The vote was 74-24. It came after funding had expired for the agencies at midnight, but the White House sent out a notice shortly after the deadline announcing the Office of Management and Budget had ceased shutdown preparations because there was a high degree of confidence that Congress would pass the legislation and the president would sign it on Saturday.

“Because obligations of federal funds are incurred and tracked on a daily basis, agencies will not shut down and may continue their normal operations,” the White House statement said.

Prospects for a short-term government shutdown had appeared to grow Friday evening after Republicans and Democrats battled over proposed amendments to the bill. Any successful amendments to the bill would have sent the legislation back to the House, which had already left town for a two-week recess.

But shortly before midnight Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a breakthrough.

“It’s been a very long and difficult day, but we have just reached an agreement to complete the job of funding the government,” Schumer said. “It is good for the country that we have reached this bipartisan deal. It wasn’t easy, but tonight our persistence has been worth it.”

While Congress has already approved money for Veterans Affairs, Interior, Agriculture and other agencies, the bill approved this week is much larger, providing funding for the Defense, Homeland Security and State departments and other aspects of general government.

The House passed the bill Friday morning by a vote of 286-134, narrowly gaining the two-thirds majority needed for approval. More than 70% of the money would go to defense.

The vote tally in the House reflected anger among Republicans over the content of the package and the speed with which it was brought to a vote. House Speaker Mike Johnson brought the measure to the floor even though a majority of Republicans ended up voting against it. He said afterward that the bill “represents the best achievable outcome in a divided government.”

In sign of the conservative frustration, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., initiated an effort to oust Johnson as the House began the vote but held off on further action until the House returns in two weeks. It’s the same tool that was used last year to remove the last Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy of California.

The vote breakdown showed 101 Republicans voting for the bill and 112 voting against it. Meanwhile, 185 Democrats voted for the bill and 22 against.

Rep. Kay Granger, the Republican chair of the House Appropriations Committee that helped draft the package, stepped down from that role after the vote. She said she would stay on the committee to provide advice and lead as a teacher for colleagues when needed.

Johnson broke up this fiscal year’s spending bills into two parts as House Republicans revolted against what has become an annual practice of asking them to vote for one massive, complex bill called an omnibus with little time to review it or face a shutdown. Johnson viewed that as a breakthrough, saying the two-part process was “an important step in breaking the omnibus muscle memory.”

Still, the latest package was clearly unpopular with most Republicans, who viewed it as containing too few of their policy priorities and as spending too much.

“The bottom line is that this is a complete and utter surrender,” said Rep. Eric Burlison, R-Mo.

It took lawmakers six months into the current fiscal year to get near the finish line on government funding, the process slowed by conservatives who pushed for more policy mandates and steeper spending cuts than a Democratic-led Senate or White House would consider. The impasse required several short-term, stopgap spending bills to keep agencies funded.

The first package of full-year spending bills, which funded the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and the Interior, among others, cleared Congress two weeks ago with just hours to spare before funding expired for those agencies.

When combining the two packages, discretionary spending for the budget year will come to about $1.66 trillion. That does not include programs such as Social Security and Medicare, or financing the country’s rising debt.

To win over support from Republicans, Johnson touted some of the spending increases secured for about 8,000 more detention beds for migrants awaiting their immigration proceedings or removal from the country. That’s about a 24% increase from current levels. Also, GOP leadership highlighted more money to hire about 2,000 Border Patrol agents.

Democrats, meanwhile, are boasting of a $1 billion increase for Head Start programs and new child care centers for military families. They also played up a $120 million increase in funding for cancer research and a $100 million increase for Alzheimer’s research.

“Make no mistake, we had to work under very difficult top-line numbers and fight off literally hundreds of extreme Republican poison pills from the House, not to mention some unthinkable cuts,” said Sen. Patty Murray, the Democratic chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on that committee, appealed to her GOP colleagues by stating that the bill’s spending on non-defense programs actually decreases even before accounting for inflation. She called the package “conservative” and “carefully drafted.”

“These bills are not big spending bills that are wildly out of scope,” Collins said.

The spending package largely tracks with an agreement that then-Speaker McCarthy worked out with the White House in May 2023, which restricted spending for two years and suspended the debt ceiling into January 2025 so the federal government could continue paying its bills.

Shalanda Young, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told lawmakers that last year’s agreement, which became the Fiscal Responsibility Act, will save the federal government about $1 trillion over the coming decade.

___

Associated Press congressional correspondent Lisa Mascaro and staff writers Farnoush Amiri and Chris Megerian contributed to this report.

The post Senate passes $1.2 trillion funding package in early morning vote, ending threat of partial shutdown first appeared on Federal News Network.

The House approved the measure by a vote of 314-108, with opposition coming mostly from the more conservative members of the Republican conference. Shortly before the vote, the House Freedom Caucus announced it “strongly opposes” the measure because it would facilitate more spending than they support.

Nevertheless, about half of Republicans joined with Democrats in passing the third stopgap funding measure in recent months. The action came a few hours after the Senate had voted overwhelmingly to pass the bill by a vote of 77-18.

The measure extends current spending levels and buys time for the two chambers to work out their differences over full-year spending bills for the fiscal year that began in October.

The temporary measure will run to March 1 for some federal agencies. Their funds were set to run out Friday. It extends the remainder of government operations to March 8.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president would sign the resolution and urged Republicans to quit wasting time on partisan spending bills.

“House Republicans must finally do their job and work across the aisle to pass full-year funding bills that deliver for the American people and address urgent domestic and national security priorities by passing the President’s supplemental request,” Jean-Pierre said.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has been under pressure from his right flank to scrap a $1.66 trillion budget price tag he reached with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer earlier this month for the spending bills. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said the continuing resolution passed Thursday will facilitate that agreement, and urged colleagues to vote against it.

“It’s Groundhog Day in the House chamber all the time, every day, yet again spending money we don’t have,” Roy said.

Johnson has insisted he will stick with the deal, and centrists in the party have stood behind him. They say that changing course now would be going back on his word and would weaken the speaker in future negotiations.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said Americans expect Congress to govern and work in a bipartisan fashion.

“Some of my colleagues would see that this government would shut down and don’t care how hurtful that would be,” DeLauro said.

House Republicans have fought bitterly over budget levels and policy since taking the majority at the start of 2023. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., was ousted by his caucus in October after striking an agreement with Democrats to extend current spending the first time. Johnson has also come under criticism as he has wrestled with how to appease his members and avoid a government shutdown in an election year.

