Johnson strikes his first bipartisan deal — a $1.7T funding accord

Congressional leaders have clinched a deal on overall budget totals that could pave the way for a broader government funding compromise in the coming weeks — further enraging Speaker Mike Johnson’s right flank.

The bipartisan agreement sets defense funding at $886 billion for the current fiscal year, in line with the total President Joe Biden and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiated as part of last summer’s debt ceiling package. In a big win for Democrats, the accord pegs non-defense funding at nearly $773 billion, a total that counts tens of billions of dollars agreed to alongside the debt limit package.

Lawmakers have just 12 days to negotiate and finalize bill text before cash for many federal agencies expires on Jan. 19, while funding for the rest of the government runs out on Feb. 2, including for the military and the biggest domestic programs. A shutdown remains possible, with a host of thorny policy issues still unresolved, as well as conservative demands to attach GOP border reforms to spending legislation.

Non-defense budgets would remain roughly flat, amounting to a less than 1 percent decrease compared to current funding. Military programs would see about a 3 percent increase.

In a letter to House lawmakers on Sunday, the speaker celebrated $16 billion in extra spending cuts he negotiated beyond the terms of the debt agreement, for a total of $30 billion less than Senate lawmakers sought in the funding bills they have drafted. The new funding accord is still far higher than fiscal conservatives have demanded, however, risking Johnson’s good standing among his House Republican conference and raising the specter of a government shutdown.

The speaker acknowledged in his letter that the funding levels “will not satisfy everyone, and they do not cut as much spending as many of us would like.” But he called the deal “the most favorable budget agreement Republicans have achieved in over a decade,” noting that the bipartisan accord will allow GOP lawmakers to put their mark on federal budgets, rather than running the government on the “Schumer-Pelosi” deal struck before Republicans claimed the House majority last year.

Lawmakers will have to work incredibly fast — federal cash for the departments of Agriculture, Transportation, Energy, Veterans Affairs and more expires on Jan. 19. Funding for the rest of the government, including the biggest domestic programs and the Pentagon, runs out on Feb. 2. A shutdown remains very possible, with a host of thorny policy issues for congressional leaders to work through in extremely limited time, including conservative demands to attach GOP border reforms to spending legislation and Republican ultimatums holding up Biden’s separate request for more than $100 billion to aid Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

Johnson also forecast partisan clashes in the coming weeks on policy issues like funding for abortion, saying in his letter that the agreement gives GOP leaders “a path” to “fight for the important policy riders” included in the funding bills House Republicans have drafted.

White House budget director Shalanda Young said GOP leaders have been “working in good faith to prevent a shutdown.” But she predicted Johnson is likely to face revolt within his conference, complicating endgame negotiations and increasing the odds of a funding lapse.

“So while I think leadership understands this is a bad path, the question is: Can they hold back the floodgates?” Young told reporters during an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor on Friday.

"History has shown us that leadership can work in good faith, and then they go into a raucous conference room after a trip to the border,” said the OMB director, who previously served as the House’s top appropriations aide. “And then the sentiment of … 'We'll shut the government down. We control the money,' wins out the day.”

The deal on a government funding framework, a critical first step quietly negotiated by Schumer and Johnson’s staffs, comes after House conservatives spent the better part of last year trying to undo the budget totals established by last summer’s bipartisan debt ceiling accord.

Conservatives have fought for months to deeply slash spending beyond the bipartisan funding levels Biden and McCarthy negotiated, even ousting McCarthy from the speakership in part for cutting that deal with Democrats. Their efforts, however, have so far fallen short.

Indeed, the arrival of a new speaker has yielded a funding agreement that many Democrats would argue is actually a far better outcome for domestic programs than the cuts that could be triggered by last summer’s bipartisan debt law.

If Congress doesn’t override those triggers, a short-term funding patch would spur defense funding cuts of about 1 percent at the beginning of May, while non-defense accounts would be slashed by an estimated 5 percent. A 9 percent cut to domestic programs would be exacted if Congress fully funds the government without negating that sequester.

The fiscal conservatives who have pushed House Republican leaders all year to negotiate funding cuts to the non-military side of the budget are insistent that their new speaker use the sequestration threat as leverage to force other spending concessions from Democrats.

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Lebanon airport screens display anti-Hezbollah message after being hacked

BEIRUT — The information display screens at Beirut’s international airport were hacked by domestic anti-Hezbollah groups Sunday, as clashes between the Lebanese militant group and the Israeli military continue to intensify along the border.

