Morning Report — Government funding deal remains elusive

by Kristina Karisch - 12/11/23 6:31 AM ET

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With the holiday recess fast approaching, lawmakers in both parties are expressing concern about the future of a government funding handshake deal brokered between the White House and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

In late spring, President Biden and House GOP leadership worked to pass legislation known as the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) as part of a larger deal to suspend the debt ceiling and set budget caps for Congress to work from when it hashes out its full-year funding bills months later. That negotiating period is just around the corner, as lawmakers gear up for a fiscal spending fight in January.

The Hill’s Tobias Burns and Aris Folley report that critical components of that months-old deal, which were not reflected in the law, are now in question. Ultraconservatives, in pursuit of steeper cuts amid climbing debt, say Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is not beholden to what Democrats say is the full commitment made by McCarthy.

“A deal is a deal is a deal,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who serves on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said last week. “I think there’s no way we’re going to get to an appropriations deal if people can’t hold to their commitments.”

In a letter to Republicans last week, Johnson said the FRA remains “the law of the land” that “provides the framework” for spending talks as both chambers work to reach a top-line agreement for fiscal 2024 funding. But as funding talks pick up between leadership in both chambers, the House Freedom Caucus is dialing up the heat on Johnson to hold the line, demanding in a Friday letter that any deal on a top-line level for government funding for fiscal 2024 “significantly reduce total programmatic spending year-over-year.”

ONE DIVISIVE FUNDING AREA is aid to Ukraine. Biden announced Sunday he will host Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House this week, as Congress looks increasingly unlikely to pass additional funding for Ukraine and as U.S. officials warn that the country will run out of money to fight Russia’s invasion by the end of the year. Johnson will meet with Zelensky at the Capitol on Tuesday.

The meetings will take place against the backdrop of a divided Congress struggling to reach a deal that would provide aid to Ukraine. Last week, Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have provided aid to Ukraine and aid to Israel in its war against Hamas. Republicans, however, have said they would not vote for an aid package that does not also include provisions addressing the U.S. southern border with Mexico (Bloomberg News).

While Johnson has said he thinks Ukraine aid is important, he faces a challenge convincing his fellow party members. Biden signaled a renewed openness to striking a deal that includes provisions to address the border last Wednesday, saying he’s willing to make “significant compromises” on border policy in order to unlock funding for Ukraine (The Hill and The Washington Post).

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY

▪ The war in Ukraine has reached a stalemate, with even Ukrainian officials admitting the highly anticipated counteroffensive is unlikely to reach a breakthrough, putting Kyiv on what could be its toughest path yet.

▪ Communities across the U.S. are fueling a secondary arms market by giving seized and surrendered guns to disposal services that destroy one part and resell the rest.

▪ Senators are grappling with what the aftershocks of Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s (R-Ala.) blockade of military promotions will look like — whether it will open the floodgates for members to institute widespread holds or scare them off.

IMPEACHMENT WATCH: House Republicans are preparing to formalize their impeachment inquiry into Biden with a House vote this week as right-wing pressure grows and their investigation reaches a critical juncture. The House GOP has not yet had enough votes to legitimize their inquiry with a full chamber vote, as the party’s probe has struggled to uncover wrongdoing.

McCarthy unilaterally launched the inquiry in September, even though he had previously criticized Democrats for taking the same step in 2019 when they launched the first impeachment probe of then-President Trump without taking a vote. House Republicans argued Friday that the latest indictment of Hunter Biden on federal tax charges bolsters the need to approve an impeachment inquiry resolution.

The resolution references committee probes into the president’s son’s business dealings. Prosecutors allege Hunter Biden engaged in a scheme to avoid paying more than $1 million in income taxes from 2016 through 2019 (CNN and Roll Call).

“Now that Hunter Biden is being charged for felony criminal activity related to the family business in which Joe Biden himself was aware and from which he benefited, Americans deserve more answers,” said House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.). “These charges further confirm the need for Congress to move forward with an impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden in order to uncover all the facts for the American people to judge.”

▪ The Hill: Here are five takeaways from the latest indictment of Hunter Biden.

▪ The Hill: Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) predicted in a Sunday Fox News interview that impeachment articles for Biden would be drafted by the spring.