“We just needed a little more time on the calendar to do it and now that’s where we are,” Johnson said Tuesday about the decision to extend federal funding yet again. “We’re not going to get everything we want.”

Most House Republicans have so far refrained from saying that Johnson’s job is in danger. But a revolt of even a handful of Republicans could endanger his position in the narrowly divided House.

Virginia Rep. Bob Good, one of eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy, has been pushing Johnson to reconsider the deal with Schumer.

“If your opponent in negotiation knows that you fear the consequence of not reaching an agreement more than they fear the consequence of not reaching an agreement, you will lose every time,” Good said this week.

Other Republicans acknowledge Johnson is in a tough spot. “The speaker was dealt with the hand he was dealt,” said Kentucky Rep. Andy Barr, noting the constraints imposed by the party’s slim majority.

In Thursday afternoon’s vote, 107 House Republicans voted to keep federal agencies funded and 106 voted against the measure. To almost lose the majority of his conference underscores the challenges facing the new speaker and signals the difficulty he will have in striking a deal that will not alienate many of his GOP colleagues. They are clamoring for deeper non-defense spending cuts and myriad conservative policy mandates.

Meanwhile, 207 Democrats voted for the resolution and only two voted against.

The short-term measure comes amid negotiations on a separate spending package that would provide wartime dollars to Ukraine and Israel and strengthen security at the U.S.-Mexico border. Johnson is also under pressure from the right not to accept a deal that is any weaker than a House-passed border measure that has no Democratic support.

Johnson, Schumer and other congressional leaders and committee heads visited the White House on Wednesday to discuss that spending legislation. Johnson used the meeting to push for stronger border security measures while Biden and Democrats detailed Ukraine’s security needs as it continues to fight Russia.

Biden has requested a $110 billion package for the wartime spending and border security.

___

Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri, Lisa Mascaro and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

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The new document from the Enduring Security Framework (ESF) Software Supply Chain Working Group focuses on open source software adoption and things to consider when introducing an open source component to the existing environment. The guidance also covers best practices for Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs) management.

Titled ‘Securing the Software Supply Chain: Recommended Practices for Managing Open Source Software and Software Bill of Materials,’ the guidance expands on a June 2023 memo from the Office of Management and Budget, which directed agencies to begin collecting attestations for critical software and clarified that agencies only have to collect attestations from the producer of the software end product. The document also builds on the previously released series of recommended practices guides for securing the software supply chain.

“This guidance may be used to describe, assess and measure security practices relative to the software lifecycle. Additionally, the suggested practices listed herein may be applied across a software supply chain’s acquisition, deployment and operational phases,” the report stated.

The document delves into open source software management; creating and maintaining a company internal secure open-source software repository;  open-source software maintenance, support and crisis management; code signing and secure software delivery; and SBOM creation, validation and artifacts.

The guidance also highlights seven areas of improvement related to software development and open-source software, including open-source selection criteria, risk assessment, licensing, export control, maintenance, vulnerability response and secure software and SBOM delivery.

Given the complexity of securing the software supply chain, the document will continue to evolve. The working group urges suppliers and developers to track CISA’s website for SBOM updates and clarifications. Additionally, CISA facilitates vulnerability exploitability exchange (VEX) discussions with the SBOM community and has information and resources on defining VEX minimum elements, use cases, and status justifications.

“Understanding the provenance of SBOMs are clearly where rubber hits the road, however organizations need the capability to both consume and proactively use those SBOMs. If they don’t, then SBOMs merely become shelfware until there’s an incident or a known vulnerability. SBOMs are a critical piece of supply chain risk management,” Jon Boyens, the deputy chief of the Computer Security Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told Federal News Network in an interview in October.

“But they’re not a silver bullet, and they require an organization to have a broader and deeper vulnerability management program established in order to really reap the benefits of SBOMs,” he added.

The ESF’s guidance on securing the software supply chain from last year identified SBOMs as a critical to the software acquisition process and recommended that agencies use SBOMs during the evaluation phase of an acquisition.

CISA also facilitates workstreams led by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration on SBOMs-related topics, including cloud and online applications, on-ramps and adoption, sharing and exchanging and tooling and implementation.

Recent high-profile software supply chain incidents, including SolarWinds and Log4J, have promoted organizations to address weaknesses within the software supply chain. President Joe Biden’s cybersecurity executive order released in 2021 established new requirements for securing the federal government’s software supply chain, signaling the beginning of the administration’s commitment to a more secure software supply chain. Earlier this year, the White House released the National Cybersecurity Strategy, which called for the shift of the burden for cybersecurity to vendors and for software providers to introduce more secure software development practices.

The ESF Software Supply Chain Working Group, led by the NSA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), CISA and industry partners is just one of the government-wide efforts to address the need for software supply chain security guidance.

The post NSA, CISA call on software developers, suppliers to improve open source software management practices first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Senate met into Wednesday night to pass the bill with an 87-11 tally and send it to President Joe Biden for his signature one day after it passed the House on an overwhelming bipartisan vote. It provides a funding patch into next year, when the House and Senate will be forced to confront — and somehow overcome — their considerable differences over what funding levels should be.

In the meantime, the bill removes the threat of a government shutdown days before funding would have expired.

“This year, there will be no government shutdown,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said at a news conference after the bill’s passage.

The spending package keeps government funding at current levels for roughly two more months while a long-term package is negotiated. It splits the deadlines for passing full-year appropriations bills into two dates: Jan. 19 for some federal agencies and Feb. 2 for others, creating two deadlines where there will be a risk of a partial government shutdown.

“Everybody is really kind of ready to vote and fight another day,” Republican Whip John Thune, the No. 2 Republican, said earlier Wednesday.

The two-step approach was not favored by many in the Senate, though all but one Democrat and 10 Republicans supported it because it ensured the government would not shut down for now. Sen. Patty Murray, the Washington Democrat who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, voted for the bill but said it would eventually “double the shutdown risk.”

The spending bill also does not include the White House’s nearly $106 billion request for wartime aid for Israel and Ukraine, as well as humanitarian funding for Palestinians and other supplemental requests. Lawmakers are likely to turn their attention more fully to that request after the Thanksgiving holiday in hopes of negotiating a deal.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who crafted the plan, has vowed that he will not support any further stopgap funding measures, known as continuing resolutions. He portrayed the temporary funding bill as setting the ground for a spending “fight” with the Senate next year.

