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Key Republicans waver ahead of war powers vote

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Several Republican senators are voicing uncertainty ahead of a vote to block the Trump administration from taking military action against Venezuela, setting up a potential rebuke of the president over the scope of his war powers.

The White House, in an apparent push to get Republicans on board, has started sharing more information with Congress about its rationale for strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean Sea. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will brief lawmakers on Wednesday as senators weigh the bipartisan legislation.

Four Senate Republicans said Wednesday they are still reviewing the Justice Department’s legal rationale, which Congress received last week, and two others have already voted against the military strikes. It would only take three more GOP defections to flip the outcome of the upcoming vote.

“I want to make sure that we do our due diligence and that we’re doing things correctly long-term,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, (R-S.D.), a member of the Intelligence and Armed Services panels, who noted the stepped-up engagement from administration officials.

Democratic lawmakers have objected to the U.S. military strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that have killed more than 60 people.

Rubio’s push to shore up support on Capitol Hill — where he’ll meet with congressional leaders and national security committee heads from both parties — comes amid bipartisan frustration that the Trump administration has left Congress in the dark about its increasingly aggressive military campaign.

“I’m still looking at everything,” said Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), a Senate Intelligence Committee member. “I’m doing my homework.”

Lawmakers are particularly interested in the intelligence behind the strikes and the Justice Department’s legal justification for them.

“I need to read the legal opinion that the Office of Legal Counsel did,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who chairs the Appropriations Committee. “I’ve gone to the classified briefing, as I said, but I’d like to read that opinion.”

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said he wants clarity on when the Constitution requires Congress to authorize military force.

“I’m trying to figure out where that line is drawn,” he said, adding that he also wants answers to “factual” questions. “What are we doing and what is yet to come?”

The last war powers measure failed 48-51 with Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) crossing the aisle to support it. Both indicated on Wednesday that they have not changed their minds.

Paul said there have been “rumblings” of more dissatisfied Republicans switching sides amid concerns about the lack of legal clarity. “Really killing people without an accusation, without evidence and without a trial is not something that I find acceptable,” he said.

A bipartisan group of defense lawmakers pressed President Donald Trump directly for more details in a letter sent to the White House on Tuesday, arguing efforts to stem the flow of narcotics into the U.S. “must be done within the legal, moral, and ethical framework that sets us apart from our adversaries.”

The letter was signed by Republican Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Mike Turner of Ohio as well as Democrats Jason Crow of Colorado and Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, all senior members of the House Armed Services Committee.

“The administration should come to Congress, make the legal case, present their intelligence, and assure the American people that any military action is grounded in both authority and accountability,” Bacon said in a statement. “If those standards are met, I’m confident Congress and the American people will stand behind decisive action to confront this crisis.”

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Congress

Capitol agenda: Shutdown hinges on razor-thin rule vote

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House Republican leaders are facing a white-knuckle vote Tuesday morning as they move to end the partial shutdown after four days.

Here’s what we’re watching on both sides of the aisle as an unpredictable day shakes out in the House.

— Razor-thin rule vote: Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump got involved in wrangling hard-liner holdouts Monday who were threatening to oppose the procedural measure setting up final debate of the $1.2 trillion spending package.

Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) started the day threatening to tank the rule if the SAVE Act, a partisan elections bill, wasn’t attached. But a White House meeting left the duo in a better place, with Luna telling reporters Monday night she got “assurances on the standing filibuster” that would allow the bill to pass the Senate.

One big caveat: There’s been no acknowledgment from Senate Majority Leader John Thune that any such deal is in place.

Various proposals for a “standing filibuster” or “talking filibuster” have been rattling around for years on both sides of the aisle — most recently from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — but that hasn’t convinced the vast majority of Senate Republicans who want to keep the 60-vote threshold in place.

While Luna said she expected “an announcement” on a rules change that would force Democrats to hold the floor in order to block the bill, no such announcement appears imminent. But her remarks — and a big midday Truth Social nudge from Trump — were enough to buoy GOP leaders.

Asked Monday night if he was confident he had the votes to move forward and end the shutdown, Johnson said, “I think we do.”

