‘Total dumpster fire’: Republicans fume over speaker’s spending plan days from shutdown deadline
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(WASHINGTON) — Several House Republicans stormed out of Tuesday morning’s conference meeting furious over Speaker Mike Johnson’s handling of the government funding bill – which still isn’t ready and puts the federal government on the brink of a shutdown at the end of the week.
Republicans had initially promised to release bill text over the weekend with the aim of holding a vote early in the week, but outspoken criticism from within their ranks has continually delayed negotiators from finalizing the legislation.
Johnson denied that the evolving package amounts to a so-called “Christmas tree omnibus,” but confirmed that the measure is not a clean continuing resolution and will include a disaster relief package — reported to be more than $100 billion — as well as $10 billion for the agricultural community.
Missouri Republican Rep. Eric Burlison called the speaker’s funding plan presented at the conference meeting a “total dumpster fire.”
“I think it’s garbage,” Burlison said, adding that he has conveyed his frustrations to Johnson, who is seeking to retain the speaker’s gavel in the new year.
“I’m disappointed,” Burlison said when asked about Johnson’s future. “I think that he can do better. He can communicate better. The fact that we haven’t seen the language today and we’re supposed to vote on it this week is unacceptable.”
South Carolina Republican Rep. Ralph Norman said he is frustrated with the funding plan as well.
“I’m not voting for the CR [continuing resolution],” he said.
Texas GOP Rep. Chip Roy, a frequent critic of the leadership’s spending bills, said, “This is not the way to do business right.”
“We’re just fundamentally unserious about spending. And as long as you got a blank check, you can’t shrink the government. If you can’t shrink the government, you can’t live free,” Roy said.
The Texas congressman did not respond when asked if he’ll support the speaker in January.
Georgia Republican Rep. Rich McCormick said as he left the meeting, “I’m frustrated with the whole approach to this, because I think, once again, we’re just adding to the deficit without having any clear plan forward,”
After relying on Democrats for bipartisan support to pass the past five continuing resolutions, Johnson brushed off the criticism bubbling up within his ranks, stressing that the bill has not been released.
“I got a couple of friends who will just say that about any end of year funding measure,” Johnson said. “This is not an omnibus, OK? This is a small CR that we’ve had to add things to that were out of our control. These are not manmade disasters. These are things that the federal government has an appropriate role to do.”
Despite the growing tensions, Johnson expressed optimism that his speakership will overcome the challenges to buy the conference time until Republicans have unified control over Washington next year.
“I’m not worried about the speaker’s vote. We’re governing. Everybody knows we have difficult circumstances. We’re doing the very best we can under those circumstances,” Johnson said. “These are the hard choices that lawmakers have to make, but we will get the job done, as we always do. We will. We will keep moving forward, and in January, we have a new lease on all this.”
With government funding set to lapse at the end of the week, Johnson was steadfast that the House must abide by a 72-hour rule, where the clock starts to tee up a vote once bill text is released.
“I believe in the 72-hour roll rule,” Johnson said. “We’re committed to all of that. We’re going to take care of these obligations and get this done, and then we’re going to go to work in unified government in the 119th Congress. It begins in January.”
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(WASHINGTON) — In the days since President Donald Trump handed down pardons and commutations for the more than 1,500 of his supporters who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, federal judges in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia have remained essentially silent while signing off on the hundreds of now-dismissed cases that for years crowded their court dockets.
On Wednesday, three judges with the D.C. District Court broke that silence on Trump’s pardons of Jan. 6 rioters, with one eviscerating Trump’s proclamation that stated he was righting a “national injustice” that occurred through the prosecution of the pro-Trump mob.
“No ‘national injustice’ occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election,” Judge Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said in an order Wednesday. “No ‘process of national reconciliation’ can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity.”
She added, “That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law. Yet, this presidential pronouncement of a ‘national injustice’ is the sole justification provided in the government’s motion to dismiss the pending indictment.”
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, also made clear in a dismissal order for one Capitol defendant that Trump’s sweeping pardons “will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021.”
“What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.”
