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May 13, 2024
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THE TOP
Congress clashes over Israel
Happy Monday morning.
The House and Senate will be in on Tuesday. President Joe Biden will be on Capitol Hill Wednesday for the National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service.
The crisis in Gaza — and Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas — will dominate Capitol Hill this week, with the FAA bill and House Republicans’ “Police Week” agenda getting attention as well.
Hill Republicans are pressing Biden and senior administration officials over the president’s refusal to provide Israel with heavy bombs while Israeli forces continue their assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are fleeing the Israeli offensive.
Republicans are accusing Biden of “cutting off” or “abandoning” Israel in the middle of the war. This isn’t true, of course. Israel continues to receive huge shipments of American-made weapons.
Yet this is the most serious strain in U.S.-Israeli relations in decades, and Republicans are exploiting it in an attempt to put Biden and Democratic congressional leaders in a political bind. There’s growing anger inside Democratic ranks, especially among progressives, over Israel’s conduct of the war and the more than 30,000 Palestinian deaths since the conflict began. Israel attacked Gaza following Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks.
While Democrats brawl over the issue, House GOP leaders plan to move forward with a resolution to condemn the Biden administration for withholding military aid from Israel. It’s a non-binding “Sense of Congress” resolution, so it doesn’t carry any real weight. But this will further split the House Democratic Caucus, something the Republican leadership has enjoyed doing in recent weeks.
During a Sunday interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken — who spoke to Israeli officials on Sunday — said the heavy bombs were the only weapons being held up at this point:
Blinken also noted that the IDF is once again battling Hamas in Gaza City and other areas that supposedly had been cleared of militants months ago.
FAA: The biggest floor action this week is House consideration of the five-year FAA reauthorization bill. The Senate cleared the legislation Thursday evening and also passed a one-week extension, which gives the House until Friday to get this done.
The big point of contention in the FAA bill is the addition of slots at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The Maryland and Virginia delegations are adamantly opposed to the effort yet were unable to strip the language from the package in the Senate.
House Republicans overwhelmingly support expanding DCA to allow more flights outside the statutory perimeter. House Democrats are largely opposed.
House GOP leadership intends to bring the FAA bill to the floor under suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority for passage. So they clearly don’t believe that they’ll have any problems passing the bill even with the DCA language included.
Other dynamics to watch this week:
| → | Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) is continuing to bleed staff. Vanessa Ide, Cuellar’s fundraiser, has quit, according to multiple sources. And Cuellar’s political advisers have turned against him and are cooperating with the Justice Department. |
| → | The NRCC is pressing House Democrats to return donations from Cuellar’s leadership PAC. Texas First PAC has doled out $340,000 to Democratic campaigns in its 16-year history, including donations in recent cycles to vulnerable members like Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine), Susie Lee (D-Nev.) and Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio). Cuellar’s PAC has also given to Minority Whip Katherine Clark and the DCCC. |
| → | The federal bribery trial of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) begins this week in New York City. |
| → | The House Judiciary Committee is slated to mark up a contempt of Congress resolution targeting Attorney General Merrick Garland. The Justice Department has given GOP congressional investigators transcripts of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interviews with Biden but not the tapes. |
| → | House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the ranking member, dropped a new op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Sunday saying Section 230 — which governs the liability of online publishers — has outlived its usefulness. Here’s the draft version of their legislation. |
– Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Max Cohen
May Events: Next week, join Punchbowl News on Thursday, May 23 at 8:30 a.m. ET for a conversation with Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa). Punchbowl News founder and CEO Anna Palmer will sit down with Nunn to discuss news of the day and how AI can affect productivity and innovation. RSVP!
GOP MAJORITY
The House GOP’s November conundrum
Ask House Republicans what they are running on this year. They all say different things.
The House GOP is struggling to figure out what — if anything — to tout this November. The Republican Conference remains plagued by the bitter infighting and deep divisions that have overshadowed everything they’ve done during this Congress.
We spoke with roughly two dozen House GOP lawmakers about how they plan to convince voters to let them hold on to the majority. A few cited former Speaker Kevin McCarthy-era messaging bill wins, some played up their own individual efforts to bring money back to their district and others said they’ll simply run on the fact that they’re not Democrats.
“My Democrat colleagues are insane,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said plainly. “We’ve at least got sanity.”
Yet Roy has been publicly criticizing his own party for months, even taking to the House floor to suggest Republicans have no accomplishments they can run on.
Here’s Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), another conservative hardliner. Norman said Republicans will have to campaign on what they tried to block, rather than what they actually secured.
“Look at what we stopped. They’re socialists,” Norman told us. “If you want socialism, vote Democrat.”
The House GOP is in a starkly different position than a year ago when the party was working through its “Commitment to America” plan spearheaded by McCarthy.
In part of 2023, House Republicans were at least passing party-line bills that could satisfy the GOP base, despite most of those measures being dead on arrival in the Democratic-led Senate.
House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said Republicans can point to those bills, as well as oversight of President Joe Biden and other administration officials.
“The first few bills we passed, parents rights, H.R. 2 on immigration policy … we point to that and say ‘I’m sorry Chuck Schumer won’t take up good legislation,’” Jordan told us.
But while most conservative hardliners aren’t sweating their own reelection chances, there’s a large swath of the conference who says the poor optics of this Congress are impossible to ignore.
