Congress
Congress nears deal on disaster aid, funding patch to avert pre-Christmas shutdown
Congressional leaders are closing in on a deal to fund the government into early next year, along with tens of billions of dollars in disaster aid, as they work to avoid a holiday shutdown.
The burgeoning agreement comes after weeks of House and Senate leadership negotiations, which included top appropriators, ahead of the Dec. 20 deadline. Text of the funding bill is expected over the weekend or early next week to allow both chambers to pass the measure before lawmakers leave town until January.
“We’re making good progress,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said Thursday afternoon.
“It’s the final phases in negotiation, and something can always go wrong,” Cole said Wednesday night. “I know when people are working in good faith and trying to get to a common point. And I would say that’s happening both across the rotunda and across the partisan divide.”
The spending patch is expected to fund the government into March.
Lawmakers have been privately haggling over the details of a disaster aid package that is expected to be included in the bill, following the White House’s request last month for more than $98 billion in emergency funding to aid recovery from hurricanes Helene and Milton, as well as other disasters throughout the country.
Some Republican lawmakers have predicted that the disaster aid will total less than the White House’s request, but not dramatically. There is broad acknowledgment that the emergency funding within the package will not be offset by funding cuts to other accounts, despite deficit hawk concerns.
The decision to fund the government into March comes after some Senate Republicans had pushed for an earlier deadline, arguing it would help clear the deck for Republicans to focus instead on using the reconciliation process to skirt the Senate filibuster to pass priorities like energy policy and tax cuts.
GOP appropriators and some members of leadership had also initially hoped to wrap up government funding until Oct. 1 as part of a sweeping year-end spending deal, but those aspirations quickly died after Donald Trump’s election win. Washington quickly recalibrated so that Trump could put his stamp on the larger spending package early next year. A spending deal also would have sparked a likely challenge to Mike Johnson’s speakership.
Congress
Comer subpoenas Attorney General Pam Bondi over Epstein files
House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) issued a subpoena to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday, demanding she testify before lawmakers over her handling of the Epstein files.
The move came after five Republicans on the committee joined their Democratic colleagues in supporting Rep. Nancy Mace’s (R-S.C.) motion to call on Bondi to testify earlier this month.
In a letter to Bondi, Comer wrote that “the Committee has questions regarding the Department of Justice’s handling of the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein and his associates” and its compliance with a law passed by Congress last year compelling the DOJ to release the documents.
“As Attorney General, you are directly responsible for overseeing the Department’s collection, review, and determinations regarding the release of files pursuant to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and the Committee therefore believes that you possess valuable insight into these efforts,” he wrote.
Comer’s committee has subpoenaed former President Bill Clinton and former first lady Hillary Clinton as a part of its ongoing investigation into Epstein, as well as other influential individuals named in the files.
Congress
House members to get classified briefing on expiring spy law
Trump administration officials will hold a classified briefing for House members Wednesday on the upcoming spy powers expiration, according to two people granted anonymity to announce the plans ahead of an announcement.
Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing to hold a vote on an 18-month reauthorization of the surveillance authorities known as Section 702 next week, ahead of the April 20 expiration, but he’s facing down a potential rebellion from GOP hard-liners rebellion who want changes made to the spy law and to attach an unrelated elections bill.
House GOP leaders are arguing that the national security implications of the reauthorization are more important than ever given President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Iran and the threats posed by the widening war in the Middle East.
The briefing is set for 3:30 p.m. Wednesday.
The 18-month extension is likely to come direct to the floor next week without action first in the House Intelligence Committee, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter and a brief interview with panel Chair Rick Crawford (R-Ark).
“I don’t think we’ll mark it up,” Crawford said — a decision that could further exacerbate the internal tensions between party leaders and the hard-right lawmakers who oppose a clean extension.
Congress
Democrats deliver latest DHS funding offer to White House
Senate Democrats sent over their latest proposal for immigration enforcement changes at the Department of Homeland Security as a shutdown of the vast department drags into its second month.
The offer, confirmed by a White House official and two other people with knowledge of the matter, is the latest of several the two parties have traded since the funding lapse began Feb. 14. Little progress has been made since toward an agreement that would fund agencies including TSA, FEMA, ICE and the Coast Guard.
Democrats have vowed to block funding until the administration agrees to immigration enforcement changes in the wake of federal agents killing two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. Republicans, meanwhile, have rejected Democrats’ efforts to lop off immigration enforcement agencies and fund the rest of DHS.
The White House is “currently reviewing” the offer, the official said. But a top GOP aide immediately cast doubt of the seriousness of the proposal.
“It took 18 days for them to hit ‘Ctrl C’ and ‘Ctrl V,’” Ryan Wrasse, a spokesperson for Majority Leader John Thune wrote on X, referring to the copy-and-paste function on a personal computer.
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