Tag: Government Shutdown

Speaker Mike Johnson Unveils Never-Before-Attempted Budget Proposal to Avert US Government Shutdown

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With a partial government shutdown looming in less than a week, US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson unveiled a two-step plan on Saturday to fund the government through the new year. The stopgap funding bill, often referred to as a “continuing resolution,” would extend funding for several federal agencies until late January, while the rest of the government would be funded through early February.

Johnson defended the bill as bucking “the absurd holiday-season omnibus tradition of massive, loaded up spending bills introduced right before the Christmas recess,” in a post on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

The Louisiana conservative, who has been in the top House job for less than a month and has never chaired a House committee, faces a steep climb to get the bill passed before the November 17 midnight deadline. If all Democrats are present and vote against the bill, Johnson can afford only four defectors in his own party in a vote that could come as early as Tuesday.

Yet the bill has to satisfy two dramatically opposed constituencies. On one side are the far-right House GOP members who ousted Johnson’s predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, over his resistance to imposing deep spending cuts during the budgeting process and have called for a staggered funding process. On the other hand, more moderate members in both chambers of Congress don’t like the idea of bifurcating the deadlines for funding federal programs. Johnson conceded during a private conference call with lawmakers Saturday that the bill likely would not get universal support from Republicans, The New York Times reported.

In just the last week alone, the House GOP punted on two separate funding votes due to divisions between hardline and moderate members, a sign that the sharp divisions that opened up during the speakership fiasco have not disappeared.

Already, some members of Congress in both parties are voicing their displeasure with Johnson’s proposal. Texas Representative Chip Roy, a hard-right House Freedom Caucus member, wrote that his opposition to the bill, which does not include any spending cuts, “cannot be overstated.” In another post, he wrote that he opposes the bill “100%”. On Thursday, amid reports that Johnson was weighing pushing forward with a staggered bill, Senate Appropriations Committee chair and Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray called the plan “the craziest, stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

The Biden administration immediately pounced on the plan. In a statement hours after Johnson unveiled the bill, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called it “a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns.”

“With just days left before an extreme Republican shutdown — and after shutting down Congress for three weeks after they ousted their own leader — House Republicans are wasting precious time with an unserious proposal that has been panned by members of both parties,” Jean-Pierre said.

The White House is reportedly already prepping surrogates to use the likelihood of a shutdown to boost Joe Biden’s stubbornly low approval ratings. “The clock is ticking,” reads a copy of talking points distributed to Biden allies and obtained by Politico. “We are just X days from an Extreme Republican Shutdown that would: Force servicemembers and law enforcement officers to work without pay—risk significant delays for travelers. Undermine public health. Cut off funding for small businesses.”

On Friday, the ratings firm Moody’s downgraded the United States’ credit outlook to “negative,” citing “continued political polarization” within Congress.

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Jack McCordick

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November 12, 2023
House Speaker Mike Johnson proposes 2-step stopgap funding bill to avert government shutdown

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House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled his proposal on Saturday to avoid a partial government shutdown by extending government funding for some agencies and programs until Jan. 19, and continuing funding for others until Feb. 2.

The approach is unusual for a stopgap spending bill. Usually, lawmakers extend funding until a certain date for all programs. Johnson decided to go with the combination approach, addressing concerns from GOP lawmakers seeking to avoid being presented with a massive spending bill just before the holidays.

“This two-step continuing resolution is a necessary bill to place House Republicans in the best position to fight for conservative victories,” Johnson said in a statement after speaking with GOP lawmakers in an afternoon conference call. “The bill will stop the absurd holiday-season omnibus tradition of massive, loaded up spending bills introduced right before the Christmas recess.”

The bill excludes funding requested by President Biden for Israel, Ukraine and the U.S. border with Mexico. Johnson said separating Biden’s request for an emergency supplemental bill from the temporary, stopgap measure “places our conference in the best position to fight for fiscal responsibility, oversight over Ukraine aid, and meaningful policy changes at our Southern border.”

Hardline conservatives, usually loathe to support temporary spending measures of any sort, had indicated they would give Johnson some leeway to pass legislation, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, to give Congress more time to negotiate a long-term agreement.

But, some were critical in their reactions following the conference call.

“My opposition to the clean CR just announced by the Speaker to the @HouseGOP cannot be overstated,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, tweeted on X. “Funding Pelosi level spending & policies for 75 days – for future ‘promises.’”

The federal government is operating under funding levels approved last year by a Democratic-led House and Senate. Facing a government shutdown when the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, Congress passed a 47-day continuing resolution that funds the government through Nov. 17, but the fallout was severe. Rep. Kevin McCarthy was booted from the speakership days later, and the House was effectively paralyzed for most of the month while Republicans tried to elect a replacement.

Republicans eventually were unanimous in electing Johnson speaker, but his elevation has hardly eased the dynamic that led to McCarthy’s removal — a conference torn on policy as well as how much to spend on federal programs. This past week, Republicans had to pull two spending bills from the floor – one to fund transportation and housing programs and the other to fund the Treasury Department, Small Business Administration and other agencies – because they didn’t have the votes in their own party to push them through the House.

A document explaining Johnson’s proposal to House Republicans, obtained by The Associated Press, said funding for four spending bills would be extended until Jan. 19. Veterans programs, and bills dealing with transportation, housing, agriculture and energy, would be part of that extension.

Funding for the eight other spending bills, which include defense, the State Department, Homeland Security and other government agencies would be extended until Feb. 2.

