Overnight Defense: GOP struggles for spending bill votes | Pentagon issues memo on transgender recruits | Pentagon acknowledges ramped-up Yemen strikes

by Rebecca Kheel - 12/20/17 6:20 PM ET

THE TOPLINE: House Republican leaders are struggling to muster the necessary GOP votes to pass their latest plan to fund the government, raising the prospects of a government shutdown on Friday at midnight.

GOP leadership had appeared confident throughout Wednesday that a new strategy to pass a clean continuing resolution (CR) through Jan. 19, along with a separate disaster relief bill, would avoid an intra-party fight over the funding bill.

But the strategy was quickly thrown in doubt as it became clear House GOP leadership did not have the votes to get the bill through the chamber.

{mosads}

“I don’t think what they’re whipping right now will get 218 [votes]. I don’t think it will even be close,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a member of the House Freedom Caucus.

Defense hawks want the CR to include a full-year of defense spending, while conservatives want to remove a measure reauthorizing a surveillance program.

The Hill’s Melanie Zanona and Jordain Carney have the details.

Earlier Wednesday, House Republicans ditched a plan for a full year of defense spending coupled with stopgap spending for the rest of the government The Hill’s Melanie Zanona recaps:

House Republican leaders ditched their initial plan for a stopgap spending bill amid GOP infighting over how best to avoid a government shutdown, which will take place Friday at midnight if Congress doesn’t intervene.

The original plan was to send a bill to the Senate that links a full year of funding for defense with a short-term patch that funds the rest of the government through Jan. 19. The continuing resolution (CR) was also supposed to include funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program and a massive $81 billion disaster aid package.

But some conservatives balked over the emergency aid because it is not offset by spending cuts elsewhere, while the boost for the military was likely dead on arrival in the Senate.

Read more here.

AT LEAST 9,000 KILLED IN MOSUL BATTLE, AP SAYS: An Associated Press analysis published Wednesday found that at least 9,000 civilians were killed in the nine-month battle to retake Mosul from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Of that, at least 3,200 were from Iraqi or U.S.-led coalition forces, according to the AP, which based its analysis off information from several nongovernmental organizations, a United Nation report and a list of deaths from a Mosul morgue.

The 9,000 to 11,000 civilians AP says were killed in the battle is a casualty rate 10 times higher than officially acknowledged.

The Hill’s Mallory Shelbourne has more on the AP report here.

ICYMI:

— The Hill: Lawmakers urge Tillerson to declassify Qatar counterterrorism agreement

— The Hill: US, Canada to co-host meeting on North Korean nuclear threat in January

— The Hill: Trump administration approves lethal arms sales to Ukraine

— The Hill: Opinion: Wrong changes to key intelligence program may put us at risk

— The War Horse: Zero Tolerance: The Defense Department’s decades-long failure to end sex crimes in uniform

— Military Times: This young man is transgender, and ready to enlist Jan. 1

Please send tips and comments to Rebecca Kheel, rkheel@digital-staging.thehill.com, and Ellen Mitchell, emitchell@digital-staging.thehill.com.