Morning Report — Washington returns for jam-packed January
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Heading into a new year, Washington lawmakers have an incredibly full plate of old problems: federal spending, foreign wars, the border surge. It’s not going to be an easy welcome back for anyone.
Facing a Jan. 19 deadline before a partial government shutdown — that’s 17 days away — Congress must hash out a budget deal among House Republicans, the Democrat-controlled Senate and President Biden. All in an election year, and with the Iowa caucuses for Republicans only 13 days away.
Amid the struggle to fund the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and Ukraine’s war with Russia, Republicans are ramping up pressure to address the crisis at the border (more on that below).
It is all setting things up to be a wild start to 2024.
Meanwhile, in the House … The GOP caucus is still worried about showboat lawmakers who may be tanking efforts in the House’s razor-thin majority. The Hill’s Emily Brooks reports that some are upset about the lack of consequences those members have faced.
Hard-liners are ruffling feathers among the rank-and-file and moderate Republicans who see lapsed deadlines or a government shutdown as the impact of their tactics that will likely continue into the new year.
For those hard-liners, peeving their colleagues is just a part of flexing their influence to achieve their goals.
“Change can be very disquieting and uncomfortable. Are people upset by that? I think so,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.).
After a tumultuous 2023 that included the ouster of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) after his own struggles to be elected leader of the chamber, the House isn’t so harmonious.
SPEAKING OF ELECTIONS: Obviously, there is a presidential race, but all of the members of the House and a third of the Senate are also on the ballot this year. Here’s where the Cook Political Report currently has them rated.
The Associated Press recently analyzed how retirements are impacting the makeup of Congress.
From the AP’s Kevin Freking‘s report: “More retirements can be expected after the holidays, when lawmakers have had a chance to spend time with families and make decisions ahead of reelection deadlines. But so far, the numbers don’t indicate the dysfunction in the House is causing a mass exodus for either party.”
“Members sort of knew that this is what the institution is currently like when they chose to run for office,” Molly Reynolds, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told the AP. “Some of them may well be feeling frustrated at this point in time, but anybody who has been elected to Congress in recent years, they’re not surprised at what they’re finding when they are getting to Washington.”
MEANWHILE… Democrats are not liking their chances in this state.
3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY:
▪ JACKPOT: The Powerball lottery hit $810 million as we rang in the new year. More on that here.
▪ HOLLYWOOD: The start of the year means longtime favorites are hitting the public domain. In other words… Entertainers just got a lot more to work with without fear of lawsuits or having to pay. This year has opened up works from 1928; check The Hill’s list on what’s hitting the public domain.
▪ MAKING MONEY MOVES: The federal electric vehicle tax credit is seeing changes in 2024. The Hill’s Zack Budryk breaks down what you need to know about the new rules to maximize on the tax credit, which tops out at $7,500.
Programming note: The Hill’s Alexis Simendinger and Kristina Karisch will be back in your inboxes tomorrow!
LEADING THE DAY
Credit: Getty Images
IMMIGRATION
New year, same problems: Among stalled border asylum policy negotiations in the Senate, expected impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and an upcoming trip by House Republicans to the U.S. southern border, immigration reform is center stage as 2024 kicks off.
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will lead a group of about 60 Republican this week on a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border near Eagle Pass, Texas. Also on the trip: Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), who represents a border district, along with House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.), both of whom will be at the center of any impeachment proceedings against Mayorkas.
The Hill’s Emily Brooks and Rebecca Beitsch note the trip is the latest escalation for Johnson, who has become increasingly vocal about taking action to address soaring border crossings and establishing stricter immigration policies.
Gonzales said the trip’s timing, so soon into the new year, is “a small miracle and shows we are committed as a group.”
“America is experiencing the worst border crisis in our history, impacting every community in the country. While President Biden and Senate Democrats are asleep at the wheel, House Republicans will not cease in demanding transformative, immediate solutions to the madness,” Johnson said ahead of the trip.
Senators will make another go at a bipartisan deal over border policy changes that would unlock funding for Ukraine after weeks of failed negotiations. These negotiations continued virtually and even over text over the holiday break, lead Democratic negotiator Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) told Politico.
