Thursday, Oct 02nd
Last update09:00:21 PM GMT
Congressional Glance
The federal government has shut down after lawmakers in Congress failed to reach an agreement on how to extend funding.
While it's not clear how long this government shutdown might last, we're beginning to see the impacts across the country.
Reporters from the NPR Network are digging into the ways the government shutdown is playing out in their region.
Here's what they found so far.
(Jump to state-specific impacts.)
As the two parties square off over an imminent government shutdown, Democrats are accusing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of keeping the House of Representatives out of session to delay a vote on the Epstein files.
The House had been scheduled to vote on Monday and Tuesday, but Johnson canceled the votes in order to put more pressure on Senate Democrats to accept a government funding bill Republicans pushed through the House earlier this month.
The canceled votes are also pushing back the swearing-in of Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat who won a special election last week to fill her late father’s Arizona seat. Grijalva would provide the crucial 218th signature on a “discharge petition” forcing a vote on legislation to make the Justice Department release its investigatory files on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
“Any delay in swearing in Representative-elect Grijalva unnecessarily deprives her constituents of representation and calls into question if the motive behind the delay is to further avoid the release of the Epstein files,” Rep. Katherine Clark (Mass.), the No. 2 Democrat in the House, complained in a letter to Johnson on Monday.
Democrats came together in near unison to defeat the measure on a 44-48 vote, with only Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman (D) voting for the Republican-drafted proposal, which passed the House earlier Friday by a 217-212 vote.
Two Republicans voted against the House-passed continuing resolution: Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.), an outspoken fiscal hawk who argued it would prolong Biden-era spending levels, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), a centrist who has voiced grave concerns about the Medicaid cuts Trump signed into law earlier this year.
Democrats blocked the resolution, which would fund government until Nov. 21, after Republicans defeated an alternative Democratic proposal to fund government until Oct. 31, extend health insurance subsidies and restore nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid funding cuts.
The two failed votes leave Republican and Democratic leaders at loggerheads over how to avoid a government shutdown in only 11 days.
The Senate has confirmed 48 of President Donald Trump’s nominees at once, voting for the first time under new rules to begin clearing a backlog of executive branch positions that had been delayed by Democrats.
Frustrated by the stalling tactics, Senate Republicans moved last week to make it easier to confirm large groups of lower-level, non-judicial nominations. Democrats had forced multiple votes on almost every one of Trump’s picks, infuriating the president and tying up the Senate floor.
The new rules allow Senate Republicans to move multiple nominees with a simple majority vote — a process that would have previously been blocked with just one objection. The rules don’t apply to judicial nominations or high-level Cabinet posts.
“Republicans have fixed a broken process,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said ahead of the vote.
More...
More than a dozen elected officials were arrested Thursday while protesting conditions at a New York City immigration holding facility where a federal judge this week extended a court order requiring the government to shape up its treatment of detainees.
The officials — including the city’s fiscal watchdog and state lawmakers — were among 77 people detained during protests at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan. The government building, home to immigration court, the FBI‘s New York field office and other federal offices, has become a hotbed of arrests and detention amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
Eleven officials were arrested inside the building while attempting to inspect holding rooms on the 10th floor that are the subject of ongoing litigation alleging squalid conditions and overcrowding, according to a coalition of politicians, advocates and faith leaders involved in the protest. They were given summonses and released. The building was later locked down because of a telephoned bomb threat, authorities said.
The Trump administration is asking Congress to approve an additional $58m for security services to protect the members of the executive and judicial branches after the killing of Charlie Kirk, multiple outlets report. They also supported adding more money to protect members of Congress, but they deferred to the legislative branch on further steps.
News of the request comes as House Democrats prepare to hold a virtual security briefing on Sunday evening, following Kirk’s death. The briefing will be with the House sergeant at arms and the Capitol police chief.
Last week, rightwing activist and Trump ally Charlie Kirk was killed while speaking at an event at a university in Utah and a suspect was arrested. Despite the shooter’s motive still being unconfirmed, conservatives have expressed anger and concern, blaming liberals and leftwing activists for Kirk’s killing. The right has declared war on the left, leading prominent politicians to cancel events over safety concerns and threats.
Two Democratic senators claim they have reached the “inescapable conclusion” that Israel is acting on a systematic plan to destroy and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from Gaza to force locals to leave, and they say the US is complicit.
Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Jeff Merkley of Oregon, both members of the Senate foreign relations committee, released their findings in a report on Thursday after returning from a congressional delegation to the Middle East where, they note, the destruction goes beyond bombs and bullets. They say they also found a systematic campaign to strangle humanitarian aid, which they call “using food as a weapon of war”.
“The Netanyahu government has gone far beyond targeting Hamas to imposing collective punishment on all the people of Gaza,” Van Hollen said at a Thursday press conference. “What they’re doing, and what we witnessed, is putting those goals into action.”
At least one hundred people have died from famine in Gaza, the United Nations said this week, citing the Gaza health ministry.
The senators, who visited Egypt, Israel, the occupied West Bank and Jordan, argue that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a deliberate strategy to ethnically cleanse the local population rather than collateral damage from the war against Hamas. Their report is titled The Netanyahu Government Is Implementing a Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza of Palestinians. America is Complicit. The World Must Stop It.
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