The Israel funding/IRS defunding bill just passed, with some Democratic help. It won’t pass in the Senate, but the fact that it passed complicates pretty much all of the funding fights.
New Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is off to a wobbly start in his first, short week of being in charge of a legislative body, and he’s bringing some really bad ideas that aren’t going to improve things. For a very good part of Wednesday, leadership didn’t know if they had the votes they needed to pass the Legislative Branch appropriations bill scheduled for the day. It probably didn’t help that Johnson’s very first daily management meeting as speaker didn’t happen until 4:00 PM ET.
He got past that hurdle with help from four Democrats, and the evening progressed with no one being censured or expelled when a bipartisan group killed the resolution against Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Democrats withdrew their resolution to censure Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and a majority decided to let the Ethics Committee finish their work with New York Republican Rep. George Santos before they move to expel him.
