GOP scraps government funding bill after Trump demands changes

Some Trump allies in the House are now openly calling for a government shutdown after Speaker Mike Johnson’s effort to pass the bipartisan spending deal collapsed due to President-elect Donald Trump’s opposition.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote, “I’m all in,” on X, in response to a post from former Speaker Newt Gingrich saying that Trump and Republicans should not be afraid of a shutdown. “The government can shut down all the way until Jan 20th as far as I’m concerned,” Greene wrote. January 20 is the day that President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated.

Greene added a warning shot to Speaker Johnson, writing, “WE MUST STAND FIRM WITH THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO STOP THE MADNESS!! No matter what. Even if we have to elect new leadership.”

Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee posted to X, “Shut it down.”

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina posted an image to X with text that reads “Shut. It. Down.” In the same post, she wrote, “At this point if there is no plan, let the September CR lapse and let’s reset Jan. 20th.”

President Joe Biden speaks to reporters as he departs the White House enroute to Wilmington, Delaware, on December 17, in Washington, DC.

After campaigning against Donald Trump as a grave threat to democracy, President Joe Biden says it’s not his concern that Trump doesn’t “abide by the rules of the democracy we’ve established,” and Biden again committed to a smooth transition of power — including attending Trump’s inauguration.

“Of course I am,” Biden said, asked in an interview with MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas if he would attend the ceremony after Trump skipped his. “The only president ever to avoid inauguration is the guy who’s about to be inaugurated.”

Asked about inviting Trump to the Oval Office after November’s election, Biden said it was “how we’re supposed to be,” even after Trump tried to subvert the 2020 election.

Biden pointed to Trump relenting on FBI background checks for some of his cabinet picks, but said the bottom line “is that we can’t keep this up.”

“We can’t keep up this childish game of walking away when you don’t agree and not cooperating,” Biden said.

Donald Trump and JD Vance attend a remembrance ceremony on the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 terror attack on the World Trade Center at Ground Zero, in New York City on September 11.

President-elect Donald Trump and Vice-President elect JD Vance slammed the continuing resolution put forward by House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Johnson is scrambling to avoid a government shutdown when the funding deadline runs out after members of his own party retched up criticism of his plan to fund the government. Trump and Vance repeated many of those criticisms in their statement.

“Republicans must GET SMART and TOUGH. If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, then CALL THEIR BLUFF,” Trump and Vance’s statement read.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise speaks at a news conference in the Capitol Visitor Center on Tuesday, December 10.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters that leadership made “real progress” last night toward a funding deal but offered no details on the emerging measure.

Asked if he has spoken to President-elect Donald Trump, Scalise said: “We’ve been talking to a number of people, people in the coming Trump administration, Democratic counterparts, colleagues in the House.”

Asked about how Republicans would proceed without Democrats’ support, Scalise said: “I think if you see a deal come together in the House and passes, it’s likely going to pass in the Senate too.”

He didn’t answer if he has spoken with Elon Musk.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and his GOP leadership team are privately discussing a narrow spending package that would attempt to jam Democrats and force them to accept a debt limit deal with no concessions — setting up a dramatic showdown even before Donald Trump comes into office.

GOP leaders are mulling a plan that would include a “clean” debt limit with a mostly “clean” stopgap bill, with only disaster relief and farm aid attached, according to multiple GOP sources. It would strip out other key provisions Johnson and Democrats had already agreed to, such as the policy provisions related to the Baltimore bridge and RFK stadium.

Johnson is going to try to sell this plan to others in the conference this morning, many of whom are skeptical of addressing debt limit now.

But multiple Democrat sources said that this framework would be difficult for them to swallow. And without a huge number of Democratic votes, it’s not clear how the plan would pass the GOP-led House.

The emerging spending plan — which came out of late-night meetings with senior spending leaders and conservatives — still remains highly fluid, those sources cautioned.

But some Republicans believe it could be a much-needed exit plan for Johnson, who has faced blowback across the party for his negotiations with Democrats this week.

House majority whip Tom Emmer declined to answer questions about whether the GOP would be tackling the debt limit in its spending plan and whether they would put a bill on the floor today.

Asked whether members would be able to go home for Christmas, Emmer told CNN: “The situation as it currently stands is extremely fluid.”

House Minority Whip Katherine Clark attends a news conference with House Democratic Caucus leaders in the Capitol Visitor Center on Tuesday, November 19.

Democratic Minority Whip Katherine Clark said the onus is Republicans to find a solution after the continuing resolution tanked Wednesday and that the blame would be on them if the government shuts down.

Seeming to refer to Elon Musk, Clark added, “But we have a billionaire calling the shots for the GOP, and we’ll see what they do today. This is up to them.”

Speaker Mike Johnson will meet with a small group of GOP members at 9:30 a.m. ET, according to a GOP source, as he races to find a path forward on a funding deal that can win Donald Trump’s approval.

It’s not yet clear who will attend. Johnson did not answer questions from reporters about where things stand, just about 40 hours away from a shutdown.

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Republicans will carry the political consequences if the government does shut down after Friday at midnight.