The document sent to GOP lawmakers and key staff states that Johnson inherited a budget mess. He took office less than three weeks ago and immediately began considering appropriations bills through regular order. Still, with just days remaining before a shutdown, a continuing resolution is now required.

“This proposal is just a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns — full stop,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement Saturday on Johnson’s proposal. “With just days left before an Extreme Republican Shutdown—and after shutting down Congress for three weeks after they ousted their own leader — House Republicans are wasting precious time with an unserious proposal that has been panned by members of both parties.”

Underscoring the concerns about the possibility of a shutdown, the credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service lowered its outlook on the U.S. government’s debt on Friday to “negative” from “stable,” citing the cost of rising interest rates and political polarization in Congress.

House Republicans pointed to the national debt, now exceeding $33 trillion, for Moody’s decision. Analysts have warned that with interest rates heading higher, interest costs on the national debt will eat up a rising share of tax revenue.

Johnson said in reaction to Moody’s announcement that House Republicans are committed to working in a bipartisan fashion for fiscal restraint, beginning with the introduction of a debt commission.

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November 11, 2023
US House Speaker Johnson unveils a two-step stopgap bill – media

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson on Saturday announced a two-step temporary funding measure aimed at averting a partial government shutdown a week from now, U.S. media reported.

The measure employs an unorthodox structure that would provide funding for some segments of the federal government until Jan. 19 and for other agencies until Feb. 2, according to media reports. It was unlikely to win support from Democrats or the White House.

The Republican-controlled House and Democratic-led Senate have until Friday to enact temporary funding legislation, commonly known as a continuing resolution, to keep federal agencies open after current funding expires.

Stopgap measures, known as continuing resolutions or “CRs,” have been used up to now to fund the entire government over a single period of time. The unorthodox two-step structure adopted by Johnson reflected demands from Republican hardliners who have opposed more straightforward measures in the past.

Before Saturday’s announcement, some Republican lawmakers had expressed concern that a complex CR could make it harder to reach agreement with Democrats and increase the risk of a shutdown.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by David Gregorio and Daniel Wallis)

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November 11, 2023
A Speaker Without Enemies—For Now

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When Representative Mike Johnson arrived in Congress in 2017, he received an important piece of advice from a fellow Louisianan, Representative Steve Scalise. “Be careful about your early alliances that you make,” Scalise told Johnson, as the younger Republican recalled in a C-SPAN interview that year. Avoid getting “marginalized or labeled in any way.”

Six years later, Johnson has followed that advice all the way to the House speakership, reaching a post that is second in line to the presidency faster than any other lawmaker in modern congressional history. Staunchly conservative and closely aligned with former President Donald Trump, the 51-year-old former talk-radio host made few headlines and fewer enemies as he climbed the ranks of his party.

With a 220–209 House vote this afternoon, Johnson was able to forge a consensus that eluded three previous aspirants—including his own mentor, Scalise—to replace Kevin McCarthy. He earned unanimous support from Republican members, who stood and applauded when he clinched a majority of the chamber. His victory ends a weeks-long power struggle that immobilized the House as a war started in the Middle East and a government shutdown loomed.

Johnson’s win was as sudden as it was improbable. Early yesterday afternoon, he lost a secret-ballot vote to become the House GOP’s third speaker nominee in as many weeks. But the winner of that tally, Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, faced immediate backlash from social conservatives and Trump allies over his support for same-sex marriage and his 2021 vote to certify Joe Biden’s election as president. More than two dozen Republicans told Emmer that they would not support him in a public floor vote, putting him in the same perilous position as the previous GOP speaker nominee, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio. While Emmer was trying to win them over, Trump denounced him as “a globalist RINO.” Emmer’s nomination was dead after just four hours.

David A. Graham: The House Republicans’s new litmus test

As the fifth-ranking House GOP leader, Johnson was next in line. Late last night, he captured the nomination in the second round of balloting. His victory was far from unanimous, but rank-and-file Republicans who had initially voted against Johnson, apparently weary after weeks of infighting, decided to support him.

Johnson’s ascent is a product of both the GOP’s ideological conformity and its ongoing loyalty to Trump. His record in the House is no more moderate than Jordan’s, whose preference for antagonism over compromise turned off an ultimately decisive faction of the party. Both Johnson and Jordan served as chairs of the Republican Study Committee—the largest conservative bloc in the House—and played key roles in Trump’s effort to overturn his defeat in 2020. Johnson enlisted Republican lawmakers to sign a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to allow state legislatures to effectively nullify the votes of their citizens. Despite Johnson’s involvement, he won the support of at least one Republican, Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, who had refused to vote for Jordan, because the Ohioan didn’t acknowledge the legitimacy of Biden’s win.

For electorally vulnerable House Republicans, Johnson’s relative anonymity was an asset. They rejected Jordan in large part because they feared that his notoriety and uncompromising style would play poorly in their districts. By contrast, Johnson, who heeded Scalise’s advice to avoid being “marginalized or labeled,” comes across as mild-mannered and polite. He could be harder for Democrats to demonize. Johnson is so little known that operatives at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which sent out a flurry of statements criticizing each successive speaker nominee, were still combing through his record and listening to old recordings of his radio show this morning. “Mike Johnson is Jim Jordan in a sports coat,” a spokesperson, Viet Shelton, told me. “Electing him as speaker would represent how the Republican conference has completely given in to the most extreme fringes of their party.”

