Category: Senate

These 11 senators voted against the must-pass defense spending bill

Posted on (Updated by Julia Shapero

The Senate passed its version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Thursday night with widespread bipartisan support.

Just 11 senators — including six Democrats, one independent and four Republicans — voted against the must-pass defense spending bill, which next heads into the reconciliation process as the Democratic-led Senate and Republican-led House attempt to find a compromise.

The Senate version largely avoided the culture wars provisions in the House version, which passed almost entirely with GOP support, but it still authorizes a topline figure of $886 billion — a figure that was too high for some senators on both sides of the aisle. The topline figure last year was $816.7, up from $777.7 billion in fiscal 2022.

Here are the 11 senators who voted against the upper chamber’s version of the bill:

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.)

Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.)

Braun said Wednesday that he planned introduced several amendments to the defense spending bill, which he argued was driving government glut.

“It’s the most important thing we do here in the federal government, but we don’t do any budgets over there, we don’t do any audits,” he said in a video posted to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “It’s all part of the problem of why we spend too much money and then borrow it from future generations.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah)

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)

Markey called the $886 billion defense spending package “ridiculous" and claimed that the “bloated budget does not advance our national security.” 

“The American people have repeatedly heard from Republicans that we need to cut government spending—for education, for health care, for food assistance—and now they are enthusiastically throwing funding to their defense contractor friends,” Markey said in a series of posts on X.

“While I am grateful that the NDAA passed tonight includes my language to compel the [Department of Defense] to take the overdose crisis among service members and their families seriously, I can’t support a package that inflates military spending at the expense of working and middle-class families,” he added.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)

Merkley similarly described the defense budget approved under the Senate’s version of the NDAA as “bloated.” 

“I voted against the excessive military spending in the NDAA,” he tweeted Thursday night. “The already bloated defense budget does not need to be injected with additional billions of dollars.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

Sanders explained his opposition to this year’s NDAA on the Senate floor Wednesday, pointing to several crises that lawmakers are seemingly overlooking while approving the large defense spending bill.

“We have a planetary crisis in terms of climate change. Our health care system is broken and dysfunctional. Our educational system is teetering. Our housing stock is totally inadequate. And these are just some of the crises facing our country,” he said.

“And what is very clear, I think, to the American people and to many people here in the Senate and those in the House, we’re not addressing those crises," Sanders continued.

He argued that Congress votes to increase the military budget every year with "seemingly little regard for the strategic picture facing our country."

“It just happens,” he said. “We don’t worry about people sleeping out on the street, we don’t worry about people who don’t have any health care, we don’t worry about people who can’t afford prescription drugs.”

Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio)

Vance said his vote against the defense spending bill was due to its commitments to provide Ukraine with “years of additional military aid.”

“I’ve worked in good faith throughout this process to secure as many wins for Ohio as possible, and I’m proud that many of those priorities have been included in the final version of the NDAA,” Vance said in a statement Friday. 

“However, I cannot in good conscience support the broader package, which commits the United States to years of additional military aid for the war in Ukraine,” he added. “It’s disappointing to me that these significant priorities that would benefit Ohioans have been bogged down with such deeply problematic foreign policy proposals.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)

Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.)

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)

Senate GOP rallies behind Romney call for winnowing anti-Trump field

Posted on (Updated by Alexander Bolton

Senate Republicans are rallying behind Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) call for Republican donors to refrain from giving money to long-shot presidential candidates once it becomes clear they can’t win the GOP nomination. 

GOP lawmakers who are deeply skeptical of former President Trump’s chances of beating President Biden in next year’s general election are worried that long-shot candidates will stay in the race too long and siphon support away from more viable candidates.  

They say the party needs to start winnowing the field earlier than it did in 2016 to help ensure the most electable nominee advances to the general election. 

“I think that’s a pretty practical recommendation,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “I think to have a large field is probably not going to help us win the White House back.” 

