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Meanwhile US President Joe Biden will travel to Italy next month to meet separately with prime minister Giorgia Meloni and Pope Francis, the White House said Thursday, in what will probably be his last overseas trip before leaving office.
The 9-12 January visit is aimed at strengthening US-Italy relations and thanking Meloni for her “strong leadership of the G7 over the past year,” spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
Biden, a devout Catholic, will have an audience with Pope Francis and “discuss efforts to advance peace around the world,” Jean-Pierre said.
The president spoke to the pontiff by phone on Thursday and thanked him for his “continued advocacy to alleviate global suffering,” according to the White House.
Biden’s Italy trip will come days before he hands over the keys to the White House to Trump.
We’re waiting to see if the Republicans will try to reintroduce their spending bill via a different congressional procedure that requires fewer votes to pass. But so far, it doesn’t seem they will tonight.
The last government shutdown took place in December 2018 and January 2019 during Trump’s first White House term.
Summary
The Republican spending bill backed by president-elect Donald Trump has failed in the US House of Representatives, leaving Congress with no clear plan to avert a fast-approaching government shutdown that could disrupt Christmas travel. By a vote of 174-235, the House rejected the spending package.
Government funding is due to expire at midnight on Friday. If lawmakers fail to extend that deadline, the U.S. government will begin a partial shutdown that would interrupt funding for everything from border enforcement to national parks and cut off paychecks for more than two million federal workers.
The US Transportation Security Administration warned that travellers during the busy holiday season could face long lines at airports.
The bill largely resembled the earlier version that Musk and Trump had blasted as a wasteful giveaway to Democrats. It would have extended government funding into March, when Trump will be in the White House and Republicans will control both chambers of Congress, and provided $100bn in disaster relief and suspended the debt. Republicans dropped other elements that had been included in the original package, such as a pay raise for lawmakers and new rules for pharmacy benefit managers.
At Trump’s urging, the new version also would have suspended limits on the national debt for two years – a manoeuvre that would make it easier to pass the dramatic tax cuts he has promised and set the stage for the federal government’s $36 trillion in debt to continue to climb.
Ahead of the vote, Democrats and Republicans warned that the other party would be at fault if Congress allowed the government to shut down. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that the package would avoid disruption, tie up loose ends and make it easier for lawmakers to cut spending by hundreds of billions of dollars when Trump takes office next year. “Government is too big, it does too many things, and it does few things well,” he said.
Democrats blasted the bill as a cover for a budget-busting tax cut that would largely benefit wealthy backers such as Musk, the world’s richest person, while saddling the country with trillions of dollars in additional debt. “How dare you lecture America about fiscal responsibility, ever?” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said during floor debate.
Government funding is due to expire at midnight on Friday. If lawmakers fail to extend that deadline, the US government will begin a partial shutdown that would interrupt funding for everything from border enforcement to national parks and cut off paychecks for more than 2 million federal workers.
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Final vote count: bill rejected 174-235
The Republican spending bill backed by Donald Trump has failed in the House, leaving Congress with no clear plan to avert a fast-approaching government shutdown that could disrupt Christmas travel.
By a vote of 174-235, the House rejected the spending package.
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Republicans’ decision to abandon a congressional spending plan will cost troops their paychecks over the holidays unless some agreement is reached before Friday’s deadline to prevent a government shutdown, the Pentagon warned.
Even if they don’t get paid, those troops will be required to report for duty both overseas and at home, Pentagon press secretary Major Gen. Pat Ryder said Thursday.
Without an agreement to fund the government, troops will not receive their end-of-month paychecks, reservists drilling after Friday will not be paid, and federal civilians who are required to work during a shutdown also will not be paid, he said.
The military payroll is just one of thousands of federal accounts that would be affected, but one of the most visible.
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Republican version of spending bills fails House vote
Voting is ongoing, but there are now enough no votes against the last-minute Donald Trump-backed spending bill to make a two-thirds majority impossible.
Lawmakers have one more day to avert a total government shutdown. House speaker Mike Johnson, who introduced a new, stripped-back bill after Trump torpedoed an earlier, bipartisan spending bill, told reporters that Republicans will remain committed to cutting down the size of the federal government even as he and other Trump allies acquiesced to the president-elect’s request to suspend the US borrowing limit.
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The House is now voting on the new funding bill.
Because the House speaker Mike Johnson expedited it to the floor, it requires the support of two-thirds of the House to pass.
