Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on Sunday shrugged off criticism of President Biden's son Hunter Biden attending a state dinner at the White House last week just after pleading guilty to tax crimes.
"You know, I think as the president explained, that's his son. That's a separate thing," Klobuchar said on NBC's "Meet the Press," when asked if she thinks it was appropriate for Hunter Biden to be at the state dinner, which Attorney General Merrick Garland also attended.
The president's son was in attendance at the dinner held during the official state visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week. Court documents last week also revealed Hunter, who has been under investigation for tax matters for several years, will plead guilty to tax crimes in a plea deal with prosecutors, and reached a diversion agreement relating to unlawful possession of a weapon.
"And I would like to say about that, that decision was made by an independent prosecutor, who is a Trump appointed U.S. attorney, who had 10 years of experience, well-respected. [The] Philadelphia Inquirer reported that he was a registered Republican. He looked at the facts and evidence and made that decision," Klobuchar said of the legal development.
"And by the way, if that's what the Republicans want to run on, in the coming election, good luck," Klobuchar said.
Asked whether she wished the "perception" were different, Klobuchar said, "You always wish there are different perceptions."
Republicans have bashed the deal as too lenient on the president's son, with many attacking the Justice Department. Garland, who was also at the state dinner, has denied allegations of political interference in the Justice Department’s investigation into Hunter Biden.
The Supreme Court case that eliminated the federal right to obtain an abortion was preceded by years of legislative attempts by congressional Republicans to chip away at those protections.
But a year after the high court handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, there is little appetite among Republicans in the House — the only chamber where they control the majority — to take steps to restrict abortion at the national level.
Though House Republicans passed 20-week abortion ban bills three times in the last decade, many of the same abortion opponents behind those proposals now say the issue should be handled at the state level.
And Republicans in swing districts are loath to spend political capital on a messaging bill that is dead on arrival in a Democratic-controlled Senate — particularly as more and more Americans say they are in favor of increasing abortion access.
“There's political realities in a four-seat majority,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who represents a district that President Biden won in 2020. While he supports some proposed anti-abortion measures in theory, he understands why others do not.
“Some people are very sensitive about it. Though they would agree to it, they're just afraid that it becomes a big issue in the next election,” Bacon said.
That concern isn’t unfounded. Abortion played a major role in the 2022 midterms, coming in behind only inflation as the issue voters were most concerned about. The liberal side prevailed in each of the five abortion-related referendums on state ballots in November — including in Montana and Kentucky — as well as in a Kansas special election last summer and a Wisconsin Supreme Court election earlier this year that turned heavily on the issue of abortion.
A Gallup poll conducted in May found record-high support for abortion access.
Meanwhile in the House, Republicans seem to be pulling back on taking even incremental steps against abortion.
A bill to permanently codify and expand the Hyde Amendment, a provision that prohibits certain federal funds from being used on abortion procedures, was included in a list of 12 pieces of legislation House Republicans planned to pass in the first weeks of the new House majority. That bill, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act was given the high bill number of H.R. 7 — symbolic of its importance to the Republican platform.
But it never came to the floor, with opposition from moderate House Republicans being a factor.
One of those is Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Ore.), a first-term Biden-district Republican.
“I will continue opposing standalone federal action on limiting taxpayer funding for abortion. The Dobbs decision made clear that it's an issue that should be decided at the state level, and Oregonians recently rejected efforts to limit taxpayer-funded abortion overwhelmingly,” Chavez-DeRemer said in a statement.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said that leaders are “going to keep working to move” the bill, and said Republicans will work to include provisions prohibiting spending on abortion in appropriations bills.
Staff for the Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus in the House, released a memo Friday urging Republicans to stand together to pass the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act — noting that it passed with universal GOP support in January 2017, the last time the party held the House majority.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) has been an outspoken critic of how her party has handled abortion issues, saying in April that Republicans could “lose huge” if they continued trying to enact strict bans, but is a cosponsor of the legislation.
She said the bill was supposed to get a floor vote last week but was pulled down due to concerns from GOP members in swing seats.
Some members took issue with the bill being “Hyde plus,” including prohibiting qualified health plans under the Affordable Care Act from providing abortion coverage.
While Mace supports bans on the procedures as long as there are exceptions, she thinks Republicans should put more focus on options such as expanding access to birth control and adoption.
“For me as a woman and as a victim of rape, it's really important that we as Republicans let women know we care about them,” Mace said.
