Morning Report — McConnell eyes exit; shutdown fallback emerges 

If anyone needed more evidence that the Republican Party has moved dramatically from an activist world view to a militant brand of “America First,” Wednesday offered some fresh exhibits.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), 82, the longest serving Senate leader in history, said he would step down in November from his role leading his party but serve out his term, which ends in 2027. After planning his surprise announcement since January, he immediately became a lame duck.

One of the most partisan Senate strategists and infamous obstructionists during decades of divided government, McConnell these days is derided by House conservatives as a turncoat and Democratic appeaser because of his support for additional U.S. aid to Ukraine, which Senate Democrats and President Biden want to enact. House firebrands assail his opposition to government shutdowns — which they believe could bolster their arguments for smaller government and less spending — and decry his purposeful nurturing of a bipartisan border security bill that recently died in the Senate under the weight of former President Trump’s opposition.

McConnell’s far-right critics, now closer to Trump than they are to the Reaganite era that greeted the Kentucky senator when he was first elected in 1984, cheered his decision to step down from leadership.

“McConnell dug his own grave and is attempting to pull the rest of the GOP in with him,”  Bradley Devlin wrote in The American Conservative, describing the party’s border security skirmishes. “Instead of using the GOP conference as added leverage for [Louisiana Republican Speaker Mike] Johnson and the GOP, McConnell is leaving Johnson high and dry,” he continued.

First-term Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), who was 4 years old when McConnell was elected to the Senate, faulted the minority leader in Devlin’s article.

“You’re the supposed Republican leader of the United States Senate, not the chief fundraising coordinator for Ukraine,” Crane said. “Americans are being killed because the Biden Administration has cruelly opened our borders and Republican leadership has consistently and corruptly diverted their attention away. We need real leadership, not cowardly controlled opposition.”

The Hill’s Niall Stanage describes “an angrier, more performative style” of GOP politics that supplanted the traditional Republicanism McConnell embodied. Pragmatists are part of the GOP Senate, but if Trump is elected again, the former president’s influence on the “cooling saucer” upper chamber will be no surprise.

As McConnell spoke Wednesday, a last-minute, short-term funding accord to avert a weekend shutdown took shape. Leaders from both parties said they agreed to hold a vote on a stopgap funding bill by Friday to avoid a partial government shutdown this weekend, followed by votes next month on full-year spending measures. All 100 senators must agree to move quickly on passing legislation, a consensus that is not guaranteed.

Biden — who has worked with (and against) McConnell over the decades on legislation, nominees and to avert shutdowns, fiscal cliffs and potential U.S. defaults — said of the senator Wednesday, “I’ve trusted him, and we have a great relationship. We fight like hell. But he has never, never, never misrepresented anything.”

McConnell has been credited (and faulted) for helping to stock the judiciary with Republican appointees, and he helped Trump tilt the Supreme Court to the right. But the two soured on one another during Trump’s term and have not spoken since December 2020. Their investment in the court resurfaced Wednesday when the former president thanked justices for their decision to hear his claim of absolute immunity for any actions and decisions he made as president. A high court ruling could impact the government’s pending prosecution of Trump on federal criminal charges in Washington and Florida, as well as in Georgia in a complex racketeering case. 

Trump and his legal team are working to postpone his trials until after November.

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Hunter Biden told House investigators Wednesday that he “did not involve” his father in his business dealings. Republican members of two House committees have accused the president and his son of wrongdoing but have produced no evidence that the Bidens sought to enrich themselves by leveraging the elder Biden’s government influence. House conservatives say the president should be impeached. The committees lost credibility with the FBI’s prosecution of a key informant now accused of peddling untruths about the Bidens that originated with Russian intelligence.

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LEADING THE DAY

POLITICS

BIDEN IS GOING ON OFFENSE on border security, seeking to turn a political liability into a line of attack against Republicans who rejected a bipartisan proposal to bolster resources at the southern border, The Hill’s Alex Gangigtano and Brett Samuels write.  Biden today will be in Brownsville, Texas, to meet with officials. He’s expected to use the backdrop to urge congressional Republicans to pass the Senate’s bipartisan border proposal. 

“When you’ve got a vulnerability, you should run towards it. And they have something to sell because there was this bipartisan border deal that would have made a world of difference, and it was stopped because it was not good for Donald Trump,” said Jim Kessler, vice president of policy for the left-center think tank Third Way. “And voters need to know that.”

But polling has shown voters trust Trump on immigration more than Biden, and the murder of a Georgia college student underscores that border security will remain an issue Biden will have to address in the months to come. The former president in recent days has amplified the news of 22-year-old Laken Riley’s killing after an undocumented immigrant was arrested in connection with the crime. Now Republicans are trying to tie the killing to broader arguments they’ve made about the southern border.

TRUMP WILL BE IN EAGLE PASS, Texas, for his own border event today. The location has been a focal point in the state’s legal standoff with the administration over rights to enforce the border. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) installed concertina wire and other physical deterrents in the city to bar migrants. Federal agents say border security is federal responsibility (The Texas Tribune).

Trump’s campaign derided Biden’s visit as “chasing us to the border.” A campaign spokesperson said the trip “shows just how big of a problem this is for him.”

