Editor’s note: The Hill’s Morning Report is our daily newsletter that dives deep into Washington’s agenda. To subscribe, click here or fill out the box below.
In today’s issue:
- Trump’s next steps are pricey
- Democrats look for path forward
- Transition behind-the-scenes: The Hill’s Brett Samuels
- Russia renews warning to U.S., Ukraine
President-elect Trump’s plans for historic migrant roundups and generous tax cuts next year will cost Republicans, perhaps beyond their budgets.
The math, at a minimum, will be a challenge.
While Trump maneuvers to get his chosen top lieutenants into place in a new administration, his team is planning with the GOP to deliver swift migrant deportations, plus an extension of individual and corporate tax cuts — all aimed at fulfilling the president-elect’s “promises made, promises kept” campaign refrain.
Trump early Monday confirmed in a social media post that soon after his inauguration, he intends to declare a national emergency over immigration and use the military as part of the implementation of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.
But there will be speed bumps, including costs, federal capacity, pushback from pro-immigrant advocacy groups, the courts and the willingness of other nations to accept the migrants. The optics also worry some Republicans.
Congress has granted presidents the power to declare national emergencies and redirect funds previously appropriated for other purposes. During his first term, for example, Trump invoked this power to spend more on a border wall than Congress had been willing to authorize.
In interviews last year with The New York Times, Trump’s top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller — soon to be deputy White House chief of staff for policy in late January — said military funding would be used to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” run by the Homeland Security Department to hold immigrants as their cases progressed.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, lacks the space to hold a significantly larger number of migrant detainees than it does today. Larger camps, and appropriations for them, could enable the government to accelerate deportations of undocumented people who want to contest expulsion from the country, according to the Trump team. Locking up migrants during an interim waiting period, according to planners, could result in more people who would voluntarily accept removal to other countries, the Times reports. The president-elect’s team has experience invoking a public health emergency to curtail asylum claims, something it did during the COVID-19 pandemic during Trump’s first term.
Separately, transition planners and GOP lawmakers are foraging for politically palatable ways to slash spending to offset the lost revenues that result from lowering taxes. They want, as an opener, to renew tax provisions enacted in 2017 that expire at the end of next year. Among ideas kicking around: pull money from Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor, The Washington Post reports.
Republican leaders want to extend the GOP tax cuts but worry that lowering tax revenues means increasing federal borrowing and debt. In addition to social safety net programs, many Republicans are also looking to repurpose clean energy funds approved by Democrats. Trump’s tariff plans could also raise additional revenue. But those ideas may prove unworkable or insufficient to fully account for the cost of a sweeping new tax package, the Post adds.
Here’s a look at some potential revenue-raisers Republicans may propose: higher tariffs, funding yanked out of the Inflation Reduction Act, changes in international business taxes and a hike in the corporate tax rate or the employee retention tax credit. Republicans continue to be drawn to arguments for “dynamic scoring” in proposed budgets, arguing that tax cuts pay for themselves with economic expansion. Congressional scorekeepers traditionally eschew the idea.
Because the House originates spending and tax bills, all eyes are on Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), a member of Trump’s inner circle, as he applies pressure on fellow Republicans to back Trump’s governing team and the legislative agenda the president-elect will launch within weeks.
“MAGA Mike” has grafted his own political fortunes to Trump and is running interference for everything from the Senate confirmation of controversial nominees, to withholding a House ethics report from release because it could damage the odds of confirming Trump’s nominee to lead the Justice Department.
The Republican chair of the House Ethics Committee said release of an investigative report about former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), controversial attorney general-designee, will be a decision of the committee members and not up to the Speaker, who has said the report should be kept under wraps.
Two adult women testified to the Ethics panel that Gaetz paid them for sex, according to an attorney interviewed by ABC News. One of the women testified that in 2017 she saw the lawmaker at a party engaging in sex with her friend, a 17-year-old girl. A Trump transition spokesperson called the assertion “baseless” and Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing. The president-elect is calling senators to lobby for Gaetz’s confirmation, Axios reported.
More Cabinet picks: Trump on Monday announced his intention to nominate Sean Duffy, 53, a former GOP Wisconsin congressman, ex-reality TV personality and Fox Business host, to be secretary of Transportation. His background is HERE.
▪ The Hill: Senate Republicans deride a Trump transition proposal to use outside firms for background checks for Cabinet and other nominees rather than the FBI.
▪ The Hill: Those who have previously experienced Trump’s wrath are alarmed by the president-elect’s up-front vows to exact revenge against perceived foes.
SMART TAKE FROM THE HILL’S BOB CUSACK:
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently said he wouldn’t leave his job if Trump wanted him to resign. Asked about the possibility at a press conference, Powell simply said it’s “not permitted under the law.”
