Congress Unveils Government Funding Bill

Happy Wednesday! There’s no shortage of theories about what, exactly, the drone sightings over New Jersey are, but we’re pretty sure that they’re not Imperial TIE fighters. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• Russian Gen. Igor Kirillov and his aide were killed Tuesday in Moscow by an explosive planted in a scooter. An official with the Ukrainian Security Service confirmed to the New York Times that Ukraine carried out the assassination. Kirillov, the commanding officer of Russia’s radioactive, chemical, and biological defense forces, was accused by Ukraine of allowing the “massive use of chemical weapons” on the battlefield. Ukrainian authorities had charged Kirillov on Monday with war crimes for the alleged use of chemical munitions in grenades and drones against Ukrainian forces. 
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited newly Israeli-occupied territories in Syria on Tuesday, promising that Israeli military forces would stay in the country indefinitely. After visiting Mt. Hermon, 6 miles from Israeli positions in the Golan Heights, Netanyahu issued a statement that said Israeli troops would remain “until another arrangement is found that guarantees Israel’s security.” Israel has struck hundreds of weapons sites and military bases in Syria over the past several days, and captured several areas near its border with the country, following the fall of the Assad regime. 
• New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan ruled Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump’s May felony conviction should not be dismissed because of the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity earlier this year. Lawyers for Trump had argued that the guilty verdict, on 34 counts of falsifying business records, should be tossed out after the Supreme Court ruled in July that the president enjoyed broad immunity for official acts during his term. Merchan wrote in his 41-page decision that the evidence contested by Trump’s legal team did not relate to official presidential acts, and that “the People’s use of these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch.”
• Luigi Mangione, the suspect arrested for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson earlier this month, will be charged with murder as an act of terrorism, according to New York prosecutors, using a law passed after the 9/11 attacks. “This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg at a Tuesday press conference. 
• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Tuesday announced a rule banning “hidden fees,” or last-step add-ons to the listed price of hotel rooms and live-event tickets. The rule mandates that businesses must “clearly and conspicuously disclose the true total price inclusive of all mandatory fees.” FTC Chair Lina Khan said in a statement Tuesday that “people deserve to know up-front what they’re being asked to pay—without worrying that they’ll later be saddled with mysterious fees that they haven’t budgeted for and can’t avoid.”
• President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he is suing Iowa pollster Anne Selzer, the Des Moines Register, and its parent company, Gannett, for publishing polls showing Trump losing the state shortly before the election. Trump’s lawyers are alleging violations of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which provides false advertising in the sale of merchandise, claims which are unlikely to hold up to judicial scrutiny.

‘This Is Not an Omnibus’

A little after 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, congressional leaders dropped a 1,547-page stopgap spending bill to fund the government through March. We will not insult your intelligence—we haven’t read the whole thing. But neither has Congress. 

When Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives gathered for their respective conference meetings earlier in the day to discuss a continuing resolution (CR)—a funding measure that lawmakers must approve by Friday night to avoid a government shutdown—there was one problem. There was no bill to discuss.

Though it was expected over the weekend, the text of the CR wasn’t released until Tuesday evening. Although party leaders were reasonably sure about the content of the bill during their caucus meetings, they didn’t have it in writing. House Speaker Mike Johnson had to sell the package to a disgruntled conference holding a narrow 219-211 majority that will be even smaller next year. 

“The CR is coming together,” Johnson said at a press conference after the meeting. “Bipartisan work is ongoing. We’re almost there. We worked really hard to achieve consensus on a bill that responsibly funds the government until March [14] of next year.” But some of Johnson’s members were less than enthused with how the process played out. 

Why did it take so long to agree on the CR? There were a few sticking points.

Some Republican lawmakers didn’t want to extend government funding all the way to March or include too many add-on spending measures. The party will have a governing trifecta in January, enabling it to better pursue its own spending priorities. “What we run the risk of here, as more people pile on and want to add stuff to the CR, that it is no longer a CR, it’s an omnibus, and I’m not going to vote for an omnibus,” Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told reporters Monday evening. “The whole point of a CR is to extend the status quo until we can come up with something better.”

The CR’s add-ons include a $100 billion disaster relief package to help fund the recovery from Hurricanes Helene and Milton and a $10 billion agricultural aid carve-out for farmers, Johnson said. He tried to tamp down concerns over the CR funding adding up to something more than lawmakers bargained for. “This is not an omnibus, okay?” he said.“This is a small CR that we had to add things to that were out of our control.”

“I wish it weren’t necessary,” he added.“I wish we hadn’t had record hurricanes in the fall, and I wish our farmers were not in a bind so much that creditors are not able to lend to them. We have to be able to help those who are in these dire straits.”

The aid to farmers was a particular hang-up. Congressional leaders had hoped to divert funds from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and give it to farmers in the form of economic aid, according to reporting from Punchbowl News. But Johnson objected, possibly because President-elect Donald Trump (who has been quiet on the CR) hopes to undo much of the IRA’s measures. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries then seized the opportunity to get something out of Johnson in return for the farm aid. Democrats pushed for several add-ons, including the federal government footing the entire bill to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore and a trade measure allowing Haitian apparel and textile imports to come in duty-free. 

Republican Rep. Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania, who chairs the House Committee on Agriculture, cheered the inclusion of aid to farmers. “I think the $10 billion is a great start, and I think it’s going to send the right signals to the market that most farmers and ranchers are going to be able to get eligible for the credit that they need tomorrow in order to plant a crop or raise up a herb,” he told reporters. “It’s not exactly what we wanted, but it’s a great start, and we’re in a great position, because we’ll have the House, the Senate, and the White House.” 