RELATED: More than a third — 35 percent — of Americans listed immigration and the border wall as a top concern heading into the new year, according to a new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Mayorkas, meanwhile, could come under further scrutiny from the House GOP over his handling of the border situation. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) revealed Johnson and Green told her an impeachment vote for the Homeland Security chief could come in the near future. The House referred two previous impeachment inquiries into Mayorkas to the House Homeland Security Committee and declined to take an immediate vote.
“We’re going to have about three or four hearings in January, and then we’re going to mark up the impeachment articles that have been written,” Green said late last month during an appearance on Fox News.
The Department of Homeland Security has pushed back against the prospect, calling the House majority’s efforts a “baseless political exercise” with “no basis.”
WHERE AND WHEN
The House will meet for a pro forma session at 9 a.m.
The Senate will convene for a pro forma session at 11:45 a.m.
The president has no public events on his schedule today. He and first lady Jill Biden are set to return to the White House from their family’s traditional New Year’s trip to St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, this afternoon.
Vice President Harris is in Los Angeles with second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
ZOOM IN
CONGRESS
Credit: The Hill / Greg Nash
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who wielded so much power when his party was in control that he was able to block then-President Obama from getting a Supreme Court appointee, is not in such good standing with the GOP today, after has tradedtrading barbs with former President Trump, who is the front-runner for the Republican 2024 nomination.
The Hill’s Al Weaver breaks down down where McConnell stands in the finicky Trump world.
TAKEAWAYS FROM THE HILL’S REPORTING ON MCCONNELL:
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.): “He is the recognized leader. He is still the strategist that sees the long game, and he is the guy who is putting the strategy out in front of us right now. That has not changed … What I’m seeing has been a leader who has been on top of it.”
“Anybody who tells you they know is kidding themselves,” a senior Senate GOP aide told The Hill.
Leader no more? Weaver reports: One Senate Republican predicted that if leadership elections had been held last month, McConnell’s support would be at a similar level to what it was last year when 11 members backed Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) challenge.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) went so far to say it would not surprise him if McConnell just decided not to run for his long-held leadership role, but he’s not counting out the GOP leader’s odds of winning if he wants it.
“I personally would be surprised if he ran again for leader … But I will tell you, I don’t think anybody challenges him or beats him if he decided to run,” Mullin said.
Credit: AP
2024 ROUNDUP:
▪ Bad polling piles up for Biden: The president is trailing Trump when it comes to Hispanic and young voters in a new survey by USA Today and Suffolk University. Trump garnered 39 percent of Hispanic voters’ support, while Biden picked up 34 percent support. This is a sharp decrease from 2020, when Biden picked up 65 percent of the demographic group. The president also saw support drop among Black voters, receiving about 63 percent of support.
▪ The 2024 election will present a test of the resiliency of the U.S. democracy, with some election experts calling November’s race a “Super Bowl.” The AP’s Nicholas Riccardi explains what sorts of questions we could see in 2024.
▪ The New York Times reported on the former president’s situation in Iowa, noting that as the state’s Jan. 15 caucuses swiftly approach, Trump is tempering his expectations, warning supporters of the threat of complacency.
ELSEWHERE
INTERNATIONAL
Credit: AP
ISRAEL’S MILITARY doesn’t appear to be letting up on its campaign to destroy the militant group Hamas, predicting its war with the group will last all of 2024. Israeli Defense Minister Daniel Hagari shared the prediction hours ahead of the new year, writing the “objectives of the war require prolonged fighting,” The Hill’sLauren Sforza reports.
“We are wisely planning the management of the forces operating in the field, looking at the reserve system, the economy, refreshing forces, and continuing the combat training processes in the [Israel Defense Forces],” Hagari said.
Related: The Israeli military plans to withdraw thousands of Israeli troops from Gaza, at least temporarily, citing the economic burden and the need to gather strength for the upcoming year. The New York Times’s Aaron Boxerman, reporting from Jerusalem, outlines what this could look like.
