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The Hill's Morning Report — Government shutdown averted as Senate passes spending bill

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Senators on Thursday passed a short-term spending bill that moves Friday’s government shutdown deadline to next week, giving negotiators more time to patch together a larger funding deal for fiscal 2023. The Senate voted 71-19 to pass the continuing resolution (CR), sending the legislation to President Biden for approval. The legislation passed the House Wednesday on a vote of 224-201. 

The bill freezes funding levels through Dec. 23, and appropriators on both sides of the aisle have been working to pass an omnibus spending package by the end of the month, with sights set on final passage by Christmas Eve. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) acknowledged Thursday that there’s still “a lot of work to do” on a broader spending deal.

“No drama, no gridlock, no government shutdown this week,” he said on the chamber floor as voting began.

A group of Republicans joined Democrats in passing the spending bill on Thursday. However, others in the GOP have pushed against a one-week CR in favor of a stopgap bill that would kick the funding deadline into the new year to give their party more influence on how the government should be funded for fiscal 2023, which began in October. Senate Appropriations Committee member Mike Braun (R-Ind.), who voted against the CR, told The Hill ahead of the vote that he would have only backed the measure if it moved the deadline into next year (The Hill and The Washington Post). 

“I think most Republicans are gonna listen to the Republicans that just gave us the House back, and why would you do that when we’re gonna have more input into it, even though it might be a process, a little bit of turmoil, why would you do that now?” Braun said.

Roll Call: House Appropriations Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) is confident the sprawling spending bill can pass by Christmas, but acknowledges “crazy things” can happen.

The Senate on Thursday also passed the annual defense authorization bill, sending the $858 billion measure to President Biden’s desk for signature just before the year-end deadline. The measure, formally known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, 83-11.

The vote caps weeks of wrangling over floor timing and policy changes, such as language demanded by conservative Republicans to end the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which has been in place since August 2021. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.) praised the passage of the bill after months of negotiation, calling it “the most significant vote of the year” (The Hill and The Washington Post). 

“I’ve said it before and I’m not the only one saying it — the world is a more dangerous place than I’ve ever seen before in my lifetime,” he said.

Progressive lawmakers, meanwhile, are raising the alarm over the final figure of the soon-to-be signed NDAA, writes The Hill’s Ellen Mitchell. They say the behemoth piece of legislation they say comes at the expense of domestic priorities. The bill, which lays out how the Defense Department will allocate its budget in fiscal 2023, came in at $85 billion higher than what the Biden administration first requested earlier this year following congressional negotiating. But liberals in both the House and Senate have labeled the final figure as a money grab that does more for padding the pockets of defense contractors than it does for actual military readiness. 

While the omnibus spending package is getting closer to passage, the expected exclusion of marijuana banking reform has spawned a battle within the GOP, writes The Hill’s Al Weaver. The push to legalize marijuana is broadly popular, putting Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) in a tricky position as he prepares to chair the Senate GOP campaign arm in 2024 and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) takes a hatchet to one of his main projects in the upper chamber. Proponents were hopeful the item would be included in either the NDAA or the omnibus, but are likely to be left empty handed heading into 2023. 

“Guys like me have been trying to make the case to my conference that this is not some kind of crazy bill,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan (Alaska), who, along with Daines and Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), have led the GOP’s SAFE Banking effort. “It’s a bill about safety and small businesses.”

The Hill: Senate rejects Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) energy permitting amendment to the defense bill.

Efforts are ramping up to support House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for Speaker, as a handful of hard-line conservatives threaten to keep him from winning the gavel in a Jan. 3 House floor vote. Some centrist members in the Republican Governance Group have taken to wearing buttons that read “O.K.” — forecasting they will vote for “Only Kevin” (The Hill).

“We definitely are doubling down on our support for Kevin McCarthy and we’re making it very clear that we’re going to support him through and through no matter how many ballots it takes,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) told The Hill.

McCarthy’s ongoing Speaker battle has paralyzed the House, Politico reports. The GOP leader confirmed he’s postponing key committee contests, delaying the conference’s ability to prepare bills, call hearings or even pay staff.

House Republicans are rallying around Elon Musk’s so-called “Twitter Files” to fuel their accusations of anti-conservative censorship, previewing the hostile tech agenda the GOP will launch when they take control of the chamber in January, The Hill’s Emily Brooks and Rebecca Klar report. Republicans set to chair key House committees have pledged to call in ex-Twitter staff to testify at hearings and probe the companies’ content moderation decisions highlighted in the four-part “Twitter Files” series. Conservatives are trying to prop up the information revealed in the four Twitter threads as examples of the partisan imbalance favoring Democrats they’ve long accused Twitter of using, despite the threads largely showing internal debates among employees over high-profile decisions and lacking details of influence from Democrats. 

▪ The Washington Post: Twitter abruptly suspends more than half a dozen journalists.

▪ Vox: Why the “Twitter Files” actually matter. Twitter’s previous management made some controversial political decisions. Some of them haven’t held up.

Related Articles

▪ Roll Call: Top tax writers diverge on lame-duck Social Security fix.

▪ Reuters: Puerto Rico independence vote bill passes the House, although the measure has little chance of being taken up by the Senate.

▪ The Washington Post: Biden announces visit to Africa next year. He also formally announced U.S. support for the African Union to permanently join the Group of 20.

▪ The Hill: National Archives releases thousands of JFK assassination records.

LEADING THE DAY

➤ POLITICS

House Democrats are urging their incoming leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), to move quickly in choosing the head of the party’s campaign arm, warning that a long delay will lend a strategic advantage to Republicans heading into the 2024 presidential cycle, writes The Hill’s Mike Lillis. 

