Congress Dodges Shutdown for Now, Despite Republicans’ Best Efforts

After months of stalled negotiations and short-term funding resolutions, the House of Representatives finally passed a measure on Thursday to keep the federal government funded. The effort received minimal support from Republicans—nearly half of whom, 106 members, actually voted against the initiative.

It passed in a 314–108 vote with near-unanimous support from Democrats, some 207 of whom voted for the measure, compared to just 107 Republicans. The bill is now on its way to President Joe Biden’s desk.

The short-term spending bill was voted on by the House just two hours after the Senate passed it, narrowly bucking a looming two-part shutdown that was set to begin on Friday. The continuing resolution has granted Congress an extra six weeks to coordinate a full spending measure before its next two-part shutdown deadline, slated for March 1 and March 8, when funding for agencies ranging from the Department of Defense to the Food and Drug Administration will finally run dry.

The passage of the stopgap resolution is a win for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who pulled off a bipartisan deal that his predecessor, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, failed to. Facing a momentous countdown on the clock, Johnson cut a deal with other congressional leaders in order to avert the shutdown, despite outsize pressure against it stemming from the House Freedom Caucus.

Johnson has struggled in recent weeks to keep hold of his newfound power since he won the House’s highest seat in a shocking election in October, enduring calls by far-right hard-liners in the House to kick him out just three months into his tenure.

On Wednesday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she would personally force a vote to oust Johnson if he cut a deal to fund Ukraine, regardless of bipartisan negotiating.

“We can’t fund Ukraine,” she told NBC News, calling it “an absolute no-go—that would be a reason to vacate.”

But Johnson appeared nonplussed by the threat, pointing out that he had “a job to do.”

“We all have to do our jobs,” Johnson said on CNN’s The Source. “Marjorie Taylor Greene is very upset about the lack of oversight over the funding and over the lack of an articulation of a plan, as am I.”

“I’ve talked with her about it personally at great length, and she’s made her position very clear,” he continued. “We have to do our job. We have to continue to ensure that we’re covering all these bases, and we’ll see how this all shakes out. I’m not worried about that. I got a job to do here. And we have to make sure we get the answers that we demanded.”

This story has been updated.

Trump lawyer Alina Habba was reprimanded a whopping 12 times during the former president’s defamation trial on Thursday for her combative and bizarre behavior.

Presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan has already ruled that Donald Trump defamed E. Jean Carroll after she revealed he sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s. The current trial is just to determine how much Trump owes her in damages. Carroll is seeking at least $10 million.

Habba spent her cross-examination trying to prove that the bulk of Carroll’s emotional harm—in the form of death threats and intimidation—happened in the hours before Trump weighed in, so he shouldn’t be on the hook to financially compensate her. But things started on the wrong foot immediately when Habba referred to the window between when Carroll’s accusation was released and when Trump responded.

“I was asking you about the five-hour gap—” Habba began.

Kaplan cut her off, saying, “Five hours have not been established. You might be well advised to refer to ‘the gap.’”

Soon after, Kaplan admonished Habba multiple times in a row, first for questioning the very premise of the case and then for being “argumentative” with her questions.

As part of her strategy, Habba began reading abusive tweets about Carroll aloud. Kaplan tried to stop her, and when Habba refused, Kaplan had to tell her twice to “move on.” He then said it again when Habba tried to argue that the people who attacked Carroll before Trump’s statement couldn’t have been emulating the former president.

Things got extra testy when Habba asked if Carroll made a “good amount of money” from her writing now. Kaplan pointed out that Habba’s descriptor was vague and subjective.

“This is Evidence 101,” he said.

Habba and Kaplan continued to lock horns for the rest of the morning, including when Habba again questioned established facts. She asked Carroll how many subscribers she had on the subscription-based publication platform Substack, which Kaplan reminded her Carroll had already answered on Wednesday.

When Habba tried to argue that a video Trump made might not really have been about Carroll, Kaplan shut her down again. “He said, ‘Whole thing is made up.’ That’s not about her?” Kaplan said. “We’ll pass over this for now.”

Kaplan also admonished Habba for raising objections that were of “dubious value,” for not listening when he sustained objections against her, and for still trying to read more tweets out loud.