DeLauro, a Democratic member from Connecticut, also yielded her time on the House floor to Texas Republican Chip Roy – who chided his fellow Republicans for agreeing to raise the debt ceiling.
“To take this bill and congratulate yourself because it’s shorter in pages, but increases the debt by $5tn, is asinine. That’s precisely what Republicans are doing,” Roy said.
“It’s embarrassing, it’s shameful,” he said.
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In an impassioned address, Rosa DeLauro, the Democrats’ top appropriator, mocked Republicans as being “scared” to pass the bipartisan measure.
“Because President Musk said, ‘Don’t’?” she chided. “Imagine. What does he know about what people go through when the government shuts down? Are his employees furloughed? Hell no! Is he furloughed? No!”
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Debate over the spending bill has grown so heated that representative Marc Molinaro, who was presiding, broke his gavel trying to quiet jeers from the Democrats.
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Meanwhile, Joe Biden has been largely absent.
If lawmakers fail to pass a spending bill by Friday night, the government will shut down this weekend. Though Donald Trump has not yet been sworn into office, he has been throwing his weight around and pushed Republicans to abandon their hard-negotiated bipartisan bill.
Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers told Politico they’ve hardly heard from Biden.
Politico reports:
More than a half-dozen House Democratic lawmakers said Thursday that the conference had yet to hear from the president, even as Congress scrambled to salvage a funding deal and avoid shutting down the government.
As Republicans now try to sell a revamped bill before funding runs out Friday night, the eleventh-hour debacle threatens to swamp the last days of Biden’s term, while costing the administration some final policy priorities that it had hoped to cement as part of the year-end agreement.
But as lawmakers searched for a way forward, no one seemed to be looking to Biden for answers – and the lame-duck president gave no indication he had any desire to provide them.
“I haven’t spoken to him,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the Democrats’ top appropriator, said of Biden, adding that she didn’t expect to in the near future. “I’ve spoken to the White House. I think their view is, ‘we had a deal.’”
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Meanwhile, Mark Alford of Missouri tried to reframe the impending shutdown as a “Democratic shutdown” and implicate Democrats for failing to provide support for US farmers and disaster relief if they vote against the bill.
But the previously bipartisan spending bill that Donald Trump and Elon Musk tore down also contained disaster aid and it extended the “farm bill”, – a package of farm subsidies, food benefits and other programs – and provided $10bn in economic aid for farmers.
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Jeffries also pointed out the hypocrisy of Republicans pushing a bill to suspend the debt limit for two years.
“It’s been interesting to me that for decades the Republican party has lectured America about fiscal responsibility, about the debt and the deficit. It’s always been phony. This bill proves it,” he said.
Speaking on the House floor, while stood beside a sign that reads “#RepublicanShutdown”, Hakeem Jeffries is pointing out all the policies and programs that have been cut out of the this new Republican-led government spending bill, including funding for a program for childhood cancer and disease research. “Cruelty is the point,” he said.
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Democrats have seized on this moment to point out Elon Musk’s outsized influence on Donald Trump and on the Republican party.
“Elon Musk ordered his puppet President-elect and House Republicans to break the bipartisan agreement reached to keep government open,” former House speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote on X. “House Republicans are abdicating their responsibility to the American people and siding with billionaires and special interests.”
Meanwhile, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland asked, rhetorically: “Is Elon Musk the new dictator of the Republican party?”
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Analysis: Elon Musk showcases grip on Washington
Using the power of the social media platform he owns and the threat of spending millions against Republicans in primaries, Elon Musk effectively tanked a bipartisan congressional spending bill that would have kept the government running.
After their initial failure at Musk’s hands, House Republicans on Thursday scrambled to put together another deal, which they say will provide a few months of spending and, according to reports, will suspend the debt limit at Donald Trump’s request.
The world’s richest man again flexed the muscle he gained during the 2024 election, in which he spent big to help elect Trump and spread rightwing rumors on X. Since the spending bill was introduced, Musk has fired off tweet after tweet attacking it, amplifying false claims about what it includes and dooming its fate.
“‘Shutting down’ the government (which doesn’t actually shut down critical functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill,” Musk wrote in one post.
He and the account for the “department of government efficiency” or Doge, a government body that Trump says he’ll create, claimed the bill would significantly raise pay for members of Congress – it wouldn’t. He claimed it includes funding for bioweapons – it does not. He erroneously shared that it would direct billions for a stadium in DC. He offensively used the word “retard” to joke about language changes in the bill, then joked further about his use of the word.
