The Hill’s Morning Report — Conservatives give Speaker Johnson breathing room — for now

by Kristina Karisch - 10/30/23 6:36 AM ET

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With a Speaker once again leading the House, Congress will spend this week addressing the looming government shutdown deadline, while also considering aid for Israel and Ukraine.

As the appropriations process kicks back into gear, newly minted Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) can let out a small sigh of relief as he dives into a whirlwind of pressing policy matters: Hard-line conservatives are signaling they could give him some breathing room on fiscal issues — for now.

“I’m trying to give the Speaker a little time to get his footing,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said when asked about the House Freedom Caucus’s spending demands.

Disputes about spending roiled the House GOP conference all year and contributed to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) ouster early this month. It started with negotiations about raising the debt limit this summer, resulting in aggressive tactics to lower overall top-line spending levels in the House’s regular appropriations bills — which are already marked up at lower levels than the Senate versions — and ended with outrage about McCarthy moving to pass a stopgap funding measure with Democratic support in order to avoid a shutdown.

But after Republicans remained paralyzed for three weeks as they squabbled over who should replace McCarthy, a number of hardliners now recognize some of their original plans are no longer feasible, The Hill’s Emily Brooks and Mychael Schnell report. Johnson has floated passing a continuing resolution to fund the government until January 15 or April 15. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), another Freedom Caucus member, said that he would be okay with that.

“He deserves some time to do it,” Norman said. “We lost three weeks.”

▪ The Hill: Johnson says he “isn’t afraid” of changing the rule on vacating the Speakership.

▪ Vox: “Lord of the Flies”: The House’s chaotic next era, explained.

▪ The Hill: Johnson faces a steep climb to fill McCarthy’s fundraising void.

▪ The Hill: The Memo: Johnson’s views on abortion, LGBTQ issues could weigh down the GOP.

“A LOT OF WORK AHEAD OF US”: In addition to the government funding deadline, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Johnson are headed for a showdown over emergency funding for Ukraine, and the two issues will test their ability to work together. McConnell says he wants to keep military aid to Ukraine and Israel tied together because he views those conflicts as part of a larger global threat. Johnson says he wants to “bifurcate” the issues of Ukraine and Israel, and he has signaled early support for a stopgap funding bill that would include steep cuts to nondefense spending, which Democrats say would have no chance of passing the Senate.

The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports Johnson has also proposed offsetting $14 billion in aid to Israel with other spending cuts, an idea that will be controversial with Senate Republicans and Democrats alike. Johnson on Sunday said a standalone bill for Israel aid will come to the House floor this week, sending an indication that President Biden’s request for aid to Ukraine will be further delayed. Johnson, along with other congressional leaders, met with Biden last week at the White House, where he suggested the president break up the $100 billion supplementary budget request between aid for Ukraine and Israel given the overall consensus of House Republicans, some of whom have questioned further aid to Kyiv (The Hill).

McConnell highlighted the challenges ahead, telling his Senate colleagues “we have a lot of work ahead of us” and urging House and Senate Republicans to “work together on a number of urgent priorities.”

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

▪ On “60 Minutes,” Vice President Harris spoke about the Biden administration’s efforts to balance Israel’s need to retaliate against Hamas with the urgent need to get relief to the Palestinian people.

▪ The United Auto Workers (UAW) union struck a tentative agreement to end their strike against Stellantis Saturday just days after agreeing to a similar deal with Ford. Now all eyes are on the third major automaker — General Motors.

▪ China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Sunday the “road to the San Francisco summit will not be a smooth one,” in a reference to an expected meeting between President Xi Jinping and Biden on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in November.

LEADING THE DAY

Backed by tanks and aircraft, Israeli troops continued to press into the Gaza Strip today after a weekend of intense bombing. The Israel Defense Forces said it had struck over 600 “terror targets” in Gaza over the past few days, including weapons depots and anti-tank missile launching positions. Bombs have hit as close to 200 feet from Al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City, where thousands of people are sheltering despite Israeli evacuation orders, a spokesperson for the Palestine Red Crescent Society told NBC News. Staff have warned that evacuating patients from the site would be impossible.

ON SUNDAY, NEARLY THREE DOZEN AID TRUCKS ENTERED GAZA in the largest convoy since the war between Israel and Hamas began, but humanitarian workers said the assistance still fell desperately short of the community’s needs. Thousands of people broke into warehouses over the weekend to take flour and basic hygiene products, and Gazans resorted to using sea water to bathe and clean their clothes.

