“The MAGA-verse, with President-elect Trump and Elon Musk at the helm, continues to wield unprecedented power over Congress — but it has also found its limits,” Axios reports.
“Three times now, the influential voices surrounding Trump — often organizing on X — have failed to get exactly what they want.”
“President-elect Donald Trump’s last-minute demands for a congressional funding package were rejected by dozens of Republicans this week, foreshadowing the legislative challenges he could face next year — even with unified GOP control,” the Washington Post reports.
“Trump’s role in sinking a bipartisan deal to fund the government — and his public insistence that any spending bill lift the debt ceiling — led to a failed vote on the House floor Thursday evening. More than three dozen members of his own party voted against the deal he’d endorsed hours earlier. The Senate passed a new bill to avert a government shutdown early Saturday; the bill did not include Trump’s debt limit demand.”
“The drama highlighted the limits Trump faces in bending his entire party to his will, as Republicans hold a narrow margin in the House and remain ideologically split over government spending.”
Wall Street Journal: How a routine spending bill turned Washington upside down.
Politico: Trump’s wake-up call: Republicans are willing to defy him.
After the week of drama around a short term spending bill, Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) said: “I am now undecided on what House leadership should look like in the 119th Congress.”
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“President-elect Donald Trump, who derailed a bipartisan spending deal in Congress, tried on Friday to escape responsibility for the consequences, saying it would be better to let the government shut down under President Biden’s watch than to allow a politically damaging stalemate once he takes office next month,” the New York Times reports.
“President Biden is considering commuting the sentences of most, if not all, of the 40 men on the federal government’s death row, a move that would frustrate President-elect Donald Trump’s ability to resume the rapid pace of executions that marked his first term,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
In a complete reversal, Elon Musk, who barraged the initial spending deal with a torrent of criticism on X, just posted on the platform that Johnson “did a good job here, given the circumstances,” the New York Times reports.
After days of uncertainty and Republican infighting, the House easily passed a spending bill to keep the government funded through March.
Democrats feel they defeated both President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk with this bill.
There is no extension of the debt limit, though Republicans have agreed to address that in the new Congress.
“Speaker Mike Johnson will try yet again to pass a short-term funding bill this afternoon, just hours before a government shutdown is set to begin. But this time it seems likely to work,” Punchbowl News reports.
“Johnson is now pushing a short-term funding bill that keeps federal agencies open until mid-March. The bill will include $100 billion in disaster aid for the hurricane-battered Southeast and other states. There’s also $30 billion in aid for farmers and a one-year extension of current agriculture policy.”
“The measure will be taken up under suspension, according to senior GOP lawmakers and aides, meaning it needs a two-thirds majority to pass. There will be one vote, instead of individual votes on the component parts as Johnson first envisioned.”
“If House Democrats back it – which seems likely – and the Senate processes it quickly, the measure could be approved by tonight’s midnight shutdown deadline and sent to President Joe Biden for his signature.”
“I cannot believe the Republicans are extending the debt ceiling — I am a Republican and I am embarrassed!”
— Donald Trump, in January 2013.
“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling. Without this, we should never make a deal. Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.”
— Trump, earlier today.
Elon Musk is questioning whether the spending bill that Republicans are bringing to the House floor later today is a Republican bill or a Democrat bill.
House Republicans have changed their plans once again and will now bring to the floor this afternoon the same government funding bill that failed last night — but without raising the debt ceiling, Punchbowl News reports.
It will require a two-thirds majority to pass.
There is also supposedly a side “agreement” — though only among House Republicans — to raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion in the “first reconciliation package” alongside a promise to cut $2.5 trillion in “net mandatory spending in the reconciliation process.”
“An appearance by Pete Buttigieg on Friday morning on New Hampshire talk radio is fueling ongoing speculation that the U.S. Secretary of Transportation in President Biden’s administration may be mulling another White House run in 2028,” Fox News reports.
“Elon Musk has already helped propel Donald Trump into the White House. Now he might have his sights on a political shake-up at another iconic address: 10 Downing Street,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“There is growing alarm among Britain’s political establishment that Musk, who has been sharply critical of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, may radically alter the U.K.’s electoral landscape by donating millions of dollars to Reform UK, a populist upstart party. Britain’s government says it wants to change the law to prevent foreigners from making outsize political donations.”
Outgoing Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) told Semafor that her opposition to scrapping the filibuster was the “most important vote I’ve ever taken in my life.”
She added: “I know some people think I’m, like, this enigma or whatever, but I don’t think that’s true at all,” Sinema said. “I think, maybe, this is a place where sometimes people say things that they don’t mean. I am not one of those people … I think I’m highly predictable.”
“It’s real for some people, but Chip Roy can survive it. I can survive it. It’ll move the needle 20 points in a race. But if you were going to win 80-20 percent you can be okay.”
— Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), quoted by Politico, brushing off Donald Trump’s threat to back primary challengers to Republicans who defy him.
“Elon Musk said he’ll be funding moderate primary challengers to incumbent Democrats in deep-blue seats around the country, as he continues to try to influence a wide swath of government,” Politico reports.
Said Musk, in response to a video of Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA): “Forgot to mention that I’m also going to be funding moderate candidates in heavily Democrat districts, so that the country can get rid of those who don’t represent them, like this jackass.”
The Washington Post is expected to name Matt Murray as the permanent executive editor following an ultimately unsuccessful search to recruit a new newsroom chief, Puck reports.
“The news… will bring an anticlimactic end to a long and tortured recruitment effort at a storied paper that … has endured a rather miserable and ignominious few years of financial irresponsibility, soul-searching, and chaos.”
Eric Lutz: “Given the kind of year it’s been, it’s perhaps only fitting that 2024 would end with a chaotic fight over the funding of the government: After twelve months of upheaval and dysfunction, why not a final frenzy of shutdown politics to cap things off?”
“But make no mistake: Whether or not lawmakers strike a deal by their Friday night deadline, Republicans own the chaos that led us to this moment.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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