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US House Speaker Mike Johnson is speaking about the DHS deal and the plan to avert a shutdown during a press conference in Washington DC, USA, on March 20, 2024.
Hard Numbers: US government shutdown averted, Nigerian schoolkids rescued, Israel’s hospital raid proves deadly, Search for Mexican kidnap victims continues
1.2 trillion: The Senate passed the $1.2 trillion spending bill on Saturday in a 74-24 vote, enabling President Joe Biden to sign it into law and avert a partial government shutdown. This will keep the lights on for roughly three-quarters of the federal government until October, raising military pay and increasing funds for US-Mexico border patrol.
137: Nigerian authorities on Sunday rescued 137 schoolkids who were kidnapped two weeks ago in the northern state of Kaduna, with 76 girls and 61 boys found in the neighboring Zamfara state. Earlier reports suggested that 287 children had been kidnapped, but that number was an estimate, and authorities say all of the kidnap victims have been found and will soon return home.
170: Israel says its raid on Gaza’s largest health facility, Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, has killed 170 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants, with more than 800 detained. Israeli special forces and tanks encircled the hospital early last week, forcing thousands of Palestinians who had been sheltering there to evacuate. On Sunday, Israel reportedly surrounded two more hospitals in Gaza.
42: After 66 people were kidnapped Friday in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa – home to the infamous Sinaloa Cartel – authorities have worked over the weekend to rescue 42 of the hostages, including 18 children. The search continues for the remaining 24.House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, gives a press conference in the Capitol on Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2023, after leading a vote to avoid a government shutdown.
Shutdown averted, but deal contains no aid for Ukraine
New Speaker Mike Johnson managed to wrangle enough votes to avoid a government shutdown late Tuesday, relying on 209 Democrats and 127 Republicans to pass a bill to allow the US government to keep functioning into 2024. The Senate approved the measure on Wednesday, sending it to President Joe Biden for his signature. Had the House not acted, the government would have run out of money at midnight on Friday.
Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, has been speaker for less than a month. He took over after a convoluted internal struggle that followed the ouster of Kevin McCarthy by members of the far-right Freedom Caucus, who were pushing for the Republicans to shut down the government to force the Biden administration to spend less money. Johnson ended up presenting a similar stopgap bill to the one that Republicans could not swallow from McCarthy.
The agreement Tuesday takes the pressure off, but it will likely be a brief respite. The funding will run out for some programs — military construction, veterans’ affairs, transportation, housing, and the Energy Department — on Jan. 19, while other programs are funded until Feb. 2. The brinksmanship over the next round will begin again soon, and Republicans — who are pushing for spending cuts and tougher border security measures — are not likely to give way easily. Intense struggles within the GOP make it hard to predict what Congress will do after the Thanksgiving break.
The bill did not include military aid for Israel and Ukraine. Democrats have sought to link military aid for Israel – for which there is bipartisan support – to support for Ukraine, which a growing number of Republicans are likely to resist.
The continued success of Ukraine in resisting Russian aggression hinges on continued military support from the United States. In Europe, meanwhile, Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán has threatened to veto EU aid packages for Ukraine. So both sides of the Atlantic are seeing political struggles that may ultimately decide what happens on the ground in Ukraine.Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-LA., returns to his office in the US Capitol on Monday, Nov. 13, 2023.
Mike Johnson has a plan to avert the shutdown – will it work?
Is it better to kick two cans down the road rather than one? House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is about to find out in the first big test of his speakership. With another government shutdown deadline looming on Friday, the House plans to vote today on Johnson’s plan to keep the US government from plunging over the fiscal cliff – again.
The background: We’ve been here before, recently. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) avoided a shutdown in September only by relying on Democratic support for a bill that kept government spending flat. But he paid for it with his job: Far-right members led by Matt Gaetz (R-FL) had demanded deep spending cuts, and when they didn’t get their way, they ousted the speaker for the first time in US history.
The new approach: Johnson, who comes from the right wing of the GOP himself, isn’t trying McCarthy’s approach. Instead of asking members to vote on a single bill to keep the government running, Johnson has proposed what is known as a “laddered” approach that will fund government spending on military construction, Veterans Affairs, transportation, housing, and the Energy Department — where there is broad consensus on funding levels — through Jan. 19, 2024, while delaying a decision on the rest of the government’s funding until Feb. 2, 2024.
Johnson got the House Rules Committee to approve his unorthodox approach on Monday, but that was the easy bit. He’s now got to shepherd through a proposal that can pass the Democratic-controlled Senate (which will reject spending cuts) without angering the same far-right caucus that unseated his predecessor (which wants deep spending cuts).
