Jeffries shuts down raising the debt ceiling

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared to shut down Republicans’ push to raise the debt ceiling in a Thursday morning social media post. “GOP extremists want House Democrats to raise the debt ceiling so that House Republicans can lower the amount of your Social Security check. Hard pass,” he posted on his Bluesky account. Jeffries’ […]

Trump team lands at Energy Department

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has landed at the Energy Department’s headquarters. Members of the Trump transition arrived at the Energy Department on Tuesday to meet for the first time with department leaders, a DOE spokesperson said Wednesday. “Department officials showed them to dedicated office space in the building that had been set aside for […]

Johnson and Trump team floating stopgap plan with disaster aid, debt limit, farm bill

Speaker Mike Johnson and Donald Trump’s team are circling a new federal funding stopgap plan that includes disaster aid, pushing off a debt limit fight for two years and a one-year farm bill extension, according to two Republicans familiar with the discussions. The closed-door talks between the speaker and Trump’s team, including incoming Vice President […]

What we’re watching: Republicans scramble on government funding

🗓️ What we’re watching President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance injected themselves further into an escalating fight over federal spending, insisting that Congress raise the nation’s debt ceiling and cut a range of spending proposals. In a post to Truth Social, Trump dismissed the possibility of a clean CR, and said any Republican […]

Johnson has 3 main options to avert a shutdown. None of them are looking good.

Mike Johnson’s in a terrible spot, with a government shutdown deadline looming in less than 48 hours and no obvious way out. Conservatives are furious, rank-and-file members are exasperated, and President-elect Donald Trump is threatening to primary his members and taking blatant shots at his speakership. After spending weeks negotiating a stopgap spending bill with […]

Musk and Trump put House GOP in a bind

Just two days before a planned Christmas break, Speaker Mike Johnson is facing down the threat of a government shutdown and demands from an incoming president that he cannot easily deliver on. Yesterday, Trump ally Elon Musk banded with conservatives in the House and outside influencers to effectively tank a bipartisan government funding deal that […]

Ernst rolls out next DOGE-inspired bill

Sen. Joni Ernst is rolling out her next step on Thursday to overhaul the federal workforce as she embraces President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. The bill from Ernst, known as the DRAIN THE SWAMP Act, would require each executive agency to relocate at least 30 percent of employees currently working at a Washington, […]

Rand Paul floats Musk for speaker

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is floating the ultimate Washington outsider to be speaker: Elon Musk. “The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress,” Paul wrote in a post on Musk’s X platform. “Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk . . . think about it . . . […]

DOGE Can’t Do It All. Here’s What It Can Do.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have grand ambitions for their supercharged government consultancy. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency is going to solve the U.S.’s debt problem. It’s going to dramatically reduce the government’s power and slash the size of its workforce. And it’s going to crack down on that perpetual, easily named enemy: waste, […]

Veteran Trump hands a part of Labor Dept. landing team

President-elect Donald Trump’s landing team for the Labor Department includes a pair of high-ranking agency officials from his first term and a former chair of the federal agency that adjudicates labor disputes within the federal workforce. Trump’s transition operation recently informed the Biden administration that Virginia Secretary of Labor Bryan Slater, former Equal Employment Opportunity […]