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In today’s edition … Sen. Bob Menendez holds a news conference today … How a podcast could transform U.S. labor law … but first …
On the Hill
The reality behind a motion to discharge a short-term funding bill
Setting the scene: Absent the passage of a stopgap spending bill, the government will shut down in six days.
The House and the Senate aren’t back in town until Tuesday night in observance of Yom Kippur.
In the House: When the House gets back, lawmakers won’t consider a bill to avert a shutdown temporarily, known as a continuing resolution, or CR. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is hoping progress on four appropriations bills will buy enough goodwill to pass a CR in his conference.
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They include the defense and agriculture funding bills — which some Republicans have blocked in the past — as well as the homeland security and State Department funding bills. (In a troubling sign for McCarthy, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) announced over the weekend that she’ll vote against the measure because the Defense funding bill includes $300 million in “blood money” for Ukraine.)
Such a strategy is unlikely to prevent a government shutdown starting Oct. 1.
In the Senate: When the Senate gets back Tuesday, Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) will try to pass a CR to keep the government open until November or December.
- The details of the Senate CR are still being hammered out, including exploring options to fund Ukraine so that it’s not a supplemental as a way to ease some Republican concerns, according to two people familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal deliberations.
But the Senate’s strategy could run into a dead end in the House.
Even if the Senate sends the House a CR this week, McCarthy is unlikely to bring it up for a vote, multiple Republican aides said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal party dynamics and conversations.
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- “I don’t think he could” put a Senate CR on the floor, one House Republican aide said.
- The reason: It would not pass with just Republican votes, and relying on Democrats could cost McCarthy his job.
Even though McCarthy has been unable to fund individual appropriations bills or a CR through his narrow majority with only Republican votes, he’s unwilling to work with Democrats because Republican hard-liners — the same hard-liners who have blocked spending bill after spending bill — have said they would trigger a motion to depose him.
The escape hatch
There is a potential escape hatch if the government shuts down.
It’s called the discharge petition — a procedural tactic with which a majority of the House can bypass McCarthy and force a vote on legislation on the floor — and it could be used to bring a CR up for a vote if McCarthy won’t do it.
While neither McCarthy nor House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) is explicitly talking up a discharge petition, it would need the tacit support of the speaker as well as Jeffries’ buy-in.
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It could be a backdoor way for McCarthy to move a CR without being directly responsible for it.
- “The speaker either has to have implicit support for a discharge petition or he’s lost control of the majority,” said one former aide steeped in House procedure.
McCarthy has said signing on to a discharge petition and voting against a rule — a procedural vote to move on to a bill — are both ways of betraying the party.
But Republicans who are contemplating partnering with Democrats to sign on to a discharge petition dismiss the accusations from some on the right that it would be a betrayal, according to multiple people present for a conference meeting last week where the issue was discussed. They note that the hard-right members have already violated McCarthy’s guidelines by taking down three rules in as many months.
The status of the discharge petition
Bringing a discharge petition to the floor is a lengthy process, but fortunately for the lawmakers discussing the strategy, there’s already one available. It’s the one Democrats moved earlier this year as a safety valve should Republicans fail to lift the debt limit.
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All House Democrats have already signed it. Just five Republicans are needed to sign on to force it to the floor — if no Democrats remove their names.
Unfortunately for advocates of the strategy, a discharge petition is complicated procedurally. Just two have become law. And there’s no way to bring a discharge petition to the floor before Oct. 1.
- Once a discharge petition has 218 signatures, House rules dictate that the lawmakers who signed it must wait seven legislative days before one of them can move forward.
- Then the lawmaker can call up the discharge motion “at a time or place, designated by the Speaker, in the legislative schedule within two legislative days after the day on which a Member whose signature appears thereon announces to the House an intention to offer the motion.”
Discharge details
We reported bipartisan discussion about the possibility of using a discharge petition early last week, and since then, Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) — two of the 18 House Republicans who represent districts President Biden carried in 2020 — told our friends at NBC News on the record that they are considering backing it.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who has been saying for weeks that Republicans should work with Democrats to keep the government open, told us this weekend that he's willing to sign a discharge petition “if I like the bill they're discharging.”
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The legislation tucked into a discharge petition could be the Senate CR or a proposal by the Problem Solvers Caucus that would extend government funding, provide money for border security and aid for Ukraine and create a commission to address debt.
Or it could be something else.
What’s clear is, there is not a lot of time to figure it out.
What we're watching
On the Hill
We are watching Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who is expected to hold a news conference in New Jersey today after he and his wife, Nadine Menendez, were charged with bribery on Friday in what prosecutors allege was “a corrupt scheme involving gold bars, stacks of cash and using the senator’s powerful position to secretly benefit the Egyptian government,” as our colleagues Perry Stein, Devlin Barrett and Isaac Stanley-Becker write.