The next few weeks will test whether the inexperienced Johnson is in over his head, and just how far to the right Johnson is willing to push his party. “You’re going to see this group work like a well-oiled machine,” Johnson, flanked by dozens of his GOP colleagues, assured reporters after securing the nomination last night. He’ll have plenty of doubters. The new speaker will be leading the same five-vote majority that routinely rebuffed McCarthy, forcing him to rely on Democrats to pass high-stakes legislation.

Read: The real-world consequences of the House speaker fight

Congress faces a November 17 deadline to avoid a government shutdown—the result of a five-week extension in funding that ultimately cost McCarthy his job. Johnson has circulated a plan to Republicans that suggested he would support another stopgap measure, for either two or five months, to buy time for the House and Senate to negotiate full-year spending bills.

He’ll also confront immediate pressure to act on the Biden administration’s request for more than $100 billion in aid to Israel and Ukraine. Like Jordan, Johnson has supported aid for Israel but has opposed additional Ukraine funding. “We stand with our ally Israel,” Johnson said last night; he made no mention of Ukraine.

If the GOP holds on to its majority next year, Johnson would have a say in whether the House certifies the presidential winner in 2024. When a reporter asked him last night about his role in helping Trump try to overturn the 2020 election, the Republicans around him, unified and jubilant for the first time in weeks, started to jeer. A few members booed the buzzkill in the press corps. “Shut up!” yelled one lawmaker, Representative Virginia Foxx of North Carolina. Johnson, the conservative without enemies, merely shook his head and smiled. “Next question,” he replied. “Next question.”

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Russell Berman

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October 25, 2023
Jim Jordan Could Have a Long Fight Ahead

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Updated at 3:46 p.m. ET on October 17, 2023

On Friday, immediately after nominating Representative Jim Jordan as their latest candidate for speaker, House Republicans took a second, secret-ballot vote. The question put to each lawmaker was simple: Would you support Jordan in a public vote on the House floor?

The results were not encouraging for the pugnacious Ohioan. Nearly a quarter of the House Republican conference—55 members—said they would not back Jordan. Given the GOP’s threadbare majority, he could afford to lose no more than three Republicans on the vote. Jordan’s bid seemed to be fizzling even faster than that of Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, whose nomination earlier in the week lasted barely a day before he bowed out in the face of opposition from within the party.

Yet, by this afternoon, Jordan had flipped dozens of holdouts to put himself closer to winning the speakership. The 55 Republicans who said last week that they wouldn’t support him had dwindled to 20 when the House voted this afternoon. He earned a total of 200 votes on the floor; he’ll need 217 to win. Jordan will now try to replicate the strategy that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy used to capture the top House post in January: wearing down his opposition, vote by painful vote. It took McCarthy 15 ballots to secure the speakership, but Jordan may not need that many. The Republicans who voted against him on the floor have not displayed the defiance that characterized the conservatives who overthrew McCarthy. Several of them have told reporters that they could be persuaded to vote for Jordan, or would not stand in the way if he neared the threshold of 217 votes needed to win.

Read: Steve Scalise bows out

Should he secure those final votes, Jordan’s election would represent a major victory for the GOP hardliners who, led by Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, toppled McCarthy with the hope of replacing him with a more combative, ideological conservative. The switch would also give Donald Trump, who endorsed Jordan, something he’s never had in his seven years as the Republican Party’s official and unofficial standard-bearer: a House speaker fully committed to his cause. Although McCarthy and the previous GOP speaker, Paul Ryan, accommodated the former president, Jordan has been his champion; as documented by the House committee on January 6, Jordan was deeply involved in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election and urged then–Vice President Mike Pence to throw out electoral votes from states that Trump was contesting.

His election would look a lot like Trump’s, each the result of establishment Republicans falling in line with a leader many of them swore they’d never support. Throughout Trump’s four years in the White House, GOP lawmakers, aides, and even members of the Cabinet sharply criticized the president in private, either to reporters or to their own colleagues, while offering unequivocal support and praise in public. That dynamic played out for Jordan this afternoon, when the floor vote revealed that dozens of the Republicans who’d opposed him in a secret ballot were unwilling to put their names against him on the record.

Some of them had made awkward public reversals in the run-up to the vote. On Thursday, Representative Ann Wagner of Missouri was asked whether she would back Jordan in a floor vote. “HELL NO,” she told Scott Wong of NBC News. By Monday morning, she was saying that Jordan had “allayed my concerns about keeping the government open” and securing the southern border; she would vote for him. One by one, other senior Republicans who had initially said that they were determined to block Jordan’s ascent—Representatives Mike Rogers of Alabama, Ken Calvert of California, Vern Buchanan of Florida among them—declared that they, too, had come around.

By this afternoon, however, Jordan was still well short of the votes he needed. “I was surprised at the number. I think everyone was surprised,” Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, a Jordan supporter, told reporters after the vote. The big question now is whether Jordan can close the gap on subsequent ballots, or whether the small cadre of Republican holdouts will grow into a more formidable bloc against his candidacy. The safer assumption seemed to be that Jordan’s opposition would melt away. After all, this group of Republicans is a different breed than the recalcitrant conservatives who forced out McCarthy. The anti-Jordan contingent is, if not ideologically moderate, then far more pragmatic and committed to stable governance than the anti-McCarthy faction.