Cornyn told reporters in May that he didn’t think Trump could win the general election, adding “what’s the most important thing for me is that we have a candidate who can actually win.”  

Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairwoman Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who represents the state that will host the first contest of the 2024 primary, said “if we want to win elections, we need to look toward the general election and making sure our candidates are strong and ready to go.” 

“If people can start coalescing and getting the right candidate into place, that would be very helpful,” she said.  

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), who has endorsed North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s (R) presidential bid, said he’s worried about fielding a competitive candidate in next year’s general election, reflecting the widespread view within the Senate GOP conference that Trump’s polarizing effect on voters is a potential political liability.   

Asked if Trump would be the strongest candidate in the general election, Cramer said “as a primary voter, personally, I prefer picking somebody who I agree with and can win.” 

“At the end of the day, there’s no point endorsing somebody who can’t win,” he said. “I wish we just move on to something normal and tap into the talent of 340 million Americans and see what else we can come up with.” 

Romney argues that anti-Trump voters and donors waited too long in 2016 to coalesce behind a single alternative to Trump, splitting their support among several candidates and letting Trump cruise to the nomination. 

He says next year fellow Republicans need to ramp up pressure on long-shot candidates to drop out if they fail to reach the front of the pack after the first primary contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.  

“Republican megadonors and influencers — large and small — are going to have to do something they didn’t do in 2016: get candidates they support to agree to withdraw if and when their paths to the nomination are effectively closed,” Romney wrote in the Wall Street Journal Monday.  

Romney told The Hill he targeted his op-ed at major Republican donors, who in the last competitive Republican presidential primary stuck with their favored candidates for too long, splitting up the support of GOP voters who didn’t initially favor Trump.  

“A number of folks have sent me texts or emails saying, ‘Hey, well done, I agree with you,’” he said. “That was really aimed at large donors and hopefully they take that into stride. 

“Donors feel the loyalty to the candidate and the candidates want to stay in. That’s the nature of a politician, which is, ‘I’m going to fight to the end. I’m not a quitter,’” he said.  

Instead, Romney says donors need to intervene for the good of the party, telling long-shot White House hopefuls: “No, no. Put that aside. What’s the right thing for the country, and your party?” 

Nonpartisan pollsters such as David Paleologos, the director of the political research center at Suffolk University, say the biggest challenge Republican rivals face in defeating Trump in next year’s primary is that they are splitting the anti-Trump vote a dozen ways.  

Polls show Trump has a solid share of what Paleologos calls “tier one” voters who know with confidence which candidate they will back next year.  

That means any candidate who would emerge as the leading alternative to Trump has to win over a large majority of “tier two” voters who are less certain about how they will vote in the primaries. The more candidates running, the tougher it would be for any one candidate to attract enough undecided voters to defeat Trump. 

Trump is leading the rest of the Republican field by more than 30 percentage points in an average of recent national polls.  

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has trended steadily downward in the polls since March 30 as others including entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) have gained more support. 

The field also includes Burgum, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), former Vice President Mike Pence, former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R). 

Romney says GOP donors need to start pushing weak candidates out of the race if they fail to gain traction by Feb. 26, a week before Super Tuesday, when 15 states will cast ballots for president. 

The party nominating rules appear to favor Trump even more than 2016 because at least 17 states will allocate all of their delegates to the winner of its primary or caucus — giving a Trump a chance to rack up a huge lead in delegates even if he wins individual states with a plurality of the vote.  

Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) thinks the Republican presidential primary field will start narrowing on its own as donor support begins to dry up for struggling candidates. 

“I think by then the field’s going to naturally … narrow down. I think a lot of people are going to be out of money well before that date,” he said of the Feb. 26 target set by Romney. “In theory it would be nice if you could have some control about all that.” 

But Thune cautioned “it’s hard to tell somebody they have to end their campaign.” 

Thune said it was “a much bigger field” in 2016 and the “dynamics were different” because Republicans were running for an “open seat” after President Barack Obama’s two terms in office. 