The new speaker, who told reporters this week that he counted himself among the “arch-conservatives” of the House, is pushing for deeper spending cuts. He wanted to avoid lawmakers being forced to consider a massive government funding package before the December holidays — a tactic that incenses conservatives in particular.

But Johnson is also facing pushback from other hardline conservatives who wanted to leverage the prospect of a government shutdown to extract steep cuts and policy demands.

Many of those conservatives were among a group of 19 Republicans who defied Johnson Wednesday to prevent floor consideration of an appropriations bill to fund several government agencies.

GOP leaders called off the week’s work after the vote, sending lawmakers home early for Thanksgiving. It capped a period of intense bickering among lawmakers.

“This place is a pressure cooker,” Johnson said Tuesday, noting that the House had been in Washington for 10 weeks straight.

The House GOP’s inability to present a united front on funding legislation could undercut the Louisiana congressman’s ability to negotiate spending bills with the Senate.

Republicans are demanding that Congress work out government funding through 12 separate bills, as the budgetary process requires, but House leadership has so far been forced to pull two of those bills from the floor, seen another rejected on a procedural vote and struggled to win support for others.

When it returns in two weeks, Congress is expected to focus on the Biden administration’s requests for Ukraine and Israel funding. Republican senators have demanded that Congress pass immigration and border legislation alongside additional Ukraine aid, but a bipartisan Senate group working on a possible compromise has struggled to find consensus.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in a floor speech pledged that Republicans would continue to push for policy changes on the U.S. border with Mexico, saying it is “impossible to ignore the crisis at our southern border that’s erupted on Washington Democrats’ watch.”

One idea floating among Republicans is directly tying Ukraine funding levels with decreases in the number of illegal border crossings. It showed how even longtime supporters of Ukraine’s defense against Russia are willing to hold up the funding to force Congress to tackle an issue that has flummoxed generations of lawmakers: U.S. border policy.

Most Senate Republicans support the Ukraine funding, said Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., but he added, “It is secondary to securing our own border.”

But the U.S. is already trimming some of the wartime aid packages it is sending Ukraine as funds run low, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said from San Francisco, where he accompanied President Joe Biden for a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders.

He said the pot of money available for Ukraine is “withering away, and with it will be a deleterious effect on Ukraine’s ability to continue to defend itself.”

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said in a statement that he voted against Wednesday’s funding package because it did not include aid for Ukraine.

Schumer said the Senate would try to move forward on both the funding and border legislation in the coming weeks, but warned it would require a compromise and implored the House speaker, Johnson, to once again work with Democrats.

“I hope the new speaker continues to choose the bipartisan approach,” Schumer said.

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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Darlene Superville and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.

The post Congress approves temporary funding and pushes the fight over the federal budget into the new year first appeared on Federal News Network.

The package drops aid to Ukraine, a White House priority opposed by a growing number of GOP lawmakers, but increases federal disaster assistance by $16 billion, meeting Biden’s full request. The bill funds government until Nov. 17.

After chaotic days of turmoil in the House, Speaker Kevin McCarthy abruptly abandoned demands for steep spending cuts from his right flank and instead relied on Democrats to pass the bill, at risk to his own job. The Senate followed with final passage closing a whirlwind day at the Capitol.

“This is good news for the American people,” Biden said in a statement.

He also said the United States “cannot under any circumstances allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted” and expected McCarthy “will keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine and secure passage of the support needed to help Ukraine at this critical moment.”

It’s been a sudden head-spinning turn of events in Congress ahead of the midnight funding deadline after grueling days in the House pushed the government to the brink of a disruptive federal shutdown.

The outcome ends, for now, the threat of a shutdown, but the reprieve may be short-lived. Congress will again need to fund the government in coming weeks risking a crisis as views are hardening, particularly among the right-flank lawmakers whose demands were ultimately swept aside this time in favor of a more bipartisan approach.

“We’re going to do our job,” McCarthy, R-Calif., said before the House vote. “We’re going to be adults in the room. And we’re going to keep government open.”

If no deal was in place before Sunday, federal workers would have faced furloughs, more than 2 million active-duty and reserve military troops would have had to work without pay and programs and services that Americans rely on from coast to coast would have begun to face shutdown disruptions.

“It has been a day full of twists and turns, but the American people can breathe a sigh of relief: There will be no government shutdown,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The package funds government at current 2023 levels until mid-November, and also extends other provisions, including for the Federal Aviation Administration. The package was approved by the House 335-91, with most Republicans and almost all Democrats supporting. Senate passage came by an 88-9 vote.

But the loss of Ukraine aid was devastating for lawmakers of both parties vowing to support President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after his recent Washington visit. The Senate bill included $6 billion for Ukraine, and both chambers came to a standstill Saturday as lawmakers assessed their options.

“The American people deserve better,” said House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, warning in a lengthy floor speech that “extreme” Republicans were risking a shutdown.

For the House package to be approved, McCarthy was forced to rely on Democrats because the speaker’s hard-right flank has said it will oppose any short-term funding measure, denying him the votes needed from his slim majority. It’s a move that is sure to intensify calls for his ouster.

After leaving the conservative holdouts behind, McCarthy is almost certain to be facing a motion to try to remove him from office, though it is not at all certain there would be enough votes to topple the speaker. Most Republicans voted for the package Saturday while 90 opposed.

“If somebody wants to remove me because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try,” McCarthy said of the threat to oust him. “But I think this country is too important.”

The White House was tracking the developments on Capitol Hill and aides were briefing the president, who was spending the weekend in Washington.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who has championed Ukraine aid despite resistance from his own ranks, is expected to keep pursuing U.S. support for Kyiv in the fight against Russia.

“I have agreed to keep fighting for more economic and security aid for Ukraine,” McConnell, R-Ky., said before the vote.

Late at night, the Senate stalled when Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., held up the vote, seeking assurances Ukraine funds would be reconsidered.

“I know important moments are like this, for the United States, to lead the rest of the world,” Bennet said, noting his mother was born in Poland in 1938 and survived the Holocaust. “We can’t fail.”

The House’s quick pivot comes after the collapse Friday of McCarthy’s earlier plan to pass a Republican-only bill with steep spending cuts up to 30% to most government agencies and strict border provisions that the White House and Democrats rejected as too extreme. A faction of 21 hard-right Republican holdouts opposed it.