The Fed is an independent entity, rare among government agencies. While Trump has been critical of Powell, he has not indicated he would fire him. That said, Trump defies the norms of Washington, D.C., and making a move on Powell wouldn’t be shocking.
It is common practice for administration officials, such as the Treasury secretary, to meet regularly with the chair of the Federal Reserve. (The chair’s calendar is available online for all to see). Most presidents, recognizing the independence of the Fed, do not directly engage with its head.
In his last couple of years in the White House, Trump met or talked with Powell seven times, including one “unscheduled” phone call in April of 2019. Powell, who is seen as a bipartisan policymaker, was nominated by Trump and renominated under President Biden.
Trump has a very aggressive agenda and will have to pick his spots to use political capital. He probably will opt to keep Powell until his term expires in May of 2026. And if that happens, Powell will be fielding more phone calls from the commander in chief, unscheduled or not.
3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY:
▪ SpaceX plans a “Starship” launch in Texas today. Trump appears to be headed that way.
▪ Jobs: Boeing announced it will lay off more than 2,200 workers in Washington state and Oregon. Maryland-headquartered Marriott announced it will lay off 833 workers in January while restructuring.
▪ Forty-five former politicians and activists who had organized or taken part in the 2020 opposition primary in Hong Kong were sentenced to prison Tuesday.
LEADING THE DAY
© The Associated Press | J. Scott Applewhite
HOUSE DEMOCRATS will hold their leadership elections today. The three top posts are not expected to change, as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and his two top deputies are unopposed. But the fourth spot will be contested as Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) announced she will challenge Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) for control of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.
The leadership elections come as Democrats conduct further postmortems to explain their losses on Election Day.
Progressives are wrestling with support for transgender rights and the political impact Republicans created with attack ads leading up to Nov. 5. On Monday, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced a bill that would bar transgender women from Capitol Hill facilities that match their gender identity. Mace’s measure followed the election of Sarah McBride (D-Del.) as the first openly transgender representative. McBride will join Congress in January.
Democrats don’t have much to be happy about two weeks after Election Day, which will leave them completely out of power in Washington, D.C., for at least the next two years..
After another election cycle in which their shining hopes turned to ash, Texas Democrats are sorting through what went wrong in 2024 — and what it means for their long-term plans to take power. For the party, “it’s sort of a Lucy and the football story,” Southern Methodist University historian Cal Jillson told The Hill’s Saul Elbein.
“Every election cycle, they feel as if they are on the verge, and if they just had some natural money to put into the race, they could close it out.” Instead, the party “woefully underperformed” on Election Day, state Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D) told The Hill: a result, he and others agreed, of the wrong message wedded to a too-thin electoral strategy handled by a part-time staff with few connections to local Democratic machines. The scale of the loss was made all the worse by Democrats’ hopes going in.
Nationally, Vice President Harris’s campaign is seeing growing scrutiny over its spending strategy in the wake of her devastating loss to Trump, report The Hill’s Julia Manchester and Caroline Vakil. Harris’s campaign blew through more than $1 billion in spending while her team was reportedly left $20 million in the red after the election, though her campaign has vowed there will be no debt listed by the next campaign finance filings.
While Democrats acknowledge Harris faced an uphill climb given Biden’s late exit from the race in July, many critics say her loss of all seven swing states and the popular vote to Trump could have been avoided with a more targeted strategy.
“Everybody fell short,” said James Zogby, a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee. Zogby explained that if you’re going to be sending out emails asking members of the party for money, “then we ought to be able to say to people, ‘and here’s what we did with it.’”
WHERE AND WHEN
- The House will meet at 10 a.m. The Senate will convene at 10 a.m.
- The president is in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and will receive the President’s Daily Brief in the morning. Biden will participate in the second day of the G20 summit, then have a working lunch with President Lula da Silva of Brazil. Biden will depart Rio de Janeiro in the afternoon and return to the White House tonight.
- The vice president will fly from Washington to Los Angeles, then to Kalaoa, Hawaii, with second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
ZOOM IN
© The Associated Press | Evan Vucci
AS THE NEW ADMINISTRATION takes shape, Morning Report’s Kristina Karisch spoke with The Hill’s Brett Samuels, who covers the White House and followed the Trump campaign. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
There’s been a lot of talk of potential recess appointments and how some of Trump’s nominees have steep hurdles to clear for a Senate confirmation. Would the Senate GOP agree to recess appointments?
The indication I’ve gotten from the Trump team is that they’re going to fight for all these nominees to get them confirmed in the Senate by a regular vote. And this idea of recess appointments is something that is going to loom over all of this. Obviously, Trump has talked about it, and at this point it’s unclear whether it will come to that. It puts a lot of pressure on Senate Republicans to essentially pick a side: Either they’re going to agree that Trump has this broad mandate and that they’re going to confirm the nominees — or they’re going to be put on the spot. Trump is trying to basically tell Senate Republicans he plans on getting his nominees confirmed one way or another.