The ordeal is a sign of what’s to come for Musk in his influential role, with a social media platform he can use to go after those he disagrees with. His tweets receive millions of impressions and signal to the rightwing online ecosystem what the lines of attack will be.
Read more:
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Democrats, emerging from their closed-door meeting, told reporters they were “united” in their opposition to the new government spending deal, members told reporters.
The deal “is not serious, it’s laughable”, said Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic representative of New York and the House minority leader. “Extreme Maga Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown.”
Given that some Republicans, such as Chip Roy, have also indicated that they’re opposed to a deal, it’s unclear what future this version of the spending bill will have. Still, Republicans are on track to call a vote on the measure shortly.
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Hakeem Jeffries told House Democrats in a closed-door meeting, “I’m not just a no, I’m a hell no,” according to multiple reports.
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Among the many provisions stripped from the new spending measure:
- $190m for a a child cancer research program and funding for other medical research
- A bill criminalize the publication deepfake porn
- Restrictions on US outbound investment in China
And likely many of the other provisions in the bipartisan deal, which are detailed by Reuters here.
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House Democrats will be meeting at 4.30pm eastern time, to discuss the Republicans’ deal.
Democrats weren’t part of the discussions that led to the spending bill deal put forth by the Republican speaker, Mike Johnson. But Johnson will need lots of Democratic votes in order to push the deal through.
Democrats, meanwhile, are still reeling from the breakdown of a bipartisan deal that Donald Trump tanked. The bipartisan measure would have extended government funding through mid-March, but it also contained other policy measures including a pay raise for Congress members, expansions and changes to Medicare and Medicaid policy, and restrictions on hotel “junk fees”.
Egged on by Elon Musk, who is to head a new agency to reduce government inefficiency called Doge, Trump urged Republicans to kill the measure and instead pass a stripped-back spending bill without policies that he characterized as “DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS”.
Musk piled on, posting on social media that “any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!”
But even as Musk railed against excess spending, Trump called on Congress to raise the debt ceiling, pushing Republicans to increase the country’s borrowing limit while Joe Biden was still in the White House to avoid the political complications of doing once he is sworn in.
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Mike Pence, Trump’s first vice-president, has meanwhile sided with the Chip Roy and conservatives who are ideologically opposed to expanding government spending.
In a post on X, Pence wrote: “Congressman Chip Roy is one of the most principled conservatives in Washington DC and people across this country are grateful for his stand against runaway federal spending. We just can’t keep piling trillions in debt on our children and grandchildren.”
Trump’s insistence on suspending or eliminating the debt ceiling puts him at odds with his party’s fiscally conservative stalwarts. And it’s unclear how much support this latest deal will garner among Republicans, let alone among Democrats who did not have any input on the deal.
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Donald Trump has put his support behind the spending deal, writing on his Truth Social platform, “all Republicans, and even the Democrats, should do what is best for our country and vote ‘YES’”.
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House Republicans reach agreement on government spending deal
House Republicans have reached a short-term government funding agreement that will prevent a shutdown from happening after Friday, Reuters reports.
According to Punchbowl News, the deal would fund the government for the next three months, and suspend the debt limit until 2027, as Donald Trump had demanded.
It also includes $110bn in aid for disasters, including the hurricanes that recently struck North Carolina and elsewhere in the south-east.
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Trump threatens Republican congressman over debt ceiling increase
Republican congressman Chip Roy is a conservative stalwart, but his opposition to increasing the debt ceiling without major cuts to government spending has earned him the ire of Donald Trump.
The president-elect is demanding the debt limit be increased or eliminated in any bill to keep the government open beyond Friday at midnight, when its current spending authorizations run out. On X, Roy announced he would only accept increasing the limit under strict conditions:
My position is simple – I am not going to raise or suspend the debt ceiling (racking up more debt) without significant & real spending cuts attached to it. I’ve been negotiating to that end. No apologies.
Apparently aware of his opposition, Trump a few minutes earlier published on Truth Social a takedown of Roy, which begins:
The very unpopular “Congressman” from Texas, Chip Roy, is getting in the way, as usual, of having yet another Great Republican Victory – All for the sake of some cheap publicity for himself. Republican obstructionists have to be done away with. The Democrats are using them, and we can’t let that happen. Our Country is far better off closing up for a period of time than it is agreeing to the things that the Democrats want to force upon us.
He then called for Roy to face a challenge in his next Republican primary:
Chip Roy is just another ambitious guy, with no talent. By the way, how’s Bob Good doing? I hope some talented challengers are getting ready in the Great State of Texas to go after Chip in the Primary. He won’t have a chance!