Kollar-Kotelly further used her order to honor the law enforcement officers who responded to the Capitol that day, which she said “cannot be altered or ignored.”
“What role law enforcement played that day and the heroism of each officer who responded also cannot be altered or ignored,” she said.
“Grossly outnumbered, those law enforcement officers acted valiantly to protect the Members of Congress, their staff, the Vice President and his family, the integrity of the Capitol grounds, and the Capitol Building-our symbol of liberty and a symbol of democratic rule around the world,” she added. “For hours, those officers were aggressively confronted and violently assaulted. More than 140 officers were injured. Others tragically passed away as a result of the events of that day. But law enforcement did not falter. Standing with bear spray streaming down their faces, those officers carried out their duty to protect.”
She closed her order, stating bluntly, “All of what I have described has been recorded for posterity, ensuring that what transpired on January 6, 2021 can be judged accurately in the future.”
Trump’s Monday order commuted the sentences of 14 people and offered “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” The order fulfilled a campaign promise the president repeatedly made on the campaign trail.
Howell’s statement came through her dismissal of a case against two violent Jan. 6 rioters, Nicholas DeCarlo and Nicholas Ochs, who admitted to throwing smoke bombs at officers trying to protect the Capitol building.
Howell refused to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” as requested by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, which would leave open the possibility the prosecution could one day be resumed, though their statutes of limitations will run out by the end of this administration.
“This Court cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement,” Howell said. “Bluntly put, the assertion offered in the presidential pronouncement for the pending motion to dismiss is flatly wrong.”
Later Wednesday, the federal judge who oversaw Trump’s criminal case related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election joined the growing chorus of judges breaking their silence.
“No pardon can change the tragic truth of what happened on January 6, 2021,” said Judge Tanya Chutkan, another Obama appointee, in a brief order granting the dismissal of one rioter’s criminal case. “The dismissal of this case cannot undo the ‘rampage [that] left multiple people dead, injured more than 140 people, and inflicted millions of dollars in damage.’ … And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.
“In hundreds of cases like this one over the past four years, judges in this district have administered justice without fear or favor,” she added. “The historical record established by those proceedings must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.”
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing for U.S. Attorney General in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on January 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee Pam Bondi vowed she would remove politics from the Department of Justice during the first day of her confirmation hearing, though her refusal to answer key questions about Trump’s 2020 election loss and his outspoken desire for retribution raised concerns about how she would execute her promise.
With a second day of her hearing set to resume on Thursday, Bondi is expected to glide through confirmation and take on the role of the country’s top law enforcement officer, tasked with implementing Trump’s longstanding desire to reshape the Department of Justice that brought two criminal cases against him before his election.
“The partisanship, the weaponization, will be gone. America will have one tier of justice for all,” Bondi said, vowing that, “There will never be an enemy’s list within the Department of Justice.”
While Bondi sought to reassure the Senate Judiciary Committee about her independence from Trump and desire to usher in a “new golden age” of the DOJ, her refusal to say that Trump lost the 2020 election, defense of her past statement that “prosecutors will be prosecuted,” and openness to investigate Special Counsel Jack Smith prompted skepticism from Democratic members of the committee.
If confirmed, Bondi would lead the DOJ with recently expanded power after the Supreme Court last year ruled that interactions between a president and attorney general are immune from prosecution.
“The fear and the concern we have is that the incoming president will use that loaded weapon, that immunity to commit crimes through the Department of Justice,” said Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff.
Here are five key takeaways from the first day of Bondi’s confirmation hearing:
Bondi vowed to keep politics out of prosecutions, but keeps the door open to investigating Jack Smith
Accusing President Joe Biden of coordinating political prosecutions, Bondi said that she would only bring cases based on “facts and law” and said she has not discussed starting investigations of Trump’s enemies with the president-elect.
“No one will be prosecuted, investigated because they are a political opponent. That’s what we’ve seen for the last four years in this administration. People will be prosecuted, based on the facts and the law,” Bondi said.