— Dems fume over another Senate jam: While Democrats are expected to unite against the rule, party leaders declined to comment on how they would vote on the overall package ahead of Tuesday morning’s closed-door caucus meeting.

It appears it will be a vote of conscience: A whip alert circulated Monday night urged a “no” vote on the rule but did not offer any guidance for the underlying bill, which funds most federal agencies but ends Department of Homeland Security funding after Feb. 13.

Still, many House Democrats have been left grumbling — again — after being sidelined in negotiations between Senate Democrats and the White House.

Top leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are playing down tensions over the deal, but many in the rank-and-file are miffed at getting jammed with a spending bill they oppose for a third time in less than a year.

“We end up having to answer for what [the Senate] won’t do, and it can be very frustrating,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said.

What else we’re watching:   

— House moves to overturn DC tax law: The House Rules Committee teed up floor consideration this week for a bill that would roll back a D.C. law that declines to apply key tax cuts from last summer’s megabill to local income taxes in the city.

In that measure, the D.C. Council decided not to adopt 13 separate tax provisions from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including several key incentives the GOP restored for businesses and the deductions for tipped income, overtime pay, new car loan interest and seniors.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee is scheduled to consider its version of the resolution Wednesday.

Meredith Lee Hill and Bernie Becker contributed to this report.

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House Democrats once again left complaining about a Senate spending deal

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For the third time in less than a year, a spending deal brokered in the Senate has House Democrats feeling left out — and grumbling about their counterparts across the Capitol.

This time, the agreement between President Donald Trump and Senate Democratic leaders would spare the vast majority of federal agencies from an extended shutdown — funding most of them through the end of the fiscal year in September while punting Homeland Security funding only through Feb. 13.

But to Democrats up in arms over Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda, that’s still 10 days of DHS funding too many — assuming the deal passes the House as planned Tuesday — leaving them to vent once again about the other chamber.

“There are some Senate Democrats who always signal nervousness and are so reluctant to be strong,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.). “We end up having to answer for what they won’t do, and it can be very frustrating.”

“We are far closer to the people,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), adding that it’s “critically important that House members be brought in” during negotiations over immigration enforcement constraints considering ICE, Border Patrol and other agencies are deployed in their districts.

The interchamber tensions between Democrats are becoming a regular feature of funding fights in the second Trump term. Lawmakers, strategists and voters alike exploded in anger last March when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a handful of colleagues allowed a spending package to move forward amid the Elon Musk-led DOGE assault on federal agencies. In November, tempers again flared when a handful of Senate Democrats joined with Republicans to end a record 43-day shutdown.

This time, the situation is more nuanced. At stake is $1.2 trillion in full-year funding that was negotiated on a bipartisan basis; Democrats generally support the vast majority of the agreement. But the inclusion of the DHS money has been a sore spot — especially after the killing last month of two U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis.

A version of the DHS bill passed in the House before the Jan. 24 killing of Alex Pretti garnered only seven Democratic votes. Senate Democrats immediately declared a no-go on full-year funding for the department after the incident, and Schumer and Trump negotiated a two-week punt to allow for further talks.

Fewer than half of Senate Democratic Caucus members ultimately ended up voting for the deal, however, and support among House Democrats is considerably more scant.

Asked if House Democrats were sufficiently read in on the Trump-Schumer deal, Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar said “no” but added, “I don’t think that that’s surprising.”

“But I think the split among senators was kind of surprising,” the California lawmaker added. “And so … we’ll see what happens.”

The spending package is headed to the floor Tuesday, where it remains an open question if House Republicans will be able to unite on a key test vote. Late last week — facing dissension in his own ranks over having to pass a bill with only temporary DHS funding — Speaker Mike Johnson entertained using a bipartisan fast-track process.

But members of Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ leadership circle were caught unaware — with some downright livid — at Johnson’s confidence that he could pass the bill under that process — which would require a two-thirds-majority vote, meaning at least 70 Democrats would be needed to get it across the line.

