Morning Report — No shutdown. Now what?

by Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch - 01/19/24 6:26 AM ET

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of D-N.Y., left, talks at a news conference after a policy luncheon on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

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Let the record show that a partial government shutdown was averted Thursday, in part because of an ominous winter weather forecast, plus Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) decision to buck his right flank, lean on Democrats for a fast-track process and send a bill to President Biden’s desk hours after the Senate acted and more than a day ahead of a deadline.

Stormy weather, which leery lawmakers always see as an impediment to leaving town, dumped snow in the nation’s capital this morning. Johnson’s icy reception from fellow conservatives has been piling up, too.

Johnson had to rely on Democratic support after conservatives criticized the Senate-passed measure for what it saw as too little border security reform and too much in overall spending. Two Democrats — Reps. Jake Auchincloss (Mass.) and Illinois’s Mike Quigley, a leader of the Ukraine caucus— voted against the measure. Quigley was opposed last year, too.

Asked if there will be consequences for Johnson after adoption of a third continuing resolution this year, House Freedom Caucus leader Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) responded: “We’ll see.”

Good’s conservative colleagues have vowed since last year to try to block stopgap funding measures while working to wrestle deep spending cuts into law.

The Hill: The Speaker’s challenge among his colleagues on the right is real. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is already warning, in no uncertain terms, that she’ll file a motion to strip Johnson of his gavel if he brings a Senate-negotiated Ukraine-border bill to the floor.

The upshot is that funding for federal departments and agencies extends until March 1 and March 8, which is viewed as a necessary extension that’s helpful to appropriators and reassuring to Americans, financial markets and national political candidates. In other words, House and Senate members applied a legislative Band-Aid to spending decisions to last another seven weeks.

The pressure points for lawmakers by early March, their next deadline, may be Super Tuesday’s GOP contests on March 5 and Biden’s State of the Union address from inside the Capitol on March 7.

The Senate vote midday Thursday was 77-18. House passage followed in the afternoon by 314-108.

“It’s precisely what Americans want to see: both sides working together and governing responsibly. No chaos, no spectacle, no shutdown,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer(D-N.Y.) said after the vote.

The mention of “chaos” echoed a word used to criticize former President Trump on the GOP presidential campaign trail. Trump wants Republican lawmakers to sidestep any horse trading with Biden on border security, which has become a point of leverage for House Republicans who know the president and his party — and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — among other Senate conservatives, are open to a compromise that can toughen immigration law and deliver supplemental funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan at the same time. The House GOP is hardening its stance against Ukraine aid.

Even if Republicans capture the White House and Senate majority after November, McConnell and Senate GOP Whip John Thune (S.D.) argue that Trump, if nominated and elected, would be unable to move reforms through Congress that are tougher than those under bipartisan discussion now — because of Democrats’ influence using the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold, reports The Hill’s Alexander Bolton.

Do Republicans in Congress want the issue or new law? History suggests that politics pauses policy, especially when Trump’s say-so over immigration carries hefty election-year weight. It remains to be seen.

“You have to make hard choices sometimes in politics and in life,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a close McConnell ally, told CNN when asked about House Republican insistence on immigration changes included in a House bill rather than what’s in a developing Senate proposal.“And here the question is, ‘Do you want to get something that will help us stem the tide of humanity coming across the border and drugs? Or do you want to get nothing?’” Cornyn added.

▪ The Hill: A potential tax deal in Congress faces obstacles as a crucial markup looms.

▪ The New York Times: House GOP wrapped up impeachment hearings targeting Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday without his public testimony.

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

▪ Japan wants to join an exclusive lunar club by getting to the moon early Saturday with the world’s first “pinpoint landing.”

▪ Biden touts statistics with voters to argue that his policies deliver for everyday Americans. An additional 74,000 student loan borrowers received debt cancellation, for a total of more than 3.7 million beneficiaries, he said in a statement today. The president, who promotes energy efficient EVs, added this morning that the government is funding additional publicly available electric vehicle chargers nationwide, for a total of 170,000 chargers publicly available to date. (By the way, the EV share of the total U.S. vehicle market was 7.6 percent last year. Solidly blue California leads all other states.)

▪ Chronic absenteeism is a national concern, according to a new federal survey of school attendance.

“CASCADING FAILURES”: The Justice Department reported Thursday in 600 detailed pages the lack of preparation, communication and failures by law enforcement officers in Uvalde, Texas, who responded in 2022 to a mass shooting that left 19 children and two adults dead at Robb Elementary School.

