Senate eyes Ukraine vote as House adjourns
The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said yesterday that negotiators had made “good progress” in their talks regarding a supplemental funding package aimed at providing aid to Ukraine and reforming immigration policy.
“The plan is for the Senate to act as soon as we are ready to move forward on the supplemental,” Schumer said yesterday.
“We hope to come to an agreement. But no matter what, members should be aware that we will vote on a supplemental proposal next week.”
The timeline will force senators to delay their planned holiday recess, although Schumer did not provide a specific schedule for next week.
Even if the Senate can get a funding bill passed, it would still need to pass the House, which adjourned yesterday for its own holiday recess and is not expected to return to session until the new year.
Despite the apparent progress in the Senate, the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, has indicated he will not call members back from their recess even if a supplemental funding bill passes the upper chamber.
Johnson said yesterday, “While that work should continue, the House will not wait around to receive and debate a rushed product.”
Since I became Speaker in late October, I have clearly and consistently told the White House and Leader Schumer that we must secure our own border before we secure another country’s.
For some reason, the Biden Administration waited until this week to even begin negotiations…
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) December 14, 2023
Here’s what else is happening today:
-
Hungary blocked the EU from approving a €50bn aid package to Ukraine. The move came hours after EU leaders agreed to open membership talks with Ukraine.
-
Republicans named Nassau County legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip as their nominee to replace George Santos in the House. The special election has been scheduled for 13 February.
-
A federal appeals court will consider a request from Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, to move his case from state to federal court. Meadows has been charged by Fulton county prosecutors over his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
Key events
As the Senate continues to negotiate over a potential deal on Ukraine aid and border policy changes, Congress did manage to pass one substantial bill this week.
Yesterday, the House passed an $886bn defense policy bill in a vote of 310-118, sending the legislation to Joe Biden’s desk. The Senate had easily passed the bill a day earlier, in a vote of 87-13.
The legislation includes the largest pay raise for troops in more than two decades and represents a funding increase of about 3% compared to the prior year.
The bill’s passage caps off months of conflict between the House and the Senate, after the two chambers passed very different versions of the bill. The proposal initially passed by the House included controversial provisions aimed at restricting transgender troops’ access to gender-affirming healthcare and blocking the Pentagon’s reimbursement policy for service members who travel to get an abortion.
Those policies were stripped out of the bill to get it passed through both chambers of Congress, angering the hard-right Republicans who had pushed for their inclusion.
“You almost feel like a parent who’s sent a child off to summer camp and they came back a monster,” congressman Matt Gaetz, a hard-right Republican of Florida, said of the final bill. “That’s what we’ve done. This bill came back in far worse shape.”
Jury continues to deliberate in Giuliani defamation case
Sam Levine
The jury is still deliberating in a federal case to determine how much Rudy Giuliani should have to pay two Georgia election workers he spread lies about after the 2020 election.
The jury started deliberating around 1:30 pm yesterday and went home at five. They returned this morning at 9 a.m. In total, they’ve now deliberated for around 5.5 hours.
The press room here is still packed. While she’s waiting for the jury, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell is moving through her docket. Several of the cases are scheduling matters in January 6 cases.
During one case, Howell was confused, and slightly incredulous, to learn about the term “ghost bus,” a right-wing conspiracy theory about January 6.
Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat of Pennsylvania who has been celebrated on the left for his anti-establishment persona, has attracted criticism from progressives over his staunch support of Israel amid the war in Gaza.
Speaking to NBC News about his views, Fetterman reiterated that he does not identify as a progressive and stood by his position on Israel.
“I’m not a progressive,” Fetterman told NBC News. “I just think I’m a Democrat that is very committed to choice and other things. But with Israel, I’m going to be on the right side of that.”
Fetterman also emphasized the urgent need to pass an aid package for Ukraine and Israel, even if it means making significant concessions to Republicans on immigration policy.
“Progressives better do that because we can’t leave Israel — we can’t sell them out, and we can’t sell Ukraine out, and we have to deliver on this,” Fetterman said. “I just would very much like to get a deal to deliver this critical aid.”
A Punchbowl News reporter spotted the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and some White House staffers arriving on Capitol Hill this morning. Their presence in the Capitol indicates the Senate negotiations over border policies are continuing in earnest today:
After Senate Republicans blocked one version of the supplemental funding package last week, members called on Joe Biden to become more actively engaged in the talks over immigration reform.
“The commander in chief — if there’s a deal to be made — is going to have to get involved in the negotiations,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, said on Tuesday. “It’s his job above all others.”
House Republicans voted on Wednesday to formally authorize the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, even though they have uncovered no proof that the president financially benefited from his family’s business dealings. Some right-wing media figures appear to have grown weary of the investigation, the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports:
Several figures at Fox News, a usually reliable mouthpiece for most Republican party initiatives in Washington DC, have shown signs of “impeachment fatigue”, appearing to question the motivation of the vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry that Biden himself has condemned as “a baseless political stunt that even Republicans in Congress admit is not supported by facts”.
Peter Doocy, Fox’s White House correspondent, was among the most vocal, telling viewers that “Republicans are still trying to connect” money that the president’s son, Hunter Biden, earned overseas to accounts controlled by Joe Biden.
