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In today’s issue:
- Funding government drags lawmakers to the wire
- Cabinet watch: Hegseth looks up, Gabbard struggles
- DOJ: FBI omitted “basic step” before Jan. 6
- Blinken makes Middle East diplomacy push
By the end of next week, lawmakers will bid farewell to a legislative year that proved to be both the best and worst of times.
Their leftover legislative goals before the holidays are familiar but proved onerous: keep the government funded and put the annual must-pass defense authorization measure on the president’s desk in time.
Republican senators cheered after flipping the upper chamber in November’s elections to gain the majority next year, when President-elect Trump will return to the Oval Office. Yet, House Republicans barely retained a majority, and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) does not have the clout to strongarm consensus. He hopes Trump next year will be his force multiplier.
Republicans in Congress want the president-elect to guide the legislative sequence of a GOP agenda and to craft a strategy that puts Republicans — and the economy — on an advantageous glide path toward the 2026 midterm contests.
Sounds simple enough, but the House GOP wants to prioritize tax legislation next year. Senate Republicans think immigration reforms should come first. How to deliver major headline results during the president’s honeymoon first year? Stay tuned.
“Ultimately and pretty imminently the president is going to call the play,” Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) said this week.
The New York Times: The most durable guardrails around Trump in his second term are likely to be the stock market and his wariness about “bad press.” He is likely to receive only the meekest resistance from his own party, which will control both the House and Senate. Since his first term, dissenters have been driven into retirement, defeated in primaries or are being cowed into silence.
The president-elect wooed Wall Street on Thursday with pledges of corporate tax cuts while ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange
Trump’s economic advisers are discussing the pros and cons of doubling the state and local tax deduction (SALT), a change that would please tax filers residing in high-tax New York, New Jersey and California. But raising the deduction would lower federal revenues. The idea in play: raise from $10,000 to $20,000 the tax write-off. Getting to $20,000 “would solve the problem for middle-class families in blue states,” said Trump economic transition adviser Stephen Moore.
▪ Bloomberg News: Trump’s push to eliminate existing tax credits for the purchase of electric vehicles hits GOP lawmakers’ home states.
▪ The Associated Press: The Senate, hunting for 60 procedural votes in the final days of the session, is pushing to provide full Social Security benefits to another 2.8 million people. The House already approved the measure.
▪ Roll Call: The House approved a Senate-passed bill this week to add new judgeship positions to the system, which would have pleased Democrats if it had occurred before the election. President Biden issued a veto threat.
▪ The Hill: Senate Democrats are not mournful about the retirements of Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), previously centrist Democrats who enjoyed keeping their colleagues guessing during chamber votes. Neither sought reelection this year.
3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY:
▪ President Xi Jinping will not attend Trump’s inauguration in response to his invitation but may send a representative.
▪ Trump on Thursday offered his support for the dockworkers union with a chilly rebuke for automation at ports.
▪ Environmental groups want the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to do more to protect Rocky Mountain grizzly bears with expanded habitat before Trump is sworn in.
LEADING THE DAY
© The Associated Press | Rod Lamkey Jr.
PERSON OF IMPACT: Trump was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year on Thursday. It’s the second time he received the designation after winning the White House.
The president-elect sat for an interview with the magazine at Mar-a-Lago at the end of November, where he spoke about a wide range of topics, from inflation and foreign affairs to abortion and transgender rights. Trump was asked about plans including pardoning some Jan. 6 defendants, enacting mass deportations and undoing Biden’s executive actions.
▪ Time magazine: A fact-check of Trump’s interview.
▪ CBS News: 11 highlights from Trump’s interview.
CABINET: Two of Trump’s highest-profile Cabinet choices are experiencing different trajectories in the Senate as they gear up for January confirmation hearings.
Trump and his allies have seemingly turned the tide on Pete Hegseth’s embattled nomination for Defense secretary, a sharp reversal from days ago when Trump considered contingency plans for a new nominee. Trump’s allies instead turned up the pressure on senators to give Hegseth time, write The Hill’s Brett Samuels and Alexander Bolton. They threatened primaries and blasted those who confirmed Biden’s nominees but were on the fence about Trump’s choice for the Pentagon. At the same time, Hegseth received some pre-nominee tutoring and walked back some of his controversial positions on women and gays. The all-in effort to get Hegseth across the finish line could preview future fights between the MAGA wing of the party and senators intent on maintaining their role as a check on Trump.