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He’s already stepped down as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as required by Senate Democrats’ rules. Will he announce that he won’t run for reelection next year?
Much of the New Jersey Democratic establishment has called on Menendez to step aside. Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, who stood by Menendez during his last indictment, in 2015, in which he was cleared because of a hung jury, has yet to say anything about Menendez this time.
Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), who cleaned up the Capitol in his suit after the rioters left on Jan. 6, 2021, wasted no time and immediately announced that he’ll run for Senate.
Republicans believe they have an opening in New Jersey — which Biden won by nearly 16 points in 2020 — if Menendez remains on the ballot. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), who switched parties during the Trump administration, has publicly floated the idea of running.
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Thursday: The House Oversight Committee will hold its first hearing on the Biden impeachment inquiry. Witnesses haven’t been announced yet, but the hearing is titled “The basis for an impeachment inquiry of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.” and marks the opening of the impeachment inquiry despite the House not yet voting to officially launch one.
At the White House
Biden will host a summit with Pacific island leaders today as part of his administration’s years-long effort to counter China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific. The leaders are expected to discuss climate change, the economy and public health during the two-day summit. However, all eyes will be on Biden when he establishes diplomatic ties with the Cook Islands and Niue, two South Pacific nations.
But Washington’s charm offensive may have already hit a roadblock.
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- “Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, who has deepened his country’s ties with China, will skip the summit,” Reuters’s David Brunnstrom, Trevor Hunnicutt and Kirsty Needham report.
- Vanuatu Prime Minister Meltek Sato Kilman Livtuvanu will also miss the summit, per the Associated Press’s Aamer Madhani.
On Tuesday, Biden is heading to Michigan, where he’s expected to make history by joining striking United Auto Workers members on the picket line. Then he’s off to San Francisco for a fundraiser. (The end of the third fundraising quarter is on Saturday.)
On Wednesday, Biden will meet with members of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. He’ll headline two more fundraisers before heading to Phoenix.
On Thursday, Biden will give a speech honoring John McCain, his late Senate colleague, and sneak in one more fundraiser before heading back to Washington.
The campaign
Republican presidential candidates will debate on Wednesday, this time at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. Since last month’s debate in Milwaukee, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, once seen as former president Donald Trump’s top rival, has fallen in the polls, while Trump remains in a dominant position despite the four indictments against him.
Trump won’t attend Wednesday’s debate, opting instead to deliver a prime-time speech to union workers in Detroit.
We’re watching whether former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley performs as well in the second debate as she did in the first — and whether DeSantis can break through in a way that could revitalize his campaign.
In the agencies
How a podcast could transform U.S. labor law
Our colleague Jeff Stein is out this morning with a look at how a lawsuit brought against two former sports-talk radio hosts could test new guidance from the National Labor Relations Board about noncompete clauses and transform U.S. labor law as we know it. Here’s an excerpt:
- In May, one of Biden’s NLRB appointees “published legal guidance finding that overly broad ‘noncompete’ agreements can violate federal labor law,” Jeff writes. “Issued by the agency’s general counsel, the guidance does not yet have the force of law. But because Democrats hold a majority on the NLRB, it suggests a major change in federal policy may be on the way once the panel takes up the matter.”
- And that has given hope to Jake Kemp and Dan McDowell, the Dallas-area talk hosts who are being sued by their former employer. “At stake is not just the future of the co-hosts’ musings about the Dallas Cowboys schedule and Disney casting controversies, but also the status of millions of other workers across the country affected by noncompete clauses that many economists believe unfairly restrict workers’ options.”
In the states
The latest on the UAW strikes
The UAW strike against the Big Three Detroit automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — enters its 11th day today. Here’s what you need to know:
- Biden and Trump will be in Michigan: “Biden’s Michigan visit — which labor experts say is probably the first time a sitting president has visited a strike in at least 100 years — will come a day before his expected rival in the 2024 presidential race, Trump, plans to deliver his own speech to hundreds of union members in Michigan,” our colleagues Lauren Kaori Gurley, Jeanne Whalen, Erica Werner and Wali Khan report.
- Americans may begin to feel the effects of the strikes: The UAW expanded its strike to 38 GM and Stellantis parts warehouses on Friday. These warehouses send parts to dealerships and auto body shops for vehicle repairs. The strike escalation adds 5,600 autoworkers to the picket line and “could mean cars that need repairs are stuck at dealerships or body shops ‘for two months, for three months, when it should be there for two or three weeks, because they can’t get a part,’” Pete DeVito, a member of a union that represents workers at car dealerships, told NPR’s Camila Domonoske.
The Media
Must reads
From The Post:
From across the web:
- Deal! WGA, AMPTP reach historic contract agreement to end 146-day writers strike. By Variety’s Cynthia Littleton, Kate Aurthur, Matt Donnelly and Gene Maddaus.
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