House GOP gets set to grill FBI director

Lawmakers are returning to Washington this week after the July 4th recess with a number of priorities on the docket, including high-profile hearings, legislative pushes and, at the top of the list, the appropriations process.

The Senate returns to session on Monday and the House will gavel in on Tuesday. Both chambers are scheduled to be in session for three weeks ahead of the August recess.

The House on Wednesday is set to hold a hearing featuring FBI Director Christopher Wray, who has emerged as a boogeyman on the right amid GOP claims that federal law enforcement agencies are politicized against Republicans.

On the Senate side, top officials from the PGA Tour are scheduled to testify as the organization’s merger with LIV Golf comes under scrutiny from congressional lawmakers. And senators are scheduled to receive a classified briefing on artificial intelligence as the matter comes under increased focus in the current Congress.

For both chambers, however, appropriations will be top of mind this week and throughout July as Congress stares down a Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government or risk a shutdown. House and Senate lawmakers have started marking up appropriations bills, but they are doing so at different levels — putting the two chambers on a collision course and raising the possibility of a potential shutdown.

Wray to testify before House panel

FBI Director Christopher Wray is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, putting him face-to-face with some of his fiercest Republican opponents —  a number of whom have floated impeaching the director.

The hearing, set to begin at 10 a.m., will cover “the politicization of the nation’s preeminent law enforcement agency under the direction” of Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, according to the panel. Both men have been top GOP targets this Congress.

The House GOP majority this Congress has consistently criticized the Justice Department — especially the FBI — arguing that federal law enforcement has been politicized and is biased against Republicans.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) introduced articles of impeachment against Wray in May, accusing him of “facilitating the development of a Federal police force to intimidate, harass, and entrap American citizens that are deemed enemies of the Biden regime.”

Two Republicans who sit on the Judiciary Committee — Reps. Barry Moore (Ala.) and Jeff Van Drew (N.J.) — are cosponsors of the impeachment resolution.

The hearings come on the heels of a heated showdown between Wray and the House Oversight Committee. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the chairman of the panel, threatened to hold Wray in contempt over the FBI’s refusal to share a document detailing unverified allegations that then-Vice President Biden accepted a bribe, which the White House denies. On the eve of the vote, however, the FBI agreed to grant committee members access, leading Comer to cancel the vote.

PGA Tour officials to testify following merger with LIV Golf

The controversy surrounding the PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger will make its way up to Capitol Hill this week with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations set to hold a hearing on the deal, which will feature testimony from two top PGA Tour officials.

The hearing — scheduled for Tuesday at 10 a.m. — is titled “The PGA-LIV Deal: Implications for the Future of Golf and Saudi Arabia’s Influence in the United States.” PGA Tour CEO Ron Price and board member Jimmy Dunne are slated to testify.

In a statement last week, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chair and ranking member of the subcommittee, said the hearing would examine the PGA Tour-LIV Golf agreement and “the future of the PGA Tour and professional golf in the United States.”

The event comes just over one month after the merger between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf was announced, a deal that will create a new entity that has not yet been named, which will include the two golf businesses in addition to DP World Tour. The agreement also put an end to the pending antitrust litigation that existed between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf.

The deal, however, has sparked criticism from athletes and lawmakers alike, who are voicing concerns over the American PGA Tour teaming up with LIV Golf, which is based in Saudi Arabia, a country that has well-documented human rights abuses.

“While few details about the agreement are known, PIF’s role as an arm of the Saudi government and PGA Tour’s sudden and drastic reversal of position concerning LV Golf raises serious questions regarding the reasons for and terms behind the agreement,” Blumenthal wrote to the PGA Tour commissioner and LIV Golf CEO last month.

Senate to received classified AI briefing, eyes SCOTUS reform markup

The Senate is scheduled to receive a classified briefing on artificial intelligence Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced over the weekend, as the top Democrat prioritizes AI in the current Congress.

The Defense Department and Intelligence Community will brief senators “to learn how we’re using and investing in AI to protect our national security and learn what our adversaries are doing in AI,” Schumer said in a letter to colleagues on Sunday.

Schumer said the briefing will be the first-ever classified all-senators briefing on national security and AI. It comes after the New York Democrat last month outlined his approach for crafting AI policy, which he dubbed the SAFE Innovation Framework for Artificial Intelligence.

In Sunday’s letter, Schumer also outlined the Senate’s agenda for July: legislation to lower the cost of insulin, prescription drug reform and measures to address Supreme Court ethics.

Some action on the latter issue, dealing with the bench, is expected this week: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has said his panel will mark up Supreme Court ethics reform legislation when the chamber returns after the July 4th recess. Last week, he said an announcement on the timing of a vote would be made early this week.

Appropriations is the top priority

The top priority for Congress heading into the three-week July sprint is government funding, as lawmakers race to pass all 12 appropriations bills ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline — a task that is appearing more and more difficult as complicating dynamics emerge.

In the House, conservatives are pushing for aggressive cuts when it comes to the appropriations process — they want spending to move back to 2022 levels — which is below the levels that were set in the debt limit deal President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) cut last month. The hardline stance comes after conservatives voiced strong criticism of that very debt limit deal, arguing that it did not do enough to bring down the deficit.

In a show of good faith to those conservatives, the House began marking up appropriations bills at 2022 levels, but the right-wing Republicans are skeptical, accusing leadership of using budgetary gimmicks known as recessions to make it look like they are spending less than they are.

Complicating the matter even more, the Senate is marking up appropriations bills at the levels set in the debt limit deal, setting the stage for a chamber vs. chamber clash that could bring the government to the brink of a shutdown.