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The stopgap spending bill that Republicans and Democrats agreed to this week to avert a government shutdown is in jeopardy after President-elect Donald J. Trump will convict him on Wednesday, just over two days before the midnight deadline to fund the government. President Mike Johnson championed the 1,500-page stopgap spending bill, but several House Republicans are not satisfied with it. Trump’s opposition underscored the challenge Republican leaders will face next year in Congress and they will face an unpredictable president with a tendency to blow up politically fraught commitments. Learn more >
The House Ethics Committee plans to release an investigative report into the conduct of former Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, according to three other people with knowledge of the matter. Gaetz resigned from the House after Trump nominated him for attorney general, but ended his candidacy after the weight of sex trafficking and drug use allegations made it clear that he would not be introduced in the Senate. He has denied those allegations. Learn more >
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , Trump’s pick for the position of fitness secretary, returned to the Capitol on Wednesday to meet more with Republican senators. So far, his audience has been friendly lawmakers, but he may soon be met with a more skeptical reception: He’s expected to meet with Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who has said she needs to ask him about his defense against vaccines.
Catie Edmondson and Carl Hulse
Reporting from the Capitol
A bipartisan spending deal to avert a shutdown was on life support on Wednesday after President-elect Donald J. Trump condemned it, leaving lawmakers without a strategy to fund the government past a Friday night deadline.
Trump issued a scathing order ordering Republicans not to support the sprawling bill, adding to the complaint of Elon Musk, who spent Wednesday trashing the measure on social media and threatening political ruin while Republicans would support it.
It was still unclear how President Mike Johnson planned to proceed as the package, which was packed with unrelated policy measures as well as tens of billions of dollars in crisis and farm aid, appeared to be losing money. support. Some Republicans warned that he was considering scrapping everything from the bill to the spending extension and putting it to a vote, but the fate of such a measure was also highly uncertain.
The blowback from Republicans to the agreement underscored the complications top G.O.P. leaders will have to manage next year when they control all of Congress and face a president with a penchant for blowing up political compromises. It also showed the power of a circle of influential outside players in Mr. Trump’s orbit who appeared willing to punish Republicans if they failed to accede to his wishes.
Even before Musk started making noise, a huge number of Republican lawmakers (ultraconservatives and some classic members) were furious about the investment measure, which was introduced Tuesday night. It began as an undeniable spending bill to keep the government’s budget afloat beyond mid-March, but it emerged from bipartisan negotiations loaded with $100 billion in crisis aid and dozens of other unrelated policies.
GOP resistance meant that to pass the bill, Johnson would have to rely on Democratic votes once he returned to pass it, employing a special procedure that requires approval by two-thirds of voters. But as of Wednesday afternoon, the backlash against the law had spread so widely within the Republican Party that it was unclear whether it would even be able to rally a modicum of Republicans to join forces with Democrats and push them over the edge. bottom line.
The bill gave the impression of doom when Trump spoke late Wednesday afternoon, saying lawmakers needed to pass a “temporary investment bill NO DEMOCRATIC GIFTS,” and said it would be combined with an increase in the debt ceiling, the limit on how much money Democrats can invest. The United States is allowed to borrow to meet its monetary obligations.
“We deserve to pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want,” Trump wrote in a lengthy social media message he posted along with Sen. J. D. Vance, vice president-elect.
They spoke after Musk, whom Trump appealed to to diminish the success of the federal government, raged for a day against the bill, posting almost nonstop on his social media platform about how lawmakers are killing him. He was joined by Vivek Ramaswamy, another billionaire who is joining forces with Musk in efforts to streamline government and cut spending.
Republicans gauging support for the legislation said they were bleeding votes as a result of Mr. Musk’s barrage.
“Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Mr. Musk wrote in one post.
Johnson appeared on “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday morning to defend the bill and said he had spoken with Musk and Ramaswamy earlier that day.
“They said, ‘This isn’t directed at you, Mr. President, but we don’t like to spend,'” Johnson said. I said, “Guess what, guys, me neither. We have to do that because this is the key: by doing this, we are emptying the cards and we are preparing for Trump to come back strong with the America First agenda. ” »
Even before Trump got involved, reliable Republican votes in favor of stopgap investment measures had begun to falter. Senator John Cornyn of Texas called the bill a “monstrosity. “
And anti-spending conservatives were livid.
“The American people wanted change,” said Representative Ralph Norman, Republican of South Carolina. “They didn’t say go out and spend more money, put us more into debt. It’s the opposite of what the American people voted for.”
But while conservative Republicans and Musk openly opposed the two-component deal because it added too much spending to the national debt, Trump has called for raising the debt ceiling, insisting that Republicans will have to increase it as a component of spending. package so that debt can be reduced. The limit would accrue while President Biden was still in the White House.
It reflected a recognition by the president-elect that his party would have a difficult time raising the limit next year when they have full control of Congress, and that he would not want to sign such a measure. Many Republicans refuse to back debt ceiling increases, viewing them as politically toxic.