“I hope that the failures end today,” said Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter Lexi Rubio was killed in the shooting. “My child, our children are named in this report because they are dead.” Of the officers who failed, she said: “They should be named.”

The Hill: Five takeaways from the DOJ’s scathing Uvalde report.

LEADING THE DAY

POLITICS

The lead-up to Tuesday’s New Hampshire Republican primary will be without some of the usual fanfare after major news networks canceled their Granite State debates Wednesday following former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s announcement she would only debate Biden or Trump. The former president has not participated in any GOP primary debate, preferring rallies, town halls and friendly interviews. That left networks with only one candidate on the debate stage, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and consequently no debates.

DESANTIS PUSHED BACK against the idea that he’s “skipping” the New Hampshire contest to focus instead on South Carolina’s February primary. The Republican presidential candidate sparked headlines about a new game plan in the South with plans to campaign this weekend in the Palmetto State along with a shift of some staff members.

“I had the morning available. And yeah, we were planning to maybe sleep in and rest. So, I’m like, ‘You know what? Let’s use that time,’” DeSantis told Fox News’s Alexis McAdams. “So we went to South Carolina, knocked out a couple events and then did what we were planning to do in New Hampshire. That was somehow caricatured as ‘skipping’ New Hampshire when it wasn’t. It was adding South Carolina in addition to that.”

The Hawkeye State results have raised questions about DeSantis’s campaign as the nominating contest moves to New Hampshire, where Haley and Trump are both polling well ahead of DeSantis and the Florida governor has become an afterthought, tumbling into the single digits in public polls and expected to finish a distant third. Many Republicans have questioned the viability of DeSantis’s candidacy, anticipating a string of defeats in upcoming states (The Hill and The Washington Post).

Politico: DeSantis said he regrets his anti-media strategy: “I should have gone on everything.”

HALEY IS CHASING INDEPENDENTS in the Granite State, but they have a mind of their own. Her chance to beat Trump in New Hampshire depends on her ability to win over its famously freethinking voters. Her challenge? They come in all stripes — and many aren’t open to her. A new poll from Saint Anselm College showed Trump leading Haley by 65 percent support to 25 percent among likely Republican voters in the state, while she beat him among unaffiliated voters by a considerably narrower margin, 52 percent to 37 percent (The New York Times).

The former South Carolina governor said during a Thursday CNN town hall that her goal on Tuesday is to “be strong,” but stopped short of saying she needs to defeat Trump.

“What I want to do is be strong. We won’t know what strong looks like until those numbers come in,” she said at New England College in Henniker, N.H. Haley said her “personal goal is to do better than we did in Iowa,” where she finished in third place, 32 points behind Trump and 2 points behind DeSantis.

BIDEN BASHED TRUMP’S COMMENTS about the economy Thursday, saying the former president doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he says he expects the U.S. economy to crash. Trump recently said that if there is an economic crash, he hopes it is before he would take office in January 2025, if reelected, and said he doesn’t want to be known as a Hoover. Former President Hoover had been in office for just a few months when the stock market crashed in 1929, triggering the Great Depression.

Biden has brought up in numerous speeches that Trump is one of two presidents — along with Hoover — who left office with fewer jobs than when he entered (The Hill).

“Did you hear he wants to see the stock market crash?” Biden said Thursday during remarks in Raleigh, N.C. “We’re doing well, he’s acknowledging that, we’re doing pretty damn well economically, and we’re getting better. He wants to see the stock market crash. You know why? He doesn’t want to be the next Herbert Hoover.”

TWO YEARS POST-ROE: Biden’s reelection campaign is preparing to highlight abortion rights in the leadup to the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, looking to tie the upcoming election to a “woman’s right to make her own health care decisions — including the very possible reality of a MAGA Republican-led national abortion ban.”

? NewsNation will debut a new Sunday public affairs program March 3 at 10 a.m. ET called “The Hill Sunday,” hosted by Chris Stirewalt, the cable news channel’s political editor. NewsNation and The Hill are owned by Nexstar.

2024 ROUNDUP

▪ A judge in Washington state rejected an effort to boot Trump off the state’s primary and general ballots in a ruling Thursday.

▪ McConnell and other Senate Republicans have signed on to a brief supporting Trump in his Colorado ballot case before the Supreme Court.

