December 18, 2024 - Presidential transition news

Our live coverage of the Trump administration’s transition has ended for the day. Follow the latest updates or read through the posts below.

With government funding facing significant uncertainty ahead of the Friday deadline, the White House Office of Management and Budget will be sending additional guidance to federal agencies on shutdown preparations in the coming days, an administration official told CNN.

This is the part of the OMB document detailing the mandatory, but standard process for government shutdowns. It states: “OMB will hold follow-up communications on a periodic basis until such time as appropriations are enacted or a lapse in appropriations occurs.”

The most up-to-date agency plans for shutdown will be posted here ahead of the deadline.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise was noncommittal about whether the debt ceiling would make it into any deal to avert a government shutdown, as he left the Capitol shortly after Vice President-elect JD Vance.

Scalise insisted they are “going to continue to work through the night, through the morning to get an agreement we can bring to the floor,” however, “we’re not there yet.”

Pressed on how they got to this point, where President-elect Donald Trump came out against a bipartisan, negotiated package, Scalise replied: “We’re working with he and the Vice President to address some of the — he wants to start the presidency on a sound footing, and we want him to as well, and I think that’s one of the things we’re all focused on.”

“There’s a lot we want to do starting in January, but obviously we’ve got to get through this first, and we’re going to get it resolved — hopefully tomorrow, we’ve got to see,” he said.

Asked whether Elon Musk is in charge now, Scalise pushed back.

“No, President Trump is going to be the President of the United States and we’re excited about it,” Scalise said.

Scalise ignored questions about whether Trump called into the meeting.

Tom Homan talks to CNN's Kaitlan Collins on December 18, 2024.

Tom Homan, who Donald Trump has tapped as his incoming administration’s “border czar,” said Wednesday night that plans are underway to deport undocumented immigrants at large scale, and that he’ll need funding from Congress to do so.

In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, he said he will need a minimum of 100,000 beds to detain undocumented immigrants — more than doubling the 40,000 detention beds ICE is currently funded for — and needs more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to carry out the president-elect’s mass deportation plans.

“It all depends on the funding I get from the Hill,” Homan said on “The Source.”

He said he isn’t yet sure how much additional funding Trump’s administration will seek from the Republican-led House and Senate.

Homan also said he would ask the military for help transporting migrants.

“They’re not going to be out arresting people, but they can be a force multiplier in doing things we need to do that doesn’t require a badge and a gun,” he said.

The president-elect announced last month that Homan, who served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump’s first administration, would be the “border czar” in his incoming White House.

Read more on Homan’s plans for the border.

CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this report.

Vice President-elect JD Vance left House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office and told reporters they had a “productive conversation” but said Republicans are still in the middle of negotiations.

Vance left the office with his son.

President-elect JD Vance is now meeting in Speaker Mike Johnson’s office.

Vance earlier joined President-elect Donald Trump in a statement that slammed the bipartisan government spending bill that was unveiled by Johnson on Tuesday night.

The massive spending bill has since been scrapped, according to House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

The US Capitol is seen October 9, 2023.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise confirmed tonight that the current government funding plan that was negotiated by Speaker Mike Johnson is officially scrapped after President-elect Donald Trump came out against it.

Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance sharply criticized the deal and called on Republicans to increase the debt limit as part of the negotiations to keep the government running.

No more announcements are expected from Capitol Hill tonight as GOP leaders scramble to negotiate a fresh deal before the Saturday deadline.

Here’s the latest on the government funding bill:

Here were other developments today:

No updates are expected tonight as Capitol Hill leaders work to negotiate a deal on government funding before the deadline.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is not expected to make any announcements tonight.

“Look, there’s a group of us trying our best to find a way out of the mess, and we’re offering solutions that we think are viable, and ultimately, it’ll be up to the speaker, and we respect that,” senior appropriator GOP Rep. Steve Womack told CNN. “Debt ceiling will be one of the things that we’re negotiating.”

