Don Davis eyes open North Carolina Senate seat
The Senate plans to vote no earlier than next week on President Donald Trump's request for lawmakers to scrap $9.4 billion in previously approved funding for NPR, PBS and foreign aid, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the plans. That's running dangerously close to lawmakers' July 18 deadline to vote in favor of the rescissions package, or the administration will be forced to spend the money as Congress originally intended.
GOP leaders have work to do to shore up votes for the package, which would formalize funding cuts previously sought by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency initiative. Among the wary Republicans is top Senate Appropriator Susan Collins, who helped tank Trump's unsuccessful rescissions request back in 2018. The Maine Republican said during a late-June hearing with White House budget chief Russ Vought that reducing support for the AIDS-fighting program PEPFAR would be 'extraordinarily ill-advised and short-sighted;' Collins later told Calen that she's looking at 'drafting an alternative package of rescissions.' Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota have also echoed Collins' warnings about slashing money for public broadcasting, with Sullivan saying he's seeking an amendment for 'very rural' stations that would be affected by the White House proposal.
Looming over the rescissions talks: appropriations. Senators will Thursday begin marking up their first batch of spending bills necessary to fund the government beyond the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30. Leaders are under immense pressure to allow votes on individual measures rather than seek to avert a shutdown with a massive omnibus, and more than anything else want to avoid having to pass another short-term stopgap. But the scheduled August recess will take away four weeks of time lawmakers would otherwise be in Washington to negotiate.
The House has made some progress with its appropriations work, passing one bill so far and advancing four others out of committee. House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) says he wants to complete all 12 markups by July 30. Yet even the typically bipartisan bill to fund the Department of Veterans' Affairs garnered only two Democratic votes on the chamber floor. It underscores how a process that once relied on buy-in between the two parties has become a largely partisan exercise — a risky situation for Republicans who can lose only three votes on their side of the aisle for party-line legislation.
What else we're watching:
— How lawmakers respond to the deadly flooding in Texas: Some state officials are sharply criticizing the National Weather Service for severely underestimating the rainfall in its forecasts. The White House on Sunday pushed back against attempts to link the administration's NWS staffing cuts to its inability to warn Texas residents about the storms.
At least two members have been directly affected by the catastrophe: GOP Reps. August Pfluger of Texas and Buddy Carter of Georgia. Pfluger's daughter and Carter's granddaughters were rescued from a camp affected by the flooding, with Carter also sharing that his granddaughters' cousin was killed.
— More reconciliation bills ahead: Riding high on a legislative win, Speaker Mike Johnson is sketching out a timeline for potentially pushing two more party-line packages through the reconciliation process this Congress. Watch what policy areas they'll address — and whether they include the priorities of key hard-liners who claimed they got certain assurances to support the megabill last week.
— NDAA to shake up the Pentagon: House Armed Services is aiming to make it harder to withdraw troops from Europe and change how the Pentagon buys its weapons as it heads toward a markup next Tuesday of the annual defense bill. Senate Armed Services will mark up its version of the defense bill this week; the full panel debate is slated to begin Tuesday afternoon and will likely take several days.
Jordain Carney, Gregory Svirnovskiy, Mia McCarthy and Connor O'Brien contributed to this report.
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RALEIGH, N.C. -- Democratic Gov. Josh Stein cleared his desk Wednesday of the deluge of bills passed to him from the North Carolina General Assembly last month, three of which he vetoed. Stein topped off his veto total at 14 for this year's legislative session. One of the vetoes prolongs the extensive battle between the governor's office and GOP-controlled legislature over gun laws — an issue Republican lawmakers prioritized when they came to Raleigh. Now that all of Stein's vetoes have been returned to the Legislative Building, possible veto override attempts could occur starting later this month. House Speaker Destin Hall reaffirmed that possibility in a post on the social platform X. 'We're keeping score. Overrides coming soon,' Hall said. With Republicans one House seat short of a veto-proof supermajority, GOP leaders may have to pick and choose which measures to take action on. A few bills with some Democratic support may be able to skirt by. The first vetoed bill would allow certain people to carry firearms onto private school property with permission from the school's board of trustees or administrative director. The person — either an employee or a volunteer — would be required to have a concealed handgun permit and complete a training class. Republican proponents of the bill said it would keep private schools safe in rural areas where police response time is longer. Stein argued in his veto statement that school employees and volunteers 'cannot substitute' law enforcement officers, who receive hundreds of hours of safety education, when crises occur. The governor did voice support for another provision in the bill that would heighten penalties for threatening or assaulting an elected official. He urged the legislature to 'send me a clean bill with those protections so I can sign it.' 'Just as we should not allow guns in the General Assembly, we should keep them out of our schools unless they are in the possession of law enforcement,' Stein said in the statement. Some Democrats in the House and Senate voted for the bill originally, meaning a veto override is on the table. The fight over guns was the focus of a previous bill Stein vetoed a few weeks ago that would allow adults to carry concealed weapons without a permit. That bill faces an uphill battle to becoming law after a handful of Republicans voted against the measure, making the chances of a veto override fairly slim. GOP state legislators have continued to carve out further gun access over the past few years. In 2023, Republican lawmakers overrode former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's veto and put into law the elimination of the pistol purchase permit system that mandated character evaluations and criminal history checks for applicants. The other two bills Stein vetoed Wednesday also received some Democratic votes and thus could be overridden if such support holds. One of the bills would create an expedited removal process for homeowners and landlords to remove people unauthorized to live on their property. Stein said he was unhappy with a last-minute addition that would prevent local governments from enforcing their own prohibitions on pet shop animal sales and additional licensing beyond statewide rules. The other bill would bar public agencies from collecting or releasing certain personal information about donors to 501(c) nonprofits. The governor signed nine bills into law Wednesday. Two were omnibus criminal justice and public safety measures, raising penalties on many crimes or creating new criminal counts. Another was designed to help active-duty military and veterans with reduced government fees and improved access to higher education.