The lack of a House speaker for the past two weeks has paralyzed the chamber in the middle of ballooning domestic and international crises. The federal government will shut down a month from today if no action is taken by Congress, which has been unable to offer more assistance to either Israel or Ukraine in their respective wars with Hamas and Russia. A number of Jordan skeptics have cited the upheaval outside the Capitol as a rationale for resolving the impasse inside the dome, even if it means voting for a conservative they consider ill-suited to lead.

Lee Drutman: Matt Gaetz is half right

Democrats believed that the election of such a polarizing Republican could, along with the general collapse of governance by the GOP, help them recapture the chamber next year. But they were appalled that Republicans might elevate to the speakership a far-right ideologue many of them have labeled an insurrectionist. A former wrestler who brought a fighter’s mentality to Congress, Jordan rose to prominence as an antagonist of former Republican Speaker John Boehner a decade ago, pushing against bipartisan cooperation. “He is the worst possible choice,” Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, a 25-year veteran of the House, told me before the vote.

Jordan’s record, and the possibility that he would be an electoral vulnerability for the GOP, was clearly weighing on Republicans before the vote. As he walked into the chamber shortly after noon, Representative Anthony D’Esposito, a Republican who represents a swing district on Long Island, told reporters that he still hadn’t decided how to vote. He ultimately joined 19 other GOP lawmakers in backing someone other than Jordan. Other mainstream Republicans justified their vote for Jordan on the grounds that he alone had the credibility to persuade far-right Republicans to avert a government shutdown in the coming weeks and months. “If he says it, they think it’s a strategic move. If I say it, they call me a RINO,” one Republican told me on the condition of anonymity after voting for Jordan.

By the end of the vote, as many Republicans had opposed Jordan as had initially tried to block McCarthy in January, before the former speaker embarked on a five-day period of private lobbying and dealmaking to win the gavel. It was unclear whether Jordan would be able to do the same. He appeared relaxed as he sat through the nearly hour-long roll call, showing little reaction as his defections mounted. When the vote ended, he huddled with supporters, including McCarthy, and the House, having failed once more to elect a speaker, recessed so Republicans could figure out their next move.

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Russell Berman

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October 17, 2023
Steve Scalise drops out of House speaker race amid GOP leadership crisis

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Steve Scalise drops out of House speaker race amid GOP leadership crisis – CBS News

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Louisiana Republican Rep. Steve Scalise has withdrawn from the House speaker race, extending concerns about the duration of the legislative gridlock with a government shutdown looming. CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane reports from Capitol Hill.

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October 13, 2023
Steve Scalise Bows Out

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When Representative Steve Scalise emerged yesterday from the private party meeting where House Republicans narrowly nominated him to serve as the next speaker, he sounded anxious to get started. “We need to send a message to people throughout the world that the House is open and doing the people’s business,” Scalise told reporters.

The Louisiana Republican wanted an immediate floor vote so that his members could formally elect him in a party-line tally. He had reason to hurry: The pile of problems—both global and domestic—that Congress must address is growing fast, and the House can do nothing without an elected speaker. The federal government will shut down on November 17 if lawmakers don’t act. Ukraine needs more funding from the U.S., and Israel, suddenly at war with Hamas, could soon as well.

Scalise’s Republican foes, however, weren’t giving in. He needed the support of 217 of the House’s 221 GOP members in order to win the speakership, and defections began popping up almost immediately. Today more Republicans came out in opposition to his bid, and this evening Scalise announced that he was withdrawing from the race. His time as the Republican nominee lasted less than a day and a half.

Read: ‘We put sharp knives in the hands of children’

What began as a personal vendetta against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy by a single Republican backbencher, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, has spiraled into a much broader crisis—not only for the slim and fractured GOP majority but for the country and its allies around the world. “It’s very dangerous what we’re doing,” Representative Michael McCaul of Texas, the Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters yesterday. “We’re playing with fire.” How the impasse ends, and when, could determine whether federal agencies stay open and whether the U.S. lends more support to its allies overseas.

Here are three major issues that could hinge on the outcome of the speaker fight:

A government shutdown

In what became his final act as speaker, McCarthy averted a government shutdown by relying on Democratic help to pass a temporary extension of federal funding. But the Californian ended up sacrificing his dream job to keep the government’s lights on for a grand total of seven weeks. The supposed goal was to buy time to negotiate budget bills for the remainder of the fiscal year, but Republicans have already wasted nearly two of those weeks bickering over McCarthy and his replacement. “There’s no way we’re going to have a budget,” Representative Lois Frankel of Florida, a Democratic member of the House Appropriations Committee, told me.

Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, whom Scalise defeated for the speaker nomination, conceded as much, reportedly telling Republicans that they would need to pass another temporary extension once the House resumes normal operations. Jordan’s proposal called for the House to extend funding for another six months, which under the budget agreement Congress enacted in June would trigger an automatic 1 percent spending cut across the board.

The best hope to avert a shutdown might be if Republicans are forced instead to elect a caretaker speaker such as Representative Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, who is currently the acting speaker pro tempore, or Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, the House Rules Committee chair, who has good relationships with members of both parties. Some lawmakers have suggested that either Republican could serve for a few weeks or months, helping to resolve the funding crisis before giving way to a longer-term leader.

Funding for Ukraine

Although he kept the government open before he was deposed, McCarthy refused to allow passage of $6 billion in additional aid to Ukraine sought by the Biden administration and bipartisan majorities in the Senate. Neither Scalise nor Jordan would commit to sending more money to Ukraine, bowing to pressure from GOP hard-liners who have demanded that the U.S. secure the southern border before approving another infusion of aid.

