Former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) on Thursday became the latest Republican to launch a bid for the White House, following Miami Mayor Francis Suarez's jump into the race last week. On Thursday, The New York Times reported Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) was also weighing his own presidential bid, though he has publicly denied this. 

But while a cohort of the Republican Party is open to non-Trump alternatives in 2024, members of the GOP fear the burgeoning field could siphon off votes from his more competitive opponents, especially Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

"The more candidates who enter the GOP presidential fray, the better positioned Donald Trump is to win the nomination because it dilutes the non-Trump vote," said Republican strategist Ford O'Connell. 

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There are now roughly 12 major contenders for the GOP nomination to take on President Biden, seen as the de facto Democratic presidential nominee. National and local polling has shown Trump leading the pack, with DeSantis largely in second place.

Though the GOP field has started to crystallize ahead of the first GOP debate in August, the recent additions — North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum also launched a long-shot bid earlier this month — are heightening concerns among those opposed to Trump.

"Every person that enters this race who isn't named Donald Trump is drawing from a limited pool of Republican voters, and it divides the field further and further and further,” said Rick Wilson, co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “It makes it harder and harder for a DeSantis or a [Chris] Christie or a Nikki [Haley] or anyone else to credibly put together enough hard numbers in the field in these various early states to win."

Trump’s allies know it, too, and they’ve been delighted by the number of new candidates steadily joining the race. Specifically, they’ve seen it as an opportunity to target DeSantis, whom they view as Trump’s most formidable challenger.

"Let’s be honest, Never-Trumper Will Hurd wouldn’t even consider getting in this race if Ron DeSantis’ campaign wasn’t in total free fall. Hurd’s entry means nothing for President Trump’s standing, but means everything for Ron DeSantis, further underscoring how far Ron’s star has fallen," said Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for Make America Great Again Inc., the super PAC that's backing Trump.

Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd speaks during the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition Spring Kick-Off April 22 in Clive, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Make America Great Again Inc. has issued a statement after each new candidate has entered. Nearly all of them have made a point to attack DeSantis, arguing that each contender is joining the field because the Florida governor has failed to consolidate support. 

Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump’s campaign, said Hurd’s entry into the race was evidence that DeSantis “has failed to seal the deal” with voters seeking to move past Trump. 

“Nobody thinks he’ll ultimately be President Trump’s main challenger,” Miller said.

Those backing Trump largely believe the growing field will fragment the vote among challengers who do not have a clear, devoted base. DeSantis, who has been the favorite among a certain brand of conservative Republicans who want the party to move on from the former president, could be the biggest casualty.

As one Trump ally put it: “The more the merrier.”

But DeSantis is batting away those concerns. Asked his opinion on the matter during his visit in North Augusta, S.C., on Thursday, DeSantis replied: "Not if you guys do your part. The sky's the limit for us. I mean, we can do it."

"All I can tell you is this: People can do what they want. The only reason I'm running is to win and deliver on these promises. That's the only reason," he added.

Members of the GOP also acknowledge there are personal reasons, beyond becoming president, as to why some candidates would launch bids now.

"There is almost no downside to running for president these days, particularly when you are an unknown, because it becomes a branding exercise for a future office, for a future job, etc.," O'Connell said.

Some Republicans also believe that there's no harm in running while it's still early in the cycle, believing that the field will consolidate quickly as candidates fight for funding from donors and assess their performances in the early presidential primary states.

"My expectation is that the field is going to narrow very, very quickly,” said Matt Mackowiak, chairman of the Travis County GOP, who has also previously advised Hurd. “There's going to be enormous pressure on anyone that finishes fifth or worse in Iowa or New Hampshire to get out quickly. I mean, those people are not gonna be able to raise 100 bucks.”

"I do worry if nine or 10 people were to stay in past through, say, Super Tuesday, then it almost guarantees Trump the nomination because he's got a solid 25 to 30 percent of the primary electorate as of now that are really rock solid behind him," he added.

The first true test for candidates will come right before the party's first debate in Milwaukee in August. Contenders will need to meet several qualifications to make the stage, such as registering at least 1 percent in three national polls, or a mix of national and early state polling, and have 40,000 unique donors "with at least 200 unique donors per state or territory in 20+ states and/or territories," according to the Republican National Committee. 

GOP strategist Alice Stewart, who's worked on several presidential campaigns, including for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, said presidential contenders have every right to launch their campaign and argued "trying to shove someone out the door at this stage of the game isn't helpful to the process because we don't know what can happen."

Still, many of the candidates face a steep climb.

"I feel like there's a lot of candidates that are, again, excellent resumes and great experience and optimistic vision. But at the end of the day, some appear to be driven by consultants who are going to be cashing in on candidates that have a … difficult road ahead," Stewart said. 

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R), a staunch Trump critic who launched his long-shot presidential campaign in April, seemed to acknowledge some of those challenges in an interview Thursday with Fox News. Asked if the growing number of GOP primary candidates was dividing the anti-Trump vote, he answered, “Probably.”

“We’ve got to go through this period of self-evaluation,” Hutchinson said, “that if our message doesn’t resonate and if were stepping on each other’s toes, then we need to say who can be the best leader and we need to make sure that we reduce those numbers … as we get closer to 2024.”

The resolution, which will not have practical consequences, passed on a purely party-line vote, with 219 Republicans in favor, and 206 Democrats against.

Still, it adds another chapter to the ongoing partisan wrangling over how to handle asylum seekers released into the country.

“Using school facilities as shelter for illegal aliens instead of as schools, as they were intended, creates a host of issues ranging from safety hazards for young children to a freefall of security issues as a result of not providing the adequate accommodations or security screening,” Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), the author of the resolution, said in a floor speech.

Miller-Meeks said her resolution “bans the Biden administration” from repurposing schools, but the measure doesn’t have the power to compel the administration, and it's been local jurisdictions, not the federal government, engaged in the practice.

Democrats opposed the resolution, saying it was based on dangerous stereotypes.

“It’s Republicans spending time — and taxpayer dollars — to trot out stereotypes of migrants as dangerous and dirty and who knows what else,” Rep. Jesús "Chuy" García (D-Ill.) said in a floor speech.

García noted that many of the migrants seeking shelter are not undocumented, but rather asylum seekers with pending cases in immigration court.

"Let’s remember who Republicans are targeting with this language," he said. 

"They’re targeting migrants — many of them asylum seekers — who come to this country, who risk their lives — and to our cities — seeking safety and stability."

But the Republican resolution played on tensions growing in large Democratic-controlled cities, where shelter space is limited.

In May, New York City announced it was considering converting up to 20 school gyms into temporary housing for migrants, as the city ran out of shelter space to accommodate newcomers.

The announcement drew backlash from some parents, who complained their children would not benefit from the facilities.

Republicans supporting Thursday’s resolution leaned on that point.

“At a minimum it deprives students of their space for recess and physical education and imposes financial burdens on schools for cleaning and housing,” Miller-Meeks said.

Democrats also attacked the resolution as an issue fueled by Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas, who have for months shipped migrants to Democratic jurisdictions without coordinating their arrivals.

"They’re targeting migrants trafficked by GOP governors as a political stunt," said García, who was born in Mexico. 

"This resolution is part of the same stunt, designed to sell fear and hatred — to make primetime slot pieces on Fox News. It’s dangerous for immigrants like me and the community I represent."

The 219-208 party-line vote ends a two-day clash between GOP leaders and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), a conservative firebrand who stunned Washington on Tuesday by introducing a procedural measure to force a floor vote on her impeachment articles despite the objection of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). 

The articles, which accuse Biden of overseeing “a complete and total invasion at the southern border,” triggered an outcry from some of Boebert’s GOP colleagues, who were caught by surprise and quickly condemned any impeachment vote as premature. 

The sides ultimately reached an agreement late Wednesday to sidestep an impeachment vote by sending her articles to both the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, which have jurisdiction over impeachment and immigration policy, respectively. 

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The deal avoids — at least temporarily — what might have been an embarrassing internal fight on the House floor.

But Boebert is already warning that if the two committees don’t move on impeachment quickly enough to satisfy her sense of urgency, she intends to reintroduce the “privileged” resolution to force the issue to the House floor once again. 

“That is my commitment, that if nothing happens in committee like I’m promised that it will, yes, I will bring a privileged resolution every day for the rest of my time here in Congress,” Boebert told reporters Wednesday night.

Asked how much time she is willing to give the committee process before moving to force another vote, Boebert said, “The chairman is working on those details,” adding that he's planned "a few months of work" and that "there’s a little bit of grace there."

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) speaks to reporters following vote series at the Capitol on Thursday, June 22, 2023.

"But, I mean, that’s tentative,” she qualified.

The push to impeach Biden is nothing new for House Republicans. In the last Congress, when Democrats still controlled the chamber, GOP lawmakers introduced no fewer than 10 impeachment resolutions against the president, targeting his policies on issues as diverse as immigration, the response to the COVID pandemic and the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The new Congress, under GOP control, has already featured the introduction of four similar resolutions. 

Yet Boebert’s strategy this week stood out as an enormous escalation in the effort to oust Biden — one that threatened to turn a behind-the-scenes messaging strategy into a front-and-center floor vote that would have put many Republicans in an uncomfortable spot.

Vulnerable moderate lawmakers have hoped to avoid going on the record on impeachment, for fear of blowback in their purple districts. And GOP leaders have sought to finalize their investigations into Biden at the committee level before charging ahead with anything as aggressive as impeachment. 

“This is one of the most serious things you can do as a member of Congress. I think you’ve got to go through the process. You’ve got to have the investigation,” McCarthy said. “Throwing something on the floor actually harms the investigation that we’re doing right now.”

