Speaker Mike Johnson’s ability to carry out President Donald Trump’s “play call” for funding the government will be put to the test Tuesday as the House holds a procedural vote on a bill to end the partial shutdown. Johnson can’t lose more than one Republican on party-line votes with perfect attendance, and some are threatening to tank the effort if their priorities aren’t included, even though Trump said “There can be NO CHANGES at this time.”
The measure would end the partial government shutdown that began Saturday, funding most of the federal government through Sept. 30 and the Department of Homeland Security for just two weeks as lawmakers negotiate new rules for agents enforcing immigration laws.
Meanwhile, the Clintons have agreed to testify in the House Epstein investigation, and Colombia’s president is visiting the White House as U.S. trade partners seek shelter from Trump’s fury by cutting deals amongst themselves.
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GOP elections bill a last-minute obstacle to ending shutdown
Some House Republicans have demanded that the funding package include the SAVE Act, which among other things would require Americans to prove their citizenship before voting in elections. But Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., appeared to drop this demand late Monday, writing on social media that she had spoken with Trump about a “pathway forward” for the voting bill in the Senate that would keep the government open.
The Brennan Center for Justice, a think tank focused on democracy and voting rights issues, said at least 21 million voters lack ready access to their passport or birth certificate.
“The SAVE Act is not about securing our elections. It is about suppressing voters,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said. Including it in the bipartisan funding bill, he said, “will lead to another prolonged Trump government shutdown.”
Democrats say GOP won’t have their help to take up bill ending shutdown
Some Democrats are expected to vote for the final bill, but not for Tuesday’s initial procedural measure setting the terms for the House debate.
Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has made clear that Democrats wouldn’t help Republicans out of their procedural jam, even though Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer helped negotiate the funding bill. That’s because the procedural vote covers a variety of issues most Democrats oppose.
“If they have some massive mandate,” Jeffries said of Republicans, “then go pass your rule, which includes toxic bills that we don’t support.”
Don Lemon describes his arrest by a dozen federal agents
The former CNN anchor said agents handcuffed him at the elevator of his Los Angeles hotel, ignoring his offer to turn himself in to face federal civil rights charges over covering an anti-immigration enforcement protest that disrupted a Minnesota church service.
ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel said his Monday night guest “was arrested for committing journalism.”
“I went there to be a journalist. I went there to chronicle and document and record what was happening. I was following that one group around, and so that’s what I did. I reported on them,” Lemon said.
Lemon said the arresting agents wouldn’t let him make a phone call or talk with his lawyer, but one did agree to take his diamond bracelet, which kept getting caught in his handcuffs, up to his husband in their hotel room. “And that’s how my husband found out. Otherwise, no one would have known where I was,” Lemon said.
What to expect when Trump and Colombia’s Petro meet
Trump is set to welcome Colombian President Gustavo Petro to the White House on Tuesday for talks only weeks after threatening military action against the South American country and accusing the leader of pumping cocaine into the United States.
U.S. administration officials say the meeting will focus on regional security cooperation and counternarcotics efforts. And Trump suggested Monday that Petro — who has criticized Trump and the U.S. operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro — has “changed his attitude.”
“Somehow after the Venezuelan raid, he became very nice,” Trump told reporters.
Yet, bad blood between the leaders overshadows the sit-down. The conservative Trump and leftist Petro are ideologically far apart, but both leaders share a tendency for verbal bombast and unpredictability, setting the stage for a White House visit with an anything-could-happen vibe.
Trump threatens Harvard again, saying he wants $1 billion
The president overnight accused Harvard University of not meeting his administration’s demands and said he wants a $1 billion settlement from the school rather than the previous $500 million he sought.
On Truth Social, the president said, “Harvard has been, for a long time, behaving very badly!”
He repeated his assertions that Harvard is “Strongly Antisemitic” and said university President Alan Garber has done “a terrible job.” Garber is Jewish and talks openly about his faith.
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“He was hired AFTER the antisemitism charges were brought - I wonder why???” Trump wrote of the Ph.D. economist, physician and researcher who had been Harvard provost for 13 years before becoming president.
Trump’s outburst came followed a New York Times report saying the president had dropped his demands that the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university pay a federal fine as other elite institutions have done. Trump called the Times’ reporting “a lot of nonsense.”
Trump says he won’t tear down the Kennedy Center arts venue, just fully expose its steel
Trump said Monday that he’s “not ripping down” the Kennedy Center but insisted the performing arts venue needs to shut down for about two years for construction and other work without patrons coming and going and getting in the way.
The comments strongly suggested that he intends to gut the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as part of the process.
Such a project would mark the Republican president’s latest effort to put his stamp on a cultural institution that Congress designated as a living memorial to President Kennedy, a Democrat. It would also be in addition to attempts to leave a permanent mark on Washington through other projects, the most prominent of which is adding a ballroom to the White House.
Trump announced Sunday on social media that he intends to temporarily close the performing arts venue on July 4 for about two years “for Construction, Revitalization, and Complete Rebuilding,” subject to board approval.
Seeking shelter from Trump’s fury, U.S. trade partners reach deals with each other
Bullied and buffeted by Trump’s tariffs for the past year, America’s longstanding allies are desperately seeking ways to shield themselves from the president’s impulsive wrath.
U.S. trade partners are cutting deals among themselves — sometimes discarding old differences to do so — in a push to diversify their economies away from a newly protectionist United States. Central banks and global investors are dumping dollars and buying gold. Together, their actions could diminish U.S. influence and mean higher interest rates and prices for Americans already angry about the high cost of living.
Last summer and fall, Trump used the threat of punishing taxes on imports to strong-arm the European Union, Japan, South Korea and other trading partners into accepting lopsided trade deals and promising to make massive investments in the United States.
But a deal with Trump, they’ve discovered, is no deal at all.
The mercurial president repeatedly finds reasons to conjure new tariffs to impose on trading partners that thought they had already made enough concessions to satisfy him.
Clintons agree to testify in House Epstein investigation ahead of contempt of Congress vote
Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agreed late Monday to testify in a House investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, but the Republican leading the probe said an agreement had not yet been finalized.
Rep. James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, continued to press for criminal contempt of Congress charges against both Clintons Monday evening for defying a congressional subpoena when attorneys for the Clintons emailed staff for the Oversight panel, saying the pair would accept Comer’s demands and “will appear for depositions on mutually agreeable dates.”
The attorneys requested that Comer, a Kentucky Republican, agree not to move forward with the contempt proceedings. Comer, however, said he was not immediately dropping the charges, which would carry the threat of a substantial fine and even incarceration if passed by the House and successfully prosecuted by the Department of Justice.
“We don’t have anything in writing,” Comer told reporters, adding that he was open to accepting the Clintons’ offer but “it depends on what they say.”
GOP leaders labor for support ahead of key test vote on ending partial government shutdown
Speaker Mike Johnson’s ability to carry out Trump’s “play call” for funding the government will be put to the test Tuesday as the House holds a procedural vote on a bill to end the partial shutdown.
Johnson will need near-unanimous support from his Republican conference to proceed. He can afford to lose only one Republican on party-line votes with perfect attendance, but some lawmakers are threatening to tank the effort if their priorities are not included. Trump weighed in with a social media post, telling them “There can be NO CHANGES at this time.”
The measure would end the partial government shutdown that began Saturday, funding most of the federal government through Sept. 30 and the Department of Homeland Security for two weeks as lawmakers negotiate potential changes for the agency that enforces the nation’s immigration laws — United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
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