Meanwhile, former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, once a Democrat and Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, is struggling through her meetings with senators this week, The Hill’s Al Weaver and Alex Gangitano report. One source familiar with Gabbard’s discussions with senators in recent days described them as “not going well,” adding that she “was proving to be a little shallow, like a House member talking at a hearing and not someone who is ready to provide the president’s daily intelligence briefing.”
“She’s probably more vulnerable than Hegseth right now,” the source said, adding that people who have been on Capitol Hill with the Defense candidate feel like he has “turned the corner.”
DEMOCRATS ARE DISAPPOINTED that FBI Director Christopher Wray will step down at the end of Biden’s term, arguing the move allows Trump to speed the law enforcement agency’s transformation and skirt accountability for forcing the director out.
“I think he should have forced Trump to fire him because by stepping down he sort of took the onus off Trump for breaking with the tradition and the policy of having FBI directors serve 10-year terms,” Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.), a former prosecutor and House Judiciary member, told The Hill. “There’s this precedent now for FBI directors stepping down when a new president comes in. And that’s not how this should work.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s pick to lead the bureau, Kash Patel, has called the top ranks of the FBI “a threat to the people” and published a list of enemies, vowing retribution for investigations of top Republicans. But he appears to be on a glide path to confirmation, with Republican senators lining up enthusiastically behind him.
Middle East adviser: Massad Boulos, Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, is often characterized as a billionaire dealmaker. Records show otherwise.
Federal Aviation Administration: Administrator Mike Whitaker told his staff Thursday he will resign ahead of the Trump administration, presumably effective Jan. 20.
The Hill: The Biden administration is sprinting to finalize the unfinished pieces of its climate policy, from fully disbursing Inflation Reduction Act funds to getting final regulations out the door. The incoming Trump administration is all but certain to roll back numerous Biden actions but getting funds out the door can make at least some of Biden’s policies permanent.
Bank regulators: The Trump transition team has started to explore pathways to dramatically shrink, consolidate or even eliminate the top bank watchdogs in Washington, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Any proposal to eliminate the FDIC or any agency would require congressional action, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The New York Times: A new federal rule that took effect on Thursday limits overdraft fees at large banks. It could save Americans billions of dollars, but it’s unclear the changes will remain in place under the Trump administration.
WHERE AND WHEN
- It’s Friday the 13th. Use caution.
- The House will meet Monday at noon. The Senate will meet Monday at 3 p.m.
- The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9 a.m. Biden will participate in a virtual meeting of Group of Seven leaders at 9:30 a.m. in the White House Old Executive Office Building’s South Court Auditorium.
- Vice President Harris is in Washington and has no public events.
- The secretary of State met with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Ankara early today local time.
- First lady Jill Biden will host a Toys for Tots event at 11:30 a.m. at the White House with the Marine Corps and local Marine families
ZOOM IN
© The Associated Press | Jose Luis Magana
“BASIC STEP”: On the day of the attack on the Capitol in 2021, the FBI worked to identify domestic extremists who planned to be in Washington, D.C., but failed to take a “basic step” that could have helped law enforcement prepare, according to a new report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s office.
Horowitz’s long-awaited report comes nearly four years after a crowd of Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, and looks at how the FBI handled its intelligence and informants, known as confidential human sources, ahead of the event. Both the FBI and Department of Homeland Security have faced sharp criticism for what a Senate committee report described as a failure to believe the tips they received ahead of the attack.
While, according to the report, the FBI “recognized the potential for violence and took significant and appropriate steps to prepare” ahead of Jan. 6, the inspector general’s office determined that the bureau failed to canvass its field offices to identify any intelligence, including from informants, about potential threats that day to the electoral certification.
▪ The New York Times: The FBI didn’t instruct informants to encourage violence at the Capitol, report says.
▪ The Hill: Trump said he intends to pardon “most” rioters accused or convicted of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 in one of the first official acts of his second presidency.
ELECTION INTERFERENCE: State prosecutors in Wisconsin, Georgia and Nevada made clear Thursday that they are pressing forward with criminal cases against Trump and his allies related to interference in the 2020 election.
All three prosecutors leading the state criminal cases are Democrats, and have vowed to see them through, given the substantial body of public evidence.
▪ New Jersey Monitor: This ruling by a conservative Supreme Court could help blue states fight Trump policies.