But he acknowledged that “a lot of the people who are in” the 2024 presidential primary “are all folks who are wanting to be the anti-Trump.” 

“If they want somebody to be the anti-Trump, then they’re probably going to have get behind somebody, drop out of the race and get behind somebody who actually has a shot,” he said. 

Murray to GOP lawmaker who cursed at teen pages: ‘Learn to respect others, especially kids’

Posted on (Updated by Julia Shapero

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) criticized the Republican lawmaker who cursed at a group of teenage Senate pages Thursday, suggesting that he should “learn to respect others, especially kids.”

“My message to the Senate Pages: This is one of the most amazing experiences you’ll ever have. Take it in. Learn a lot. And of course, have fun,” Murray posted on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

“My message to out-of-line Members of Congress who yell at Senate Pages: Learn to respect others, especially kids,” she added.

Early Thursday morning, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) yelled at the pages — a group of 16- and 17-year-olds who assist Senate operations — as they rested in the Capitol rotunda.

“Wake the f‑‑‑ up you little s‑‑‑‑. … What the f‑‑‑ are you all doing? Get the f‑‑‑ out of here," Van Orden said, according to a transcript written out by a page shortly after the incident. "You are defiling the space you [pieces of s‑‑‑],”

“Who the f‑‑‑ are you?” Van Orden asked. When one person responded that they were Senate pages, the Wisconsin Republican said, “I don’t give a f‑‑‑ who you are, get out.”

“You jackasses, get out,” he added.

The Senate pages were resting in the rotunda while the upper chamber worked on National Defense Authorization Act amendments Wednesday night into early Thursday morning. The high school pages generally rest in the area when the Senate works late.

Van Orden defended his actions in a statement to The Hill on Thursday, arguing that the rotunda should be treated with respect.

“The history of the United States Capitol Rotunda, that during the Civil War it was used as a field hospital and countless Union soldiers died on that floor, and they died because they were fighting the Civil War to end slavery. And I think that place should be treated with a tremendous amount of respect for the dead,” he said.

“If anyone had been laying a series of graves in Arlington National Cemetery, what do you think people would say?” he added.

Senate passes annual defense bill, teeing up showdown with House

Posted on (Updated by Al Weaver

The Senate on Thursday night passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), teeing up a looming effort to find a deal on a compromise bill that satisfies the Democratic Senate and Republican House.

Senators voted 86-11 on the bill, which authorizes a topline figure of $886 billion for fiscal 2024, the total that was included in the debt ceiling deal struck between the Biden administration and House Republicans. 

The package passed with little drama after the Senate kicked off consideration of the bill and amendments early last week. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has repeatedly called on the chamber to move the process along in a bipartisan fashion. 

Six Democrats — Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.), Ed Markey (Mass.), Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Peter Welch (Vt.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) — voted against the bill, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Four Republicans also opposed the package: Sens. Mike Braun (Ind.), Mike Lee (Utah), Rand Paul (Ky.) and JD Vance (Ohio).

Schumer was trying to avoid anything resembling what took place in the House, when Republicans passed a version of the bill that included a number of GOP-led provisions, turning the normally bipartisan annual affair into a near-party-line vote.

Among them are items that would block the Pentagon's new policy that covers travel costs for military members who seek abortions, take aim at military diversity programs and bar funding for surgeries and hormone treatments for transgender troops.

“We’ve had an open and constructive amendment process for the NDAA, with both sides … working together in good faith. This is exactly how the process for the NDAA should look: bipartisan [and] cooperative,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday morning. 

“What’s happening in the Senate is a stark contrast to the partisan race to the bottom we saw in the House,” Schumer said, noting that many of the items they included have little chance of being included in a final version later this year. “House Republicans should look to the Senate to see how things get done. … They are throwing on the floor partisan legislation that has no chance of passing. The contrast is glaring.” 

