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Lawmakers bemoan Trump’s latest power grab: Troop pay

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Members of Congress say they’re happy military troops are getting paid during the shutdown — but not necessarily that President Donald Trump is claiming vast power over the federal spending process to do it.

In a sweeping order last week, Trump gave both the Pentagon and the White House budget office the green light to use “any funds” left over for the current fiscal year to bankroll paychecks for active-duty servicemembers, which were due to be withheld last Wednesday amid the government funding standoff.

The move took the onus off lawmakers to vote on standalone legislation to pay troops during the funding lapse — something House and Senate GOP leadership had resisted, fearing it would reduce pressure on Democrats to vote for the Republican plan to reopen the government as the minority party demands bipartisan negotiations on health care.

The Senate is scheduled to consider legislation this week that would allow members of the military and other federal workers to receive pay while the government remains shuttered. It’s far from certain it will attract the necessary 60 votes to advance or would ever be brought to the floor in the House, which has been in recess since passage of the GOP-backed stopgap more than a month ago.

Against this backdrop, lawmakers who oppose Trump’s troop funding gambit have been careful to couch their criticism of the method with support for the end result.

“Look, I want the troops to be paid,” said Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, a senior appropriator and likely the Senate’s next Democratic whip. “But, as usual, they find the most illegal way to do everything.”

But Republicans are also among the many lawmakers highly skeptical about the legality of Trump’s actions. The president invoked his authority as commander in chief to claim missed paychecks would pose an “unacceptable threat to military readiness” — but the law requires the president to seek approval from Congress before moving around money, and there are many constraints to what can be done even with lawmakers’ passive consent.

“While it’s a desired outcome, there’s a process that’s required — by Constitution and by law — for Congress to be not only consulted but engaged,” Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a brief interview last week.

And the issue isn’t going away. According to two White House officials not authorized to speak publicly, Trump will continue to use funding for military paychecks during the shutdown, if Congress doesn’t pass a government funding bill before the next pay date at month’s end.

At the same time, Trump administration officials have not provided top congressional appropriators with details about how much cash the White House believes is available for use, nor have they submitted requests to Capitol Hill to reprogram any money.

“There’s a way we take care of this. It’s called appropriations. It’s called reprogramming. And I don’t think that process is being respected,” said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, another leading Republican appropriator and frequent Trump critic.

The Trump administration privately told lawmakers that it tapped $6.5 billion from a pot of about $10 billion in unspent military research and development funding to pay troops ahead of the Oct. 15 paycheck date.

“The appropriations committee in general believes that it should get more information and that we should receive a list of canceled work” and “contracts,” Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) told reporters last week.

On Friday the White House sent lawmakers a five-page document detailing its argument for why the president has the power to use funding for a different purpose than Congress mandated in law. The bulleted list of talking points cites examples like then-President George Washington tapping military funding in 1794 for the militia to respond to the Whiskey Rebellion.

But administration officials have not relayed how much other money they believe could be used to pay troops when the next paychecks are due on Oct. 31.

The White House is already hunting for any available money to address other funding shortfalls during the shutdown to support politically popular programs. That includes options to pay at least a segment of federal workers, and potentially reopen key loans for struggling farmers amid quiet pressure from Senate GOP Leader John Thune and other farm-state lawmakers, according to two Trump officials and two senior Hill Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter.

White House officials also need to figure out how to manage the dilemma over SNAP, the country’s largest food assistance program that serves 42 million low-income Americans, which will start to run out of funds Nov. 1.

The federal government’s top watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, typically weighs in on the legality of shifting funding during a government shutdown. When Trump was president during the last, lengthy funding lapse that ended in early 2019, GAO concluded that his administration twice violated the law with its funding moves, warning that officials would face fines and up to two years in prison for future violations.

This time around, however, GAO has yet to receive any lawmaker requests to review Trump’s maneuver to pay members of the military — even as the independent oversight agency is working to determine whether the administration has violated the law by firing federal workers during the shutdown.

“GAO has a process it goes through to determine whether we do work and when, which we are working through,” a spokesperson for the office said in a statement.