Jeffries, who is poised to replace Pelosi at the top of the party next year, has been newly empowered to hand pick the leader of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). The powerful post had been an elected position — chosen by the full Democratic Caucus — since 2016, but that changed post-midterms last month, when rank-and-file members voted to revert it back to an appointment at the discretion of the leader. The shift grants Jeffries sole authority to choose the figure who will lead the Democratic efforts to win back control of the lower chamber in 2024, and represents the single most significant decision of his nascent tenure at the top of the party. As he weighs the choice, his colleagues are urging him to be deliberate — but not chew on it for too long, lest GOP operatives get a leg up on the campaign season.  

▪ NBC News: Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) predicts Democrats will hold the Senate majority again in 2024.

▪ The Hill: Schumer, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) urge Biden to run in 2024: Public has “gotten wise” to former President Trump.

▪ NBC News: Biden allies plot 2024 strategy focused on Trump, even if he fades away.

Trump unloaded Thursday on polling showing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis beating him in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. DeSantis led Trump 52 percent to 38 percent in a Wednesday Wall Street Journal survey. Even though DeSantis is not expected to announce whether he will run until after Florida’s legislative session in the spring or summer, he quickly emerged as the leading alternative to Trump among GOP voters after a sweeping double-digit reelection victory over Democratic former Gov. Charlie Crist in November.

“DeSantis is rising and Trump is increasingly scared of being left for dead by the Republican Party,” Dan Eberhart, a GOP donor who is backing the Florida governor, told NBC News. “Trump is not going to let DeSantis grab his throne without a fight. We are on the eve of nothing less than a civil war in the Republican Party.”

▪ Vox: DeSantis’s vaccine “investigation” is all about beating Trump.

▪ Politico: DeSantis builds his conservative resume as Trump flounders.

▪ The Hill: House Democrats introduce legislation to bar Trump from office under 14th Amendment.

➤ ADMINISTRATION

The administration is considering expanding its support for the war in Ukraine as Kyiv worries that Russia could make a new push to take the capital as soon as January, Politico reports. In addition to the Patriot missile defense system, the White House is also weighing sending other weapons — such as Joint Direct Attack Munition kits, which convert unguided aerial munitions into smart bombs, and Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bombs.

Trump’s former national security advisor is putting his support behind remarks by McCarthy that the U.S. should not sign a “blank check” on Ukraine, writes The Hill’s Laura Kelly, calling for close scrutiny on the use of military and economic support.

Robert O’Brien, who served as national security advisor from 2019 until the end of the Trump administration, told The Hill in an interview last week that while he views robust support for Ukraine as necessary, it should come with strict oversight.

IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES

➤ INTERNATIONAL

Ukraine’s critical infrastructure has been decimated by two months of relentless Russian missile and drone attacks, blowing a hole in the country’s economic projections. Before the strikes, Ukraine expected to need at least $55 billion — more than the whole country’s prewar annual spending — in foreign assistance next year to meet basic expenses. Now some officials believe Kyiv could end up needing another $2 billion a month (The Washington Post).

“What do you do when you can’t heat your house, you can’t run your shops, factories or plants, and your economy is not working?” Oleg Ustenko, an economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told the Post. “We are going to be requiring more financial assistance, and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is doing this to destroy unity among allies.”

Russia fired dozens of missiles at infrastructure in Ukraine today, forcing emergency power shutdowns across the country amid freezing temperatures and killing and wounding people in their homes in the south. The latest Russian attacks followed warnings from Ukrainian officials that Moscow plans a new all-out offensive early next year (Reuters).

▪ The Washington Post: “Wiped out”: The war in Ukraine has decimated a once feared Russian brigade.

▪ The New York Times: An alternate reality: How Russia’s state TV spins the Ukraine war.

After 62 matches over the course of nearly a month, the stage has been set for the World Cup’s final showcase in Doha, Qatar. On Sunday, reigning World Cup champion France will face off against Argentina, which is chasing its fourth title. According to FIFA’s most recent rankings, Argentina is No. 3, while France is No. 4 (CNN).

USA Today: France has World Cup fever — not the good kind — ahead of final vs. Argentina.

Traumatized by COVID-19, but ruled by a party that never apologizes, The New York Times reports. Gripped with grief, anxiety and depression, many in China want a national reckoning over the hard-line “zero COVID” policy. Holding the government to account may be a quixotic quest.

The New York Times: A bribery case cracks open the European Parliament — and finds hidden cash. Prosecutors say the glamorous lifestyle of a European lawmaker masked a Qatari corruption scandal, but it also exposed how vulnerable Brussels is to foreign influence.

➤ STATE WATCH

Conservative states are looking to force a series of quick decisions on Title 42, teeing up litigation that, if successful, could leave in place for more than a year the policy that allows the turning away of asylum seekers, writes The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch. A group of nearly 20 GOP-led states are moving to intervene in a case, hoping to challenge a decision from a federal judge who struck down Title 42 after determining the government failed to consider less drastic measures when implementing a major shift in immigration policy amid the pandemic. 

The states’ effort to angle their way into the suit is accompanied by a request to halt the lifting of Title 42 and a pledge to appeal to the Supreme Court as the policy is set to terminate just days before Christmas.

▪ NBC News: Trump invoked Title 42 after the pandemic broke out. Here’s what the measure is all about — and what a change could mean for migrants and border cities.

▪ The Washington Post: Trump and COVID-19 slowed down immigration. Now employers can’t find workers. Economists estimate that “two years of lost immigration” is responsible for close to half of the 3.5 million workers missing from the labor force.

The New York Times has featured 12 of the thousands killed this year by what has become the leading cause of death for American kids: gun violence.

OPINION

■ Falling inflation rates are great news — unless you’re a GOP politician, by Jennifer Rubin, columnist, The Washington Post. https://wapo.st/3BAwyJp 

■ Putin’s leaning tower of Jenga, by Jonathan Sweet and Mark Toth, contributors, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3FqGE0A

WHERE AND WHEN

👉 The Hill: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights: The Hill launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.

The House will convene on Wednesday, with votes postponed to 6:30 p.m.

The Senate will convene on Monday at 3 p.m.

