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IN THIS EDITION

Schumer’s next big headache(s)

UNRWA funding emerges as sticking point in FY2024 spending talks

The decimated Republican majority turns to November

THE TOP

Schumer’s next big headache(s)

Happy Thursday morning.

Get ready for the Schumer squeeze.

After some major legislative victories, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is under pressure on three major fronts that are dividing his party: TikTok, Israel and the travails of indicted Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.).

Let’s start with TikTok.

The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved legislation requiring ByteDance to divest its stake in TikTok within 180 days. If that doesn’t happen, TikTok would be banned in the United States.

The legislation got 352 votes, so it’s impossible for Schumer to ignore it. Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) is now backing it, a boost for the bill’s supporters. The White House is also urging Schumer to take “quick” action.

On the flip side, consider this:

→	Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) could be a real obstacle for the bill’s backers.

→	Progressives are sure to press Schumer to kill the House legislation.

→	The pressure campaign from TikTok, its users and its lobbyists is already intense.

→	The Senate doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to taking swings at social media companies.

Cantwell doesn’t support the House bill and has instead offered a watered-down version. Some of Cantwell’s former staffers now lobby or work for TikTok.

So if Schumer wants to move forward with the House bill, he’d be bucking Cantwell, whose committee has jurisdiction over the issue. Yet referring the legislation to committee, as we’ve noted before, is a euphemism for killing it. Plus, the Commerce panel has a huge backlog of legislation right now.

“There may be changes we want to make in the bill,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who backs the TikTok bill. “Forcing a divestiture is [something] I strongly support, and we should consider it through [committee].”

Yet Schumer isn’t the only one dealing with tricky politics on overwhelmingly bipartisan legislation passed by the other chamber. Speaker Mike Johnson is still refusing to put the Senate-passed $95 billion foreign aid bill on the House floor, even amid renewed prodding from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But even as he hammers Johnson, Schumer will have to make a decision about how to handle the House’s TikTok bill, which passed with a similar margin and with support from leadership on both sides.

On Israel: As Democratic criticism of Israel’s deadly military campaign in Gaza has ramped up in recent months, Schumer has been notably mum.

To review, Schumer traveled to Israel immediately after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack and has been an outspoken Israel backer. Schumer delivered a powerful address condemning the rise of antisemitism in the aftermath of the Hamas attack. He’s the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history — and to the right of much of his party on Israel.

All of this informs Schumer’s perspective here as fellow Democrats — including members of his leadership team — are speaking out in larger numbers against Israel over its conduct of the war.

Schumer has emphasized that Israel must limit civilian casualties and allow the unfettered flow of humanitarian aid. But he hasn’t weighed in on burgeoning efforts by Democratic senators to overhaul U.S. policy toward Israel and impose restrictions on American aid to the embattled ally.

That could soon change. According to his office, Schumer will deliver a “major address” later this morning laying out a “plan to address obstacles to peace and a two-state solution.”

This week alone, eight Democratic senators called on President Joe Biden to end U.S. assistance to Israel if it continues to block safe passage of U.S. humanitarian aid into Gaza. Biden has intensified his criticism of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And the president said recently that an invasion of the city of Rafah in southern Gaza would be a “red line.”

Democrats are emphasizing that they want “accountability” tied to Biden’s red-line remark. That means using U.S. leverage over Israel — security assistance — to persuade Netanyahu to change course. Some Democrats are even suggesting they’d move to invoke congressional authority to block weapons sales. These are privileged resolutions, so they can hit the floor without Schumer’s signoff.

All of this has the potential to put Schumer in a very uncomfortable position.

Menendez: Schumer is continuing to stand by Menendez amid mounting criminal indictments against the New Jersey Democrat.

Schumer didn’t answer questions last week about whether Menendez should keep his committee assignments and access to classified information given the federal bribery and corruption charges against him. Schumer also re-appointed Menendez last month to the Senate’s National Security Working Group, which gets its own staff and budget.

When pressed on this, Schumer on Tuesday responded the same way he has for months — that he’s “disappointed” in Menendez for falling short of the standards expected of a senator. Menendez lost his Foreign Relations chairmanship but still sits on the panel and gets classified briefings.

— Andrew Desiderio

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BEHIND THE SCENES

UNRWA funding emerges as sticking point in FY2024 spending talks

News: As Hill leaders scramble to finish the last of the FY2024 spending bills, a new flashpoint has emerged in the fight to avert a government shutdown next week — U.S. funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

The U.S. government suspended funding last month for UNRWA after the Israeli government accused a dozen employees of the agency of being involved in the Oct. 7 terror attacks. The United Nations is still investigating those allegations. The United States is UNRWA’s biggest donor, giving more than $370 million in 2023. While nearly all of this year’s U.S. aid for UNRWA had already been spent before the suspension, getting congressional approval for new funding is the issue.

The $95 billion foreign aid package passed by the Senate last month included language barring funding for UNRWA. And it called for the State Department and USAID to set up procedures to make sure “Hamas and other terrorist and extremist entities in Gaza” don’t get any U.S. funds.

House Republicans want to keep this restriction in place as part of the FY2024 State and Foreign Operations spending bill, one of the six remaining appropriations measures that must be passed by the March 22 shutdown deadline. The other outstanding bills include Defense; Financial Services and General Government; Homeland Security; Labor-HHS; and the Legislative Branch.