Adding to the Republicans’ reluctance is the simple fact that any impeachment resolution would almost certainly fail on the House floor, creating an embarrassing political situation for GOP leaders who have accused Biden of being unfit for office.

Their move to defuse the impeachment push came the same week that another Republican — Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) — used the same procedural gambit as Boebert to force a vote on censuring Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a highly unusual disciplinary action approved by GOP lawmakers Wednesday.

The successful vote, however, came only after a band of Republicans joined Democrats in defeating the effort last week, which brought threats of retaliation from former President Trump and forced Luna to revise the resolution and force another vote.

Both votes have highlighted the difficulties facing McCarthy and other GOP leaders as they fight to manage a restive conference with a razor-thin majority. McCarthy struggled to obtain the Speakership in January in the face of opposition from 20 GOP detractors — including Boebert — who continue to question his conservative bona fides.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., speaks during the stamp unveiling ceremony in honor of Rep. John Lewis on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, June 21, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Eleven of those conservatives shut down all activity on the House floor earlier this month to protest McCarthy’s handling of the debt ceiling negotiations with Biden. And they’re threatening to do it again if the Speaker doesn’t get behind deeper spending cuts in the upcoming fight over government funding, which expires Oct. 1. 

Democrats sought to highlight that internal discord Thursday, arguing that the vote on Biden’s impeachment resolution was a product of McCarthy’s weak leadership.

“We all know the truth: The real emergency here was that the Georgia wing and the Colorado wing of the MAGA caucus got into a fight right over there on the House floor about who gets to impeach the president first,” Rep. Jim McGovern (Mass.), the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, said during debate.

He was referring to a spat between Boebert and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) one day earlier about the impeachment articles.

“The truth is that Speaker McCarthy has lost control of this House, and it is being run by the MAGA fringe. This is nuts,” he continued. “Kids get shot in their classrooms, nothing. Environmental disasters destroy entire communities, nothing. Our air is clogged with smoke because half the Northern Hemisphere is on fire due to climate change, nothing. But when the MAGA wing nuts say, 'Jump,' Speaker McCarthy says, 'How high?'”

Democrats also argued that Republicans were attempting to distract from the legal troubles surrounding former President Trump, following his federal indictment earlier this month and state charges in March.

“This resolution is simply the latest attempt by extreme MAGA republicans to distract from the legal peril facing their twice-impeached, twice-indicted party leader,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who chaired the Jan. 6 select committee. “This cynical resolution has nothing to do with border security. It does nothing to stop fentanyl deaths. And it has nothing to do with the constitutional law.”

Republicans, however, disagreed, asserting that their effort against Biden was squarely focused on his response to the situation at the southern border.

“Let’s be very clear: The issue that is happening at our southern border — not the name-calling or talking about former President Trump — what is happening at our southern border today and for the last two years under President Biden has been a dereliction of duty with respect to immigration law in the United States,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said on the House floor Thursday.

While Thursday’s vote punted the question of whether Biden should be impeached, some of the president’s fiercest critics are vowing that the referral to committees marks just the beginning of their latest effort against the president.

“Our job in the House of Representatives is, in fact, to deter the overreach and abuse of authority by the President of the United States refusing to carry out the laws of the United States in detriment to the well-being, security, and lives of the people of this country,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said on the House floor Thursday.

“That is our job in the House of Representatives. That is why we are here, that is why I support this rule and that is why I support this resolution. That is why I support this inquiry,” he continued. “And we are just beginning.”

Emily Brooks contributed.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which will head to the full House floor later this year for debate, sticks to the $874 billion budget request from President Biden, which was kept intact by the debt ceiling bill reached with Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

It includes a major pay raise for service members, programs and initiatives to counter China, and $300 million to support Ukraine, among other funding needs across the military.

But the draft NDAA, which passed just after midnight Thursday after roughly 14 hours of debate and voting, also includes several amendments targeting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and other cultural issues. Those measures led to hours of infighting Wednesday between Republicans and Democrats on the committee.

The GOP is touting the bill as a major win against programs they object to at the Pentagon.

“We bleed green and fight for the same flag,” Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla) said in a tweet. “DoD should be mission and merit-focused, not focused on turning our ranks against each other based on skin color.”

One amendment from Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) forces the Biden administration to conduct a review of how transgender policies have affected service members.

Banks also successfully passed his amendment to ban the Navy's Digital Ambassadorship program after a service member who moonlights as a drag queen was criticized by the GOP for participating in it.

Another, from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), prohibits the Pentagon from funding drag shows. Gaetz also offered an amendment to eliminate the Defense Department's (DOD) chief diversity officer.

And Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) mustered through a provision creating a parental bill of rights for service members who put their children through military-affiliated schools — an amendment that her Democratic colleagues called overly broad and a Trojan horse to allow conservative parents to ban books or prevent certain material from being taught in school. 

“It was made very clear by the sponsor of the amendment that she’s going after trans education and sex education. There is a very narrow conservative agenda and this amendment wants to empower parents to dictate that agenda into the schools in a more effective manner,” ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said.

Republicans also passed several amendments to aid service members who were kicked out of the military for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine and to eliminate the use of critical race theory — an academic framework evaluating U.S. history through the lens of racism that has become a political catch-all buzzword for any race-related teaching — at military service academies.

Some conservative proposals did get shot down, however. The committee rejected an amendment from Gaetz to halt funding for DEI training and declined to pass another from Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.) that would defund the Pentagon’s deputy inspector general for diversity and extremism in the military.

Despite the repeated clash over cultural issues between Democrats and Republicans, only Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) voted against sending the NDAA to the full House floor.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) championed the bill as bipartisan and praised it for including "provisions that counter China’s aggression, boost oversight of the Department of Defense, and support our servicemembers and their families."

"Additionally, this year’s bill saves taxpayers billions of dollars while still making critical investments in innovative technologies and our defense industrial base," Rogers said in a statement.

Still, the bill’s controversial amendments are likely to face more hurdles when it comes to the full House floor.

Smith in a statement said he is “not supportive of everything in this bill.”

“As we prepare to bring the NDAA to the House floor, we will continue to advocate for the priorities and values that make our military stronger and America safer, including ensuring that we have the most diverse, talented pool of individuals to recruit and retain to our Armed Forces,” he said.

Democrats did achieve some wins, passing an amendment to prohibit the Pentagon from purchasing cookware, uniforms, personal care products and other products that contain per- and polyfluoroalkyl, known as forever chemicals. 

On the national security level, Democrats feuded with Republicans on an amendment from Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) to create a program for the SLCM-N, a sea-launched cruise missile.

Biden’s budget did not include continued funding for SLCM-N, considered a “tactical” naval weapon as a low-yield, non-ballistic nuclear missile. 

Supporters say it creates more options for the Navy to deter foreign adversaries, while opponents argue the nuclear capability was not necessary and could impact U.S. submarines traveling to international ports. The amendment passed.

The NDAA also passed without any changes to language that would restrict funding for construction and leasing projects for U.S. Space Command until a final decision is made on the combat command’s headquarters. The bill also slashes the Air Force secretary’s travel budget in half until a decision is made.

Alabama Republicans are upset that the Biden administration has delayed a planned Space Command relocation from Colorado Springs, Colo., to Huntsville, Ala., and may scrap the plan entirely over concerns about abortion restrictions.

As the bill heads to the House floor, it’s expected that Republicans will further try to chip away at the Pentagon’s policies made under the Biden administration that fall within the cultural wars raging across the country.

Among those is an anticipated amendment to reverse a DOD policy that reimburses travel expenses for service members who seek an abortion outside the state they are based.

And Ukraine funding is also sure to be targeted, with Gaetz vowing to file floor amendments to “strip as much of this Ukraine money out of this bill as possible.”

In the letter, ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and the panel’s other Democrats said CEO Alan Shaw has failed to produce all information requested in a March letter. The company has only partially complied, they wrote, producing predominantly publicly available materials. Norfolk Southern has also falsely claimed federal regulations keep them from producing all of the requested documents, according to the panel.

“Among other missing items, your company has not provided any internal documents regarding its implementation of precision scheduled railroading practices and their effects on Norfolk Southern’s operations and financial position, nor has your company provided documents regarding positions cut as part of workforce reductions,” the members wrote.

“Your company has also not provided documents relating to its internal policies regarding wayside detectors and sensors, and it has not provided its communications with state and federal agency officials involved in the response to the East Palestine derailment,” they added.

The Hill has reached out to Norfolk Southern for comment.

A train carrying a number of hazardous substances — including vinyl chloride, which is used in the production of plastics — derailed in East Palestine in February. While no deaths or injuries have yet been directly linked to the crash, fish in nearby waterways and local wildlife died following the derailment.

The Environmental Protection Agency has invoked the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, which requires Norfolk Southern to cover cleanup and other costs.

An ongoing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board has since determined that track sensors detected a rapidly overheating wheel bearing on the train just before the derailment, but by the time it reached the overheating threshold required to stop the train, it was too late to avert the crash.

Florida is accusing the Biden administration of unlawfully interfering with a recent state law that requires universities to switch their accreditor every few years, arguing the department is unjustly burdening the state’s schools' ability to comply. 

Universities are required to go through an accreditation process to receive federal funds. While accreditation companies are private, the department reviews these firms to see if they are following proper standards to let them keep their status as arbitrators of the funding. 

DeSantis says that after Florida created a law to require universities to switch accreditors every so often, the Department of Education issued three “guidance documents” making it virtually impossible for schools to follow the state’s directive. 

“I will not allow Joe Biden’s Department of Education to defund America’s #1 higher education system all because we refuse to bow to unaccountable accreditors who think they should run Florida’s public universities,” said the governor, who is also a 2024 presidential candidate, in a statement.

In the complaint, the state of Florida lays out ways the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACS), the accreditor that works with all Florida schools, has allegedly abused its power. 