“Our options are slipping away every minute,” said one senior Republican, Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida.

The federal government had been heading straight into a shutdown that posed grave uncertainty for federal workers in states all across America and the people who depend on them — from troops to border control agents to office workers, scientists and others.

Families that rely on Head Start for children, food benefits and countless other programs large and small were confronting potential interruptions or outright closures. At the airports, Transportation Security Administration officers and air traffic controllers had been expected to work without pay, but travelers could have faced delays in updating their U.S. passports or other travel documents.

The White House has brushed aside McCarthy’s overtures to meet with Biden after the speaker walked away from the debt deal they brokered earlier this year that set budget levels.

Catering to his hard-right flank, McCarthy had made multiple concessions including returning to the spending limits the conservatives demanded back in January as part of the deal-making to help him become the House speaker.

But it was not enough as the conservatives insisted the House follow regular rules, and debate and approve each of the 12 separate spending bills needed to fund the government agencies, typically a months-long process. In the Senate, all the no votes against the package came from Republicans.

McCarthy’s chief Republican critic, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, has warned he will file a motion calling a vote to oust the speaker.

Some of the Republican holdouts, including Gaetz, are allies of former President Donald Trump, who is Biden’s chief rival in the 2024 race. Trump has been encouraging the Republicans to fight hard for their priorities and even to “shut it down.”

At an early closed-door meeting at the Capitol, several House Republicans, particularly those facing tough reelections next year, urged their colleagues to find a way to prevent a shutdown.

“All of us have a responsibility to lead and to govern,” said Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York.

The lone House Democrat to vote against the package, Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, the co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, said, “Protecting Ukraine is in our national interest.”

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Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

The post Government shutdown averted with little time to spare as Biden signs funding before midnight first appeared on Federal News Network.

In public overtures and private calls, Republican lieutenants of the embattled speaker pleaded with a handful of right-flank holdouts to resist further disruptions that have ground the House to a halt and back McCarthy’s latest plan to keep government open before next weekend’s Sept. 30 deadline for a shutdown.

Republican Rep. Garrett Graves of Louisiana said the holdouts are “absolutely hallucinating” if they think they can wrap up work without the need for a temporary measure that many of them have shunned before time runs out.

“An important part of this strategy is going to be ensuring that we do everything we can to avoid a government shutdown,” Graves said after a Saturday afternoon conference call with lawmakers.

But in a sign of the deep divisions still ahead, one of the conservative holdouts, Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., walked past the McCarthy allies’ news conference at the Capitol, telling reporters he remained firm in his position.

Asked if he was worried about a potential shutdown, Rosendale said: “Life is going to go on.”

President Joe Biden on Saturday chided the “small group of extreme Republicans” who were threatening a shutdown in which “everyone in America could be forced to pay the price.”

“If the government shuts down, that means members of the U.S. military are going to have to continue to work and not get paid,” he told a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation dinner. “A government shutdown could impact everything from food safety to cancer research to Head Start programs for children. Funding the government is one of the most basic responsibilities of Congress. It’s time for Republicans to start doing the job America elected them to do.”

Congress had largely emptied out for the weekend as the House ground to a standstill, and the White House instructed federal agencies to begin preparing for a possible shutdown. The House Rules Committee held a rare Saturday session to begin setting up the process for next week’s voting.

Time is running out for Congress to act, but McCarthy is pushing ahead with plan urged on by his right flank to start voting on some of the dozen bills needed to fund the various government departments.

Under the current strategy, the House would start voting as soon as Tuesday to advance some of the dozen bills needed to fund the government. Then, with time running short, the House would turn toward a stopgap measure to keep government open for about a month while work continues.

“Well, people have been holding back, not wanting to do anything — now is not the time,” McCarthy said before an afternoon call with his Republican colleagues.

McCarthy said his message to the holdouts was: “You’ve got to stop that.”

At issue is the House conservatives’ drive to undo the deal McCarthy reached with Biden earlier this year setting government funding levels. They are insisting on the lower spending levels McCarthy promised the Republican hardliners in January during his own race to become House speaker. But that would require severe budget cuts to government services and programs even other Republicans don’t want to make.

Even if McCarthy can secure Republican support to move forward next week on the first four bills for the Defense Department, Homeland Security, Agriculture and State and Foreign Operations — and it’s not at all certain he has the votes to do it — it’s a laborious task.

Usually it takes weeks, if not months, to process the big bills and hundreds of amendments. And once those House bills are approved, often in round-the-clock voting, they still would go for negotiations with the Senate, which has its own legislation.

One big issue for debate will be amendments to strip funding for the war in Ukraine being pushed by allies of Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 race for the White House.

As the floor debate potentially grinds on next week, McCarthy and his allies want the holdouts to be prepared to consider a stopgap measure, called a continuing resolution, or CR, to keep the government funded while talks continue.

His plan is for the CR to be at lower levels than the government currently spends, and it would include provisions important to Republicans, including to beef up border security and establish a new debt commission.

But many of the holdouts notably Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a top Trump ally, say they will never vote for any CR — all but ensuring a shutdown, as the former president urges them on.

Exasperated McCarthy’s allies used the megaphone Saturday to broadcast their case to their colleagues, and to Americans watching the standoff in Congress.

“Folks can go out there and create these imaginary solutions,” Graves said. “Anyone who says that we’re going to finish all 12 appropriations bills between now and Saturday is absolutely hallucinating.”

The other option is for McCarthy to work with Democrats to pass a continuing resolution with their votes, and the Senate is preparing such a bipartisan measure that could be sent to the House in a matter of days.

But if McCarthy joins with Democrats, he will almost certainly face a vote from Gaetz and others for his ouster.

___

Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.

The post With House Republicans in turmoil, colleagues implore GOP holdouts not to shut down government first appeared on Federal News Network.

The White House said Biden nominated Michael G. Whitaker, a former deputy administrator at the FAA. He is currently the chief operating officer of a Hyundai affiliate working to develop an air taxi aircraft.

Whitaker’s nomination had been expected for months, and Biden’s announcement was praised by several industry and labor groups.

The FAA, which regulates airline safety and manages the nation’s airspace, has been run by back-to-back acting administrators since March 2022.

The agency faces a number of challenges including a shortage of air traffic controllers, aging technology, and alarm over close calls between planes at major airports. In addition, Congress is deliberating over legislation that will direct the agency’s operations for the next five years.