The House did pass two measures related to “pro-life” issues in February: A bill to require care to be given to an infant who survives an abortion procedure (Democrats have argued that a 2002 law already guarantees infants’ legal rights), and a resolution condemning attacks on anti-abortion centers and churches.
And some moderate Republicans think the House should not go much further than that.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), another Republican who represents a district that Biden won, said he does not think there should be more action in the House GOP to implement more abortion restrictions.
“I think that it's a very divisive issue, and we need to start building a bridge on it,” Fitzpatrick said. “I'm a big believer in legislating between the 40-yard lines and eliminating extreme options on all sides.”
That marks a stark change from the abortion politics in Congress over the last decade, when incremental nationwide ban legislation helped gradually build momentum for the anti-abortion cause leading up to the Dobbs decision.
House Republicans passed a 20-week abortion ban when they controlled the House in 2013, 2015 and 2017. Last year, that bill was modified to ban abortions after 15 weeks.
“It works through committee. The Supreme Court has made that decision. It goes to the states, the states will take up that issue,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said in a press conference in April when asked if Republicans will put forward a national ban on abortion in any form.
Interest in pursuing a national abortion ban also appears low in the Senate GOP.
“Most of our folks are of a mind that, you know, letting states decide is the best course of action,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said.
But Thune warned that Democrats will define Republicans by the most restrictive bans and will work to guarantee abortion access at the national level — which could push the debate to Congress eventually.
“At some point, there will be a debate here at the national level,” Thune said. “The position I've come behind is the 15-week ban.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he still thinks Republicans should support the 15-week ban proposal he spearheaded last year, calling it a reasonable “national minimum standard.”
But Republicans are long way away from having a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate that could usher an abortion ban into law.
It's not only vulnerable Republicans veering away from a national abortion ban. Conservative Republicans in solidly red districts also say the issue should be left to the state level.
“Nobody's bringing up a national ban. Nobody is trying to push that,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said. Donalds said that his read of the Dobbs decision is that “abortion is now to be regulated by the states, as it should have been this entire time — not by the Supreme Court and not by Congress.”
They also worry that being too assertive with anti-abortion messaging could endanger Republicans — and the anti-abortion cause — overall, now that voters have a much heightened awareness of the issue.
“I think going into a ‘24 election, presidential election, you have a lot of lessons learned from the midterms. And I think, collectively, you're seeing the states step up, particularly after Roe v. Wade, making decisions that we for the longest time have advocated for — that this was a states rights issue,” Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.), co-chairwoman of the Pro-Life Caucus.
“But people are very cognizant of where they need to fall in terms of the messaging on this, because we certainly lost seats and had missed opportunity as a result of some pretty aggressive, extreme messaging,” Cammack said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said an effort to impeach President Biden that lacks due process would be “dead on arrival” in the Senate.
Graham said during a Friday appearance on “The Hill” on NewsNation that Republicans argued that Democrats did not give former President Trump the right to due process during the impeachment proceedings against him in 2019 and 2021, and he does not believe anyone should be impeached without a hearing being held.
Graham noted that the impeachment against former President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s went through a process that allowed him to defend himself.
“But what’s being done in the House to go straight to the floor with articles of impeachment — we criticized the Democrats for not giving Trump any due process. I think this is dead on arrival,” he said.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) introduced a privileged motion in the House this week to force a vote on impeaching Biden over his handling of federal immigration policy and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border. But the motion caught many of her own colleagues by surprise and did not have support from several notable GOP members in the House and Senate, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
Senate Republicans raised questions about the effort, and some said they considered it to be frivolous and not meeting the level required for impeachment. The motion was ultimately referred to the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, avoiding the vote for now.
McCarthy said Boebert’s motion is “one of the most serious things you can do as a member of Congress” and an investigative process needs to occur first to move forward.
“Throwing something on the floor actually harms the investigation that we’re doing right now,” he said.
Republicans have been pushing to impeach various members of the Biden administration, including Biden, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has introduced articles against all of them as well as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Matthew Graves.
Some Republicans warned after Boebert's effort failed that the attempt will give Democrats the ability to paint the GOP as extreme, with one Republican strategist calling Boebert’s effort “frankly stupid.”
Graham said impeaching any president without “some process in place” is “irresponsible.”
“It’s important that we follow the process, and if you believe that President Biden has done something this impeachable, take it through the committee, give him a chance to respond, and we’ll see what happens,” he said.