Habba has irritated Kaplan every day of the trial thus far. The two repeatedly butted heads on Wednesday over Habba’s disruptive behavior in the courtroom, resulting in Kaplan admonishing her 14 times. And during opening statements on Tuesday, Habba almost immediately violated the rules Kaplan had set about what Trump’s team can and cannot say.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday rejected the premise of a Palestinian state and promised that Israel will take over the entire region it currently occupies, “from the river to the sea,” according to an English translation on the Israeli news channel i24NEWS.

According to other translations, Netanyahu said that Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River,” which is basically the same thing.

The prime minister vowed to oppose the creation of any Palestinian state, as Israel continues its horrific military bombardment of Gaza. Israel has killed at least 24,000 Palestinians in Gaza in the last three months, under Netanyahu’s leadership—and the prime minister made it clear that Israel won’t be stopping its war anytime soon.

“For 30 years, I am very consistent and I am saying something very simple: this conflict is not on the lack of a state of Palestinians, but the existence of a state, the Jewish state,” Netanyahu said, according to a translation on i24NEWS. “Every area that we evacuate we receive terrible terror against us. It happened in South Lebanon, in Gaza, and also in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] which we did it.”

“And therefore I clarify that in any other arrangement, in the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea.”

The use of the phrase “from the river to the sea” has come under particular scrutiny in the last three months. When Palestinians, or anyone on the left, has used the phrase to demand a free Palestine—as in the popular chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”—those on the right have disingenuously argued that it is calling for the death of all Jewish people in Israel.

Representative Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, was censured by Congress last year for her use of the phrase. Many Democrats joined Republicans in condemning her, minutes after she used a floor speech to condemn both rising Islamophobia and antisemitism in the wake of Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza.

“From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate,” Tlaib wrote in an effort to clarify her language as the bad-faith critics amassed against her. “My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.”

The use of the phrase “from the river to the sea” also became the center of a monthslong news cycle focused on what college kids are saying in campus protests. Fomented by so called “anti-woke” activists and Republicans in Congress, it ultimately ended with the resignations of several university presidents.

Netanyahu, for his part, clearly stated on Thursday that he is not using the phrase “from the river to the sea” in a peaceful manner.

After claiming Israel would take over the entire area from the river to the sea—which would presumably include the West Bank and Gaza, areas recognized as Palestinian territory under international law—Netanyahu went on to directly challenge the Biden administration and its support for the two-state solution.

“This truth I say to our American friends,” Netanyahu said Thursday. “And I also stopped the attempt to impose on us a reality that will jeopardize us. A prime minister in Israel has to be able to say no, even to the best of friends. To say no when you need to and to say yes when you can.”

When people tell you who they are, believe them.

This article has been updated.

A convicted felon with alleged neo-Nazi ties has been unanimously cleared to remain on the GOP ballot in North Carolina, per the state’s Board of Elections.

Joseph Gibson III is running to represent District 65—which includes Rockingham County along North Carolina’s northern border with Virginia—in the state’s House of Representatives.

It’s the second time Gibson has appeared on the district’s ballot and proved a legitimate challenger. In 2022, the Connecticut native carried more than 20 percent in the North Carolina GOP primary, shortly before he was put on blast by the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism for his neo-Nazi ties. The ADL found that Gibson had promoted a rally by the National Socialist Movement, or NSM, one of the largest white supremacist groups in the country, had simulcasted his podcast on the group’s network, and had shared the group’s manifesto to his social media accounts.

“I’ve never been to an NSM rally,” Gibson told WRAL News last week, denying any relationship with the racist group. “I’ve never supported them. But I think that’s coming from my podcast because I have had them call in. But I’ve had Black Panthers call in. I have all sorts of people call in. I believe in the First Amendment.”

Still, despite wiping some of the more egregious evidence documented by the Anti-Defamation League from his social media accounts, Gibson retains some eyebrow-raising posts. In one post made in 2021, Gibson used a racial slur against Black people while complaining about an interracial family, per Vice News. In other comments, Gibson agreed with posts by a self-proclaimed former member of the KKK and the NSM, and shared a propaganda video titled, “Aryan: Our Purpose.”

And yet, Gibson expects apologies, after Republican officials challenged his candidacy. On Tuesday, Gibson told WRAL News that he expects the state’s GOP to say sorry for his “character assassination” and “political assassination” as he returns to challenge state Representative Reece Pyrtle.