Democrats feared that the election of either Scalise or Jordan could effectively end American aid to Ukraine. If Republicans are unable to secure enough votes on their own to elect a speaker, Democrats might agree to support a more moderate candidate on the condition that the House vote on an aid package, among other concessions. “I do think that a majority of House members want to continue to help Ukraine,” said Frankel, who sits on the subcommittee that oversees the foreign-aid budget. “The challenge is having a speaker who would bring up a bill to allow us to do that. That’s the danger of a Republican candidate for speaker making a deal with extremists who say, ‘Hell no.’”

Funding for Israel

Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel could reopen a path for Ukraine funding. Despite pockets of opposition on the far left and right, the Jewish state retains overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress; when Scalise left yesterday’s party meeting, he was wearing both American and Israeli flag pins on his suit jacket. Biden officials and congressional Democrats are already discussing a package that would combine funding for Israel and Ukraine, in the hope that yoking the two together would help the Ukraine aid win approval.

Read: The Israeli crisis is testing Biden’s core foreign-policy claim

The success of that strategy is not guaranteed, however. When the idea came up yesterday during a classified State Department briefing for members of Congress, Frankel told me that a Republican lawmaker, Representative Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin, started shouting “No!” The outburst seemed to encapsulate a week of paralysis in a party that, until it picks a leader, can’t say yes to anything. “I’m semi-optimistic,” Frankel said with a sigh, “that at some point Republicans will come to their senses.”

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Russell Berman

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October 12, 2023
Ukraine’s “Army of Drones” tells CBS News $40 million worth of Russian military hardware destroyed in a month

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Eastern Ukraine — Russia launched a fresh wave of drone attacks against Ukraine overnight. The Ukrainian Air Force said Tuesday that it downed all but two of the 31 exploding aircraft, but the latest assault highlighted the extent to which the war sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion more than a year and a half ago is increasingly a drone war.

Ukraine’s military gave CBS News rare access to one of its new drone units, called the “Army of Drones,” which has been successfully attacking Russian forces behind the front line. We watched as soldiers from the unit, part of Ukraine’s 24th Mechanized Brigade, practiced commanding fleets of the small aircraft to target and destroy enemy hardware and personnel.

One pilot, codenamed “Sunset,” was flying a state-of-the-art R18 octocopter — a drone designed entirely in Ukraine. Each one costs more than $100,000, but even with that price tag, the R18s have proven cost effective, and devastatingly successful.

A Ukrainian soldier with a drone unit from the 24th Mechanized Brigade flies a Ukrainian-designed R18 octocopter UAV during a training exercise in eastern Ukraine, in early October 2023.

CBS News

Sunset told us the unit had already used them to destroy 10 Russian tanks since it started operating in May.

Equipped with thermal imaging cameras, the R18 turns deadliest after dark. The Ukrainian troops showed CBS News video from one of the devices as it illuminated a Russian Howitzer artillery piece hundreds of feet below, and then blew it up.

The 24th Mechanized Brigade’s commander, codenamed “Hasan,” said his forces had “destroyed $40 million worth of Russian hardware in the past month.”

He said the unit was set to grow in manpower from about 60 to 100 troops, and they will need even more drones.

According to one estimate, Ukraine is using and losing 10,000 drones every month. With the war dragging on, Hasan acknowledged that ensuring a supply of the lethal weapons is an issue.

Ukrainian soldiers with a drone unit from the 24th Mechanized Brigade prepare a Ukrainian-designed R18 octocopter UAV during a training exercise in eastern Ukraine, in early October 2023.

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Most of the drones used by his forces come from China, he said. But Beijing officially banned its drone makers from exporting to Ukraine — and Russia — at the beginning of September. They still manage to get them through middlemen and third countries, but it’s slower.

Boxes from China sat on a shelf in a concealed workshop, where another Ukrainian commander, “Taras,” watched over his men working to adapt the drones they could get ahold of to kill, and repairing damaged ones to save money. That kind of warfare thrift is all the more important with new U.S. aid for Ukraine now suspended.

Since it was founded in May, the drone unit we met has struck communications towers, infantry hideouts and Russian soldiers, and Sunset had a message for Americans, including the politicians in Washington who will decide whether to continue increasing military support for his country:

“Thank you,” he said. “We are not wasting your money. Drones save our lives.”

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Ramy Inocencio

Ramy Inocencio is a foreign correspondent for CBS News based in London and previously served as Asia correspondent based in Beijing.

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October 4, 2023
Kevin McCarthy’s Brief Speakership Meets Its End

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Kevin McCarthy began his 269th day as House speaker by recounting all the times he proved his doubters wrong. In January, after a series of humiliating defeats, the California Republican hung on to become speaker of the House. In the months since, he reminisced, he has narrowly averted the twin crises of a national-debt default and, this past weekend, a government shutdown. “I just don’t give up,” McCarthy told reporters after making one more plea to his party to keep him in his post.

Today, McCarthy’s streak of defying his skeptics came to an end as a group of his GOP critics joined Democrats to vote him out of the speakership after fewer than nine months in office. The unprecedented move could paralyze the House for days or even weeks, as Congress faces a November 17 deadline for funding the federal government.