One thing to remember: Roy supported Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, not Trump, in this year’s Republican presidential primary.
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Should a government shutdown happen, Democrats are gearing up to steer the blame to the GOP.
The California Democratic congresswoman Judy Chu said in a statement:
With the ink barely dry on a bipartisan deal between Speaker Johnson and Congressional Democrats to fund the federal government and provide relief to natural disaster victims all over America, self-designated President Elon Musk – an unelected billionaire and world’s richest man – ordered a government shutdown that will hurt working people all across this country. Donald Trump, Speaker Johnson, and House Republicans heard their marching orders and reneged on a deal that would avert a government shutdown and help disaster victims from California to North Carolina, Florida to Vermont.
Chu noted that the spending package rejected by Donald Trump yesterday at Elon Musk’s urging included money for relief from the Bridge fire, which ravaged part of her Los Angeles county district.
“House Republicans still have a choice: they can work on a bipartisan basis with Democrats to support families and disaster survivors or they can side with billionaires and shut down the government, leaving working Americans out in the cold during the holidays,” Chu said.
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Harris calls off trip to California as government funding teeters
Kamala Harris has canceled her plans to travel to California this evening, as Congress negotiates a funding bill to avert a government shutdown that is less than 36 hours away.
Harris was scheduled to depart Washington DC for Los Angeles after 9pm, but the White House says she will now remain in the capital. They did not specify a reason, but the vice-president has been tasked with breaking ties in the Senate, should it come to that.
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Republican senators express frustration over Trump meddling in spending talks - report
As they left a lunch with JD Vance, Republican senators voiced to CNN their concerns with Donald Trump’s demands that they throw out a compromise bill to fund the government and instead agree to a new one that includes increasing or eliminating the debt ceiling.
Here’s what Rand Paul of Kentucky had to say:
‘They’re trying,’ he said of Trump’s effort to raise or get rid of debt ceiling. ‘But I don’t think they’ll get there … Getting rid of the debt ceiling seems to be fiscally irresponsible.’
Paul added: ‘It’s a little bit late in the game to be putting debt ceiling on this anyway.
And Chuck Grassley of Iowa:
Chuck Grassley, leaving a GOP lunch, told us there was no plan yet presented to them to avoid a shutdown.
‘When you have a $35 trillion national debt, it’s stupid to shut the government down,’ he said.
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The vibes on Capitol Hill around keeping the government open remain bad.
Republican senator Susan Collin’s thoughts on the matter, via Politico:
Are you feeling better about the CR? ‘I’m not, because there’s no plan,’ Sen. Collins says
And here’s what Mitt Romney thinks of what may be one of the last votes of his Senate career:
What does President Trump want Republicans to do: vote for the CR or shut down government? Absent direction, confusion reigns.
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Bernie Sanders has criticized “President Elon Musk” over the billionaire’s efforts to derail a bipartisan spending deal that would keep the government running for another three months.
“Democrats and Republicans spent months negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government,” said Sanders, the independent senator for Vermont who votes with Democrats, in a statement.
“The richest man on Earth, President Elon Musk, doesn’t like it. Will Republicans kiss the ring?”
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Trump indictment 'still stands' despite Fani Willis disqualification from prosecuting election case, expert says
Norm Eisen, Brookings Institute senior fellow, says there is still hope for Donald Trump to be brought to justice despite the disqualification of prosecutor Fani Willis from her case against him and others for trying to overthrow Georgia’s 2020 election results.
Eisen said: “The disqualification of Fani Willis is entirely unfounded, but there is a silver lining: the indictment against Trump still stands. It should be pursued vigorously. As we’ve seen in the New York case, Trump is not immune, and prosecutors must continue to hold him accountable.”
Eisen has admitted in the past Willis’s decision to hire her romantic partner Nathan Wade as a special prosecutor for the case “represents poor judgment” but distracts from the real issue of election conspiracy.
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Senator Warren voices support for Trump call to eliminate debt ceiling
More lawmakers react to Trump’s calls for abolishing the debt ceiling, which has sent legislators into chaos as a government shutdown nears.
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren in a rare show of support for Trump, said on X: “I agree with President-elect Trump that Congress should terminate the debt limit and never again govern by hostage taking.”
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Senator John Thune of South Dakota, who is the incoming majority leader, just reacted to Donald Trump’s calls to eliminate the debt ceiling:
“I think that at some point we’re going to have to deal with that. It’s coming. How we deal with it, I’m open to suggestions.”
