Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 166
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson vowed Tuesday to press ahead with requiring proof of citizenship for new voters as part of a bill to avoid a partial government shutdown in three weeks, though the measure appeared likely to be voted down. Democrats overwhelmingly oppose the measure. Enough Republicans were also coming out against the bill, though for different reasons, that its prospects of passing the House appeared dim. Even if it does pass the House on Wednesday, the bill would go nowhere in the Senate. Johnson said the issue o...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Mike Johnson pulled a vote Wednesday on a temporary spending bill that would keep federal agencies and programs funded for six months as it became increasingly clear the measure lacked the support to pass as a potential partial government shutdown looms. The legislation to continue government funding when the new budget year begins on Oct. 1 includes a requirement that people registering to vote must provide proof of citizenship. Johnson, R-La., signaled that he was not backing off linking the two main pillars of t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee issued a subpoena Wednesday to the Secret Service director compelling her to appear before the committee on Monday for what is scheduled to be the first congressional hearing into the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. And even before the first hearing Republican calls for Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign intensified Wednesday with top Republican leaders from both the House and the Senate saying she should step down. The d...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Wednesday confirmed the 200th federal judge of President Joe Biden's tenure, about a month earlier than when Donald Trump hit that mark in his term, though Trump still holds the edge when it comes to the most impactful confirmations — those to the Supreme Court and the country's 13 appellate courts. The march to 200 culminated with the confirmation of Angela Martinez as a district court judge in Arizona. The milestone reflects the importance that Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and...
WASHINGTON (AP) — For Mike Johnson it was effectively a Day 1 priority. It's well past time, the newly elected House speaker said in October, to establish a bipartisan commission to tackle the federal government's growing $34.6 trillion in debt. "The consequences if we don't act now are unbearable," he said, echoing warnings from his predecessor and other House Republicans. More than six months later, the proposal appears all but dead, extinguished by vocal opposition from both the right and the left. The collapse underscores an unyielding d...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hardline Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called Wednesday for a vote to oust Speaker Mike Johnson, pressing ahead with her long-shot effort despite pushback from Republicans at the highest levels tired of the political chaos. Greene, who is one of Donald Trump's biggest supporters in Congress, stood on the House floor and read a long list of "transgressions" she said Johnson had committed as speaker. Colleagues booed in protest. The vote, which under House rules is required within two days, could happen imminently. The Georgia R...
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats will vote to save Republican Speaker Mike Johnson's job should some of his fellow Republican lawmakers seek to remove him from the position, Democratic leaders said Tuesday, likely assuring for now that Johnson will avoid being ousted from office like his predecessor, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy. Johnson, R-La., has come under heavy criticism from some Republicans for moving forward with aid for Ukraine as part of a $95 billion emergency spending package that passed this month. It would take only a handful of Re...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate passed a $1.2 trillion package of spending bills in the early morning hours Saturday, a long overdue action nearly six months into the budget year that will push any threats of a government shutdown to the fall. The bill now goes to President Joe Biden to be signed into law. The vote was 74-24. It came after funding had expired for the agencies at midnight, but the White House sent out a notice shortly after the deadline announcing the Office of Management and Budget had ceased shutdown preparations because there wa...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional leaders emerged from an "intense" Oval Office meeting with President Joe Biden on Tuesday speaking optimistically about the prospects for avoiding a partial government shutdown, but with new uncertainty about aid for Ukraine and Israel as the president and others urgently warned Speaker Mike Johnson of the grave consequences of delay. Biden called the leaders to the White House in hopes of making progress against a legislative logjam on Capitol Hill that has major ramifications not just for the U.S. but for the w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a single week, the Republican chairs of three House committees announced they would not be seeking reelection, raising questions about whether the chaos that has reigned this Congress is driving out some of the GOP's top talent. What makes the retirements particularly noteworthy is that none of the chairs were at risk of losing their position due to the term limits that House Republicans impose on their committee leaders. They conceivably could have returned to the same leadership roles in the next Congress, but chose i...
