(DCNF)—Republicans are running out of time to pass President Donald Trump’s agenda and tackle the affordability crisis as the midterm elections inch closer.
With the midterms looming, Republicans have struggled to pass several policy agendas, including funding immigration enforcement, addressing affordability and adding voter identification requirements. Republicans are on a time crunch to address the hot-button issues for voters, including the economy and immigration, before they cast their ballots in November.
The Senate has 53 days in session before November, while the House has about 40.
A second reconciliation package aimed at funding immigration enforcement will not reach Trump’s desk by his June 1 deadline, leaving Senate Republicans scrambling to pass the package once they return from Memorial Day recess. Republicans are uncertain on how to handle the Trump administration’s $1.8 billion fund that would pay people alleging the justice system was “weaponized” against them, as many senators intended to use the package to restrict the fund.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said his colleagues wanted to place conditions on who could receive the fund payments, adding that he did not see a need for this fund. Republican Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy claimed the fund would allow Trump to hand payments to people without any “legal precedent or accountability,” while Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said the fund would “compensate people who assaulted Capitol Police officers.”
Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York also introduced legislation on May 21 to prohibit the use of taxpayer money for the fund.
Republicans appear hopeful they can get reconciliation passed before the midterms, with Republican North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer telling Semafor that passing the package “is way too important not to do.”
The package would provide over $30.73 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), $22.57 billion to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and $2.5 billion in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriations through 2029. Senate Republicans drafted the legislation in response to the 76-day shutdown of DHS after Democrats refused to fund the agency following high-profile shootings involving immigration agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in January.
The package faced more hurdles because of Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, who ruled that four sections violated the Byrd Rule, which dictates that provisions in a reconciliation bill must have a direct, non-incidental impact on the federal budget. The impacted provisions involved funding for Border Patrol, Department of Homeland Security appropriations and additional funds to screen unaccompanied migrant children.
“From day one, Senate Republicans have committed our majority to providing Americans with safer streets, more money in their pockets, and new opportunities to get ahead,” Thune told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “There’s no better example of that success than the historic Working Families Tax Cuts bill, which included more than 100 individual bills aimed at making Americans’ lives safer and more secure. But with six months until Election Day, there’s plenty more to be done, and we won’t take our foot off the gas to continue getting our shared Republican agenda in place and putting Democrats on record for their out-of-touch priorities.”
Senate Republicans have also struggled to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act, which would require all voters to provide documentation proving their U.S. citizenship before casting a ballot in a federal election. The legislation passed the House on April 10, though the Senate has not met the 60-vote threshold needed for it to pass the Senate.
Trump pressured Republicans to eliminate the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act. Some Republicans, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, have pushed to get rid of the filibuster, though not all in the party have been on board. Republicans have been unsuccessful in securing enough Democratic support for the bill, who argued that the legislation would disenfranchise certain demographics, prevent married women who changed their names from voting and end online voter registration.
Thune stated the Senate lacked the necessary votes to nuke the filibuster. Republican Texas Senate nominee Ken Paxton stated he would exit the Senate primary the SAVE America Act passed. He defeated Cornyn by a landslide in the Tuesday runoff race after the legislation had never passed in the chamber.
Paxton also called for the Senate to lift the filibuster to get the legislation passed, calling it the “most important bill the U.S. Senate could ever pass.”
The bill also faced opposition from Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina. Murkowski said in February she would not support the bill and Tillis opposed the procedural options to pass it. Former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also does not support the SAVE America Act and has actively voted against legislative efforts to pass it.
Republican Maine Sen. Susan Collins became the 50th senator to co-sponsor the legislation in February, giving the bill the potential for a tie-breaking vote by Vice President J.D. Vance. She is set to run for reelection against Democratic Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner in November.
Congress is also planning to pass a third reconciliation package in the summertime, which House Speaker Mike Johnson said will address affordability and anti-fraud measures. They have not passed the $1.5 trillion in spending cuts promised to holdouts of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, though Johnson promised they would use the reconciliation to pass these promised cuts.
House Republicans also delayed a vote on May 21 on the war powers resolution that would restrict Trump’s ability to continue the Iran war, which likely would have passed before the Memorial Day recess given that many Republicans were absent.
Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, a president has 60 days to engage in a military conflict before Congress must either declare war or authorize the use of military force. A version of the resolution has gotten close to passing in the Senate, which most Senate Republicans have worked to defeat.
Americans overwhelmingly disapproved of the Iran war, as one PBS News Hour survey showed that 60% of the American public disapproved of the war. An Ipsos poll also found that 58% of Americans disapproved of U.S. military strikes in Iran.
Inflation skyrocketed to higher levels than expected in April as the Iran war waged on. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.6% on a seasonally adjusted basis in April, after increasing 0.9% in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported. Gas prices rose more than 50% since the Iran war began, with regular gas costing an average of $4.50 per gallon.
Trump’s approval on his economic handling reached record lows. A Quinnipiac poll from May 20 found that 58% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 38% approve.
The House overwhelmingly passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act on May 21, a housing affordability bill which aimed to tackle the housing crisis by expanding loans to build housing, curbing Wall Street’s ownership of single-family homes, pushing local governments to loosen permitting rules and expanding manufactured housing. Since the House amended the Senate’s version that originally passed in March, the chambers must reconcile their differences before the legislation can be sent to Trump’s desk.
Congress has repeatedly delayed final votes on reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows for warrantless surveillance of foreign nationals’ communications with Americans. House Republicans initially postponed a procedural vote in April to negotiate with hardliners and struggled to advance a three-year extension, while the Senate delayed action on the bill due to a lack of support. Both chambers need to extend Section 702 by its expiration date on June 12.
House and Senate leadership are also trying to pass the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, a landmark digital asset bill that aims to resolve regulatory disputes by defining which federal agencies can oversee various parts of the cryptocurrency industry.
Congress is also trying to pass the BUILD America 250 Act, a five-year surface transportation reauthorization package to fund the construction of federal highways, transits and bridges. The package passed the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on May 22, ahead of the Sept. 30 expiration date of the current infrastructure law.
Johnson’s office did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
