Congress

Shutdown chances rise as Johnson defers to Trump on a spending plan

Published

2 years ago

December 19, 2024

Speaker Mike Johnson is bending to President-elect Donald Trump’s demands in his latest bid to avoid a government shutdown in less than 36 hours and help save his job. GOP lawmakers are skeptical he can pull it off.

There’s no final plan yet, as the Lousiana Republican continues to huddle in his office on Thursday with a rotating cross-section of his conference, including members of his leadership team, House Freedom Caucus lawmakers and others. The speaker is assessing various options and running them by Trump world to ensure he has the incoming president’s buy-in before moving forward on another plan, after Trump publicly trashed the spending bill Wednesday and suddenly demanded that lawmakers raise the debt ceiling as well.

Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), who has been in and out of Johnson’s office all day, has told a swarm of reporters roughly two dozen times that the situation is “fluid.” By early afternoon he had switched his descriptive of the talks to “moving.” The head of the GOP’s campaign arm, Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), was asked if the House would vote on a spending plan Thursday and replied: “I guess we’ll find out.”

The scramble underscores Johnson’s reality, not just now but in the coming months: Nearly any plan he puts forward will spark grumbling, if not an outright rebellion, from his ranks. With a spending deal, he will almost certainly need to get Democratic votes to avoid a shutdown deadline Friday night, since some conservatives are unlikely to support the plan regardless. That problem came up repeatedly in a meeting of more mainstream GOP members on Thursday.

“It was mostly about frustration with one group, who’s gonna demand what’s in and out of this bill, and then still vote against it,” said one House Republican who was in the meeting, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Johnson also needs to keep Trump happy, and the incoming president is demanding that the speaker not cede to Democratic demands. A handful of members on the right flank are publicly calling for Johnson to just let funding lapse and allow a government shutdown before Christmas. Trump has also expressed he’s open to the idea.

But his last-minute demands are also sowing discontent with other lawmakers. One House GOP lawmaker was overheard by a Blue Light News reporter complaining to another member about Trump’s last-minute demands.

“If [Trump] wants to do this … he needs to show up,” said the House Republican. “This is a deeply unserious party right now.”

Johnson can only afford to lose three Republicans on any partisan proposal he puts forward — a bar he’s been unable to clear on funding fights before. Some of his members are stating the obvious: Even if Republicans manage to pass it without Democratic help in the House, it will have to clear the Democratic-controlled Senate and get signed by President Joe Biden.

“If you don’t take pretty close to what we’ve got right now, I just don’t know how it gets through the Senate,” said Rep. Drew Ferguson (R-Ga.), referring to Johnson’s initial three-month funding bill that dozens of House Republicans vowed to oppose.

The hurdles with raising the debt ceiling are two-fold. Democrats are against the idea and trying to pressure Johnson to stick to their original deal. Meanwhile, Trump’s push to raise — or completely eliminate — the debt limit doesn’t square with conservatives’ long-held demand for cuts to government funding and reining in spending.

“Republicans cannot raise the debt ceiling without massive spending cuts and significant structural reforms,” outgoing Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) wrote on X.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) repeatedly declined to comment as he left meetings in Johnson’s office on Thursday. But he hinted at his previous positions of opposing clean debt ceiling suspensions or hikes, telling reporters that “everybody knows how I feel about a debt ceiling increase.” And Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), another Freedom Caucus member, said he could not support a short-term funding bill that included a clean debt hike or suspension.

Others shrugged off the concerns of raising the debt limit, arguing it hasn’t done much to rein in spending at all.

“It hasn’t been very effective in dealing with constraining the debt,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “We knew we were going to have to address the debt limit at some point. President Trump just wants it done now, rather than on his watch. And I can understand why.”

Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.) told reporters after a meeting in Johnson’s office that abolishing the debt limit is “not part of the conversation.” But, she added, Trump has said “he wants to make sure that we are addressing the debt ceiling in addition to the continuing resolution and the spending priorities.”

“Still negotiating,” she added, saying that Republicans are having a “robust discussion.”

The lack of a clear path forward has prompted Republicans to start preparing for the unseemly idea of a shutdown over the Christmas holiday. A growing number of GOP lawmakers are even publicly calling for the government to shut down until next year, with some floating the party could keep it shuttered until Trump’s inauguration. That would mean the construction to build Trump’s inauguration platform outside the Capitol and other surroundings would stall, among various other issues.

“We can reset federal government appropriations after Trump is sworn in. Shut it down,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) tweeted.

Meanwhile, Trump isn’t being subtle: how Johnson handles this will impact if he can become speaker in a Jan. 3 vote. Early Thursday, Trump told Fox News Digital that if the GOP leader “gets rid of all of the traps being set by the Democrats, which will economically and, in other ways, destroy our country, he will easily remain speaker.” He also implied the Louisiana Republican needs to toughen up.

Conservatives, meanwhile, have started floating other names to replace him, including those who had backed Johnson for speaker as recently as last week.