Ultimately, the decision is a foreboding omen for those fighting to keep Donald Trump off the presidential ballot, even as he faces the possibility of conviction in any one of his several criminal trials.

The outcome of Trump’s criminal trials has proven to be one of the few issues that sways some of his raucous supporters. More than a quarter of Republicans said that the real estate mogul should not be a presidential candidate if he’s convicted of a crime, according to a December New York Times/Siena College poll—that could be enough to swing the general election in a matchup against President Joe Biden.

“It will be up to voters as to whether they want an insurrectionist in the White House,” said Andrew Weissman, a New York University law professor and former lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation, during The New Republic’s “America in Crisis” event on Wednesday evening.

Trump is on the line for 91 charges across four separate criminal cases, for his behavior related to the January 6 insurrection, his attempt to undermine the election results in Georgia, his alleged theft of thousands of classified documents, and the Stormy Daniels hush-money case, in the last of which Trump is accused of using his former fixer Michael Cohen to sweep an affair with the porn actress under the rug ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

Police officials “demonstrated no urgency” in their response to the deadly elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and the response that did happen was plagued by “cascading failures,” according to a scathing Department of Justice report released Thursday.

A gunman opened fire in the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24, 2022. He barricaded himself in a classroom and shot dead 19 students and two teachers, wounding 17 others, before police finally stopped him.

It took officers more than 70 minutes before they engaged the shooter, and law enforcement officials at all levels have come under intense scrutiny over the response to the attack.

“The victims and survivors of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School deserved better,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “The law enforcement response at Robb Elementary on May 24, 2022—and the response by officials in the hours and days after—was a failure.”

The nearly 600-page report found that even though officers arrived just minutes after the shooter, they did not engage him because he shot at them from inside the classroom. There were 376 officers at the scene before a Border Patrol tactical team finally breached the classroom.

“An active shooter with access to victims should never be considered and treated as a barricaded subject,” the report said.

Police failed to set up a centralized command post, which caused confusion among officers and first responders, the report found. There were issues with technology resources and training protocols. There were also multiple communication issues, including some caused by then–school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo.

Arredondo discarded his radios when he arrived at the school because he thought they were unnecessary. He then told officers by phone not to enter the classroom with the shooter until the other classrooms had been emptied of students and staff. One sheriff’s deputy tried to breach the classroom when he realized his 10-year-old daughter was inside. Other officers restrained him, as per Arredondo’s orders.

The report also included quotes from a 27-minute-long 911 call that children made from inside the classroom. They included multiple cries of “Help!” and one child saying, “I don’t want to die. My teacher is dead.”

At least five officers, including Arredondo, lost their jobs over the shooting response. The Uvalde community is still reeling over the shooting years later, and families of the victims are unsure how the Justice Department report helps.

Velma Lisa Duran, whose sister Irma Garcia was one of the teachers killed, told the AP she was grateful for the agency’s work. But “a report doesn’t matter when there are no consequences for actions that are so vile and murderous and evil.”

“What do you want us to do with another report?” she said. “Bring it to court.”

Donald Trump’s defense lawyer Alina Habba isn’t impressing anyone during the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial—least of all Judge Lewis Kaplan, who has become increasingly fed up with the showy attorney and the rest of Trump’s team, regularly glowering and crossing his arms while complaining about their conduct bench-side.

On Thursday, Habba got into another kerfuffle with Kaplan when she flubbed a line of questioning against Carroll, asking the columnist if she “makes a good amount of money” from her Substack.

“What’s ‘a good amount of money?’” interjected Kaplan, stopping Habba. “This is Evidence 101.”

The outburst is the result of days of questioning by Habba that has at times been redundant, unfounded, or inappropriate, leading to countless objections by Carroll’s legal team and interruptions by Judge Kaplan himself.

In another exchange on Thursday, Kaplan blew past a line of questioning pushed by Habba over Carroll’s Substack subscriber count.

“That was definitely asked yesterday,” Kaplan said.

“Number of subscribers?” Habba insisted.

“Eighteen hundred. Move on,” Kaplan retorted.

The two butted heads even more on Wednesday, when Kaplan corrected Habba more than a dozen times, per Business Insider. At one point, Habba interrupted Carroll’s direct testimony to explain what Trump’s team intended to do later.

