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Tonight, the Senate unanimously passed the Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act 2.0, which reauthorizes a pediatric cancer research initiative through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) into 2028.
This provision had originally been part of the stop gap funding deal negotiated by Congressional leadership, but it was dropped after President-elect Donald Trump insisted on a “clean” short term spending package, without extra measures included.
Earlier this week, House Republicans pushed back on outrage over the funding being cut from the package, arguing that Senate Democrats were to blame for waiting months to bring up the bill. The House had passed the research funding reauthorization on March 5.
House Republicans who opposed the spending bill that passed on Friday criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson’s handling of the process, casting doubt on how smooth his path to being reelected to his position in January will be.
Rep. Keith Self of Texas said he wants Congress to pass simple funding bills, explaining, “it’s the only way to govern.” He said he had no comment on whether he’ll back Johnson next year.
Rep. Chip Roy, wo has repeatedly opposed the spending levels in proposals put forth by Johnson, conceded that Republicans “ended up getting the framework for actual spending cuts in a significant way” in the latest bill.
When asked if he thinks Johnson’s chances of being elected speaker have been compromised, Roy said he’s “not gonna go down that road,” adding, “we’ve got through tonight.”
“We managed to, I think, deliver something that was useful and productive and provides a framework for, you know, productivity in January. So we got to figure out how to organize to get that done,” The Texas Republican said, adding that “we could have delivered this product three days ago.”
Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida told CNN he voted for the bill in the interest of disaster aid for his state, but noted it “could have been more streamlined,” adding “at the end of the day, this place is never easy. I mean, the speaker’s doing the best he can.”
“At the beginning of this Congress, you know, we were having a large disagreement amongst our colleagues about how this place was going to work, and for the end of this Congress to kind of get back into that same old way in Washington, I’m definitely not a fan of but, you know, we’re going to move forward,” Donalds said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer assured reporters on Friday night that the Senate is working on a plan to pass the stop gap funding package.
“We’re working through the amendment process right now,” the New York Democrat told CNN. “That’s where I’m going, to work through the amendment process right now.”
Asked about his outlook on the debt ceiling next year, Schumer wouldn’t say if he agrees with Democrats who say they should only engage if Trump agrees to abolish it.
“Look, I think that the bottom line is that this would have been very unfortunate time to add the debt limit to any agreement to any CR (continuing resolution) and I’m very glad we didn’t,” Schumer said.
Schumer said he was glad Republican leadership and members “were able to tell Elon Musk he was wrong when it comes to debt.” He refused to comment when pressed on whether Trump is taking too much direction from Musk, who’s influence led House Republicans to scrap an initial Bipartisan deal earlier this week.
While Democrats didn’t get everything they wanted, Schumer said it was important to get disaster relief through the finish line and prevent a government shutdown.
“We kept the government open, and we didn’t get the debt ceiling. So, there were three major victories. We didn’t get everything we wanted, but I think if you look at the vote in the House, people felt pretty good. It was virtually unanimous,” Schumer said.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he is “confident” the Senate will pass the stopgap spending bill to prevent a federal government shutdown.
“The House has overwhelmingly passed a bill to keep the government open and I’m confident the Senate will pass it as well. We hope to get it passed as soon as possible,” the New York Democrat wrote in a post on X.
“Though this bill does not include everything Democrats fought for, there are major victories in this bill for American families—provide emergency aid for communities battered by natural disasters, no debt ceiling, and it will keep the government open with no draconian cuts. As I have said, the only way to keep the government open is through bipartisanship.”
Some context: Schumer is alluding to efforts by President-elect Donald Trump, who torpedoed an initial bipartisan funding deal, to inject the politically fraught issue of the debt ceiling into funding negotiations.
A Trump-backed measure that would have suspended the debt limit before he takes office in January failed in the House on Thursday, leaving Democrats with “Plan C”: the bill headed to the Senate for a vote tonight.
