President Donald Trump’s longest-serving director of legislative affairs is departing this White House in the coming weeks, wrapping up nearly 600 wild, white-knuckle days of managing relations between the 47th president and the Congress.
While Trump’s massive 2024 electoral victory created powerful momentum in the early days of the administration, hard battles were quick to follow. The White House relied on knife’s-edge majorities in both chambers, as well as a number of senior senators in particular who carried no love for the president — and no sure loyalty to his priorities.
‘James has played a critical role in our many accomplishments with Congress.’
Just a week after Trump trounced Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris by 2,284,967 votes and 86 electoral points, former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave a speech to the neoconservative think tank AEI in which he promised to devote his remaining days in office to frustrating the incoming Republican administration.
While less strident than their leader, Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) promised similarly tough approaches. Both Collins and Murkowski backed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for president, though her campaign only ever won Washington, D.C., and all three of them had voted to impeach at the end of Trump’s first term.
Despite formidable obstacles from the entire Democrat coalition and parts of the Grand Old Party itself, James Braid and his team were able to accomplish sweeping legislation on taxes, energy, the border, and spending in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act; send $70 billion to immigration and border enforcement with the Secure America Act, even after the ICE-involved Minneapolis shootings scattered Senate support; create a regulatory framework for stablecoin cryptocurrency with the Genius Act; claw back $9 billion in overspending with a Rescissions Act; and crack down on deadly fentanyl trafficking and revenge porn with the Halt and Take It Down acts.
Even while the president, the Congress, and the parties all duked it out, the legislative affairs team was able to notch a number of major bipartisan victories. Early on, the Laken Riley Act won Democrat votes to create new tools for states to detain criminal illegal aliens and, possibly more importantly, give states legal remedies when the federal government refused its responsibility to protect states being swamped by illegal immigration, as many experienced during the Biden administration.
Braid and his team were also instrumental in helping to form coalitions and grease tracks for the 21st Century Road to Housing Act. The bill was perhaps Washington’s most populist reform of the past two years, working to lower housing prices and protect American families by taking on powerful, entrenched private equity interests that had been busily buying up entry-level homes in fast-growing markets, paying cash, and converting starter neighborhoods into permanent rental communities. While the vote ended up passing nearly unanimously, it was a battle to see it out of committees run by corporate-friendly Republicans and others unwilling to work with liberal Democrats.
Aside from legislative victories, Braid and his team successfully shepherded a number of deeply contentious nomination fights through an often hostile Senate, winning votes for Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Chairman of the Federal Reserve Kevin Warsh, and Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Blanche’s confirmation was successful even after Trump targeted two of the Republican senators on the committee in their primary campaigns. While former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) withdrew their nominations, this administration has never lost a confirmation vote.
“James has played a critical role in our many accomplishments with Congress, including the ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL, beating the Democrats in two shutdown showdowns, passing the GENIUS Act, defeating a record number of War Powers resolutions, and in the confirmation of my Cabinet at the fastest rate in decades,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Thursday morning.
Braid has long worked on Capitol Hill and joined the campaign as the legislative director for JD Vance, then a fast-moving and combative freshman senator. “James Braid had one of the toughest jobs in the entire Administration as White House Legislative Director and delivered for President Trump at every turn,” Vance wrote Thursday morning. “He played a critical role in all of the administration’s achievements in Congress: largest tax cut ever, resources to carry out President Trump’s historic immigration agenda and finish the border wall, defeating two Democratic shutdowns, a landmark first crypto bill, the fastest confirmation of the cabinet in decades and much more.”
“I am profoundly grateful to President Trump and Vice President Vance for the opportunity to be a part of this extraordinary team and to serve in an administration that has worked with the Congress to deliver the largest tax relief in American history, the resources necessary to secure the border and build the wall across two reconciliation bills, the fastest confirmation of the Cabinet in 20 years, and defeating two Democratic shutdowns,” said Braid in a statement.