However, when pressed about Trump’s claim that special counsel Jack Smith should go to jail, Bondi declined to answer whether she would open an investigation into Smith before suggesting his conduct is “horrible.”
“Senator, what I’m hearing on the news is horrible. Do I know if he committed a crime? I have not looked at it,” said Bondi, who added that “it would be irresponsible … to make a commitment regarding anything.”
In his final report issued earlier this week, Smith denied Trump’s accusation that his work was in any way political — describing the accusation as “laughable” — and assuring Attorney General Merrick Garland that his work followed the “rule of law” and DOJ guidelines regarding political interference.
Bondi declined to answer key questions about Trump’s election denialism, vow to pardon Jan. 6 defendants
Bondi — who helped Trump spread distrust in the outcome of the 2020 election — notably declined to say that Trump lost the 2020 election, raising concerns from Democratic senators in light of Trump’s alleged use of the Department of Justice to illegally retain power after his defeat.
“Are you prepared to say today, under oath, without reservation, that Donald Trump lost the presidential contest to Joe Biden in 2020?” Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin asked.
“Joe Biden is the president of the United States. He was duly sworn in, and he is the president of the United States. There was a peaceful transition of power. President Trump left office and was overwhelmingly elected in 2024,” Bondi said, repeatedly refusing to offer a yes or no answer to the question.
Bondi also refused to condemn Trump’s baseless claim that “massive fraud” corrupted the 2020 election. When asked about Trump’s call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he asked him to “find” 11,780 votes, Bondi said she has not listened to the entirety of it, but suggested Trump’s comments were taken out of context.
Bondi also declined to comment about Trump’s vow to pardon the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, during his first day in office, telling the committee she would defer to Trump and declining to weigh in on the proposed pardons because she has not read every defendants’ case file.
“Senator, I have not seen any of those files. Of course, if confirmed and if asked to advise the president, I will look at each and every file. But let me be very clear in speaking to you, I condemn any violence on a law enforcement officer in this country,” Bondi answered.
Bondi avoided answering if she would disobey an unlawful order from Trump
When pressed by Democratic Sen. Chris Coons about dropping a criminal case if someone in the White House directed her to, Bondi declined to entertain the hypothetical.
“What I can tell you is my duty, if confirmed as the attorney general, will be to the Constitution and the United States of America, and the most important oath, part of that oath that I will take are the last four words, ‘So help me God.’”
Bondi at one point answered “of course” when asked if she would be willing to resign if asked to do something improper.
“Senator, I wouldn’t work at a law firm, I wouldn’t be a prosecutor, I wouldn’t be attorney general if anyone asked me to do something improper and I felt I had to carry that out,” Bondi said.
Schiff, who had multiple heated exchanges with Bondi, expressed skepticism that she could avoid confrontation with Trump, considering his past attorneys general.
“You may say that you believe that conflict will never come, but every day, week, month and year of the first Trump administration demonstrated that conflict will come. Jeff Sessions may not have believed it would come to him. It came to him. Bill Barr may not have believed it would come to him. It came to him. It came to everyone,” Schiff said. “It will come to you and what you do in that moment will define your attorney generalship.”
Bondi vowed to reform the DOJ but provided few specifics of her plans
Bondi told senators that she aspired to “restore confidence and integrity” in the DOJ after what she called a weaponization of the justice system to target Trump. She vowed that if confirmed, she would answer to the people of the U.S., not the president.
“My oath would be to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. The people of America would be my client,” Bondi said.
While her vow to remove politics from the DOJ were cheered on by Senate Republicans, Bondi offered few details about how she would implement her plan across the department’s 115,000 employees. Bondi attempted to defend her 2023 statement that “prosecutors will be prosecuted,” telling the Committee that she would only bring cases against “bad” prosecutors.
Bondi appears poised to be confirmed by the Senate, as attention turns to Kash Patel
While Senate Democrats raised concerns about Bondi’s refusal to acknowledge Trump’s 2020 loss and lack of commitments, her confirmation appears all but assured.