The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 9:30 a.m. At noon, he will participate in a town hall in New Castle, Del. and speak with veterans and veteran survivors about the PACT Act. Biden will return to the White House at 1:55 p.m., and depart for Wilmington, Del. with the first lady at 8:55 p.m.

The vice president has no public schedule.

The first lady heads to Wilmington, Del. with the president at 8:55 p.m.

The second gentleman will visit a local 988 call center in Hyattsville, Md. at 10 a.m., where he will meet with workers and receive a tour. Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) Deputy Secretary Andrea Palm and DHS Assistant Secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use Miriam Delphin-Rittman will join the visit.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet with Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard at 2 p.m. at the State Department. 

ELSEWHERE

➤ ECONOMY 

The Federal Reserve’s 2-percent target for inflation is coming under scrutiny from economists, lawmakers and investors, The Hill’s Tobias Burns reports, who are all expressing doubts about not only whether 2-percent inflation is possible but if it’s even still desirable.

The economy, meanwhile, has shown signs of slowing as retail sales and manufacturing dropped last month, but the labor market remained resilient as employers largely held onto workers. Retail sales fell in November by the most in nearly a year — reflecting the strain of inflation and a shift toward spending on services. As initial applications for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest in two months, the labor market continues to be a bright spot. However, a separate measure of unemployed workers who’ve been out of a job for a longer period has climbed to the highest since February (Bloomberg News).

▪ The Wall Street Journal: Retail sales, manufacturing declines point to a slowing economy.

▪ Vox: The last time the Fed curbed inflation without crashing the economy, explained.

A majority of voters think the economy will be in worse shape in 2023 than it is now and roughly two-thirds say the country’s economic trajectory is headed in the wrong direction, according to a new poll from The Wall Street Journal. The pool, conducted Dec. 3-7, suggests a recent burst of positive economic news hasn’t altered the way many feel about the likely risk of a recession.

The Hill’s Sylvan Lane breaks down where Americans pulled back their spending the most last month.  

➤ PANDEMIC & HEALTH 

Americans can once again order four free COVID-19 tests through the mail as part of the Biden administration’s plan to deal with an increase in cases sparked by indoor holiday gatherings. The tests can be ordered on COVIDtests.gov and will start to ship the week of Dec. 19, according to a senior administration official. The government is urging people to test themselves when they have symptoms — and before visiting with family (NPR).

The 2022 winter season has been one of prolonged misery for many families, as sniffles, sore throats, coughs and trips to the emergency room mount with the return of illnesses that were kept at bay during the pandemic. It’s like “a big bomb of viruses went off,” Christina Lane, who runs a pediatric practice in New Albany, Ind., told The Washington Post. As we approach year four of the coronavirus pandemic, Lane and other doctors agree the overlapping viral surges and how they are playing out are unusual and concerning, leading to patients with back-to-back respiratory illnesses.

“When you take a pandemic and then add co-circulation of other viruses in the mix, you might expect to see some weird things,” Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona, told the Post.

Information about COVID-19 vaccine and booster shot availability can be found at Vaccines.gov.

▪ CNBC: Long COVID-19 medical costs average $9,500 in the first six months, as patients become “health-system wanderers.”

▪ The New York Times: How a sprawling hospital chain ignited its own staffing crisis. Ascension, one of the country’s largest health systems, spent years cutting jobs, leaving it flat-footed when the pandemic hit.

Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,087,014. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 2,703 for the week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The CDC shifted its tally of available data from daily to weekly, now reported on Fridays.)

THE CLOSER

And finally … 👏👏👏 Bravo to winners of this week’s Morning Report Quiz! Inspired by the upcoming holidays, we posed trivia questions about holiday traditions and milestones.

Here’s who guessed and Googled their way to a perfect score: Patrick Kavanagh, Ki Harvey, Harry Strulovici, Joe Erdmann, Amanda Fisher, Bill Grieshober, Pam Manges, Randall Patrick, Robert Bradley, Steve James, Stan Wasser, Luther Berg, Jerry LaCamera and TK.

They knew that the first printed reference to Christmas trees appeared in Germany.

In 1907, the first New Year’s Eve Times Square ball drop was held in New York City.

The first president to commemorate Hanukkah at the White House was Harry Truman, in 1951.

And finally, according to news reports, approximately 113 million people are expected to journey 50 miles or farther over the holidays this year.

Stay Engaged

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Senate GOP faces politics vs. policy battle on marijuana

The omnibus package is on the path to passage, but the expected exclusion of marijuana banking reform has spawned a battle in the Senate GOP.

For months, top Democrats and a number of Republicans had high hopes that legislation allowing banks to offer services to cannabis businesses in states where it has been legalize would be part of either the year-end National Defense Authorization Act or the omnibus package.

Those dreams were dashed last week when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took a two-by-four to the plan, likely leaving the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act on the cutting room floor this year. 

That has put Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) in a tricky position.

Daines, the newly-minted chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is the lead Republican on the SAFE Banking bill.

Montana is among the 19 states (plus the District of Columbia) that has legalized marijuana for recreational use.

On top of that for Daines, the push to legalize marijuana is broadly popular. According to a Pew Research survey taken last month, 88 percent of U.S. adults say it should be legalized for both medical and recreational use. Only 10 percent oppose the push. 

Nevertheless, the effort is expected to be punted until 2023 at least.

Proponents of the legislation are upset, as they maintain the bill has enough support to clear procedural hurdles and win at least 60 votes on the Senate floor.

“It’s got to be addressed. Guys like me have been trying to make the case to my conference that this is not some kind of crazy bill. It’s a bill about safety and small businesses,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who, along with Daines and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), have led the GOP’s SAFE Banking effort. 

The SAFE Banking bill was set to be paired with the Harnessing Opportunities by Pursuing Expungement (HOPE) Act, which would create grants for state expungement programs. The latter proposal was authored by Reps. David Joyce (R-Ohio) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). 

Differences over the legislation have not done damage to the Daines-McConnell relationship.