Included in the bill is a 5.2 percent pay increase for military personnel, $9.1 billion for various measures aimed at competitiveness with China and $300 million for Ukraine. 

Schumer on Thursday evening locked in a time agreement in order to finish work as lawmakers were champing at the bit to start the August recess, which will begin Friday and last through Labor Day weekend. 

Senators wrapped up work Thursday and voted on a series of amendments, having OK’d 25 amendments overall for the NDAA. Lawmakers also greenlighted a second manager’s package that includes 49 more amendments. 

While the process went smoothly this time around, the real show will be in the coming months, as both chambers attempt to reconcile the two proposals and pass an overall NDAA package that can emerge through the Senate with the requisite 60 votes. 

Already, things are tilting in the Senate’s direction, as provisions related to abortion and the culture wars are expected to be watered down. A final bill will need to be nailed down by the time members leave for Christmas. 

However, the process did not go off without any hitches. An effort led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) to attach an item to give permanent residency to roughly 80,000 Afghans who’ve come to the U.S. following the country’s fall two years ago failed over opposition from top Republicans. 

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) maintained a hold on Klobuchar’s bill, with Senate Republicans arguing that while they support the idea generally, the Minnesota Democrat’s proposal was too broad. Cotton has a bill of his own he is pushing that would create a pathway to residency for Afghan evacuees, but it would hamper the ability of the president to grant humanitarian parole. 

“This is our moment,” Klobuchar said on the Senate floor Wednesday night. “We have had two years to show the world whether or not we’re going to stand with those that stood with us. … The decision we make right now of whether we live up to the covenant we made to our Afghan allies is going to reverberate militarily and diplomatically for longer than any of us will serve in this body,”

One Senate Republican told The Hill that while Klobuchar’s Afghan Adjustment bill was unsuccessful this go-around, a limited version will likely make its way into the final NDAA product later this year. 

‘Shocked’ Schumer issues defense of Senate pages who were cursed at by GOP lawmaker 

Posted on (Updated by Al Weaver

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) took to the floor Thursday to issue a defense of the Senate pages after a House Republican cursed at a number of them late Wednesday night.

Schumer said prior to passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that he was “shocked” by the actions of Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.). The lawmaker yelled multiple obscenities at pages, who are 16- and 17-year olds who assist Senate operations. 

When the Senate works late — as it did Wednesday night on NDAA amendments — pages generally rest nearby in the rotunda. 

“I understand that late last night, a member of the House majority thought it appropriate to curse at some of these young people — these teenagers — in the rotunda. I was shocked when I heard about it, and I am further shocked at his refusal to apologize to these young people,” Schumer said.

“I can’t speak for the House of Representatives, but I do not think that one member’s disrespect is shared by this body, by [Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)] and myself.”

Schumer went on to thank the pages for their assistance, and senators proceeded to give them a standing ovation.

McConnell agreed with Schumer’s defense of the pages, saying afterward on the floor that he would like to “associate myself with the remarks of the majority leader.”

“Everybody on this side of the aisle feels exactly the same way,” McConnell said.

According to a transcript written by a page minutes after the incident and obtained by The Hill, Van Orden called the pages “jackasses” and “pieces of s‑‑‑,” and told them he didn’t “give a f‑‑‑ who you are.”

“Wake the f‑‑‑ up you little s‑‑‑‑. … What the f‑‑‑ are you all doing? Get the f‑‑‑ out of here. You are defiling the space you [pieces of s‑‑‑],” Van Orden said, according to the account provided by the page.

“Who the f‑‑‑ are you?” Van Orden asked, to which one person said they were Senate pages. “I don’t give a f‑‑‑ who you are, get out.”

“You jackasses, get out,” he added.

Van Orden has defended his actions.

“The history of the United States Capitol Rotunda, that during the Civil War it was used as a field hospital and countless Union soldiers died on that floor, and they died because they were fighting the Civil War to end slavery. And I think that place should be treated with a tremendous amount of respect for the dead,” he said.