Whitaker worked as a lawyer for TWA, which was absorbed by American Airlines, spent 15 years at United Airlines, where he became a senior vice president and oversaw international and regulatory affairs, then moved to InterGlobe, a travel company in India.

He was deputy FAA administrator — a job that does not require Senate approval — from 2013 to 2016. He is currently the chief commercial officer for Supernal, a Hyundai subsidiary that is working on an electric-powered air taxi — which would need FAA certification to fly in the United States.

The White House said Whitaker holds a private-pilot license.

Last year, Biden nominated Denver International Airport CEO Phillip Washington, but he withdrew in March after his nomination stalled in the Senate Commerce Committee. Republicans and independent Kyrsten Sinema argued that Washington lacked adequate aviation experience — his background is mostly in city transit systems, having held the Denver airport job only since mid-2021.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who led the GOP opposition to Biden’s first pick, gave a noncommittal statement about the second choice.

“We must carefully evaluate Mike Whitaker’s qualifications, experience, and temperament to determine whether he is the right person to lead the agency at this critical juncture,” Cruz said.

The FAA has lacked a Senate-confirmed leader since early last year, when Stephen Dickson, who was chosen by President Donald Trump, quit midway through his five-year term.

Since then, the agency has been run by two successive acting administrators. The first, Billy Nolen, who left FAA in June to join another air taxi company, Archer Aviation, praised Whitaker’s nomination in a recent interview. “I can’t think of a better choice,” he said. “He will do an amazing job.”

Earl Lawrence, a former senior official at the FAA who now works for Xwing, which is developing pilotless planes to carry cargo, said Whitaker’s appointment would be a win for companies making drones and autonomous aircraft — in part because of Whitaker’s time at Supernal.

“He knows how to support the airlines because he worked at the airlines, and he has worked with the drone folks,” Lawrence said. He will “create the environment that it’s OK to move forward” with new technologies.

A range of industry groups praised Whitaker as somebody they can work with — which could raise questions about FAA independence from the companies it regulates.

Nicholas Calio, president of the trade group Airlines for America, said Whitaker has extensive experience including on modernizing the air traffic system. He said Whitaker appreciates “the collaborative partnership between industry and government” to keep air travel safe.

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, urged the Senate to confirm Biden’s pick quickly. “Whitaker has the experience to step into the role and immediately lead us forward,” she said.

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This story has been corrected to note that FAA has been run by two successive acting administrators, not three.

The post Biden nominates a former Obama official to run the Federal Aviation Administration first appeared on Federal News Network.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy raised the idea of a months-long funding package, known as a continuing resolution, to House Republicans on a members-only call Monday evening, according to those familiar with the private session and granted anonymity to discuss it.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the two leaders had spoken about such a temporary measure. It would extend federal funding operations into December to allow more time to work on the annual spending bills.

“I thought it was a good thing that he recognized that we need a CR,” Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters on a call.

“We hope that our House Republicans will realize that any funding resolution has to be bipartisan or they will risk shutting down the government,” he said.

A stopgap measure that would keep government offices running past the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year is a typical strategy while the Republican-held House and Democrat-held Senate try to iron out a long-term budget agreement. The government’s new fiscal year begins on Oct. 1, when funding approval is needed to avert closures of federal offices.

But this year, the task may prove more politically difficult. McCarthy will need to win over a large portion of his Republican colleagues to pass the stopgap bill or risk political blowback from staunch conservatives if he leaves them behind and cuts a bipartisan deal with Democrats.

Conservatives, including many from the House Freedom Caucus, are usually loathe to get behind short-term funding measures as they push for steeper spending cuts, using the threat of a shutdown as leverage.

Foretelling the political dynamics ahead, many in Congress are bracing for a shutdown.

“It’s clear President Biden and Speaker McCarthy want a government shutdown, so that’s what Congress will do after we return in September. Everyone should plan accordingly,” Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, shortly after the Monday Republican call.

Democrats alongside President Joe Biden don’t necessarily want a shutdown, but they would be quick to blame Republicans for instigating it — arguing that Republicans are the ones driving for spending reductions.

All sides had agreed to budget levels during the recent debt ceiling negotiations when Biden and McCarthy struck a deal that established topline spending levels. But McCarthy’s GOP majority rejects those amounts.

White House deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton was asked Tuesday on Air Force One if Biden is worried about a government shutdown.

“We worked in good faith to negotiate a bipartisan budget agreement a couple of months ago,” Dalton said.

“We’ve upheld our end of the bargain. They’ve upheld theirs, so far. We can expect that to continue.”

The White House had no immediate comment on whether Biden would sign a short-term resolution.

“We don’t believe that there’s any reason we should have to have a government shutdown, that congressional Republicans should bring us to that point,” Dalton said. “We think that we can work together to meet the needs of our country and the urgent needs that we’ve put forward.”

Along with deeper spending reductions, House Freedom Caucus members have also pushed to tie the government’s budget to conservative policy priorities on immigration and security at the U.S. border with Mexico, as well as at the Department of Justice.

Some Freedom Caucus members have embraced the idea of a government work stoppage to force lower spending, though many Republicans disagree with that approach.

Republican Rep. David Joyce, who sits on the Appropriations Committee and oversees its subcommittee on Homeland Security, said in a statement, “Republicans must come together to advance these bills because we cannot risk a government shutdown. When we shut down our government, we communicate to our adversaries that America is vulnerable and threaten the security of our nation.”

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Associated Press writer Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

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Scott had been at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, since Friday, when he was hospitalized for an undisclosed medical issue, according to Senate officials.

In a statement released by Senate President Thomas Alexander, Scott’s family said he “passed away peaceably while surrounded by family and close friends.”

Scott, a Columbia Democrat, operated a realty company and had been in the Legislature for more than 30 years, serving most recently on the Senate’s judiciary, medical affairs and penology committees. First elected to the state House in 1990, he won election to the Senate in 2008 and would have been up for reelection next year. He ran unopposed in the 2020 general election.

Marguerite Willis, who selected Scott as her running mate when she unsuccessfully sought the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2018, told The Associated Press on Sunday that she was with Scott’s family in Charleston when he died, and that she and Scott reflected recently on their campaign.

“John and I were just talking about this a month ago,” Willis said. “We were proud of that, and what it said about harmony and diversity and the importance of having both sexes and two races together. It broadened our vision and our experience, and thus our impact.”