For their part, House and Senate Democrats don’t want to permanently handcuff the U.N. agency charged with providing relief to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank in the midst of Israel’s grueling war with Hamas. Democrats want to set conditions on UNRWA aid but not a permanent ban.

Democrats also note that the bipartisan Senate foreign package includes more than $9 billion in humanitarian aid for the Palestinians. Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to bring up the Senate package for a vote.

So to Democrats, House Republicans want the UNRWA language “for free,” meaning they get to cut off UNRWA funding without providing any help to the beleaguered Palestinians.

House Republicans counter that Democrats are willing to shut down the federal government to block language that the Senate already passed.

The UNRWA dispute — as well as the issue of overall U.S. support for the United Nations — has been kicked up to the level of the Big Four leaders.

The Homeland Security bill remains the biggest problem area in the spending talks, which Hill leaders hope to complete as soon as possible in order to meet the March 22 shutdown deadline.

But the two sides are still clashing over how much money to spend on the Border Patrol and facilities to detain undocumented migrants, among other issues. Some lawmakers have warned that Congress may have to pass a year-long continuing resolution to fund DHS.

There are hang-ups on the other spending bills as well. For instance, there’s a dispute over roughly $75 million in election grants as part of the FSGG bill. Republicans want to zero it out, Democrats want to keep it in place. Labor-HHS has its own problems too.

However, the Defense bill — the biggest of the annual measures — is ready to go, according to Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), chair of the Defense subcommittee on the House Appropriations panel. “I gotta bring the whole train along with me,” Calvert joked about the second minibus.

There will have to be a bicameral agreement on the overall spending package very soon. House and Senate appropriations staffers will need to finish drafting the individual bills and then read them out line-by-line, an arduous process that takes several days.

In order to conform with the 72-hour rule for House Republicans and still meet the March 22 shutdown deadline, the finished package will have to be released this weekend. The House will go first, followed by the Senate, similar to the first minibus.

— John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman

THE HOUSE LEADERSHIP

The decimated Republican majority turns to November

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. — The House Republican Conference is in a pretty bad spot right now. Members are heading for the exits and one didn’t even bother to have a conversation with leadership before he did so. Attendance at this week’s retreat is anemic. A senior GOP lawmaker estimated that only about one-third of House Republicans came to the event.

It’s the slimmest GOP majority in decades. There’s a looming deadline next week on complex spending bills that divide the conference. Right-wingers are aggrieved over leadership’s failure to listen to their unrealistic demands. Moderates are signing on to a discharge petition to move a massive foreign aid bill because Speaker Mike Johnson has failed to act on Ukraine and Israel funding.

So when House Republican leadership addressed the media Wednesday evening to kick off the retreat, they focused heavily on the 2024 election. Eager to shift attention from their governing mishaps, senior Republicans touted ambitious plans to grow their House majority.

The GOP theory of the case is dominated by three main pillars: President Joe Biden, immigration and redistricting.

First, Republicans are betting Biden’s unpopularity drags down Democrats in competitive districts. NRCC Chair Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) is intimately familiar with the numbers, citing the president’s 56% national disapproval rating.

If Biden really is that far underwater on Election Day, House Democrats will have to run well ahead of the president in order to take back the majority.

Remember: Democrats drastically overperformed expectations in 2022 when Biden’s approval rating was also low. The difference this time? Biden’s actually on the ballot this year. But so is former President Donald Trump, who can turn out Democratic voters better than anyone in history.

Second, the GOP hopes voters continue to say immigration is their top issue. Polls have shown the public favors their party on immigration and Republicans have been consistently hammering the Biden administration on the U.S.-Mexico border crisis.

Johnson singled out the vote this week on a resolution condemning Biden’s border policies as a preview of campaign messaging. Fourteen Democrats, mostly Frontliners, voted in favor, while 193 Democrats opposed the resolution.

“I think they’re going to regret that in the election cycle because I think the American people are dialed in on this,” Johnson said.

Third, the NRCC is touting the 2024 map. Both Democrats and Republicans agree the redistricting cycle was a wash. Johnson said Republicans are targeting 37 seats in November. They’re practically guaranteed to pick up three seats in North Carolina, offsetting expected losses in New York, Alabama and Louisiana.

A disclaimer: Democrats are incredibly confident they can win back the House. They think the 17 Republicans in districts won by Biden in 2020 are ripe for the picking. And they argue that abortion rights — a winning issue for Democrats — will be top of mind for voters.

What’s on the GOP agenda today: Marc Andreessen will speak about AI. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life President Marjorie Dannenfelser will discuss a “pro-family agenda” and former Secretary of Defense Chris Miller will address national security.

— Max Cohen

KEEPING TRACK …

We’re going to write this very carefully because there are a lot of feelings involved here.

Some heads turned in the House Republican Conference’s political meeting Tuesday when Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise revealed their fundraising numbers.

Johnson announced that he was transferring $3.5 million to the NRCC. Scalise then topped that by declaring that he’d given $4.3 million to GOP committees and candidates.

It wasn’t exactly an apples-to-apples comparison — which stuck out to a number of people in the room aligned with Johnson.

At the end of the day, all the money goes to help Republicans try to keep the majority. But money is power — and it is all very sensitive. Even when you’re on the same team.

— Jake Sherman

THE CAMPAIGN

With House Republicans in West Virginia, we thought we’d give you a flavor of what’s happening in the Mountain State. Chris Miller, who is running for governor, has a new spot up statewide that begins with this line: “I own guns because I like them. I shoot guns because it’s fun and it’s my God-given right.”

— Jake Sherman

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