Trump extends his reach into Congress in ways large and small

WASHINGTON (AP) — The invitation arrived in the final days of the summer recess, President Donald Trump’s political team summoning House Republican staff to an early morning meeting about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the coming midterm elections.

“Attendance will be tracked by Team Trump — see you there!” read the flyer obtained by The Associated Press.

On Wednesday morning, staffers lined up to check in to the private meeting at Republican National Committee headquarters across the street from the U.S. Capitol.

What would have been a routine political strategy session with White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, pollster Tony Fabrizio and political director James Blair showcased the depth of Trump’s reach into the affairs of the legislative branch, with Republican majorities in Congress being led by a powerful executive.

As Congress returns for a busy fall stretch, Trump was pushing lawmakers to drop their probe into the Jeffrey Epstein files — “it’s enough,” he said at the White House — despite a groundswell of bipartisan support for a full airing of the Justice Department’s information about the former financier accused of sex trafficking.

Trump has unleashed squadrons of federal law enforcement and National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., and is eyeing similar incursions into other cities, including Chicago, even after a federal judge said his use of the military to quell protests in Los Angeles broke the law.

And perhaps most threatening in the erosion of the separation of powers, Trump has utilized a highly rare administrative tool to claw back federal funds Congress had already approved, in what has been viewed as a brazen, muscular display of unchecked executive authority that is courting a federal government shutdown Sept. 30.

“Time and time again, we are seeing priorities that are out of line with what the American people want,” Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar of California, the chairman of the House Democrats, said at a Wednesday press conference at the Capitol.

Perhaps nowhere is the acquiescence of the Congress, where Republicans hold the majority, so revealing than in the morning meeting at the Capitol Hill Club on the third floor of RNC headquarters.

“At least one staffer per office expected,” the invitation read.

Lawmakers piled in first, with almost full attendance, and then staff attended a separate private session. They were shown polling, particularly on voter attitudes about the big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts that Trump signed into law, as Republicans prepare to defend their majority ahead of next fall’s midterm elections.

The takeaway: The “One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act” is now called “The Working Families Tax Cuts Act.”

“It’s not a rebranding,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson said afterward. “What we have to do to sell it is tell the truth.”

Trump had initially named the bill himself, coming up with it during a White House meeting back in spring. The moniker stuck, and was typed out on the title page of the sprawling, nearly 1,000-page package — until Democrats in the Senate succeeded in stripping it out, on technical grounds.

But two months after Trump signed the bill into law at a Fourth of July ceremony at the White House, even the president has acknowledged it wasn’t his best marketing.

“I’m not going to use the term ’great, big, beautiful,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting last week. “That was good for getting it approved. But it’s not good for explaining to people what it’s all about.”

Johnson, who said he missed the morning session to take his son to school, also said he spoke with Trump near midnight and “fully” endorses the strategy.

“This was all pre-arranged with me,” Johnson said. “We’re closely coordinating with the White House.”

Johnson acknowledged the big bill has not proven popular with voters, but he insisted that’s because they don’t fully realize what’s in it.

The big bill extends tax rates and brackets that have been in place since Trump’s first term. It offers new cuts, including no taxes on tipped income, higher tax credits for children and deductions for some seniors. It also imposes new Medicaid work requirements and extends work requirements for those receiving food stamps assistance.

Half of U.S. adults expect the new tax law will help the rich, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Most — about 6 in 10 — think it will do more to hurt than help low-income people.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated some 10 million more Americans will go without health care coverage and 2.4 million fewer people will qualify for food stamps under the new law.

CBO also estimated it will result in less income for the poorest Americans, with more money for the wealthy.

“Republicans don’t have a branding problem, they have a substance problem,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday.

“Americans hate the Republicans’ big, ugly bill.”

While leadership from the White House can prove powerful in motivating lawmakers to fall in line behind a president’s priorities, Trump is leading the GOP into a new era of executive power that is steamrolling past the legislative branch in a way unseen in peacetime presidencies.

Senators are considering rare rules changes that would allow Republicans to meet Trump’s demands to more speedily confirm his executive branch nominees, even as the president has summarily fired the newly confirmed head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the White House engages in a legal battle to oust Lisa Cook, a Senate-confirmed member of the Federal Reserve Board.

Also Wednesday, House Republicans quietly approved a resolution to stand up a new committee to reinvestigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol as they continue to contest what happened after Trump sent a mob of supporters to fight the 2020 election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump was impeached for inciting the 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, but was later acquitted.

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Associated Press writer Leah Askarinam contributed to this report.