“If anyone had been laying a series of graves in Arlington National Cemetery, what do you think people would say?”

Hawley on new Trump indictment: ‘We cannot allow this to stand’

Posted on (Updated by Julia Shapero

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) slammed the new charges brought against former President Trump in the case over his handling of classified documents Thursday, arguing that “we cannot allow this to stand.” 

“It’s so brazen right now, what they’re doing,” Hawley said on Fox News. “It is really a subversion of the rule of law. I mean, they’re taking the rule of law, turning it on its head, and we cannot allow this to stand.” 

“The American people are not gonna be safe,” he added. “Our system of government is not gonna be safe if this is gonna be the new standard.”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a superseding indictment Thursday evening, accusing the former president of attempting to delete surveillance footage at his Mar-a-Lago property. It also included an additional Espionage Act charge based on a military document that Trump boasted of having in a 2021 meeting. 

The new indictment added Carlos de Oliveira, the property manager of the Mar-a-Lago resort, as a co-conspirator, accusing him of working with Trump and the former president’s other co-defendant Walt Nauta to try to delete the surveillance footage.

Hawley suggested that the DOJ is now “charging random people” following de Oliveira’s addition to the indictment and claimed that the new charges were brought in order to distract from Hunter Biden’s legal problems.

The plea deal that the president's son had reached with the DOJ over tax and gun charges was put on hold Wednesday, after the federal judge presiding over the case raised concerns about the agreement.

“Is it any coincidence that the DOJ rushes to add these new indictments today, after the Hunter debacle, after their own self-dealing and two-timing is exposed, after they tried to us the true extent of this plea deal,” Hawley said. 

“That gets blown up, and then it’s like, ‘Oh well, we’ve got to go indict Trump on something else,’” he added.

‘Jackasses,’ ‘little s‑‑‑‑’: GOP congressman curses out teenage Senate pages

Posted on (Updated by Al Weaver

Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) is in hot water after he cursed out a group of teenage Senate pages in the Capitol rotunda early Thursday morning. 

According to a transcript written by a page minutes after the incident and obtained by The Hill, Van Orden called the pages “jackasses” and “pieces of s‑‑‑,” and told them he didn’t “give a f‑‑‑ who you are.”

The pages are a group of 16- and 17-year-olds who assist Senate operations, and when the Senate works late — as it did Wednesday night on National Defense Authorization Act amendments — pages generally rest nearby in the rotunda. 

“Wake the f‑‑‑ up you little s‑‑‑‑. … What the f‑‑‑ are you all doing? Get the f‑‑‑ out of here. You are defiling the space you [pieces of s‑‑‑],” Van Orden said, according to the account provided by the page.

“Who the f‑‑‑ are you?” Van Orden asked, to which one person said they were Senate pages. “I don’t give a f‑‑‑ who you are, get out.”

“You jackasses, get out,” he added.

The incident, which occurred just after midnight, outraged members of the upper chamber, with one calling the string of remarks “horrible.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) later on Thursday took to the Senate floor to defend the pages.

“I understand that late last night, a member of the House majority thought it appropriate to curse at some of these young people — these teenagers — in the rotunda. I was shocked when I heard about it, and I am further shocked at his refusal to apologize to these young people,” he said.

“I can’t speak for the House of Representatives, but I do not think that one member’s disrespect is shared by this body, by [Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)] and myself.”

Van Orden did not dispute the exchange and defended his actions when asked by The Hill. 

“The history of the United States Capitol Rotunda, that during the Civil War it was used as a field hospital and countless Union soldiers died on that floor, and they died because they were fighting the Civil War to end slavery. And I think that place should be treated with a tremendous amount of respect for the dead,” he said.

“If anyone had been laying a series of graves in Arlington National Cemetery, what do you think people would say?”

Punchbowl News was the first outlet to report the incident.