▪ Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab (R) announced on Wednesday that No Labels would be officially recognized as a political party in the state after meeting the eligibility requirements.

▪ House Republican leaders are promoting two anti-abortion bills ahead of today’s annual March for Life, although neither measure seeks to limit abortion on a national scale. They focus on unwanted pregnancies and pregnancy centers.

▪ Hunter Biden agreed to a deposition under closed-door questioning by the House Oversight and Judiciary committees on Feb. 28.

▪ Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) on Thursday endorsed Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) in the Democratic primary for embattled New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez’s (D) seat.

▪ Biden — the second Catholic president in U.S. history — campaigns on some issues the Catholic Church is against. He has said Pope Francis told him he’s a “good Catholic.”

WHERE AND WHEN

The House convenes at 11 a.m. on Monday.

The Senate will meet Monday at 3 p.m.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 10 a.m. Biden at 3:45 p.m. will host a White House event for mayors attending the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. The president will depart this evening for Rehoboth Beach, Del.

Vice President Harris has no public events.

First lady Jill Biden will arrive in Columbus, Ohio, from California this afternoon to speak at a fundraiser at 5:30 p.m. local time before departing 45 minutes later.

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff is in Switzerland where he will meet at noon Davos time withWorld Economic Forum attendees, including the news media and members of the private sector gathered at the Congress Center. In the evening, Emhoff will attend a Shabbat reception at the Morosani Schweizerhof.

The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 1:30 p.m.

ZOOM IN

INTERNATIONAL

IN AN UNMISTAKABLE REBUKE to Biden and the U.S., Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday he told the Biden administration that he opposes calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state as part of any postwar scenario. The U.S. has called on Israel to scale back its offensive, and American officials have said the establishment of a Palestinian state should be part of the “day after.” Netanyahu repeated his goal of a “decisive victory over Hamas” (The Hill).

▪ Time magazine: For Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the war in Gaza is a test of U.S. power.

▪ NBC News: Inside the effort to create a far-reaching U.S.-Saudi-Israeli pact to end the war.

▪ Bloomberg News: An Arab proposal for postwar Gaza faces steep odds.

GAZA’S HOSPITALS cannot handle the tens of thousands of Palestinians hurt and dying in Israel’s military offensive, a U.N. health emergency expert said this week, while a doctor with the International Rescue Committee called the situation in Gaza’s hospitals the most extreme she had ever seen. The World Health Organization’s Sean Casey, who departed Gaza recently after five weeks of trying to get more staff and supplies to the territory’s 16 partially functioning hospitals, told a U.N. news conference that he saw “a really horrifying situation in the hospitals” as the health system collapsed day by day (The Hill).

Israel pounded southern Gaza on Thursday, and the fierce fighting suggested that Israeli forces are not yet fully scaling back their assault despite U.S. pressure over heavy civilian casualties and increasing doubts among families of hostages held by Hamas and its allies (The Washington Post).

HOUTHI REBELS, unbowed by U.S. strikes, are continuing to attack ships in the Red Sea, putting the Biden administration in a bind as it works to stomp out the Yemeni militants’ aggression and resume global trade operations. The Hill’s Brad Dress reports an initial set of strikes last week on Houthi assets in Yemen was meant to degrade the Iranian-backed group’s capabilities to keep up the Red Sea attacks, but the Houthis emerged intact and with a resolve to continue their aggression. The U.S. continued to strike the Houthis this week, and the rebel group has responded with more aggression, with all signs pointing toward a potentially long conflict.

▪ The Hill: U.S. forces strike two Houthi anti-ship missiles in fifth round of bombings.

▪ The New York Times “The Daily” podcast: “What the Houthis really want,” with Times Gulf Bureau Chief Vivian Nereim.

“WAKE UP!” European lawmakersin Washington this week issued dire warnings to Congress and called on the U.S. to support Ukraine this year or risk losing any European assistance in the face of a potential conflict with China over Taiwan. The plea came from a delegation of chairs of foreign affairs committees from six countries in Europe and Canada, meeting with U.S. lawmakers in between their fraught negotiations over border security policy that is holding up a major funding package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan (The Hill).

“The reality is the U.S. also needs a wake-up call,” said U.K. Member of Parliament Alicia Kearns, chair of the foreign affairs committee. “If Taiwan is invaded, the U.S. will need to lead on it alongside Japan, Korea and Australia, and we in Europe will have to lead on Ukraine, and we’ll have to turn around and say to the U.S. we cannot give you what you want in support for Taiwan.”