Throughout the government funding negotiating process, particularly when lawmakers reached an impasse, House Speaker Mike Johnson returned to a similar joke: He welcomed anyone else who could get 218 votes.
It takes 218 votes to establish a majority in the lower chamber — and to hold on to the speakership — when every member casts a ballot.
“He said that a lot. He does crack that joke quite a bit,” GOP Rep. David Valadao, a key House appropriator who was at the negotiating table, told CNN.
“In reality, I think we all know that getting to 218 in this conference today is not an easy task for anyone,” Valadao added. “These past two years have been a little bit of a roller coaster, and we expect that to continue.”
Some background: Many lawmakers left for the holidays frustrated at Johnson for leaving them in the dark for much of this process, or for how he created a lot of angst by pivoting his government funding plan at the last minute, only to revert back to essentially his original position.
But most Republicans are hoping that time away for the holidays will ease the tensions of the real divisions that exist within the narrow House Republican majority. And very few actually are ready to oust Johnson.
For now, Johnson has something in his back pocket that has been his human shield: the support of President-elect Donald Trump.
“President Trump says he’s supporting him, and I’m supporting him,” Republican Rep. Mike Collins said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats have “successfully funded the government” and fought for Americans after the chamber passed a spending package to avoid a shutdown on Friday.
The House passed a bill to keep the government funded into March with support from Democrats. Before the vote, CNN reported that Jeffries signaled to his Democratic members that he will not instruct the party to oppose the GOP bill, despite some objections.
Speaking to reporters shortly after the bill’s passage, Jeffries touted several provisions in the bill, including a bipartisan disaster aid package and money for child care.
“House Democrats have successfully stopped extreme MAGA Republicans form shutting down the government, crashing the economy and hurting working class Americans all across the land,” Jeffries said.
He also praised Democrats for preventing a debt limit hike, saying his party “stopped the billionaire boys club, which wanted a $4 trillion blank check by suspending the debt ceiling.”
The issue of the debt ceiling was not included in this bill after President-elect Donald Trump and allies, including tech billionaire Elon Musk, demanded it be added to negotiations on Thursday.
“This is a victory for the American people,” the minority leader said Friday, adding that there are still things to fight for in the new year, when the GOP will take control of both chambers.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he was in “constant contact” with President-elect Donald Trump throughout the process of negotiating a new stopgap funding bill in time to prevent a government shutdown.
Trump’s opposition to Johnson’s initial plan earlier this week prompted House Republicans to scrap it.
“He knew exactly what we were doing and why … and this is a good outcome for the country. I think he certainly is happy about this outcome as well,” Johnson said, noting that he had spoken to Trump about 45 minutes before addressing reporters following the successful vote in the House.
Johnson also noted that he spoke to Elon Musk — the tech billionaire whose influence helped tank the initial bipartisan deal — “about the extraordinary challenges of the job.”
“And I said, ‘Hey, you want to be Speaker of the House? I don’t know,’” Johnson said. “He said, ‘This may be the hardest job in the world.’”
House Speaker Mike Johnson said things are going to be “very different around here” when Republicans take control of both chambers of Congress in January, while applauding the passage of a stopgap spending bill on Friday.
The House passed a bill to keep the government funded into March. The bill, which also includes disaster relief and farming provisions, will now go to the Senate.
Johnson called it a “very important piece of legislation,” but also a “necessary step to bridge the gap to put us into that moment where we can put our fingerprints on the final decisions on spending for 2025.”
“We are set up for a big and important new start in January,” Johnson said.
Johnson had to come up with a new deal after President-elect Donald Trump demanded on Thursday that a suspension of the debt limit be included in the bill — which failed last night. This bill that passed the House on Friday does not address the debt limit.
“We’re grateful that everyone stood together to do the right thing,” he said, urging swift passage in the Senate.
The House has voted to pass a stopgap funding bill just hours before a midnight deadline to avert a federal government shutdown. The Senate must next take up the bill.