Whether McCarthy is done for good as speaker remains unclear. The vote to remove him will trigger a new election, and McCarthy was coy with reporters earlier in the day about whether he’d try to reclaim the gavel. Assuming he doesn’t, his tenure atop the House—the briefest in nearly 150 years—was as historic as it was short-lived: He won the office after fighting through more ballots than any speaker in a century, and he was the first to be removed in the middle of a term by a vote of the House.

Few of McCarthy’s 54 predecessors had assumed the speakership with lower expectations. His years rising through the GOP leadership had left him with a reputation as a glad-handing lightweight with few convictions. And his majority seemed ungovernable from the start. He had just a five-vote margin over the Democrats, and was surrounded by hard-liners who demanded confrontation over compromise. McCarthy traded away much of his power as speaker during the marathon series of votes that ended, after 15 rounds, with his election. As part of the horse trade, McCarthy handed his Republican foes the means of his own destruction: the ability for a single member to call, at any time, a vote on whether to remove the speaker.

“From day one, he knew and everyone knew that he was living on borrowed time,” Representative Gerry Connolly of Virginia told me recently.

McCarthy’s most ardent Republican critic, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, had made the speaker’s ouster his singular mission even before McCarthy made a surprise reversal on Saturday to avert a government shutdown. Gaetz ultimately persuaded seven Republicans to join him in voting to remove McCarthy via a procedural maneuver known as a motion to vacate the chair.

Read: Kevin McCarthy finally defies the right

Democrats faced their own conundrum: Was the speaker they knew a safer bet than a replacement they didn’t? Whichever Republican succeeds McCarthy is likely to be just as conservative and just as beholden to the hard-line faction that deposed him—if not more so. Yet Democrats ultimately decided that McCarthy was not worth rescuing; all 208 in attendance today voted to remove him.

The speaker had lurched to the right far more often than he governed from the center; he had joined the bulk of the GOP in forgiving former President Donald Trump for his role in fomenting the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, and just a month ago buckled to conservative demands to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. “It is now the responsibility of the Republican members to end the House Republican Civil War,” the House minority leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, declared after a lengthy Democratic Party conference this morning, urging members to support McCarthy’s removal as speaker.

In the end, McCarthy almost survived only because Democrats struggled to get their members to the Capitol in time for the crucial votes. McCarthy, however, had suffered too many Republican defections for it to matter. The process began with a vote on a motion to table Gaetz’s motion to vacate the chair. Eleven Republicans voted with the entire Democratic caucus to clear the way for McCarthy’s ouster, more than twice as many members as the speaker could afford to lose within his own party. “The office of speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant,” Representative Steve Womack of Arkansas, presiding over the vote, said after the 216–210 roll call concluded.

No obvious successor has emerged. McCarthy’s top lieutenant, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, is popular with conservatives but is now undergoing treatment for blood cancer. Majority Whip Tom Emmer or GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik could also emerge as alternatives, but neither has been openly campaigning for the job.

Ever the optimist in public, McCarthy seemed to sense before the votes that the run of good fortune and political survival that had taken him to the nation’s third-highest office would not last much longer. He had struck a defiant tone, defending to the end his decision to keep the government open even if it cost him his job. “If you throw out a speaker” for averting a government shutdown, he warned reporters and, implicitly, his Republican colleagues, “then I think we’re in a really bad place.”

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Russell Berman

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October 3, 2023
Rep. Gaetz says he will file a motion this week to oust Speaker McCarthy

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Rep. Gaetz says he will file a motion this week to oust Speaker McCarthy – CBS News

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pushed through a last-minute bipartisan stopgap bill on Saturday to keep the government open, but now his speakership is at risk as Rep. Matt Gaetz said on Sunday he will try to oust him from his leadership position. CBS News’ congressional correspondent Nikole Killion reports.

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October 2, 2023
10/1: CBS Weekend News

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10/1: CBS Weekend News – CBS News

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Fighting continues after deal reached to temporarily fund government; The story of one of the most iconic photos in hip-hop history

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October 1, 2023
Fighting continues after deal reached to temporarily fund government

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Fighting continues after deal reached to temporarily fund government – CBS News

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A government shutdown was narrowly avoided after a deal was struck to temporarily fund the government for 45 days. But President Biden blasted GOP leadership as infighting in the Republican-controlled House continues. Nikole Killion reports.

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October 1, 2023
Open: This is

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Open: This is “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” Oct. 1, 2023 – CBS News

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This week on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy discusses Congress’ last-minute vote to avoid a government shutdown, plus Jimmy Carter celebrates his 99th birthday in Plains, Georgia.

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October 1, 2023
Government shutdown is averted, but for how long?

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Government shutdown is averted, but for how long? – CBS News

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An 11th hour “Hail Mary” stop-gap spending bill passed the House on Saturday, averting a shutdown of the federal government due to infighting within the Republican Party. Correspondent Lee Cowan looks at how the crisis has been (perhaps only temporarily) avoided – with ramifications for Ukraine.

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October 1, 2023
Congress Averts U.S. Government Shutdown With 11th Hour Short-Term Funding Bill

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Three hours before a potential government shutdown, the House and Senate did what no one thought possible just 24 hours prior—approve a last-minute short-term spending bill on Saturday that provides $16 billion for disaster relief and prevents millions of federal employees from being furloughed, at least until Nov. 17.

The 45-day stopgap funding package, hastily put together by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), will keep federal agencies open, but does not provide aid to Ukraine.

After weeks of escalating rhetoric by the House Republican Freedom Caucus, approximately twenty hard-liners who revel in challenging the GOP leadership, McCarthy pivoted to House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and the Democrats to get the bill passed. Consequently, the GOP speaker is expected to be confronted by his party when the House returns next week.