Multiple Senate GOP sources say the two have a “great” dynamic and that there isn’t any friction between them, especially as Daines takes over the NRSC from Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a vocal opponent of the longtime Republican leader. 

“Just different dynamics [back home],” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), referring to the different tracks for Montana and Kentucky.  

Daines declined to comment directly when asked about the political impact of legislative action on marijuana or his conversations with McConnell in recent weeks. He pressed that the impetus behind advancing the legislation is predominantly for safety purposes in his home state. 

“My support for SAFE Banking relates to the first word in the bill. It’s called ‘safe.’ This is a public safety issue,” Daines said in an interview, noting that 38 attorneys general back the effort. “For states that have legalized cannabis, this is a way you can make a community safe — by taking the cash off the street and put it in the bank.”

Opponents of the bill echo McConnell’s remarks on the Senate floor last week where he argued the legislation would be “making our financial system more sympathetic to illegal drugs.”

“It seems odd that we would create a legal construct for something that’s federally prohibited. If you want me to be sympathetic to states that have legalized it, contrary to federal law, that have a banking problem, let’s look at the broader issues that would have to be part of federal policy,” Tillis said, noting that would involve the Food and Drug Administration, along with regulatory, tax and revenue-related avenues.

The battle over the legislation has pit allies against one another while putting political foes om the same side.

One of the senators Daines will potentially be tasked with defeating in 2024 is Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a prime GOP target. Tester himself has a related bill that would push the Department of Veterans Affairs to conduct clinical trials for medical marijuana to be used as an alternative remedy for chronic pain and PTSD.

Daines, along with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), were convinced the bill would get over the finish line this year, especially as marijuana boosters felt the wind at their back. President Biden in October issued pardons for all federal offenses of simple marijuana possession, a move viewed as a precursor to full decriminalization of the drug’s usage. 

Supporters of the blueprint believe lawmakers are missing a major opportunity.

“Here’s what you don’t want to do: You don’t want to have some kind of horrendous crime against someone with all this cash, and then people say, ‘Oh, now we have to act.’ We’re supposed to act to prevent that,” Sullivan said. 

Source: TEST FEED1

‘Twitter Files’ fuel House GOP probes, censorship claims

House Republicans are rallying around Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” to fuel their accusations of anti-conservative censorship, previewing the hostile tech agenda the GOP will launch when the party takes control of the chamber in January. 

Republicans set to chair key House committees pledged to call in ex-Twitter staff to testify at hearings and probe the companies’ content moderation decisions highlighted in the four-part “Twitter Files” series.

Conservatives are trying to prop up the information revealed in the four Twitter threads as examples of the partisan imbalance favoring Democrats they’ve long accused Twitter of using, despite the threads largely showing internal debates among employees over high-profile decisions and lacking details of influence from Democrats. 

“They ran an information operation on — misinformation operation — on the country. So, heck yeah, we’re gonna look into this,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, told The Hill. 

Journalist Matt Taibbi, who released the first batch of “Twitter files,” said that while he saw general warnings from the government to Twitter about possible foreign hacks, he saw no evidence of specific government involvement in Twitter’s decision to suppress the New York Post’s story on the Hunter Biden laptop.

But Jordan said that the revelations are enough to warrant more investigation.

“There’s probably not an email from [FBI agent] Elvis Chan to [then-Twitter CEO] Jack Dorsey saying take down the whole story. But there’s weekly briefings where they say, ‘We think there’s real potential for hacking-and-leak operations, Russia’s gonna try to interfere with the election,’” Jordan said.

“There’s no like, email. It’s like, everyone understands what they’re supposed to do here. Plus, all these people lean to the left anyway. So I think that’s what happened,” he added. 

Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif.), incoming vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, brushed off GOP interest in the “Twitter Files” — which he called “stupid” on Twitter.

“Republicans actually can’t pass any bills on this issue because the First Amendment prevents government from regulating speech on Twitter. So it’s not clear to me why they are so focused on somebody they can actually not do anything about,” Lieu said. “Lots of people complained to Twitter, including candidates, the Trump administration, your cousin’s friend, anyone that could complain. Sometimes Twitter ignored them, sometimes they didn’t, which was Twitter’s right as a private business. And that is not news.”

The “Twitter Files” were released in four parts, between Taibbi, journalist Bari Weiss and author Michael Shellenberger. The first installment from Taibbi focused on the Hunter Biden laptop saga, while the subsequent threads were about Twitter’s decisions to de-amplify content from certain accounts and the decision to remove former President Trump.

Jared Holt, senior research manager at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said the information revealed in the threads is “inherently interesting” to a degree, offering a peek under the hood of how Twitter came to certain decisions, but they’re “not exactly bombshells.”

“It doesn’t show what I think some politicians and even to some degree Taibbi and Weiss frame it up as showing, which is this kind of conspiracy to censor conservatives at the platform,” Holt said. 

A lot of the material featured in the threads was also recycled, he said, noting that Dorsey discussed the decision to suppress the Post’s story about Hunter Biden’s laptop during a congressional hearing last year. At the time, the former Twitter CEO called it a “total mistake.” 

The previous explanation and admission of regret, though, have not quelled Republicans’ push for answers. 

After the release of the first round of the “Twitter Files,” incoming House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) called for Twitter’s former Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde, former global head of trust and safety Yoel Roth and former deputy general counsel James Barker to testify at a public hearing. 

But the Republicans don’t yet have clear direction over a timeline for the hearings, or what committee should take the lead amid interest across the judiciary, energy and commerce, and oversight panels, a GOP source told The Hill. 

The pressure over Twitter’s decisions fits in with Republicans’ broader investigatory agenda on not only tech censorship, but also alleged politicization in the intelligence community, the Biden family’s business dealings and the origins of COVID-19.

Earlier this week, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee put forward a proposal that sought to require the Biden administration to provide documents “relating to coordination” with social media companies about “censorship” of a wide range of content including Hunter Biden, COVID-19 and elections. 