The White House, meanwhile, on Sunday touted remarks made by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on NBC’s “Meet The Press”. Romney said House Republicans had no evidence to support their effort to open an impeachment inquiry.

“I think before you begin an impeachment inquiry, you ought to have some evidence, some inclination that there’s been wrongdoing. And so far, there’s nothing of that nature that’s been provided,” Romney said, directly responding to the argument from some House Republicans that they were moving to open the investigation to gain access to information that might reveal evidence of wrongdoing.

Morning Report’s Alexis Simendinger will be back in your inboxes Tuesday.

LEADING THE DAY

© The Associated Press / Jacquelyn Martin | Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, two former Georgia poll workers, will face former Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani in court this week after suing him for defamation in 2021.

WHILE COUNTING THE RESULTS of Georgia’s 2020 election, Fulton County poll worker Ruby Freeman passed her daughter, another poll worker named Shaye Moss, a ginger mint. But longtime Trump ally Rudy Giuliani claimed a video of that interaction showed evidence of election fraud against Trump — proof of the mother-daughter pair passing a USB drive between them to scan ballots hidden in suitcases under tables at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena. The Hill’s Ella Lee reports that in the months that followed, the poll workers were subjected to a barrage of threats stemming from Giuliani’s baseless accusations.

“I’ve lost my sense of security, all because a group of people — starting with Number 45 and his ally Rudy Giuliani — decided to scapegoat me and my daughter, Shaye, to push their own lies about how the presidential election was stolen,” Freeman said in a deposition with the House Jan. 6 committee.

Today, Freeman and Moss — who sued Giuliani in December 2021 — will come face-to-face in court with him, as a trial over his false claims against them gets underway in Washington, D.C., federal court. Giuliani could be fined up to $44 million in damages (The Washington Post).

▪ NBC News: Eli Bartov, an accounting professor at New York University, said that his $900,000 in expert witness fees for Trump’s civil fraud trial were paid by the Trump Organization and Trump’s Save America PAC.

▪ Business Insider: New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) says Trump’s high-priced expert witnesses are helping her civil fraud trial case.

▪ The Guardian: Trump tests federal gag order with attack on former Attorney General Bill Barr: “He was a coward.”

▪ Politico: Special counsel Jack Smith reveals the sweeping scope of a bid to debunk Trump’s election machine claims.

TRUMP SAID SUNDAY HE WILL NOT TESTIFY in his New York civil fraud trial this week, where he had been expected to appear for a second time to make the case that his company did not misrepresent the value of its properties to win favorable financing. The former president said on social media that he had already testified and had “nothing more to say other than that this is a complete and total election interference.”

Trump had been expected to take the stand Monday to be questioned by his own defense team as the nearly two-month-long trial winds down. Trump previously testified last month under questioning by the New York attorney general’s office and was unexpectedly hauled to the witness stand once before to respond to the judge’s assertion that he had violated a gag order in place. His testimony often grew political, more akin to a stump speech than a direct examination as he railed against the judge and the New York attorney general whom he decried as “frauds” and “political hacks” (The Hill and Reuters).

“It’s a disgrace that a case like this is going on; all you have to do is read the legal scholars — the papers — and you’ll know,” Trump testified in November, raising his voice. “This is a political witch hunt.”

WHERE AND WHEN

The House meets at 3 p.m. Chair of the House Subcommittee on the Central Intelligence Agency Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) at 4 p.m. ET will moderate a panel discussion about Chinese influence in Latin America with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies as part of a series called “Beyond the SCIF.”

The Senate will convene at noon.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 10 a.m. and travel to Philadelphia. At 12:30 p.m. he will speak at the announcement event for the city of Philadelphia receiving a $22.4 million SAFER Grant award to fund firefighters’ salary and benefits. Biden will headline a campaign reception at 2:30 p.m. in the City of Brotherly Love before returning to the White House to host a Hanukkah holiday reception along with first lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will speak at the State Department’s Toys for Tots drive at 11:30 a.m.  At 1 p.m., he will meet with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

ZOOM IN

TRUMP-ALLIED REPUBLICAN SENATORS are calling for the GOP to rally around Trump as the party’s inevitable nominee for president and accusing Republicans who are holding back on supporting him of giving aid and comfort to Biden. With the Iowa Caucuses only a few weeks away, Trump’s commanding lead in the polls has strengthened his influence in Washington, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports, putting border security — one of Trump’s signature issues — at the forefront of the Republican agenda and shifting Republican sentiment on funding the war in Ukraine.

