A Senate Republican wants to codify President Donald Trump’s desire to cap credit card interest rates, but it’s an idea that’s already been met with resistance among top Republicans.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., plans to introduce legislation that would make good on Trump’s push to cap credit card interest rates at 10% for one year. However, Republican leadership in both chambers has already pushed back against the idea, arguing that it could lead to credit scarcity.

Marshall’s bill, the Consumer Affordability Protection Act, would limit the amount that credit card companies could charge for one year, capping the ceiling at Trump’s desired rate of 10%.

That cap would only apply to banks and financial institutions with over $100 billion in assets, with the idea being that smaller community banks and most credit unions would not be affected.

Marshall said in a statement to Fox News Digital that the legislation was about ‘giving families breathing room, restoring fairness in the marketplace, and making sure the American Dream is still within reach for everyone who works hard and plays by the rules.’

‘Credit cards were meant to be a tool — not a trap,’ Marshall said. ‘Right now, millions of hard-working Americans are getting crushed by outrageous interest rates that make it nearly impossible to pay down debt and get ahead.’

The bill follows Trump’s demand that Americans no longer be ‘‘ripped off’ by credit card companies that are charging interest rates of 20 to 30%, and even more, which festered unimpeded during the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration.’

He set a target date for the cap of Jan. 20, the one-year anniversary of his inauguration to his second term in office.

‘AFFORDABILITY! Effective January 20, 2026, I, as President of the United States, am calling for a one year cap on Credit Card Interest Rates of 10%,’ Trump said on Truth Social.

Marshall’s push isn’t his first foray into the world of credit — he and Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have a long-simmering bill that would boost competition among credit card payment networks. Trump endorsed that legislation earlier this week, and the bipartisan duo reintroduced it in the Senate shortly after.

Durbin and Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., are co-sponsors of Marshall’s latest bill. Trump and Marshall also have an unlikely ally in Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. The progressive lawmaker spoke with the president earlier this week about affordability, and both found middle ground on their desire to cap credit card interest rates. But she was wary that any real action, either from the White House or the GOP-controlled Congress, would come to fruition. 

‘I supported it for years,’ Warren said. ‘And when he first floated the idea over a year ago, I said, ‘I’m all in,’ and so far, Trump hasn’t done anything.’

But despite Trump’s edict and the patchwork of bipartisan support, the top Republicans in Congress aren’t completely sold on the idea.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., warned that capping credit card interest rates could ‘probably deprive an awful lot of people of access to credit around the country.’

‘Credit cards will probably become debit cards,’ Thune said. ‘So, yeah, I mean, that’s not something I’m out there advocating for.’

And House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., warned of ‘unintended consequences’ of such a change.

‘One of the things that the president probably had not thought through is the negative secondary effect: they would just stop lending money, and maybe they cap what people are able to borrow at a very low amount,’ Johnson said.

Tense scenes played out in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night as a group of moderate Republicans took a stand against a trio of GOP-led labor rule bills.

One of those bills failed to pass, while the other two were quickly scuttled to avoid the same fate — an embarrassing blow to House Republican leadership and the majority of GOP lawmakers who supported them.

It’s an example of a situation that has been growing increasingly common in Congress’ lower chamber as Republicans wrestle with a party-line majority of anywhere between three and one vote, depending on attendance that day.

‘We’ve got simple bills like this that should be a no-brainer, and we’ve got several moderate Rs that are going to kill the bill,’ Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., told Fox News Digital on the sidelines just before the first bill failed. ‘What I foresee, and you’re seeing it in appropriations bills, they don’t care about guys like me … they’re just working with the Democrats to pass them.’

Several Republicans who spoke with Fox News Digital this week said there’s growing concern about Democrats growing their number of legislative victories despite Republicans holding the gavel — or potentially using their numbers to take over the agenda.

As Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., put to reporters last week, ‘We are one flu season away from losing the majority.’

Steube said he did not believe Democrats could actually take the speaker’s gavel but conceded the situation was tenuous. He pointed to the recent sudden death of Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., as an example.

‘You’re a heart attack and a car accident away from the majority. There’s people in our conference that are not young people. I mean, you saw what just happened with LaMalfa. In my opinion, he was young, 65. We have people who are much older in the conference,’ he said Tuesday night.

‘Now, Democrats couldn’t take over the gavel, but like, what you’re seeing here, you’ve got attendance issues, you’ve got seven Republicans voting with the Democrats. You lose more than two, you’re toast.’

Despite that, however, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., denied there was a fight for the agenda on Tuesday night.

‘We’re totally in control of the House,’ he told reporters. 

He added, however, that leaders were watching attendance closely.

‘They’d better be here,’ Johnson said of his members. ‘I told everybody, and not in jest, I said, no adventure sports, no risk-taking, take your vitamins. Stay healthy and be here.’

It comes after several recent incidents that have put their tenuous grasp on the House in perspective for Republicans.

