defect, and so you've you've just sort of truncated your period of having full control of government. You bet. Um if it's tough week ahead for John Thune, his opposite number Chuck Schumer's got potentially a tough day tomorrow. There's a load more primaries as there are pretty much every Tuesday during this period, and we will get into the California ones tomorrow. Really interesting stuff going on in California. We will talk about that tomorrow morning with you guys, but I just wanted to talk about one today, which is the Democratic race for the Senate nomination in Iowa. Iowa, of
course, having once been this great swing state, now has been a bit more uh regularly Republican over the last 10 or 15 years, but there is an open Senate seat up for grabs in Iowa, as many of you guys listening to this will know. Joni Ernst is retiring. We expect the Republican candidate to be House Representative Ashley Hinson, but on the Democratic side, it's a proper head-to-head battle, and I just love these things because, you know, regardless of what you care about these two particular candidates, who we'll talk about in a second, are going at it. The bigger picture is it tells you something about the Democratic Party, who's got power within it, which factions are doing well, and which ones
are not. And we have seen these proxy races play out through the course of year. This one in Iowa looks really interesting. Actually, we've got Josh Turek, who's an Iowa state representative, a former Paralympian. He has been getting lots of money and funding and support from Chuck Schumer's PAC, and other sources close to the leadership. Has not been endorsed by the leadership, but it's pretty clear who they want to win. It's him. The other guy is Ed Fallon, is a state senator in Iowa, who's on the progressive wing. He's got endorsements from people like Elizabeth Warren. He has not said he supports Chuck Schumer for the leadership going forward. And so, you have this sort of proxy battle between the left of the
party and the establishment leadership, if I can put it that way, even though they haven't endorsed in the race. And it'll be so interesting, once again, to see who's coming out on top. Yeah, and the folks near the Walls campaign are none too pleased about Schumer getting involved here. And there's some frustration from some Democrats, um because Schumer tried his hand in Maine. He hand-picked Janet Mills to be the candidate there, and she pulled out and now it's Grand Platner's for the taking for Democrats. Um and so, there's a lot of question about how much Schumer should be playing in these elections,
and some concern for Schumer now. He needs some wins here. He needs to show uh his relevance and his power. And if that um doesn't, you know, work out and continues to sort of diminish, that's a real problem for a Senate minority leader who already has a lot of folks um in his party questioning his leadership. It's so true. Although he might say that given the weekend that Grant Platinum has just had up in Maine, you know, maybe he's been proven right about that race all along. Um Grant Platinum of course have hitting with more controversial stories which have come after many more other controversial stories and Republicans are absolutely lapping up all of that stuff at the moment. Platinum campaign
says none of it matters. Uh he is still going to win and we shall see. I mean, look, Platinum is playing this I think the way that Trump does. Um and I'm not putting a value judgment on it. I'm just saying like this is the Trump era of politics where you don't apologize, you don't drop out of a race because of a scandal, you sort of plow your way through it and if you, you know, have that connection with voters, it might not matter. But of course it might. I mean, no one else is Trump. Um but I think that his approach and his ethos when it comes to these things has largely changed those dynamics and what candidates think they make it out with.
It will be fascinating to see whether people in Maine feel like that or whether it's just a Donald Trump who can get away with this stuff or whether now the whole rules of the game have changed. I guess we'll find out in a few months. We better talk a little bit about Donald Trump, Tasha, cuz we always do and it, you know, we haven't actually really mentioned him today, but the issue he's supposed to have been spending the weekend grappling with is Iran. Just like the previous weekend he was supposed to spend grappling. He missed his own son's wedding, right? Because there was going to be this big thing happening on Iran. Didn't really happen. This weekend there's a whole
business in the situation room and here we are on Monday morning and uh nothing much has happened. It's like Groundhog Week again and again in this conflict. I feel like we've even said the Groundhog Week like everyone I talk to about Iran like honestly any green room I'm in for TV whether I'm at CNN or Fox or wherever we're like we're going to have to talk about Iran again today. And like what are we supposed to say because it's been the same conversation over and over again. There's almost a deal. Oh, no, there's not a deal. It's not good enough. We need more. We might attack.
We might not. We do kind of attack. No, there's still a ceasefire. I mean, it's it's really murky and I'm like so hesitant to make any sort of predictions here because it's really kind of been status quo for a while now, right? Right. The New York Times memorably calling it the stalemate phase of Trump's presidency last night because Iran froze like this and of course the Korean peace talks have stopped moving as well. I suppose it's something he was supposed to fix very quickly. has stalled. Congress has stalled. Nothing's moving except for the ballroom and that's why he's keen to talk about that, I guess. But I mean, the stalemate itself is important, right? Let's not forget.
This whole thing was supposed to be over in a matter of days or a matter of weeks or a month or two and here we are. It's now June 2026. We're almost headed towards the fall and straight off of Moose's closed, the gas price is still high. They've come down a little bit in the last week, but nowhere near enough. People are angry and none of this is changing. No, and he said to his daughter-in-law on Fox News, Lara Trump, in an interview that he is not in a hurry. That there's no rush. He said, you know, like could be rushing because of gas prices. I know that's not good, but
they're going to plummet so much when we do get this deal and to be in a hurry, we might not get the best deal. So, he's he's signaling to everyone that this could take more time and every time um we've we've thought maybe we could be close, it has been extended. So, I think this stalemate is kind of our new reality for a little bit. And even the deal that's supposed to be at the on the cusp of signing this week sounds like a deal to talk some more. Like it's a deal to do more negotiation, much like the Gaza deal, which by the way make the deal. Yeah. Do you remember Gaza was supposed to be on to phase two and that is also appears not to be moving any pace at the moment, either.
Well, and in the meantime, speaking of Gaza and Israel, Netanyahu just announced more incursions into Lebanon, which of course is playing a huge role in the dynamics with Iran and it's not going to necessarily be very helpful for the US-Iran negotiations. Right, not moving us forward anymore. I have a horrible feeling that come next Monday morning, Tasha, we'll be on this podcast saying, "Well, another week and Iran are on the cusp of something." Yeah, we'll try to avoid the phrase. All right, we'll better leave it there. Um thanks you all very much for listening. We've got loads more news and analysis in today's Playbook newsletter. You can find that at politico.com/playbook.
We'll be back tomorrow to talk California, your specialist subject, Tasha, and other things as well. Have a great day. Happy Monday, everybody.
