House Republicans Jam Senate Democrats in Shutdown Fight

Speaker Mike Johnson
Jack Gruber-USA TODAY via Imagn Images
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

The Trump administration agreed Tuesday to resume military aid to Ukraine and restart intelligence sharing with Kyiv after talks in Saudi Arabia where Ukraine said it would be open to a 30-day ceasefire in the three-year-old war against Russian aggression. Here at home, House Republicans passed their continuing resolution to fund the government through September. Read on for more details.

House Republicans Pass Bill to Avoid a Shutdown

House Republicans narrowly passed their plan to fund the government through September and avoid a government shutdown starting Friday night, delivering a significant win for President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

The showdown over the GOP bill was essentially a contest to see whether each party could stay unified. Both essentially did, as the vote, 207-213, fell almost entirely along party lines. One Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, opposed the measure, and one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, backed it.

"Today, House Republicans stood for the American people and voted to maintain funding the paychecks for our troops, the agents who secure our borders, the TSA workers responsible for safe air travel, as well as the healthcare and benefits for veterans, and essential services and programs that keep the government operational," Johnson said in a statement after the vote.

House Democrats panned the plan because they said it gave President Trump and Elon Musk too much power over spending decisions and claimed that it would pave the way for GOP assaults on programs including Social Security and Medicaid. "This bill will unleash fury on the American people," House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said before the vote. "It will facilitate the ongoing effort that is currently underway."

Republicans insisted that their bill was a "clean" extension of current spending levels with no "poison pill" riders, though it does include some tweaks, and they rightfully pointed out that the measure itself does not cut Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security.

Decision time for Senate Dems: The GOP bill now heads to the Senate, where Democrats are in something of a bind. They can oppose the bill like their House colleagues did and likely cause a government shutdown or they can help it pass even as some of their own members have warned it would undercut Congress's power of the purse. Senate Democrats must also worry that a shutdown might backfire on them, both in terms of public opinion and by giving an unintended boost to the cost-cutting efforts driven by Musk and the Trump administration.

Top Democratic appropriators had released their own plan late Monday for a spending bill that would keep federal agencies open for a month and buy time for further negotiations on full-year spending bills. They now have no real hope for that fallback plan.

Upending traditional positions: This spending bill flipped the usual politics around continuing resolutions and shutdown threats.

Johnson posted a video on social media highlighting past Democratic arguments against shutting down the government. "It's a striking new posture for Democrats who have always been apoplectic about the prospect of government shutdowns," he told reporters.

On the Republican side, the House Freedom Caucus came out Monday night in support of the spending bill - notable because the hardline group more typically opposes these continuing resolutions. "If Democrats had proposed this same funding plan back in December, Republicans - especially the Freedom Caucus - would have denounced it," congressional reporter Jamie Dupree noted. "It has no significant cuts and leaves in place policy deals negotiated with President Biden in 2024."

The bill also does nothing to codify the DOGE cuts. The programs that the Trump administration is cutting, like those at the U.S. Agency for International Development, will continue to be funded by Congress, even as the administration looks to stop spending the appropriated funds.

The Freedom Caucus said in its statement that this continuing resolution is different from previous ones, echoing arguments made by Trump and congressional leaders: "This bill will reduce and then freeze spending for the next six months to allow President Trump and his Administration to continue their critical work within the Executive Branch to find and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. It entirely kills the prospect of a budget busting, pork filled omnibus this fiscal year, and it breaks the longstanding practice in the Swamp of handcuffing increases in defense funding with increases to the non-defense bureaucracy."

The group also highlighted the additional money the bill would provide for immigration enforcement and deportation operations as well as the elimination of earmarks from the package and the continued rescission of Internal Revenue Service funding that Democrats had enacted.

"This is not your grandfather's continuing resolution," House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris of Maryland told reporters Tuesday morning.

The bottom line: Republicans will now need at least eight Democrats to approve the bill in the Senate.

Trump Threatens Major New Tariffs on Canada, Then Backs Down

Despite a stock market reeling from a rapidly escalating trade war and growing worries about stumbling into an avoidable recession, President Trump on Tuesday threatened to impose a 50% tariff on Canadian steel and aluminum products starting Wednesday - only to back off the threat later in the day.

Following another down day for stocks, the White House said the previously announced 50% tariff on Canadian metals would instead revert to a planned 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imported from all trading partners, taking effect at midnight Wednesday. Canada is the largest supplier of foreign steel and aluminum to the U.S.

Trump's initial threat came in response to the announcement by Ontario Premier Doug Ford that would impose a 25% tax on electricity sold by Canadian producers to American consumers. However, Ford suspended the export tax after U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick agreed to trade talks.

"With any negotiation that we have, there's a point that both parties are heated and the temperature needs to come down," Ford told reporters Tuesday afternoon.

Trump was anything but cool earlier in the day as he expressed outrage about the threatened Canadian tariff - and surprise that the nation's northern neighbor provides any power to the U.S. in the first place.

"Why would our Country allow another Country to supply us with electricity, even for a small area? Who made these decisions, and why?" he wrote on his social media platform. "And can you imagine Canada stooping so low as to use ELECTRICITY, that so affects the life of innocent people, as a bargaining chip and threat? They will pay a financial price for this so big that it will be read about in History Books for many years to come!"

Stocks plunge again: Stocks whipsawed during the day as investors contemplated the worsening trade war. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 1.1%, or 478 points, and the S&P 500 was down 0.75%, or 42 points.

Speaking to reporters at midday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the recent stock market decline - which has wiped out all gains since Trump was elected - as simply a "snapshot in time" and said any problems should be blamed on Trump's predecessor.

"We are in a period of transition from the mess that was created under Joe Biden in the previous administration," Leavitt said. Without providing a clear timeline or any details on how things might play out, Leavitt added that the economic transition will lead to "a golden age of American manufacturing under a businessman and a dealmaker-in-chief in President Donald J. Trump."

The problem for the Trump team is that most economists and investors reject the idea that high tariffs and a trade war will boost the U.S. economy. Nathan Sheets, global chief economist at Citigroup, told The New York Times that the Trump administration's talk about a painful but necessary transition is an attempt to convince Americans that Trump's policies are laying the groundwork for better times ahead. "But the bigger question is, are we really going to get to a better place?" he asked. The answer for him and for most economists is "no," at least not if a trade war is involved.

Still, there are no indications that Trump has changed his mind about the appeal of aggressive tariff use, even if he backed off a bit on Tuesday.

Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence in Trump's first term, told Bloomberg that the escalating trade war reflects an important change in the second Trump administration. "I think it's dramatically different than the first administration, and I think one of the biggest challenges is markets look at it and say, you know, this is just part of his bluster, right?" he said. "I think markets just assumed it would be the same, that it's just negotiation, and it's not."

Department of Education to Lay Off Nearly Half Its Workforce

The U.S. Department of Education said Tuesday that it is initiating a wave of layoffs that will reduce its workforce of 4,400 by roughly half.

The White House has reportedly prepared an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to dismantle the department, long a target of conservative ire. A draft of the order seen by CNN authorizes McMahon to "take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Education Department."

As soon as McMahon was sworn in last week, she made it clear that her job was to "send education back to the states" and shut down the department. "This is our opportunity to perform one final, unforgettable public service to future generations of students," she wrote in a message to her employees.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the destruction of the department would cause chaos in the U.S. educational system. "Denuding an agency so it cannot function effectively is the most cowardly way of dismantling it," she said in a statement. "We are urging Congress-and the courts-to step in to ensure all students can maintain access to a high-quality public education."

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