Communications were restored to much of the enclave early Sunday after most contact was knocked out Friday during an Israeli bombardment described by residents as the most intense of the war, cutting Gaza’s 2.3 million residents off from the rest of the world (The Associated Press). After Israel shut off communications, the U.S. pressured the Israeli government to switch them back on, a senior U.S. official told The Washington Post.

“We made it clear they had to be turned back on,” the official said, adding that the Israelis did not give a reason why they had caused a near-total blackout. “The communications are back on. They need to stay back on.”

▪ Bloomberg News: Israel deepens a war with Hamas that has no end in sight.

▪ Reuters: Israel shows images of tanks in Gaza as war on Hamas militants deepens.

▪ The New York Times: 34 hours of fear: the blackout that cut Gaza off from the world. As Israeli forces entered Gaza on Friday to fight Hamas, phone and internet service was severed, sowing chaos for Palestinian civilians and leaving rescuers driving blindly toward explosions.

According to the Gaza Health Ministry, the death toll among Palestinians has passed 8,000, mostly women and minors, as Israeli tanks and infantry pursued what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called a “second stage” in the war ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7 incursion. The toll is without precedent in decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Over 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during the initial attack.

Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari said Sunday that more troops had entered Gaza as part of Israel’s ground invasion over the weekend, as Hamas’s military arm said it was engaged in clashes with Israeli forces in the far north of the enclave. The precise number of soldiers operating in the territory since Friday remained unclear, but Hagari said that it was “gradually expanding the ground activity and the scope of our forces,” and that they were “progressing through the stages of the war according to plan” (The New York Times).

Netanyahu and Biden spoke Sunday morning about efforts to locate and secure the release of more than 220 Israeli hostages and about efforts to “significantly increase” the flow of humanitarian assistance into Gaza. Biden reiterated the right of Israel to protect itself, but also “underscored the need to do so in a manner consistent with international humanitarian law that prioritizes the protection of civilians,” according to a White House summary of the call (The Hill).

▪ The Hill: Biden briefed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Sunday about the United States’s efforts to avoid escalating conflicts in the Middle East.

▪ Vox: The world will see this as Biden’s war. While the Israeli military is carrying out this attack, much of the world views Israel’s assault on Gaza as enabled by the United States.

▪ The Hill: Netanyahu apologized Sunday after appearing to blame the country’s security establishment for Hamas’s deadly attacks inside Israel this month.

THE U.S. IS “PREPARED” TO SUPPORT A HUMANITARIAN PAUSE in the fighting between Israel and Hamas in an effort to free the hostages, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday. ABC’s Martha Raddatz asked Sullivan on “This Week” how Israel can both eliminate Hamas and secure the release of the more than 200 hostages being held in Gaza by the group. Sullivan reiterated that there are “ongoing efforts” to secure the freedom of those hostages, some believed to be Americans.

Sullivan also said the “risk” of the Israel-Hamas war escalating into a wider regional conflict is “real,” vowing the U.S. will continue to respond to attacks from Iran proxies to deter the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East. His comments come just days after U.S. fighter jets struck two facilities in eastern Syria used by Iran and its proxies following attacks against U.S. troops in the region.

Defense officials told reporters Biden ordered U.S. military forces to carry out “self-defense airstrikes” on a weapons storage facility and an ammunition storage area used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (The Hill).

Speaking to CBS’s Margaret Brennan on “Face The Nation,” Sullivan said the end game in Gaza is “ultimately” up to Israel as it escalates its operations into the territory without a clear military objective on what it seeks to accomplish aside from the eradication of Hamas.

“Well, they have declared they have told us in broad terms that making sure that Hamas can never again threaten Israel in the way it threatened Israel before is their core strategic objective in this conflict,” he said. “But in terms of what the specific milestones are, that is something that ultimately is up to Israel, this is their military operation, they will make that decision.”

WHERE AND WHEN

The House meets at noon for a pro forma session.

The Senate convenes at 3 p.m. to resume consideration of the nomination of Matthew Maddox to be a U.S. District Court judge for the District of Maryland.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 11 a.m. with the vice president. He and the vice president will participate in a White House artificial intelligence (AI) event at 2:30 p.m. At 5:30 p.m., the president and first lady Jill Biden will host trick-or-treaters along the South Lawn.

The vice president will participate in the AI event with the president. At 3:30 p.m., she will ceremonially swear in the President’s Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement in the United States.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will speak at the Award for Corporate Excellence ceremony at 11 a.m. at the State Department. At 1:30 p.m., he will meet with Nepali Foreign Minister Narayan Prakash Saud.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff will meet with members of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations at 2:15 p.m. at the Department of Education to discuss the uptick in instances of antisemitism at schools and on college campuses following the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona will also attend.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 3 p.m.; NSC spokesperson John Kirby will attend.