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), the panel’s chairman, called the proposal “frivolous and partisan” and in “stark contrast” to the bipartisan work the committee advanced earlier in the year, including a landmark comprehensive data privacy bill. 

“I sincerely hope we can put aside these out of touch, partisan issues and instead prioritize work that actually benefits the American people,” he said. 

The proposal, touted by incoming Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) as a way to promote “free speech,” offers a glimpse into the way the GOP will tackle tech issues in the coming year. 

“Certainly what’s been exposed only confirms the questions that we’ve had and the concerns that we’ve been raising around censorship, and especially the manipulation the platforms have taken — their manipulative efforts to shut down conservative speech,” Rodgers told The Hill.

Jordan sent letters to top executives at Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft on Wednesday asking for information on communications between the companies and the federal government concerning “the moderation, deletion, suppression, restricting, or reduced circulation of content,” and directing them to preserve documents and communications — indicating that subpoenas may be coming once Jordan takes the gavel.

Since Musk closed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter at the end of October, he’s made a number of changes, such as reversing bans on users like Trump and removing a COVID-19 misinformation policy, that the GOP cheered making the site less of a target for House Republicans.

Those same changes, however, are causing other issues for Musk — including contending with an ongoing pressure campaign from advocacy groups and an exodus of advertisers  — as he tries to make his Twitter purchase profitable. 

The Hill reached out to Twitter for comment.

Source: TEST FEED1

More adult children are living with their parents. Parents are not pleased

The share of adult children who live with their parents has ticked up in recent years. This just in: The parents don’t like it. 

A recent Pew survey found two-fifths of dads believe parents hosting adult children is bad for society, while only 12 percent think it’s a good thing. Moms agree, albeit to a lesser degree.  

With the economy sputtering, a spate of new articles counsel parents on such lightning-rod topics as whether adult children should pay rent and, more bluntly, “How to Get Your Grown Children to Move Out.” 

COVID-19 sent adult children back to the nest in unprecedented numbers. A stampede of younger millennials and older Generation Z progeny have fled roommates and cramped urban apartments during the pandemic for spacious homes in thinly settled suburbs with full kitchens and convenient laundry facilities. 

The share of adults ages 25 to 34 who lived with their parents reached historic highs in 2020, Census figures show: 22 percent of men and 13.4 percent of women.  

The numbers have retreated since then, but not far. In 2022, 19 percent of men and 12 percent of women in the 25-34 demographic cohabit with their parents.  

“We talk in psychology about emerging adulthood as a new stage in life,” said Carol Sigelman, a developmental psychologist at the George Washington University. “It’s this sort of in-between land.” 

A grown child with a good job can maximize the benefits of living at home, amassing savings and retiring debts while paying little or nothing for food and shelter.  

Returning to a childhood home can also trigger a waking nightmare of rehashed arguments, violated boundaries and unattainable privacy, not to mention the inescapable sense of being treated like a child. 

“Multigenerational households really are very productive and useful,” said Jerrold Shapiro, a professor of counseling psychology at Santa Clara University. “But there are some issues. The biggest one is, as soon as kids get back with their parents, no matter how old they are, they regress. And the parents regress. They do it in tandem.” 

Returning from college to the twin bed and One Direction posters of a childhood bedroom is a well-established, if vaguely humiliating, rite of passage for America’s young adults. More than half of men and women ages 18-24 have lived with their parents consistently since 2011, Census numbers show.  

They sit at the vanguard of a decades-long trend, spotlighted by the pandemic, that has transformed the American household.  

In the first four decades of the 1900s, long before the term “failure to launch” entered the cultural vocabulary, more than two-fifths of adults under 30 lived with their parents in multigenerational households, often sharing chores on a family farm, according to a Pew analysis of Census files. The share of young adults living with their folks peaked at 48 percent in 1940.  

The cohabiting population plummeted in the 1940s and 1950s, an era of war, prosperity and urbanization, bottoming out around 30 percent in 1960. It has risen slowly ever since.  

Young adults are staying in school longer, coping with rising student debt, marrying later and waiting longer to buy a first home. Many move out of the parental home only to return after losing a job or a roommate. Researchers call them boomerang kids. 

COVID-19 sparked a mass relocation, with millions of Americans leaving crowded urban cores and shuttered college campuses. A Pew survey found that young adults were three times as likely to move as any other age group. 

In the first half of 2020, the pandemic pushed the share of under-30 adults living with their parents from 47 percent to 52 percent, a slim majority. 

In the years since, much of American life has returned to normal. But many pandemic boomerang kids remain in the parental home: two-thirds, by one estimate.  

A raft of stories romanticized the new connections forged between grown children and the parents who thought they’d lost them forever.      

“It was a joy to have this time with our adult children,” David Ellis, a dad in Raleigh, N.C., told The Guardian in 2021, after the pandemic put two of them back beneath his roof.  

Over time, some of the societal goodwill has soured. The boomerang child has spawned a cottage industry of coverage about coping, not with the pandemic, but with the young pandemic refugees still colonizing your home. 

One article enumerates “8 mistakes parents make when their 20-something kids move back in.” (Number four is, “Assuming they’ll move out when they’re ready.” Number seven: “Letting them wait for the perfect job.”) 

Another headline announces, “Working parents spend more than $1,000 per month on adult kids’ bills.” That piece discusses a recent survey by the consumer website Savings.com. Among the findings: 62 percent of adult children living with parents “don’t contribute at all to the household expenses.” 

A third entry warns, “Supporting Adult Kids May Cost Parents $227K in Retirement.” One disturbing takeaway: 10 percent of adult children still collect an allowance. 

“Living at home, saving money, paying back college debt, that sounds okay to me,” said Jim Kinney, a certified financial planner in New Jersey. “But what I’ve been seeing recently is more of this failure-to-launch thing. The kid’s living at home because he doesn’t want to go out and get a job.” 