The most recent incident listed in the lawsuit was in 2021, when SACS said Florida State University was in danger of losing federal aid because it was considering the Florida commissioner of education to be its president. 

“In 2022, the Florida Legislature, prompted by the Department’s actions and incensed by SACS’s abuses, passed SB 7044, which requires public colleges and universities to switch accreditors,” the lawsuit reads. 

In response, the department released documents to the accreditors detailing that schools needed a “reasonable cause” to be able to switch accreditation agencies. Another document said the agencies need to remember the voluntary nature of the relationship between the private companies and schools and to investigate if they feel a requested switch is against the wish of a university. 

The last document, according to the lawsuit, updated guidance that says universities must get approval from the department before they begin the process to switch accreditors. 

While some Florida universities have formally requested permission to change accreditors from the department, the lawsuit says the administration has responded by saying they need to know if the school is only switching because of Florida’s new law to determine if they have a “reasonable cause” to change accreditors. 

“As it stands, state law requires over half of Florida’s public colleges and universities to change accreditors in the next two years. Their ability to do so is substantially burdened, if not entirely prevented, by federal laws that violate the Constitution and federal policies that violate the APA,” the lawsuit reads. 

The lawsuit asserts the federal government is violating the private nondelegation doctrine, the 10th Amendment and Spending Clause, the Appointments Clause and the Administration Procedure Act. 

“The Biden administration’s attempts to block these reforms is an abuse of federal power, and with this lawsuit, we will ensure that Florida’s pursuit of educational excellence will continue,” DeSantis said. 

A White House spokesperson compared this lawsuit to other “culture war” issues DeSantis has focused on such as book bans.

“If Republican elected officials could have their way, library shelves would be stocked with guns – not books – and curriculums would be loaded with conspiracy theories, not facts. These culture wars do nothing to actually help students, and only make things worse. This Administration won’t allow it. We’re committed to ensuring all students receive a high-quality education, and will fight this latest effort by opponents to get in the way of that,” the spokesperson said. 

The lawsuit is the latest move in DeSantis's crusade on education, which he has made a top pillar in his time as Florida governor and in his presidential campaign. He has in particular stirred up the higher education space by signing laws that make it more difficult for faculty to retain tenure, restricting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and replacing the board of a small liberal arts college with conservative members.

Updated at 5:09 pm.

Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Jon Tester (Mont.), two centrist Democrats facing tough reelection races next year in red states, voted against the resolution. They both have a history of supporting gun-owners' rights.

The resolution failed by a vote of 49 to 50. 

President Biden had said he would veto the measure, which the House approved June 13.   

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said repealing the rule effectively banning pistol braces would have made it “easier to conceal an assault-style pistol, something that’s been used in mass shooting after mass shooting.”  

“Shame on them,” he said of Republicans who pushed to overturn the regulation.  

“If you’ve ever seen a gunman fire what looks like a machine gun with one hand, that’s what pistol braces allow you to do,” he said.  

The White House noted in a statement of administration policy that gunmen have used brace devices in mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and Boulder, Colo.  

The resolution, which Republicans moved under the Congressional Review Act, would have nullified the rule finalized in January by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) stating that any stabilizing brace attached to a pistol with a barrel less than 16 inches would be regulated as a “short-barreled rifle” under the 1968 Gun Control Act.   

Congress passed legislation in the 1980s to impose a 10-year prison sentencing enhancement for using a short-barreled rifle in any violent or drug trafficking crime.  

Under the new Biden administration rule, gun owners who have a pistol with a stabilizing brace can either add a longer barrel to the firearm, remove the brace, turn the firearm in to a local ATF office or register it as a short-barreled rifle with federal authorities.  

“Short-barreled rifles are more concealable than long guns, yet more dangerous and accurate at a distance than traditional pistols. For these reasons, they are particularly lethal, which is why Congress has deemed them to be dangerous and unusual weapons subject to strict regulation since 1934,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a June 12 statement of policy.  

The White House budget office said earlier this month that Biden would veto the measure.   

“For almost 90 years, short-barreled rifles have been controlled under the National Firearms Act, along with machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. Why? Because they combine the accuracy of a rifle with the concealability of a handgun. It’s a deadly combination,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said before the vote.   

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), the House sponsor of the resolution, called the ATF rule “unconstitutional” and an example of “executive overreach.”  

The House passed the resolution earlier this month by a largely partisan vote of 219 to 210.  

Two Democrats voted for it and two Republicans voted against it. 

The release of their names — father Gercino dos Santos and aunt Elma Preven — on Thursday is the latest iteration of a months-long saga surrounding Santos, the federally indicted first-term lawmaker who has come under intense scrutiny amid questions about his finances and background.

The congressman attempted to keep their identities private, citing fears of harassment as he unsuccessfully pushed back twice on media companies’ requests to unseal the names.

“As the News Organizations aptly note, family members frequently serve as suretors for criminal defendants in this country every day,” U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert, appointed by former President Clinton, wrote in a newly unsealed ruling handed down earlier this week.

"Consequently, it is more likely that disclosure of the Suretors’ identities will render any potential ‘story’ a ‘non-story,’ especially considering the News Organizations’ acknowledgement of this fact,” she added. “Indeed, it appears Defendant’s continued attempts to shield the identity of his Suretors, notwithstanding the fact that he is aware their identities are not controversial, has simply created hysteria over what is, in actuality, a nonissue."

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Joe Murray, Santos’s lawyer, previously suggested Santos would rather have them withdraw and the lawmaker go to jail, rather than let their names become public, citing a “media frenzy.”

The judge, however, rejected that notion when ordering the names unsealed.

"Defendant did nothing to diffuse the ‘media frenzy’ when leaving the courthouse, instead choosing to address the numerous reporters awaiting his departure,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Anne Shields wrote.

Thursday’s order also revealed that five days after Shields presided over Santos’s arraignment, she held a bond hearing behind closed doors. Santos’s aunt and father were present, but the congressman did not attend, according to court documents.

Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) celebrates the first ever Congressional Sneaker Day created by the Congressional Sneaker Caucus at the Capitol on Wednesday, June 21, 2023.

The filings indicate Santos’s father and aunt both “remained comfortable” at the hearing about their roles, even following days of media attention on the case.

Shields noted they didn’t secure the bond with cash or property, but were “deemed able to provide the necessary moral suasion” and are personally responsible for Santos’s compliance.

Santos last month was indicted on 13 federal charges that accuse him of misleading campaign donors, fraudulently receiving unemployment benefits and lying on financial disclosures. He pleaded not guilty.

But he has been the subject of controversy since before he was sworn into office after a bombshell report outlined questionable aspects of his resume in December. The criticism ballooned when more inquiries about his finances emerged and hit a fever pitch last month when he was indicted.

Also last month, A House Democrat moved to force a vote on expelling Santos but the chamber ultimately voted to send the resolution to the Ethics Committee, which was already investigating the congressman.

The unsealing of the names of people who sponsored Santos’s bond — which Santos fought — could have implications for that inquiry.

The Ethics panel launched its probe into Santos in March to look into various areas, but in recent weeks the committee asked for information about his bond suretors.

In a May 13 letter from the panel to Santos — which was first revealed in a court filing this month — the committee asked the congressman to identify the individuals who co-signed his bond, inform the committee of any payments made on his behalf to the co-signers as compensation, lay out any exceptions to House rules that the congressman believes applies to the bond guarantors and provide all documents related to the bond, including communications with the co-signers.

Santos did not immediately comply with the request: Roughly two weeks later, his attorney, Joseph Murray, asked that his client receive a 30-day extension to respond to the panel’s request while also noting he could not share the requested information with the committee until it was unsealed by the court.

“Please understand that unless or until such time that the Court unseals the identities of the suretors, the surety records, and proceedings, I cannot share that information with this Honorable House Ethics Committee,” Murray told the committee in a May 31 letter first revealed in a filing this month.

“If the Court decides to unseal the identities of the sureties, the surety records and proceedings, I will share that information with the Committee. If, however, the Court upholds the sealing, I will also share that Order with this Committee,” he added.

Updated at 1:31 p.m.

Obama gave his comments ahead of the official state visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been criticized for his government's treatment of Muslims and a weakening of press freedoms.

“I do think that it is appropriate for the president of the United States, where he or she can, to uphold those principles and to challenge — whether behind closed doors or in public — trends that are troubling. And so, I’m less concerned about labels than I’m concerned about specific practices,” he told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

He added that protecting the rights of minority groups in India is essential.

“Part of my argument would be that if you do not protect the rights of ethnic minorities in India, then there is a strong possibility India at some point starts pulling apart. And we’ve seen what happens when you start getting those kinds of large internal conflicts,” he said.

In the full interview, which will air Thursday night, Obama said that part of the duties as president is to meet with leaders of other countries and their governments, even if they aren't fully democratic.

"But you have to do business with them — because they're important for national security reasons — there are a range of economic interests," he said.

"If the president meets with Prime Minister Modi, then the protection of the Muslim minority in a majority-Hindu India, that's something worth mentioning," Obama added.

Biden, Obama's former vice president, made joint remarks with Modi at the White House on Thursday. The Indian prime minister did not respond to a question about the treatment of Muslims in India ahead of a bilateral meeting.

Modi, on his first state visit to the United States, will also give a joint address to Congress later Thursday, which will be boycotted by some Democrats.

"What I would say is this: When you are saying that [former New York Gov. Andrew] Cuomo did better on COVID than Florida did, you are revealing yourself to just be full of it," DeSantis responded. 

"Nobody believes that," he added to applause. "And you know why I know that? Because I remember in 2020 and 2021 when he was praising Florida for being open, saying we did it much better than New York and Michigan, and everyone was coming to Florida, and that we were one of the great governors in the United States."