Such a move generally requires tacit agreement from minority party leaders to supply the votes. But Republicans at that point hadn’t asked their Democratic counterparts for a more formal private count of how many Democrats might support the measure, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Jeffries told Johnson just hours later on a private call that Democratic leadership would not commit to delivering the required votes for a fast-track vote, forcing Johnson to gather GOP votes to jump through a procedural hurdle first. Johnson has since accused Democrats of “playing games” with the shutdown-ending package.

Those interparty antics have helped deflect attention from internal Democratic tensions over the Senate-brokered funding deal, with Jeffries playing down any such rift Monday.

“I speak regularly with Leader Schumer, and I speak regularly with Mike Johnson,” he said when asked if House Democrats were properly consulted in the funding package negotiations. “There’s no daylight between House and Senate Democrats on accomplishing the objective, which is dramatic reform of ICE.”

Jeffries opposed the prior package, with full-year DHS funding, but would not say Monday how he intended to vote on the revised bill with the short-term stopgap.

Schumer, for his part, said he spoke with Jeffries during the negotiations that erupted in the Senate following Pretti’s killing. He said after the Senate vote Friday night that Jeffries had agreed on limiting DHS funding to Feb. 13.

“This bill was negotiated by … [Senate Majority LeaderJohn] Thune and me,” Schumer said. “But I’ve talked to Hakeem Jeffries. For instance, we talked about how long a [stopgap] should be, because we wanted to limit it greatly.”

Asked about Schumer’s comment Monday, Jeffries said, “I think what we made clear to the Senate is that the original three-month proposal was completely and totally unacceptable.”

Behind the scenes, Schumer told the White House and congressional Republicans last week that they would need to talk to Jeffries because the bill was going back to the House, according to a person granted anonymity to disclose a private conversation.

If Republicans can get the bill over the procedural hurdle Tuesday, more Democrats are expected to support it than the seven who backed the previous version. But the party remained sharply divided Monday.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Appropriations Committee Democrat, said Monday she would support the bill on the floor, while another panel leader, Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern of the Rules Committee, said he would oppose it.

“I will not vote for business as usual while masked agents break into people’s homes without a judicial warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment,” McGovern said.

Others declined to forecast their plans, including members of the Democratic leadership team. Rep. Ted Lieu of California, the caucus vice chair, said he planned to attend Tuesday morning’s caucus meeting before deciding.

Several Democrats said they do not expect party leaders to formally whip votes for or against the funding package, with some acknowledging that it would not be an easy decision for members who support the vast majority of the funding bill and also don’t want to see noncontroversial DHS agencies such as FEMA and TSA shut down.

And blaming the Senate for having to take a tough note, one Democrat noted, is hardly new.

“I’ve been here long enough that people always complain about the other chamber, so that’s always an easy out,” Aguilar said.

Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

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House Republicans eye next week for housing bill vote

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House leadership is eyeing the week of Feb. 9 for a vote on a bipartisan housing package, according to four people with direct knowledge of the planning.

Senior lawmakers have also been mulling whether to consider the widely supported bill under suspension of House rules, which would expedite passage of the legislation, said three of the people who were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

However, plans for the bill are not locked in and could be subject to change as the House deals with a partial government shutdown.

The Housing in the 21st Century Act, which overwhelmingly advanced through the House Financial Services Committee in December, is part of a push by Congress to pass legislation that could address a growing housing affordability crisis. The bill includes 25 provisions that aim to increase the housing supply, modernize local development and rural housing programs, expand manufactured and affordable housing, protect borrowers and those utilizing federal housing programs, and enhance oversight of housing providers.

House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) said Friday that he’s pushing for the Housing for the 21st Century Act to receive a floor vote expeditiously.

”I hope that that bill can come to the House floor in just a few days. I really am pushing for that, I think it’s the right decision,” Hill said on Bloomberg Radio.

The Senate’s housing bill, the ROAD to Housing Act, passed the upper chamber as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act but may be put to a separate floor vote. If the House is able to pass its own version by a wide margin before the Senate, it could have additional leverage for negotiations with the upper chamber for a final bill. Hill and other House Republicans have said the Senate bill, which received overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate Banking Committee, has a number of provisions that would not be acceptable among House GOP members.

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