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., abruptly resigned earlier this year after publicly falling out with President Donald Trump. Rep. Jim Baird, R-Ind., returned on Tuesday badly bruised from a car accident that he spent the week prior recovering from.

And just this week, Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., said he is home recovering from major brain surgery. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., is in his district caring for his ill wife.

Beyond conversations about their own mortality, it’s also spurred discussion among some Republicans about what unexpected life events could do to their majority.

‘The margins are really, really close. A few of us were in a car the other day, driving … if that became an accident, that would have tipped the scale. So I think it’s a concern to be vigilant, prudent, and just understand that the consequences of an accident may have, you know, consequences outside of the norm,’ Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., told Fox News Digital.

He also warned his fellow Republicans, as a former Navy SEAL, to be mindful of unsafe situations.

‘Say some evil mind wants to change the majority in the House — we don’t have the same protection that the president does. And that’s why I say just remain vigilant,’ Zinke said. ‘I have faith that we’ll continue, but I think it should be a concern, because it’s a big deal to change power outside of a normal election cycle.’

One House Republican speaking to Fox News Digital anonymously pointed out that there appeared to be more Democrats than Republicans voting on a slate of bills — albeit, relatively uncontroversial ones — on Monday night.

‘I’d guess they’re terrified,’ the lawmaker said of GOP leaders on Tuesday. ‘Sometimes life happens — look at Derrick Van Orden … car accidents, COVID, or flu. I mean, I don’t think we had the majority last night.’

‘They’re going to have to get smart about the calendar, probably break some arms,’ that GOP lawmaker said. ‘It’s kind of unprecedented. I don’t know how it would work. Say, unfortunately, someone else passed. You can’t fix that. You may have to wait a few months. You might have to strip committees. There’s a whole lot of uncharted waters to deal with.’

There are also more than a dozen GOP lawmakers running for higher office — something that could also spur absences, as South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., pointed out.

She dismissed fears of Democrats taking over the agenda, however.

‘Certainly there’s concern with the slim majority. There are many of us that are running for higher office as well, and as the debate season gets underway, there’s going to be members that miss votes to make debates and to be campaigning,’ Mace said.

Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., told Fox News Digital he was not worried about Democrats taking over the floor but conceded there was tension over the slim margins for Republicans.

‘I know they’re carefully watching attendance,’ Ogles said. ‘I think the joke is that no two members should travel together at this point.’

But not all House Republicans are agonizing over how the politics of the situation are playing out.

One moderate GOP lawmaker who spoke with Fox News Digital anonymously said the thin majority could save Republicans in the middle from taking politically perilous votes.

‘It gives folks in the center a little more juice on preventing bills from coming to the floor,’ they said.

An example they used is Thursday morning’s expected vote on a bill dealing with the joint-employer labor rule, telling Fox News Digital, ‘There’s an active effort among pro-labor Republicans to block that from coming to the floor, and we can only really get that done in our majority.’

House Democrats are demanding a congressional inquiry into the Trump administration’s criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is joining forces with Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., and other members of their party to ask Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, to open the probe.

‘As Jerome Powell, the Trump-appointed Chair of the Federal Reserve Board, explained to the nation on Sunday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has launched a sham criminal investigation into statements Chair Powell made about renovations to the Board’s historic building,’ the letter read.

‘That investigation is a flagrant attempt by the President to bully and intimidate the Board into setting interest rates not based on evidence, economic conditions, or the public interest but instead based on the President’s own whims.’

The Democrats called the DOJ’s probe a ‘systematic assault on the independence of our central bank.’

They asked Jordan to hold a public hearing on the issue and even potentially subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi and relevant Department of Justice (DOJ) officials to testify.

The investigation into Powell is being led by U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro, who accused Powell of not cooperating with her office’s search for information.

Pirro also suggested there was no immediate threat of a criminal indictment, something Powell mentioned in his statement responding to the probe.

‘The United States Attorney’s Office contacted the Federal Reserve on multiple occasions to discuss cost overruns and the chairman’s congressional testimony, but were ignored, necessitating the use of legal process—which is not a threat. The word ‘indictment’ has come out of Mr. Powell’s mouth, no one else’s,’ Pirro wrote on X.

‘None of this would have happened if they had just responded to our outreach. This office makes decisions based on the merits, nothing more and nothing less. We agree with the chairman of the Federal Reserve that no one is above the law, and that is why we expect his full cooperation.’

Powell said in a statement Sunday that DOJ was ‘threatening a criminal indictment related to my testimony before the Senate Banking Committee last June.’

He alleged, however, that the investigation was really motivated by the Fed’s independence in setting interest rates despite President Donald Trump publicly pressuring the body to lower them at a faster pace.

Trump has criticized Powell publicly on multiple occasions, including for the Fed’s pace of lowering interest rates.

Trump denied any involvement in starting the probe in an interview with NBC News earlier this week, though adding, ‘he’s certainly not very good at the Fed, and he’s not very good at building buildings.’

The president also told Reuters on Wednesday that he had no current plans to fire Powell.