Aging parents who support adult children risk shortchanging their own retirement plans, Kinney said.  

“In the real world, the glory years of when people really pour money into their retirement is the last 10 years” of their working lives, he said. “And if you’re supporting your kid by paying his car insurance and paying for his groceries and maybe even paying for his medical insurance, that takes the opportunity away to pile on the retirement savings in the final years before retirement.” 

Kinney believes most adult children who live with parents should pay at least some rent. “If they’re a little too comfortable at home,” he said, “maybe you need to make it a little uncomfortable.” 

Ideally, parents should work out an arrangement with boomerang children before they move back, laying out what funds or chores the child will contribute and what boundaries the parents will honor, according to Shapiro. “It’s like a prenup,” he said.  

Even then, relations can deteriorate.  

Shapiro, an expert on empty-nest parents, once counseled a couple whose daughter had agreed to pay rent when she returned to the family home. “And she did,” Shapiro said. “For about three months. And she stayed there for a year and a half. And it created a real problem.” 

When a multigenerational household prospers, the arrangement can pay rich dividends both for parents and their adult children. Parents thrive, after all, on seeing their children go out into the world and perpetuate the species, a concept known in psychological circles as “generativity.” 

“Most parents are really quite good at this,” Sigelman said. “They’re still parents. They want to help their children any way they can.”  

All parents really ask in return, she said, is to “see the adult child is trying to make some kind of progress. They’re in school, working on a degree. They’re looking for jobs. They’re making a plan for leaving.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

House Democrats introduce legislation to bar Trump from office under 14th Amendment

A group of 40 House Democrats, led by Rep. David Cicilline (R.I.), introduced legislation on Thursday to bar former President Trump from holding future federal office under the 14th Amendment.

Section 3 of the amendment states that no one who previously took an oath to support the Constitution and engaged in “insurrection or rebellion” shall “hold any office, civil or military, under the United States.”

Cicilline said in a release announcing the legislation that Trump “very clearly” engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, with the intention of overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election. 

“You don’t get to lead a government you tried to destroy,” he said. 

The release states that the bill includes testimony and evidence demonstrating how Trump engaged in the insurrection. 

The bill also specifically describes how Trump helped encourage the violence on Jan. 6, tried to intimidate state and federal officials when they did not support his false claims of the election being stolen and refused to denounce the mob that stormed the Capitol for hours during the riot. 

“The 14th Amendment makes clear that based on his past behavior, Donald Trump is disqualified from ever holding federal office again and, under Section 5, Congress has the power to pass legislation to implement this prohibition,” Cicilline said. 

Cicilline, who served as an impeachment manager during Trump’s first impeachment, sent a letter to his Democratic colleagues last month to solicit co-sponsors for a bill to bar Trump from office. 

Trump was impeached on a charge of “incitement of insurrection” in the aftermath of Jan. 6, but he was acquitted by the Senate. This was the second time Trump was impeached, with the first coming in December 2019. 

Last month, Trump became the first major candidate to announce a run for the presidency in 2024. 

The 14th Amendment was ratified in the aftermath of the Civil War, when ex-Confederates and seceded states rejoined the Union.

Source: TEST FEED1

Senate passes short-term funding bill to avert government shutdown

The Senate on Thursday passed a short-term funding bill that punts Friday’s government shutdown deadline through next week as negotiators race to patch together a larger government funding deal for fiscal year 2023.

The Senate voted 71-19 to pass the continuing resolution (CR), sending the legislation to President Biden for approval after it passed the House the night before on a vote of 224-201. 

The bill freezes funding levels through Dec. 23, preventing a shutdown on Friday midnight to buy time for ongoing spending negotiations. 

Leaders on both sides of the aisle have been working to pass an omnibus spending package by the end of the month, with sights set on final passage by Christmas Eve.

But divisions have been on display within the GOP over how long lawmakers should put off setting new government funding levels — particularly as Congress prepares to usher in a newly Republican-led House next month. 

Twenty-two Republicans joined Democrats in passing the legislation on Thursday. However, others in the GOP have pushed against a one-week CR in favor of a stopgap bill that would kick the deadline into the new year to give the party more influence on how the government should be funded for fiscal year 2023, which began in October.

Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.),  a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee who voted against the stopgap bill, told The Hill ahead of the vote that he would have only backed the measure if it moved the deadline into next year. 

“I think most Republicans are gonna listen to the Republicans that just gave us the House back, and why would you do that when we’re gonna have more input into it, even though it might be a process, a little bit of turmoil, why would you do that now?” Braun said. 

The passage on Thursday capped off several hours of drama leading up to the final vote.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) confirmed to reporters around noon that he placed a hold on the CR, saying: “I think it’s a good idea that we move it into the spring with the new Congress.”

Other Senate Republicans opposing the bill also pressed for partisan amendments ahead of the vote.

Just nine out of 213 House Republicans voted with Democrats to advance the bill on Wednesday, after GOP leadership urged rank-and-file members to reject the short-term funding bill.

Opponents of passing an omnibus this year also point to the coming retirements of Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chair and vice-chair of the Appropriations panel, while arguing Congress needs to have a fresh start on appropriations beginning the new year.

“We should not move a short-term CR,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said hours before the House vote on Wednesday. “We should move one further into the new year. Allow the American people what they said a month ago — to change Washington as we know it today. We can’t afford to continue to spend the way the Democrats have. The future generation cannot afford it as well.”

But other Republicans have pushed for an omnibus to be enacted sooner, citing concerns about funding for defense and national security.

Top negotiators announced a bipartisan deal on a framework for an omnibus funding package for fiscal year 2023 earlier this week, despite the opposition from McCarthy.

Shelby told reporters on Wednesday that GOP negotiators have been “basically negotiating with the House Democrats and the Democrats here because some of the House Republicans have not shown as much interest in getting an omnibus.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said earlier this week that lawmakers are “very close to getting an omnibus appropriations bill,” and set a cutoff date for Dec. 22 for Congress to wrap up its work.

