Rep. Bryan Steil on his MEGA Act, Trump admin rolls out Trump Accounts, GOP is flush with cash for 2026, and more

Rep. Bryan Steil (R., Wis.) wants to Make Elections Great Again, and as the chair of the House Committee on Administration, he’s set about doing that by unveiling the Make Elections Great Again (MEGA) Act — a “comprehensive election integrity reform package that lays out a series of reforms that are needed to improve the operations of U.S. elections, and in particular, reinstill Americans’ trust in our elections,” he explained during an interview with the Washington Reporter.

This bill follows years of Steil trying to reform American election systems and “jurisdictions that poorly administer their elections.”

Election integrity has been a longstanding priority of President Donald Trump, and Steil said that he “worked closely with the Trump administration as we were drafting this legislation to make sure that we were working hand in glove in a unified government on what’s actually needed to strengthen America’s election system.”

INTERVIEW INCOMING: Our editor-in-chief Matthew Foldi scored another interview with President Donald Trump — we’re going to roll out a special edition of the Washington Reporter featuring a series of articles Foldi wrote about his latest conversation with the 47th president. HISTORY MADE: President Donald Trump celebrated one year back in the White House following his historic 2024 comeback earlier this week. Rep. Lisa McClain (R., Mich.), the House GOP’s Conference Chair, hosted another media row that the Washington Reporterwas on-site for. Stay tuned for coverage of that! 2026 WATCH: Austin Rogers, the general counsel to Sen. Rick Scott (R.,…

Trump Accounts are the “antidote to socialism,” the administration lauded at a star-studded event where everyone from President Donald Trump to Nicki Minaj discussed how the accounts will revolutionize savings for millions of newly-born Americans.

Brad Gerstner, a Hoosier venture capitalist who was one of the originators of the idea, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), helped kick off the summit, describing the accounts as the opposite of universal basic income.

Trump Accounts, which were a key component of the GOP’s One Big, Beautiful Bill (OBBB), are new government savings accounts available for children born between 2025 and 2028, to which parents, businesses, and philanthropies can contribute thousands of dollars. The accounts are invested in low-cost index funds for future use, and can only be accessed by the holders once they turn 18.

Montana’s sleepy Senate race is heating up as Republicans take aim at a potential independent candidate who hasn’t even launched a campaign yet.

A new site, “BOTH WAYS BODNAR,” launched — and Republicans are texting the microsite to voters and launching a statewide ad campaign. One Montana political veteran told the Washington Reporter that the site “is getting texted to every R voter in MT.” The newly-launched website, paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), relies on the Reporter’s latest coverage of the race.

Seth Bodnar, the now-former president of the University of Montana, is likely to run for Senate against Sen. Steve Daines (R., Mont.) as an independent. The Reporter previously covered how Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and ousted Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.) are closely involved in Bodnar’s efforts. Bodnar’s extensive ties to Democrats would likely still sink his bid in the conservative state.

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard’s recent trip to Fulton County, Georgia, focusing on election integrity efforts is in line with the DNI’s responsibilities, a spokesperson explained to the Washington Reporter, following Gabbard’s trip.

In one of President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meetings of his second term, Gabbard explained the “long list of things that we’re investigating,” with “election integrity being one of them. We have evidence of how these electronic voting systems have been vulnerable to hackers for a very long time and vulnerable to exploitation, to manipulate the results of the votes being cast.”

Shortly after those remarks, she noted that the DNI is continuing “our extensive investigations around exposing the very serious issues we have related to election integrity, illegal abuses of FISA, Crossfire Hurricane, and others.”

President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent hosted Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.), Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Katie Britt (R., Ala.), Gov. Brad Little (R., Idaho), Rep. Jason Smith (R., Mo.), Brad Gerstner, Michael Dell, Kevin O’Leary, Nicki Minaj, and others at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium for a summit on Trump Accounts, which were a key component of the One Big, Beautiful Bill that Cruz worked extensively on.

Trump Accounts are historic investment accounts for American children that are now law thanks to Cruz’s successful push to include them in the OBBB last year.

From the summit’s main stage, Cruz explained how the idea came to be. “Brad [Gerstner] got on a plane, flew from Silicon Valley to D.C., pitched the idea to me, I said ‘I love it.’ We drafted the legislation, that is what is in the bill — that idea that came from a 2 A.M. poker game with Phil Hellmuth.”

As both parties brace for November’s midterm elections, the GOP has outraised Democrats when it comes to money raised by party committees, super PACs, and with candidates, according to both parties’ latest campaign finance records.

Republicans have just shy of $1 billion across organizations like the Republican National Committee (RNC), the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), and the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), combined with other outside groups in the Trump orbit.

The GOP’s standard party committees raised over half a billion dollars in 2025; when combining what elections analyst Rob Pyers calculated as the “$385 million or so more spread across the Trump SuperPAC, leadership PACs, and joint fundraising committees” of the president’s orbit, the GOP is flush with cash as it attempts to defy historical trends and maintain its narrow control of both houses of Congress.

A few short weeks ago, everything seemed like smooth sailing for the proposed congressional stock trading ban, the Stop Insider Trading Act, which was on track to pass with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Then, last week, some members jumped ship, claiming that the bill didn’t go far enough. It still ultimately cleared the committee on a party-line vote.

The bill will thus soon be considered by the full House. It would prohibit members of Congress, their spouses, and their dependent children from purchasing publicly traded stocks. Members would still be able to keep stock assets in investment and retirement funds holding broad categories of financial assets, but they would not be able to trade individual stocks. Most Americans support such restrictions.