With a two-week holiday break starting next week, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) gathered some of his most vocal conservative critics Friday for a meeting intended to ease the hard-liners’ deficit concerns ahead of the long summer fight over government spending.
It’s been a rocky few weeks in the House. The Speaker’s conservative critics have been grumbling that he caved too quickly during debt ceiling negotiations with President Biden, and they’re seeking concrete assurances that McCarthy will hold a harder line — and demand deeper cuts — in the upcoming partisan battle over funding the government beyond September.
To mollify those gripes, the Speaker summoned a group of at least eight conservatives to his office in the Capitol on Friday afternoon, seeking to convince the skeptics that Republican leaders share their goals when it comes to spending cuts. Afterward, McCarthy characterized the discussion as a sort of primer on the goals GOP leaders aim to achieve in their appropriations bills.
“You have to think differently. We got to start at the beginning,” McCarthy said. “It's walking people through what's in the approps bills now, and what could be as the other ones get marked up. Greater input, greater conversations. And the more knowledge, the better off we are in the better chance we have at passing.”
With lawmakers leaving for a two-week recess on Friday, McCarthy said he did not want members to “just go away,” and that he is setting up more meetings on the matter over the break.
In an indication of the high stakes, some of the conservatives had delayed flights home in order to join Friday’s meeting, according to Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), who was among them. Higgins acknowledged that GOP leaders face an arduous task in rallying 218 votes behind their spending bills given the party’s slim majority — “The understatement of possibly the decade,” he said — but he also predicted they would meet that goal.
“We're going to find a way to get to 218 on appropriations,” Higgins said. “We are united in that goal.”
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, also came away from the meeting with an optimistic tone.
“I think there is a plan of action. I don’t know about a resolution, but a plan of action,” Perry said.
Others, though, emphasized the long road ahead in ironing out the details of the spending cuts conservatives are demanding.
Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) said a big part of the discussion is “making sure that we're all on the same page” with the appropriations figures, and that members are not operating with “different sets of numbers.”
Conservatives have accused GOP leaders of using a budget “gimmick” — known as rescissions — to claim they’re setting next year’s spending at last year’s levels, while actually allocating much more. And several of them said they’re not yet satisfied with leadership's response.
“It’s a very much continued and unresolved question,” Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) said.
“I think the disagreement right now amongst us [and], you know, our colleagues is they’re using that to help bring up the agency spending,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said of the rescissions after the meeting. “And so my view is no, we shouldn’t be doing that. … The agencies need to justify why they even need the money to begin with. They have not done that.”
The House left Friday for a two-week Independence Day recess after an extended seven-week stretch in session; the debt ceiling legislation forced leaders to cancel a scheduled weeklong recess the week of Memorial Day.
Tensions flared — and derailed leadership’s hold of the House floor — through the second half of that grueling stretch, forcing McCarthy to stomp out fires.
Eleven members of the House Freedom Caucus and their allies sunk a procedural rule in protest of the proposed cuts in the debt ceiling compromise not being steep enough, shutting down legislative action on the House floor for a week. Moderate Republicans lashed out, with one even proposing working with Democrats to get back control of the floor.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) forced a vote on a resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calf.), which failed last week but then succeeded this week after adjustments in language. And Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) forced action on her resolution to impeach Biden over his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border, angering colleagues and surprising leaders — who then punted on her impeachment articles by working out a vote to send them back to committee.
Conservatives still have major concerns with spending levels in appropriations bills that have started to move through the committee. While they have allowed floor action to continue, they warn that shutting down the floor again remains a possibility.
Yet McCarthy said Friday the House GOP has “been so successful for the last seven weeks.”
As the leaders’ outreach effort ramps up, Republican appropriators have already begun the long process of marking up their 2024 spending bills, with a goal of sending all 12 appropriations bills to the House floor as quickly as possible.
“I think that what makes the most sense for us strategically is to be able to get these bills, get the numbers as low as we possibly can, and get them out of the House as quick as we can for negotiating purposes,” Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), a close McCarthy ally who was central to debt ceiling negotiations, told reporters after the meeting. “I think that’s what’s most strategic and in our interest.”
Behind Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-Texas), the Appropriations Committee has already marked up roughly half of those spending bills. But Graves emphasized that even those are not set in stone, and GOP leaders are reserving the right to alter those bills as needed to win over potential GOP holdouts — conservatives and moderates alike.