ZOOM IN

POLITICS & CAMPAIGNS

Just over a year out from the 2024 presidential election, the Republican primary field is narrowing. Former Vice President Mike Pence announced Saturday that he is suspending his campaign for the presidency. The former Indiana governor said that while he’s leaving the campaign trail, he will “never stop fighting to elect principled Republican leaders to every office in the land.”

“We always knew this would be an uphill battle but I have no regrets,” Pence added. “The only thing that would have been harder than coming up short would have been if we’d never tried at all.”

Pence exits the crowded GOP field led by his ex-running mate, former President Trump, after struggling to pull ahead of his fellow Republican candidates battling to get closer to the frontrunner. Pence, who had been a Trump cheerleader throughout the administration, broke with the former president after their 2020 election loss. The former vice president stood out on the party’s first presidential debate stage in Milwaukee back in August, but regularly polled in the single-digits as the cycle warmed up (The Hill and NBC News).

Trump, who defended his supporters chanting “Hang Mike Pence” during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, spoke about the former vice president at a campaign event Saturday night shortly after Pence announced the suspension of his campaign (Rolling Stone).

“People are leaving [the race] now, and they’re all endorsing me,” Trump said in Las Vegas. “I don’t know about Mike Pence. He should endorse me. You know why? Because I had a great successful presidency, and he was the vice president, he should endorse me. I chose him, made him vice president. But… people in politics can be very disloyal. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

▪ The New York Times analysis: The devil’s bargain Pence could not escape. The former vice president tied himself to Trump in the 2016 campaign and it may have cost him a political future.

▪ Politico: The stage was set for the non-Trump field. He stole the show.

Pence’s exit from the GOP primary race winnows the field of White House hopefuls battling to get closer to Trump, leaving those who supported his bid to look toward other candidates. One rising Republican campaign star is former South Carolina Gov. and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, whose ascendence is already reshaping the GOP’s longshot undercard race to overtake Trump. Other GOP contenders had their moments in the spotlight. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, was an instant frontrunner before backsliding. Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) was once the talk of the donor class, and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy had a moment in the spotlight after the first debate.

“She’s breaking through at the right moment,” Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist, told Politico about Haley. “Everything else has been ridiculous preseason coverage, like baseball teams at summer training … I think it all starts now.”

Haley took digs at Trump’s friendliness to foreign dictators in a speech Saturday at the Republican Jewish Coalition annual summit. The former president is facing backlash for criticizing Netanyahu for not being prepared ahead of Oct. 7 when Hamas entered the country in a surprise attack. Trump also called the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah “very smart.”

“As president, I will not compliment Hezbollah nor will I criticize Israel’s Prime Minister in the middle of a tragedy and war,” Haley said, referring to Trump’s controversial comments in recent weeks. “We have no time for personal vendettas,” she added. “I will also not compliment Chinese communist President Xi nor will I call North Korea’s Kim Jong Un my friend.”

2024 ROUNDUP

▪ Trump now leads his nearest Republican rivals by nearly 30 points in Iowa, with two-thirds of likely GOP caucusgoers dismissing the severity of the legal challenges he faces, according to the second NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll.

▪ A new congressional map in North Carolina could set multiple House seats up to flip in Republicans’ favor, dealing a blow to Democrats heading into 2024.

▪ Republicans are watching eagerly as primary challenges — most recently Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) — pile up against Biden, hoping the Democratic infighting and agitation about his candidacy will weaken his stature in November.

▪ Some Democrats worry Phillips’s bid is injecting further uncertainty into a race that already includes two other Democratic primary challengers and several independent candidates, which could splinter off votes for Biden.

▪ The fight over abortion in Ohio will test whether vulnerable Democrats can turn public support for abortion rights into campaign victories — even if the elections are a year apart.

▪ Democrats are seeking to make Johnson a boogeyman going into next year’s general election, citing his conservative voting record in the House.

ELSEWHERE

TRUMP WORLD

Trump is set to testify Nov. 6 at his New York civil fraud trial, following his three eldest children to the witness stand in a case that threatens to disrupt their family’s real estate empire. The schedule sets up a blockbuster stretch in the trial of New York Attorney General Letitia James’s (D) lawsuit, that alleges Trump overstated his wealth for years on financial statements that were given to banks, insurers and others to help secure loans and deals (NPR).

The former president endured a series of legal setbacks in recent days, underscoring the mounting risks he faces as his various legal cases intensify. Trump took the stand in his New York civil fraud trial this week, sworn in as a witness for unexpected testimony to respond to allegations he violated a gag order by making a comment about the judge’s clerk while complaining about the ongoing trial.

