Morning Report — Dear Congress, your deadline is nigh

In today’s issue:  

• Congress created a deadline. It’s in 10 days
• Cabinet hopefuls lobby lawmakers
• Supreme Court sidesteps controversial issues
• Thousands of displaced Syrians return home

The trouble with lame-duck congressional sessions is that they’re so short and too long.

In 10 days, Congress will run out of funds to keep the government operating through the holidays without action or a strategy (preferably both). There was talk last month of extending the deadline again — to March.

The two parties expect to limp toward a solution by Dec. 20, which is the government shutdown deadline they established to give themselves time to resolve impasses, but negotiators have yet to iron out big questions, including how to replenish depleted federal disaster relief funding — and by how much? Disaster victims in numerous states are waiting. President Biden proposed $100 billion to include the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster fund and Small Business Administration loans. House conservatives say Biden’s number is too high, and they object to adding to the federal deficit.

Meanwhile, House and Senate Republicans are at odds over how to sequence President-elect Trump’s legislative ambitions next year to pocket speedy success with fewer trip wires. The House GOP thinks major tax legislation should be the marquee triumph to show to Trump voters. Some Senate Republicans, including Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), argue that border and immigration changes using budget reconciliation as the vehicle should be Congress’s first order of business in 2025.

Why is sequencing important to incoming presidents? Honeymoons last barely two years. Trump will be a lame-duck president shortly after he’s sworn in. And midterm elections can upend Washington politics. 

Former President Clinton spent his first year on health care legislation that failed to come to a vote. After health care and other battles, Republicans emerged in 1994 from decades in the political wilderness to control the House. The Senate flipped, too. Clinton later mused that he should have tackled welfare reform first rather than health care and earned some GOP trust. He wound up signing the Republicans’ welfare measure.

Former President Obama also was advised by veteran Democrats that he would not find Republican allies in his first year to support his ObamaCare version of health coverage and reforms, but he spent 18 months searching for GOP backing. He did not find it. Democrats in the 2010 midterms met with a “shellacking” from voters, Obama conceded, and he accepted blame.

Defense (and more): Over the weekend, congressional negotiators released a mammoth 1,800-page measure known as the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act, which includes key priorities. But this year, the exercise has faced serious roadblocks between and among parties, including GOP amendments that focus more on cultural political divisions than arguments over war and peace.

The $883.7 billion bill includes widely supported provisions, such as strengthening the U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific region. It also includes a 19.5 percent pay raise for junior-enlisted troops, a major new proposal this year. It also includes amendments that Democrats oppose, including specific restrictions on transgender health care for children of service members.

SMART TAKE FROM THE HILL'S BOB CUSACK:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has controversial views, but his nomination to run the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) appears to be on track for now.

When most think of Kennedy, his deep skepticism of vaccines comes to mind. But it’s another issue that could pose problems for the 70-year-old nominee.

Kennedy, a former Democrat who has supported abortion rights, has attracted criticism from the anti-abortion movement. Former Vice President Mike Pence wants the Senate to reject Kennedy, calling him “the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history.”

While other Trump nominations hinge on the support of GOP moderates such as Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Kennedy has to appease conservatives as well as centrists.

One such conservative Republican, Sen. James Lankford (Okla.), said there is a 100 percent chance that abortion will come up at Kennedy’s confirmation hearing. Kennedy should defer to Trump on abortion-related decisions and note that the president-elect is the ultimate boss, not him. That might not be the easiest thing for the 2024 presidential candidate to say, but it will be essential to secure his nomination.

▪ The New York Times: Seventy-seven Nobel laureates wrote to senators Monday urging they vote against the nomination of Kennedy to lead the Health and Human Services Department. “Placing Mr. Kennedy in charge of [the department] would put the public’s health in jeopardy and undermine America’s global leadership in the health sciences,” the letter warned. 

▪ The New York Times: To show his health credentials, 70-year-old Kennedy ditches his shirt.

3 THINGS TO KNOW TODAY: 

▪ Luigi Mangione, 26, was charged Monday with murder, weapons felonies and three misdemeanors in the New York City shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Mangione was arrested and arraigned in Pennsylvania following a citizen’s tip at a McDonald’s in Altoona.

▪ Taylor Swift's Eras Tour brought in $2.2 billion in its nearly two-year run, making it the highest-grossing tour of all time for a second year in a row.

▪ Two major solvents commonly used in everyday products and at community locations, including dry cleaners, are banned as of Monday because of cancer and other health hazards, the Environmental Protection Agency announced. The chemicals are TCE, or trichloroethylene, and perchloroethylene, known as Perc.