▪ The Hill: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is suing companies that have historically made toxic “forever chemicals,” commonly referred to as PFAS, or products that contain them, alleging false advertising over their safety.
ELSEWHERE
© The Associated Press | Andrew Caballero Reynolds, AFP
Middle East: Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Jordan and Turkey on Thursday as part of a trip to promote an “inclusive, Syrian-led” government transition in Damascus and meet with leaders of neighboring nations to try to get them on board.
“All of these conversations are looking to bring all the countries in the region together, as well as beyond the region, in a unified approach to supporting the Syrian people as they emerge from this dictatorship,” Blinken told reporters Thursday after meeting with Jordan’s king and foreign minister.
Following the toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the emerging transitional government in Syria faces an uphill battle as it looks to unite a vast coalition of rebel groups and appeal to Western nations concerned about whether the country will suppress minority communities. The opposition forces were led by an erstwhile al-Qaeda offshoot, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which has tried to distance itself from its roots but will face key tests in the months ahead to prove its new claims. The Hill’s Brad Dress writes that whether HTS can manage to unite the country peacefully will also be a key determining factor for how the U.S., which has substantial interests in Syria, engages with the new government in Damascus.
▪ The Associated Press: The Biden administration is making a final diplomatic push for stability across a turbulent Middle East.
▪ The Hill: Who is Travis Timmerman, the missing American apparently found in Syria?
▪ NBC News: United Nations chief António Guterres urged Israel to halt its aerial attacks and advance into Syrian territory after the overthrow of the Assad regime.
▪ The New York Times: For decades, Iran poured money and military aid into Syria, backing the Assad regime in its ambition to confront Israel. Now many Iranians are openly asking why.
▪ The Wall Street Journal: Trump is weighing options for stopping Iran from being able to build a nuclear weapon, including the possibility of preventive airstrikes. Such a move would break with longstanding policy of diplomacy and sanctions.
Russia is scrambling to save face after its humiliating loss of its client, Assad, and the Kremlin has conceded preserving its crucial Syrian military bases will take time and delicate negotiations with groups that had just days ago been designated “terrorists.” Russian President Vladimir Putin made saving the Assad regime his personal project in 2015, and its fall nine years later marks a blow to Putin’s main goal — forging Russia into a great world power.
“This is certainly a huge blow to Putin’s image in the eyes of other leaders in the Middle East and Africa,” Ruslan Suleymanov, research fellow at the Baku-based Institute for Development and Diplomacy, told The Washington Post. “Putin has shown everyone that he is no longer able to support his allies. He just doesn’t care. He no longer has many stable resources. He is busy doing something completely different.”
That something different includes Russia’s nearly two-year invasion of Ukraine. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Wednesday expressed concern about the idea of conducting peace negotiations in the war without Putin “at the table,” calling the move “risky.” He also warned that Putin wants to “wipe Ukraine off the map” and could come after other parts of Europe next.
CNN: Russia launched a massive attack on Ukraine’s energy sector.
OPINION
■ Don’t make DOGE about nothing, by Susan Dudley, columnist, The Wall Street Journal.
■ Democrats should stop saving the Republicans from themselves, by Matt K. Lewis, opinion contributor, The Hill.
THE CLOSER
© The Associated Press | Alex Brandon
And finally … Kudos to winners of this week’s Morning Report Quiz! We tracked some presidential brand marketing tied to cologne and perfume and readers followed the scent.
Here’s who came up roses: Phil Kirstein, Mark Roeddiger, Lynn Gardner, Richard E. Baznik, Mark R. Williamson, Stan Wasser, Melody, Linda L. Field, Chuck Schoenenberger, Jaina Mehta Buck, Peter Sprofera, Pam Manges and Steve James.
The president-elect turned to Truth Social this week to promote a $199 “limited edition” Trump-branded cologne and perfume called Fight, Fight, Fight.
When asked her “favorite smell” by Stephen Colbert during her book tour last year, former first lady Michelle Obama thought for a second and answered, “my husband.”
President John F. Kennedy promoted a public image of outdoorsy vigor and masculinity, which inspired occasional curiosity about his purported favorite cologne(s). Eight & Bob is a scent reportedly worn by JFK as a young man and currently sold on the White House Historical Association website.
The museum store at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Texas does not sell “Dubya” men’s cologne. The correct quiz answer was “false.” (We made that up.)
Stay Engaged
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