In Georgia, Trump’s former attorney Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty in a case revolving around efforts to overturn the election — the fourth of Trump’s co-defendants in the sprawling racketeering and election case to do so. And in the federal case that Trump sought to overturn the election, reporting this week indicates Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows was granted immunity to testify before grand jurors, a sign of the wealth of evidence prosecutors may have gathered in the case. A separate gag order in the federal trial was reinstated Sunday, reimposing restrictions on what Trump can say about witnesses and prosecutors (The New York Times).

Together, the developments showcase the mounting pressure on Trump.

“Between the Meadows news and Jenna Ellis striking a plea deal, it definitely was a bad day for Trump but a good day for democracy,” Sarah Matthews, a former Trump aide who testified at a hearing for the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riots, said in an interview (The Hill).

▪ The Hill: A look inside the courtroom where Trump’s tensions with Cohen exploded.

▪ The Hill: Cohen says he “felt absolutely nothing” when facing Trump at the New York fraud trial.

▪ CNN analysis: In court, Trump is forced to play by the rules and doesn’t like it.

© The Associated Press / Matt Rourke | Members of the New Apostolic Church sing and pray at a makeshift memorial outside a bowling alley, in Lewiston, Me., the site of one of this week’s mass shootings, on Sunday.

STATE WATCH

FAMILIES GRIEVING THEIR LOVED ONES IN MAINE are also grappling with unanswered questions after police found the body of the U.S. Army reservist who authorities say carried out the deadliest mass shooting in the United States this year.

Authorities found the body of Robert Card, 40, Friday evening inside a recycling facility box trailer about 10 miles from Lewiston, where 18 people were killed and 13 others were wounded in shootings at a bowling alley and a restaurant on Wednesday. The Lewiston community is finally able to mourn after a 48-hour manhunt that closed down schools and kept residents behind locked doors. Elizabeth Seal, wife of Joshua Seal who was killed in the shootings, told CNN she is still processing the fact the shooter is dead.

“I wanted him to be apprehended. I wanted to ask questions that will not be answered,” she said, speaking through an American Sign Language interpreter. “Why did you do this? What was the motive? Why would you hurt so many families?”

▪ The New York Times: The Maine gunman disclosed he had mental health issues, a local gun shop owner said.

▪ CBS News: Who are the victims of the Maine mass shooting? A father and teenage son among the dead.

▪ Portland Press-Herald: An official from the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention arrived in Lewiston Sunday night to lend support for the community and ensure federal resources are available.

🏫 CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM AMONG U.S. STUDENTS has nearly doubled since before the pandemic, The Hill’s Lexi Lonas reports, and experts fear plummeting test scores and soaring learning loss will be impossible to correct without fixing it. New data released on the Return 2 Learn Tracker from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) shows chronic absenteeism, defined as students missing more than 10 percent of the school year, went from 15 percent in 2018 to 29 percent in 2022. Chronic absenteeism has become such an extensive problem that the White House released a statement last month outlining its concerns and steps officials are taking.

“Ultimately, whether chronic absenteeism is a symptom or a cause — or both — of ongoing academic disruption, the evidence is clear that the road to recovery runs through the classroom,” the Biden administration said.

❄️ DITCH THE SCARVES: While parts of the Northwest have already weathered their first winter storm this past week, that multi-foot blast of snow was not necessarily a sign of what’s to come this season. With an El Niño climate pattern already firmly in place, the northern portion of the U.S. will likely be basking in warmer-than-average temperatures this winter, according to a recent U.S. Winter Outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But The Hill’s Sharon Udasin writes that for much of the West, the upcoming winter forecast is a coin flip.

OPINION

■ Maine’s mass shooting should change America’s gun culture, by Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP, Bloomberg Opinion.

■ Labor wins bolster Biden’s strategy, by Jennifer Rubin, columnist, The Washington Post.

THE CLOSER

And finally … 🎃 Spooky Season is upon us, and the White House is getting into the spirit. Biden and the first lady will host local public school students, military-connected children and neighborhood families today for trick-or-treating along the South Lawn up to the much-decorated South Portico. The event features costumed characters, candy and plenty of other treats.

Halloween has been celebrated at the White House since the mid-20th century, according to the White House Historical Association; the Bidens hosted their first White House Halloween in 2022, and the first lady dressed up in butterfly wings and a purple wig.

▪ New York Daily News: Halloween in the White House throughout the decades.

▪ Insider: Here are eight of the best Halloween costumes worn by presidents and first families.

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