“I’d be open to supporting Elon Musk for Speaker of the House. DOGE can only truly be accomplished by reigning in Congress to enact real government efficiency. The establishment needs to be shattered just like it was yesterday,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted, just two weeks after telling Blue Light News she will back Johnson on the House floor.

Johnson has largely avoided talking to the press over the past 24 hours amid his dust-up with Trump.

Nicholas Wu contributed reporting.

Congress

Rand Paul’s about to get his chance to settle his feud with Anthony Fauci

Published

6 hours ago

July 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Rand Paul’s said Anthony Fauci belongs in prison. The Kentucky Republican will get his chance to make the case Wednesday when the former Covid czar is slated to appear under subpoena before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that Paul chairs.

Paul reiterated his objective on X Monday, saying the pardon President Joe Biden gave Fauci — Biden said to shield him from a vindictive Trump administration prosecution — would not protect Fauci if he lies to Congress.

The two have a feud dating to the pandemic, when Paul accused Fauci of lying to Congress about funding risky research in China that Paul believes unleashed Covid-19. Fauci responded to Paul by accusing him of lying. Now 85, Fauci retired from federal service at the end of 2022.

In April, a federal grand jury indicted Fauci’s former senior adviser, David Morens, on three felony charges for allegedly circumventing federal public records laws by concealing Covid-related communications. Federal agents arrested Morens at his home in Maryland, reportedly putting him in handcuffs and making him disrobe.

Paul’s goals go beyond incriminating Fauci. He also wants to show that Fauci funded risky virus research in China.

“The goal is the truth,” Paul told reporters on Monday about Fauci. “I’d like to hear him say he’s sorry.”

The origin of Covid remains a fraught debate, with no scientific consensus on whether it was a lab accident or whether an animal infected a human. But most Republicans and President Donald Trump have embraced the lab leak theory.

Fauci has rejected Paul’s accusations and defended himself vigorously, including in some of the five previous hearings in which they’ve faced off.

He declined to comment.

The debate over Fauci’s legacy has long broken on party lines, and Democrats are expected to defend him against GOP attacks on Wednesday.

“They got a longstanding vendetta against Fauci. He seems to be almost obsessed,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee member, said of Paul on Monday.

Both Paul and Democrats on the committee have supported stricter oversight of gain-of-function research, which aims to make viruses more virulent or more transmissible in order to devise defenses against them. The panel has twice approved Paul’s Risky Research Review Act, which would take funding decisions away from Fauci’s old agency, the National Institutes of Health, and give them to a new Life Sciences Research Security Board appointed by the president. The White House also released Tuesday a new policy stopping high-risk biological research.

Congress

Big Ten, SEC are on the clock as new college athletics bill is circulated

Published

7 hours ago

July 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

The bipartisan leaders of the Senate Commerce Committee are making changes to their big college sports overhaul in a bid to garner support from the nation’s two most powerful athletic conferences as they look to build Republican support ahead of a potential vote on the Senate floor.

Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the ranking member, made several concessions to the Big Ten and Southeastern Conferences in the latest draft of their Protect College Sports Act. They include protections against certain legal challenges and a new $20 million pool of funds that schools can use for retaining athletes, according to three people close to the negotiations.

It’s unclear whether the changes will be good enough to win over the two conferences. A senior Commerce Committee staffer asked the conferences to schedule a call with their general counsels and staff “ASAP” to discuss the text and gave them a 9 a.m. Wednesday deadline to decide whether they support the latest version of the bill, according to an email reviewed by Blue Light News.

Two lobbyists directly engaged on the bill said Tuesday that weeks of negotiations had not meaningfully addressed a litany of concerns the SEC and the Big Ten had with earlier versions of the bill.

The conferences demanded, for instance, that a provision allowing universities to jointly negotiate their media rights make clear that schools cannot be coerced into participating. The updated text includes a provision shielding schools who do not participate in media pooling from potential litigation, according to a copy of the draft obtained by Blue Light News.

The bill, however, leaves out another key demand of the conferences: a provision clarifying that postseason tournaments and contests would be excluded from media pooling.

It also retains a prohibition on conferences with over $700 million in revenue participating in mergers and acquisitions, which would impact both power conferences along with the Atlantic Coast Conference. That threshold was brought down from an earlier $1 billion limit, but the SEC and the Big Ten had hoped to see it stripped from the bill altogether.

The new text also includes a newly added section titled the “Ignite HBCUs Sports and Media Act.”

That section, which is still in flux, deals with “extraneous topics of broadband,” per the email sent to the conferences on Tuesday. The $20 million athlete retention pool also remains subject to change “as we discuss how to align the proper incentive for spending on women’s NIL,” according to the email.

Cruz remains determined to get the bill onto the floor before the Senate heads out of town for a scheduled recess next week. But time is running short, and he and Cantwell still need to win over wary senators on both sides of the aisle.