“We’re going to do our job,” McCarthy said before the House vote, “We’re going to be the adults in the room. And we’re going to keep government open.”

The House bill, which funds the government at current 2023 levels, was approved by a wide margin: 335-91, with almost all Democrats and most Republicans supporting the legislation. The Senate approval was a lopsided 88-9 vote in support, according to CSPAN.

“Americans can breathe a sigh of relief,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer following the vote.

The loss of aid to Ukraine was difficult to overcome for some lawmakers, including Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.), who delayed the Senate vote until receiving promises of “more economic and security aid” for the war-torn nation by Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

After voting to approve the measure, Bennet told reporters, “I think it was really, really important for us to send a signal to the world. We’re gonna continue to work in a bipartisan way to get Ukraine the funds.”

“I know important moments are like this, for the United States, to lead the rest of the world,” Bennet said, noting his mother was born in Poland in 1938 and survived the Holocaust. “We can’t fail,” he told the Associated Press.

President Joe Biden praised the legislation as “preventing an unnecessary crisis that would have inflicted needless pain on millions of hardworking Americans.”

With a focus on McCarthy and the House Republicans, he said, “But I want to be clear: we should never have been in this position in the first place. Just a few months ago, [we] reached a budget agreement to avoid precisely this type of manufactured crisis.”

Biden added that while there is no new funding for Ukraine in the stopgap measure, “We cannot under any circumstances allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted. I fully expect the Speaker will keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine and secure passage of the support needed to help Ukraine at this critical moment.”

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September 30, 2023
House passes 45-day funding bill, sends it to Senate for final approval

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House passes 45-day funding bill, sends it to Senate for final approval – CBS News

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The House on Saturday passed a last-minute stopgap measure that would fund the government for 45-days and likely avoid a government shutdown. The bill now heads to the Senate, where it will need to be passed before 11:59 p.m. Saturday to avoid a shutdown.

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September 30, 2023
House Republicans cancel planned recess as government shutdown appears more likely

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WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders Friday canceled a planned two-week recess as a government shutdown appeared more likely after they failed to pass a short-term spending bill with fewer than two days left to avoid the shutdown.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif, informed the GOP caucus of the canceled break at a closed-door meeting after more than 20 Republicans embarrassed him by voting with Democrats to defeat the bill.

Republicans who joined Democrats voting against the measure included several of McCarthy’s most outspoken antagonists, Rep. Matt Gaetz, of Florida; Reps. Andy Biggs and Eli Crane, of Arizona, and other hardline conservatives.

Even if the bill had passed, it was doomed to failure in the Senate, where Democrats hold majority control.

The government is scheduled to shut down at 12:01 a.m. ET Sunday if a funding bill is not approved by both chambers of Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden.

The Senate already advanced a bipartisan bill by a wide margin that would fund the government through Nov. 17.

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Friday blasted McCarthy for trying to placate conservatives in his caucus, rather than working with Democrats and moderates on a bill that could pass the Senate.

“Coddling the hard right is as futile as trying to nail jello to a wall, and the harder the speaker tries, the bigger mess he makes,” Schumer said. “And that mess is going to hurt the American people the most.”

“I hope the speaker snaps out of the vice grip he’s put himself in and stops succumbing to the 30 or so extremists who are running the show in the House,” Schumer said. “Mr. Speaker, time has almost run out.”

House Republican leaders advised members that there would be votes Saturday.

It was unclear what they would be voting on.

But on Friday evening, McCarthy suggested that his conference might be willing to back a bipartisan bill to fund the government, as long as it did not contain additional emergency funding for Ukraine — a key White House demand with broad support in the Senate.

“I think if we had a clean [funding bill] without Ukraine on it, we could probably be able to move that through,” McCarthy told reporters as he left the closed door conference meeting.

Several hours later, McCarthy walked back his apparent willingness to move the Senate bill.

“After meeting with House Republicans this evening, it’s clear the misguided Senate bill has no path forward and is dead on arrival,” he said around 9:30 p.m. ET. “The House will continue to work around the clock to keep government open and prioritize the needs of the American people.”

Nonetheless, the notice to members to be ready for Saturday votes had raised hopes among both moderate Republicans and Democrats that McCarthy might agree to hold a vote on a version of the Senate bill to fund the government. Such a bill which would almost certainly pass with broad support from moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans.

As the clock neared midnight Friday, with just 24 hours remaining before a shutdown, it was difficult to envision what McCarthy could do that would both fund the government and satisfy the conservative critics in his restive caucus,

The White House condemned House Republicans for engaging in fiscal brinksmanship.

“We’re doing everything we can to plead, beg, shame House Republicans to do the right thing,” Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told reporters.

She scoffed at McCarthy’s suggestion that he would refuse his own paycheck during a shutdown.

“That is theater,” Young said.

“The guy who picks up the trash in my office won’t get a paycheck. That’s real.”

The White House said Biden would stay “in dialogue with Congress” over the coming days, but insisted the core elements of any spending bill had been agreed to as part of the debt ceiling deal earlier this year.

Across Washington on Friday, government agencies prepared their employees and the public for the effects of a shutdown.

The Smithsonian Institution said it would use existing funds from last year to keep its museums and the National Zoo open for at least the next week.