“The House oversight committee has been at this for years, and they have so far not been able to provide any concrete evidence that Joe Biden personally profited from his son Hunter’s overseas business,” Doocy said.
“But they are going to try again with this impeachment inquiry.”
Read the Guardian’s full report:
Republicans are skeptical supplemental funding package can be passed quickly
Despite signs of progress in the Senate negotiations over a supplemental funding package, some Republicans are skeptical that a bill can be passed quickly.
For one thing, the House has already adjourned for its holiday recess, and the speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, has shown little interest in calling members back.
In addition to those logistical concerns, at least one Republican senator has indicated he wants to see some assurance that the House will pass the bill as well before the Senate votes on it.
“As we’ve seen recently, just because the speaker supports something doesn’t mean the House will go along with it,” Senator John Cornyn, a Republican of Texas, told Punchbowl News.
“There’s no reason for us to rush to pass something that’s dead on arrival in the House.”
But House passage of a funding bill is far from guaranteed, even if Republicans win some concessions on immigration policies. Dozens of hard-right House Republicans remain adamantly opposed to additional Ukraine aid, which could jeopardize the bill’s passage.
Abortion rights supporters in Florida hope to enshrine the right to terminate a pregnancy in the state constitution by approving a ballot measure next year. Republican voters may be key to realizing that goal, Joseph Contreras reports for the Guardian:
More than 150,000 registered Republican voters in Florida have now signed a petition calling for a constitutional amendment that would guarantee a woman’s right to an abortion up to the point of a fetus’s viability, which is generally considered to be around the 24th week of pregnancy.
The effort is a no-brainer, according to Miami-born Republican Carlos Lacasa.
“How can my party be so vigorous in its defense of the right to bear arms yet not defend a woman’s right to make decisions about her own healthcare?” says the son and grandson of Cuban immigrants who fled communism under Fidel Castro in the early 1960s.
“I believe in small government, and morality cannot be legislated without an overwhelming consensus of the governed – and there is no such consensus on this issue.”
In supporting this effort, Lacasa will break ranks with the state’s rightwing governor, Ron DeSantis, and his allies in the Florida legislature who have sharply limited access to abortions in the state in the last two years, encouraged in part by the supreme court overturning Roe v Wade.
Read the Guardian’s full report:
The jury in Rudy Giuliani’s defamation trial will continue its deliberations today, as they weigh what damages the former Trump lawyer should pay to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss.
Freeman and Moss’ lawyer argued that Giuliani substantially damaged their reputations by spreading lies about them related to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, has asked the jury to award Freeman and Moss at least $24m each to “send a message” to others who might consider similar election schemes.
“They say when someone shows you who they are, believe them. Mr Giuliani has shown us over and over and over again that he will not take our clients names out of his mouth,” Gottlieb said yesterday.
“Facts do not and will not stop him. He’s telegraphing that he will do this again. Believe him.”
Read the full report from the Guardian’s Sam Levine:
Hugo Lowell
A federal appeals court is expected to consider Friday whether Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, charged by Fulton county prosecutors over his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, should see his criminal case transferred from state to federal court.
Meadows has so far been unsuccessful in his removal efforts. The US district judge Steve Jones denied the motion in September and Meadows challenged the decision to the US court of appeals for the eleventh circuit, which scheduled oral arguments for 9am.
The appeal before judges William Pryor, Robin Rosenbaum and Nancy Abudu – George W Bush, Obama and Biden appointees – marks possibly the final chance for Meadows to have his case transferred, a move that would give him key advantages at trial as well as affect the case against Donald Trump.
Read more of the Guardian’s report:
Senate eyes Ukraine vote as House adjourns
The Senate majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, said yesterday that negotiators had made “good progress” in their talks regarding a supplemental funding package aimed at providing aid to Ukraine and reforming immigration policy.
“The plan is for the Senate to act as soon as we are ready to move forward on the supplemental,” Schumer said yesterday.
“We hope to come to an agreement. But no matter what, members should be aware that we will vote on a supplemental proposal next week.”
The timeline will force senators to delay their planned holiday recess, although Schumer did not provide a specific schedule for next week.
Even if the Senate can get a funding bill passed, it would still need to pass the House, which adjourned yesterday for its own holiday recess and is not expected to return to session until the new year.
Despite the apparent progress in the Senate, the House speaker, Republican Mike Johnson, has indicated he will not call members back from their recess even if a supplemental funding bill passes the upper chamber.
Johnson said yesterday, “While that work should continue, the House will not wait around to receive and debate a rushed product.”
Since I became Speaker in late October, I have clearly and consistently told the White House and Leader Schumer that we must secure our own border before we secure another country’s.
For some reason, the Biden Administration waited until this week to even begin negotiations…
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) December 14, 2023
Here’s what else is happening today:
-
Hungary blocked the EU from approving a €50bn aid package to Ukraine. The move came hours after EU leaders agreed to open membership talks with Ukraine.
-
Republicans named Nassau County legislator Mazi Melesa Pilip as their nominee to replace George Santos in the House. The special election has been scheduled for 13 February.
-
A federal appeals court will consider a request from Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s former chief of staff, to move his case from state to federal court. Meadows has been charged by Fulton county prosecutors over his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