Departure and arrival information was replaced by a message accusing the Hezbollah group of putting Lebanon at risk of an all-out war with Israel.

The screens displayed a message with logos from a hardline Christian group dubbed Soldiers of God, which has garnered attention over the past year for its campaigns against the LGBTQ+ community in Lebanon, and a little-known group that calls itself The One Who Spoke. In a video statement, the Christian group denied its involvement, while the other group shared photos of the screens on its social media channels.

“Hassan Nasrallah, you will no longer have supporters if you curse Lebanon with a war for which you will bear responsibility and consequences,” the message read, echoing similar sentiments to critics over the years who have accused Hezbollah of smuggling weapons and munitions through the tiny Mediterranean country’s only civilian airport.

Hezbollah has been striking Israeli military bases and positions near the country’s northern border with Lebanon since Oct. 8, the day after the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza began. Israel has been striking Hezbollah positions in return.

The near-daily clashes have intensified sharply over the past week, after an apparent Israeli strike in a southern Beirut suburb killed top Hamas official and commander Saleh Arouri.

In a speech on Saturday, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a speech vowed that the group would retaliate. He dismissed criticisms that the group is looking for a full-scale war with Israel, but said if Israel launches one, Hezbollah is ready for a war “without limits.”

Hezbollah announced an “initial response” to Arouri’s killing on Saturday, launching a volley of 62 rockets toward an Israeli air surveillance base on Mount Meron.

The Lebanese government and international community have been scrambling to prevent a war in Lebanon, which they fear would spark a regional spillover.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said the hack briefly disrupted baggage inspection. Passengers gathered around the screens, taking pictures and sharing them on social media.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a monthlong war in 2006 that ended in a draw. In the early stages of the war, Israel bombed Lebanon’s airport and put it out of commission.

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Biden’s top priority for a second term: Abortion rights

President Joe Biden’s day one priority if he earns a second term?

“First of all: Roe,” deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks said Sunday during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“The president has been adamant that we need to restore Roe. It is unfathomable that women today wake up in a country with less rights than their ancestors had years ago,” Fulks said.

Biden has been poised to run on what has been described as the strongest abortion rights platform of any general election candidate as he and his allies look to notch a victory in the first presidential election since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022.

The president, who is Catholic, has described himself as personally not "big on abortion" because of his faith, but the landmark 1973 decision "got it right,” he said over the summer. And he’s slammed court rulings limiting abortion access and fought efforts to restrict the availability of abortion pills.

Last month, Biden seized on a case in Texas, where a woman, Kate Cox, was denied an abortion despite the risk to her life posed by her pregnancy.

“No woman should be forced to go to court or flee her home state just to receive the health care she needs,” Biden said of the case. “But that is exactly what happened in Texas thanks to Republican elected officials, and it is simply outrageous. This should never happen in America, period.”

When abortion rights are on the ballot, they win with voters across the political spectrum — though they don’t always boost Democratic candidates on ballots advocating for them, a POLITICO analysis found.

Still, as the Biden campaign works to turn the focus of the election away from the president himself and on to the threat posed by the possibility of Trump’s return to power, the attention on abortion rights — which Trump had a hand in through his Supreme Court nominees — is expected to continue to be a focal point of the campaign.

“Look, the president understands that this election isn't about him: it's about the American people,” Fulks said Sunday.

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DNC blasts NH Dems over ‘meaningless’ primary

The Democratic National Committee is blasting New Hampshire Democrats for selecting delegates for the state's “meaningless” unsanctioned presidential primary.

The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee fired off a letter to New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley ahead of the state party’s delegate caucuses Saturday warning that the process had not been approved and that no delegates or alternates would be awarded based on the results of the unofficial primary.

“Non-compliant processes can disenfranchise and confuse voters,” Minyon Moore and Jim Roosevelt Jr., the co-chairs of the Rules and Bylaws committee, wrote to Buckley in the Friday letter shared first with POLITICO.

The upcoming primary is “detrimental” and “meaningless,” they wrote, and “the NHDP and presidential candidates should take all steps possible not to participate.” The committee asked the state party to submit a “compliant” delegate selection plan by Jan. 15.

Buckley, the New Hampshire Democratic Party chair, dismissed the pushback as "nothing new."

"They've been saying that for a year, yet we persist," he said.

New Hampshire is holding an unsanctioned Democratic primary in just over two weeks after state and national Democrats failed to agree on the order of this year’s nominating calendar.