The vote was 366 to 34. Thirty-four Republicans voted against the bill, and one Democrat voted present.
The bill would extend government funding into March and includes disaster relief and farming provisions, but does not include a suspension of the debt limit, which President-elect Donald Trump has been demanding Republicans address.
White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre offered qualified praise for a proposal from House Republicans to fund the government and avoid a government shutdown, writing in a statement Friday, “President Biden supports moving this legislation forward and ensuring that the vital services the government provides for hardworking Americans.”
“A government shutdown heading into the holidays would mean service members and air traffic controllers go to work without pay, essential government services for hardworking Americans would be paused, and economic disruption would occur,” Jean-Pierre wrote. “While it does not include everything we sought, it includes disaster relief that the President requested for the communities recovering from the storm, eliminates the accelerated pathway to a tax cut for billionaires, and would ensure that the government can continue to operate at full capacity.”
The White House has blasted Republicans, including President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President-elect JD Vance, and billionaire Elon Musk for blowing up a bipartisan funding deal earlier this week, with Jean-Pierre saying GOP lawmakers were “doing the bidding of their billionaire benefactors,” by reneging on their agreement with Democrats.
Biden himself has yet to weigh in on the fight to fund the government — during Friday’s press briefing, Jean-Pierre defended Biden’s silence on the issue, telling CNN, “This is a strategy that we have done many times before, not the first time, and this is for Republicans in Congress in the House specifically to fix. They created this mess.”
Tech billionaire and Donald Trump confidante Elon Musk — whose influence played a role in tanking an initial bipartisan funding bill this week — offered some praise for Johnson’s “Plan C” tonight, after a plan backed by the president-elect also failed Thursday.
“The Speaker did a good job here, given the circumstances. It went from a bill that weighed pounds to a bill that weighed ounces. Ball should now be in the Dem court,” Musk wrote in a post on X.
The House is voting now on a stopgap funding bill in a bid to avert a federal government shutdown just hours before a midnight deadline. If the bill passes, it would next need to go to the Senate.
The bill would extend government funding into March. It includes disaster relief and farming provisions, but does not include a suspension of the debt limit, which President-elect Donald Trump has been demanding Republicans address.
How we got here: Republicans have struggled to find a way to prevent the government from shutting down after Trump upended the funding push by coming out against an initial bipartisan deal earlier this week.
The Republican-led chamber then tried and failed to pass a GOP funding plan backed by Trump that would have included a two-year suspension of the debt limit.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said now that the debt ceiling suspension is out of the government funding bill text, Democrats can “evaluate the four corners of what remains.”
“I’m looking forward to our caucus-wide conversation,” Jeffries said, trailed by reporters.
“What needed to come out of the bill has come out of the bill and now we’ve got to evaluate the four corners of what remains in the legislation,” Jeffries said.
House Republicans pointed fingers within their party as they emerged from a 2-hour meeting to discuss a last-ditch plan to fund the government ahead of the midnight shutdown deadline.
Here’s what some of them said:
- Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky called Speaker Mike Johnson’s handling of the situation “not that great,” saying he had a lack of “situational awareness” to know the first bill wouldn’t pass. He also expressed frustration at adding a debt limit increase into the bill, after President-elect Donald Trump demanded it on Thursday. “In some sense, there’s an institutional victory here, which is the president said jump, and we didn’t jump,” Massie said.
- Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas also expressed frustration with Trump’s last-minute decision to impose his demands on House Republicans after they had already cleared a path to keep the government open into the early days of the new administration. He said, “I will eat sh*t sandwiches, which is budget bills and debt ceiling increases, so that Trump has a great runway – but you’ve got to plan ahead to do that.”
- Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who has repeatedly expressed dismay with how massive spending bills are handled, called the situation “the sewer,” adding, “it’s just what it is. It’s never any different this.”
