The Senate voted Thursday afternoon on a massive defense spending bill after Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) threw a curveball into the government funding fight earlier this week.
Thune was effectively daring Democrats to oppose the $852 billion bill as the GOP seeks to shift the narrative from health care to military spending. Republicans and Democrats are also sparring over who's to blame for putting military pay in jeopardy amid the shutdown.
The full-year...
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Watch: Jeffries speaks as GOP seeks to put Democrats on defense
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) spoke to reporters Thursday afternoon as the government shutdown reaches its 16th day.
Senate Republicans sought to take back momentum from Democrats more than two weeks into the government shutdown. Leaders scheduled a vote for Thursday on a $852 billion Pentagon bill defense vote to put pressure on Democrats.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), in an interview that aired Thursday morning on MSNBC, also reit...
Booker courts red state voters online, urging them to join ‘No Kings’ protests
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is pressing red state voters to join local “No Kings” protests Saturday and put pressure on their GOP legislators to end the government shutdown through his outreach with social media influencers and creators in Florida and North Carolina.
The outreach, which was first shared with The Hill, includes interviews with content creators and influencers Sara Wiles in Florida, Sander Jennings in Florida and Kate Barr in North Carolina, whose total follow...
Will Speaker Johnson ever call the House back? 800,000 Arizonans are without a voice
Right now, more than 800,000 people in Arizona’s 7th District are without representation in Congress. Their duly elected representative, Adelita Grijalva, is being denied the right to be sworn in by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) not because of any wrongdoing on her part, but because Republican leadership has chosen to hold her seat hostage for political leverage.
Let’s be clear: this is not a clerical delay or a scheduling issue. This is a deliberate act. Johnson has refused to...
Jeffries on Thune’s ACA vote offer: GOP ‘can’t be trusted on a wing and a prayer’
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Thursday Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-S.D.) offer of a vote on extending Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies was not firm enough to move Democrats to end the government shutdown.
Thune told MSNBC on Wednesday that he was willing to guarantee a vote on ObamaCare subsidy extensions, though he said reforms to the program were needed and he could not assure the outcome of the process. He had made a similar proposal...
Sanders: Marjorie Taylor Greene is a ‘good’ Republican
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Wednesday defended Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and referred to her as a "good" Republican at a CNN town hall.
The Vermont senator suggested that elected Republicans are "doing less of representing their districts and their states than just swearing allegiance to the president of the United States."
“So I never thought that I would say this, but you have somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene saying, ‘You know what, I was electe...
As the world turns, news repeats itself but is never boring
When my sister and I returned home from grade school for lunch each day we knew we were under the “shush” rule. Mother was listening to her favorite soap opera on the radio — what she called “my story.” The same rule applied over dinner in the evenings as father listened to the nightly news.
Those fond recollections came back to me last week as my wife and I returned from a two-week tour in Europe. We did not pick-up a single English-language newspaper or even attempt to find ...
The government shutdown is holding health care hostage
Health insurance is supposed to help families, not bully them. Yet when big insurers, or their lobby in Washington, don’t get the policy outcome they want, they reach for the same lever: higher premiums.
That isn’t care. That’s pressure — and patients feel it first.
We have seen this before. In October 2017, the administration cut off cost-sharing reduction payments. Carriers answered by “silver-loading” the next year, piling the missing dollars onto sil...
Virginia, New York City rivals face critical test
Morning Report is The Hill's a.m. newsletter. Subscribe here.
In today's issue:
▪ 2025’s marquee debates
▪ Redistricting battle in court
▪ Thune offers Dems vote on ObamaCare subsidies
▪ Trump authorizes CIA action in Venezuela
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GOP seeks to wrest back momentum from Democrats in shutdown fight
Republicans are trying to win back political momentum in the government shutdown fight from Democrats, putting their rivals on the defensive and taking solace from polls showing Americans are starting to shift more blame to Democrats for the funding stalemate.
After struggling through a bad last week that highlighted their divisions on health care, Republicans have showed signs of regrouping.
They’ve forced Democrats to vote twice on a House-passed government fund...