“The last I heard, Ms. Habba, I do not need announcements from counsel on what they intend to do,” Kaplan threw back.

“And I make the rulings here, not the lawyers,” Kaplan added, before telling Habba to sit down.

During another explosive moment, Kaplan threatened to throw Trump himself out of the courtroom when his comments during Carroll’s testimony could be heard by jurors.

“Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial,” Kaplan warned, noting that his right to attend the trial could be revoked if he continued to be disruptive.

“I would love it! I would love it!” Trump spat back, throwing his hands up in disapproval.

Trump’s lawyers have been walking on eggshells in the trial after Kaplan issued an order last week barring Trump and anyone on his legal team from exploring certain lines of questioning or making certain comments, including about Carroll’s “past romantic relationships, sexual disposition, and prior sexual experiences.” They also cannot argue that Trump—who has already been found liable by a jury for sexual abuse against Carroll—did not sexually abuse, rape, or act with actual malice when defaming the former Elle journalist.

Donald Trump’s legal strategy in his defamation trial apparently hinges on reading mean tweets aloud in the courtroom.

Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba finished cross-examining E. Jean Carroll on Thursday. Presiding Judge Lewis Kaplan has already ruled that Trump defamed Carroll after sexually assaulting her, so the trial is just to determine how much Trump owes her in damages. Carroll is seeking at least $10 million.

During her cross-examination, Habba sought to prove that people began abusing Carroll online before Trump made his defamatory comments. To back up her argument, Habba repeatedly read aloud mean tweets about Carroll.

Habba read out a comment that accused Carroll of “making up fake news” when she revealed that Trump had sexually assaulted her in the mid-1990s. Another tweet said, “Drop this lie.”

Another tweet called Carroll a “lying sack of shit,” and a fourth referred to her as a “pathetic liar.” Habba read each of these tweets one by one.

Kaplan clearly grew tired of Habba’s strategy, eventually saying he would just admit the rest into evidence if there were no objections. “You’ve taken enough time on this,” he said.

But Habba pressed on, reading out a tweet that said, “You’re a joke, no one would [willingly] touch your ugly ass.”

When Kaplan told her to move on, Habba pushed back. “I can’t ask about them?” she said. “With all due respect—”

“With all due respect,” Kaplan cut her off, “when I rule, you go on.”

This is the third time in as many days that Habba has irritated Kaplan. The two repeatedly butted heads on Wednesday over Habba’s disruptive behavior in the courtroom. And during opening statements on Tuesday, Habba almost immediately violated the rules Kaplan had set about what Trump’s team can and cannot say.

Kaplan issued an order last week barring Trump and his lawyers from saying certain things. They are prohibited from making comments about Carroll’s “past romantic relationships, sexual disposition, and prior sexual experiences,” and they cannot argue that Trump did not sexually abuse or rape Carroll or act with actual malice when making his comments about her.

Donald Trump appeared to admit Thursday that some of his actions “cross the line” of legality, but claimed he should be shielded from repercussions because of presidential immunity.

Trump has repeatedly insisted that he cannot be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election—or for anything else for that matter—because presidential immunity protects him against criminal proceedings.

He presented his own case for immunity on Truth Social in the early morning hours. “A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES MUST HAVE FULL IMMUNITY, WITHOUT WHICH IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM/HER TO PROPERLY FUNCTION. ANY MISTAKE, EVEN IF WELL INTENDED, WOULD BE MET WITH ALMOST CERTAIN INDICTMENT BY THE OPPOSING PARTY AT TERM END,” he wrote. “EVEN EVENTS THAT ‘CROSS THE LINE’ MUST FALL UNDER TOTAL IMMUNITY, OR IT WILL BE YEARS OF TRAUMA TRYING TO DETERMINE GOOD FROM BAD.”

“YOU CAN’T STOP POLICE FROM DOING THE JOB OF STRONG & EFFECTIVE CRIME PREVENTION BECAUSE YOU WANT TO GUARD AGAINST THE OCCASIONAL ‘ROGUE COP’ OR ‘BAD APPLE.’ SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO LIVE WITH ‘GREAT BUT SLIGHTLY IMPERFECT.’”

