May 20, 2025
🌮 Ready for a long night? We'll keep you posted on what happens if and when the "One Big, Beautiful Bill" hits the House Rules Committee.
🎶 Today's last tune is what former FERC commissioner Willie Phillips jams as he rolls into his new job at Holland & Knight: "One Mic" by Nas.
1 big thing: IRA still in flux after Trump's Hill visit
President Trump's Hill visit today appears to have changed little about the IRA tax credit picture as Republicans pledge to plow ahead on their reconciliation package.
Why it matters: The president's arm-twisting ahead of a House Rules Committee meeting currently set for 1am tomorrow puts heavy pressure on GOP holdouts on a range of sticking points.
State of play: Trump is trying to win over a handful of hardline deficit hawks who want a full IRA repeal without losing Republicans who prefer to keep the credits accessible for a period of time.
- Trump's message of getting a deal done on the other thorny issues could mean the IRA credits remain as remain as approved by Ways and Means last week.
- Although IRA-friendly House Republicans number more than a dozen, they have been far more equivocal about drawing red lines around credits than the deficit hawks.
Driving the news: House Republicans huddled with Trump in the basement of the Capitol for about an hour.
- Republicans trickling out of the meeting told reporters that Trump urged them to move the bill as is and to a deal on SALT and Medicaid.
- Trump requested that the House add back in E&C pipeline permitting language that was struck from the draft text this week, according to one House Republican who spoke on condition of anonymity.
White House messaging nodded to keeping the current House language that phases out some of the tax credits.
- The bill "repeals or phases out" the IRA energy credits, the White House said in a news release as the meeting wrapped up.
- The bill also "immediately stops credits from flowing to China and saves taxpayers $500+ billion every year, and reverses electric vehicle mandates that let radical climate activists set the standards for American energy," it said.
Between the lines: Even if the House reaches a deal, Senate Republicans plan to write their own version with a "surgical approach" on the IRA credits, Sen. Thom Tillis told Daniel.
- The House proposal "actually cuts projects off midstream — or after hundreds of millions of dollars, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars may be spent," he said. "That's just not the way to build good sustaining business policy."
- "We're going to draft something else and settle it in conference," he said.
The bottom line: "I know there's a lot of us that are being vocal" to protect the credits, Rep. David Valadao told Daniel leaving the Capitol yesterday. "There's so much up in the air right now, it's really hard to try to guess."
2. Fishing with Trout Unlimited, 2025 redux
Trout Unlimited CEO Chris Wood is confident that the conservation community will "come out of the woodwork" to defend public lands in the Trump 2.0 era.
Why it matters: Wood is a D.C. stalwart with close relationships on both sides of the aisle and an optimistic view of what's possible in a sharply divided Congress.
What he's saying: During their annual fishing trip to Fletchers Cove, Wood told Nick he's worried that Trump's proposed cuts could "hollow out" land management agencies like BLM and the Forest Service.
- "What's going to happen is they're not going to be able to fill grazing permits in a timely manner, and they're not going to be able to fill oil and gas permits in a timely manner, and the campgrounds are going to be dirty, and the trails aren't going to be maintained."
- That could turn into a "self-fulfilling prophecy" in which people believe that public lands should be sold off or given to states.
Yes, but: Wood thinks the conservation and sportsmen's communities would fight public lands sales.
- "The hunting and angling community is a generally conservative one, and is slow to anger, but once you light that fire, Katie bar the door."
Zoom in: So far, Wood said, he's seeing "strange" silence from Hill appropriators on DOGE-driven agency cuts, but he expects that to change as Trump's grace period wears off.
- He's also still bullish about the prospects of a mining package that offers industry an easier path to permitting and creates a first-ever hardrock royalty.
3. Senate to vote on California waiver CRA
The Senate will vote this week on a resolution to overturn a Clean Air Act waiver that lets California set its own auto emissions standards, Majority Leader John Thune said this morning.
Why it matters: The Congressional Review Act vote will have enormous implications for the U.S. EV market.
- Democrats are warning it could also break the filibuster and set new precedents for the CRA.
Driving the news: Thune said on the floor that Democrats "are attempting to derail a repeal by throwing a tantrum over a supposed procedural problem."
- He had previously been more noncommittal as the GOP conference debated whether to take a vote to effectively overrule the Senate parliamentarian.
Between the lines: The Biden administration granted the waiver late last year allowing California to set new rules that ban the sale of most new gas-powered cars by 2035.
- The state has a huge chunk of the U.S. auto market — and many blue states are allowed to follow California's rules — so automakers have been putting up a fight for months.
- The Trump EPA then submitted the waivers to Congress as formal rules eligible for a quick CRA repeal.
That sparked a procedural fight involving GAO and parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, who said the waivers are not eligible for CRA consideration.
What we're watching: Democrats say overruling her on this is tantamount to tossing the Senate filibuster.
- They're likely to throw up as many procedural barriers as possible ahead of the vote.
Republicans argue this is a narrow procedural issue that has more to do with GAO than the parliamentarian.
- The debate "is not about destroying Senate procedure or any other hysterical claim the Democrats are making," Thune said.
- "In fact, we are talking about preserving the Senate's prerogatives."
✅ Thank you for reading Axios Pro Policy, and thanks to editors Chuck McCutcheon and David Nather and copy editor Brad Bonhall.
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