Transition Live Updates: Shutdown Looms as G.O.P. Rebels Against Trump
"Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to find a spending plan that will satisfy both Republicans and Democrats. He has less than a day to do it.
Pinned
With a possible government shutdown looming at day’s end, President-elect Donald J. Trump early Friday renewed his demand that Congress suspend the debt ceiling, intensifying a face-off with lawmakers from his own party as Republicans run short of options before a midnight deadline.
Congress failed to pass a spending bill on Thursday night, after Republicans rejected a Trump-backed proposal that included suspending the debt limit for two years. Hours after that vote, Mr. Trump urged lawmakers to “get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling.”
Catie Edmondson and Maya Miller
Reporting from the CapitolLawmakers who met with the House speaker, Mike Johnson, on Friday morning say that Republican leaders are circling around a plan to hold three separate votes: one on a bare-bones bill funding the government through mid-March, another on disaster aid and third on economic relief for farmers. That's essentially breaking up the legislation that failed last night into its component parts and jettisoning the debt limit measure that caused conservatives to revolt.
Catie Edmondson and Maya Miller
Reporting from the CapitolAt least one House Republican who opposed the bill last night said he would be amenable to that approach. “I’d like to see how it’s laid out, but that may be structurally a smart way to do it,” Representative David Schweikert of Arizona told reporters.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, weighed in on Germany’s election via social media on Friday, apparently endorsing the far-right Alternative for Germany.
“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Mr. Musk posted to X, referring to the anti-immigrant party by its German initials.
A shutdown would hamper regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, especially when it comes to enforcement actions. In past shutdowns, the S.E.C. operated with a skeleton staff and brought only emergency actions. If there were a prolonged shutdown that ran through the inauguration, enforcement actions already in the works — like civil charges for insider trading or securities fraud — would be imperiled. Gary Gensler, the current S.E.C. chair, has said he will step down on Jan. 20.
Let the blame game begin.
President-elect Donald J. Trump said Friday morning that it would be better for the government to shut down now, under President Biden’s watch, than to let congressional gridlock result in a politically damaging stalemate after he takes office next month.
Three top Senate Democrats on Friday wrote to Boris Epshteyn, a top Trump lawyer, demanding answers to allegations that he solicited payments from potential Trump administration nominees.
The letter signed by the chairmen of the Finance, Judiciary and Banking Committees signals the expansion of the Senate’s investigation into Mr. Epshteyn’s conduct. House Democrats are also investigating.
President-elect Donald J. Trump suggested in a social media post on Friday morning that the spending deal was a “Biden problem to solve.” That appears to be a bet that a government shutdown would have more consequences for Democrats than for Republicans, even though it would become Trump's problem in two weeks, when his party takes over in Congress. Then, Republican lawmakers would hold sole responsibility for reopening the government.
Democrats have pointed out that the chaotic negotiations in recent days have been driven by infighting in the Republican House majority and among outside influencers, including Trump and the billionaire Elon Musk.
A government shutdown could snarl plans for tens of millions of Americans traveling for the December holidays if Congress fails on Friday to pass legislation to keep the government functioning. Nonessential federal operations would cease at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday.
Political polarization has made fights over lifting the debt ceiling more intense. President-elect Donald J. Trump signed legislation lifting it three times in his first term. In his first year in office, he struck a deal with Democrats to do so, surprising Republican allies. On Friday, he said that he would support getting rid of the debt ceiling entirely, an idea he raised in the White House in 2017.
Lawmakers have been streaming in and out of Johnson’s office this morning as House Republicans look for a way out of a shutdown that is about 15 hours away. Many of them are saying the situation is still fluid.
Some of the options available to Republicans: passing a clean stopgap spending bill and nothing else, punting the problem past the holidays, or trying to pass essentially the same bill as last night — with the funding measure, the farm bill extensions, and disaster aid, but stripping the debt limit provision that many conservatives rejected.
Another option, suggested by Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, would be to break up the component parts of the bill that failed on Thursday night and hold separate votes on them. That would allow conservatives to register their opposition to raising the debt ceiling.
President-elect Donald J. Trump said in a social media post Friday morning that if the federal government is going to shut down, “let it begin now, under the Biden Administration, not after January 20th.” The efforts on Capitol Hill to pass a spending bill, Trump added, “is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!”
Republicans, led by Speaker Mike Johnson, had already reached an agreement with Democrats to keep the government open in a plan unveiled earlier this week.
But that mammoth deal fell apart under a barrage of criticism from Trump, who has been pushing his party to suspend the nation’s debt limit well into his next term as part of any agreement.
Hours after the House rejected a spending and debt deal he had backed, President-elect Donald J. Trump repeated his demand that Congress suspend the debt ceiling. Posting on his Truth Social platform at 1:16 a.m. Eastern, Trump urged lawmakers to “get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling. Without this, we should never make a deal.”
President-elect Donald J. Trump transferred all of his shares in the social media company that bears his name to a trust controlled by his eldest son, according to a regulatory filing on Thursday night.
The filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said Mr. Trump had moved his roughly 115 million shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, to the trust. He did not sell the shares or receive any financial consideration for the transfer, which was described as a gift to the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust.
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s hammerlock on the Republican Party was shaken on Thursday night when 38 of his party’s lawmakers in the House voted to defy his command to support a spending and debt deal.
Writing on social media, Mr. Trump had told Republicans to “vote ‘YES’ for this Bill, TONIGHT!” He said it was vital to pass a bill that extended spending until early next year and suspended the nation’s debt limit until 2027, well into his next term.
There have been more than 20 gaps in federal government funding since 1976, with varying levels of shutdowns that have affected agencies — and the public — in different ways. During Donald J. Trump’s first term as president, roughly 800,000 of the federal government’s more than two million employees were sidelined for over a month starting in December 2018. The economy took a major hit.
As lawmakers raced to secure a funding deal that would keep the government open beyond Friday’s midnight deadline, Washington and its large federal work force braced for a potentially disruptive holiday season. Travel would still likely proceed without major interruptions, as Transportation Security Administration employees and air traffic controllers would largely continue to work. But like during the late 2018 shutdown, travelers could face delays at airports.
President-elect Donald J. Trump injected debt limit politics into already-fraught congressional spending talks this week, urging lawmakers to lift the debt limit or abolish it entirely before he takes office next month.
The re-emergence of the debt limit comes 18 months after Republicans and Democrats staved off a fiscal crisis and agreed to suspend a cap on how much the government can borrow until after the 2024 presidential election. That was supposed to clear the decks and sidestep a politically difficult vote during the heat of campaign season.
The government lurched toward a shutdown after the House on Thursday rejected a hastily produced plan ordered up by President-elect Donald J. Trump to keep funding flowing, with dozens of Republicans defying his demand to pair the spending with a two-year suspension of the federal debt limit.
The vote sent Speaker Mike Johnson back to the drawing board ahead of a Friday night deadline with no clear path to keeping the government open. Right-wing lawmakers balked at increasing the government’s borrowing limit, something many of them have long pledged not to do without spending cuts to keep the debt from ballooning further."
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