Congress

VA secretary’s role in failed vets bill stokes new round of White House, GOP frustration

Published

7 hours ago

July 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

White House officials and House GOP leaders are increasingly frustrated with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, after they say he undermined a major veterans measure championed by Republicans, according to five people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The bill, which would expand benefits for tens of thousands of veterans, was abruptly pulled off the House floor earlier this month after a group of Republicans privately warned they would tank it. They were concerned they would end up being blamed for cutting benefits because of the way the bill proposed paying for the increase — and said that Collins’ VA hadn’t done enough to alleviate their worries.

“A self-inflicted loss at the hands of the VA secretary,” said one White House official after the vote.

The floor meltdown cost Republicans a legislative win just before the House departed for its summer recess — and scuttled a positive campaign issue ahead of the November elections. Johnson will now have to burn precious floor time in September if he wants to make another attempt.

And it’s just the latest move by Collins that has stoked backlash on Capitol Hill and inside the White House, after he irritated lawmakers by failing to give them advance warning about several high-profile changes, including staffing cuts and management reforms at the department.

Speaker Mike Johnson was so unhappy with the VA’s handling of the situation ahead of the veterans bill vote that he called the White House to press for a clarification from the VA about how it would change its rules to pay for the benefits expansion, according to three of the people, who, like others, were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive legislative dynamics.

Top Republicans involved said that the VA under Collins helped fuel opposition to the bill by issuing conflicting guidance about its own plans for veterans benefits. The VA ultimately issued a new statement to POLITICO just hours before the scheduled vote in an attempt to quell resistance. But it wasn’t enough.

Inside private meetings with GOP leaders ahead of the failed vote, key House Republicans said they had spoken with Collins about their concerns and he had at least in part agreed with them, according to three other people involved in the conversations.

Administration officials pushed back on the friction. White House assistant press secretary Olivia Wales said in a statement that Collins “is doing a great job and works tirelessly to deliver for our heroic veterans.”

VA press secretary Quinn Slaven said that officials have clearly outlined support for the measure in a statement of administration policy and in public statements. “Under the leadership of President [Donald] Trump, Secretary Collins is proud to work every day to make VA benefits better, faster and easier to use than ever before,” he said in a statement.

Senior House Republicans have relayed concerns to the White House about how both Collins and Don Bergin, the VA’s assistant secretary for congressional and legislative affairs, handled the matter.

Democrats and some veterans groups have strongly opposed the measure. Money for the expansion of aid for disabled veterans would be funded by cuts in future disability claims for tinnitus and sleep apnea cases, a rule change that has been planned since the Biden administration.

But officials from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans have attacked the plan as a dangerous precedent. Supporters, including House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Mike Bost (R-Ill.), have argued the savings will be returned to the U.S. Treasury if not used for other programs.

In the lead-up to the vote, VA officials had suggested that they may not go ahead with the changes, jeopardizing about $13 billion over the next decade that was slated to pay for the measure. Just hours before the House vote was pulled, department officials clarified that the sleep apnea and tinnitus revisions will move ahead in coming months regardless of the bill’s fate.

But several GOP members still expressed concerns about the uncertainty surrounding the bill. And after a blowup between the speaker, his allies and the GOP holdouts in his ceremonial office just off the House floor, Johnson had to pull the bill from the floor.

The normally even-keeled Johnson, deeply frustrated after the failed vote, said he and Republican supporters of the measure were battling “misinformation” swirling about the legislation.

Senior Republicans were especially upset that Collins appeared to be working against them even after the VA had a seat at the table to craft the legislation.

House Republicans who spoke with Collins about the legislation said he never directly told them to vote against the bill, but he discussed their and his concerns about the legislation in a way they felt okay remaining opposed to it, according to the three other people involved in the conversations.

But anything less than 100 percent endorsement from Collins was seen as a major blow to the bill — which GOP leadership and White House officials struggled to get to the floor and whip for weeks.

It was just the latest move from Collins, a former chair of the House Judiciary Committee who helped defend Trump through his first impeachment, that has rankled Capitol Hill leaders and officials inside the White House.

His reorganization of the VA, including an initial mass layoff proposal for 80,000 more firings across a roughly 480,000-person department drew fierce opposition from bipartisan lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier this year, including from the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who said he was blindsided by the move.

“We don’t need to be reading memos in the paper about 20 percent cut at the VA,” Graham said at the time.

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) also said at that time that while the massive department is “in need of reform,” efforts to downsize “must be done in a more responsible manner,” Moran, who had been in close contact with VA, Collins and White House staff about personnel issues for weeks, added that lawmakers “need information” and that the numbers need to be “justifiable.”

Collins has also triggered the anger of Republican appropriators on Capitol Hill — he agreed to testify before House appropriators in May only after lawmakers voted to withhold funding for the agency if he didn’t. A VA spokesperson at the time denied GOP lawmakers had to pressure Collins to appear.

Collins’ handling of the veterans’ bill has also shaken his relationship with some White House officials — who are tracking how many days a week Collins is in Washington versus his home state of Georgia, according to two of the people involved in the conversations.