What happened
House Republicans abandoned a stopgap spending package Wednesday evening after President-elect Donald Trump told them to kill the bipartisan legislation and replace it with a more pared-down package that cut out Democratic priorities and also raised the debt ceiling. Trump’s new demands, paired with threats of retribution, made a Christmastime government shutdown likely.
Who said what
The carefully negotiated spending package, introduced by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Tuesday, would have funded the government at current levels until March 14 and included $100.4 billion for natural disaster survivors. Johnson’s late addition of $10 billion in aid to farmers “opened the door to a slew of unrelated demands by Democrats to ensure the bill could pass the House and Democratic-led Senate,” The Washington Post said.
Trump’s “opposition to what was considered must-pass legislation,” and especially his “almost unrealistic” debt-ceiling demand, “reinjected a sense of chaos and political brinkmanship that was reminiscent of his first term in office,” The Associated Press said. Trump weighed in after Elon Musk “used his social network X to stir Republicans into a frenzy,” posting “100-plus tweets” attacking the legislation, often using “misleading or outright false claims,” Politico said.
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