Willis, who said she hadn’t known Scott until they became running mates, said their political affiliation quickly evolved in a close friendship.

“He was a superb supporter of women and women’s issues,” she said. “It was sort of an arranged marriage in a weird way: people put us together, and over the last five years, we became brother and sister. He was my friend and my family.”

A special election will be held to fill Scott’s seat. According to statute, after the Senate’s presiding officer calls for the election, filing opens on the third Friday after the vacancy, with the election to be held roughly three months later. Gov. Henry McMaster said in statement that Scott “will be deeply missed,” and the governor’s office said he would order flags lowered across the state once funeral arrangements were announced.

Scott’s impact reverberated Sunday throughout South Carolina’s Democratic circles. Christale Spain, elected earlier this year as chair of South Carolina’s Democratic Party and one of Scott’s constituents, remembered him as someone who “used his voice in the General Assembly to fight not only for his district but for all South Carolinians and his life’s work on issues of education, healthcare and economic development will have a lasting impact on our state.”

Senate Democratic Leader Brad Hutto remembered Scott’s “tireless work ethic, his willingness to bridge divides, and his unyielding commitment to the principles of justice and equality.”

“A giant tree has fallen,” former Democratic state Sen. Marlon Kimpson, who served alongside Scott before leaving the chamber earlier this year, said Sunday.

State Sen. Gerald Malloy, D-Darlington, remembered Scott as a “numbers man” who was “always a solid voice particularly on financial and numerical matters” in the Legislature, but was even stronger in his faith, serving as a church deacon and often called on to pray at various events.

“John’s OK,” Malloy told AP on Sunday. “Looking back on what he did and his service, the only thing you can really say is that all is well with his soul, and job well done.”

Scott became Malloy’s Senate seat mate after the 2015 death of state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, who was gunned down along with eight parishioners in his downtown Charleston church.

“It will be a sad day to see that black drape on that seat, yet again,” an emotional Malloy said of the funereal cloth used to mark the seats of lawmakers who die during their terms in office. “It’s a reminder as to our humanity, and how precious life is.”

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.

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The president and Gov. Spencer Cox visited the George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center to promote the PACT Act, which is intended to improve health care and disability compensation for exposure to toxic substances, including burn pits that were used to dispose of trash on military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More than 348,000 veterans have had their claims approved in the last year, and about 111,000 who are believed to have toxic exposure have enrolled in health care.

“Everything you can imagine is thrown in these pits and incinerated,” Biden said. “The waste of war, tires, poisonous chemicals, jet fuels and so much more. Toxic smoke, thick with poison, spreads through the air and into the lungs of our troops.”

He said that when troops exposed to burn pits came home — “many of them the fittest and best-trained warriors we ever sent anywhere” — they were not the same.

The issue of veterans care is personal for Biden. He’s long believed that the brain cancer that took the life of his eldest son, Beau, was caused by exposure to burn pits while he served overseas in the Delaware National Guard. The president’s voice caught as he again noted during Thursday’s ceremony that Beau Biden had lived “about 400 yards” from a large burn pit during the year he was stationed in Iraq.

Biden sought to share the credit for the act, noting it cleared Congress with bipartisan support while calling it part of his “unity agenda.”

“Don’t tell me we can’t get things done when we work together,” he said.

The president is winding up a three-state Western swing in which he has been combining events focused on achievements from his first term with campaign fundraisers aimed at helping him win a second in next year’s election.

But the empathetic, deeply personal tone Biden struck Thursday and his praise for bipartisanship were departures from stops earlier this week in Arizona and New Mexico, when he criticized Republicans for failing to support legislation to combat climate change and to increase domestic spending.

Cox also said he wasn’t afraid to work across party lines. He noted that some people wondered if a Republican governor would welcome a Democratic president and responded, “I think it’s insane that we’re having those conversations.” The remark drew applause.

The expansion of benefits has pleased advocates but tested the Department of Veterans Affairs, which has been racing to add staff to handle the influx of applications. The backlog of disability claims, meaning they’ve lingered for at least four months without a decision, is expected to grow from about 266,000 now to 730,000 in April.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough told The Associated Press in a recent interview that the department is ahead of its internal projections and working to process veterans’ claims faster.

“Now that we’ve urged them to come in and file their claims, we want them to continue to have a good experience with us by getting a timely response back to those claims,” he said. “That’s the biggest challenge.”

Although there’s no deadline to apply, anyone who files a claim or simply signals the intent to do so by Monday could collect payments retroactive to last year if the claim is approved. The original cutoff date was Wednesday, but officials extended it because of technical difficulties with the VA website.

Later Thursday, at a fundraiser for his reelection campaign in Park City, Biden entered a crowded home in the style of a mountain lodge, with high ceilings and large windows looking out on mountain vistas. Greeted with applause, he joked that it “must be the altitude.”

The president said that as he rides to events around the country, he sees supporters cheering but also, in some areas, “flags saying Trump with” (and here Biden spelled out a profanity) “and little kids standing there.” Some children have even given him an obscene gesture as he passed, he said.

He said it’s his job to bridge those divides. “If we can’t bring people together, we’re done,” Biden said.

Biden also told the fundraiser “we have China to deal with” and called that country “a ticking time bomb in many cases” but also made clear he wasn’t looking for a fight.

“They’ve got some problems,” he said. “And that’s not good because when bad folks have problems they do bad things.”

On Wednesday, Biden signed an executive order to block and regulate high-tech U.S.-based investments going toward China, reflecting an intensifying competition between the world’s two biggest powers.

The president’s visit to Utah was shadowed by violence. Only hours before Biden arrived in the state on Wednesday, FBI agents fatally shot a man suspected of threatening to kill Biden as they tried to serve a search warrant at the man’s home in Provo, about an hour’s drive south of Salt Lake City. The man had posted online Monday that he had heard Biden was coming to Utah and made fresh threats against the president, according to court documents.

Before Utah, Biden declared a new national monument near the Grand Canyon on Tuesday in Arizona and slammed Republicans for not doing more to combat climate change. His next stop was Albuquerque, New Mexico, which included a fundraiser and a visit to the future site of a factory for building wind towers. The facility had previously produced Solo cups and plastics, but has been shuttered in recent years.

Biden is trying to convince voters that his economic policies, which include tax credits for clean energy, have resulted in new jobs and lower inflation as he runs for reelection. But at Thursday’s fundraiser, he suggested that a sweeping social spending package that he helped champion through Congress last year, the Inflation Reduction Act, may have been misnamed.