LEADING THE DAY 

© The Associated Press | J. Scott Applewhite 

TRANSITION: Tulsi Gabbard, who in 2017 flew to Damascus to confer with now-ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, began Monday to meet with senators as part of her nomination process to be director of national intelligence — including Graham, Lankford and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-Okla.). Gabbard, 43, who has never worked in the intelligence world, will meet with additional Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans this week, The Hill’s Al Weaver reports. 

Her ability to clear Senate confirmation is a question mark. She is a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, a former Democrat who endorsed Trump this year, and was once a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate who represented Hawaii in the House until 2021. Known for opposing “endless wars” and for espousing unconventional foreign policy views, Gabbard has denied peddling Kremlin disinformation. She has made remarks about the Russia-Ukraine war that were sympathetic to Moscow and echoed by Russian state media — which has praised her nomination.

Meanwhile, Kash Patel, Trump’s choice to lead the FBI, has promised to deliver a massive reform of a bureau he sees as among the agencies that have “weaponized the government.” Among proposals to more swiftly declassify records and change government surveillance programs, former FBI and Justice Department officials’ biggest concern is that the agency could lose its independence, writes The Hill’s Rebecca Beitsch.

“One thing that I think people lose sight of, and the senators need to really kind of refocus on, is the fact that our justice system works because the attorney general is not the president’s lawyer,” said Greg Brower, a former U.S. attorney appointed by former President George W. Bush who also served as the bureau’s deputy general counsel. “And I think nominees are going to have to convince the senators that they understand that and that that’s the reality for very good reasons.”

Trump on Monday named loyalist California Republican lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, one of his outspoken backers in pursuit of what the president-elect calls “fair” elections, to run the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. 

▪ Politico: How Trump’s transition could end up hamstringing his agenda.

▪ Axios: White House chief of staff Jeff Zients is asking his team to "sprint to the finish line" to cement Biden’s legacy and reshape the federal judiciary in the final days of the administration.

▪ CNN: Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who resigned in November and withdrew as a Trump Cabinet pick after pushback by lawmakers, is to become an anchor for One America News.

JAN. 6: Members of the special committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol are hitting back at Trump after he called for their imprisonment. The Hill’s Mike Lillis and Mychael Schnell report the members said the criminal conduct surrounding the rampage was committed by Trump and his supporters, not those who probed the tragedy.  

Lawmakers on the now-defunct panel, which included members of both parties, maintain that Trump’s threat to prosecute them aligns him with some of the world’s most notorious criminal dictators, who break laws with impunity and punish anyone who seeks to hold them to account. The threat has also heightened the push for Biden to pardon the Jan. 6 investigators preemptively, shielding them from any efforts at prosecution by Trump’s Justice Department.

WHERE AND WHEN  

• The House will meet at 10 a.m. The Senate meets at 10 a.m. 
  
• The president will receive the President’s Daily Brief at 10 a.m. Biden will speak about the economy during a visit to the Brookings Institution in Washington at 12:15 p.m. The president will host an East Room “Christmas for All” dinner with the Special Olympics at 7 p.m.
  
• Vice President Harris is in Washington and has no public schedule.
  
• The White House daily press briefing is scheduled at 2 p.m. 

ZOOM IN

© The Associated Press | Susan Walsh

THE SUPREME COURT declined Monday to hear cases on affirmative action, guns and transgender issues, refusing to wade into a trio of hot-button topics that have sharply divided the nation. The decisions to punt the cases elicited objections from conservative justices that suggested rifts on the court about whether and when to address major questions left open by recent decisions.

The court will today take up arguments in a case that could reduce the scope of one of the nation’s bedrock environmental laws. The case deals with the National Environmental Policy Act, which mandates that the government consider the environmental impacts of its actions before moving ahead with them. 

Sam Sankar, senior vice president for programs at Earthjustice, told reporters last week that the court could implement “a radical restriction of the way that the government evaluates the environmental impacts of its major decisions.”

▪ Newsweek: The Supreme Court on Monday declined to lift the gag order imposed on Trump in his hush money case. 

▪ The New York Times: Rupert Murdoch, 93, failed in a bid to change his family trust. He wants to give full control of his empire to Lachlan Murdoch, one of his sons, and lock in Fox News’s right-wing editorial slant.

▪ NPR: Bidders are back in court battling over the auction of Alex Jones’s Infowars.

