Congress
Democrats still not supporting GOP bill to end the shutdown
Senate Democrats rejected the House-passed, GOP-led stopgap for the 13th time Tuesday, as the pain from the government shutdown is poised to escalate by week’s end.
Lawmakers voted 54-45 on the funding patch, which would float federal operations through Nov. 21. Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — as well as Independent Sen. Angus King, who caucuses with Democrats — continued to break ranks to vote in favor of advancing the bill.
It comes as Democrats are under increasing external pressure to vote to reopen the government following a statement Monday from the powerful American Federation of Government Employees that called on Congress to immediately pass a clean stopgap bill and end the shutdown.
Democrats have largely signaled they have no immediate plans to change their position: that they would not vote to resume federal funding until Republicans come to the table to negotiate on a bipartisan compromise on soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act tax credits.
“We are in a health care crisis and Republicans don’t even want to talk about how to fix it,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday. “The president isn’t even in town as Americans are about to be devastated by the bills they’ll receive on health care.”
He was referring to the Nov. 1 date when open enrollment begins for Obamacare health plans, with people are expected to be slapped with high premiums absent a deal to extend the insurance subsidies.
But Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Senate Democrat, acknowledged Monday evening that AFGE’s statement could have an impact, even if he wasn’t changing his own stance at this time.
“It is in my mind,” said Durbin. “The SNAP program feeds one out of eight Americans.”
Lawmakers are staring down a grim reality that fallout from the shutdown is about to get worse, and there’s no offramp in sight. On Friday, members of the military will miss a paycheck; on Saturday, the government will stop distributing key food aid benefits relied upon by millions of low-income Americans.
And then there are worries that key personnel at airports will stop showing up for work, which could lead to major air travel disruptions as well as potential safety issues.
Republicans will discuss holding votes on stand-alone bills to lessen certain elements of shutdown pain, such as paying the troops and federal employees, during a closed-door lunch Tuesday with Vice President JD Vance.
A growing number of Democrats have signaled they would be willing to support legislation from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that would fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, for the duration of the shutdown.
But Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Tuesday, “there’s not a high level of interest in doing carve outs, or so-called ‘rifle shots.’ I think most people realize the way to get out of this mess is to vote to open up the government.”
Republicans are not expected to give Hawley’s proposal a vote this week, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss internal scheduling.
Ultimately, with the shutdown all-but-guaranteed to cross the one-month mark, Republicans want to keep maximum pressure on Democrats to reopen the government by making conditions on the ground as unpleasant as possible.
At the same time, some GOP senators are pushing for the chamber to remain in session beyond its normal Thursday afternoon exit time to make progress on reaching an agreement to end the impasse. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) urged her colleagues to stop treating the shutdown as business-as-usual during a floor speech Monday.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), asked Tuesday about Murkowski’s remarks, said he was willing to stay in session through the weekend if it would result in Democrats supporting the GOP stopgap.
“We’ve been here on weekends and it doesn’t seem to have made a difference,” he added.
Sen. Eric Schmitt thought he caught Jack Smith in a lie. Instead, he outed him as a fan of former Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark.
In a quest to frame former special counsel Jack Smith as a liar during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Schmitt asked him if he was in Atlanta on Feb. 3, 2024, for an NBA basketball game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks — amid mounting drama around the Atlanta-based criminal investigation into Donald Trump led by prosecutor Fani Willis.
Smith clarified that he didn’t go to that game. But he did go to a different one on the same day: He was in College Park, Md. to see the Maryland Terrapins women’s basketball team play the Iowa Hawkeyes, led by phenom Caitlin Clark, who dropped 38 points that night in a win over the Terps.
It appeared that Schmitt misinterpreted a text message reference to the “hawks” among Smith’s deputies, who discussed reserving a seat for Smith in the front row.
“What would you say if I had a series of text messages from your team that said you were in Atlanta at a Warrior Hawks game on Feb. 3, 2024, the day after Willis and Wade announced their affair,” the Missouri Republican asked, intimating that he was about to get Smith to perjure himself.
Schmitt also tried to connect the NBA game Smith did not attend in Atlanta to Feb. 2, 2024 — the date Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was also investigating Trump, acknowledged a personal relationship with another prosecutor on her team.
