Day: December 20, 2024

Congress has until midnight Friday to come up with a way to fund the government or federal agencies will shut down, meaning hundreds of thousands of federal employees could be sent home — or stay on the job without pay — just ahead of the holidays.

Republicans abandoned a bipartisan plan Wednesday to prevent a shutdown after President-elect Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk came out against it. Trump told House Speaker Mike Johnson to essentially renegotiate the deal days before a deadline when federal funding runs out.

On Thursday, Republicans did just that, putting together a revamped government funding proposal that would keep the government running for three more months and suspend the debt ceiling for two years, until Jan. 30, 2027. But the bill failed overwhelmingly in a House vote hours later, leaving next steps uncertain.

Update:

Just In: House Republican leadership is proposing a plan for raising the debt limit that is separate from the government funding bill, according to three sources in a closed-door GOP meeting Friday.

The proposal would be an agreement to raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion next year in the “first reconciliation package” alongside $2.5 trillion cuts in “net mandatory spending in the reconciliation process,” according to three sources.

This plan of separating the debt limit increase from the government funding plan, as CNN has been reporting, is being discussed in a House GOP conference meeting that is still underway. The debt limit proposal would satisfy most of the Republicans who are against raising the debt ceiling without extensive cuts accompanying it.

House GOP leadership is shopping this idea to the conference to see if they have enough consensus to go to the floor and avoid another failure like Thursday night, when 38 Republicans voted against a plan that linked government funding and the debt limit together — a plan that President-elect Donald Trump had supported.

The House has failed to pass a Trump-backed spending bill as a government shutdown looms https://t.co/hj7u05YLMj

— CNN (@CNN) December 20, 2024

ℂℕℕ

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Aleksandr Khinshtein says missiles have hit the town of Rylsk in Kursk Region, targeting civilian infrastructure

Ukraine has launched a missile attack on Russia’s Kursk Region, Acting Governor Aleksandr Khinshtein reported on Friday. He said civilian infrastructure in the town of Rylsk was being targeted.

In a short video message posted on his Telegram channel on Friday, Khinshtein stated that the Ukrainian military had “conducted a missile strike on the town of Rylsk.” He accused Kiev’s forces of “deliberately choosing civilian facilities [and] social facilities as their targets.”

He added that senior regional officials, as well as all emergency services, had been deployed to the site of the incident. 

Update:

Just In: Six dead after Ukrainian strikes.

🚨 BREAKING: Ukraine Launches ATACMS Missile Strikes on Russian City of Rylsk

• Direct Hit: Ukrainian forces reportedly fired ATACMS missiles at Rylsk in Russia’s Kursk region, targeting buildings housing Russian military personnel.

• Strategic Move: This comes amid… pic.twitter.com/15qzBO1E78

— Shred Newz (@Shreddick0) December 20, 2024

𝕊𝕙𝕣𝕖𝕕 ℕ𝕖𝕨𝕫

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