“The Speaker committed in January to go through regular order. Regular order includes allowing amendments and changes to bills as we move forward,” Graves said. “And look, yeah, Freedom Caucus has ideas on what they want to do. But so do a lot of other people.”
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is throwing his weight behind the conservative effort to expunge the two impeachments of former President Trump, saying Trump’s behavior didn't rise to a level that merited either punishment, and he would like to eradicate both votes from history.
Leaving the Capitol on Friday ahead of a long holiday recess, the Speaker said he supports erasing the pair of impeachments because, he argued, one “was not based on true facts” and the other was “on the basis of no due process.”
“I think it is appropriate, just as I thought before, that you should expunge it because it never should have gone through,” McCarthy told reporters outside his office. He later clarified he supports expunging both Trump impeachments, but he emphasized such resolutions must first go through the committee process.
The Speaker’s endorsement of the expungement push highlights both the tenuous grip McCarthy has on his conference, where conservatives are holding his feet to the fire on numerous policy issues, and the powerful influence Trump retains over the Republican Party more than two years after leaving office.
Behind then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), House Democrats successfully impeached Trump twice: The first vote, in late 2019, found that Trump abused his power when he threatened to withhold U.S. military aid to Ukraine unless leaders in Kyiv launched an investigation of his political rivals. The second, in early 2021, found Trump responsible for “incitement of insurrection” for his role in encouraging the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
In the House, the first impeachment passed without any Republican support. The second was different, and 10 Republicans crossed the aisle to impeach Trump for the Capitol rampage. In both cases, Trump’s Republican allies in the Senate rallied to prevent a conviction.
Just two of the 10 Republicans who supported the second impeachment still serve in the House: Reps. Dan Newhouse (Wash.) and David Valadao (Calif.).
McCarthy's position on the Jan. 6 attack has shifted over time.
Immediately following the Capitol rampage, McCarthy went to the floor and said Trump bore "responsibility" for the violence, which was carried out by Trump supporters trying to block the certification of his 2020 election defeat.
When it became clear the GOP was sticking behind Trump, McCarthy quickly reversed course, visiting Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida a few weeks later. He would go on to say Trump did not "provoke" the riot, and he then orchestrated the expulsion of then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from GOP leadership for her refusal to indulge Trump's lies about his election defeat.
Asked about potentially expunging the punishments in January, the newly-elected Speaker said he would “look at it.”
House GOP Conference Chairwoman Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) launched an effort to expunge Trump’s impeachments on Thursday, unveiling two resolutions that would discard the disciplines. Greene is the sponsor of the measure targeting Trump’s first impeachment, and Stefanik’s name is on the second one.
The practical implications of the resolutions are dubious because they can do nothing to revisit the impeachment votes or eradicate the public’s memory of them. Still, the bills are designed to do both, claiming the expungement will reset the historical record "as if such Articles had never passed."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks during a press conference held by the Republican Study Committee announcing their Fiscal Year 2024 Budget at the Capitol on Wednesday, June 14, 2023.
Earlier this week, before the measures were introduced, Greene said she is hoping to see a vote on the floor for the resolutions “soon.”
The push to expunge Trump’s impeachment is not new on Capitol Hill: In the last Congress, then-Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla), who now serves in the Senate, introduced resolutions to expunge both of the former president’s impeachments. They did not, however, advance in the Democratic-controlled House.
Democrats wasted no time this week attacking the Republicans supporting expungement, accusing them of carrying water for a twice-disgraced former president solely because he remains so powerful among GOP voters.
“It’s a continuation of Republicans acting as Donald Trump's taxpayer-funded lawyers,” said Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who was a lead attorney for the Democrats during the first impeachment.
“It's telling who's introducing them," he added. "And it's essentially whoever's trying to curry the most favor with Trump.”
(NewsNation) — Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley (R) said he was "surprised" to learn how many unidentified aerial phenomena the U.S. government has come across, amid calls from lawmakers for investigations into a whistleblower's claims of a secret UFO program.
"The number of these is apparently huge, huge. And that is something that the government has, the best I can say about it, downplayed, if not kept from the public, for a long, long time," said Hawley.
While he acknowledged that he can't assess the truth of David Grusch's allegations, Hawley pointed to government reports that indicated there were UAP sightings that remain "unaccounted for."
