Axios Hill Leaders

May 09, 2025
We've got news! 948 words, 3.5 minutes.
- ✈️ Scoop: Kemp's secret sortie
- 🎤 Trump negotiates with himself
- 🔥 Crypto meltdown
1 big thing: ✈️ Scoop ... Kemp's secret sortie

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is planning a White House sitdown with President Trump in the coming weeks to get on the same page for supporting the best Republican candidate in the swing state's 2026 Senate race, sources tell us.
Why it matters: Neither Trump nor Kemp wants a repeat of 2020, when their very public feud — which finally ended last year — was followed by the GOP losing both its Georgia Senate seats.
- "The president, like the governor, wants someone who can win," said a White House adviser.
The intrigue: In both the White House and the governor's mansion, there's concern with polling that shows firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene would win a Republican primary but lose to Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff.
- 💨 One poll conducted by a Republican group shows MTG getting "smoked," said a person who had reviewed the numbers.
- "The president loves MTG. He doesn't love her chances in a general," the Trump adviser said.
- Greene has not ruled out a race, but those familiar with her thinking say she's aware of the perception that she could not win a general election.
Zoom in: Three names have been in circulation the most in the White House and this weekend at the governor's Sea Island retreat on the Georgia coast:
- Rep. Brian Jack
- SBA administrator and former Sen. Kelly Loeffler
- Rep. Mike Collins
The early default favorite is Collins:
- 🎯 "He lines up on the Venn diagram," said a top Georgia Republican strategist. "He's at every [Trump] rally. He's a trucker, so he has a blue-collar business background and would be the firebrand, workhorse candidate."
The bottom line: There's a keen awareness in Kemp's orbit of the need to balance conservatism with pragmatic electability, which helped Kemp win his 2022 reelection at the same time Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock was elected to a full Senate term after winning a partial one in 2021.
- "Whoever we pick has to be able to win Kemp-Warnock voters and the Buckhead wine moms," the Georgia Republican strategist said.
— Marc Caputo and Alex Isenstadt
2. 🎤 Trump's internal millionaires' monologue

Trump has been negotiating with himself on a millionaires' tax:
- He's for it at the $2.5 million level, after being against it at $1 million.
Why it matters: Negotiating with his own party may be easier. Speaker Mike Johnson will tell Trump tomorrow that the House will deliver on the president's tax priorities, according to a congressional aide.
- Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) admitted he's "not excited about the proposal," before quickly adding that "there are a number of people in both the House and Senate who are."
- "If the president weighs in in favor of it, then that's going to be a big factor that we have to take into consideration as well," he said on Hugh Hewitt's radio show.
Driving the news: Trump told Johnson over the phone yesterday that the House should increase the top rate from 37% for individuals making $2.5 million and up ($5 million for married couples).
- "This is to pay for working- and middle-class tax cuts that were promised, and protect Medicaid," an administration official told us.
- Trump is also insisting that carried interest be treated like regular income, which would amount to a tax increase for the private equity industry.
Between the lines: Just as Trump is calling for higher taxes on the wealthy, blue state Republicans are demanding that Trump lower them by increasing the SALT cap.
- New York Republicans are now rejecting lifting that cap from $10,000 to $30,000. Some lawmakers want to go as high as $62,000.
Zoom out: Since the "Reagan Revolution," Republicans have been preternaturally predisposed to hate taxes. Or as House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said when the millionaires' tax was floated in April:
- "No. 1 goal is keeping rates where they are and preventing a tax increase."
— Hans Nichols
3. 🔥 Crypto meltdown
Everyone will try to claim victory from the historic crypto legislation that stalled out in the Senate today. They may all be right.
- Democrats are proud they stuck together to try to force Republicans to make changes. When Democrats asked for more time — and Senate Majority Leader John Thune didn't give it to them — they held the line.
- But Republicans seemed willing to accept a short-term setback to prove a broader point: Democrats aren't serious about crypto, they said. Donors can expect to hear all about it.
Zoom in: The debate presented Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer with the familiar predicament of convincing his colleagues to stay together on a procedural vote to extract policy changes.
- He didn't lose a single Democratic senator in today's 49-48 vote. It needed 60 to pass.
- Even Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) — who both received millions of dollars in crypto industry donations — voted "no."
- Democrats were suspicious that Republicans wanted them to vote yes on the procedural vote without allowing them to read the new bill text.
The other side: Republicans accused Democrats of moving the goalposts.
- They argued the vote would have simply started the real debate, with another round requiring 60 votes for Democrats to get their changes into the bill.
- "I don't know what more they want," Thune said on the floor, insisting the bill had already been litigated in committee, where it received five Democratic votes.
- But Democrats insisted they were negotiating in good faith and even abandoned a provision that looked suspiciously anti-Trump.
— Stef Kight and Hans Nichols
This newsletter was edited by Justin Green and copy edited by Kathie Bozanich.
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