Congress
Top lawmakers unveil ‘Christmas-tree’ funding bill with $100B for disasters
Congressional leaders released bill text Tuesday night that would fund the federal government into March, hitched to more than $100 billion in disaster aid and a slew of last-ditch policy bills as lawmakers prepare to leave town for the holidays.
Racing to avert a government shutdown Friday night before fleeing the Capitol until January, lawmakers have again turned their year-end funding bill into the proverbial “Christmas tree” measure, ornamented with a variety of unrelated legislation they want to clear in the final days of the current session of Congress. That includes a bill to renew expiring health care programs, a measure to restrict U.S. investments in China and a one-year extension of the annual “farm bill” that sets agriculture and food policy.
Speaker Mike Johnson bristled Tuesday at the classic nickname for Congress’ catch-all December package: “It’s not a Christmas tree.”
The measure is a “small” stopgap funding patch, the speaker added, “that we’ve had to add things to that were out of our control. These were not man-made disasters. These are things that the federal government has an appropriate role to do. So I wish it weren’t necessary. I wish we hadn’t had record hurricanes in the fall.”
Disaster aid under the bill will largely flow to communities recovering from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, along with other disasters like wildfires and severe flooding, plus federal aid to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge that collapsed in Baltimore earlier this year. Another $10 billion in economic assistance is included for farmers.
The package also OKs year-round sales of ethanol fuel nationwide, a major victory for Republicans in corn-growing states.
Conservative Republicans in the House are seething over the funding package, escalating discontent within the conference ahead of the January floor vote that will decide if Johnson can remain speaker.
House Democratic leaders, predicting that dozens of GOP lawmakers will vote against passage this week, are issuing a warning to Johnson heading into the new Congress.
“One of the things that we know very clearly is that House Democrats will be needed to pass government funding,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said on Tuesday. “That has been the case this Congress. It will continue to be the case, even in the next Congress.”
“But this is a lesson for Speaker Johnson,” Jeffries added. “Work with us, let’s find solutions, let’s tune out the most extreme voices in your conference, and let’s find that consensus that will be necessary to fund government.”
That next funding fight will happen in the first two months of the second Trump administration. Under the new stopgap spending bill congressional leaders are trying to clear this week, the next government shutdown deadline will be pushed to March 14, keeping budgets mostly static for the military and federal agencies well into the fiscal year that kicked off in October.
That new deadline will allow the Trump administration to officially weigh in on a final funding deal and is a win for conservative Republicans. House Freedom Caucus members who are hoping to slice government funding have long-favored pushing the deadline close to a late-April trigger for across-the-board cuts.
The March funding deadline is also seen as advantageous to Johnson, since it saves him from having to negotiate a final bipartisan government funding deal — and the ensuing criticism from House conservatives — before the January floor vote to lock in his speakership.
Sen. John Cornyn said Monday he will not support Todd Blanche’s confirmation as attorney general absent a written modification to the settlement agreement President Donald Trump entered into with his own administration.
Opposition from the Texas Republican could sink Blanche’s nomination in a highly anticipated Judiciary Committee vote scheduled for Thursday.
While Cornyn said he is in talks with Blanche and others at the Justice Department, he has not secured changes he has demanded to the settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS. Those include formally rescinding a proposed $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” and restricting the scope of tax audit immunity granted to the president and his family.
Cornyn told reporters he needs the document to be signed by Blanche but did not specify whether Trump also needs to sign it.
“We’re talking about that. That hasn’t been fully resolved yet,” Cornyn said in a subsequent interview when asked if Trump needs to sign the modification as well. “We’re still talking. I mean, there’s different ways to approach it.”
Time is running out for Blanche to meet Cornyn’s demands ahead of Thursday’s committee vote, where any one Republican’s opposition could be fatal to the nomination. The senator said Blanche and the administration have been so far “reluctant” to follow through.
At his nomination hearing last week, Blanche testified that plans for the payout fund were dead and that the audit agreement was more limited than set out in the settlement. But Cornyn honed in on the text of the agreement, which states that it “may be modified only with the written agreement of the Parties.”
Blanche acknowledged during the hearing that, without a written change to the agreement, the anti-weaponization fund could still be revived.
“That’s what we’re trying to get them to agree to, which is again what his sworn testimony was,” Cornyn said. “So I don’t know why they’re so reluctant to do that.”
The White House and Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Jordain Carney contributed to this report.
Jay Clayton is on the verge of becoming President Donald Trump’s next director of national intelligence — though Democrats won’t be helping him get there.
The news: The Senate on Monday voted 51-43 in a party line vote to move forward with Clayton’s nomination, teeing up a final vote as soon as Tuesday to confirm him as the next head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. No Democrats joined their GOP counterparts in support of Clayton.
Clayton, the top prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office and a former SEC chair, will take over from acting spy czar Bill Pulte and join Trump’s Cabinet when he’s confirmed by the full Senate.
Why it matters: At some level, that’s a win for Democrats, who have been eager to replace Pulte, a Trump loyalist with no background in national security, since the president named him to the post last month. But after an up-and-down confirmation process for Clayton, Democrats have new reservations about the incoming intel adviser, as Monday’s vote underscored.
During his Senate confirmation hearing two weeks ago, Clayton refused to say that Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 vote, leading Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Panel to vote against his nomination. That marked a reversal from June, when Senate Democrats worked with their GOP counterparts to fast-track Clayton’s confirmation in exchange for renewing a powerful spy law. That deal fell apart after Trump intervened, alleging on social media that Democrats weren’t delivering on their end of the deal.
Open question: Though Clayton’s confirmation now looks imminent, Senate action on the spy statute that was supposed to be part of the deal — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — is not.
With the House already gone for the August recess, the Senate appears unlikely to vote on Section 702 until September.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will meet with lawmakers in Washington to discuss American leadership on artificial intelligence, the company said Monday.
A spokesperson for the chipmaker said Huang would hold talks with both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill to talk about latest developments with the technology.
“Jensen is in DC to meet with leaders on both sides of the aisle to discuss American leadership in AI, including leading in open source,” the spokesperson said.
Huang is scheduled to sit down Tuesday with Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee who has expressed serious concern about security threats following last week’s OpenAI autonomous cyberattack.
The senator’s office confirmed the meeting. Senate Intelligence Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
It comes as Huang defended open-source AI on X, writing that such models “strengthen safety and cybersecurity, accelerate innovation and diffusion, and enable sovereignty.”
Huang’s visit comes as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also expected to meet with Warner, although a spokesperson for the senator said the talks were separate. Earlier Monday, Open AI announced it was in talks with Nvidia, a technology company that makes chips to use artificial intelligence, for a data center project.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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