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson's margin for error in getting Republican priorities through the House is getting slimmer, complicating future votes and magnifying the ability of individual lawmakers to force concessions. Republicans had just a 222-213 margin before Rep. George Santos of New York was expelled in a broad, bipartisan vote a week ago. Then, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California announced Thursday he would be retiring at the end of the month. He was the first speaker ever booted from the position, a victim of a process h...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate in a single stroke Tuesday approved about 425 military promotions after Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama ended a monthslong blockade of nominations over his opposition to a Pentagon abortion policy. Tuberville had been under pressure from members of both sides of the political aisle to end his holds as senators complained about the toll it was taking on service members and their families, and on military readiness. President Joe Biden called the Senate's action long overdue and said the military confirmations s...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Republican majority is stuck, one week after the ouster of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, with lawmakers unable to coalesce around a new leader in a stalemate that threatens to keep Congress partly shuttered indefinitely. On Tuesday evening, two leading contenders for the gavel, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, were addressing colleagues behind closed doors at a candidate forum. But they appeared to be splitting the vote. McCarthy, meanwhile, was openly ready to reclaim the gavel he just l...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional supporters of Ukraine say they won't give up after a bill to keep the federal government open excluded President Joe Biden's request to provide more security assistance to the war-torn nation. Still, many lawmakers acknowledge that winning approval for Ukraine assistance in Congress is growing more difficult as the war between Russia and Ukraine grinds on. Republican resistance to the aid has been gaining momentum in the halls of Congress. Voting in the House this past week pointed to the potential trouble a...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz filed a resolution late Monday to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker, setting up a likely showdown vote in the House in the days ahead. The far-right Republican from Florida has for months threatened to use a procedural tool — called a motion to vacate — to try to strip McCarthy of his office. Those threats escalated over the weekend after McCarthy relied on Democrats to provide the necessary votes to fund the government. A motion to vacate is a rare and strong procedural tool that has only been used...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A government shutdown appeared all but inevitable as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy dug in Thursday, vowing he will not take up Senate legislation designed to keep the federal government fully running despite House Republicans' struggle to unite around an alternative. Congress is at an impasse just days before a disruptive federal shutdown that would halt paychecks for many of the federal government's roughly 2 million employees, as well as 2 million active-duty military troops and reservists, furlough many of those workers a...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers broke for their August recess this week with work on funding the government largely incomplete, fueling worries about whether Congress will be able to avoid a partial government shutdown this fall. Congress has until Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year, to act on government funding. They could pass spending bills to fund government agencies into next year, or simply pass a stopgap measure that keeps agencies running until they strike a longer-term agreement. No matter which route they take, it won't be easy. "...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House passed a sweeping defense bill Friday that provides an expected 5.2% pay raise for service members but strays from traditional military policy with Republicans add-ons blocking abortion coverage, diversity initiatives at the Pentagon and transgender care that deeply divided the chamber. Democrats voted against the package, which had sailed out of the House Armed Services Committee on an almost unanimous vote weeks ago before being loaded with the GOP priorities during a heated late-night floor debate this week. T...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Debt limit negotiations between the White House and House Republicans hung over the weekend with tough talk but little action, as President Joe Biden and world leaders watched from afar hoping high-stakes discussions would make progress on avoiding a potentially catastrophic federal default. In a sign of a renewed bargaining session, food was brought to the negotiating room at the Capitol on Saturday morning, only to be carted away hours later. No meeting was expected. It was another start-stop day with no outward signs of p...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Debt limit talks came to an abrupt standstill Friday after Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said it's time to "pause" negotiations, and a White House official acknowledged there are "real differences" that are making talks difficult. McCarthy said resolution to the standoff is "easy," if only President Joe Biden would agree to some spending cuts Republicans are demanding. It is unclear when negotiations would resume. "We've got to get movement by the White House and we don't have any movement yet," McCarthy, R...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Transgender athletes whose biological sex assigned at birth was male would be barred from competing on girls or women's sports teams at federally supported schools and colleges under legislation pushed through Thursday by House Republicans checking off another high-profile item on their social agenda. The bill approved by a 219-203 party-line vote is unlikely to advance further because the Democratic-led Senate will not support it and the White House said President Joe Biden would veto it. Supporters said the legislation, whic...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate passed a massive $1.7 trillion spending bill Thursday that finances federal agencies through September and provides another significant round of military and economic aid to Ukraine one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's dramatic address to a joint meeting of Congress. The bill, which runs for 4,155 pages, includes about $772.5 billion for domestic programs and $858 billion for defense and would finance federal agencies through the fiscal year at the end of September. The bill passed by a vote of 6...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Legislation to avert what could have been an economically ruinous freight rail strike won final approval in Congress on Thursday as lawmakers responded quickly to President Joe Biden's call for federal intervention in a long-running labor dispute. The Senate passed a bill to bind rail companies and workers to a proposed settlement that was reached between the rail companies and union leaders in September. That settlement had been rejected by four of the 12 unions involved, creating the possibility of a strike beginning Dec. 9....
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Thursday effectively acknowledged the failure of one of his biggest and most humiliating foreign policy gambles: a fist-bump with the de-facto leader of Saudi Arabia, the crown prince associated with human rights abuses. Biden's awkward encounter with Mohammed bin Salman in July was a humbling attempt to mend relations with the world's most influential oil power at a time when the US. was seeking its help in opposing Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the resulting surge in oil prices. That fist bump t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats desperately needed the vote of Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia to get their signature legislative priority across the finish. So they did what Washington does best: They cut a deal. To help land his support for a bill hailed by advocacy groups as the biggest investment ever in curbing climate change, Manchin said he secured a commitment from President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders to move a permitting-streamlining package for energy projects through Congress before Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal y...