"I don't have any basis to evaluate them but do some of the details that he's alleging, do they sound plausible? Yeah, sure. They sound plausible, based on what I've seen this government do in other instances," Hawley said.
Hawley said his remarks concerned the government's response to the Chinese spy balloon spotted over the U.S. back in January.
"What we learned from the Chinese spy balloon incident is that one part of the government actively concealed it from other parts of the government," Hawley explained. "Because that's what they do all the time."
A House oversight committee has vowed to hold open hearings to address the whistleblower's allegations.
David Grusch, an Air Force veteran and former member of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, alleged the U.S. government has recovered non-human craft for decades. He recently filed a whistleblower complaint, stating he gave what he referred to as classified “proof” to Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General.
Hawley said he felt that Grusch's claims track with what he alleges to have heard in briefings.
"He's saying that the government knows more about this than they have previously let on. That doesn't really surprise me. Because it looks to me like the government has been tracking these UAPs for a long time now, and has not been saying much about it," said Hawley.
Not all lawmakers are convinced, however.
"If we'd really found this stuff, there's no way you could keep it from coming out. … My gut belief is if there's a physical piece of a spacecraft or an intact spaceship, we would've known about it by now," said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Hawley doesn't buy that argument, saying the government is good at keeping secrets when it wants something to stay hidden.
Unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), formerly referred to as UFOs, in theory, could include alien spacecraft, but the two aren't synonymous.
The Defense Department's All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) considers a UAP "anything in space, in the air, on land, in the sea or under the sea that can't be identified and might pose a threat to U.S. military installations or operations."
In a statement to NewsNation, the Pentagon said, to date, that “AARO has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.”
However, Grusch is claiming very few people are aware of the alleged secret UAP program, saying even those at the Pentagon who respond to UAP reports are in the dark.
“I have plenty of senior, former intelligence officers that came to me, many of which I knew almost my whole career, that confided in me that they were part of a program," Grusch claimed. "They provided me documents and other proof, that there was in fact a program that the UAP Task Force was not read into.”
Senate Republicans are looking for a way to get around the caps on defense spending set by the debt limit deal that President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) negotiated last month, putting them on a collision course with House Republicans.
Republican defense hawks on the Senate Appropriations Committee vented their frustration with the allocations for the Defense Department set by Senate Democrats and House Republicans, which represents an increase of more than 3 percent over current spending levels.
“If you’re looking at China’s navy and you think now’s the time to shrink our Navy, you sure as hell shouldn’t be in the Navy. We go from 298 ships under this budget deal to eventually 291. ... You sunk the Navy. The Congress has sunk eight ships. How many fighter squadrons have we parked because of this deal?” fumed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) at a committee hearing Thursday morning.
“GDP to defense spending is going to be at a historic low under this deal,” he said, arguing that the defense spending cap will also hurt Ukraine in its war against Russia. “There’s not a penny in this deal to help them keep fighting. Do you really want to be judged in history as having, at a moment of consequence to defeat Putin, to pull all the money for Ukraine?”
Graham suggested Thursday afternoon that Senate Republicans may attempt to renegotiate the defense spending cap set by the debt limit law later this year.
“There will be conversation among senators and hopefully the House to increase our spending to deter China. Reducing the size of the U.S. Navy doesn’t deter China,” he said.
Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), the top-ranking Republican on the Appropriations Committee, said she was concerned that "the new debt limit law caps regular defense funding in fiscal year 2024 at the inadequate level requested by the president" and that it "fails to meet the security challenges facing our nation.”
House Republicans have proposed $826 billion for the annual defense appropriations bill, while Senate Democrats have proposed $823 billion for the defense spending bill, keeping in line with the spending caps McCarthy negotiated with Biden.
Those numbers don’t include defense spending spread across other departments, including the Department of Energy, which oversees the nation’s nuclear arsenal; the Department of Homeland Security; and money allocated for military construction and veterans affairs.
Graham and Collins are hoping to increase defense spending levels later in the year — possibly by passing a supplemental defense spending bill that includes money for Ukraine — but McCarthy has already poured cold water on the deal.
“I’m not going to prejudge what some of them [in the Senate] do, but if they think they’re writing a supplemental because they want to go around an agreement we just made, it’s not going anywhere,” he told Punchbowl News earlier this month.
Adding fuel to the fire, House Republicans have proposed cutting an additional $119 billion from discretionary spending by setting spending targets for the annual spending bills that cumulatively fall well below the caps that Biden and McCarthy agreed to for those programs — $886 billion for defense and $703.7 for nondefense programs.
