🗓️ What’s Up Next
Congress
The House is out this week for its annual policy retreat, and the Senate is in all week.
The PA General Assembly
The House and Senate are doing budget hearings and will not be back in regular session until the end of March.
Want a deeper dive?
If there’s a topic you’re interested in our analysis of, feel free to drop us a line. We’ll be doing deeper dives on the big stuff as it happens, but we’re always happy to hear what you want to know.
There’s a lot to catch up on this week, starting with Kristi Noem’s removal as Homeland Security Secretary. President Trump announced on Thursday that he’d be replacing Noem with Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin. In the last few days, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) said that Noem’s departure is a “major step” in moving the needle on negotiations about the ongoing DHS shutdown. With the DHS funding bill now passed by the House—largely unchanged—the Senate has its work cut out for it. Some Democrats have countered with a proposal to fund the TSA, Coast Guard, and FEMA separately from ICE and CBP, but it’s not a popular sentiment. Republicans have rejected separating the entities as a nonstarter.
What Happened at the Florida GOP Retreat
Meanwhile, the House is out this week and GOP House members are at their annual policy retreat in Florida, where President Trump has declared the SAVE America Act his “No. 1 legislative priority”. He warned Republicans at the retreat that he’d refuse to sign any other legislation until the bill passed—but Republicans don’t seem inclined to believe that. Majority Leader Thune stated that the “votes aren’t there” either to eliminate the filibuster or force a talking filibuster for the legislation. House Speaker Johnson gave every indication that the House now views the SAVE Act as a Senate problem and left it off his list of must-pass bills.
The Senate voted last week 89-9 to advance the ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan housing legislation package aimed at upping housing supply and barring large institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes. Final passage in the Senate is expected as early as Thursday, but passage in the House is reportedly less certain. Key housing industry groups are looking for changes to the investor ban provision, arguing the current seven-year selling requirement on built-to-rent properties will suppress housing supply. President Trump also didn’t mention the bill at the Florida retreat, dismissing housing as something “they don’t talk about” compared to the SAVE Act.
House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-TX) is pushing for a new Republican reconciliation bill similar to the “One Big Beautiful BIll” that passed last July, this one focused on “fraud prevention” in federal safety-net programs. He also wants to revive Medicaid spending cuts that were stripped from last year’s megabill, and is calling for offsetting Pentagon spending increases with cuts elsewhere in the defense budget—a proposal that will likely face significant resistance from certain GOP members. Speaker Johnson, while seemingly on board with the idea of another megabill, is derailed again by the fact that President Trump doesn’t have the appetite for it, and didn’t mention wanting another megabill at the Florida retreat. Bringing some levity to the situation, Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-MO) said: “I’d love to do a second reconciliation bill, but I’d also love to be Brad Pitt. It’s never going to happen.”
On Iran
The price of oil barrels dropped on Tuesday from $120 to $80, a heartening change for the White House, which maintains that the spikes are temporary and manageable as oil prices continue to fluctuate. The White House is “taking steps to address oil prices”, apparently considering lifting sanctions on Russian oil, and reiterating that the war will be a short one. Tuesday was the “most intense” day of the conflict yet, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Beyond the seven service members killed in action, over 140 troops have been wounded in the operation, and the Pentagon has burned through an estimated $5.6 billion in munitions.Democrats are demanding public hearings with Secretaries Rubio and Hegseth testifying under oath, citing continuously unanswered questions about cost, duration, rules of engagement, and a recent missile strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran that killed an estimated 170 people. A previous War Powers resolution failed last week along party lines, with only Senator Rand Paul crossing over from the GOP. It remains to be seen if sentiments will shift as casualties and costs rise.
The Sector Breakdown
Energy: Oil prices may have dropped temporarily, but even top Republicans are readily acknowledging that rising energy prices are a cause for concern for American voters.
Economy: The inflation rate held steady in February at 2.4 percent, with consumer prices rising 0.3 percent, according to the Labor Department’s consumer price index.
Law Enforcement and ICE: Masking has been at the center of the fight for DHS funding for months now, with Democrats calling for more transparency and for ICE agents to be prohibited from wearing masks, while Republicans maintain that anonymity is necessary for the safety of officers and their families. What do former officers have to say about it?
Elections: The special election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene, who abruptly resigned after her very public falling out with President Trump, goes into a run-off.
Technology: On Monday, Anthropic filed a case against the Trump administration over their order for federal agencies to cease use of Anthropic’s AI products after negotiations with the Pentagon over safety guardrails fell apart. Microsoft has since filed an amicus brief in Anthropic’s case, urging the court to block the implementation labelling Anthropic as a supply chain risk.
The Pennsylvania Impact
The DHS shutdown is stretching into its 26th day, and the impacts are being felt at airports and in the bank accounts of federal workers across the state. At PHL, TSA employees are now working without a paycheck, and the travel industry is bracing for impact as spring break begins. Nationwide, TSA employees have received a partial paycheck and are bracing to miss a full one for the third time in just a few months, after previous lapses in funding caused uncertainty and missed paychecks.
History usually repeats itself at the worst of times: travel and aviation industry leaders are warning that longer lines should be expected, as the industry projects that TSA will screen an average of 2.8 million passengers per day in March and April. An all-time high as Spring Break travel begins to kick up.
Meanwhile, the Iran conflict has economic ripple effects—rising oil prices, flight disruptions, and uncertainty in defense contracting—are all being felt in the state due to its major energy sector, international airports, and significant defense industry presence. The housing bill we spoke about is particularly relevant to PA: the sharp increase in housing costs has touched every community in the state , and a bill that targets institutional investor purchases of single-family homes could have implications for neighborhoods where large investment firms have been active buyers.
The SAVE Act may also have implications for PA’s election administration structure, though nothing is certain with the bill currently stalled in the Senate. We’ve already seen controversy in recent election cycles over mail-in voting, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. As for the budget reconciliation debate—the proposal to revive Medicaid cuts carries significant implications for a state where Medicaid covers roughly 1 in 4 residents. As always, we’ll wait to see what any potential legislation says and does before we say for certain what impacts it will have.
🔥 What We’re Watching
A van drove through a barricade near the White House early Wednesday morning, authorities said.
Three commercial ships have been damaged by "unknown projectiles" in the Strait of Hormuz. Why is the shipping channel so important?
California voters are likelier than not to support a proposed wealth tax that’s already being blamed for driving well-known billionaires out of the state, according to Politico.
Did You Know? The United States has no shortage of strange laws, and Pennsylvania has a few that—while unlikely to be enforced—are certainly weird, including: no firing a cannon during a wedding, no singing in the bathtub, and no fortune-telling for your own gain.
Till next time,