The White House blasted Republicans Wednesday evening — including President-elect Donald Trump and Vice-President-elect JD Vance — for “playing politics” over the government funding deal.

Trump and Vance are demanding lawmakers tie the debt limit to government funding, dramatically increasing the chances of a shutdown.

In a joint statement earlier Wednesday, Trump and Vance called for Republicans in Congress to “pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want,” with Trump later warning any Republican who backed the proposal “should, and will, be Primaried.”

Biden, who’s been in Wilmington, Delaware to mark the 52nd anniversary of the December car crash that killed his wife and daughter, has yet to weigh in himself on the issue.

Elon Musk attends the America First Policy Institute gala at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 14.

Democratic senators railed against House Republicans and Elon Musk for the collapse of a stop gap funding deal that included disaster aid, and expressed concern about how Musk’s influence will affect Congress’s ability to govern over the next four years.

Sen. Bob Casey, who lost his re-election bid, called the package’s implosion “bizarre, disturbing, and dangerous.”

He acknowledged that “a lot can happen in 48 hours,” and they still may be able to avert a shutdown, but warned that Musk’s influence will pose a challenge for lawmakers going forward.

“Just the fact they’re even talking about this because of a comment by one person that triggers this kind of result, it doesn’t bode well for the new Congress or the new administration,” he said.

Casey continued, “they’re not going to be able to operate in the manner that we would hope a majority in the House and the Senate and administration would operate, if they’re going to operate based upon the, you know, a puppet master.”

Senator Ben Ray Luján agreed.

“If anyone has any questions as to why the American people are facing a shutdown, they should ask my House Republican colleagues as to what just happened,” he said. “Maybe they can ask the person that posted this on his social media feed and the company that he owns.”

Luján added that he believes they are headed toward a shutdown.

GOP Sens. Tom Tillis of North Carolina and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina stressed the importance of having disaster relief included as part of a bill to avert a government shutdown.

Tillis said Vice President-elect JD Vance understands that.

Tillis and Vance recently toured disaster damage in North Carolina together.

Graham threw cold water on the idea that disaster relief is “pork,” or excess spending.

Speaking to the reality of tackling a debt limit increase, Tillis said he isn’t opposed to the idea, but doesn’t see why Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would be on board with that plan.

On the debt limit increase, Graham said, “I don’t know how this plays into things. I do know this, we don’t want to default. There are a lot of Republicans who never vote to raise the debt ceiling for ideological reasons. So that means you’ve got to get Democrats, and that will be a negotiation.”

Some background: The funding bill that was unveiled Tuesday contained nearly $100 billion in disaster aid and $10 billion more in banking relief for farmers in rural communities.

Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said he’s “very frustrated” with the year-end spending bill coming to a halt in the House under pressure on Speaker Mike Johnson from President-elect Donald Trump and GOP hardliners.

It “would have been very helpful” for Trump to make his demands clear sooner, Cramer said. “Maybe he hadn’t thought about it until just today, but yeah, that would have been very helpful.”

The senator added: “I understand why he wants to raise the debt ceiling now, rather than later. It’s going to be harder later.”

Sen. Rick Scott speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on December 18.

While some GOP lawmakers point out how difficult it would be to quickly reach a debt limit deal, Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said there’s “absolutely” time to deal with the debt limit just two days before a shutdown deadline.

Scott said he would not be comfortable with disaster relief being stripped out of the funding package, but added that disaster aid should “have been a separate bill all along.”

Meanwhile, Independent Sen. Joe Manchin said “it’s a shame” when asked for his view on the current situation and potential that the government could shutdown as the original plan to fund the government collapses.

Manchin argued that the House “is tied in knots” because of how small the majority’s margins are. “The place has to change,” he said, so that the “Speaker’s not threatened every minute of every day with everything that he does.”

House Democrats plan to caucus in the morning, according to a senior Democratic aide.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise confirmed that the current government funding plan is officially scrapped after President-elect Donald Trump came out against it, but Republicans have still not come up with a plan B.