The probe nevertheless has caused some heartburn on both sides of Capitol Hill, with virtually all Democrats and even some Republicans pushing back against it.

‘Pursuing criminal charges relating to his testimony on building renovations at a time when the nation’s economy requires focus and creates an unnecessary distraction,’ House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill, R-Ark., said in a statement. ‘The Federal Reserve is led by strong, capable individuals appointed by President Trump, and this action could undermine this and future Administrations’ ability to make sound monetary policy decisions.’

The White House referred Fox News Digital to the DOJ for comment on Democrats’ letter. Pirro’s office declined to comment.

Fox News Digital also reached out to Jordan’s office for comment but did not immediately hear back.

President Donald Trump seemed to remain ambivalent about the possibility of exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi taking over the country if the Islamic regime were to fall.

‘He seems very nice, but I don’t know how he’d play within his own country,’ Trump told Reuters during an interview on Wednesday. ‘And we really aren’t up to that point yet.

‘I don’t know whether or not his country would accept his leadership, and certainly if they would, that would be fine with me,’ he added.

Trump has yet to take a clear stance on Pahlavi since protests erupted in Iran late last month. On Jan. 8, during an interview with Hugh Hewitt, Trump said that he was unsure about meeting with Pahlavi amid the unrest in Iran, saying it might not be ‘appropriate.’

‘I’ve watched him, and he seems like a nice person, but I’m not sure that it would be appropriate at this point to do that as president,’ Trump said. ‘I think that we should let everybody go out there, and we see who emerges.’

Pahlavi has made repeated appeals to Trump amid the raging protests in Iran. On Jan. 9, after the Islamic regime instituted a sweeping internet blackout, Pahlavi posted ‘an urgent and immediate call’ to the president on X, urging him to ‘be prepared to intervene to help the people of Iran.’

The exiled crown prince made a similar plea during an appearance on ‘Sunday Morning Futures.’ He issued a message directly to Trump while speaking with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo.

‘You have already established your legacy as a man committed to peace and fighting evil forces,’ Pahlavi said on ‘Sunday Morning Futures.’ ‘There is a reason why people in Iran are renaming streets after your name. They know that you are totally opposite to Barack Obama or Joe Biden. They know you’re not going to throw them under the bus as they have had before.’

While Trump has publicly expressed his hesitation toward Pahlavi, there was reportedly a meeting between the exiled crown prince and high-level U.S. officials. The meeting was first reported by Axios and allegedly included White House special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The outlet noted that Pahlavi is trying to position himself as a ‘transitional’ leader in the event that the regime falls.

Pahlavi is the son of Iran’s last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who ruled the country for decades before being overthrown during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, during which time his family was forced to flee the country. The crown prince lives in exile to this day, unable to return to Iran.

The Senate advanced a three-bill spending package through its final procedural hurdle on Thursday, teeing up a final vote later in the day.

Lawmakers are in a mad dash to avert a partial government shutdown after just exiting the longest closure in history a few short months ago, and they have a deadline on Jan. 30 to beat.

Thursday’s first vote was a key test of whether the warring parties could come together or again fall victim to political divisions as they did in September. The overwhelmingly bipartisan vote proved, for now, that Senate Republicans and Democrats have a truce in the government funding battle.

The roughly $174 billion package, which cruised through the House last week, includes funding bills for commerce, justice, science and related agencies; energy and water development and related agencies; and interior, environment and related agencies.

If passed later on Thursday, it’ll mark six total spending bills that lawmakers have put on President Donald Trump’s desk.

But it’s only halfway to the magic dozen that are needed to fund the government. Many lawmakers acknowledge that given the short amount of time left before the deadline, and lingering issues with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funding bill, a short-term funding extension, known as a continuing resolution (CR), will be needed to prevent a shutdown.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was hopeful that another round of funding bills brewing in the House could solve the DHS issue. But he didn’t shut down the possibility that lawmakers may need to use a CR just for that agency as political divisions bubble up.

‘That will be the hardest one for sure,’ Thune said. ‘And I can’t predict what happens, but I think you have to, you know, reserve some optionality.’

Congressional Democrats have put their foot down on the DHS funding bill, demanding restrictions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the wake of the shooting of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent.

But it’s unlikely Republicans will play ball with that request, meaning the bill will stay in limbo for the time being. That divide won’t be an easy mountain to climb, and the Senate is gearing up to leave for a week, returning to Washington, D.C., the week of the funding deadline.

Senate Democrats also don’t want to turn to a year-long CR, a good sign that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus are serious about finishing the work of funding the government.

Earlier this week, Schumer lauded Democratic negotiators who worked on the package, and noted that it was full of their own spending priorities meant to push back against Trump.

‘Their leadership stopped the worst of Donald Trump’s devastating cuts, protected investments that millions of Americans depend on, from education to housing to jobs,’ Schumer said. ‘Though this isn’t the finish line, it’s a good step in the right direction.’