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April 18, 2024
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The bipartisan Setting Consumer Standards for Lithium-Ion Batteries Act will keep uncertified batteries off the market and out of homes — reducing the fire risk and preserving consumer access. It passed the House by an overwhelming majority. Now it’s the Senate’s turn to make a smart decision to protect Americans.
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THE TOP
News: Leadership mulling changes to make it harder to boot Johnson
Happy Thursday morning.
News: Top House Republican leaders and aides are privately discussing using the debate over the $95 billion foreign aid package to make it harder to oust Speaker Mike Johnson. This comes as Johnson faces another uprising from his right.
Right now, any member can file a motion to vacate the chair, which triggers a potential snap referendum on the speaker. This was how hardliners ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy in October. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has filed such a motion against Johnson, although she hasn’t sought a vote yet.
With Johnson getting hefty opposition from the House Freedom Caucus and other conservatives over the foreign aid package, the GOP leadership is discussing embedding language in the rule for debating the legislation that would raise the threshold needed to file motions to vacate. Under former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, only the party leaders could file such motions. McCarthy agreed to lower it to one member back in January 2023, which ultimately cost him his job.
Johnson hasn’t made a decision whether he’ll pursue this change, we’re told. But he’s getting pressed by scores of members to raise the threshold now.
This comes as Johnson’s multi-part effort to move the foreign aid package — which includes $61 billion for Ukraine and $26 billion for Israel and the Gaza war — was stuck on Wednesday night. The Ukraine funding is causing huge problems with conservatives.
House GOP leaders also want to push through a big border-security bill as part of this week’s effort. This includes the funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, border security and a “sidecar” full of other measures, such as a revised TikTok ban.
Yet the Rules Committee’s hearing to pass the border security bill — a modified version of H.R. 2, which House Republicans passed last year — stalled out late Wednesday night. So the fate of this bill is unclear. The panel is scheduled to meet again at 10 a.m., so we’ll see what Johnson does.
It seems very obvious that Johnson will need Democrats to bring the foreign aid legislation up.
Johnson is finally leaning in on Ukraine. During a recent staff meeting in Johnson’s office, an aide to the Louisiana Republican spoke up and told the speaker that he has “FISA, Ukraine and the speakership.” You can’t have all three, the aide warned Johnson.
Johnson demurred and said he wasn’t sure about that. He’s testing that proposition.
In the intervening weeks, Johnson passed a reauthorization of FISA and has released a trio of bills to send critical foreign aid to Israel, the Indo-Pacific and Ukraine.
And for the first time since becoming speaker, Johnson is making a strong case for aiding Ukraine, a position that is almost certain to result in a challenge to his speakership in the coming weeks.
There’s a lot to take away from here. This is the kind of forceful argument for Ukraine that supporters have been hoping to hear from Johnson for some time. Johnson has decided to pass the aid package, no matter what the consequences are.
In addition, Johnson says he believes the intelligence briefings that he has gotten as a member of the Gang of Eight. Imagine that!
Also: Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) announced her support for the House’s latest TikTok bill on Wednesday night. It’s a major development for the legislation, which is to be included in Johnson’s “sidecar” package.
Cantwell announced her support after we scooped that the TikTok bill will be tweaked to allow the president to extend the divestment period from six months to one year.
Just last week, Cantwell was detailing her problems with the bill, including her belief that it couldn’t withstand legal scrutiny. Cantwell was viewed as a serious obstacle to getting this legislation through the Senate, so this is a big deal.
DCCC wallops NRCC … again: The DCCC raised $45.4 million in the first quarter of 2024, outpacing the NRCC by $12 million. That’s the DCCC’s best quarter of the 2024 cycle and includes a $21.4 million March haul. This is a massive show of force for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
The DCCC has $71.1 million on hand. Compare that to the NRCC, which has $55.9 million on hand.
— Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan, Max Cohen, Andrew Desiderio and Mica Soellner
APRIL EVENTS! Today: Punchbowl News Managing Editor Heather Caygle will sit down with Rep. John Joyce (R-Pa.) at 9 a.m. ET. They’re going to discuss the news of the day and how 5G supports America’s global competitiveness. It’s not too late to RSVP here.
IMPEACHMENT
Reality hits House GOP in the face on impeachment
House Republicans entered the 118th Congress vowing zealous oversight of the Biden administration and talking a big game on impeachment. They were considering multiple impeachments of senior officials from President Joe Biden on down.
But following the Senate’s dismissal Wednesday of the impeachment charges against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and the floundering Biden impeachment inquiry, things aren’t looking so rosy.
Remember: Just 15 months ago, everyone from Attorney General Merrick Garland to FBI Director Christopher Wray to Secretary of State Antony Blinken was rumored to be in the GOP crosshairs.
Yet as time went on, the political reality of a Democratic-controlled Senate, constant House Republican infighting and the messiness of the GOP investigations stood in the way of real results, rendering impeachment a poor political weapon. It’s a blunt, imprecise, slow and — above all — incredibly partisan process that has yielded little historically.
Still, a top House GOP chair says the impeachment of Biden remains on the table — and he blamed Democrats for the confusion surrounding how this procedure is used.
“The Democrats cheapened impeachment when they impeached Donald Trump twice,” Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) asserted. “The Democrats have done irreparable damage.”
Tit-for-tat: The Senate’s dismissal of the Mayorkas impeachment articles has also ignited a fierce debate over precedent. Both sides agree — for different reasons — that the impeachment process has been cheapened and weakened as a tool for punishing improper or even potentially illegal behavior.
During Wednesday’s proceedings, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) asked the presiding officer, Senate President Pro Tempore Patty Murray, whether the chamber’s dismissal of the Mayorkas articles creates a precedent that could apply to future impeachment cases, including for a president.