The final text included not just the $10 billion in aid to farmers but the Haitian trade and Key Bridge measures as well. And it included a few other provisions Johnson didn’t mention at his press conference, such as transferring ownership of Robert F. Kennedy Stadium—a potential venue for a new Washington Commanders stadium—from the federal government to the D.C. government. The bill also contained several health care policy changes, including extending Medicare telehealth flexibility. 

Some Republicans, led by members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus (HFC), spoke out against Johnson’s handling of the CR. “It’s a total dumpster fire. I think it’s garbage,” Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican and HFC member, told The Hill. “This is what Washington, D.C., has done. This is why I ran for Congress, to try to stop this. And sadly, this is happening again.” Rep. Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin also criticized the process, telling Fox News, “There’s been very little back-and-forth with members on specific issues.” After the text was released, HFC put out a statement labeling the CR “The Cramnibus.” 

But not all Republicans were so critical of Johnson. Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, who will serve as the Republican Policy Committee chair in the new Congress, said both Republicans and Democrats deserved blame for not going through normal budget processes. “This isn’t all on Speaker Johnson. This is on Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats never passed a budget. We haven’t passed a budget since we’ve been here. You’re not going to ever fix these last-minute negotiated deals like CRs until you get the budget process back in order—and that’s Democrats and Republicans.”

Next comes the question of when, exactly, the House will vote on the bill. As part of the rules package created in the aftermath of then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s contentious election early last year, the House adopted a requirement that members must have 72 hours to review the text of a piece of legislation before they vote on it. There were questions as to whether Johnson would waive the rule, but he promised to adhere to it at his press conference. “I believe in the 72-hour rule,” he told reporters. “I’ve said that to all the House Republicans this morning. I believe we ought to try to pass this on a rule, to go through regular process.” 

With the text being released a little before 7 p.m. Tuesday, no vote would come earlier than 7 p.m. Friday, hours before the deadline. The other option is to expedite the process under suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority.

Even assuming Johnson manages to get the CR passed, he won’t have much of a respite. The first thing the Republican House will need to do next term—likely with just a 217-215 majority—is elect a speaker. Will that be Johnson? Early reports suggest that there are some no votes within the conference, but no Republicans are yet on the record saying as much. Asked Tuesday whether she would support Johnson in the January contest, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who filed a motion to vacate Johnson’s office earlier this year, reiterated her pledge from earlier this month that she would back him. 

As for Johnson himself, he is not showing stress, at least publicly, about the prospect of losing his speakership. “I’m not worried about the speaker vote,” he said at his press conference. “We’re governing. Everybody knows we have difficult circumstances. We’re doing the very best we can under the circumstances.”

Worth Your Time

• In The Atlantic, Caleb Gayle reported on one struggling town’s attempt at a comeback story: revitalizing the oldest African-American rodeo in the country, in Boley, Oklahoma. It’s a fascinating, hopeful tale that uncovers the hidden history of the black West: “In popular culture, the mélange of Westerns and cowboys and country music that is often called ‘Americana’ has been associated with a particular vision of liberty, in which the people most entitled to the possibilities of the West are white men who mastered the land and its inhabitants. But Boley and its rodeo helped create a countertradition—that of the Black West. In this tradition, Black people who had every reason to give up on America instead struck out for places like Boley and dictated the terms of their belonging.”
• The Economist took a look at the welcome yet puzzling decline in opioid deaths. America’s most deadly drug epidemic may finally be starting to peter out, and no one is quite sure why. “Data published by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, a government agency, suggests that nationally, deaths peaked around August last year. In the 12 months to July this year, there were 90,000 deaths—still an appalling total, but a reduction of around a sixth,” the report noted. An explanation could be related to law enforcement, the pandemic, and drug treatment. Or America may simply have reached a natural peak in the number of people willing to use fentanyl. “The idea that an epidemic can rise and then burn out, almost independently of the resources that flood into treatment or enforcement, is an uncomfortable one. But it has happened before: the European heroin epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s has not returned. And if this is what is happening with opioids now, the fall in deaths might, most promisingly, be sustained.”

Presented Without Comment

New York Times: A Weary Biden Heads for the Exit

Mr. Biden these days barely engages with the reporters who follow him everywhere. He has held no news conferences and conducted no interviews with the traditional news media since the election, though he has done some podcasts. His only reply to shouted questions from journalists during his entire Africa trip added up to 14 words. In South America, it was just a single word.

Also Presented Without Comment

Bloomberg: Navy Wasted $2 Billion to Maintain Older Guided Missile Cruisers, GAO Says

The US Navy mismanaged a program to keep in service 11 older cruisers designed primarily for air defense, “wasting” nearly $2 billion in the process and failing to hold contractors accountable for shoddy work on a broad scale, according to an audit released Tuesday.

…

“By not extending the service lives of any of the 11 cruisers as planned,” for at least five years, the Navy “will lose 55 years of operational cruisers, compared to its original plans,” it said.

In the Zeitgeist

Wax on, wax off: There’s a new Karate Kid movie, starring Jackie Chan, in the works. 

Toeing the Company Line

• In the newsletters: Nick Catoggio argued (🔒) that threats and shakedowns will be the political currency of Trump’s second term.
• On the podcasts: Jonah Goldberg is joined by Greg Lukianoff on The Remnant to discuss all things free speech. 
• On the site: Kevin Carroll explains what’s happening with all the drones in New Jersey, John Gustavsson argues that Europe should not be accepting refugees from Syria, and Jonah Goldberg breaks down why presidents don’t affect the economy as much as everyone thinks.

Let Us Know

Do you think government shutdowns are going to become a regular occurrence under the Trump administration?