“Yes” Scalise said when asked if the plan that was released on Tuesday has been tossed out.

Scalise said a new agreement has not been reached and confirmed Republicans are still discussing how to tie debt limit increase to government funding, in response to Trump’s last-minute demands.

“Obviously, there’s still a lot of negotiations and conversations going on, but there’s no new agreement,” Scalise said.

Asked if the new deal had a debt limit increase, Scalise said “there is no new agreement right now, just obviously looking at a number of options.”

“We’ve been having some conversations about the debt limit, as relates to the CR. So, you know those are ongoing conversations,” he added.

Scalise said he has not spoken to Trump directly today.

While House Republicans go back to the drawing board after President-elect Donald Trump came out against their end-of-year spending deal, Senate Democrats are committing — for now — to stick with the deal they struck saying that there is an agreement and it’s time to vote.

Democrats were seen in a massive huddle on the Senate floor for several minutes, after which Sen. Chris Coons said he echoed to CNN what Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in the gathering: “We have a deal and we’re sticking with it.”

“We have an agreement they just need to stick to the agreement,” said Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii.

It all adds up to a dramatic escalation in the span of a few hours just as lawmakers were eyeing their holiday exits.

Democratic Whip Dick Durbin said all they needed to do was to vote on the agreement in hand.

House Democratic leadership also met earlier this evening and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries signaled in a statement on X that Republicans should honor the hard-fought agreement released last night.

Sen. Josh Hawley speaks during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on December 5.

Sen. Josh Hawley said he spoke with Donald Trump tonight and the President-elect told him that he was blindsided by House Speaker Mike Johnson’s government spending deal with Democrats.

The speaker’s allies say he has been in touch with the Trump team throughout the process.

Trump is “just learning about it … he’s just reading about it,” Hawley said, adding that Trump called the deal “horrible.”

Hawley took a swipe at Johnson too.

“How’s he going to manage reconciliation if he can’t manage the CR? This is easy,” he said, referring to the fast-track budget process they plan to employ to enact their agenda.

As President-elect Donald Trump makes an 11th-hour play for Republicans to tie the debt limit to government funding, some Republicans are pushing back.

Injecting the politically fraught issue of the US debt limit – which the country is on track to hit after it is reinstated in the new year – two days before the government is set to run out of funding has presented lawmakers with a daunting task and dramatically increased the chances of a shutdown.

Here’s what some Republicans are saying:

Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana said he believes the key to passing government funding is through a clean continuing resolution attached to disaster recovery aid — and said President-elect Donald Trump needs to work the phones to round up the “free-range chickens” in the Republican House.

Earlier, Vice President-elect JD Vance said he and Trump would only support a clean continuing resolution if it’s attached to a debt limit increase.

“I don’t think he’s wrong, but, but it complicates the matter,” Kennedy said.

“We’ve got to stop worrying about who needs to pay more in taxes, and start asking, what the hell happened to all the money?” he said.

“I wouldn’t bet my house on it,” Kennedy said when asked if he believes the government will shut down.

“If Mr. Jeffries sticks to his guns in the House and there are no Democratic votes, then in order to pass the CR, the speaker is going to have to use have all Republican votes. And, as I just said, I mean, he’s going to need help rounding up those free-range chickens,” Kennedy said.

President-elect Donald Trump in a Truth Social post Wednesday threatened that any Republican who does address the debt ceiling limit before his inauguration “should, and will, be Primaried.”

Some background: Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance earlier on Wednesday had slammed the government funding bill, which was negotiated by Republican Speaker Mike Johnson for including what they see as Democratic priorities while also injecting the politically fraught issue of the US debt limit, which the country is on track to hit after it is reinstated in the new year.

The last-minute grenade just days from the shutdown deadline — after a bipartisan deal had already been reached — dramatically increases the risks of a shutdown on Capitol Hill. Top Democrats quickly signaled that they would be unwilling to go along with Trump’s new calls for a “streamlined” spending deal that rips out billions of dollars in policies that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had already negotiated with Johnson.