Lindsey Graham’s new challenge for Mike Johnson

Speaker Mike Johnson already has to worry about a clutch of hard-line conservative ideologues inside the House Republican ranks as he tries to pass the heart of President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.

He also needs to keep an eye on one garrulous, shape-shifting, veteran Republican from the other side of the Capitol.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham has been back-channeling with some members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus — picking their brains and giving them advice on trillions of dollars in overall spending cuts — as he prepares in his role as Budget Committee chair to pave the way for a party-line border, energy and defense bill.

The Freedom Caucus, according to one member, has Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) taking an informal lead in talking with senators including Graham.

As lawmakers on both sides of the cross-Rotunda communications tell it, the aim of the talks is to help Republicans eventually get on the same page — something that has eluded the party so far. And Graham’s efforts have the tacit approval of other GOP senators, who know that whatever the Senate does has to pass muster with the House’s toughest votes.

“We need their help, and they need ours,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said in an interview. “It would be better if we got together.”

But it’s also a direct contrast to the approach Johnson is taking at the behest of his committee chairs and fellow leaders. That would sweep together not only the energy, border and defense agenda that the Senate is pursuing, but also add in a dizzyingly complex tax overhaul to create “one, big beautiful bill” — one, Johnson believes, will be too big to fail. Graham's competing push for a two-bill strategy has put the Freedom Caucus in rare alignment with him and Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

Rubber could meet the road for that plan this week in the House Budget Committee, where Graham’s counterpart — panel Chair Jodey Arrington of Texas — is tasked with writing and sending to the floor a fiscal blueprint for the one-bill effort. It’s a first, high-stakes test of whether Johnson will end up getting the unity he needs to execute his plan. (Norman and Roy, as well as three other Freedom Caucus members, sit on the panel.)

Graham, meanwhile, hasn’t publicly said when he will move forward in committee with his own budget blueprint — the necessary first step in the party-line reconciliation process. He’s also been holding closed-door meetings with members of his panel, who believe he could move in the next two or three weeks. Thune said in a brief interview last week the text is ready to go.

“They’re in the camp of doing border first, and so am I,” Graham said about his outreach to Roy and his allies. “I told them to go find spending cuts that are reconciliation-compliant and get the votes.”

Graham said he’s also reaching out to House Republicans more broadly and said in a previous interview that he also wanted to talk to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has floated doing three reconciliation bills.

Yet it’s the working relationship with the House GOP’s hard-liners that is the latest twist in Graham’s decadelong political evolution. Best known as a Reaganite defense hawk, he infamously railed against then-candidate Trump during the 2016 election and destroyed his cellphone after Trump gave out his number in public in 2015.

But Graham quickly pivoted to being one of Trump’s most steadfast allies, and a frequent golf partner, in the wake of his 2016 victory. Now as Budget Committee chair, he’s responsible for teeing up the heart of Trump’s legislative agenda — and navigating the intense GOP divisions that come with it.

“We want to be respectful of the House,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a member of the Budget Committee, adding of Graham‘s timeline: “I think you’re going to see us move pretty quickly.”

The informal Graham-Freedom Caucus alliance is odd on the surface: The ultra-conservative group is deeply anti-establishment and typically aligns itself more closely with more libertarian-styled Republicans like Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who has been known to stop by their weekly meetings. Norman is even flirting with a potential primary challenge against Graham in 2026 as he mulls running for either governor or Senate. And members of the group have tried to apply early public pressure on Thune when it comes to Trump’s nominees.

“We want to be respectful of the House,” said Sen. John Kennedy, a member of the Budget Committee, adding of Graham‘s timeline: “I think you’re going to see us move pretty quickly.”

But the two sides are united on a reconciliation strategy: splitting it into two parts, giving the party an early win on the border before tackling the much harder lift of a tax package before the end of the year. The Freedom Caucus is also backing a component — a Pentagon funding boost — that is important to Graham. A letter the group sent to House leadership last month proposed unlocking additional defense funding.

”We’re talking about spending stuff. … We've been talking pretty regularly,” Roy said about the talks with Graham, whom he called “a friend.”

He added that the Freedom Caucus proposal is aimed at wanting a “strong defense, but we also want to free up [Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency] to be able to make cuts in discretionary” spending.

Graham isn’t the only Senate Republican chatting behind the scenes with their House counterparts as they try to figure out a path forward. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) is close friends and housemates with House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.). Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) also said in a brief interview that he’s talked with Smith, Roy and other House Republicans about the upcoming tax debate.

Graham is dealing with some skeptics within his own conference. Some GOP senators are supporting the one-bill approach because it appears to be Trump’s preferred option and they aren’t sure they can navigate the House’s tricky math twice.

“The problem is, I don’t think the House is going to pass what we pass, but I think anything the House passes, we can pass,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Budget Committee and leadership adviser.

Asked about his fellow Texan Roy wanting two, he quipped: “Well, God bless him.”

Kennedy has two influential Lousianians in his own delegation — Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise — who favor trying to pass one package because of their narrow margin in the House and the assumption that no Democrats will vote for the bill.

“They’re only going to get one bite at reconciliation. They don’t want to go back to the well twice,” Kennedy said of his House counterparts. “They’ve got a bunch of free-range chickens … and they all wander off and Mike can’t catch all of them and even President Trump, we’ve seen, can’t catch all of them.”

House GOP leaders are aware of the back-channeling. But they are making clear they’re continuing to pursue Johnson’s one-bill plan.

"It's entirely their right — that's what I think about it,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) said in a brief interview at the House GOP retreat in Florida. ”They can have whatever position they want to have.”

“When that is ultimately done, our speaker has said he wants one bill. That's what he's designed the timeline for,” Emmer said. “That’s what we're going to do."

Meredith Lee Hill, Katherine Tully-McManus and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

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