DeSantis then circled back to the original question and said, "It's like, I want to beat Biden, OK? I will do that. I will get that done. And I think, more importantly than that, I will actually bring these policies for a landing and get it all done up there."

"But it's an important process, and you respect the process and you respect the people's decisions, how this goes, but I'm very confident that those decisions are going to be positive for us," he said. 

Trump's campaign has attack the governor in recent days over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. On Tuesday, the Trump campaign rolled out a 30-second spot accusing DeSantis of shutting Florida down and referring to him as "lockdown Ron."

The DeSantis campaign hit back, calling the spot “bizarre.” The campaign rolled out its own video with a compilation of clips of Trump praising Florida for being “open” during the pandemic.

In March 2020, DeSantis declared a state of emergency in Florida in response to the pandemic. He then imposed a stay-at-home order on April 1, 2020, which was considerably later than other states.

Tensions between Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) boiled over on the House floor as Greene called Boebert a "little bitch" amid GOP frustration at the Colorado Republican's move to try and force a vote on impeaching President Biden.

During votes Wednesday afternoon, Boebert approached Greene over statements she made earlier in the day for critiquing her move to force an impeachment vote, the Daily Beast reported. 

Greene accused Boebert of copying her own articles of impeachment against Biden, which Greene had previously asked her to co-sponsor, the report said. And Greene also noted that she donated to Boebert and defended her.

At one point, Greene called Boebert a “little bitch.”

More House coverage from The Hill

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• House clerk who oversaw McCarthy Speaker fight resigns
• House passes resolution to condemn using schools as migrant shelters
• Republicans punt on Boebert’s effort to impeach Biden

Greene confirmed the exchange, later telling reporters that the Daily Beast’s story — including the name-calling — was “impressively correct.”

Boebert’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the exchange, but she told CNN of the reported exchange, “Like I said, I’m not in middle school.”

Greene expanded on her frustration with Boebert while speaking to reporters at the Capitol.

“I have defended her when she's been attacked. She and I have virtually the same voting record. We're both members of the House Freedom Caucus. We should be natural allies,” Greene said. “But for some reason, she has a great skill and talent for making most people here not like her. And so, it’s her issue.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks during a press conference held by the Republican Study Committee announcing their Fiscal Year 2024 Budget at the Capitol on Wednesday, June 14, 2023.

Greene said that she supported Boebert’s impeachment articles because she also wants to impeach Biden, but she critiqued her approach. Boebert's move to force a vote surprised and angered many of her colleagues.

“She didn't talk to anyone about it. She didn’t come to the conference [meeting]. She didn't address it with anybody. She copied my articles of impeachment, refused to cosponsor mine,” Greene said.

The Trump-supporting firebrands both arrived in Congress in 2020, and due to their ideological and stylistic similarities, were often lumped together. But the two have diverged in their tactical approaches over the last year or so, and they have made clear they do not get along with each other.

One House GOP member told The Hill that Boebert and Greene have never liked each other and sit at opposite ends of the table during House Freedom Caucus meetings.

The tension between the two has burst into public view in the past — particularly around the time Boebert and other conservatives blocked Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from immediately becoming Speaker, while Greene was a staunch supporter of McCarthy.

During the drawn-out Speaker’s fight in January, Greene and Boebert got into a confrontation in the women’s bathroom, the Daily Beast reported.

“You were OK taking millions of dollars from McCarthy, but you refuse to vote for him for Speaker, Lauren?” Greene reportedly said.

Boebert later recounted the exchange to conservative commentator Dana Loesch. 

“When she started going after me, I looked at her and said, ‘Don’t be ugly,’” Boebert said.

Amanda Andrade-Rhoades, J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

And in a December interview with conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, Boebert lamented being “accused of believing a lot of the things that [Greene] believes in.” 

“I don’t believe in this, just like I don’t believe in Russian space lasers — Jewish space lasers and all of this,” Boebert said, in reference to a 2018 Facebook post from Greene in which she floated that a “laser beam or light beam” from “space solar generators” could be to blame for wildfires in California, also mentioning the “Rothschild Inc.” Greene later said she did not know the Rothschilds have long been at the center of antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Greene shot back on Twitter.

“She gladly takes our $$$ but when she’s been asked: Lauren refuses to endorse President Trump, she refuses to support Kevin McCarthy, and she childishly threw me under the bus for a cheap sound bite,” Greene said of Boebert.

In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that a 1868 treaty did not require the country to take “affirmative steps” to secure water for the tribe. 

At issue is an 1868 treaty under which the federal government guaranteed the nation’s agricultural needs, which the Navajo Nation argues includes water rights.

Tribal governments in the suit also cite the so-called Winters doctrine, based on the 1908 Winters v. United States court case, which established that the creation of a Native American reservation also reserves the water necessary for its purposes.

More Courts coverage from The Hill

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• Alito caught in crosshairs of latest Supreme Court scandal
• Hunter Biden to make initial court appearance July 26 

The 1868 peace treaty in question established a reservation for the Navajo and granted them the right to use needed water on the reservation. 

The tribe has argued that under that treaty, the U.S. has the responsibility to secure water for the tribe — which has become more difficult as water resources along the Colorado River dwindle amid historic drought. 

But the majority of the high court called the tribe “incorrect.”

“In the Tribe’s view, the 1868 treaty imposed a duty on the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Navajo. With respect, the Tribe is incorrect,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.

The majority opinion was joined by all of the court’s conservatives except Neil Gorsuch,  a fervent defender of tribal rights who wrote a dissenting opinion joined by the court’s three liberals.

Gorsuch said the court’s decision “rejects a request the Navajo Nation never made.”

“Where does the Navajo Nation go from here?” Gorsuch wrote. “To date, their efforts to find out what water rights the United States hold for them have produced an experience familiar to any American who has spent time at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Navajo have waited patiently for someone, anyone, to help them, only to be told (repeatedly) that they have been standing in the wrong line and must try another.”

He said their lawsuit “more than suffices to state a claim for relief.”

“As they did at Bosque Redondo, they must again fight for themselves to secure their homeland and all that must necessarily come with it,” Gorsuch wrote, referring to the attempted ethnic cleansing of the Navajo in the 1860s.

“Perhaps here, as there, some measure of justice will prevail in the end,” he added.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas took issue with another piece of the tribe’s case.

He wrote that when a lower court allowed the Navajo Nation’s “breach of trust” claim to go forward, it recognized a “generic legal duty of the Federal Government toward Indian tribes” — which he took issue with. 

“The Nation has pointed to no source of legally enforceable duties supporting its claim in this suit. But the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning reflects deeper problems with this Court’s frequent  invocation of the Indian ‘trust relationship,’” he wrote. 

The Navajo reservation, which stretches more than 17 million acres, has been hit hard by a lack of water infrastructure, and tribal leaders have argued the federal government has shirked its treaty obligations to the tribe.

In 2021, a San Francisco federal appeals court sided with the tribe, allowing it to sue in support of the affirmative duty. The Biden administration and the states of Arizona, Nevada and Colorado appealed the decision, with the high court hearing the consolidated appeals.

In their arguments before the court, the states argued that siding with the Navajo Nation would represent a major disruption to management of the Colorado River.

The states in the river’s basin only recently reached a consensus on temporary water usage cutbacks, in a proposal that has yet to be approved by the Bureau of Reclamation. Earlier this month, the Interior Department also launched the formal process for updating the 2007 Colorado River operating guidelines, which are set to expire in 2026.

Updated at 4:06 p.m. EDT.

Youngkin waded into the GOP contests last month, backing 10 candidates, all of whom won against their primary challengers. 

The results are a boon to the incumbent governor ahead of what is expected to be a hard-fought cycle in November. They also bolster his image as a rising star within the GOP ranks.

In a memo released Wednesday, the chairman of Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia PAC, Dave Rexrode, argued Youngkin has an “unprecedented opportunity” to impact November’s races given the commonwealth’s newly drawn district lines, along with other factors. 

“The fact is, an open-seat environment, with a well-liked Governor who is directly working these races, while advancing a popular agenda that moves Virginia forward — is cause for optimism as we look to hold the majority in the House and flip the Senate,” Rexrode wrote. “It is still a challenging climb, but the strength of Governor Youngkin’s image, job approval, and the support of his commonsense agenda is critical to a successful November.”

The governor’s team pointed to contested primary races last night, including in Senate District 27, where Republican Del. Tara Durant, who was backed by Youngkin, defeated Matt Strickland by roughly 14 points. 

“It’s always a risk to involve yourself in an intramural contest, but it was a calculated risk because I think that the governor’s team knows that if you want to win the state Senate back this fall, which is no easy task, then you have to go in and try to find the candidates who would be most successful in that attempt,” said Tucker Martin, a Virginia-based GOP strategist. 

Youngkin rolled out his endorsements along with a slickly produced six-figure ad buy last month ahead of the primaries to flex his political muscles. 

“He is ready to stick his neck out, put his political capital on the line to get good Republican legislators to work with,” said Will Ritter, the CEO of Poolhouse, an agency that does media for Youngkin’s PAC. “What happened last night shows that he’s got a sophisticated political operation that sets a goal and hits it.”

Republicans have touted party unity coming out of Tuesday while painting Democrats as a party grappling with infighting.  

“Gov. Youngkin deserves credit for being a unifying force and being a boost,” said Mike Joyce, communications director at the Republican State Leadership Committee. “Having the unified force that we have going into November, it really speaks to the work that Gov. Youngkin has done.”

But others argue Youngkin and his allies are overhyping the governor’s role Tuesday.

“His candidates won, but they were in Republican primaries,” said Bob Holsworth, a veteran Virginia political analyst. “It doesn’t mean anything for the fall.” 