“I wish I hadn’t called it that because it has less to do with reducing inflation than it has to do with providing alternatives that generate economic growth,” Biden said. “And so, we’re now in a situation where, if you take a look at what we’re doing in the Inflation Reduction Act, we’re literally reducing the cost of people being able to meet their basic needs.”

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Associated Press writer Will Weissert contributed to this report from Washington.

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The new rules, passed by a 3-2 vote along party lines, also require publicly traded companies to annually disclose information on their cybersecurity risk management and executive expertise in the field. The idea is to protect investors.

Breach disclosures can be delayed if the U.S. Attorney General determines they would “pose a substantial risk to national security or public safety” and notifies the SEC in writing. Only under extraordinary circumstances could that delay be extended beyond 60 days.

“Whether a company loses a factory in a fire — or millions of files in a cybersecurity incident — it may be material to investors,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a statement, noting the current inconsistency in disclosures.

The rules will put “more transparency into an otherwise opaque but growing risk” and may spur improvements in cyber defenses — though potentially posing a bigger challenge for smaller companies with limited resources, Lesley Ritter, senior VP at Moody’s Investors Service, said in a statement.

Technically, the clock doesn’t start ticking on the four-day window for reporting until companies have determined a breach is material.

One of the dissenting Republican commissioners, Hester Peirce, complained that the new requirements overstep the SEC’s authority and “seem designed to better meet the needs of would-be hackers” – who could benefit from detailed info on how companies manage cyberrisk.

As well, Peirce said in a statement, the temptation for the SEC to “micromanage” company operations will only grow.

A leading figure in cybersecurity, Tenable CEO Amit Yoran, heartily welcomed the new rule.

“For a long time, the largest and most powerful U.S. companies have treated cybersecurity as a nice-to-have, not a must have. Now, it’s abundantly clear that corporate leaders must elevate cybersecurity within their organizations,” he said in a statement.

The rules were first proposed in March 2022, when the SEC determined that breaches of corporate networks posed an escalating risk as their digitization of operations and remote work increased — and the cost to investors from cybersecurity incidents rose.

While some critical infrastructure operators and all health care providers must by law report breaches, no federal breach disclosure law exists.

In a new report published by IBM, researchers found organizations now pay an average of $4.5 million to deal with breaches — a 15% increase over the past three years. The Ponemon Institute researchers also found that impacted businesses typically pass the costs on to consumers, who may themselves also be victims with personal information stolen in a breach.

The rule’s passage also comes amid slow-moving, often cryptic disclosures — some through SEC filings — from a major data breach affecting hundreds of organizations caused by the so-called supply chain hack by Russian cybercriminals of a widely used file transfer program, MOVEit. The breach has impacted multiple universities, major pensions funds, U.S. government agencies, more than 9 million motorists in Oregon and Louisiana and companies including the BBC, British Airways, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Many victims of the MOVEit breach were quick to point out that they were failed by a third-party application. The new SEC rule encompasses third-party apps and notes how companies have increasingly relied on outside cloud services for data management and storage.

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The Carter Center, the 39th president’s post-White House organization for advocating democracy and fighting disease in the developing world, did not release a cause of death.

Hugh Carter was among the many extended family members who campaigned alongside Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter and their children early in the 1976 presidential campaign, when the Georgia Democrat was considered a longshot candidate. After Jimmy Carter won, he assigned Hugh Carter the task of curtailing waste among White House staffers. The job earned him the nickname “Cousin Cheap.”

Jason Carter, the former president’s grandson and chairman of The Carter Center’s governing board, called Hugh Carter “crucial in my grandfather’s election” and, without referencing his old nickname, said his cousin “skillfully implemented true zero-based budgeting in my grandfather’s White House.”

Hugh Carter served in the U.S. Army and graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Wharton School of Business and Finance at the University of Pennsylvania.

During the 1976 campaign, the Carter family, friends and supporters from Georgia would fan out to meet as many voters as possible in small groups or one-on-one. Then they would reconvene, discuss their concerns and learn from Jimmy Carter how to relay his positions to the voters.

Hugh Carter was among the aides who helped make the Brigade a near-constant presence in early nominating states. The strategy proved effective: Carter led all Democrats in the 1976 Iowa caucuses and gained momentum over several senators and Washington power players who were unable to catch up with the former Georgia governor.

Once in Washington, Jimmy Carter turned to Hugh to implement various cuts in White House operating costs, some of them unpopular with staff. The president and his cousin turned up the air-conditioner thermostat, reduced the numbers of televisions in White House offices and limited magazine and newspaper subscriptions billed to taxpayers. Hugh Carter even put a freeze on ordering yellow legal pads.

In a 1977 interview with The Washington Post, he explained that the point wasn’t just to save money — such cuts were paltry in the context of all federal spending — but to deliver on his cousin’s promise to make the presidency less entitled and imperious.

He once told The New York Times that, despite some White House staff believing he benefited from nepotism, he and the President “had the understanding that I was to be a normal staff person, that just because I was related to him, I’d be treated no differently.”

Jimmy Carter, 98, remains at home in Plains, Georgia, where he has been receiving hospice care since February.

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In a notice to Congress posted Wednesday, the White House nominated Gen. David W. Allvin to serve as the service’s next chief.

In his long career, which includes more than 4,600 hours flying military aircraft, Allvin has commanded units leading NATO’s air training and combat operations in Afghanistan, he’s led air strategy in Europe and he’s overseen all global air mobility operations, responsible for a fleet of more than 1,000 aircraft that fuel, transport and supply troops around the globe.

If confirmed, Allvin would replace outgoing Gen. CQ Brown, who was tapped by the White House to serve as the next Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Allvin was seen as a frontrunner for the position, having served most recently as the vice chief of staff of the Air Force.

Allvin’s nomination joins hundreds of other top generals awaiting confirmation to move into their new military assignments; each of those posts are currently being held up by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who has put a hold on the confirmation process until DOD revises a policy allowing service members to travel and take time off for reproductive health care.

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The measure seeks to improve air travel, which has been plagued by delays and cancellations during its busiest times, and would reauthorize FAA programs for the next five years. It passed on a mostly bipartisan vote of 351-69.

The Senate is working on its version of the bill ahead of the Oct. 1 deadline for action. The two chambers will have to reconcile differences or else approve a short-term extension of existing FAA programs by then.

