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Republican Bruce Blakeman planning to enter race for New York governor

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ALBANY, New York — Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman is preparing to enter the race for New York governor as soon as Tuesday, according to two people with direct knowledge of his plans.

Blakeman’s decision to seek the Republican nomination is a major snag in Rep. Elise Stefanik’s efforts to secure GOP backing in her challenge to Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, who is running for a second full term next year.

The looming primary has the makings of a battle royale between two ardent supporters of President Donald Trump — a generational fight pitting an ascendent woman in the Republican Party against a stalwart GOP officeholder who has been on the periphery of the Empire State’s political scene for decades.

Blakeman, who last month won reelection in the suburbs east of New York City, has said Trump has not discouraged him from seeking statewide office. The president offered no preference Monday when reporters asked about Blakeman and Stefanik, appearing to signal that he doesn’t mind them competing.

“He’s great and she’s great,” Trump said at the White House. “They’re both great people.”

Hochul more overtly welcomed the competition.

“If there’s a Republican primary, it makes it much more entertaining for me,” Hochul said about Blakeman’s launch. “Let them go at it. Let’s see how they out-MAGA each other.”

Hochul has reason to be reassured. Republican Lee Zeldin competed in a four-candidate primary in 2022 and eventually came within 6 points of unseating her. Some New York Republicans grumble that Zeldin lost time he could have used to focus on Hochul and was drained of resources as a result.

The people who spoke with Blue Light News about Blakeman’s announcement were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. A Blakeman spokesperson declined to comment on the pending launch.

The county executive has downplayed the problems a primary would pose.

“You gotta be sharp. You gotta be on your game if you want to win this,” he said when he was beginning to explore his bid. “There’s not a large margin of error for Republicans. So I think it sharpens both candidates if there is a primary in many circumstances as long as you can keep it from not degrading into namecalling and things of that nature, which I would never do.”

Hochul, who faces her own primary challenge against Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, led Stefanik 52 percent to 27 percent in a Siena University poll last month. In their bid to defeat the governor, Republicans plan to leverage New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s ascendance to City Hall — tying the moderate Hochul to the 34-year-old democratic socialist who is unpopular in the suburban counties.

The suburbs will be key to Blakeman’s campaign.

While he’s not well known statewide, the Nassau County executive hails from vote-rich Long Island, which has trended toward Republicans in recent elections. He identifies as a “pro-choice Republican” — a position that stands to complicate his ability to win over GOP voters in a closed party primary. Republicans, though, are hungry to win after being shut out of statewide office in New York for the last 20 years, and a less rigid stance on abortion rights may win over moderate voters.

Blakeman is also a Trump-allied Republican who revels in culture wars and has twice won a purple county where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans. Nassau County is home to two critical House battlegrounds, and Republicans are eager to flip the seats held by Reps. Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen in an effort to retain the majority in Washington.

“Even before the election, a lot of community leaders, business leaders, political leaders asked me if I would get into the race because they feel that I would have the best chance to beat Kathy Hochul because of my attraction to crossover Democrats and independent voters,” Blakeman said last month after he won reelection.

He has taken a conservative line on trans athletes, masking in public and is eager to have local law enforcement coordinate with federal immigration enforcement efforts.

He also enjoys a warm relationship with The New York Post, the influential conservative tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch. Blakeman this year announced the Post would become the “official newspaper” of Nassau County.

But Blakeman will face an immediate fundraising crunch. Stefanik, an aggressive fundraiser, formally entered the race for governor in November, but she has been effectively a candidate since the summer after Rep. Mike Lawler bowed out to run for reelection in his swing House seat. Stefanik has made early inroads with Republicans statewide, funding an effort to boost the party’s local-level candidates in the November elections.

Trump likely will loom large in the race. Democrats are poised to tether the president to whoever emerges as the GOP nominee. And Trump’s May endorsement of Lawler’s House reelection bid almost certainly influenced the Hudson Valley Republican’s decision to forgo a gubernatorial run. If Trump decides to favor Stefanik or Blakeman, it is almost certain to have an impact on whether one or the other remains in the running.

“I spoke to President Trump on election night. He congratulated me,” Blakeman said in November. “I told him I wanted to sit down and talk to him. And he said he was willing to sit down and talk about it. He didn’t discourage me.”

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Congress

Shutdown likely to continue at least into Tuesday

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The partial government shutdown that began early Saturday morning is on track to continue at least into Tuesday, which is the earliest the House is now expected to vote on a $1.2 trillion funding package due to opposition from Democrats and internal GOP strife.

House Republican leaders have scheduled a Monday meeting of the House Rules Committee to prepare the massive Senate-passed spending bill for the floor. According to two people granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, the procedural measure teeing up a final vote would not happen until Tuesday, with final passage following if that is successful.

That’s one day later than GOP leaders had hoped. Their previous plan was to pass the bill with Democratic help under suspension of the rules, a fast-track process requiring a two-thirds-majority vote.

But that plan was complicated by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries telling Speaker Mike Johnson in a private conversation Saturday that Democratic leadership would not help Johnson secure the 70 or so Democratic votes to get the measure over the line, according to the two people and another person granted anonymity to discuss the matter.

The Tuesday plan remains tentative as GOP leaders scramble to navigate tensions inside their own conference, which could make passing the procedural measure difficult. Some conservative hard-liners, for instance, want to attach a sweeping elections bill to the package.