Israel pulled tanks out of some Gaza City districts Monday, though fighting continued in other parts of the coastal enclave. (Reuters)
The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier strike group will head home “in the coming days” after spending months off the coast of Israel to deter the Israel-Hamas war from escalating into a regional conflict. (The Associated Press)
Secretary of State Antony Blinken is slated to return to Israel in early January for talks on the war as U.S. officials increase calls on the country to transition to a “lower-intensity” phase of the war. Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and a top aide for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have discussed shifting Israel’s war strategy to “maximize focus on high-value Hamas targets,” a White House official told The Times.
The Daily Beast examined the five biggest obstacles standing in the way of Israelis and Palestinians reaching a peace deal.
ALSO IN ISRAEL: The Israeli Supreme Court has overturned a key aspect of Netanyahu’s controversial judicial overhaul. The law would’ve allowed the government to override Supreme Court decisions and grant more power to appoint justices.
What the 8-7 ruling said: The law was struck down because of the “severe and unprecedented harm to the core character of the State of Israel as a democratic country,” The Hill’s Lauren Irwin reports.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE: Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be following up on his promise to intensify attacks against Ukraine after Russian forces launched a record 90 drones over Ukraine in the early hours of the new year. (The Hill)
New Year’s goals: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a year-end speech, vowed to increase the country’s domestically produced weapons in the coming year.
“And next year, the enemy will feel the wrath of domestic production,” Zelensky said in the speech. “Our weapons, our equipment, artillery, our shells, our drones, our naval ‘greetings’ to the enemy and at least a million Ukrainian FPV drones.”
IN JAPAN: More than a dozen earthquakes hit off the coast of Ishikawa, Japan, on Monday, prompting tsunami warnings and evacuations along the country’s western coast. One of the quakes had a magnitude of 7.6, risking serious damage, house collapses and landslides.
The White House confirmed the Biden administration is in touch with Japanese officials and said the U.S. “stands ready” to assist Japan’s residents.
ON THE BORDER: Fox News reports that immigrants from Guinea are using fake passports to claim they are minors. More from the alleged scheme via Fox News.
NEW JERSEY LOOPHOLE: Bus operators are trying to get around New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s (D) new restrictions on migrant bus arrivals, dropping migrants off at a New Jersey train station where they can continue toward the city.
“New Jersey is primarily being used as a transit point for these families — all or nearly all of them continued with their travels en route to their final destination of New York City,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said.
NEW YORK CITY BLASTS TEXAS: A spokesperson for New York City dug into Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who has sent scores of migrants to Democrat-lead cities in protest of the U.S.’s border policies.
“But instead of joining us in treating human beings humanely, Texas Governor Greg Abbott continues to treat asylum seekers like political pawns, and is instead now dropping families off in surrounding cities and states in the cold, dark of night with train tickets to travel to New York City, just like he has been doing in Chicago in response to their similar executive order,” the spokesperson told The Hill.
STATE WATCH
Just hours into the new year, Southern California was rattled with a 4.1 magnitude earthquake, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.
The good news: USGS says there’s “low likelihood of casualties and damage” for the Golden State, The Hill reported.
OPINION
■ Biden’s marijuana clemency grants are a small present in a big box, by Rachel E. Barkow and Mark Osler, opinion contributors, The Hill.
■ When the World Feels Dark, Seek Out Delight, by Catherine Price, guest contributor, The New York Times.
THE CLOSER
Credit: Getty Images
Did you wake up wondering why Vanilla Ice was trending on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, as we kick off 2024? We did, too!
Turns out the ’90s rapper (with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’s Michelangelo in tow) was the highlight at former President Trump‘s New Year’s party at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.
Users of X uploaded videos of the two getting down on his classics like “Ice, Ice, Baby.” Trump himself can even be seen jamming out to the hits in some of the crowd shots.
The icy rapper performed at Mar-a-Lago’s New Year’s bash back in 2021, but the performer, legally named Robert Van Winkle, insisted it wasn’t about politics (and suggested it might be more about the bling.)
“We danced. We celebrated. We had a great time,” he said at the time. “It was a very classy event at a beautiful Palm Beach landmark.”
Van Winkle grew up in South Florida, when he wasn’t living in Texas, so Florida Man is doing his thing.
More: Here is an anti-Taylor Swift column that we are NOT ready for. But feel free to hate-read.
Happy 2024: The Washington Post wants to know about your 2024 culture standing.
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