“House Republicans have unilaterally decided to break an agreement that would provide support for everyday Americans, keep the government open and avoid a government shutdown. if you break an agreement, you own the consequences,” Jeffries told reporters.

Jeffries will huddle with his Democratic members this morning, as well.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury speaks during a roundtable discussion on June 11 in Washington, DC.

Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury said “you cannot run the world’s greatest democracy by tweet” in response to the scraping of the government funding plan, that was negotiated by Speaker Mike Johnson, after President-elect Donald Trump came out against it.

The New Mexico representative continued, “We’re less than 48 hours away from a government shutdown, 72 hours. And you cannot run the world’s greatest democracy by tweet. And so we need some serious grownups at the table. And Mike Johnson needs to come back and meet with our leadership and have serious negotiations again.”

Stansbury said the current funding fight has nothing to do with the debt ceiling, saying, “What we know is that Donald Trump plans to do a tax reconciliation bill in the coming weeks and months, and they’re looking for room in the budget so that he can give big tax giveaways to his billionaire friends. And we know that that’s really kind of the backstory here.”

When discussing who would deserve the blame if a shutdown happens, Stansbury said a shutdown would be on Mike Johnson’s watch rather than on President Joe Biden. She said it “shows the inherent weakness of the GOP right now.”

President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on December 16.

President-elect Donald Trump has blown up the carefully negotiated, bipartisan government funding package by demanding that congressional Republicans increase the debt ceiling as part of the measure. He slammed GOP lawmakers for having agreed to a deal in 2023 that suspended the debt limit until January.

He also wrote on Truth Social: “Everything should be done, and fully negotiated, prior to my taking Office on January 20th, 2025.”

Here’s what Trump is talking about:

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 tells 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.”

Every department and agency has its own set of plans and procedures for a shutdown. The plans include:

Those plans can vary from shutdown to shutdown.

Government agencies had to prepare multiple times for a shutdown during the last fiscal year since Congress repeatedly punted approving a full funding plan before finally passing one in March.

The impact of a shutdown differs each time, but the consequences could be felt early. Previous shutdowns have closed national parks and museums, wreaked havoc on the Internal Revenue Service just before the start of the tax filing season and delayed some federal lending to homebuyers and small businesses, among other impacts. However, some agencies can continue certain operations from other sources of funding.

Remember: President-elect Donald Trump presided over the longest government shutdown in four decades during his first term. The 35-day standoff, which shuttered part of the government, ended in January 2019, when Trump agreed to a temporary funding measure that did not include billions of dollars for a border wall.

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

President-elect Donald Trump is very familiar with government shutdowns — during his first term, some federal operations ceased for 35 days, the longest in four decades.

Trump raised the odds of another government shutdown starting on Saturday after scuttling Congress’ recent bipartisan spending agreement by harshly criticizing it.

There were actually two shutdowns in 2018, with the more significant one beginning just days before Christmas. Funding lapsed for roughly a quarter of the government, including the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development, after Congress and the White House failed to reach a deal over Trump’s demand for $5 billion for a border wall.

The standoff ended on January 25, 2019, when Trump agreed to a temporary funding measure that reopened the government but did not include money for the border wall. However, the shutdown wreaked havoc for many Americans and federal employees, including causing flight delays, canceling immigration hearings and making it harder for some families to obtain student loans.

President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago on December 16, in Palm Beach, Florida.

While Donald Trump is returning to the White House with sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution, that won’t necessarily keep him out of the courtroom or free from testimony under oath.

Nearly a dozen civil suits at the trial-level in federal court have Trump as a defendant. The lawsuits — including a defamation case from the Central Park Five, eight lawsuits over Trump’s role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol and two cases related to the clearing of racial justice protesters from the park outside the White House in June 2020 — are likely to hang over his presidency.

And the president-elect’s own legendary litigious streak continues this week, with the newly filed lawsuit against the Des Moines Register and a pollster who predicted he would lose Iowa, which he didn’t. This adds to other pending lawsuits he’s filed against media outlets, and he has threatened more.

Cases Trump has brought: It’s unclear when Trump will be under oath again. Trump’s legal exposure in current lawsuits may be minimal for several months, if not years.

Earlier this week, Trump narrowly avoided testifying in a lawsuit where he had sued ABC News. The case settled days before he and anchor George Stephanopoulos were to sit for depositions, with ABC News agreeing to donate $15 million to Trump’s future presidential foundation and museum and $1 million for his legal fees to end the case. It was a rare win for Trump in cases he’s brought.

Trump as a civil defendant: The January 6 lawsuits — where eight different individuals or groups are seeking to hold Trump accountable for injuries people suffered in the attack on the Capitol — are still in a phase where Trump provided written answers to just a few dozen questions. A federal judge in Washington, Amit Mehta, is likely to decide this year if Trump will have immunity for his actions on January 6.

Read more on Trump’s civil cases here.

President-elect Donald Trump dined with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk Wednesday night, a source familiar told CNN.

CNN previously reported that Trump and Bezos were scheduled to meet at Mar-a-Lago Wednesday.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Welcome to the new Washington of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

The president-elect and the world’s richest man combined Wednesday to smash a short-term spending compromise orchestrated by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson to keep the government open until early in Trump’s new term.