“Johnson has more runway than McCarthy, but more runway is not a license to do anything you want,” said Eurasia Group’s US Director Clayton Allen. “Johnson is trying to find a way forward that does not blow up his position with the GOP conference.”
That path may require suspending the normal rules of the House to move the bill through. If he can cobble together a two-thirds majority of Republicans who are ok with no spending cuts right now and Democrats who want to keep the government funded even if they don’t love the two-step structure, far-right GOP members can still vote “no” but can’t offer amendments or otherwise delay the passage of the bill, thereby avoiding a shutdown.
And by separating the few easy spending items from the rest for early next year, Johnson is offering those same members another chance to get their desired cuts a little later, perhaps with some additional leverage to negotiate with the Senate. Will it be enough of a concession to save his bacon? That’s what we’re about to find out.
A collage showing the US Capitol, former US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz.
Washington chaos rings alarm bells in Ukraine and Europe
You’ve heard the news. Rebel Republicans and unsympathetic Democrats ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his job yesterday. That post is now officially “vacant.” For now, Patrick McHenry (R-NC) holds the post of Speaker Pro Tempore to ensure there’s someone there to keep the lights on and the process moving toward the election of a new speaker.
Americans (and the world) are now trying to figure out what it all means. But keep in mind, this has never happened before. The only previous attempt to fire a speaker of the US House of Representatives failed, and that was 113 years ago. The cliché “uncharted waters” fits perfectly here.
But … you’ve got questions, lots of questions, and I’m here to give you the best available answers.
We just survived a shutdown threat last weekend. Should we expect more of these congressional showdowns?
Absolutely. Current funding for the government runs out on Nov. 17, and we may not have a speaker to make a deal by then. Even if the House is able to elect a new speaker well before then, that person may feel obliged to continue this game of legislative chicken well into next year by continuing to offer only short-term government funding deals in exchange for concessions from Democrats. In short, the “shutdown showdowns” have only just begun.
Who will be the next speaker?
Get ready for a potentially bloody fight among Republicans. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), conservative Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Kevin Hern (R-OK) have already made moves to enter the race, but there will be more names. For now, Scalise has the most friends with votes, so he’s the early favorite.
Can McHenry, the temporary speaker, get stuff done while we wait?
Again, we’re in uncharted waters. McHenry, McCarthy’s hand-picked successor, has an open-ended ability to preside over House business. There are no rules that prevent him from holding the job indefinitely.
But because this has never happened in American history, the limits of McHenry’s authority aren’t clear. The House parliamentarian is the person with the responsibility to tell us what the rules say. (Be glad you don’t have that job.) Whatever the rules-interpreter/rules-keeper decides will create a precedent.
What does all this chaos mean for Ukraine?
It’s bad news for Volodymyr Zelensky, to be sure. It’s possible that Congress will approve new money for Ukraine before the end of the year, but it’s looking a lot less likely now than it did a few days ago. There are a sizeable number of House Republicans who don’t want the US to send more money to Ukraine, certainly not the additional $40 billion that President Joe Biden wants.
Step back for a moment to last weekend, when most of us were breathing a deep sigh of relief that the shutdown had been averted. To get that deal, pro-Ukraine Democrats had agreed (at least temporarily) to pull new Ukraine funding from the budget deal. They fully intended to fight over that another day, but they set a precedent that Ukraine aid was a bargaining chip they were willing to put on the table.
Anti-Ukraine-aid Republicans saw that, and now they’ll want that concession every time they bargain with Democrats to keep the government open.
OK, so why didn’t Democrats save McCarthy yesterday? They could have done that, right?
Yes, they could have. But the Dems felt McCarthy had backed away from too many promises to deserve saving. From the Dems’ point of view, McCarthy went from condemning Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and calling for an investigation of his responsibility to backing Trump and then to launching an impeachment process against Biden. Democrats made clear early yesterday they had no intention of bailing out a speaker they neither liked nor trusted.
But the Democrats do want to support Ukraine, right? Haven’t they left Ukraine in a precarious place?
Yes, they have.
Here are the scenarios that could protect near-term US aid for Ukraine …
- Republicans could elect a speaker who’s willing to defy dozens of his fellow Republican members of Congress to pass a bill that includes billions more for Ukraine.
- Or Democrats in the Senate could refuse to compromise on Ukraine aid and dare Republicans to shut down the US government.
Neither is all that likely.
By the way, it’s not that all US financial help for Ukraine has stopped. The Pentagon still has $5 billion in additional aid and drawdown authority in its budget. That will meet some of Ukraine’s needs in the coming months.
So, what’s the lasting damage from all this?
Ukraine’s leaders now know the US isn’t a reliable long-term backer, even with a supportive president and the backing of most members of Congress. And they know they’ll have to fight their war differently now. They’ll have to keep more firepower in reserve to be sure they don’t run out of weapons and ammo at a time when new supplies aren’t coming.