Jeffries said in a MS NOW interview Saturday that Republicans “cannot simply move forward with legislation taking a my way or the highway approach” while noting that House Democrats are set to have “a discussion about the appropriate way forward” in a Sunday evening caucus call — first reported by Blue Light News.

He did not rule out that Democrats might support the Senate-passed spending package, which funds the majority of federal agencies through Sept. 30 while providing a two-week extension for the Department of Homeland Security — including controversial immigration enforcement agencies.

Democrats, Jeffries said, want “a robust, ironclad path to bringing about the type of change that the American people are demanding” in immigration enforcement.

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Here’s what federal programs are headed for a (possibly brief) shutdown

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Government funding is set to lapse at midnight Friday for the military and many domestic programs, but cash will continue to flow at a slew of federal agencies Congress already funded.

House leaders are aiming to send a funding package to President Donald Trump Monday, days after the Senate passed the legislation just before the deadline to avert a partial shutdown.

The effect on most federal programs is expected to be minor, and employees who are furloughed would miss just one day of work if the House acts on schedule — which is not assured.

This time, many of the services that have the greatest public impact when shuttered — like farm loans, SNAP food assistance to low-income households and upkeep at national parks — will continue. That’s because Congress already funded some agencies in November and earlier this month, including the departments of Energy, Commerce, Justice, Agriculture, Interior and Veterans Affairs, as well as military construction projects, the EPA, congressional operations, the FDA and federal science programs.

Still, the spending package congressional leaders are trying to clear for Trump’s signature next week contains the vast majority of the funding Congress approves each year to run federal programs, including $839 billion for the military.

Besides the Pentagon, funding will lapse for several major nondefense agencies beginning early Saturday morning.

That includes federal transportation, labor, housing, education and health programs, along with the IRS, independent trade agencies and foreign aid. The departments of Homeland Security, State and Treasury will also be hit by the shutdown.

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Senate passes $1.2T government funding deal — but a brief shutdown is certain

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The Senate passed a compromise spending package Friday, clearing a path for Congress to avert a lengthy government shutdown.

The 71-29 vote came a day after Senate Democrats and President Donald Trump struck a deal to attach two weeks of Homeland Security funding to five spending bills that will fund the Pentagon, State Department and many other agencies until Sept. 30.

The Senate’s vote won’t avert a partial shutdown that will start early Saturday morning since House lawmakers are out of town and not scheduled to return until Monday.

During a private call with House Republicans Friday, Speaker Mike Johnson said the likeliest route to House passage would be bringing the package up under a fast-track process Monday evening. That would require a two-thirds majority — and a significant number of Democratic votes.

The $1.2 trillion package could face challenges in the House, especially from conservative hard-liners who have said they would vote against any Senate changes to what the House already passed. Many House Democrats are also wary of stopgap funding for DHS, which would keep ICE and Border Patrol funded at current levels without immediate new restrictions.

If the Trump-blessed deal ultimately gets signed into law, Congress will have approved more than 95 percent of federal funding — leaving only a full-year DHS bill on its to-do list. Congress has already funded several agencies, including the departments of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs and Justice.

“These are fiscally responsible bills that reflect months of hard work and deliberation from members on both parties and both sides of the Capitol,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said before the final vote.

The Office of Management and Budget has issued shutdown guidance for agencies not already funded, which include furloughs of some personnel.

Republicans agreeing to strip out the full-year DHS bill and replace it with a two-week patch is a major win for Democrats. They quickly unified behind a demand to split off and renegotiate immigration enforcement funding after federal agents deployed to Minnesota fatally shot 37-year-old U.S. citizen Alex Pretti last week.

But Democrats will still need to negotiate with the White House and congressional Republicans about what, if any, policy changes they are willing to codify into law as part of a long-term bill. Republicans are open to some changes, including requiring independent investigations. But they’ve already dismissed some of Democrats’ main demands, including requiring judicial warrants for immigration arrests.

“If Republicans are serious about the very reasonable demands Democrats have put forward on ICE, then there is no good reason we can’t come together very quickly to produce legislation. It should take less than two weeks,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Friday.

Republicans have demands of their own, and many believe the most likely outcome is that another DHS patch will be needed.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), for instance, wants a future vote on legislation barring federal funding for cities that don’t comply with federal immigration laws. Other Republicans and the White House have pointed to it as a key issue in the upcoming negotiations.

“I am demanding that my solution to fixing sanctuary cities at least have a vote. You’re going to put ideas on the floor to make ICE better? I want to put an idea on the floor to get to the root cause of the problem,” Graham said.

The Senate vote caps off a days-long sprint to avoid a second lengthy shutdown in the span of four months. Senate Democrats and Trump said Thursday they had a deal, only for it to run into a snag when Graham delayed a quick vote as he fumed over a provision in the bill, first reported by POLITICO, related to former special counsel Jack Smith’s now-defunct investigation targeting Trump.

Senate leaders ultimately got the agreement back on track Friday afternoon by offering votes on seven changes to the bill, all of which failed. The Senate defeated proposals to cut refugee assistance, strip out all earmarks from the package and redirect funding for ICE to Medicaid, among others.

Graham raged against the House’s move to overturn a law passed last year allowing senators to sue for up to $500,000 per incident if their data had been used in former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the 2020 election. But he backed off his threats to hold up the bill after announcing that leaders had agreed to support a future vote on the matter.

“You jammed me,” Graham said on the floor Friday. “Speaker Johnson, I won’t forget this.”

Meredith Lee Hill and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

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