— Updated at 11:05 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

Senate sends $858 billion defense bill to Biden’s desk

The Senate on Thursday passed the annual defense authorization bill, sending the $858 billion measure to President Biden’s desk for signature just before the year-end deadline.

The measure, formally known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, 83-11. 

It provides $45 billion more for defense than called for in Biden’s budget, including allocating $817 billion to the Department of Defense and $30 billion to the Department of Energy. 

Thursday’s vote caps weeks of wrangling over floor timing and controversial policy changes, such as language demanded by conservative Republicans to end the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, which has been in place since August of 2021. 

It marks the 61st year in a row that Congress has passed the defense bill on time, a notable achievement given the legislative gridlock that has reigned on Capitol Hill in recent years. 

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.) cheered the passage of the bill after months of negotiation, calling it “the most significant vote of the year.” 

“I’ve said it before and I’m not the only one saying it — the world is a more dangerous place than I’ve ever seen before in my lifetime,” he said.

The bill is named after retiring Sen. James Inhofe (Okla.), the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services panel. 

The Biden administration earlier this week criticized the vaccine mandate repeal as “a mistake” but the president is still expected to sign the legislation when it reaches his desk. 

Senators approved the legislation after voting down an amendment sponsored by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to enact permitting reform for energy projects and another sponsored by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) to require the military to rehire and provide back-pay to service members forced out of work because of vaccine non-compliance. 

Both amendments needed 60 votes to pass. 

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) asked for a vote on his amendment to cap fees charged by trial lawyers in cases representing Marines who became ill because of water contamination at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina 

He later withdrew it because he expected it to fail but pledged  to work with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, on a compromise before the end of the year.

Conservatives won a major victory by successfully pressing Democrats to accept language ending the Pentagon’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. 

“I am so pleased that the NDAA language reflects what we have sought to do,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who pushed for the repeal. 

She hailed it as a “major win” and noted that every service branch has struggled to meet their recruiting goals this year. More than 8,400 active-duty service members have been pushed out of the military for not getting COVID-19 shots, Blackburn said. 

Passage of the defense bill is a victory for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who identified it as a top priority in the lame-duck session. 

“I’ve spent all week discussing ways this legislation will help our armed forces and national security professionals, safeguard our homeland and keep adversaries like Russia on their back feet,” McConnell said Thursday ahead of the bill’s passage.

“The NDAA is only a first step toward the investments, modernization and stronger strategies that we need to compete and to win against rivals who don’t wish us well, but it is a crucial first step.”

McConnell and other Republicans criticized Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) for waiting so late in the year to bring the bill to the floor. 

“Republicans spent months urging the Democratic majority not to neglect this year’s National Defense Authorization Act; not to leave our Armed Forces to the last minute. Five months ago, I called on our colleagues to process the defense bill as soon as possible.” 

The Senate passage comes exactly a week after the House passed the bill, which lays out how the Defense Department allocates hundreds of billions of dollars toward weapons programs and provides a 4.6 percent raise in service members’ salaries.

It authorizes $163 billion for procurement, compared to the $144 billion requested in Biden’s budget; $139 billion for research and development, compared to the $130 billion requested by Biden; and $279 billion for operation and maintenance, compared to the $271 billion requested by Biden.

In addition, it authorizes $211 for personnel and health, roughly the same that Biden requested; $19 billion for military construction and $30 billion for defense related nuclear programs. 

The bill includes intended military aid to other countries, such as $10 billion to Taiwan through 2027 and another $800 million in security assistance for Ukraine.

It allocates $6 billion for the European Deterrence Initiative, a program initiated in 2014 after Russia’s annexation of Crimea to increase the readiness of U.S. forces in Europe to deter further aggression. 

It reforms the Uniform Code of Military Justice to give the special trial counsel jurisdiction over sexual harassment offenses and requires investigators outside the immediate chain of command to investigate harassment complaints.

Republicans defeated two policy riders that Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) wanted to add to the defense bill, Manchin’s permitting reform proposal and the SAFE Banking Act, which would prohibit federal regulators from penalizing financial institutions that work with legitimate cannabis-related businesses. 

McConnell said last week that attempts to add those provisions were “obstructing” passage of the defense bill and dismissed the proposals as “a grab bag of miscellaneous pet priorities.” 

Other Republicans criticized Manchin’s permitting reform bill from taking power away from Public Utility Commissioners by giving authority to federal regulators to pick the sites of electric transmission lines. 

Passage of the NDAA leaves the omnibus spending package as the last remaining item of must-pass legislation to finish before the Christmas break and the end of the 117th Congress. 

McConnell on Tuesday set a deadline of Dec. 22 to finish the omnibus and said he would support a stop-gap spending measure punting spending decision into 2023 if it’s not done by then. 

Source: TEST FEED1

‘Only Kevin’ Republicans ramp up support for McCarthy

Efforts to support House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for Speaker are ramping up as a handful of hardline conservatives threaten to keep him from winning the gavel in a Jan. 3 House floor vote.

More centrist Republicans in the Republican Governance Group are wearing buttons that say “O.K.” — forecasting they will vote for “Only Kevin.”

“We definitely are doubling down on our support for Kevin McCarthy and we’re making it very clear that we’re going to support him through and through no matter how many ballots it takes,” said Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.).

Discussions continue between McCarthy and those pushing for rules changes and concessions, but no member has publicly said they have changed their mind based on the talks.

“My phone has rang more in the last two weeks than in the previous four years, I’ll put it to you that way,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who has not said how he plans to vote on Jan. 3 as he pushes for rules changes that would empower individual members.

The New York Times reported that former President Trump has lobbied members to back McCarthy.

Four GOP members who have indicated they will vote against McCarthy for Speaker – Reps. Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Ralph Norman (S.C.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), and Matt Rosendale (Mont.)  declined to comment on whether Trump has talked to them about supporting McCarthy.

