With 2 days left until the government goes into a shutdown, a funding plan negotiated by congressional leaders behind closed doors collapsed last night after President-elect Donald Trump came out in opposition to the package.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said leadership was looking at other options.
This was only one day after Congressional leadership released the $100 billion legislation that would keep the government open until March 14—called a continuing resolution (CR) in Washington-speak, hedging off a shutdown set to begin on Saturday. It includes a series of more controversial funding measures related to health, agriculture, emergency aid, and many others.
In a joint statement with Vice President-elect JD Vance, Trump said that the 1,547-page proposal “would give sweetheart provisions for government censors.”
“The bill would make it easier to hide the records of the corrupt January 6 committee—which accomplished nothing for the American people and hid security failures that happened that day. This bill would also give Congress a pay increase while many Americans are struggling this Christmas,” the statement reads.
The statement includes an ultimatum for Republicans, calling on them to use the opportunity to raise the debt ceiling now rather than pushing the issue off until next year when the current debt ceiling is expected to run out.
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Democrats have historically been more likely to support debt ceiling increases, which are deeply unpopular with Republicans.
If the issue is left until the next Congress, when Republicans will have a majority in both chambers, it could give Democrats leverage to force concessions from the Trump administration.
Trump also emphasized his opposition to replacing the current funding package with a “clean” CR, saying in a post on Truth Social that such a CR “will be so destructive to our country.”
“All it will do ... is bring the mess of the Debt Limit into the Trump Administration, rather than allowing it to take place in the Biden Administration. Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this should, and will, be Primaried,” he wrote.
That creates a series of new headaches for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and other congressional leaders, as lawmakers hoped to get government funding dealt with quickly before the upcoming winter recess, set to stretch through all of next week.
Compounding the difficulties, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has taken a hard stance against replacing the original agreement.
“House Republicans have been ordered to shut down the government,” Jeffries said in a post on X. “You break the bipartisan agreement, you own the consequences that follow.”
That suggests Democrats are open to refusing any alternatives that are put forward.
Still, Trump’s opposition to the proposal all but guarantees that the bill—already facing strong GOP pushback—will be withdrawn, leaving the next steps unclear.
Negotiating a deal on the debt ceiling with just around 36 hours left until a shutdown would be a nearly impossible task even if Democrats were open to the idea—and given how much leverage the issue could give them over policy in the coming months, Democrats may not be willing to cooperate.
The next steps on the CR remain unclear, and Johnson has been silent since Trump spoke out against the plan.
—Joseph Lord
GORKA ON TRUMP'S FOREIGN POLICY
Rather than pursuing a strictly interventionist or isolationist foreign policy, President-elect Donald Trump may be deliberately choosing a middle-ground approach. Sebastian Gorka, who is set to serve as a policy adviser in the new administration, has asserted Trump is practicing a foreign policy method that Gorka has termed “surgical strength.”
In a Dec. 17 interview with Epoch TV’s “American Thought Leaders,” Gorka said this “surgical strength” strategy has seen Trump order brief but spectacular shows of force to convey his interests on the world stage without entangling the United States in larger conflicts.
Gorka said one such example of Trump’s “surgical strength” method came during the 2018 Battle of Khasham in Syria. Instead of protracted discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin about diplomatic red-lines, Trump quickly authorized strikes on Russian mercenaries encroaching on U.S. outposts in the country.
“When he heard that 300 Russian mercenaries were running around the Middle East, he didn’t say, ‘Don’t do that, Putin.’ He ordered the then-secretary of defense to kill them all,” Gorka said.
Rather than cite these 2018 strikes as justification for a direct conflict with the United States, Russian officials downplayed their losses and have avoided direct clashes with U.S. forces in Syria.
While Gorka has positioned Trump’s past foreign policy actions as part of a deliberate strategy, questions surround how Trump will handle a variety of challenges ahead, including the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
In a Dec. 16 op-ed in Foreign Affairs, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised Trump’s first-term moves to begin supplying Ukraine with weapons, and for ordering strikes on Russian mercenary forces during the Battle of Khasham. Still, McConnell argued some of Trump’s actions have fueled doubts about America’s willingness to support its allies abroad
McConnell argued Trump should reject isolationism and place renewed emphasis on U.S. military primacy.
—Ryan Morgan
BOOKMARKS
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear TikTok’s challenge to a law requiring its parent company, based in China, to divest itself of the platform. President Joe Biden signed legislation earlier this year giving parent company ByteDance until Jan. 19, 2025, to divest, but TikTok has appealed on First Amendment grounds.
The 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed the Senate 85–14 on Dec. 18, and is headed to President Biden’s desk to be signed into law. The $895.2 billion package includes pay raises for service members, and contains a provision barring the military’s medical plan from funding gender transition surgeries for their minor dependents.
California will have the authority to ban new gas-powered cars by 2035, following two legal waivers granted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Dec. 18. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to overturn the waivers in January when he assumes office.
Theresa Higdon spends two days a week from 7:30 a.m to 3 p.m. investigating “cold cases,” unsolved murders that are sometimes decades old. She is one of four volunteers sleuthing with the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Bureau in Prescott, Arizona.
—Stacy Robinson
