Congress
Capitol agenda: GOP dares Dems to buck bipartisan spending bill
Democrats have to decide Thursday whether voting in favor of advancing a full-year appropriations bill will weaken their negotiating position in the government shutdown.
Republicans are daring Democrats to oppose bipartisan legislation to fund the Department of Defense for fiscal 2026. Majority Leader John Thune told reporters he’s also hoping to tack on appropriations measures to fund the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services.
Democrats have been clamoring for progress on “regular order” spending bills, but now they’re on the fence amid the larger partisan shutdown standoff. That includes Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Appropriations Vice Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
“We have to see what [Republicans] put on the floor,” Schumer told reporters. “They haven’t told us yet.”
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) is one Democrat who could end up breaking rank: while she stopped short of saying how she would vote Thursday, she told reporters Wednesday she supports moving forward with the appropriations process amid the shutdown.
But Minority Whip Dick Durbin said Wednesday it would be a “long shot” for Democrats to shore up the necessary votes to break the Senate filibuster and advance the defense bill. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) argued now is not the time for Democrats to give up leverage, as the party continues to push for an agreement to extend expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies to protect individuals from losing insurance amid steep insurance hikes.
“We are weeks away from people getting notified, if they haven’t been notified already, of skyrocketing health care costs,” Kelly said, referring to the Nov. 1 start date for widespread ACA open enrollment. “That should be the focus. Not a single defense appropriations bill.”
Many Democrats have a desire to reach a broader appropriations deal before playing ball on individual funding measures. They also want to know whether Republicans will consent to attaching the Labor-HHS appropriations bill to the Defense measure.
“What’s needed is a larger agreement about how the appropriations process is going to move forward so it’s clear that our priorities are respected,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) told reporters.
The showdown Thursday comes as senators are separately deliberating whether to kickstart the formal process of resolving differences with the House on the Senate-passed, three-bill “minibus” to fund the Departments of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs, the FDA and the operations of Congress.
Democrats are reluctant to move forward on that package for the same reasons they are wary about advancing the defense bill, while Republicans are also not united: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has been withholding support due to an outstanding provision regarding hemp, according to a Senate aide granted anonymity to disclose private discussions.
But Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), who chairs the Agriculture-FDA appropriations subcommittee, projected confidence that Republicans could eventually shore up their ranks.
What else we’re watching:
— A new shutdown demand?: Many Democrats want to make their votes to reopen the government contingent on an administration promise to rehire federal workers fired during the shutdown. However, Schumer hasn’t weighed in, and it could complicate the path out of the shutdown as Democrats navigate an already-intense battle over extending health insurance subsidies.
— Senate moves forward on judges: As the federal courts are poised to run out of money Friday, one key pillar of the Trump agenda is not on pause during the shutdown: expanding the president’s influence on the federal courts. Senate Judiciary is set to vote Thursday on two potential district court judges to fill vacancies in the Northern District of Mississippi, along with other U.S. attorney nominees.
Nicholas Wu, Mia McCarthy and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.
A Democratic trio attempted to pass an artificial intelligence bill via a unanimous consent request on Tuesday but were blocked on the Senate floor.
Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) sought to pass their Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act using the procedural mechanism, which allows expedited consideration of legislation but fails if one senator opposes it.
“The whole world has recognized that we’ve got to do something,” Warner said in a speech on the floor. “We should not miss the moment to put a safety protocol in place now.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) objected to the bill, preventing any chance of passage.
“Congress must not legislate on the issue of artificial intelligence hastily or in a closed manner,” he said on the floor, adding that it gave some in the government too much power to dictate the technology that could be permitted to be released.
As some lawmakers grow concerned over dire warnings from AI labs’ top executives about the technology’s risk to humanity, Congress’ attempts to legislate AI guardrails have largely stalled.
In the past few weeks, two other AI-related bills, the Ratepayer Protection Act and AI Emergency Button Act, were also nixed in an attempt to pass them unanimously.
Warner, Schatz and Kim’s new bill would have established a new safety board within the Commerce Department to vet models before they are deployed and set safety standards for the industry. It would also have created a reporting process for safety and security incidents.
Sen. Darline Graham sought to take up her brother’s mantle Tuesday, going after former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining the late-Sen. Lindsey Graham’s phone data.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the South Carolina Republican told Smith as he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that the anguish the prosecutor caused her brother “makes me sick.”
Lindsey Graham, until his unexpected death in July, was among the most vocal in his outrage over revelations that Smith secretly collected electronic data from GOP lawmakers as part of the Biden-era investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The late senator was also unapologetic in his support for a provision tucked into a government funding package, which was later repealed, allowing senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 or more if they discover their electronic records were seized without notification — language specifically designed to compensate Smith’s targets.
But Smith replied that Lindsey Graham was not a target of his investigation and was not suspected of wrongdoing — in fact, he considered Darline Graham’s brother “a patriotic public servant” who likely would have been a “witness” in his case against Trump for attempted election subversion.
“Your brother investigated the claims that Donald Trump was making,” Smith told Darline Graham. “He found them to be false.”
The federal government’s internal watchdog told Congress Tuesday that it has concluded President Donald Trump acted unlawfully in unilaterally canceling $810 million in federal funding.
In a letter to congressional leaders obtained by Blue Light News, the Government Accountability Office’s top lawyer panned Trump’s declaration Friday that he is nixing money Congress appropriated through a controversial budget maneuver called a “pocket rescission.”
“The Constitution vests in Congress the power of the purse,” GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez wrote,
adding that “Congress did not cede this important power” by enacting the 1970s impoundment law intended to stop presidents from withholding money Congress approves.
“Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress’s constitutional power of the purse,” Perez added. “The President may not force the expiration of budget authority Congress has already enacted and did not rescind.”
It is unclear what practical effect, if any, the letter will have on the interbranch funding fight. Outside groups sued the administration last year over a prior pocket rescission, but the Supreme Court issued a preliminary ruling that they did not have standing to challenge the matter. The Trump administration has argued that only the head of the GAO is able to sue under the 52-year-old law governing rescissions.
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