Gas and diesel prices are spiking due to the Iran war, making life hell for American farmers. President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada is making consumer goods more expensive for everyone. Mortgage rates topped 7%. Tech leaders are sounding the alarm about artificial intelligence and its risk to humanity.
The Republican-controlled Congress is focused on college sports.
More than 70 senators have backed the Protect College Sports Act, which would establish a unified federal framework for intercollegiate athletics, including standards for player compensation, transfers and eligibility.
Typically, a rare bipartisan piece of legislation is something people celebrate. But the Senate is using up weeks of floor time ahead of the midterms, resulting in complaints from even some of the bill’s supporters who aren’t happy about the chamber’s priorities right now.
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“If you think moms and dads, when they lie down to sleep at night, are worried about whether the football coaches are happy, you need to back off the crank,” Sen. John Kennedy (R- Louisiana) told reporters this week. “We need to be dealing with bills to affect the cost of living. We haven’t. We haven’t done anything since the One Big Beautiful Bill.”
“We seem to be focused on issues many of you don’t even care about,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) vented to his followers on X. “We’re just not doing what we should be doing to deal with issues you care about.”
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) also urged his colleagues to stay in D.C. and work on safeguards around AI.
“The Republicans set the schedule, and they’ve demonstrated they are laser focused on things that people are not talking about,” Schatz said.
Republican leadership initially hoped to wrap up legislative business this week after clearing the college sports bill, but pressure from rank-and-file senators to do more to address high prices will keep the chamber in another week. Any real legislation to do things like regulate AI would have to wait until after the November election, though Trump has said he’s adamantly opposed to implementing guardrails.
It’s likely the college sports bill won’t get a vote until Monday at the earliest due to the Senate’s rules, but what they actually do after that is wrapped is unclear. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the chamber would likely not work on Friday, but they might take up a bill that aims to address rising costs due to data centers next week. Though even that wasn’t a sure thing.
“You know, [energy] ratepayer protections [legislation] is an option, there’s another bill that a number of our members have an interest in. So at this point, we’re kind of in that posture,” he told reporters. “You guys all know we’ve been here before this, where you kind of figure it out as we go. But part of anything around here, this time requires some level of cooperation or consent … and you know we’re not seeing much out of the Democrats on that.”
Voter concerns about high prices have rattled Republicans in key battleground races across the country, with some calling on Trump to end the war in Iran and take actions to lower the record cost of diesel, which is hitting farmers hard across the Midwest.
“The House should return to DC immediately to work to pause diesel exports, suspend the gas tax, fully unleash E15 and biodiesel, and work on a diesel relief program for truckers and farmers,” Rep. Ashley Hinson, the Republican nominee for Senate in Iowa, wrote on X.
Other Republicans are pushing for a vote in the Senate on long-stalled federal permitting legislation and a bipartisan bill passed overwhelmingly by the House that’s designed to shield consumers from costs associated with large data centers.
During his weekly press conference on Wednesday, Thune said he hoped to move both bills, but that doing so would depend on agreement from Democrats and the willingness of senators to stay in town another week.
“We can certainly try to tee it up,” Thune said of the data center bill. “It would take some cooperation from Democrats to get on it, but if we can get on it, I think it’s a worthwhile effort to try and get that bill passed.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) said the Senate ought to focus on passing aid to farmers and bolstering the nation’s defense.
“The other things most people aren’t going to run to the polls over,” Tillis said, referring to the college sports bill. “They’re not just not leading major political rallies in North Carolina.”
Kennedy warned his party not to be dismissive about the cost of living and that it “doesn’t do any good to tell [Americans] that it doesn’t exist.”
“You can’t look the American people in the eye and say, ‘Don’t believe your lying checkbooks,’ he said. “Okay, and the cost-of-living increases is caused mostly by the Iran war, and we ought to be addressing it and the things we can do to address it. But I’m disappointed that we haven’t even tried.”
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