Breaking news: The Maryland Redistricting Advisory Commission — appointed by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore — has approved a proposed map that would give Democrats control of all eight of the state’s congressional seats.
The concept map will now be sent to the legislature for approval. State Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Democrat who is on the commission, voted no and is opposed to redistricting.
Funding. The House is scheduled to take up the four-bill, 1,000-page-plus FY2026 minibus on Thursday, with government funding scheduled to run out in just 10 days.
The House Rules Committee has scheduled a meeting on Wednesday at 2 p.m. for the $1.2 trillion package, which includes the Defense, Labor-HHS, Transportation-HUD and Homeland Security bills. The GOP leadership is going to allow a separate vote on the Homeland Security spending bill due to Democratic anger about ICE’s harsh immigration enforcement tactics in Minneapolis and other cities.
House Democratic leaders expect some Democrats to vote for the DHS funding bill. We’ll have more on this in our AM edition.
But Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee for Homeland Security in the Senate, issued a scathing statement on the bill Tuesday afternoon, showing where many in the party’s progressive wing will end up.
Interestingly, the rule that the House debates is expected to combine this week’s minibus with the narrower funding package the House passed last week — National Security-State and Financial Services-General Government. This will help the Senate pass government funding before the Jan. 30 deadline. The House never forwarded last week’s spending package to the Senate despite a big bipartisan vote for the narrower measure.
Still, there is always a pile of unknowables in the House. Republicans only have a two-vote margin, and they’ve been plagued by repeated member absences in recent weeks. Hardline conservatives are unpredictable and could be piqued by anything in the bill at any time.
But House Appropriations Committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) is convinced that the giant package will pass the House, which, to be fair, it should.
“Margins are small, but this is a bipartisan compromise,” Cole said.
Here’s more from Cole:
It’s an accomplishment for both parties that Congress is going to pass all 12 spending bills. This isn’t the first time that Congress will have passed the slate of appropriations bills — it happened just a few years ago. And Republicans moved Democrats’ way on a whole host of critical provisions.
Speaker Mike Johnson is on his way back from a multi-day trip to London, so the House Republican leadership did not hold its typical beginning-of-week meetings this evening. Much about the week is yet to be decided, including whether Republicans will move tomorrow to put language in the rule to shut off lawmakers’ abilities to challenge President Donald Trump’s tariffs on the House floor.