The House approval came after a string of votes on contentious issues. Lawmakers voted 243-139 to remove a provision that would have allowed more flight simulator hours to be credited toward the 1,500-hour in-flight requirement to become an airline pilot.

Smaller airlines lobbied for the change, saying it would ease a pilot shortage that is already causing a loss of service to smaller communities. But opponents including pilot unions said the change would undermine safety.

A provision raising the mandatory retirement age for airline pilots from 65 to 67 survived despite opposition from pilot groups.

The House rejected an effort to increase the number of long-haul flights at Reagan Washington National Airport. Delta Air Lines pushed for the increase, joined by lawmakers from cities hoping to get nonstop service to the airport near downtown Washington. Flights to and from the airport are generally limited to 1,250 miles.

Opponents said the airport is already too congested and that adding more flights would lead to more delays. United Airlines, with a major operation at farther-out Dulles Airport, lobbied against the increase in flights at National.

The Senate is behind schedule on its version of the aviation measure, which would authorize more than $100 billion in spending. A committee vote was blocked last month by the disagreement over pilot training.

Many provisions in the House version of the legislation will affect airline consumers, including one that would roll back a Transportation Department regulation from 2011 requiring airlines to show the total price of a ticket upfront in advertising. Airlines could instead provide a link to the all-in price of a ticket.

Consumer advocates oppose the rollback, and the White House took their side Monday, saying full-fare advertising is needed to help consumers do comparison shopping for tickets.

Consumer groups hope that the Senate bill will include more of the provisions they want. They are underwhelmed by the House bill, which emerged as a compromise between Transportation Committee Chairman Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, and Rick Larsen, a Washington Democrat.

Graves said the bill “improves the safety of our system, our airport infrastructure, and the quality of service for passengers.”

Scores of business groups and airlines applauded the House approval of the FAA legislation.

“This bill makes important progress that will enable the FAA to hire and train more controllers, to improve air traffic control technology and to strengthen the pipeline of trained workers, including pilots and aviation maintenance technicians,” American Airlines said in a statement after the vote.

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Koenig reported from Dallas.

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Democrats voted against the package, which had sailed out of the House Armed Services Committee on an almost unanimous vote weeks ago before being loaded with the GOP priorities during a heated late-night floor debate this week.

The final vote was 219-210, with four Democrats siding with the GOP and four Republicans opposed. The bill, as written, is expected to go nowhere in the Democratic-majority Senate.

Efforts to halt U.S. funding for Ukraine in its war against Russia were turned back, but Republicans added provisions to stem the Defense Department’s diversity initiatives and to restrict access to abortions. The abortion issue has been championed by Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., who is singularly stalling Senate confirmation of military officers, including the new commandant of the Marine Corps.

“We are continuing to block the Biden administration’s ‘woke’ agenda,” said Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo.

Turning the must-pass defense bill into a partisan battleground shows how deeply the nation’s military has been unexpectedly swept up in disputes over race, equity and women’s health care that are now driving the Republican Party’s priorities in America’s widening national divide.

During one particularly tense moment in the debate, Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty of Ohio, a former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, spoke of how difficult it was to look across the aisle as Republicans chip away at gains for women, Black people and others in the military.

“You are setting us back,” she said about an amendment from Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., that would prevent the Defense Department from requiring participation in race-based training for hiring, promotions or retention.

Crane argued that Russia and China do not mandate diversity measures in their military operations and neither should the United States. “We don’t want our military to be a social experiment,” he said. “We want the best of the best.”

When Crane used the pejorative phrase “colored people” for Black military personnel, Beatty asked for his words to be stricken from the record.

Friday’s voted capped a tumultuous week for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as conservatives essentially drove the agenda, forcing their colleagues to consider their ideas for the annual bill that has been approved by Congress unfailingly since World War II.

“I think he’s doing great because we are moving through — it was like over 1,500 amendments — and we’re moving through them,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. She told reporters she changed her mind to support the bill after McCarthy offered her a seat on the committee that will be negotiating the final version with the Senate.

Democrats, in a joint leadership statement, said they were voting against the bill because Republicans “turned what should be a meaningful investment in our men and women in uniform into an extreme and reckless legislative joyride.”

“Extreme MAGA Republicans have chosen to hijack the historically bipartisan National Defense Authorization Act to continue attacking reproductive freedom and jamming their right-wing ideology down the throats of the American people,” said the statement from Reps. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Pete Aguilar of California.

The defense bill authorizes $874.2 billion in the coming year for the defense spending, keeping with President Joe Biden’s budget request. The funding itself is to be allocated later, when Congress handles the appropriation bills, as is the normal process.

The package sets policy across the Defense Department, as well as in aspects of the Energy Department, and this year focuses particularly on the U.S. stance toward China, Russia and other national security fronts.

Republican opposition to U.S. support for the war in Ukraine drew a number of amendments, including one to block the use of cluster munitions that Biden just sent to help Ukraine battle Russia. It was a controversial move because the weapons, which can leave behind unexploded munitions endangering civilians, are banned by many other countries.

Most of those efforts to stop U.S. support for Ukraine failed. Proposals to roll back the Pentagon’s diversity and inclusion measures and block some medical care for transgender personnel were approved.

GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, who served as a White House physician, pushed forward the abortion measure that would prohibit the defense secretary from paying for or reimbursing expenses relating to abortion services.

Jackson and other Republicans praised Tuberville for his stand against the Pentagon’s abortion policy, which was thrust into prominence as states started banning the procedure after the Supreme Court decision last summer overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade law.

“Now he’s got support, he’s got back up here in the House,” Jackson said.

But it’s not at all certain that the House position will stand as the legislation moves to the Senate, which is preparing its own version of the bill. Senate Democrats have the majority but will need to work with Republicans on a bipartisan measure to ensure enough support for passage in their chamber.

McCarthy lauded the House for gutting “radical programs” that he said distract from the military’s purpose.

Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee, led by Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, dropped their support due to the social policy amendments.

Smith, who is white, tried to explain to Crane and other colleagues why the Pentagon’s diversity initiatives were important in America, drawing on his own experience as a businessman trying to reach outside his own circle of contacts to be able to hire and gain deeper understanding of other people.

Smith lamented that the bill that the committee passed overwhelmingly “no longer exists. What was once an example of compromise and functioning government has become an ode to bigotry and ignorance.”

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Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri, Stephen Groves and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.

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