REPRODUCTION: In-vitro fertilization (IVF) is proving to be a political landmine for congressional Republicans, as the fallout from the Alabama Supreme Court’s ruling determining that frozen embryos are children shifts to Capitol Hill. As The Hill’s Nathaniel Weixel reports, Republicans publicly say they support access to IVF services, but appear hesitant to back federal protections, as many also seem to agree that embryos are children with equal rights. Senate Democrats on Wednesday tried to force a vote on a bill to create a federal right to IVF, but Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) on Wednesday blocked quick passage of the bill (The New York Times).

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ZOOM IN

COURTS

SETTING UP A HISTORIC DECISION, the Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to weigh Trump’s criminal immunity in a case that will almost certainly affect the presidential election. Oral arguments are set for April 22. The justices’ order pauses Trump’s criminal trial proceedings in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, handing an initial blow to special counsel Jack Smith. 

Trump had urged the justices to slam the brakes on his criminal trial but hold off on taking up his immunity claims until he exhausted appeal options in a lower court. That process would have lasted weeks.

At Smith’s suggestion, the Supreme Court instead opted to hear the former president’s immunity claims now, although the justices refused Smith’s primary request to stay out of the case and allow the federal trial to immediately move forward (The Hill).

“Without Presidential Immunity, a President will not be able to properly function, or make decisions, in the best interest of the United States of America,” Trump argued anew Wednesday in a social media post. “Presidents will always be concerned, and even paralyzed, by the prospect of wrongful prosecution and retaliation after they leave office. This could actually lead to the extortion and blackmail of a President.”

BUMP STOCKS: Some Supreme Court justices on Wednesday expressed reluctance to strike down a ban on “bump stocks,” a gun accessory that allows semi-automatic rifles to fire more quickly. The prohibition was imposed by the Trump administration after the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017. During oral arguments, both conservative and liberal justices asked questions indicating that they believe it’s plausible that an almost 100-year-old law aimed at banning machine guns could be interpreted to include bump stocks. On Wednesday, with their backing, the Biden administration attempted to defend the ban before the Supreme Court (The Hill).

BOND PAYMENTS: A New York appellate judge ruled Wednesday that multimillion-dollar penalties imposed on Trump in his civil fraud case will not be paused while he appeals the judgment; however, for now, Trump can apply for loans. Justice Anil Singh temporarily denied the former president’s request to stay the enforcement of the more than $454 million in penalties a different New York judge ordered him to pay for conspiring to alter his net worth to receive tax and insurance benefits.  

Judge Arthur Engoron earlier this month ordered the former president to pay nearly $355 million, plus interest, in penalties after finding he conspired to alter his net worth to receive tax and insurance benefits. The total judgment against Trump, which climbs nearly $112,000 in interest each day he doesn’t pay it, now amounts to more than $454 million (The Hill).

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ELSEWHERE

INTERNATIONAL

CEASE-FIRE TALKS: A senior Hamas official on Wednesday dampened hopes of an immediate cease-fire deal with Israel in Gaza, saying there was still a long way to go before an agreement could be secured. “The gap is still wide. We have to discuss a lot of points with the mediators,” said Basem Naim, the head of political and international relations for Hamas. His comments come after Biden said he hoped to have a cease-fire in Israel’s war on Gaza by next Monday, with negotiations appearing to have gathered pace. However, Naim said the Biden administration’s optimistic posture was not “related to the reality on the ground” and has more to do with domestic political considerations in a U.S. election year (Al Jazeera).

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, which is brokering the talks along with Qatar and the U.S., offered a rosier view, saying that, “God willing, in the next few days, we will reach a cease-fire agreement” to bring “real relief” to the people of Gaza (The New York Times).

AID CONVOYS CARRYING FOOD reached northern Gaza this week, Israeli officials said Wednesday, the first major delivery in a month to the devastated, isolated area, where the U.N. has warned of worsening starvation among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians amid Israel’s offensive. Across Gaza, more than 576,000 people are a step away from famine, the U.N. says. But northern Gaza in particular has been gutted by hunger (Politico). Gaza’s health ministry said Thursday that the number of Palestinians killed in the war has surpassed 30,000. The official number now stands at 30,035 deaths. The figure is widely viewed as the most reliable one available (NPR).

▪ The Guardian: One in five pregnant women treated at a central Gaza clinic are malnourished, doctors have warned, as fuel and medical supply shortages closed the last hospital operating in the enclave’s north.

▪ Axios: The Biden administration gave Israel until mid-March to sign a letter, provided by the U.S. on Tuesday, that gives assurances it will abide by international law while using U.S. weapons and allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

THE FUNERAL SERVICE for Russia’s most prominent opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, will be held Friday at a church in the Moscow neighborhood where he lived. Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said the funeral was initially planned for Thursday — the day of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual address to Russia’s Federal Assembly — but no venue would agree to hold it then. Navalny, 47, died in an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16. His family, who have accused Putin of having his long-time foe murdered in the prison, fought for more than a week to have his body returned to them (CBS News).

Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s widow, warned the European Parliament on Wednesday of possible arrests at her husband’s funeral (The Washington Post).

Reuters: Putin warned Western countries on Thursday that there was a genuine risk of nuclear war if they sent their own troops to fight in Ukraine, and said Moscow had the weapons to strike targets in the West.

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THE CLOSER

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