House Republicans are proposing finding those additional savings by cutting from nondefense discretionary spending programs, which will likely put pressure on the Department of Homeland Security.
Meeting the House Republican targets for nondefense programs could entail spending cuts ranging between 15 percent to 30 percent for the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Interior, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.
Such a showdown over spending levels heightens the chances of Senate Democrats and House Republicans failing to agree, and then not passing the regular spending bills, which means they would have to resort to a stopgap spending measure. If they fail to pass all 12 appropriations bills by Dec. 31, that would trigger an across-the-board, 1-percent rescission for all defense and nondefense discretionary spending.
Senate Republicans warn the 1-percent spending sequester would hit defense programs harder than nondefense programs.
Graham and Collins also spoke out Thursday against the spending allocations Senate Democrats set for homeland security.
Homeland Security Department funding is under pressure because of the spending cap Biden and McCarthy agreed to as part of the debt limit deal.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said the debt limit deal squeezed federal funding priorities across the board.
“We were given a top-line [spending number] that was extremely challenging and difficult,” she said. “I would dare say no one on this committee, certainly Sen. Collins or I, would have negotiated that agreement. We were not in the room but we have been given that order.”
Graham said that under the spending caps agreed to last month, the Homeland Security Department would not have enough money to stem the flow of fentanyl and other drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border.
“If you’ve looked at the border and you feel like we can spend less on homeland security, you shouldn’t be allowed to drive. This place is falling apart. and fentanyl is killing Americans. We need more, not less, to address that,” he said.
Graham suggested that the consequences of the spending caps would be severe if kept in place over the long-term.
“We’re in a tough spot. I like the idea we’re not going to be perpetually bound by this,” he said.
Collins raised similar concerns.
“Due to the inadequacy of funding for Homeland Security and the need for additional defense funding, unfortunately I cannot support the 302(b) allocations,” Collins said of the money proposed for the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon.
“Our crisis at the southern border continues. We are on pace for another 2.2 million encounters with migrants this fiscal year,” she added. “Despite this ongoing calamity, the proposed 302(b) allocation would actually reduce funding for the Department of Homeland Security, limiting our ability to have sufficient personnel and technology at the southern border.”
Graham and Collins made their comments in reaction to the $56.9 billion in budget authority that Senate Democrats proposed for the annual Homeland Security appropriations bill.
The Republican-controlled House Appropriations panel has approved $63.9 billion in budget authority for homeland security appropriations.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), the chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, told colleagues at the hearing Thursday morning that he agrees with Graham and Collins that the defense funding levels set forth by the Senate and House are “inadequate.”
“Am I happy with the defense number? No. I think it’s inadequate, quite frankly,” he said.
He later told The Hill that he found it ironic that Republicans, who usually like to bill themselves as fiscal hawks, are the ones now looking to get around the spending caps.
“I just felt like we had flipped positions today. Democrats were able to take the conservative [debt limit] number, and Republicans wanted the more liberal number,” he said.
The chance that Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) will lift his hold on military promotions over the Pentagon's abortion policy anytime soon has dimmed drastically as Senate Republicans struggle to make a deal with him to end the months-long saga.
The Senate Armed Services Committee this week failed to advance a bill that would have overturned the Pentagon's policy that covers some expenses for service members who must travel for an abortion. That, coupled with a bitter back-and-forth between Tuberville and the Biden administration and lack of progress in talks with Republicans, means the holds are set to enter their fifth month with no end in sight.
"Either side could make a move and right now neither side seems to think that these nominations are important enough to override the position that they find themselves in," Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The Hill. "So we're at a stalemate."
As of this week, Tuberville is holding up 250 promotions for general and flag officers that are normally approved on the Senate floor via unanimous consent, and the anger among Democrats has not dissipated. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) on Tuesday made the 10th attempt by Senate Democrats to advance the military promotions, only to be blocked by the Alabama Republican.
President Biden and the Pentagon also heaped more pressure on Tuberville this week. The president referred to the “former football coach from Alabama” during a fundraiser in Los Gatos, Calif., earlier this week, calling his hold “bizarre.”
“I don’t remember it happening before,” Biden said. “I know I don’t look like I’ve been around, but I’ve been around a long time.”