President Joe Biden and the DNC pitched South Carolina, a more diverse state that propelled Biden to the nomination in 2020, for the lead-off spot. But Republicans who control New Hampshire’s government refused to change the law that says the state must hold its primary a week before any similar contest. The secretary of state scheduled the primary for Jan. 23. South Carolina’s Democratic primary is Feb. 3.

Biden skipped putting his name on the ballot for New Hampshire’s primary as a result. His allies in the state are now waging a write-in campaign on his behalf.

New Hampshire Democrats continued with business as usual by scheduling delegate-selection caucuses for Biden and longshot challengers Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) and self-help guru Marianne Williamson on Saturday.

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On Jan. 6 anniversary, DeSantis accuses Democrats of waving ‘bloody shirt’

DES MOINES, Iowa — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis chided Democrats and the media on the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol by contending they have used the attack as a “bloody shirt” to “impugn” Americans.

DeSantis has been repeatedly asked — by the media as well as voters at his campaign stops in the state this week — about Jan. 6. He has called the attack a “riot” but his comments Saturday on Fox News may mark the first time he has leaned into a term associated with the political battles held in the immediate shadow of the Civil War.

“It’s one thing to say ‘ok you know these things shouldn’t have happened’ but it’s another thing to wave the bloody shirt and try to impugn tens of millions of Americans as a result of that,” said DeSantis, who then smacked President Joe Biden for his focus on Jan. 6.

“[Biden] had a chance to be a uniter for this country but he has failed,” said DeSantis, who eventually added: “At some point are we going to move on and focus on the people’s issues? … This is not on the top of the mind for voters.”

The term “wave the bloody shirt” is a reference to the rhetoric used in the late 19th century following the four-year war that ripped the nation apart. It has been viewed as a critical term thrown against politicians, primarily Republicans, who referred to the losses of the war while campaigning.

DeSantis was sharply critical of the Jan. 6, 2021 riots in the immediate aftermath. But he would eventually lambast Democrats — and the congressional committee investigating the attacks — by saying they were trying to “smear” Trump supporters. On the first anniversary of the attacks, he rejected defining the riots as an “insurrection” because no one has been charged with any crimes that fit that definition.

Now two years later, DeSantis has been pushed to talk about Jan. 6 after two states blocked Trump from the primary ballot by relying on a clause in the 14th amendment that bars some people from holding public office if they “engaged in insurrection.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to consider whether the states have the power to disqualify Trump from the ballot. DeSantis has predicted the high court will rule against Colorado and Maine and he criticized the push to disqualify Trump by saying it violated the due process rights of the former president. Trump is currently facing federal charges that he tried to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“How do you get to say then that someone should be off the ballot absent a conviction, not only for him but for anyone?” DeSantis told reporters following a Friday campaign stop in the small town of Cumming. “That opens up Pandora’s box.”

At that same stop, DeSantis was asked by an Iowa voter whether Trump had engaged in an insurrection on Jan. 6. He didn’t directly answer the question and instead said that no one had been charged with insurrection.

DeSantis is challenging Trump for the GOP presidential nomination but has struggled to gain traction and is viewing Iowa as a make-or-break state.

The comments by DeSantis on Jan. 6 are still in stark contrast to Trump, who brought up the attacks during a rally he held in Sioux City. He said that “there was Antifa and there was FBI,” at the riot. He added that those who had been imprisoned for their roles that day were “hostages.”

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Azerbaijan taps former oil industry leader to head this year's climate talks

Azerbaijan has selected its minister of ecology — a former state oil executive — to helm the United Nations climate talks later this year, in a move that stands to fuel debate about the oil and gas industry's role in international negotiations aimed at reducing fossil fuel use.

Mukhtar Babayev worked for the country’s state-owned oil company SOCAR for nearly 25 years before taking his current post as minister of ecology and natural resources in 2018.

It marks the second year in a row that an official with ties to the fossil fuel industry will oversee global climate negotiations, following the controversial COP28 presidency of Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber during the climate talks that ended last month in the United Arab Emirates.

Al-Jaber, who leads the UAE's state-run oil company, faced backlash from climate advocates and lawmakers who feared that his connections to the industry created a conflict of interest.

COP28 ended with a broad agreement to transition away from oil, gas and coal, the first time fossil fuels had been mentioned in the final outcome of climate talks over nearly 30 years. But the agreement failed to include language calling for a phase-out of fossil fuels, due in large part to opposition from oil- and gas-reliant countries

Several experts and climate leaders have called for an overhaul of U.N. rules to prevent oil companies from shaping the annual climate conferences.