The borrowing limit is expected to be reached sometime in January, and a failure to increase it would cause a default on the nation’s debt. Mr. Trump acknowledged that he did not want to shoulder the responsibility for doing so.
“Raising the debt ceiling is a smart thing to do,” Trump said in his statement, “but we prefer to do it under Biden’s leadership. “
Later, in a social media post, he said that any Republican who “would be stupid enough” to vote for an extension of investment without raising the debt ceiling “should and will face” a significant challenge.
Democrats, for their part, are in no mood to start new negotiations.
“House Republicans now have to unilaterally break a bipartisan deal that they reached,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said Wednesday night. “House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government and hurt Americans across the country every day. House Republicans will now be held accountable for any harm done to the American people as a result of the government shutdown.
Catie Edmondson
We are in spending limbo about 48 hours away from the shutdown deadline. The deal congressional leaders struck and unveiled yesterday seems all but dead after wide swaths of the House G.O.P. conference, Elon Musk and President-elect Trump all panned it. Democrats, who still control the Senate and White House, are saying they’re in no mood to negotiate a second deal. And complicating matters further is that Trump is now insisting Republicans pair any spending bill with a measure suspending the debt limit — a move many conservatives have long viewed as antithetical to their anti-spending views.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs
The White House has weighed in on the fight over the spending bill. “Republicans need to stop playing politics with this bipartisan agreement or they will hurt hardworking Americans and create instability across the country,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. She said President-elect Donald J. Trump “ordered Republicans to shut down the government and they are threatening to do just that — while undermining communities recovering from disasters, farmers and ranchers, and community health centers.”
Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Jean-Pierre also noted that both parties had agreed on the bill. “A deal is a deal,” she said. “Republicans should keep their word.”
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Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Trump appears to know that raising the debt ceiling would be difficult when he is in office, even with Republican control of Congress. Many Republicans oppose increasing the borrowing limit, and past fights over it have been politically fraught.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs
Trump filed a more scathing complaint about the stopgap Truth Social bill, calling it an “extraordinarily costly procedural resolution. “He seemed determined to avoid a vote on raising the debt ceiling months after taking office, saying he would “fight to the end” any bill passed now that would not “end or substantially expand” the country’s debt. Democrats “are looking to embarrass us in June when we vote,” Trump said.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs
In another Truth Social article, Trump explicitly threatened any Republican who supported a stopgap spending measure now without raising the debt ceiling, saying that anyone who did so would face a primary challenge.
Ian Austen
Reporting from Ottawa
President-elect Donald J. Trump on Wednesday took credit for a new border security plan, announced through Canada.
The day before, the Canadian government had presented a plan worth about 1. 3 billion Canadian dollars, that is, about 903 million dollars, up to its border with the United States. Canada has presented its plan to the new Trump administration.
“President Trump is securing the border and he hasn’t even taken it yet,” a press release from Trump’s transition team said.
“In the face of an outcry from his own citizens,” he continued, “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just announced a billion-dollar plan for primary innovations in border security and increased border patrols. »
Canada’s proposal includes drones, helicopters and other technologies to monitor the 5,525-mile border, as well as teams of dogs to detect drugs.
The plan follows Trump’s risk of imposing 25% price lists on Canadian goods soon after taking office next month if the country does not do more to prevent the entry of undocumented immigrants. and drugs to the United States.
Earlier on Wednesday, Trump continued to mock Trudeau and Canadian sovereignty in a social media post, while airing his long-standing grievances with the industry.
“No one can answer why we subsidize Canada to the tune of over $100,000,000 a year?” Mr. Trump wrote. “Makes no sense! Many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State. They would save massively on taxes and military protection. I think it is a great idea. 51st State!!!”
It is clear where Trump got this figure from.
In October, according to the U. S. Census Bureau, the U. S. industrial deficit with Canada was about $50 billion. Canada’s largest export through price is crude oil, and the United States sometimes has an industrial surplus with Canada in oil.
After an earlier reference through Trump to Canada being a U. S. state with Trudeau as governor, Canadian officials said similar comments were made during Trudeau’s first term and called them funny comments.
Trudeau has not said anything publicly in reaction to Trudeau’s attempts. Trump to mock him.
No opinion polls in Canada have given positive results for the club in the United States, but polls have found Trump to be deeply unpopular.
Last month, Trudeau and several officials traveled to Florida to discuss the border and price lists at a dinner with Trump.
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Chris Cameron
In his lengthy statement, Vice President-elect JD Vance denounced the stopgap spending bill for what he called “soft provisions for censors and for Liz Cheney,” the former Republican congresswoman who served on a commission that investigated the Sept. 6 attack. January 2021 to the Capitol. .
Maggie Haberman
A statement just issued by JD Vance that was attributed to the incoming vice president and President-elect Trump offered a series of denouncements of the funding bill to keep the government open. It was unclear what types of provisions that Trump would accept.
Response from President Donald J. Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance: The dumbest and most inept thing ever done by Congressional Republicans was to allow our country to hit the debt ceiling in 2025. It was a mistake and now that’s all it will have to change. be approached…