“I definitely did not go to a Hawks game. I’m sure of that,” Smith said, as he initially struggled to recall the time frame.
After reviewing the messages more closely, Smith said he recalled going to the Iowa-Maryland game and being flanked in the crowd by U.S. marshals. His testimony prompted Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) to lash out at her colleague’s erroneous attack, saying Schmitt owed Smith an apology.
Speaker Mike Johnson called Tuesday for more “oversight” and “transparency” of the artificial intelligence industry —including “external auditing” — while expressing a preference that those steps would be taken voluntarily by leading AI firms.
Johnson made the comments on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” just hours before he is expected to meet at the White House with President Donald Trump and top AI executives.
“There’s corporate responsibility here. Of course these folks have to provide safe products,” Johnson said. “But I think a little oversight, a little transparency, a little external auditing of what’s going on would calm the nerves of a lot of people.”
It’s a more measured tone than Johnson struck earlier this month, when he joined Trump in playing down the warnings made by some AI insiders of existential threats to humanity and emphasizing the need to beat China in the race to superintelligent models.
He reaffirmed Tuesday his belief the U.S. needs to strike the “right balance” between staying competitive globally and keeping the technology safe.
“I have resisted the siren song to jump in and do these blanket moratoriums and all of this, you know, hyperregulation, because we cannot lose our edge to China,” Johnson said. “I think we’ve got to make sure we do this well. We need to keep America ahead in this, you know, transformational technology, but also do it in a safe way.”
Several of the prominent executives who have called for a voluntary slowdown in AI development, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, will be at the meeting. Also attending is Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, which said Monday it was canceling the release of its latest model due to safety concerns.
Johnson said Tuesday he was counting on the executives, not the government, to take the lead, saying of the implementation of guardrails, “I hope it’s voluntary.”
“We’ll find out what comes out of the meeting today,” he said. “I think that that’s where they’re headed. I think they see the handwriting on the wall, and I think they want to ensure investors, consumers, the American public that they’re going to do this in a very safe way. And that will, I think, put us in the right place.”
Jack Smith, the former special counsel who orchestrated the federal criminal cases against Donald Trump, plans to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday morning that he stands by his decision to bring charges against the president — arguing that his investigations “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity.”
Smith has faced unrelenting criticism from Republicans for presiding over what they view as partisan and flawed inquiries; some, including Trump, have called for him to be jailed. Yet Smith, in his opening prepared remarks obtained in advance by Blue Light News, will maintain he made the right decision to prosecute Trump — both for his alleged role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results that led to the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol attack, and for his alleged unlawful retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
“If asked whether to prosecute a former President based on the same facts today, I would do so regardless of whether that President was a Republican or a Democrat,” Smith plans to say, according to his written testimony.
Smith will note that grand juries in two separate districts reached the same conclusion his investigation did. He also will reflect that the country is facing “challenges unlike any we have experienced in our lifetime” as U.S. citizens are routinely threatened with indictments because they are seen as opposing Trump.
“Predetermined outcomes increasingly seem to take precedence over the Justice Department’s long-standing core values, traditions, and norms,” Smith intends to tell lawmakers. “History teaches that the rule of law is rarely destroyed all at once. It is often weakened by attacks on the institutions and public servants sworn to uphold it.”
Tuesday will mark the third time Smith has appeared on Capitol Hill over the last two years. He has previously testified to members of the House Judiciary Committee — first privately, then in a public hearing — as Republicans have accused him of overstepping his bounds.
GOP lawmakers are particularly incensed over Smith’s moves to obtain electronic communications for dozens of House and Senate Republicans around the time of the Jan 6, 2021 Capitol riots. Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa)revealed in July that Smith obtained text messages between 44 members of Congress and White House officials during that period.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Judiciary panel’s top Democrat, said in a floor speech Monday, that Smith is “a nonpartisan career prosecutor.” He also criticized his GOP colleagues for having “made no effort to obtain a copy of Volume 2 of Jack Smith’s report,” which details findings from the case involving Trump’s handling of classified materials at Mar-a-Lago.
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