The failure of any rival to have a breakout moment at last week’s debate is giving Trump-allied lawmakers an opening to declare the race over, even though the first votes of the primary contest have yet to be cast. The failure of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to break through as the viable alternative to Trump in any of the four Republican presidential debates is prompting Trump’s Senate allies to now call for an early end to the race.

“I think it’s time. There are four other people still in the race, none of them are above 10 percent. Trump’s numbers are steady. Look, you either love Donald Trump or you hate him, you’re not going to change anyone’s minds now,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said of DeSantis, Haley, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. “They’re all competing for second place, looks like to me, and really hurting each other, hurting their own reputation and hurting the party.”

According to a new NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll, Trump now has more than 51 percent first-choice support from likely caucus goers in Iowa. Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer told NBC News “the field may have shrunk, but it may have made Donald Trump even stronger. I would call his lead commanding at this point.”

TRUMP’S PRIMARY RIVALS, however, are not backing down. DeSantis is looking to seize on the momentum from his strong performance at the fourth debate as he aims to solidify his place as the No. 2 Republican in the primary. Unlike his past presidential debates, DeSantis avoided fading into the background Wednesday in Alabama, and a post-debate Washington Post/Ipsos poll showed a plurality of voters saying DeSantis won the debate. DeSantis’s campaign manager celebrated the governor’s debate performance in a statement on Wednesday, calling him “the only strong conservative on stage.”

Haley went into the debate, which was hosted by The Hill’s sister news organization NewsNation, with high expectations after several strong debate performances gave her a burst of momentum in recent months. It was immediately clear that the former U.N. ambassador was the candidate to take on, with rivals hurling attacks at her right out of the gate. While observers said Haley didn’t have a terrible showing, many said she failed to stand out like she did in previous debates, potentially threatening her standing.

Republican strategist Rina Shah said the Wednesday night debate was Haley’s “weakest of the four” and “didn’t tell us anything” or significantly move the needle for any candidate.

Meanwhile Christie’s strong debate performance has given him a renewed reason to stay in the GOP presidential primary, even as his prospects for the nomination remain slim.

2024 ROUNDUP

▪ The Republican National Committee is pausing its participation in 2024 GOP primary debates. The decision, made by a 16-member internal body, means that any forthcoming debates will be hosted by networks independently of the committee. ABC News and CNN have announced plans to host future debates in Iowa and New Hampshire ahead of early state voting.

▪ Biden’s backing for Israel in its war with Hamas is alienating at least a third of Democrats, a CBS News/YouGov poll showed, as criticism of his administration’s stance grows.

▪ Amid a growing number of criminal investigations into the 2020 election, some who once cast electoral college votes for the former president say they would not do it again.

▪ University of Pennsylvania president Elizabeth Magill voluntarily resigned following backlash over her response during a congressional hearing when asked how she said she would handle remarks in the university community calling for the “genocide of Jews.”

▪ Some of the House’s most high-profile progressives are facing a growing primary threat next year over their position on the Israel-Hamas war.

▪ A Politico reporter covered Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) for years, and argues he might not care if he sinks Biden. The senator’s brand of centrism helped him survive West Virginia’s rapid transformation from blue to red, but it also helped sow the seeds of the Democratic Party’s demise back home.

▪ Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is launching his own subscription-based streaming service, set to go live today.

ELSEWHERE

MIDDLE EAST

Israeli tanks have reached the heart of Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis, as Hamas issued new demands for Palestinian prisoners to be released while at the same time threatening the lives of the hostages they continue to hold. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said over the weekend that dozens of Hamas fighters had surrendered, calling it the beginning of the end for the organization. The Palestinian militant group denied this, calling the claim “false and baseless” (The Guardian).

Israeli raids continued across Gaza over the weekend, including in the northern part of the besieged territory, where neighborhoods have been flattened by air strikes and Israeli ground troops that have been operating for more than six weeks continue to face heavy resistance from Hamas fighters. In Shujayea — where Israeli snipers and tanks positioned themselves among the abandoned buildings — residents said the dead and wounded were left in the streets as ambulances could no longer reach the area (Al Jazeera).