“Given the enormous conflict of interest, oil industry executives should not be allowed to heavily influence, much less preside over, the summit,” Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist who works at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times last month.

After Babayev's appointment, Mann said in a post on X: “It appears that the @UNFCCC folks REALLY didn’t take to heart our suggestions," referring to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

It’s up to the host country to select the president of the talks, and it’s not unusual for the minister of environment or ecology to be tapped as president-designate. It is unusual for that official to be a veteran oil executive.

That may owe to Azerbaijan’s status as a petrostate, with its economy highly dependent on the production and sale of its fossil fuel resources. Oil and gas supports around 90 percent of the country’s export revenue and finances around 60 percent of its government budget, according to the International Energy Agency.

It is the third oil exporter to host the annual U.N. climate talks after Egypt and the UAE.

Azerbaijan's deputy foreign minister, Yalchin Rafiyev, will serve as lead negotiator of the talks, which begin in November.

Babayev’s chief of staff, Rashad Allahverdiyev, confirmed the appointments and said countries, observer groups and the U.N. climate secretariat had been notified of the selection.

Babayev, 56, has a degree in political science from Moscow State University and another degree in foreign economic relations from Azerbaijan State University of Economics, according to his profile on the ministry’s website.

During a plenary speech in Dubai, he said Azerbaijan aimed to cut its climate pollution 35 percent by 2030 and 40 percent by 2050. It has also set a goal of increasing its renewable energy capacity to 30 percent of its national energy mix this decade.

“As the impacts of climate change become increasingly evident, we acknowledge the necessity to unite our efforts, catalyze global cooperation and ensure that our actions are aligned with the gravity of the situation,” Babayev said.

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Ramaswamy wants the US out of NATO

Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has told multiple people he would withdraw the U.S. from NATO as president, the furthest anyone vying for the Oval Office has gone on the idea of ending America’s role in the alliance.

The remarks made to different groups experts and supporters, detailed to POLITICO by three people familiar with his comments, signal NATO’s days may be numbered if Ramaswamy or someone who shares his general worldview, like former President Donald Trump, wins the election in November.

Last October, Ramaswamy told POLITICO the idea of the U.S. leaving NATO was “reasonable,” but stopped short of supporting taking the U.S. out of the 31-nation bloc. Such a move would hobble the alliance and threaten NATO’s ability to serve as a credible deterrent force against Russia. It could also usher in the largest transatlantic crisis in decades, leading to questions from Europe, North America and even Asia about America’s willingness to defend or support allies in moments of need.

But Ramaswamy, who has also floated taking the U.S. out of the United Nations, has privately held the view that it’s past time to remove the U.S. from NATO. Asked about his comments out of the spotlight, Ramaswamy’s campaign spokesperson Tricia Mclaughlin declined to comment directly on what he would do regarding NATO, but didn’t deny the candidate’s stance.

“Vivek has serious concerns that most NATO allies fail to meet their military investment commitments and will reevaluate our own support as necessary. He also believes that post Cold War NATO expansionism has unnecessarily increased the risk of major conflict with Russia,” she said.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have taken action to prevent the end of America’s prominent spot in NATO. Congress approved a bill that stops any president from unilaterally ending America’s participation in the alliance, which considers an attack on one member as an attack on all. The only time NATO acted on that was after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, leading allies to join American forces in Afghanistan to root out al-Qaeda.

It’s unlikely Ramaswamy will have the opportunity to order the withdrawal from behind the Resolute Desk. Polls show him a distant fourth in national polls and nowhere near winning in Iowa and New Hampshire.

But Ramaswamy is not the only NATO-wary Republican candidate. As president, Trump discussed taking the U.S. out of the alliance and may yet to do so if he reenters the Oval Office. “We have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally reevaluating NATO's purpose and NATO's mission,” reads his campaign website.

It’s possible Ramaswamy joins a Republican administration, especially Trump’s, as he has remained in the frontrunner’s good graces and is close with Tucker Carlson, a staunch Trump supporter. Ramaswamy has taken positions that appeal to the MAGA base, like making a deal with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine, cutting economic ties with China and ending American military adventures abroad. He has occasionally run afoul of U.S. foreign policy orthodoxy, such as when he suggested ending aid to Israel — even after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

Ramaswamy, however, isn’t looking for a complete removal of the United States from world affairs. He has promoted military strikes on Mexican drug cartels to curb the spread of fentanyl, and has warned other countries, namely China, that if they wade deeper into the Western Hemisphere, they will “have hell to pay.”

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