The Pentagon also slammed at Tuberville earlier this week; Sabrina Singh, the Department of Defense’s deputy press secretary, criticized him for setting a “dangerous precedent” with his actions.
Tuberville remains unmoved.
He told The Hill earlier this week that there has not been internal pressure from Republicans to release his holds and that he has not heard directly from anyone in the administration or the Democratic side in recent weeks, outside of public missives.
“We’ve probably gone backwards on that. Everyone’s gotten a closed mouth on this whole deal,” Tuberville told The Hill.
But what it would take to move him off of his hold remains unclear to many.
Tuberville told reporters that three things could get him to lift the hold on military promotions: A reversal of Pentagon policy, a successful vote to codify the policy or a failed vote to do so, with the latter two options coming both via a bill proposed by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). Tuberville’s staff clarified his comments, saying that a failed vote would not do the trick unless the Department of Defense dropped the policy ahead of a hypothetical vote on the Shaheen bill.
None of the three options are likely, and no one has been willing to budge, meaning stalemate will likely go on for the foreseeable future.
“It seems like everyone’s confused,” one Senate GOP aide said of the Tuberville situation. “I don’t know how we get to a solution here. I’m not sure there’s anyone on this planet that can talk him off of this. Plenty have tried.”
Multiple Senate Republicans in recent weeks have talked to Tuberville about just that, but all have been stymied. Sen Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) brought up an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would rescind the Pentagon’s abortion policy that was put into place late last year, but it was blocked during the markup on the bill this week.
On top of that, Tuberville had indicated already that a committee level vote on the item would not move him off of his hold, even though he voted for it.
“I’m not going for a committee vote,” Tuberville said.
Even those supportive of his push have tried to find a resolution. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told The Hill that he has talked with the Alabama Republican about the situation and was hopeful something could be done to rectify things via the annual defense authorization bill.
“I don’t disagree with Sen. Tuberville’s point. But … there needs to be a means to accomplish that,” Cornyn said. “I believe in counting the votes, as opposed to depending on my optimism, and I’m not sure they’re there yet. I’m not sure they’re not there, but I think that’s the way to go.”
Others, however, indicated they are tired of discussing the prolonged back-and-forth.
“I’ve answered a lot of questions about [this],” Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), an Armed Services Committee member, said when asked if she’s sensed any movement on the holds. Fischer initially said that she was not supportive of Tuberville’s tactics before telling reporters that she supports his efforts.
Lawmakers are starting to ask whether they could move certain nominees one by one, burning floor time. The situation will be especially acute next month as five members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including Chairman Mark Milley, will start to be replaced.
Senate Democrats indicated this week that they are not prepared to do that and are leaning on Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has said he does not back Tuberville’s hold, and other Senate GOP members to pressure their colleague from Alabama.
“I don’t know what we’ll do if we have to explore other options,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said. “Right now, the most feasible and readily available and timely way to solve it is for him to back down and for his colleagues to persuade him that’s the wise course.”
A quixotic push by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to impeach President Biden was placed on the back burner Thursday. But even some Republican insiders fear the damage might already have been done.
Boebert, one of the fiercest among the GOP’s right-wing firebrands, surprised many of her colleagues by introducing an impeachment resolution earlier this week. The move caused disarray in the House Republican conference, and the furor was only defused with a deal to send the resolution for consideration by committees.
The move, passed in a 219-208 vote Thursday, places no obligation on the committees to do anything to advance Boebert’s proposal. But she is insistent that, if it becomes clear the gambit is solely about delay, she will bring up her resolution “every day for the rest of my time here in Congress.”
Meanwhile, more moderate Republicans are wincing at what they consider an unforced political error that will give Democrats ammunition to attack the GOP as extreme and out of touch.
Republican strategist Dan Judy described the move as “frankly stupid,” adding, “the party needs to be focused on the problems facing Americans rather than this sideshow.”
Most polls, to be sure, show American voters' main concerns are the economy and inflation, as well as a host of other matters barely related to the effort to impeach the president.
But that doesn’t mean there will be an end to impeachment efforts, given that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) has her own efforts to impeach not only Biden, but Attorney General Merrick Garland, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Matthew Graves, the U.S. district attorney for the District of Columbia.
Adding to this week’s spectacle, Boebert and Greene got into a heated verbal exchange on the House floor Wednesday. Several observers contended Greene called Boebert a “little bitch.” Greene also reportedly accused Boebert of copying her on impeachment.