Murray, on behalf of the Senate’s parliamentarian, responded that it would set a new precedent.
Republicans used that exchange to argue that Democrats had just nuked impeachment forever. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) said Democrats “will come to regret what happened today,” invoking Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s famous 2013 speech warning Democrats that they’d regret scrapping the filibuster for non-SCOTUS nominations.
Some senators suggested a future Republican-controlled Senate could bypass an impeachment trial triggered by a Democratic House simply by pointing to Wednesday’s events.
“The precedent now is that accusations from the House of a felony is no longer considered a high crime or misdemeanor. So congratulations, Chuck Schumer,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said.
Republicans claim Mayorkas violated federal law by allegedly lying to Congress, which is a crime.
Dems’ view: Democrats actually agree that a new precedent was set Wednesday — but not the same one.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the precedent was that impeachment shouldn’t be used to settle policy disputes, and that if Democrats didn’t shut down the Mayorkas trial, it would’ve been “much worse.”
“I judge the danger of normalizing the House’s impeachment process that they just ran as much greater than the danger of setting a new process precedent in the Senate,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) added.
At the very least, there are likely to be practical implications for the Senate in the short-term. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and other conservatives have vowed to jam up the Senate floor in protest of Democrats’ move to shut down the Mayorkas trial.
— Andrew Desiderio, John Bresnahan and Max Cohen
Markup shows little sign of W&M bipartisan opportunity on trade
The House Ways and Means Committee’s daylong markup of trade bills on Wednesday underscored the problems for bipartisan deal making on trade policy this year.
Democrats lined up against five of the six bills that the panel took up and ultimately approved.
Republicans sought to draw some bipartisan support. But Democrats are digging in on reauthorizing Trade Adjustment Assistance, which aids workers who lose jobs thanks to international trade. TAA is a priority for labor groups. The GOP, though, is unlikely to include TAA in the sort of trade-bill package debated Wednesday.
Even though there’s some bipartisan support for reviving expired trade programs, the sticky politics and divisions on trade are again leaving little hope for cross-aisle cooperation in the House this year.
One bill, though, showed bipartisan support that could help make it a candidate for a floor vote on its own. Five Democrats broke off to vote with Republicans for a measure requiring a study of forced labor in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s cobalt mining industry.
It wasn’t immediately clear if or how Republicans could seek to advance the other bills approved on party lines, but the House’s razor-thin majority makes their path trickier.
And after Democrats opposed a Republican “de minimis” bill during Wednesday’s markup, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) told us that he’ll continue pressing for his own bipartisan proposal to tighten the rules. Both proposals aim to boost scrutiny of low-value packages entering the United States from China, in particular, but Blumenauer’s version is more expansive.
Blumenauer, the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Trade subcommittee, acknowledged that lawmakers aren’t too far apart on de minimis but said he’ll keep working to build more bipartisan support for his own bill.
And in other markup news: The House Financial Services Committee had a markup of its own Wednesday night, clearing several bills on partisan lines. One exception: A bill from Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) requiring a congressional report following the Treasury Department’s use of “systemic risk” determinations after bank failures saw unanimous support.
— Laura Weiss and Brendan Pedersen
PRESENTED BY TOYOTA
People are the heart of Toyota. We’ve invested $45.7 billion in the American workforce, creating more than 49,000 jobs across the nation.
HOUSE REPUBLICANS
Jordan takes his panel on the road to boost GOP
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is hitting the road to boost two top campaign issues for Republicans – border security and crime.
Jordan will hold three field hearings next month. Here’s what the agenda looks like:
| → | Philadelphia: The committee will hold a hearing focused on crime on May 3. The panel has held crime-centered hearings in other blue cities including Chicago and New York City. |
| → | Tucson, Ariz.: Jordan will head to Arizona to lead the committee on a May 10 hearing about the U.S.-Mexico border. This will take place in vulnerable GOP Rep. Juan Ciscomani’s district. |
| → | Grand Forks, N.D.: Jordan will team up with Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) to hold a hearing on northern border security on May 29. Armstrong is running for governor in North Dakota. |
On the issues, Jordan indicated he wanted to send a signal to President Joe Biden through these hearings.
“We can talk about both of those issues which we think are critical,” Jordan told us. “This administration needs to change.”
Of course, the locations are notable.
Pennsylvania and Arizona are two key swing states Biden and former President Donald Trump will be fighting to win in November. Jordan is one of Trump’s closest allies on the Hill.
— Mica Soellner
THE MONEY GAME
Torres making moves: Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) is quickly establishing himself as a top-tier fundraiser in the House Democratic Caucus. As of February, Torres has raised and given a total of $3.4 million to Frontline and Red-to-Blue candidates this cycle. That’s a huge number rivaling many in leadership. Torres has also raised $239,400 for the DCCC and paid $275,000 in dues.
In addition, Torres is also co-chair of the pro-LGBTQ Equality PAC along with Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.). The two have raised $6.7 million this cycle for the group. They’ve raised a further $4.1 million for Equality PAC-endorsed candidates as well.
Q1 haul: Elect Democratic Women raised $2.14 million in Q1, the PAC’s highest first-quarter fundraising tally in its six-year history.
Also: Crossroads Strategies and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) are hosting a fundraiser today for Rep. David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) that is expected to raise $70,000. It will take place at the SIFMA offices.
Suggested contributions from attendees are $1,000 per PAC or $500 per individual. To co-host, it’s $2,000 per PAC and $1,000 per individual.
— Max Cohen and Mica Soellner
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E-bike fires are happening across the country, costing lives and forcing families out of their homes. The Senate can help stop these fires and protect Americans. The bipartisan Setting Consumer Standards for Lithium-Ion Batteries Act will keep uncertified batteries off the market, reducing the risk.