This is not the first time Van Orden has flashed his temper. Van Orden reportedly threatened a 17-year-old library page in his home state over a gay pride display and demanded to know who set it up. The page in question had set the display up, and she told her parents she did not feel safe to return to the library for work. 

Mychael Schnell contributed. Updated at 8:20 p.m.

Feinstein told ‘just say aye’ at vote

Posted on (Updated by Al Weaver

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) had what appeared to be a moment of confusion Thursday as she began delivering a speech instead of voting during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. 

During a roll call vote on the defense appropriations bill Thursday morning, Feinstein started to give a speech in support of the measure. Shortly after, a staffer and committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) cut her off, asking her to simply “say aye.”

"I would like to support a yes vote on this, it provides $823 billion. That’s an increase of $26 billion for the Department of Defense and it funds priorities submitted…” Feinstein said as a staffer cut her off and told her, “Just vote ‘Aye.’”

“Just say ‘Aye,’” Murray added.

"Aye," Feinstein said eventually.

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A Feinstein spokesperson attributed the moment to a markup that was "a little chaotic."

"Trying to complete all of the appropriations bills before recess, the committee markup this morning was a little chaotic, constantly switching back and forth between statements, votes, and debate and the order of bills. The senator was preoccupied, didn’t realize debate had just ended and a vote was called. She started to give a statement, was informed it was a vote and then cast her vote," the spokesperson said.

Feinstein, 90, announced earlier this year that she will not run for another term in office and subsequently missed more than two months of work as she recovered from a serious case of shingles.

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She has been back at work consistently in recent months and has been using a wheelchair to get around the Capitol complex.

However, Feinstein has had multiple visible instances of confusion. Earlier this year, she told reporters only moments after announcing her 2024 plans that she had not decided or made public whether to seek another term. And shortly after returning to the Capitol, she told reporters, "I haven’t been gone. I’ve been working.”

Updated at 2:49 p.m.

Warren, Graham partner in proposing new agency to regulate tech giants

Posted on (Updated by Rebecca Klar

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) are teaming up on legislation to create a new agency that would have the power to regulate tech giants.

The bipartisan Digital Consumer Protection Commission Act, unveiled Thursday, would create an agency charged with oversight of Meta, Google, Amazon and other large tech companies and seek to promote industry competition and consumer privacy online.

The commission would work alongside the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ), the agencies that currently operate as antitrust enforcers, according to the bill.

The legislation would also set regulations in place requiring “dominant platforms” to be licensed and allow for licenses to be removed for repeated anticompetitive and anti-consumer conduct violations.

The bill is the latest effort from Congress to rein in the power of tech giants.

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Last year, two bipartisan antitrust reform bills advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee — the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and the Open App Markets Act — but failed to make it to the floor for a vote. Companion bills that advanced out of the House Judiciary Committee also failed to advance to a full floor vote. 

Warren and Graham’s proposal seeks to target tech regulation more broadly by creating a commission specifically tasked with oversight of the booming industry.

The legislation would also grant the new commission with oversight over how to respond to emerging risks, including from artificial intelligence (AI) — an area where lawmakers and regulators have been scrambling to understand and put rules in place.

“Enough is enough. It’s time to rein in Big Tech. And we can’t do it with a law that only nibbles around the edges of the problem,” the senators wrote in a joint op-ed published in The New York Times on Thursday. 

“Piecemeal efforts to stop abusive and dangerous practices have failed. Congress is too slow, it lacks the tech expertise, and the army of Big Tech lobbyists can pick off individual efforts easier than shooting fish in a barrel. Meaningful change — the change worth engaging every member of Congress to fight for — is structural,” they added. 

Lawmakers have long faced an uphill climb when pursuing tech reforms, with the industry launching massive lobbying campaigns targeting congressional legislation.

At the same time, Republicans leading the House have focused their tech agenda on content moderation battles rather than advancing bills aimed at reining in the market power of Big Tech.