This is far from the first time that Trump and his legal team have appeared to insist that the former president should be allowed to get away with breaking the law. While trying to appeal the charges in Trump’s January 6 insurrection case, lawyer John Sauro said that even if a president ordered the assassination of a political opponent, he could only be criminally prosecuted if he was impeached first.

If the president was acquitted during the impeachment, Sauro argued, then he should not have to face criminal proceedings.

And in early January, Trump lawyer Christina Bobb argued that anyone can be president, “whether they are guilty of insurrection or not,” so long as they were elected.

Donald Trump’s hands didn’t look too good on Wednesday, leading to a flurry of theories about the current state of the GOP front-runner’s mental and physical health.

Political advisers and voters alike speculated across the spectrum as to the origin of the dark, red spots on Trump’s hand, arguing that the marks’ origin could be anything from syphilis to ink splotches.

“They don’t look like cuts to me, they look like sores,” said Bill Clinton’s former presidential campaign strategist James Carville, during a livestream. “I’ve asked a number of M.D.s what medical condition manifests itself through hand sores, and the answer is immediate and unanimous: secondary syphilis.”

Earlier on Wednesday, syphilis was trending on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

Others pondered whether the mysterious condition emerged due to a rash, dry skin, or even as the result of some emotionally charged tantrum.

“Is it magic marker? Because it looks like he has a sore on his index finger there,” said Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

“There was a point in time during the day where Trump, very frustrated with Judge Kaplan, banged his hands down on the table. I doubt that the blisters or marks that were seen there come from that. But could they be exacerbated by that? Perhaps,” speculated MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin.

“Like a toddler having a tantrum, perhaps, and causing bleeding into his hand?” responded Willie Geist.

Some online posters noticed that the emergence of Trump’s mysterious hand condition coincided with a bizarre speech Wednesday night, theorizing that Trump’s cluttered and nonsensical speech could be a symptom of late-stage syphilis. 

“We’re also going to place strong protections to stop banks and regulators from trying to debank you from your—you know, your political beliefs what they do. They want to debank you, and we’re going to debank—think of this. They want to take away your rights, they want to take away your country, the things you’re doing,” Trump said during a New Hampshire campaign rally, immediately before diving into a rant about electric cars.

Florida state Republicans have advanced a bill that would ban schools and government buildings from displaying Pride flags, Black Lives Matter flags, and the Palestinian flag.

House Bill 901 passed the state House Constitutional Rights, Rule of Law & Government Operations Subcommittee on Wednesday by a vote of 9–5, along party lines. The bill must pass one more committee before going before the full chamber.

The measure bans all government entities from displaying flags that represent “a political viewpoint, including, but not limited to, a politically partisan, racial, sexual orientation and gender, or political ideology viewpoint.” Government employees would be banned from wearing lapel pins that express these ideologies.

Bill sponsor David Borrero said this would also prohibit flags of countries that the United States does not recognize as sovereign nations, such as Palestine.

“Public classrooms should not be the place where our kids go to be radicalized and evangelized into accepting these partisan, radical ideologies,” Borrero said. “It’s wholly inappropriate to be putting those types of flags in front of public school students and in government buildings.”

The bill applies to state and local government buildings, and all schools in the Florida public school system. This includes state colleges and universities, which detracts significantly from Borrero’s main argument. College and university students are legally adults, so this bill isn’t really about protecting children.

The bill is “not about indoctrination,” Democratic Representative Johanna Lopez said. “It’s about discrimination.”

Several Democratic state lawmakers fly Pride or Black Lives Matter flags in their offices. If the bill becomes law, they would be required to take those banners down—although they are already saying they won’t.

Democratic Representative Michele Rayner, who is Black and lesbian, lamented the fact that “once again we’re focusing on things nobody has asked us to focus on.”

Rayner has rainbow “Protect LGBTQ+ Students” flyers in her office and a “Black Voters Matter” sign hanging outside. “It will remain outside my office regardless of what bill they pass because there’s a thing called the First Amendment,” she said.

Democratic Senator Shevrin Jones slammed the bill as “authoritarianism” and “fascism at its best.” Jones is Black and gay, and he has multiple Pride symbols in his office, including a rainbow “Pride at the Capitol” poster.

“How I was raised, the rainbow meant hope … I can promise you it wasn’t that that made me gay,” Jones said. “I’m not taking a damn thing down. I want everybody to see it.”