Pressure is also mounting in Rafah, an area near Gaza’s southern border, where tens of thousands of Palestinians fleeing from Israel’s siege of the enclave are seeking food and shelter, leading United Nations officials to warn Sunday of a potential mass displacement into Egypt. “Where should I go? Tell me, where should I go?” Raif Naji Abu Lubda, 39, a farmer who fled to the border area with his wife and six children, told The New York Times. He said his family is now sleeping on the ground in the cold and cannot find food or even salty water to drink.

The World Health Organization has requested “immediate, unimpeded” access to Gaza as its chief called the current situation “catastrophic.” The WHO has reported that the health system in Gaza is collapsing, with fewer than half of Gazan hospitals even partially functional (Al Jazeera and NBC News).

Meanwhile, the 193-member United Nations General Assembly will reportedly vote on Tuesday on a resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.

The move comes after the U.S. on Friday vetoed a U.N. Security Council demand for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. The General Assembly in October adopted a resolution — 121 votes in favor, 14 against and 44 abstentions — calling for “an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities” (Reuters and NPR).

▪ The New York Times: “Buying quiet”: Inside the Israeli plan that propped up Hamas. Netanyahu gambled that a strong (but not too strong) Hamas would keep the peace and reduce pressure for a Palestinian state.

▪ The Associated Press: After seven weeks held hostage in the tunnels of Gaza, they are finally free to laugh and chat and play. But some of the children who have come back from captivity are still reluctant to raise their voices above a whisper.

▪ The Washington Post: Israel is detaining civilians in Gaza. Many have disappeared, families say.

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT

🔋 RENEWABLES ARE REACHING the point where they are outcompeting fossil fuels on price — setting the stage for their predicted dominance of the energy sector by midcentury. As The Hill’s Saul Elbein reports, when it comes to the surging demand for new electric generation, wind and solar prices are now the cheapest options almost everywhere, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). The country is passing a “tipping point” beyond which renewables are the status quo option, said Timothy Lenton, chair of the climate department at the University of Exeter, adding that by midcentury, even if climate policies remain no more generous than they are now, renewables will make up three-quarters of U.S. electricity production.

“There’s a self-propelling, ever stronger feedback loop behind the transformation,” he said. The question now, he said, isn’t whether the change is going to happen. “Now it’s more about how fast or slow to go, and how hard are the incumbents going to fight to hold the status quo.”

THE EXCLUSION OF A MEASURE to extend compensation for people exposed to radiation from U.S. nuclear testing from the annual defense bill this week marked yet another fracture in the Republican conference. The bipartisan amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed the Senate with a supermajority in August but was not included in the House version of the bill and was ultimately dropped from the final legislation. Co-sponsor Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) called its removal a “betrayal” of the country’s commitment to the victims of such radiation.

Proponents of the measure are pointing the finger at Republican leadership, saying they are responsible for stripping it from the NDAA. Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) told The Hill he “still can’t understand why Republican leadership would stand in the way of providing support to the American people, who, as uranium mine workers, sacrificed so much for national security purposes.”

▪ Politico: Building wind power, canceling coal — it’s all drowning under borrowing costs.

▪ The New York Times: How can buildings beat the heat in a desert city? Blend ancient and modern. More architects in the United Arab Emirates, the host of this year’s U.N. climate summit, are moving past glass skyscrapers and focusing on sustainability.

▪ The Washington Post: Sewers are overflowing everywhere. One solution is right in your backyard.

OPINION

■ We’ve lost the talent for mutual respect on campus. Here’s how we get it back, by Danielle Allen, contributing columnist, The Washington Post.

■ Want to tax the rich for real? Pay attention to this Supreme Court case, by Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath, guest essayists, The New York Times.

THE CLOSER

And finally … 🧑‍🚀 On this day in 1972, the Apollo space program made a last research walk (and electric vehicle drive!) on the moon (75 hours on the surface) and then ended the program. The astronauts who got there gave a little speech about how they’d be back (Britannica).

Watch a video of Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt singing on the Moon.

Fast forward to 2023, and NASA is partnering with SpaceX on the Artemis III mission to head back to the moon. While NASA is unlikely to meet its target of returning astronauts to the moon in 2025, government reports indicate a more likely 2027 launch (SpaceNews).

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