The stop-gap measure is packed with nearly $100 billion in aid for Americans hit by multiple national disasters, economic aid for farmers, a federal commitment to rebuild Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge and a criminalization of revenge porn.

But the Trump-Musk blocking maneuver plunged the capital into one of its classic year-end crises, pitched Johnson’s hopes of keeping his job into extreme doubt and offered a preview of the chaos that may churn in Trump’s second term.

A sense of turmoil was exacerbated by the 10th straight day of losses on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, matching a mark set in the Ford administration. The selloffs underlined a volatile national moment and some of the economic challenges Trump may face after the Federal Reserve warned that inflation will tick up next year.

The sabotaging of Johnson’s funding initiative triggered shock and confusion on Capitol Hill. But for many of Trump’s supporters and boosters in the conservative media who are anticipating massive cuts to federal programs, the mayhem is the point. Even if the impasse leads to a damaging government shutdown, that may represent progress for some since the government itself is viewed with disdain on the populist right. And by taking aim at the Washington status quo even before he takes the oath of office, Trump is doing exactly what he said he’d do on the campaign trail.

But the sudden imbroglio also highlighted one of the key issues facing Trump in his second term: If he wants to pass his tax cuts, push through his immigration overhauls, defend the country and leave a meaningful legacy, he will have to find some way to govern – even if that draws him into conflict with base voters and MAGA ideologues who seem happy to burn government to the ground.

Read Collinson’s analysis here.

The US Capitol is seen on the night of October 9, 2023.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise confirmed Wednesday night that the current government funding plan that was negotiated by Speaker Mike Johnson was 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.

Here’s the latest on the government funding bill:

Here were other developments on Wednesday:

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise confirmed Wednesday that the current government funding plan was 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 did not to Trump directly Wednesday.

Pete Hegseth walks with his wife Jennifer Rauchet after a meeting in the Russell Senate Office Building on December 17.

GOP Sen. Roger Wicker, the incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNN that his panel will hold its confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s defense secretary pick, on January 14.

A group of Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee has argued in a new letter that claims against Hegseth disqualify him as defense secretary.

“We write to express deep concerns about whether Pete Hegseth’s attitudes toward women, including allegations of sexual assault and harassment, disqualify him to be the next Secretary of Defense,” the Democrats, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, wrote Tuesday in a letter to Susie Wiles, Trump’s incoming chief of staff.

CNN’s Rashard Rose and Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.

In this photo illustration, the TikTok app is seen in the app store on a phone on March 13 in New York City.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to decide whether a controversial ban on the social media app TikTok violates the First Amendment, adding a major case to its docket this term just before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The high court agreed to expedite the case and hear arguments on January 10.

TikTok’s appeal to the Supreme Court will thrust the justices into a high-profile fight between Congress, which has cited national security concerns over China’s control of the app, and the platform’s users and executives, who argue that the ban violates the First Amendment.

What makes this decision different: Underscoring the significance of the case over TikTok’s fate, the court’s handling of the social media company’s appeal was unusual — and unusually fast.

In most cases — even emergency cases — the court reviews written briefings from both sides before deciding whether to hear arguments on its regular docket. In this case, it dispensed with that procedure and agreed to hear the appeal immediately.

In announcing it will hear arguments over the constitutionality of the law banning TikTok unless it divests from Chinese ownership, the court also said it was deferring its consideration of whether to temporarily block the ban until the day of oral arguments, suggesting the justices could issue a ruling in the case mere days before the law is set to take effect on January 19.

Remember: Congress passed the ban with bipartisan support earlier this year, and President Joe Biden signed it into law in April. It came in response to years of concern in Washington that TikTok’s Chinese parent-company poses a national security risk.

Trump met with the head of TikTok at his Mar-a-Lago club Monday afternoon, a person familiar with the meeting told CNN. Earlier in the day, he said he had a “warm spot” for the app.

Matt Gaetz attends the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 16.

The House Ethics Committee secretly voted earlier this month to release its report into the conduct of former Rep. Matt Gaetz before the end of this Congress, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter.

The report is now expected to be made public after the House’s final day of votes this year as lawmakers leave Washington for the holidays, those sources said.

The vote, which has not previously been reported, amounts to a stark reversal for the panel after it had voted along party lines in late November not to release the results of the investigation. The decision to release the report suggests that some Republicans ultimately decided to side with Democrats on the matter, and it is unclear if the committee will once again change course now that it has voted.

Remember: When the committee voted last month to shelve the report, Gaetz was President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be attorney general. Since then, Gaetz withdrew himself from consideration for the Senate-confirmed post, though he maintains frosty relations with many in his party and is still active in GOP politics.

The Ethics Committee’s report concludes a years-long probe into numerous allegations against Gaetz, including whether he engaged in sexual misconduct, used illicit drugs, “shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use, and/or accepted a bribe, improper gratuity, or impermissible gifts,” according to an announcement by the panel last summer.

Gaetz did not immediately respond to a request for comment on this story. He has vigorously denied all the allegations.

Read more about the vote and allegations against Gaetz.