“It’s important that Tara Durant beat Matt Strickland because that seat is one the Republicans absolutely have to keep if it has any chance whatsoever of flipping the Senate,” Holsworth added. 

“But that won’t win the Senate for him.” 

Holsworth noted that going into November, Democrats are starting with roughly 20 seats that are “relatively safe,” meaning Youngkin and Republicans will be tasked with winning every competitive race and likely will have to flip a seat. 

“It’s not predetermined that he’s likely going to be successful in flipping the Senate,” Holsworth said. “That’s an uphill climb for him in Virginia.” 

And Republicans say they are keenly aware of what will be a steep climb to win back the state Senate, where the Democratic majority has been a bulwark against much of Youngkin’s agenda. 

“It will be tough,” Ritter said. “If we can go back in the way-back machine, Virginia was completely written off as a blue state. Joe Biden beat Donald Trump in Virginia by 10 points,” he continued, referring to the 2020 election, which took place one year before Youngkin was elected. 

Democrats argue that Youngkin’s narrative coming out of Tuesday’s primaries is designed to boost his national narrative going into the 2024 presidential race. Youngkin has not formally closed the door on a potential run, but his team has maintained he is laser-focused on the Legislature races in Virginia this fall. Youngkin said last month that he would not be headed out on the presidential campaign trail this year. 

While a stellar performance for Virginia Republicans in November could theoretically bode well for Youngkin in a presidential primary, it would be a logistically mammoth task for him to shore up enough support ahead of the Iowa caucuses in early 2024. 

Still, November’s state legislative elections will be partly as a referendum on Youngkin’s first two years in office. Additionally, the stakes are raised for him because he can only serve one consecutive term as governor in Virginia, meaning what happens under him could have a profound impact on his political legacy.

“I think that this fall is going to be characterized by so many countervailing forces that it’s hard to say what the No. 1 issue or dynamic is going to be,” Martin said.

“Yes, there is a portion that will be, 'How do you feel about the governor’s leadership?' There’s also going to be a portion of it that will be, 'How do you feel about how the president’s doing?' There’s also the Trump effect," Martin added. "Abortion will be a big issue. Education will be a big issue. And who knows what else will come up between now and November?” 

Political practitioners agree November’s elections in Virginia will be a test for both parties ahead of next year’s general election. 

Democrats have already signaled that they plan to make abortion access a key issue in Virginia, while Republicans are already painting Democrats as too progressive or extreme on multiple fronts. 

“This is going to be like the first election in 2024 in some ways where the parties are going to be testing out their messages,” Holsworth said. 

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) surprised even her own GOP colleagues Tuesday when she filed a privileged motion that would force a vote on a resolution to impeach Biden.

Conservatives have also been pushing to impeach figures, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said she is converting the articles of impeachment she has filed against top officials into privileged resolutions to use “when I feel it’s necessary.” 

The moves, however, are making many Senate Republicans uneasy.

“I know people are angry. I’m angry at the Biden administration for their policies at the border and a whole host of other things, but I think we also need to look at what’s achievable,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “And with a Democratic majority in the Senate, I don’t think that’s achievable.”

The move by the Colorado Republican came out of left field to many, though Boebert told reporters she informed House GOP leadership she would be making the privileged motion. 

The decision to move ahead also caught senators off guard, even those more conservative than others. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) exclaimed, “Really?” when asked about movement on Boebert’s articles of impeachment. 

The resolution includes two articles related to Biden’s handling of matters along the U.S.-Mexico border — one for dereliction of duty and one for abuse of power. Some Senate GOP members argued Boebert’s latest maneuver is frivolous.

“I’ve got a pretty high bar for impeachment,” Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) said, noting that he said as much in his pair of votes against convicting former President Trump. “I fear that snap impeachments will become the norm, and they mustn’t.” 

Some even laughed at the idea of impeaching Biden.

Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), the lone Senate Republican who voted to convict former President Trump in both of his trials, told The Hill that conservatives are spinning their wheels.

“Yeah,” Romney said when asked if he considers this a waste of time. “If someone commits a high crime or misdemeanor, of course. If they don’t, it’s a waste of time.” 

The impeachment chatter is the latest maneuver by House conservatives that has alarmed their colleagues across the Capitol. A revolt by hard-line conservatives that ground House floor business to a halt earlier this month left Senate Republicans worried about what would happen when must-pass bills arrive. And House Republicans wrote their spending bills at levels below those agreed to in last month’s debt ceiling deal — setting up a fight with the Senate, which is following the agreed-upon caps.

But Boebert’s latest move also angered her House colleagues. Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) went so far as to urge his House GOP conference to rally against Boebert’s resolution before it hits the floor later this week. 

House Republicans want to keep attention focused on the Hunter Biden plea deal announced this week. And while some members may be in favor of impeaching some top officials — including Biden — they say Boebert’s is premature and could undermine existing congressional investigations and future impeachment efforts.

“I don’t think it’s the right thing to do,” McCarthy later told reporters. 

“This is one of the most serious things you can do as a member of Congress. I think you’ve got to go through the process. You’ve got to have the investigation,” McCarthy continued. “And throwing something on the floor actually harms the investigation that we’re doing right now.”

House Democrats are expected to make a motion to table the resolution, putting up a blockade against the vote entirely. The motion to table resolution is expected to succeed. 

Despite the wide opposition to Boebert’s effort, there has been some appetite for Biden’s removal among some Senate conservatives. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) called on the president to resign and ran ads on it earlier this year, though not because of his border policies. 

However, Senate Republicans are warning their colleagues across the Capitol complex that if they do plow forward with any sort of impeachment against Biden or others, they better be ready to back it up and show there’s an impeachable offense involved. 

“The Democrats played politics with impeachment. Republicans shouldn’t do that,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a friend and ally of McCarthy stemming from his time in the House. “If it’s something that’s impeachable, that’s fine. But there needs to be a process to it.” 

While early impeachment pushes are likely to fail, some efforts by conservative members have garnered widespread support among Republicans. House Republicans on Wednesday passed a censure resolution against Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) that was brought up by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla) over his handling of investigations into Trump.

And Senate Republicans on Wednesday reiterated their confidence in McCarthy despite the ongoing back-and-forth with conservatives. 

“I think he’s got a handful of people who’re going to do what they’re going to do. I don’t know that he’s got a lot of control over any of that,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told reporters.

“The House is the House. They’ve got their own way of doing things. I guess they’ll deal with them one way or another,” Thune said. “The best way to change the direction of the country is to win elections, and to win elections, you have to put forward a vision for the future of this country and talk in a positive way about the things that you want to do and draw contrasts with the administration.”

Alexander Bolton contributed.

Alito on Tuesday night took the rare step of penning a Wall Street Journal opinion piece to rebut a ProPublica story, published hours later, that detailed an undisclosed Alaskan fishing trip Alito took in 2008.

The conservative justice admitted that he accepted a seat on the private plane paid for by billionaire hedge fund owner Paul Singer, a major Republican donor, and later participated in several cases in which a subsidiary of Singer’s fund was a party.

But Alito denied any wrongdoing, clashing with judicial watchdog groups who say the revelation has only added to a string of ethical lapses by Justice Clarence Thomas and others at the Supreme Court.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) responded by vowing to mark up Supreme Court ethics legislation following Congress’s July Fourth recess.

“Justice Alito’s response to this latest reporting shows exactly why this Supreme Court urgently needs an ethics overhaul to hold the justices accountable for the many instances of ethical wrongdoings that continue to come to light,” Whitehouse said in a statement.

Democrats renewed a push for the Supreme Court to adopt a binding code of ethics earlier this year, when Thomas came under fire for undisclosed luxury trips he took at the expense of Harlan Crow, a GOP megadonor and real estate developer. Thomas also denied wrongdoing.

Now Alito is caught in the crosshairs.

ProPublica reported that Leonard Leo, who led a years-long push to move the court to the right and aided Alito and other conservative nominees in their confirmation battles, helped organize the 2008 Alaskan fishing trip. 

Leo reportedly invited Singer and asked if he and Alito could fly on the hedge fund manager’s jet. Alito conceded that he accepted the flight and then stayed for three nights at the Grand Salmon Lodge, paid for by the lodge’s owner, Robin Arkley II. Arkley and Singer were both major donors to Leo’s political groups, according to ProPublica. 

“One day it’s ‘my superyacht trips funded by a GOP megadonor were ethical because we’re such close friends,’ and the next it’s ‘my luxury fishing vacation funded by a GOP megadonor was ethical because I barely knew the guy,” Sarah Lipton-Lubet, president of Take Back the Court Action Fund, said in a statement.

Unlike Thomas, who publicly addressed his controversy a day after it became public, Alito took the unusual step of preempting ProPublica’s story with his article in the Journal, titled “ProPublica Misleads Its Readers.” Alito said ProPublica had reached him for comment on the story, making him aware that it was preparing to publish the piece.

Gabe Roth, executive director of watchdog group Fix the Court, in a statement said the strategy had a few positives.

“First, you don't see Supreme Court justices writing op-eds all that often, right?” he said. “Politicians write them fairly frequently, of course, but the thing is, the justices have been acting like politicians since the start of the Republic, even more so in recent years, so Alito's missive might help more Americans finally realize this.”

Like Thomas, Alito said he believed the trip fell under a personal hospitality exception to financial disclosure rules. The exception was clarified earlier this year to explicitly note that it doesn’t apply to transportation and stays at commercial properties.

Alito said his plane seat would’ve been vacant if he declined.

“It was my understanding that this would not impose any extra cost on Mr. Singer. Had I taken commercial flights, that would have imposed a substantial cost and inconvenience on the deputy U.S. Marshals who would have been required for security reasons to assist me,” Alito wrote.