Boebert, for her part, has shot back that she doesn’t want to get involved in “middle school” antics.
Democrats are agog at disputes like that one — but also convinced that the politics of the matter will play to their advantage.
Democratic strategist Mark Longabaugh declared himself amazed at “the degree to which the Republicans will figure out a way to self-destruct.”
He argued the specific danger was that performative efforts such as a push to impeach Biden would turn off independent and moderate voters.
While he acknowledged such voters have become fewer as the United States has become more polarized, he contended that they "still are a decisive part of winning any general election. And it’s very, very clear that those moderate, swing voters are just not interested in all these Republican shenanigans.”
Some Republicans shoot back that Democrats twice impeached then-President Trump — and they note that, separate from those moves, some Democratic members made solo runs aimed at the same goal.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) tried at least three times to impeach Trump, for example. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) introduced five articles of impeachment against Trump in November 2017, before the 45th president had even rung up a full year in office.
But Democrats note that such measures died swiftly, and further contend that the MAGA wing of the GOP has a firmer grip on today’s Republican Party than the progressive left has on congressional Democrats.
They point not only to Boebert’s impeachment effort but to the mini-uprising that stalled normal business in the House recently, after hard-right members including Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) balked at issues including the compromises Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) had made on spending in order to win a debt ceiling deal with Biden.
There is still the possibility that ultraconservative unhappiness over those compromises could result in a government shutdown closer to the end of the year.
“It’s not just the impeachment, but this whole pattern of things,” said Democratic strategist Robert Shrum.
He included allegations of “Deep State” malfeasance, as well as attacks even on some judges and investigators appointed by former Trump, as evidence of this pattern.
Shrum added that any government shutdown would be “catastrophic for the Republican Party.”
Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.), speaking in the House on Thursday, accused Republicans involved in bringing the impeachment resolution to the floor of “dishonoring this House and dishonoring themselves.”
According to The Associated Press, McGovern added that the House had "become a place where extreme, outlandish and nutty issues get debated passionately, and important ones not at all.”
Even some Republicans who are uneasy with Boebert’s actions argue that the political impact should not be exaggerated. They contend the episode might fade from voters’ minds fast enough.
But it’s notable that the effort was seen as causing severe discomfort for the 18 House Republicans who represent districts won by Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
And Boebert’s push also gives more fuel to the president’s argument about the supposed extremism of “ultra-MAGA Republicans” — a label that was effective during last year’s midterms.
Still, there seems no chance of Boebert backing down.
“Last Congress, I watched my impeachment articles collect dust in Pelosi’s office,” she tweeted Thursday afternoon. “This Congress, action had to be taken!”
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) criticized the U.S. Coast Guard’s emergency operations for their attempts to save a tourist submersible bound for the wreck of the Titanic, calling efforts an “epic failure of leadership.”
Debris from OceanGate's Titan submersible was found near the region of Titanic wreckage site Thursday, bringing an end to the days-long frenzy to find the craft and its crew before oxygen reserves were expected to run out.
Crenshaw claimed the Coast Guard and Navy delayed deploying deep-sea sonar-capable crafts which could have been able to find the submarine more quickly.
“Now, it’s important to note, that if you had just deployed those assets, they would have arrived on scene by Wednesday morning at the latest,” Crenshaw said in a Fox News interview Thursday.
“They finally deploy that 6K ROV, the only thing capable of actually going to that depth and seeing what’s down there, [Thursday] morning. It deploys down there, and the wreckage was exactly where they thought it would be," he added. "So, where’s the failure here? The failure is to not put all your options on the table."
Rescue ships heard noises similar to banging coming from the ocean Wednesday, but Coast Guard officials later said they did not know if they were related to the missing submarine.
The discovered debris consisted of five parts strewn about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic wreck. It included the nose cap of the submarine and parts of the pressure chamber, indicating that there was a “catastrophic event,” Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger said in a press conference Thursday.
The location of the debris was consistent with the craft imploding while it was in the water column on the descent to the Titanic wreck, he said.
After debris was recovered, the Navy also announced that its under-sea listening posts heard what is believed to be an implosion of the craft shortly after it lost contact with the surface on Sunday. An implosion would have resulted in the instant death of the five people on board.
“It begs the question — could this have been resolved differently if leadership had just acted sooner and actually put options on the table instead of just assuming, ‘Well it doesn’t matter because they’re dead,’” Crenshaw said Thursday evening.