NYET: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday dismissed a U.S. proposal to resume a dialogue on nuclear arms control, saying it’s impossible while Washington offers military support to Ukraine. At his annual news conference, Lavrov accused the West of heightening global security risks by encouraging Ukraine to ramp up strikes on Russian territory and warned that Moscow will achieve its goals despite Western assistance for Kyiv (ABC News).

Politico EU: It feels like the 1930s all over again, but with Russian President Vladimir Putin playing the role of Hitler, said British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.

ELSEWHERE

TRUMP WORLD

Ballot challenges: Trump on Thursday urged the Supreme Court to put “a swift and decisive end” to challenges targeting him using the 14th Amendment and interpretations of its insurrection clause.

“The Court should put a swift and decisive end to these ballot-disqualification efforts, which threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans and which promise to unleash chaos and bedlam if other state courts and state officials follow Colorado’s lead and exclude the likely Republican presidential nominee from their ballots,” Trump’s lawyers wrote to the justices.

Georgia prosecutor under scrutiny: The Georgia judge overseeing Trump’s criminal case tied to the 2020 election scheduled a hearing next month to weigh accusations that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) hired a romantic partner, Nathan Wade, as a top prosecutor on the case. Judge Scott McAfee scheduled a Feb. 15 hearing and directed Willis to respond to the allegations in writing by Feb. 2 (The Hill). Willis has defended her hiring of a “great friend” (USA Today). Willis is seeking to avoid testifying in the divorce of the colleague she hired, and is accusing Wade’s estranged wife of trying to obstruct her case by seeking to question her in the couple’s divorce proceedings (The New York Times and The Hill).

Trump federal criminal trial: A federal judge will require special counsel Jack Smith to seek permission before making any additional filings in the case in which Trump’s charged with election interference. It’s a small victory for the former president as the court otherwise declined to advance a filing designed to hold prosecutors in contempt. The effort from Trump to censure prosecutors came after Smith filed a motion seeking to bar the former president from making certain arguments in court (The Hill).

Defamation trial: Writer E. Jean Carroll continued her New York City testimony Thursday in her civil trial seeking defamation damages against Trump. The former president was absent to attend his mother-in-law’s funeral in Miami (NBC News).

NBC News: Here’s why Trump is likely to have more leeway for outbursts in criminal trials. The former president’s heated exchange with a federal judge this week comes as trial proceedings loom in four criminal cases ahead of the 2024 election.

OPINION

■ Why are voters so upset? Consider the Snickers bar, by Paul Donovan, guest essayist, The New York Times.

■ Trump’s behavior at his civil trials tells us what he is up to, by Jennifer Rubin, columnist, The Washington Post.

THE CLOSER

© The Associated Press / Elise Amendola | In January 2008, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) let her vulnerability show while campaigning in Portsmouth, N.H., for the Democratic presidential nomination.

And finally … ??? Bravo to this week’s Morning Report Quiz winners! In search of some smart guesses about New Hampshire primary and campaign trivia, we’re happy to say readers delivered.

Here’s who went 4/4 while mulling the Granite State: Jaina Mehta Buck, Pam Manges, Terry Pflaumer, Harry Strulovici, Patrick Kavanagh, Steve James, Lynn Gardner, Lou Tisler, Luther Berg and Mark Roeddiger.

They knew that Chris Christie, the former New Jersey Republican governor and Trump antagonist who this week suspended his campaign, predicted ahead of the New Hampshire primary that candidate Nikki Haley “is gonna get smoked.”

Stretching back to 1980, the New Hampshire GOP primary has a 71.4 percent record of picking winners who have gone on to become the party’s presidential nominees, according to reporting last week.

Hillary Clinton, before winning the New Hampshire Democratic primary in 2008, had a famously emotional reaction with a catch in her voice while answering a voter’s question. “You know, this is very personal for me. It’s not just political. It’s not just public. I see what’s happening, and we have to reverse it,” she said. “And some people think elections are a game. They think it’s like who’s up or who’s down. It’s about our country. It’s about our kids’ futures. It’s really about all of us together. You know some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some pretty difficult odds. And we do it, each one of us, because we care about our country. But some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not.”

The Democratic National Committee, advising the New Hampshire Democratic Party chair, described the New Hampshire primary as “meaningless,” which elicited a reaction from the state attorney general.

–Updated at 10:43 a.m.

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