Singer’s hedge fund and the Supreme Court’s public information office did not return a request for comment. A lodge employee said the trip happened several years before the current owner purchased the property and that they had no further details about the trip.

In a statement to ProPublica, Singer’s spokesperson said the billionaire “never discussed his business interests” with Alito and that his companies did not have “any pending matters before the Supreme Court, nor could Mr. Singer have anticipated in 2008 that a subsequent matter would arise that would merit Supreme Court review.”

At the time of the trip, a subsidiary of Singer’s hedge fund, NML Capital, was in the midst of a years-long court battle to collect on Argentinian debts it purchased at steep discounts during an economic crisis there. After Argentina defaulted in 2001, NML refused to participate in debt restructuring proposals, instead suing in court to maximize returns.

One year before the trip, NML and another entity petitioned the Supreme Court to review a lower ruling issued as part of the battle. 

A review of the court’s docket shows that, between 2009 and 2014, NML was a party in seven requests for the court to review various aspects of the battle, at times asking the justices to let lower rulings stand while other times asking them to intervene. 

The justices declined to hear all but one of those cases. In each instance, as is typical, the justices did not make their votes public, so how Alito voted remains unclear. NML also submitted two amicus briefs supporting other Supreme Court disputes.

In the case they did hear, the Supreme Court handed down a 7-1 ruling in favor of NML, allowing it to search for additional Argentinian assets by rejecting the country’s immunity arguments. Alito joined the majority opinion.

Singer’s involvement was detailed in various media reports about the case, including in The Wall Street Journal. In his op-ed in the same publication, Alito claimed he was unaware of the billionaire’s connection to the case, and he pointed out Singer’s name did not appear in any of the written briefs.

“It would be utterly impossible for my staff or any other Supreme Court employees to search filings with the SEC or other government bodies to find the names of all individuals with a financial interest in every such entity named as a party in the thousands of cases that are brought to us each year,” Alito wrote.

Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Management, is a party in a pending, unrelated case at the Supreme Court. The fund has asked the justices to stay out of the dispute.

The justices are set to discuss whether to do so at a closed-door conference in September.

When President Biden rallied Democrats last September ahead of the midterm elections, he predicted the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade set off major electoral ramifications.

“Republicans have awakened a powerful force in this country: women,” Biden said. “Here you come.”

And he was right.

Biden got a political gift a year ago when the Supreme Court overturned the national right to abortion access. While the president faced criticism immediately after the ruling for not responding more aggressively to protect access, the issue helped propel Democrats to a better-than-expected midterm result.

They added a seat to their majority in the Senate and managed to limit Republican gains in the House.

Plus, in the past year, voters in Kentucky rejected a ballot proposal that would have amended the state constitution to assert there is no guaranteed right to an abortion. Kansans voted to keep existing abortion protections in the state, while voters in Michigan, California and Vermont approved new abortion protections in the months after the Dobbs decision.

The issue will remain pivotal in the 2024 presidential election, with the Supreme Court’s decision giving Biden and his team a tangible way to argue that a Republican in the White House could lead to a national ban.

“It has brought some clarity around the importance of voting for people who will protect your rights, voting for people who won’t give that power and control over to the government but will keep it where voters believe it should be,” said Christina Reynolds, senior vice president of communications and content at EMILY’s List.

The White House has worked over the past year to make its case for reproductive rights consistent and clear.

“The vice president and I are doing everything we can to protect access to reproductive health care and safeguard patient privacy. But already, more than a dozen states are enforcing extreme abortion bans,” Biden said in his State of the Union address in February. 

“Make no mistake, if Congress passes a national abortion ban, I will veto it,” the president added.

Vice President Harris has led the charge out of the White House on the issue, traversing the country and meeting with local leaders and advocates to push back on GOP-driven state laws that the administration considers too extreme in restricting abortions. She’s heading to Charlotte, N.C., on Saturday to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision.

Abortion as a national and local issue

The White House sees the issue as a national and local one. It recently hosted more than 80 state legislators from 41 states to discuss state laws restricting reproductive rights. The local leaders — who included representatives from red states like Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida — sat down with Jennifer Klein, director of the Gender Policy Council; Neera Tanden, director of the Domestic Policy Council, and Karine Jean-Pierre, White House press secretary.

“It’s important to bring them in and say, ‘Hey, we have your back,’” Jean-Pierre said about the meeting.

With Harris and Biden consistently discussing abortion rights in speeches from the White House, in meetings with advocates and reproductive health officials, and through targeted state visits, they have been able to keep the issue top of mind for voters well beyond the midterm elections.  

The White House has taken limited actions over the past year. 

Biden signed an executive order less than a month after the Supreme Court ruling with some incremental measures to protect access to emergency medical care for women who will seek abortions in states that ban it.

Earlier this year, he issued a presidential memorandum that will further protect access to medication abortion by ensuring doctors can prescribe and dispense it across the U.S. And, in April, the administration announced new actions to safeguard patient privacy following the ruling by a federal judge in Texas that tried to limit the abortion medication mifepristone.

Abortion and the 2024 election

As the 2024 election nears, some strategists have suggested Republican presidential candidates will do much of the work for the administration and Democrats by publicly backing restrictive abortion laws, crystallizing the potential further consequences for access.

“I think many of the issues that helped elect Biden in 2020 are still out there, and I think Dobbs adds some premium grade fuel to building a winning coalition for 2024,” said Ivan Zapien, a former DNC official. “Mind you, he does not really need to do much here. The Republicans in states are doubling down on Dobbs-related legislation that is really not popular in the suburbs, so at this point, it’s a gift to his reelection prospects.”

Former President Trump, during a CNN town hall last month, repeatedly dodged questions about whether he would sign a federal abortion ban into law if he’s reelected. But he has declared multiple times in recent weeks he “was able to kill Roe v. Wade,” taking credit for appointing three conservative justices who sided with the majority.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a ban on abortions in the state after six weeks of pregnancy. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) has said he would sign the most pro-life legislation that makes it to his desk if elected. Former Vice President Mike Pence has said he supports taking abortion medications off the market and has voiced support for a proposed 15-week federal ban on the procedure.

But nationally, abortion access is popular.

A Gallup poll published June 14 found 69 percent of Americans believe abortion should generally be legal during the first three months of pregnancy, a record-high for the survey. 

The poll found a majority of Americans oppose late-term abortions. But the 37 percent who say the procedure should be legal in the second three months of pregnancy and the 22 percent who say it should be legal in the last three months of pregnancy also mark record highs for a Gallup survey.

Abortion will still be a top issue for voters in 2024 because Republicans have made it one, said Katie Grant Drew, a Democratic communications strategist and principal at Monument Advocacy.

“Republicans keep demonstrating that they’re out of step with Americans on this issue, and with a number of GOP-controlled state legislatures either enacting or debating legislation, this issue is going to stay top of mind for a wide swath of the electorate,” she said.

While the president has pushed for Congress to codify Roe v. Wade, the GOP-controlled House and the tight margins in the Senate have made that a non-starter. Previous efforts to pass legislation that would codify and expand the right to an abortion failed. 

Democrats would have to win big in 2024 to increase their congressional margins enough to pass such a measure, which has led to them also focusing on local ballot measures to make progress on the issues.

“The president will remind voters what is at stake in 2024. Dobbs will be a factor in all elections until access to reproductive freedom is available to all,” said Mary Beth Stanton, a Democratic strategist and principal at Invariant. “It’s hard to see how a codification of Roe gets done in Congress given the Senate filibuster, but there will be ballot measures in the states to help shore up down-ballot elections and drive voter turnout, too.”

The House Rules Committee met on Wednesday evening to craft a rule that will refer Boebert’s resolution to impeach Biden to the House Homeland Security and Judiciary committees. Boebert’s resolution cited Biden’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border and immigration as grounds for impeachment.

“Speaker McCarthy and House Republicans are committed to fulfilling regular order and undertaking investigations prior to taking up the serious constitutional duty of impeachment,” House Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in the hearing.

A formal vote on the rule to re-refer Boebert’s resolution will occur on Thursday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said.

Before GOP leadership moved to craft the new rule, House Democrats had planned to make a motion to table the resolution, essentially killing it. Such a motion would not be in order for the rule, stripping Democrats of the opportunity to defend Biden amid an impeachment threat.

It also protects Republicans from taking a potentially politically tricky vote. Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) said earlier on Wednesday that Republicans who voted to table the impeachment articles could face attacks based on that vote in primaries.

Boebert’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the rule to refer her resolution to the committees.

Boebert’s privileged motion on Tuesday, forcing action on her impeachment resolution this week, caught GOP leaders by surprise and sparked rare public pushback from Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), as well as immediate rebukes from scores of fellow Republicans. 

The critics warned that the formal move to oust Biden is wildly premature, harming the Republicans’ ongoing efforts to investigate the president on a range of issues — from public policy to personal finances — while undermining potential impeachment efforts in the future.

At a closed-door meeting of the House GOP conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, McCarthy took the remarkable step of urging his troops to oppose the impeachment resolution when it hits the floor later in the week, a House Republican told The Hill.

“This is one of the most serious things you can do as a member of Congress. I think you've got to go through the process. You've got to have the investigation,” McCarthy later said. “And throwing something on the floor actually harms the investigation that we're doing right now.”

McCarthy told reporters he called Boebert on Tuesday and asked her to address the issue at Wednesday’s conference meeting before moving to force a vote. Boebert told McCarthy she would think about it, according to the Speaker, but then she went ahead and made the privileged motion on Tuesday anyway.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the Colorado Republican did not show up.

Boebert instead appeared on former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s show Wednesday morning, defending her move to force a vote on impeachment despite the opposition from her leadership.