He told reporters shortly after Trump’s announcement: “I do know there are different theories about how to deal with the debt limit going forward. If it was effective, we wouldn’t have a $35tn debt. So the debt limit for all intents and purposes has limited meaning in the modern world but it is something that markets obviously pay attention to.
“In terms of how we’re going to address it, I’m not sure exactly what that looks like at the moment.”
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Trump interference of government funding talks could imperil Mike Johnson
Donald Trump’s disruption of the government funding negotiations could put the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, in a perilous position.
Johnson may have to work with Democrats to keep the government open beyond Friday, since his majority is very small, and many of his lawmakers have strident demands when it comes to government spending and the debt ceiling. If Johnson does that, rightwing hardliners in the House Republican conference may attempt to oust him from the speaker’s post when the new Congress begins next year.
Democrats could theoretically intervene to vote for Johnson and keep him in the speaker’s role. At a press conference earlier today, the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, was asked if his party would do that, assuming Johnson works with them on a short-term government funding bill.
Jeffries replied:
No.
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When it comes to Donald Trump’s demands to raise or abolish the debt ceiling, there is one group of lawmakers to pay particular attention to: the House Freedom Caucus.
The group represents far-right Republicans in Congress’s lower chamber, who more are aligned with the president-elect than most. But these same lawmakers have a long history of opposing any increase to the borrowing limit, despite warnings from economists that the government defaulting on its debt would do grievous harm to its global standing.
The caucus does not appear to have yet commented on Trump’s latest demands, but here’s a look at how they have talked about the debt ceiling in the past:
Top House Democrat says 'hard pass' to Trump's demand for debt ceiling increase
Chances are, any government funding bill will need at least some Democratic votes to pass the House, since the GOP has a tiny majority in the chamber and it appears unlikely the speaker, Mike Johnson, will get all of his lawmakers to support the legislation.
So what do Democrats think of Donald Trump’s demand that the funding deal be paired with an increase in the debt ceiling? The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, answered that question, in a post on Bluesky:
GOP extremists want House Democrats to raise the debt ceiling so that House Republicans can lower the amount of your Social Security check.
Hard pass.
The top House Democrat has not yet responded to Trump’s demand that the debt limit be abolished entirely. In the past, some of the party’s lawmakers have proposed legislation to do that, but the idea has never gone far.
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Rightwing lawmakers have backed Donald Trump’s calls to renegotiate the government spending bill, even if it causes a shutdown.
Writing on X, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene said:
The Uniparty is aiming their fire at Elon Musk and blaming him for killing their incestuous porkfest gov funding bill.
However, it was the American people engaging and posting their outrage on X that killed the bill.
But they hate Elon because he bought X and protected free speech, which allowed the people to fight back and stop another Uniparty shit sandwich.
The truth is they hate you, the people, for standing up to them.
They are angry they got caught in such a big way.
These losers waited for months knowing the government funding deadline was Friday, Dec 20th and refused to show any of us members of Congress the bill text until they dumped 1,500+ pages on us Tuesday night.
Tim Burchett of Tennessee was a bit more succinct, writing this morning:
Shut it down.
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While the joint Trump-Vance statement played a major role in upending the government funding talks, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy spent much of yesterday attacking the potential compromise.
The billionaire entrepreneurs gained heightened prominence after Donald Trump said they would co-chair a quasi-governmental “department of government efficiency” that is tasked with downsizing the federal government.
On Wednesday, Musk and Ramaswamy trained their fire on the compromise bill that would have kept the government open for the next three months, and are now crying victory after Trump torpedoed the legislation.
Musk tweeted:
Your elected representatives have heard you and now the terrible bill is dead. The voice of the people has triumphed! VOX POPULI VOX DEI
And Ramaswamy wrote:
We the People won. That’s how America is supposed to work.
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Here’s the joint statement from Donald Trump and JD Vance yesterday afternoon in which they demanded Congress renegotiate the tentative deal to fund the government, and also raise the debt ceiling.
Like much of the president-elect’s communications, it was posted on Truth Social:
The most foolish and inept thing ever done by Congressional Republicans was allowing our country to hit the debt ceiling in 2025. It was a mistake and is now something that must be addressed.
Meanwhile, Congress is considering a spending bill that would give sweetheart provisions for government censors and for Liz Cheney. The bill would make it easier to hide the records of the corrupt January 6 committee—which accomplished nothing for the American people and hid security failures that happened that day. This bill would also give Congress a pay increase while many Americans are struggling this Christmas.
Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch. If Democrats won’t cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration? Let’s have this debate now. And we should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want.
Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025. The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling. Anything else is a betrayal of our country…
Trump now says he wants the limit on how much debt the federal government can accumulate abolished entirely.
Trump threatens to 'primary' Republicans, then declares: 'EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!'
After demanding Republicans reject a three-month government funding bill, Donald Trump yesterday evening warned that any lawmaker from his party who defies him can expect to face a primary challenge.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump said:
If Republicans try to pass a clean Continuing Resolution without all of the Democrat ‘bells and whistles’ that will be so destructive to our Country, all it will do, after January 20th, is bring the mess of the Debt Limit into the Trump Administration, rather than allowing it to take place in the Biden Administration. Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this should, and will, be Primaried. Everything should be done, and fully negotiated, prior to my taking Office on January 20th, 2025.
This morning, the president-elect wrote:
EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!
The context for the latter comment is unclear.
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Georgia appeals court boots Fani Willis from election interference case - report
A Georgia appeals court has ordered that the prosecutor Fani Willis is disqualified from the case she brought against Donald Trump and 18 other defendants for allegedly plotting to overturn the state’s election result in 2020, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.
Attorneys for the defendants accused Willis, the district attorney of the Atlanta-area Fulton county, of having a conflict of interest due to her romantic relationship with Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she hired for the case. Wade resigned from the prosecution earlier this year, and in a 2-1 ruling, the appeals court said Willis should be disqualified as well.
Here’s more, from the Journal-Constitution:
In a 2-1 decision, a panel of judges, all GOP appointees, concluded that Willis’ onetime romantic relationship with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade constituted a conflict of interest that merited her dismissal from the case.
‘After carefully considering the trial court’s findings in its order, we conclude that it erred by failing to disqualify DA Willis and her office,’ wrote judges Todd Markle and Trenton Brown for the majority. A third judge, Benjamin Land, issued a strongly-worded dissent.
The majority opinion also rejected a push from several defendants in the case to dismiss the indictment.
The decision is a massive blow to Willis, one of the most recognizable prosecutors in the country who cruised to a second term earlier this month against a relatively inexperienced Republican opponent. It also could be the death knell for the fourth and final case that resulted in criminal charges against Trump after he left office in January 2021.
Willis is expected to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Georgia. A spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Trump calls for eliminating debt ceiling, further complicating negotiations - report
Just a few hours ago, Donald Trump rejected a tentative deal in Congress to keep the government funded through the first few months of his term, and demanded lawmakers increase the country’s borrowing limit in any new compromise.
Now, the president-elect has modified his demands, by telling NBC News in an interview that he wants the debt ceiling eliminated outright. “The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge,” Trump told the broadcaster.
The United States is one of a small number of countries with a statutory limit on how much debt the federal government can accumulate, and over the past decade and a half, Republicans have repeatedly demanded concessions from Democrats in exchange for voting to increase it.
Eliminating it entirely would be a huge ask at any time, but even more so now, with the government’s funding authorizations set to expire in less than 48 hours. Here’s more about what the debt ceiling is, and how it works:
Chaos in Congress after Trump torpedoes spending deal with government shutdown near
Good morning, US politics blog readers. Just yesterday, it seemed like Congress was on the verge of enacting legislation to keep the government running for the next three months and prevent a shutdown that would begin after midnight on Friday. But on X, Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and other conservatives whose influence grew after Donald Trump won re-election were busy condemning the deal. It was an effort that culminated yesterday afternoon, when the president-elect and JD Vance blew up the negotiations entirely by declaring that the bill should be scrapped and replaced with a new one that also increases country’s debt ceiling – a surprise demand that hadn’t been raised previously. The incoming administration’s opposition blew up the funding compromise, and now it is up to the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, to pick up the pieces, with less than 48 hours remaining until the government shuts down. Needless to say, few in Congress wanted this to happen with the Christmas holiday right around the corner. We’ll find out today if the GOP has it in them to turn the situation around.
Here’s what else we are watching today:
Democrats appear content to let Republicans own the government funding fiasco, with the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, tweeting that the GOP has “been ordered to shut down the government”.
The Wall Street Journal has published a lengthy look into how the White House managed Joe Biden’s public ageing during his presidency and before – which was a major factor in his decision to end his re-election bid earlier this year.
Biden and Kamala Harris have no public events on their schedule. The president is returning to Washington DC today from Delaware, while the vice-president flies this evening to Los Angeles.