Meanwhile, not everyone is questioning the legal standing of Trump’s actions.

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he supported Trump’s move “once the House made it plain that they were unwilling to come back to do a military pay bill.”

He added, “I’m glad they were able to find undesignated dollars within the defense budget they could use. As long as they keep it within defense, I think that they’re on solid ground.”

Republicans also know there’s at least one major deterrent for lawmakers to legally challenge Trump’s maneuvers to send paychecks to military troops: any outspoken critic risks being branded as unpatriotic.

“If the Democrats want to go to court and challenge troops being paid,” Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters last week, “bring it.”

Connor O’Brien and Leo Shane III contributed to this report.

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Congress

Schumer rolls out Democrats’ midterm energy pitch

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rolled out an energy and climate change agenda Wednesday as a preview of what Democrats have in store if they take the chamber’s majority in November’s elections.

Schumer’s five-point plan seeks to ride the national momentum on affordability, framing Democrats as the party not just of clean energy and fighting climate change, but of lower electricity bills and more jobs.

It touches on some longtime Democratic priorities — like bringing back the Inflation Reduction Act clean energy tax incentives that President Donald Trump and Republicans rolled back last year — and easing permitting hurdles for wind, solar and other zero-emissions energy sources.

“We can bring new voters and allies into the fight for a cleaner environment by showing how clean energy is affordable energy,” Schumer said.

“With this new expanded coalition, putting us back in the majority, we have an opportunity to put forward new policy solutions, strong policy solutions, that tell the American people we can both lower costs and make real progress on climate change,” he continued.

Schumer presented the plan at the League of Conservation Voters’ annual Capital Dinner, gathering hundreds of donors, lawmakers, environmental staff and others.

The group, long a major Democratic ally, is one of the nation’s top election spenders, and is poised to be a major part of Democrats’ attempts to recover from their 2024 losses.

Clean energy, Schumer said, is “the cheapest and fastest way to add energy to the grid, and reduces our emissions at the same time.”

The Democrats’ plan seeks to build out more electricity transmission and storage, make sure data centers pay their fair share for energy, and better protect consumers from electricity bill increases.

While many of the pillars are longtime priorities on the left, Schumer emphasized some new priorities. The plan puts geothermal and nuclear energy, including fusion, on a similar level to renewables like wind and solar.

Schumer is also promising “a thorough re-examination of the entire structure and incentives within our energy systems … to prioritize lowering costs,” and new efforts to make electricity bills “easier to understand.”

While Democrats have been engaging with Republicans toward bipartisan permitting legislation for all forms of energy, Schumer presented a more partisan permitting concept in his speech.

“Democrats will provide legislative certainty for clean energy projects, so that workers and investors can rebuild the clean energy project ecosystem that Trump has destroyed,” he said, adding that permitting legislation “never, never must come at the expense of our obligation to protect local communities and safeguard the environment.”

Democrats have not been particularly vocal on climate change in their drive to take the Senate and House majorities, as they reexamine the issue’s palatability with voters. Schumer’s rollout shows at least some willingness to focus on climate, but keeps the party’s priority on affordability.

Democrats currently hold 47 of the Senate’s seats, so they would need a net gain of four seats to get the majority. The party is focusing on candidates like former Gov. Roy Cooper in North Carolina, Gov. Janet Mills in Maine and former Rep. Mary Peltola in Alaska to get there, but it’s an uphill battle.

The party has also taken recent steps to push its energy agenda in the Senate. Earlier Tuesday, Democrats forced a vote on a resolution that sought to undo Trump’s implementation of clean energy tax policies. More such resolutions are forthcoming.

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Special election shocker has Florida Republicans nervous about redistricting

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Florida has been viewed for months as the potential capstone of a GOP redistricting campaign, but now Sunshine State Republicans are growing wary after the dramatic flip of two legislative seats in the state — including one where President Donald Trump votes.

Republicans already hold a commanding 20-8 edge over Democrats in the Florida House delegation, and some in the GOP — including Gov. Ron DeSantis — believe they could pick up as many as five more seats with a rare mid-decade redraw of district lines.

Some Florida incumbents are now warning in stark terms it could backfire.