“I would love for committees to do the work, but I haven’t seen the work be done on this particular subject,” Boebert said. She later said there are not enough GOP votes to pass impeachment articles out of committee.

“This, I’m hoping, generates enthusiasm with the base to contact their members of Congress and say, ‘We want something done while you have the majority,’” Boebert said.

Boebert’s move derailed the GOP focus on other Biden-focused criticism. Lawmakers had been eager to keep the spotlight on the president’s son Hunter Biden agreeing to a plea deal involving federal tax and gun charges.

And her GOP critics, while no fans of the president, said the move fractures the GOP at a crucial political moment while jumping ahead of the various probes into Biden’s White House. 

“It's a person thinking about themselves instead of the team,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who emphasized the importance of conducting hearings before voting on something as momentous as ousting a sitting president. Bacon represents a district Biden carried in 2020.

Republicans spent years hammering Democrats for what they said were a pair of thinly-argued impeachments of Trump, and many warned that Boebert’s impeachment effort — which sidesteps all committee action — follows in the same flawed mold.

“I feel like it was cheapened in the last Congress; we shouldn't follow the same footprints,” Bacon said. 

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said he prefers to see any impeachment effort later go through the House Judiciary Committee, as his panel probes a swath of issues — from Biden’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border to the foreign business dealings by the president’s family members.

“In five months, I think we've produced a lot of information,” Comer said “This is gonna take, you know, many more months, unfortunately. The FBI is fighting us, the DOJ is fighting us, big money lawyers are fighting us. I think we're going as fast as we can.”

When it comes to border issues, Comer said he is more in favor of starting with building a case against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas first.

Most House Republicans hungry for retribution over the U.S.-Mexico border have focused on Mayorkas rather than Biden. Last week, the House GOP launched an investigation that could serve as the basis of an eventual Mayorkas impeachment.

House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) also said he would prefer impeachments to go through his committee, though was not necessarily opposed to impeaching Biden.

"I think there's a better way to do it,” Jordan said.

Democrats plan to make a motion to table Boebert's impeachment resolution, essentially killing it. And many Republicans said they’re ready to support the Democratic measure.

Boebert is one of four members who have led articles of impeachment against Biden this year, with each one pointing to Biden’s handling of the border and immigration issues.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has had public dust-ups with Boebert in the past, accused Boebert of copying her impeachment push.

“I had already introduced articles of impeachment on Joe Biden for the border, asked her to co-sponsor mine, she didn’t. She basically copied my articles and then introduced them and then changed them to a privileged resolution,” Greene said. “So of course I support 'em because they’re identical to mine.”

“They’re basically a copycat,” she added.

Greene added that GOP members were mad at Boebert because her privileged motion “came out of nowhere.”

More privileged resolutions on impeachment could be coming. Greene said she will convert all her impeachment articles against Biden and top figures in his administration into privileged resolutions to use “when I feel it’s necessary.”

Amid the pushback, some conservatives defended Boebert’s strategy, even though it would circumvent the conventional committee process they demanded of GOP leaders this year. 

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) — the chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus who was one of several Republicans to push for regular order during the drawn-out Speaker’s race in January — argued that lawmakers were not trying to circumvent the process by bringing up privileged resolutions.

“Regular order also includes individual members being able to represent their districts,” Perry said. “[It] might not be what I do, but if that’s what they see as necessary, then that’s their prerogative.”

The vote — 213-209-6 — is the culmination of a week-long push led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), which was stymied last week when a band of Republicans joined Democrats in blocking a censure resolution from coming to the floor for a vote. It advanced on Wednesday after Luna made changes to the measure.

It also marked the apex of Republicans’ years-long campaign against Schiff, who emerged as a bogeyman on the right for his unrelenting criticism of Trump’s alleged ties with Russia, and was cemented as a chief GOP adversary on Capitol Hill when he led the first impeachment inquiry targeting Trump.

A stunning scene took place after the vote, as Democrats in the chamber surrounded Schiff on the House floor, chanting “Adam, Adam.” They interrupted Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who had taken the gavel for the vote, repeatedly as he tried to deliver the results of the vote.

Schiff — who is currently entrenched in a competitive Senate primary against two House colleagues — embraced the extraordinary punishment, declaring on the floor in an impassioned speech that he would repeat his past actions of holding “a dangerous and out of control president accountable” if called upon to do so in the future.

“Today, I wear this partisan vote as a badge of honor,” Schiff said Wednesday. “Knowing that I have lived my oath. Knowing that I have done my duty, to hold a dangerous and out of control president accountable. And knowing that I would do so again — in a heartbeat — if the circumstances should ever require it.”

Luna’s resolution censures Schiff “for misleading the American public and for conduct unbecoming of an elected Member of the House of Representatives,” and it directs the Ethics Committee to conduct an investigation into the congressman’s “falsehoods, misrepresentations, and abuses of sensitive information.”

The four-page measure accuses Schiff of spreading false claims that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, abusing the trust afforded to him as chairman and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee when airing the Trump-Russia allegations, and behaving “dishonestly and dishonorably” when discussing events related to Trump’s first impeachment.

“The American people do not trust Congress. The cyclical pattern of lies has worn down the credibility of every institution and every official in the United States government. You see it, I see it,” Luna said on the House floor during debate Wednesday.

“If we run away from the opportunity to hold this man accountable there is only one fault, and that is of ourselves,” she continued. “We will betray the people who trusted us and sent us here to do the right thing, we will be responsible of any shred of justice in this body, and we will reject the duty that we swore an oath to protect upon taking office.”

Luna first moved to censure Schiff last week, bringing a censure resolution — which she introduced last month — to the floor as a privileged measure, which forced the House to act on it. But 20 Republicans joined Democrats in supporting a motion to table the measure, a move that blocked it from coming to the floor for a vote.

A number of the GOP defectors took issue with a non-binding “whereas” clause in the measure that said if the Ethics Committee found that Schiff “lied, made misrepresentations, and abused sensitive information,” he should be fined $16 million, saying that it was unconstitutional. That dollar figure, the resolution claimed, was half the amount of money that American taxpayers paid to fund the investigation into potential collusion between Trump and Russia.

In an effort to allay those concerns, Luna introduced a new, revamped resolution at the end of last week that nixed the fine language — the chief difference between the two — and made a handful of other revisions. Additionally, the new resolution just calls for censuring Schiff while the original involved censuring and condemning the congressman.

The Florida Republican called the revised resolution to the floor as a privileged measure on Tuesday, restarting the process for the second time in a week and forcing another vote.

The changes were enough to erase the GOP concerns: all Republicans voted against a Democratic-led motion to table the resolution, sending it to the floor for a vote and setting up what would become just the sixth censure of a lawmaker since 1980, and the twenty-fifth in history, according to the House website.

The House last censured a lawmaker in November 2021, when Democrats delivered a rebuke to Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) for posting an anime video depicting him violently attacking Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and President Biden. Before that, the most recent censures were in December 2010 and July 1983.

It was not, however, the House GOP’s first rebuke of Schiff. Earlier this year, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) blocked him and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) from serving on the House Intelligence Committee. Luna has also filed a resolution to expel Schiff, though it has not progressed in the chamber.

Throughout the week-long censure saga, Democrats accused Luna — a vocal Trump supporter — and Republicans of launching an effort against Schiff as a way to distract from the former president’s legal troubles. Trump was indicted by the Justice Department on 37 counts earlier this month as part of the investigation into his mishandling of classified documents. He pleaded not guilty.

“The party of Lincoln and his Lincolnites has become the party of Luna and her Luna followers. Today's mad-cap antics are an obvious deflection from Trump's deepening legal troubles,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, said on the House floor.

“The GOP simply has no ideas for our economy, no ideas for our country and no idea for our people, but is on an embarrassing revenge tour on behalf of Donald Trump, who treats them like a ventriloquist's dummy,” he later added.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Republicans transformed the House into a “puppet show.”

“Today we are on the floor of the House, where the other side has turned this body, this chamber — where slavery was abolished, where Medicare and social security and everything were instituted — they’ve turned it into a puppet show. A puppet show,” she said during debate on the floor Wednesday.

Pelosi, who endorsed Schiff in his Senate race, was seated next to her colleague from California during a portion of Wednesday’s vote.

“And you know what?” Pelosi added, "the puppeteer, Donald Trump, is shining a light on the strings. You look miserable.”

Luna, for her part, disputed the claim that Republicans were bringing the Schiff resolution because of Trump. 

“If we want to talk about these little, fun games and comments back and forth, we’re here not about Donald Trump, we’re not here about Jan. 6, we’re here about the former chairman of the Intelligence Committee that used a lie that broke apart this country,” Luna said during debate.

Republicans offered amendments to the draft version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would eliminate the Pentagon's chief diversity officer, cut off funding for DEI programs and enforce a review of DEI initiatives, among others.

The proposed amendments sparked fury from Democrats, who accused Republicans of widening divisions over race, gender identity and sexual orientation, ignoring legitimate national security needs to attack DEI and of hurting recruitment efforts by decreasing diversity initiatives.

Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.), who is Black, battled with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who introduced two of the amendments, with the lawmakers often cutting each other off to get their points across.

Horsford blasted the DEI amendments as an attempt from the GOP to drive a "wedge" in the military.

"The military knows that diversity of our soldiers is actually our strength," he said. "So why wouldn't we include diversity, equity and inclusion? But this is not about that — this is about a wedge issue."

Republicans hit back that DEI efforts were distracting the Pentagon from military readiness, hurting recruitment efforts and spreading divisions within the ranks.

Gaetz also argued that Congress essentially created its own problem with DEI in the military by authorizing the programs.

"I view this not as a wedge issue, not as divisive, but as remedial," he said. "We have to go in and remediate the bad things that have happened as a consequence of this embrace of radical gender ideology and radical race ideology."

