After months of polls and campaigning, former President Trump showed that he indeed is the leader of the Republican Party and will likely be the nominee. An interesting tidbit: Donald Trump will be the third major party candidate to be nominated three times. The other two are FDR and Richard Nixon. If neither Haley nor DeSantis breakthrough in NH I would expect them both to dropout and endorse Trump.
As discussed below Speaker Johnson has declared that any Senate immigration/border deal that falls short of the House immigration bill, HR 2, will not pass the House. Trump’s move towards the nomination will strengthen his position as the titular head of the Party and increase his role in any big deal on immigration/border and Ukraine/Israel funding. Speaker Johnson will likely need a Trump endorsement to close big deals.
Budget deadline
When the Congress approved the current Continuing Resolution (CR) they accepted the idea of the newly minted Speaker Mike Johnson to have a two-tier deadline for the 12 budget bills. The first covers the less critical bills: Ag, Energy and Water, MilCon-VA, Transportation and HUD that are scheduled to expire and cause a government shutdown on Friday. Under the deal announced over the weekend the Friday deadline will be extended until March 1. Under the plan, the remainder of the government departments will see their spending authority expire on March 8.
The deal was agreed to by Speaker Johnson and Senate Leader Schumer with support from House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Republican Leader McConnell. The support of Jeffries is critical to passage as some of the Freedom Caucus Republicans will oppose the plan, making House Democratic support necessary to pass the package. Over the weekend 86 year old Republican Kentucky Representative Hal Rogers had an auto accident and is recovering, bringing the House Republican membership down to 218 and House Democrats standing at 213 Members. With the Congress this closely divided it makes party line votes nearly impossible. The House Republican majority relies on 18 Members who hold seats in districts carried by President Biden in 2020. These Members know that a government shutdown, blamed on Republicans, will hurt their re-election efforts.
While Speaker Johnson appears willing to break with the most conservative Members of the Republican conference on the budget, he has taken a strong stance against the immigration/border proposal that is being finalized in the Senate between Republicans and Democrats. The Speaker made clear to his Republican colleagues that he plans to insist on their bill, HR 2, that passed the House last year on a party line vote with every Democrat voting NO. With President Trump’s big win in Iowa, and move to clinching the nomination, support among Republicans in Congress for the Trump border policies is going to grow making compromise tougher. It also increases the uncertainty over the future of aid to Ukraine and Israel since the future of military aid in the Senate has been tied to relief at the border.
With the resignations and illnesses that plague the Republican majority they can only afford to lose two votes on any party line measure, and with an embolden President Trump Speaker Johnson has a lot of competing forces as he works to keep the government open, provide aid to Ukraine and Israel, deal with growing crisis at the border, and help Members in swing districts as Republicans look towards a tough race to keep their narrow House majority.