STATE POLITICS: In North Carolina, one of the closest elections in the state’s history hinges on the latest power struggle between state Republicans and Democrats. A recount of more than 5.5 million ballots from the November election showed that an incumbent Democrat on North Carolina’s state Supreme Court, Allison Riggs, held a 734-vote edge over Jefferson Griffin, a Republican judge on the state Court of Appeals.

Griffin has not given up and is protesting the results of the entire election, arguing that as many as 60,000 voters were ineligible to cast ballots. Lawyers for Riggs said the protest amounted to a ludicrous request for a do-over.

“Whether playing a board game, competing in a sport or running for office, the runner-up cannot snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by asking for a redo under a different set of rules,” they said. “Yet that is what Judge Griffin is trying to do here.”

An acrimonious race for Speaker of the Texas House is splitting the state GOP — and forcing a confrontation between the body’s warring Republican camps, writes The Hill’s Saul Elbein. In the contest between Republican state Reps. Dustin Burrows and David Cook, both have declared victory and a mandate for very different visions of the state’s political future, and the role of Democrats as its minority party.

The fight comes as part of a years-long battle between the state’s old Republican establishment and an ascendant far-right “reformer” movement backed by Texas’s leading executives — as well as national Republicans such as Donald Trump Jr.

ELSEWHERE

© The Associated Press | Omar Sanadiki

AS REBELS SWEPT through towns and cities across Syria on their push to the capital, Damascus, displaced people followed close behind. On Monday, after the brutal regime of Bashar Assad fell, thousands of Syrians who had been displaced inside their country for years tried to get back home. According to the United Nations, the 13-year civil war in Syria caused one of the “largest displacement crises in the world,” as 7.2 million Syrians were displaced from their homes inside the country, mostly to rebel-held areas, while more than 6 million fled and became refugees.

The collapse of Assad’s regime throws a major wrench into the counter-ISIS mission for the roughly 900 U.S. troops in the country, writes The Hill’s Brad Dress. The U.S. carried out a pre-emptive strike over the weekend as Damascus fell to a rebel group led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Assad fled for Moscow. While Assad’s main backers, Iran and Russia, are expected to suffer the most from the collapse, the U.S. and its Kurdish allies will now have to work with a coalition of rebels largely backed by Turkey, which considers Kurdish fighters terrorists.

▪ NPR: How Syria's revolution could reshape the Middle East.

▪ The New York Times analysis: Just weeks ago, Arab nations had been working hard to bring Assad back into the fold, assuming he was there to last. They were badly mistaken.

▪ The Times of Israel: Biden spoke with Jordan’s King Abdullah II to discuss developments in Syria and efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.

Israel struck a storage facility in southern Lebanon where officials said Hezbollah was operating “within a weapons storage facility,” the military said Sunday, alleging Hezbollah violated the ceasefire agreement between the two countries. Meanwhile, ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas to end the war in Gaza and free the remaining hostages are quietly advancing behind the scenes — after the Israel-Hezbollah truce in Lebanon and pressure from Trump.

Al Jazeera: Israel struck a flour distribution line, killing 50 across Gaza.

Reward for American in Syria: On Monday, the U.S. signaled a new urgency for the release and return of freelance journalist Austin Tice, who has been missing in Syria for more than 12 years. Believing he is alive, administration officials are focused in the region on locating Tice as rebels free prisoners from Syria’s secret prisons. The FBI renewed its offer of $1 million for help in returning the U.S. Marine veteran to the U.S. 

OPINION 

■ Trump tries a softer tone — and a harder one, too, by The Washington Post editorial board.

■ Not “beautiful”: Why Trump’s tariff strategy could undermine North American trade, by Pinar Çebi Wilber, opinion contributor, The Hill. 

THE CLOSER

© The Associated Press | Matt Sayles

And finally … ???? The 2025 Golden Globe nominations are here. “Emilia Pérez” racked up 10 nods in the film categories, while FX/Hulu’s “The Bear” won five nods, the highest among television series.

The year also posted many double — and triple — nominees. Sebastian Stan is on the best actor list for a motion picture in comedy/musical (“A Different Man”) and drama (“The Apprentice”). Kate Winslet received nods for lead actress in a drama for the biopic “Lee” and as a limited-series actress for HBO’s “The Regime.” Selena Gomez captured nominations for “Emilia Pérez” and for Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building.” 

Check out nominees here.

▪ Vulture: The biggest snubs and surprises of the 2025 Golden Globe nominations.

▪ Variety: Hollywood’s brightest react to their Golden Globe nominations.

Stay Engaged 

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