All of the amendments are tabled for now, with a recorded vote on each slated for a later date.

The fiery tensions, played out during a public House committee, highlight a growing divide between the GOP and Democrats on DEI efforts more broadly but specifically in the military, which has only grown more contentious after Republicans took over the House in January.

The House Armed Services Committee has held hearings this year on DEI, with the GOP often grilling Pentagon officials for their efforts to advance diversity in the armed forces. Defense officials have said that a diverse military not only accurately represents the nation but also creates a more capable fighting force.

Republicans have also hammered the Pentagon over drag shows, leading to a newly enforced ban on the events across military bases.

The committee clash is also likely a preview of more to come when the full House debates the NDAA, which is crucial to fund the Defense Department's discretionary spending, later this year.

To defend DEI programs as bettering the armed forces, some Democrats on the committee shared stories about having to work twice as hard or struggling when serving in the military as a minority.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), a former Navy helicopter pilot, said she did not "always feel" that the military was a welcoming place.

"I was told by one of my flight instructors that it was going to be very uncomfortable for him to have a woman as a flight student because in his belief system, women should not be in flight school," she said. "Women are still experiencing that in the United States Marine Corps."

Other Democrats said ignoring the problem of racism, bigotry and anti-LGBTQ views across America only creates a worse problem.

"If you believe there's no bigotry in [minority] groups and that the history against those groups has no impact on the society we have today, then you're utterly clueless," said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member on the committee.

Other culture war issues, partly a reflection of the debate raging across America, also popped up Wednesday.

Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) introduced an amendment to ban funding for the teaching of critical race theory — an academic framework evaluating U.S. history through the lens of racism that has become a political catch-all buzzword for any race-related teaching — within the military's service academies, setting off yet another round of debate that had little to do with defense.

Both sides, however, agreed that the divide over culture issues was a distraction from addressing national security needs.

"We are not enemies, we all want a strong military we just have different ideas of how to get there," said Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.). "But this argument, this debate we are having today, is the current divide in our nation. There's too much yelling in America."

As the GOP-controlled Appropriations Committee prepares its version of the bills that underwrite the work of federal agencies, members are slipping in a wide range of new provisions that seek to undercut federal environmental and diversity policy. 

That adds a new chapter to the ongoing saga in which Republicans have turned the budgetary process into a means to influence federal policy in the rest of government. 

Last month, the House secured trillions in spending cuts and an easier permitting process for infrastructure as payment for passing the Fiscal Responsibility Act — the chamber’s version of the deal that aimed to raise the national debt limit and keep the federal government open. 

In the deal, Republicans got far less than they had initially wanted, Appropriations Chairwoman Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) conceded in late May. 

“Some of our friends are critical that we didn’t get more. I wanted more, too. But we got the change in direction we need, and we can’t lose that,” she said. 

“We conservatives need to build on this win.“

The bills that the Appropriations Committee has released under Granger since May seek to advance conservative priorities by sliding language into the often-unrelated legislation that finances agencies like the departments of Agriculture or Defense.

That’s a “misuse” of the appropriations process, said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of consumer advocacy nonprofit Public Citizen. 

“Many of these policies are so unpopular and so clearly outside of public interest that they certainly could not pass on their own,” Gilbert said. 

“So they were attached to a must-pass piece of legislation, and they’re riding along.”

Public Citizen is part of the Clean Budget Coalition, an alliance of more than 100 labor, civil society and environmental groups. The coalition has called on lawmakers to remove the 39 such “poison pills” in the appropriations package.

In a statement, coalition members called on lawmakers to remove “these unpopular and controversial special favors for big corporations and ideological extremists” from the must-pass legislation that keeps the government running.

These span a wide range of conservative priorities, from bans on drag performances and display of the Pride flag at federal facilities to prohibiting Biden administration environmental justice initiatives. 

Here are five things these riders would do, from restricting LGBTQ rights and abortion access to kneecapping energy efficiency standards and keeping cigarettes high in nicotine.

Cutting medical care

Military personnel — or their partners — serving in states where abortion is illegal may get the Pentagon to pay for their travel to terminate a pregnancy.

Since 2021, the Department of Defense has also covered transition care for “a handful of million dollars per year” for the few thousand transgender service members in the U.S. military.

The House version of the Defense funding bill ends both policies. It “prohibits the use of funds for paid leave and travel or related expenses” for an abortion. Other language “prohibits the use of funds to perform medical procedures that attempt to change an individual’s biological gender.”

Other riders filed in May prohibit the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency from providing abortions and gender-affirming care to migrants in U.S. custody

Two riders take aim at medication abortions.

One rider reverses the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decision to allow the abortion pill mifepristone to be dispensed for home use through certain pharmacies, not just in person and in hospitals.  

And a further rider in the House bill funding the agency seeks to protect “the lives of unborn children by including a provision that ends mail-order chemical abortion drugs.”

Legalizing discrimination in the military

Several riders in the Defense and Military Construction bills seek to counter attempts by the Biden administration to diversify the military — and its vast pool of contractors.

Under Biden, the Defense Department has described an increased focus on diversity as a means to “foster an integrated culture of agility, innovation, and acceptance.” It has described that goal as a means “ to prevail against the global security challenges facing the United States” and created a new title — the Deputy Inspector General for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility — to oversee it.’’

House Republicans disagree. A series of riders in the Defense Appropriations bill defunds that position for the Pentagon and prohibits the “implementation, administration or enforcement” of Biden’s executive order on diversity, equity and inclusion. 

Others ban the use of drag queens as military recruiters or their employment in events like drag queen story hours.

And the Clean Budget Coalition argues that one innocuous-sounding pair of provisions — which prohibit “censoring [the] constitutionally protected speech of Americans” and protect them “against religious discrimination” — are a stealthy means to allow arms contractors to get around federal discrimination laws. The coalition contends this language allows defense contractors to justify discrimination against LGBTQ people on religious terms while allowing them to continue selling arms and components to the U.S. military.

Pushing back on environmental justice

Another cluster of riders seeks to block the Biden administration’s push to use the vast power of America’s energy spending and entitlement programs to reverse historical discrimination, particularly around land, water and the environment.

“A clear feeling in many minority communities is that they have been targeted for unwanted land uses and have little if any, power to remedy their dilemma,” a Department of Energy report concluded.

One attempt to address that history has been the Justice40 initiative, which seeks to put 40 percent of the benefits of any federal energy spending into disadvantaged communities. A rider in the Energy and Water Development appropriations bill defunds that initiative and blocks those communities from preferential access to resources around clean energy, energy efficiency and transit. 

Other language in that bill takes back “billions of dollars in wasteful spending” from Biden clean energy stimulus packages, including $4.5 billion in rebates for new, non-polluting electric appliances and $1 billion to help state governments “implement the latest energy codes.”

Other riders seek to block the larger intellectual wellspring that environmental justice came out of. Separate riders block funding to agencies that use DEI, critical race theory — an academic framework evaluating U.S. history through the lens of racism that has become a political catch-all buzzword for any race-related teaching — and the concepts derived from them.

Another rider blocks federal enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act, which seeks to counter abusive or anti-competitive actions by big meatpackers.

Overriding environmental laws

This January, the federal government rewrote the definition of the Waters of the United States, a once-obscure bit of administrative law that has been hotly contested since the Obama administration. That administration’s policy of counting upstream and seasonal creeks as “waters” triggered a backlash from farmers and developers because it put such waterways — and any project that might impact them — under the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act.

While the Supreme Court threw out that Obama-era language in May — ruling that to be protected, wetlands had to be connect in an “indistinguishable” way to a navigable lake or river — the Biden administration had already moved on. A new “waters” definition considers “waters” to refer to any creek or waterway that has “a significant nexus” of connection to protected waters, even if that connection is only seasonal or underground. 

A rider in the Energy and Water Development bill quietly blocks that new definition, thereby “returning to state control of waterways” that Republicans argue have “historically have not fallen under federal jurisdiction.”

Another rider targeted the new Energy Department efficiency standards for the national electric grid, which the agency said would save energy and cut fossil fuel use — particularly through the use of more energy-efficient forms of steel in the cores of new transformers. 

But the transformer industry and many utilities argued that the new requirements were too stringent, too soon. 

“This technology change will disrupt existing manufacturing processes for the entire industry and its supply chain, making the proposed January 2027 effective date a much too short timeframe,” transformer manufacturers Powersmith wrote in a comment on the proposed rule. 

The House agreed. Its version of the Energy and Water Development legislation prevents the Energy Department from passing “onerous energy conservation standards on distribution transformers.”

And riders in the Agriculture and Rural Development bill ban eliminates funding for “climate hubs and climate change research and “conservation equity agreements,” as well as almost $4 billion in rural clean energy.

Keeping cigarettes maximally addictive 

In June, the FDA proposed sweeping restrictions to the tobacco and flavored vape industries, which restricted the levels of nicotine — the addictive chemical in cigarettes and vapes — and banned flavors like menthol.

The FDA noted that these compounds are not toxic in and of themselves in announcements accompanying the proposed rules. But flavoring helps get people smoking, and while nicotine isn’t harmful in itself, “it’s the ingredient that makes it very hard to quit smoking,” contributing to nearly half a million premature deaths per year. 

Riders slipped into the Agriculture appropriations bill eliminate those restrictions. Section 768 of that bill now bans the use of federal funds to “set maximum nicotine level for cigarettes,” while 769 prohibits any ban or standard setting around the use of menthol or other “characterizing flavors.”

Unlike most of the other measures, however — which conservatives promoted themselves under “Conservative Priority” lists in white papers summarizing the bills — the nicotine protections were curiously absent from the explanatory materials released by the Appropriations committee, though they made it into the actual bill.