For Warren, her proposal with Graham is the second time the progressive firebrand has recently joined forces with a colleague across the aisle. Last month, Warren joined Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) to put forward a bill that targets failed bank executives with harsher penalties.

Senate moves closer to finishing Defense Authorization bill 

Posted on (Updated by Al Weaver

The Senate on Wednesday inched closer to wrapping up work on its version of the annual defense policy package as lawmakers push to complete their work by Thursday night and leave for their month-long recess.

Senators voted on three amendments on Wednesday evening to close in on finishing work on the National Defense Authorization Act. They are also expecting a late night on Thursday, with eight additional amendment votes slated as they rush towards the recess finish line. 

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told The Hill that lawmakers “could be” needed to stick around until Friday to officially finish up, pointing to a number of “odds and ends.” Those include a second manager’s package of amendments that members are trying to put to bed and a “handful of outstanding requests we have from members.” 

“It’s just a lot of moving parts,” Thune said, adding that the intelligence authorization package is also an item senators have to pass. He added to reporters later on that the process is “trending well.”

The Senate opened consideration of the NDAA last week and has tried to keep the package on the bipartisan rails that did not exist in the House. House Republicans passed an NDAA bill on their own that included a number of provisions related to the “culture war.”

“I’ve said repeatedly that the NDAA is an opportunity for the Senate to show we can work on the biggest issues facing our country through bipartisanship, cooperation, honest debate,” Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor. “That’s what we have seen play out so far here on the floor: bipartisanship.”

“The NDAA process in this chamber is a welcome departure from the contentious, chaotic, and partisan race-to-the-bottom we saw in the House,” he added.

The end-of-the-week process is not expected to be completely smooth sailing though. One stumbling block could come in the form of a push by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) for an amendment vote on a measure to give permanent residency to roughly 80,000 Afghans who’ve come to the U.S. following the country’s fall two years ago.

According to three Senate Republicans, the bill could potentially create issues completing the NDAA process as Klobuchar demands a vote. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) a supporter of her bill, told The Hill that he has heard Klobuchar is prepared to hold up the NDAA in the absence of a vote. However, it is considered an uphill climb for her to get a vote.

“It looks difficult to me,” Moran said. “It could be [a stumbling block.]” 

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a Senate Armed Services Committee member, added that colleagues are attempting to find a resolution later on and are committed to working with her to tailor the legislation as detractors believe its current language is too broad. 

“Sen. Klobuchar has worked hard at it, but so far the language she has presented is challenging for a number of reasons,” Rounds said. “We just don’t think the legislation as it’s currently written is going to get the job done.” 

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) has held up her bill as he has competing legislation that is more limited in scope. 

Overall, senators have passed 16 amendments to the NDAA. 

Lawmakers earlier in the week overwhelmingly passed a couple of bipartisan amendments aimed at increasing U.S. competitiveness with China. Two votes held on Tuesday won 91 votes each: one to boost transparency of investments by American entities in sensitive technologies in adversarial nations, and another blacklisting China from purchasing U.S. farmland

Those overwhelming votes earned praise from Schumer, who hailed the ability for members to “unite” to take on the Chinese. 

“It’s not often that 91 Senators can unite on a single measure, let alone two measures,” Schumer added.

Another amendment voted on early on Wednesday pushed by Sens. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) aimed at halting the harassment of our military members by debt collectors passed 95 to 4.

None of the three amendments considered on Wednesday night won the needed 60 votes to get attached to the bill. Headlining that group was one by Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that would have greenlit $10 million for an office to provide full-time Ukraine oversight. It failed 50 to 49. 

A side-by-side amendment pushed by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) that was related to the Ukraine bill failed by a wide margin. In addition, Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) amendment that would have reinstated service members who were booted from the military because they did not get the COVID-19 vaccine also was not adopted.

Once the Senate passes its NDAA version, the upper and lower chambers will have to meet to come up with a compromise bill. That legislation is highly likely not to include any of the partisan provisions or will include watered down versions of them in order to win support of at least 60 senators.