“I think the Legislature needs to be very cognizant of the fact that if they get too aggressive … you could put incumbent members at risk,” GOP Rep. Greg Steube said. Some seats that Republicans previously won by eight or nine points, he said, could instead have only a four- or five-point GOP advantage — putting them in reach for Democrats in a wave election.

DeSantis, citing a state Supreme Court decision from last year and a potential ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, has already called a special session of the state Legislature in April to push ahead with new lines. So far there have been no official maps produced or any signs that lawmakers have started working on them.

Republican anxiety has only grown further after Democrats notched surprising wins in special elections Tuesday, including a Palm Beach County district that contains the Mar-a-Largo resort where Trump lives and votes.

While many in the GOP have brushed off the Democratic gains there and in other states as anomalies, private qualms are growing among the incumbents whose seats could be put at greater risk due to redistricting.

“We keep saying these are kind of one-off things that haven’t gone our way,” said one Florida House Republican granted anonymity to speak candidly. “But I’m not seeing any of the one-offs that are going our way.”

“To talk as aggressively as some of what we’ve heard, there’s no way to get there without significantly weakening some districts,” the member added.

House Democrats are hoping to capitalize on the opportunity. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries quickly sent a warning Tuesday night that redistricting could backfire.

“We will crush House Republicans in November if DeSantis tries to gerrymander the Florida congressional map,” Jeffries said in a post on X.

Others are openly objecting to redistricting on more high-minded grounds. Rep. Daniel Webster, a veteran Republican from central Florida, called it a “slippery slope.”

“I’ve been around enough reapportionments to know it can come back and bite you,” he said.

“I don’t like this redistricting stuff,” Jacksonville-area Rep. John Rutherford said, noting south Florida would likely bear the brunt of any changes. “But if they think they can get another two seats or something, have at it.”

Any significant redraw in Florida would likely focus on changing districts that were drawn based on racial considerations, the subject of the court rulings DeSantis has cited. While much of the focus has been on seats held by Democrats, Republicans concede it could lead to changes to the Miami-area district represented by GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.

Some incumbents are also worried that redistricting — still weeks away — is hindering their reelection campaigns as the midterms approach.

“Why would you knock on doors if you don’t know if those doors are gonna be in your district or not?” Steube said.

The hand-wringing over Florida comes as the fallout from Trump’s monthslong redistricting push continues to ripple through the House. Republicans kicked things off with a surprise effort to draw new maps in Texas, but Democrats countered with an effort to draw California’s lines in their favor.

After months of wrangling in about a dozen states, the whole effort looks to end up close to a wash — after some Republicans tried to warn party leaders the heavy-handed effort could backfire.

A group of House Republicans from Florida privately discussed their concerns about the fallout of yet another redistricting push in their state, several Republicans confirmed — especially amid rising anxiety that Hispanic voters could be turning away from the GOP.

House GOP leaders mostly brushed off the Florida special elections in public comments Wednesday, arguing that low-turnout, off-cycle races shouldn’t be considered midterm bellwethers. But some suggested there are lessons to be learned from Tuesday’s results.

“Surely you look at those and see, are there things we can learn and improve upon when the big election comes?” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Wednesday. “And obviously, November is the election that we are focused on.”

The top leaders of the House GOP’s campaign arm, Reps. Richard Hudson of North Carolina and Brian Jack of Georgia, both deferred to the state Legislature on redistricting in Florida Wednesday.

Hudson, the NRCC chair, said Florida’s growing population means redistricting “makes sense to do,” but he said he was more concerned about turnout and other factors.

Jack, the group’s deputy chair for recruiting, similarly talked up the candidates Republicans would be fielding in Florida and elsewhere. As for redistricting, he said, “I defer to the Legislature.”

“It’s up to them,” he said, “not up to us.”

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Congress

Arrington: Fraud cuts for war funding

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House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington is making clear he will push for the “fraud prevention” spending cuts he wants across state and social safety net programs in order to pay for any Iran war funding in a second GOP reconciliation bill.

The Texas Republican is meeting soon this afternoon with Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) in Graham’s office to discuss plans.

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