- Rep. Eric Burlison of Missouri, who has offered similar criticism of Johnson’s handling of the negotiations, told CNN that “bringing people into the room and letting people express their thoughts” during a lengthly meeting on Friday is “what we needed.”
The House is expected to take one vote on a plan to avert a government shutdown sometime between 5 and 6 p.m. ET. Members were just alerted of vote timing.
It is unclear if the vote will pass.
House Democrats will meet to caucus before the vote, according to multiple Democratic sources.
Remember: Members of Congress have been scrambling since President-elect Donald Trump torpedoed an original bipartisan spending deal earlier this week. Then a Trump-backed GOP plan failed a vote yesterday.
Lawmakers have mere hours left before a midnight deadline to strike a deal and keep the government open.
The latest effort would see the GOP move a spending package, disaster aid, farm aid and the extension of the farm bill in one package under suspension of the rules, which would require a two-thirds majority vote to pass, according to three members familiar with the plan.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has told reporters there won’t be a government shutdown, but has not detailed the plan.
CNN’s Sarah Ferris contributed reporting to this post.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called for his colleagues to recognize the need for bipartisan deal-making in his farewell speech as GOP leader, which ended with multiple standing ovations from colleagues on both sides of the aisle.
McConnell pointed to the chaos in the Capitol Friday, as Congress works to avert a shutdown, as evidence that it is important to try to find compromise.
“Folks come to Washington to do one of two things: either to make a point, or to make a difference,” he said. “It’s usually not that hard to tell who’s doing which, especially in situations like the one we’re in right now.”
“The people who are here to make a difference recognize pretty quickly you never get everything you want, but often you can get quite a lot. And the folks who prefer to make a point have a funny habit of reminding us, out loud, how poorly they understand that fact,” McConnell added.
“I don’t care to count how many times I’ve reminded our colleagues and our House counterparts how harmful it is to shut the government down, and how foolish it is to bet your own side won’t take the blame. When you try to use normal government function as a bargaining chip, you pay a political price.”
Once House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speak about the new GOP plan to avert a federal government shutdown, Jeffries is expected to hold a Democratic caucus-wide meeting before indicating how they will vote on the floor, per multiple members.
Timing for the caucus meeting is in flux.
A group of battleground Democrats told their party’s leadership they would vote together as a party and ensure their side was not cut out of the deal, according to multiple Democratic sources.
The group of lawmakers met with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Minority Whip Katheleen Clark and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar this afternoon, the sources said.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio described a feeling of unity in the meeting despite the rapidly approaching shutdown.
“We are together as a team, and that we have to wait to see whether the other side brings back the agreement in the first place,” Kaptur told CNN.
Still, Kaptur did not rule out voting for the GOP’s emerging plan, including a slimmed-down version of the stopgap bill House Speaker Mike Johnson and Jeffries negotiated.
“I would consider it. But I would have to read very word because there are tricks being played,” Kaptur said.
House Republicans are preparing to move a spending package, disaster aid, farm aid and the extension of the farm bill in one package under suspension of the rules, which would require a two-thirds majority, according to three members.
“I think the reality is you’ve got to get this passed as quickly as possible,” New York GOP Rep. Mike Lawler said.
There is a major caveat though. House Speaker Mike Johnson still needs to talk to President-elect Donald Trump about it, members say.
It’s also not clear if Democrats will vote with Republicans on such a package, but Speaker Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have been communicating this morning.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that there won’t be a government shutdown, but did not detail specifics of a plan.
Still, he asserted that Republicans are united.
“There is a unanimous agreement in the room that we need to move forward. I will not telegraph to you the specific details of that yet because I’ve got a couple of things I’ve got to wrap up in a few moments upstairs, but I expect that we will be proceeding forward. We will not have a government shutdown, and we will meet our obligations for our farmers who need aid, for the disaster victims all over the country and for making sure that military and essential services and everyone who relies on the federal government for a paycheck is paid over the holidays. I’ll give you more details here in just a moment,” Johnson said.