“I know how to count and I know how to read tea leaves. It seems to me you’re very, very, very, very likely to be confirmed, and certainly look forward to working with you and your office,” said Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla towards the end of the hearing.
After the hearing on Wednesday, a few Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee avoided saying exactly how they’d vote on Bondi’s confirmation, though Sen. Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the “odds are in her favor.:
“I would say the odds are in her favor with the majority of the Senate floor. I don’t know if a single Republican is going against her. We’re still going to ask the tough questions today and tomorrow,” Durbin said.
With Bondi unlikely to face a serious challenge to her confirmation, Senate Democrats instead turned their attention to Trump’s pick to run the FBI, Kash Patel. Bondi said she looks forward to working with Patel — calling him the “right person” for the job and defending his qualifications — and denying the idea that either she or Patel would maintain a list of enemies or break the law.
“What I can sit here and tell you is Mister Patel, if he works with running the FBI — if he is confirmed, and if I am confirmed, he will follow the law if I am the attorney general of the United States of America, and I don’t believe he would do anything otherwise,” Bondi said.
Republican Rep. Mike Turner on Sunday refuted claims that the massive overhaul of the federal government by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) constitutes a federal crisis.
“Elon Musk goes about his job, which is a very important job, I mean the fact that we have Elon Musk looking from the private sector into the public sector, advising the president in ways that we can find ways to to reduce overall spending, to get this curve down is incredibly important and an unbelievable opportunity for for our government,” Turner said in an exclusive interview with co-anchor Martha Raddatz on “This Week.”
President Donald Trump tasked Musk with cutting federal spending through DOGE. Since Trump took office, Musk’s controversial task force has encouraged federal workers to leave their jobs and slashed many programs and agencies.
“In this instance, we have Elon Musk and the president of the United States going over to the bureaucracy and saying, ‘We’re going to tame you. We’re going to pull you back under the executive branch. We’re going to look at ways in which we can find savings, and we’re going to bring this spending curve down,'” Turner said.
Turner said that DOGE’s drastic cuts to the federal government will assist in meeting spending goals. The federal government is currently operating under a continuing resolution that was negotiated in December. The resolution is set to expire in March and without a new deal, the government will shut down.
Turner said: “This administration is taking an immediate assessment of where are we spending our funds and where do we need to spend them? And in order to do so, they need to take a stop, they need to take a critical view and let the American public know that their monies are being spent around the world, and they need to determine how they need to be spent in the way that advances U.S. interests and do so in a way that we can balance the budget.”
DOGE’s purge of the federal government resulted in the shuttering of the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Trump administration placed all USAID direct-hire employees on administrative leave effective Friday, but a federal judge late Friday blocked the move and reinstated some 500 USAID workers who had already been put on administrative leave and ordered that no USAID employees should be evacuated from their host countries before Feb. 14 at 11:59 p.m.
Turner said federal agencies needed fiscal and policy reviews.
“We’ve had USAID that has been separate from, really, the ambassador structure and our embassy structure. Commerce has been separate. DOD has been separate. You know, taking a view where we, how do we merge these back so we have one voice in foreign policy.”
But while Musk has made baseless claims of fraud within USAID, Turner emphasized the importance of the agency’s work.
“USAID is not a criminal enterprise, and people who work for the government have an important job to do, and they need to be honored,” he said.
Current and former officials warn that dismantling USAID could create a global vacuum that could be filled by U.S. adversaries like China. However, Turner, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said that he does not believe China will act.
“They’re not going to come in and start providing aid of this nature. They don’t have the heart for it,” he said. “They don’t have the goals and objectives for it. This is not what they do.”
Additionally, on Tuesday Trump announced in a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. “will take over” the Gaza Strip. Trump outlined a scenario in which Palestinians would be relocated and the U.S. would own and rebuild Gaza. Experts warn that rhetoric like this could rattle the fragile ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
Turner said Trump’s language does not worry him, but it might be distracting.
“I think it does pose the challenge of focusing on the fact that Hamas and the Palestinians and the terrorist structure that’s there needs to be dismantled, that Israel does deserve and need a peaceful structure.” Turner said.