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September 29, 2023
Kevin McCarthy’s short-term funding bill fails as shutdown looms

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Kevin McCarthy’s short-term funding bill fails as shutdown looms – CBS News

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy failed Friday to pass a short-term spending bill with only Republican votes that would keep the government open for another month. If no deal is reached, a government shutdown will begin Sunday. Scott MacFarlane has the latest.

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September 29, 2023
McCarthy-backed bill to avoid government shutdown gets bipartisan rejection

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McCarthy-backed bill to avoid government shutdown gets bipartisan rejection – CBS News

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The House on Friday rejected a stopgap bill to fund the government, with a group of hard-right Republicans handing Speaker Kevin McCarthy yet another defeat in his efforts to avoid a shutdown. The 165-page bill, known as a continuing resolution, failed by a vote of 198 to 232. Twenty-one Republicans joined all Democrats in voting against the legislation. CBS News congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane has more.

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September 29, 2023
They Keep Congress Fed — But A Shutdown Will Leave Them Broke

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They’re so familiar on Capitol Hill, they almost blend into the woodwork. In the background at everything from weekly party lunches that generate headlines to low-profile state congressional delegation receptions, members of the U.S. Capitol’s catering staff have perfected the art of being present without being seen.

And if the government shuts down, they’ll be without a paycheck.

“Me and my co-workers, we basically live check by check,” Paulo Pizarro, a 17-year veteran of the Senate-side catering, told HuffPost.

A shutdown, which looks increasingly likely as House Republicans are in a standoff against the White House and most of the Senate over a stopgap spending bill, would send a huge swath of government workers home temporarily.

Some of those will be within the Capitol itself, a sort of self-contained city where the grandeur of being a temple of democracy is only made possible by the behind-the-scenes efforts of an army of cooks, security and maintenance staffers.

But unlike many of the workers in the Capitol, the caterers work for food service contractors. While federal employees are guaranteed to be made whole with back pay once a shutdown ends, the same is not true of government contractors.

“This is going to impact us very badly because we don’t know if we’re going to have a job for two, three weeks, four weeks, a month. We don’t know how long a government shutdown is going to be,” Pizarro said.

A catering cart sits in a hallway in the U.S. Capitol near the room where Senate Democrats have their weekly party lunches.

Caterers occupy a unique place in the Capitol ecosystem: The intimacy of feeding people means they often see their lawmakers in less-guarded situations and, as in the case of the weekly lunches, on a regular basis.

Now, they watch and wait while the people they’ve served and whose water glasses they’ve refilled decide whether they will be able to pay their bills.

Pizarro, a 41-year-old supervisor with a dark beard and open demeanor, said he’s become friendly with some of the senators, though he didn’t name names. Senators compress as much work as they can into the traditional three-day workweek in Washington before flying back home, so between breakfasts, lunches, dinners and receptions, he said, “I see those senators every day.”

But he laughed when asked if he had lobbied any senators on behalf of himself and his team. He said he had professional boundaries he could not cross.

“I’d like to do it, but like I said, I have red lines,” he said. But he added that some senators have spoken to him and tried to be reassuring.

“They told me everything’s going to be OK, they’re trying to fix it,” Pizarro said. “We’ll see what’s going to happen.”

“This is going to impact us very badly because we don’t know if we’re going to have a job for two, three weeks, four weeks, a month. We don’t know how long a government shutdown is going to be.”

– Paulo Pizarro, catering supervisor

“Our members are pretty much being [treated] like some pawns in the chess game,” said Marlene Patrick-Cooper, president of UNITE HERE Local 23, which represents Capitol and federal agency contract food service workers. “And now our members are going to be the ones who are taking the loss.”

“They are predominantly Black and immigrants, people who came to this country and have been here for many, many years. They love the jobs that they do. They feel that they’ve had a sense of job security. That’s why many of them are long-term,” she added.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) agreed. Coming out of the weekly Democratic lunch Wednesday, he said, “They should be worried. A lot of people should be worried because this is a game that extremists in the House are playing.”

With government funding expiring Saturday night, House Republicans have dug in, demanding tougher border security policies and lower spending in exchange for temporarily keeping the government’s lights on. Democrats have shown little interest in negotiating.

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said he felt sorry for the workers but argued that the situation was not Republicans’ fault.

“I would say, number one, I’m sorry that they’re in this position,” he said.

“But I will also say massive government overspending also has put them in another position where they’re getting paid now, but they’re falling behind every single day when they go to the supermarket, when they go to the gas station, when they have to pay the light bill,” Donalds said.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), right, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), left, have lunch at a Republican policy lunch on Capitol Hill in March 2020.

Contractors were not given back pay in 2019, during the last shutdown. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) has introduced a bill to change that this time, joined by Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) on the Senate side.

Neither Restaurant Associates nor Sodexo, the contractors that provide catering for the Capitol, returned requests for comment.

In 2019, when the government shut down for 35 days, Pizarro said he was only able to make ends meet because he had a second job — at the now-defunct Newseum. Now he also has a mortgage to pay on a home he lives in with his elderly mother in northern Virginia.

The uncertain nature of a shutdown also would make it difficult to take another job, he said, because he can’t know how long he would be gone from the Capitol. “We don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said.

Patrick-Cooper, the union leader, said that if any workers deserve back pay after a shutdown, it’s the ones in the Capitol, who fulfill the most basic, human needs of keeping the government running.

“They, in their mind, feel like they’re government employees,” she said. “They feel like they’re serving our country.”

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September 29, 2023