Is the overall transition operation running into roadblocks?
I would say that the Trump ’24 transition is clearly much more focused and clear-eyed compared to the 2016 transition. Trump knows exactly what he’s looking for in some of these nominees, even if that may seem spur of the moment, like Matt Gaetz or Pete Hegseth. I think they’re part of a larger trend of Trump clearly looking for people who are going to be loyal to him, people who are going to carry out the things that he pledged to carry out.
What about the transition speed?
Trump is known to be kind of impulsive, and I think the Hegseth nomination and the Matt Gaetz nomination in particular were [not] on people’s radars. Nobody I [interviewed] had either in the mix for a Cabinet post, much less for the Cabinet posts that they were eventually nominated for. That is a sign that Trump, ultimately, is the final decision maker. He’s not always going through a traditional process that includes extensive vetting, or background checks, or making sure that these people are going to have a smooth-sailing confirmation process.
What can Americans expect from the rest of this transition?
The big thing to watch: Trump has yet to name [nominees for the] top economic jobs for his administration. There’s been a lot of jockeying for people’s favorite candidates for Treasury secretary, Commerce secretary, [U.S.] trade representative, all that. A lot of the focus in the next three-plus months is going to be on whether Senate Republicans want to flash some independence, or if Trump is going to just show once again that it’s his party, and these are his nominees and he’s going to get these lawmakers to bend to his will and let him create the administration that he wants to create.
How is the “Department of Government Efficiency,” led by entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, taking shape?
It’s not going to be an official government agency. It’s kind of like an advisory operation. And so the question then is, how seriously does Congress take [its] suggested cuts, and are those things that can actually get accomplished by lawmakers? Are they interested in listening? The other aspect is Elon Musk is obviously not somebody who has worked in government before, and so there’s this question of how well does he actually know how all this works, that [whether] the cuts he’s going to suggest are actually practical. He had a [recent] post pointing to interest on debt as a major source of government spending that could be cut. But you can’t just get rid of interest on debt. It’s an example that these are people who have not worked in government before. While that’s the appeal, it also represents some of the obstacles they may face in actually getting some of this accomplished.
ELSEWHERE
© The Associated Press | Eric Lee, The New York Times
UKRAINE SIGNALED a new sense of urgency in its war against Russia on Monday following a decision by the Biden administration to allow long-range strikes inside the country using American-provided missiles. Ukrainian politicians suggest the first launches would come soon and without warning. The first Ukrainian strikes with the missiles were carried out close to the border.
The policy shift drew a furious response Monday from the Kremlin, accusing the Biden administration of escalating the conflict two months before Trump takes office. Moscow said it would amount to a “new leap of tension and a qualitatively new situation with regard to the U.S. involvement in this conflict.”
Reuters: Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a warning to the United States with new nuclear doctrine.
G20: One of the key agreements made Monday at the launch of the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro is a global alliance against poverty and hunger, launched as the result of a proposal by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. So far, the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty has been backed by 82 countries, as well as more than 50 international organizations and philanthropic groups.
Biden pledged a $4 billion U.S. contribution to the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) fund for the world’s poorest countries, two sources with knowledge of the commitment said on Monday. The amount is a record and substantially exceeds the $3.5 billion Washington committed in the previous IDA fund replenishment round in 2021.
Trump’s influence is already causing behind-the-scenes drama at the G20. Argentine President Javier Milei, who last week became the first world leader to meet with Trump since the election, put up resistance to a joint leaders’ statement, CNN reports. Diplomats interpreted the move as meant to curry favor with the incoming administration, as Milei threatened to block a final communiqué over disputes about language related to taxation on the ultrarich and gender issues.
The Wall Street Journal: After defeating Trump four years ago, Biden declared “America is back” at his first G20 summit Now as he attends a final pair of gatherings with world leaders in South America, Trump is back and Biden is fading into the background.
OPINION
■ Putin sees America hurtling to disaster, with Trump at the wheel, by Mikhail Zygar, guest essayist, The New York Times.
■ The Trump administration’s next target: naturalized U.S. citizens, by Steven Lubet, opinion contributor, The Hill.
THE CLOSER
© The Associated Press | Lynne Sladky
And finally … 🚘 Thanksgiving travel, an endurance sport about which Hollywood movies have been made, will surge this year, no matter how Americans reach their family and friends. About 80 million travelers will go 50 miles or more for the holiday period, according to AAA, marking the congestion period as beginning a week from today and lasting through Dec. 2. Most travelers, perhaps a record-setting 72 million of them, will drive to reach the turkey and sides. Nearly 6 million people will fly domestically, up from last year — and international bookings are way up, too. 🧳
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