But Gaetz on his podcast on Wednesday centered on a line in the report that said while Trump is not “entirely sold” on McCarthy, the former president sees him as better than the alternative.

“The buried lede here is that President Trump’s lobbying effort, if it still exists, isn’t inspired by any sense that Kevin McCarthy is strong. And that’s probably why President Trump’s lobbying effort has not moved a single vote in favor of Kevin McCarthy. We know that his heart’s not in it,” Gaetz said.

Pro-McCarthy GOP lawmakers are growing more frustrated with the conservative anti-McCarthy votes, spurring talk they might adopt the hardball tactics favored by the “Never Kevin” crowd.

One idea being floated, first reported by CNN, is to kick members those who repeatedly vote against McCarthy on the House floor from their committees.

Another is to have members vote against the House rules package after the Speaker’s vote if it includes changes demanded by the anti-McCarthy hardliners.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) confirmed that the idea of kicking anti-McCarthy lawmakers off committees has been a topic of discussion.

“We should consider what options will work,” he said.

Another GOP lawmaker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they’d heard “lots of members” question why those interested in disrupting the House GOP’s agenda “should be allowed” a committee spot.

The member added, however, that kicking anti-McCarthy votes off committees is unlikely to happen give that McCarthy himself criticized Democrats for kicking Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) form their committees over threatening social media posts and interactions. McCarthy has pledged to restore those two Republicans to their committees.

Discord over McCarthy has led to a delay in the House GOP selecting committee chairs in contested races, leaving the conference running behind on preparations for hiring staff and crafting priorities for the new majority.

McCarthy told Politico on Thursday that those slots will not be decided until after the Jan. 3 Speaker’s vote so that freshman members can be there to approve those leading the panels.

“It’s almost like some people didn’t learn anything from the midterms. The right-of-center, left-of-center, those are the folks that won big that night, myself included. And as a constitutional conservative, finding ways to work with the other side. That’s what the American people want,” Mace said.

The House GOP Conference met this week to consider rules changes governing the whole House, addressing several requests from a group of seven current and incoming members  – including Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Roy — who have withheld support for McCarthy but not said they would vote against him.

McCarthy told reporters this week that he supports their request to require 72 hours between the time final bill text is released and its passage.

But a request to restore any member’s ability to make a Motion to Vacate the Chair, a procedural move to force a vote on ousting the Speaker, emerged as a flashpoint this week. 

The House GOP Conference already adopted an internal rule to allow the motion only if a majority of the conference agreed, and members who want to keep it that way worry that Democrats could use it to thwart the GOP majority.

“No matter how short the leash some Republicans want to put on the Speaker, a single member vote to vacate the chair will be long enough for Democrats to hog-tie our Republican Majority,” Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) said in a tweet.

Those who want the motion to vacate restored argue that the longtime practice is a critical check on leadership’s power. The rarely-used motion was used in 2015 against former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who resigned later that year amid a rebellion from conservatives.

The whole point of the motion to vacate is to pierce that, is to stick a stake in the heart of the cartel in this town that are screwing the American people every day,” Roy said.

Source: TEST FEED1

National Archives releases thousands of JFK assassination records

The National Archives has released thousands of records related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy.

The release of 12,879 new files, the largest dump since 2018, comes nearly six decades after Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, becoming the fourth U.S. president to have been assassinated while in office. President Biden ordered the documents’ release earlier in the day ahead of a Thursday deadline.

Lawmakers in 1992 passed legislation requiring all remaining government records about the assassination to be released by Oct. 2017, unless they posed certain risks to national defense or intelligence, but former President Trump and Biden both issued extensions.

That set off a legal challenge filed by the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a nonprofit that curates an online collection of the assassination records, arguing the extensions were unlawful based on the 1992 legislation.

Biden issued the most recent extension, which lasted one year, arguing that the coronavirus pandemic impeded agencies’ ability to review the records by the earlier deadline.

The president’s order on Thursday stated that almost 16,000 records remained redacted, and Biden approved the release of more than 70 percent of them.

But an unspecified “limited” number of records that remain the subject of review were not included in the batch, and Biden’s order gives federal agencies and the National Archives until May 1, 2023, to make recommendations about whether they must still be kept private.

Biden ordered the remaining records to be publicly released by June 30, 2023, unless they meet narrow exceptions.

“Agencies shall not propose to continue redacting information unless the redaction is necessary to protect against an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure,” Biden’s order states.

The Hill has reached out to the Mary Ferrell Foundation for comment.

The National Archives had released various batches of documents in recent years, with the most recent dump of 1,491 files being published exactly one year ago. 

Prior to Thursday, the Archives had released roughly 55,000 total documents since the deadline originally imposed by Congress.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden mocks Trump's 'major announcement' of digital trading cards

President Biden on Thursday mocked former President Trump for teasing a “major announcement” that turned out to be a new line of digital Trump trading cards.

“I had some MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENTS the last couple of weeks, too…” Biden tweeted from his personal account.

The president listed a consumer price report that showed inflation easing in recent weeks, the signing of legislation to protect same-sex marriage, a prisoner swap that brought home WNBA star Brittney Griner after months of being imprisoned in Russia and falling gas prices as notable achievements for the White House in recent days.

Biden’s tweet was a swipe at his predecessor, who earlier Thursday unveiled a line of digital trading cards bearing his likeness for $99 each.

Trump posted on Truth Social a day earlier that he would be making a “major announcement” without providing any details. Some had speculated the announcement would be related to the Speaker race playing out among House Republicans or Trump’s largely inactive 2024 presidential campaign.

Instead, Trump revealed a line of digital trading cards that could be purchased with cryptocurrency or a credit card. Proceeds from the cards, which, among other looks, depict the former president as an astronaut and a cowboy, do not go to Trump’s campaign.

The announcement drew mockery and disbelief from liberals and some conservatives.

“Thank God, the digital trading cards are here. It was indeed a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT,” Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro tweeted.

Source: TEST FEED1