They knew that was a risk tied to Trump and next November’s US election. But now, Kyiv must deal with this risk immediately.
Washington’s chaos is also ringing alarm bells across Europe, where leaders know that, particularly on the weapons front, they can’t backfill what will be lost if supplies from Washington begin to run dry.
And the Europeans have to think about their own security. What, they wonder, does all this mean for NATO if this is the future of the Republican Party in America?
In short, a lot of trust has been lost, and it takes much longer to rebuild trust than it does to lose it.
Ukrainian and EU flags fly in central Kyiv as the city hosts an EU-Ukraine foreign ministers meeting, amid Russia's ongoing attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine October 2, 2023.
The fight over support for Ukraine
Aware of that, EU foreign ministers visited Ukraine’s capital on Monday – their first-ever meeting outside EU territory – to signal their continuing commitment to the country’s future. Later this year, the EU is expected to formalize the beginning of a long process to welcome Ukraine, and perhaps several other states, into the union.
In Washington, the news for Ukraine was not as rosy. As part of a deal to stop Republican hardliners in the House of Representatives from shutting down the US government, Democrats met their demand to drop the latest funding package for Ukraine from current spending plans.
This isn’t the end of US financial support for Kyiv, despite intensifying opposition from some Republicans, as well as from likely GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. President Biden will reportedly call allies to reassure them that US support will continue to flow. There will be more dollars and more US weapons headed for Ukraine in the coming months. But this deal to avoid a shutdown only funds the US government until Nov. 17, setting up more “shutdown showdowns” to come – and now a precedent has been set that Ukraine aid will be a crucial bargaining chip in future fights.The U.S. Capitol.
The US government is heading toward a shutdown. What does that mean?
The US government looks set to shut down this Sunday after House Republicans indicated that they would not support a bipartisan Senate bill that would fund the federal government past this weekend’s deadline.
Absent a last-minute agreement, many federal agencies could soon shut down, while millions of federal workers could be placed on furlough without pay due to a lapse in funding from Congress, which controls the purse strings.
What led to the current stalemate and what does it mean?
You might recall that, back in June, House Republicans agreed at the eleventh hour to raise the federal debt limit to avoid the government defaulting on its loans for the first time in history. As part of that agreement, Republicans and the White House agreed to spending caps on funding bills for the next two years that aimed to avoid this sort of impasse until after the next presidential election.
But that is now up in the air as a number of “tear-it-all-down” Republicans are refusing to fund the government – an annual procedural measure – and are calling for deeper spending cuts. Crucially, they also oppose ongoing funding to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, overseeing one of the slimmest congressional majorities in decades, is hesitant to pass a funding bill with the backing of House Dems that these vocal members of his own caucus oppose, fearing they would call a vote seeking his ouster. What’s more, to appease the right flank of his party, McCarthy gave his caucus the go-ahead to start an impeachment inquiry into President Biden (the hearing will kick off Friday), but that doesn't seem to have gotten the hardliners to back off.
Indeed, this whole dance makes for very bad politics for the GOP considering that 77% of US voters don’t want the government to close.
What happens if the government shuts down? While some government departments – like the military – will continue to function, hundreds of thousands of workers (out of 4 million government employees) will be told to stay home without pay. The last time the government shut down in 2018 for 35 days, it cost the US economy a whopping $11 billion.
Plus: We asked Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, to share his view on how long the shutdown may last. Hear what he had to say here.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy
Will McCarthy stop a government shutdown?
Late Tuesday, the US Senate agreed to a bipartisan temporary funding plan in a bid to avoid a government shutdown on Sunday. The agreement would guarantee Ukraine funding by tying it to domestic disaster relief – a cause even Ukraine-wary Senate Republicans were reluctant to vote against.
Trouble is, it is unlikely to pass in the House. Speaker Kevin McCarthy would need to rely on Democratic votes for it to pass, risking a party backlash, and far-right Republicans are threatening to push for his removal if he brings it to the floor.
The chances of a last-minute deal are high. McCarthy’s position is just as threatened by a shutdown as it is by his far-right caucus, so he is expected to eventually call for a House vote on a bipartisan bill.
Even if legislators do miss the deadline, any shutdown is expected to be brief and relatively painless because Republican leaders want to avoid the political costs of a prolonged shutdown and protect their leverage going into end-of-year funding negotiations.
This is just the warm-up for the real funding fight. At the end of the year, funding battles have the potential to cause a prolonged shutdown or a potential 1% cut to all federal spending if a deal isn’t reached.
State of the Union showdown
Exclusive video of President Trump's plans for his big speech.