Vulnerable Republicans have publicly berated the party’s right flank for constantly plunging the House into chaos. Many of these lawmakers are worried the antics of a small House minority will reflect on them as well.
“It’s a small number of guys causing these troubles… but I think we have an uphill climb,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said.
Other members are seeking to flip the script on the unproductive Congress, using the argument that democracy is messy — a phrase often deployed by Speaker Mike Johnson.
“We have individual voices that are being heard and individual agendas that are being pushed,” said Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.).
Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), who briefly launched a speaker bid last year out of frustration with House conservatives, said voters are the ones who can kick out dysfunctional members. Scott has backed House Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good’s (R-Va.) primary challenger.
“Republican voters have the ability to correct that. We’ll see if they do,” Scott said.
– Mica Soellner
THE MAP
DCCC-backed Bynum on potential Chavez-DeRemer race
The DCCC rarely plays in open primaries. But the House Democrats’ campaign arm took the unusual step of endorsing Oregon state Rep. Janelle Bynum in a toss-up seat, hoping to block failed 2022 candidate Jamie McLeod-Skinner from advancing to the general.
Bynum is seeking the nomination for a chance to unseat freshman GOP Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer. President Joe Biden carried Oregon’s 5th District by nine points in 2020. And if Democrats want to flip the House, they need to win seats like this in the fall.
We sat down with Bynum in D.C. ahead of the May 21 primary to get her take on the race – one of the most contentious Democratic primaries of the cycle.
On electability: Bynum said she was the best choice in the Democratic primary because she has “a track record of winning.”
In 2022, McLeod-Skinner mounted a left-wing challenge to knock off then-Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) in the primary. She then lost to Chavez-DeRemer in November.
Bynum, however, wouldn’t attack McLeod-Skinner for losing last cycle. But Bynum did tout her own electoral success against Chavez-DeRemer. The pair faced off in two elections — in 2016 and 2018 — for the state House. Bynum won them both.
“[W]hen I decided to run in 2016, Chavez-DeRemer was our city mayor. And I was a mom who was very concerned about education and small business in our district,” Bynum said.
“I don’t know that many people believed that I could do it, but I did it. And then [Chavez-DeRemer] came back for more, and I beat her by an even stronger margin.”
Abortion rights: In the primary campaign, Bynum has messaged mainly on her support for abortion rights. As we’ve covered repeatedly, Democrats plan on using Republican attacks on reproductive rights as a top issue in November.
Bynum criticized Chavez-DeRemer, who has sent mailers hailing her “pro-life” voting record, for her stances in a state that has strong protections for abortion.
“I think that that’s going to be a challenge for Chavez-DeRemer to defend her record, but mine is solid,” Bynum said.
Her record: As a state legislator, Bynum hailed that she was the chief sponsor of Oregon’s CHIPS Act that would bring billions of dollars worth of economic investment to Oregon and thousands of jobs.
GOP view: Chavez-DeRemer told us that the 5th District “is my seat to keep” when we asked what she made of the Democratic primary.
“I’ll take on whoever. We’ve done the hard work, built a good team, and I’ll take on whoever wins,” Chavez-DeRemer said.
— Max Cohen
PRESENTED BY AMERICAN BEVERAGE
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The Vault: Ernst, Gillibrand knock FDIC
First in The Vault: Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) will take a shot at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. this week with a bill to strip pensions from federal employees convicted of certain sex crimes.
The bill would cover anyone working at a federal agency with a pension, but the lawmakers will cite the crisis whirling around the FDIC specifically. Read the text of the No Taxpayer-Funded Pensions for Sex Criminals Act here.
The FDIC — a federal bank regulator tasked with handling failed banks — is currently navigating significant fallout from an independent investigation that confirmed allegations of widespread sexual harassment and misconduct across the agency.
That report focused on sexual harassment and discrimination at the FDIC, which isn’t the same type of wrongdoing as the sex crimes Ernst and Gillibrand are targeting. This new bill would strip pensions from agency employees convicted of crimes tied to sexual abuse, child pornography, exploitation, human trafficking and more.
However, the senators will point to one high-profile instance at the FDIC that generated headlines in January: an agency lawyer who sat on paid administrative leave for 10 weeks after being indicted on child pornography charges.
“Our bipartisan bill would create real consequences to end bad behavior and send a signal that sexual predators are not welcome in the federal government,” Ernst said in a statement.
This isn’t the first time lawmakers have tried to make it easier for federal employees to lose their pensions after sex crime convictions. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) introduced the Denying Pensions to Convicted Child Molesters Act in 2019 after an Indian Health Service doctor was convicted of sexually abusing Indigenous boys.
– Brendan Pedersen
📆
What we’re watching
Tuesday: The House Rules Committee will meet to prepare a number of measures for the floor.
Wednesday: The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a hearing on the response to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore.
Michael Barr, the vice chair for supervision for the Fed, Martin Gruenberg, the chair of the FDIC, and Michael Hsu, the acting comptroller of the currency, will be in front of the House Financial Services Committee.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will be in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee to discuss the department’s FY2025 budget request. The House Judiciary Committee has a hearing on antisemitism on college campuses. The Senate Intelligence Committee has an open hearing on foreign threats to the 2024 elections.
Thursday: The House Oversight Committee has a hearing on the CCP’s infiltration of U.S. military installations.
FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel and FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr will be in front of the House Appropriations Committee to testify about their agency’s budget. The Senate Banking Committee will have Gruenberg, Barr and Hsu.
– Jake Sherman
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