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House is heading toward “nuclear” war over Ukraine funding, one top House GOP leader says
There’s a “50-50” chance of a government shutdown in early March, says House Financial Services Chairman Patrick McHenry, of North Carolina, and it’s House Speaker Mike Johnson’s fear of being ousted that will determine the outcome. And at the same time, McHenry says the House is heading to a procedural “nuclear” war over funding for Ukraine.
“I think the odds [of a shutdown] are 50-50 at this point,” McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, told CBS News on “The Takeout” this week. “This is a preventable disaster…Had we done this in November and December, the policy would be about the same, maybe a little bit better than it is now.” But the politics would be much better than they are now,” he added.
McHenry said Johnson is still adjusting to the difficulties of leading a small and restive GOP majority. Fear of losing his speakership stalks all shutdown scenarios, he said.
“All the speaker has to do is allow the Appropriations Committee to go get a deal,” McHenry said. “We will have a deal by March 1 and March 8 if we can allow just momentum to occur. If the speaker wishes to stop it for whatever reason, we’ll probably have a government shutdown. It will come down to the speaker’s decision on whether or not to just fund the government and get on with the deal.”
Congress faces two funding deadlines – March 1 and March 8 – to keep all governments services operating. The House of Representatives is in recess until Feb. 28. “Instead of taking action, Republicans on the Hill went on a two-week vacation,” President Biden said in a social media post on Monday. He has been urging House Republicans to pass national security funding, and specifically aid for Ukraine, which has been at the center of House gridlock.
Johnson and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer have already negotiated overall spending amounts for defense and domestic programs. All that remains are specific allocations under individual spending bills – and the political backlash that may come from hard-right House Republicans. McHenry said Johnson’s fear of that backlash could trigger a shutdown.
“[If] it’s fear of the deal that drives him, [that] will then result in a government shutdown,” McHenry said. “What I believe is, we will get higher spending and less policy as a result of the government shutdown.”
“You can either die as speaker and worry about them taking you out, or live every day as your last.”
McHenry said Johnson has every reason to fear being ousted.
“It is a real and legitimate fear because the last guy was taken out,” McHenry said before offering something akin to advice to Johnson. “You can either die as speaker and worry about them taking you out, or live every day as your last. Get something out of it. If you lead and get big things done, your reputation enhances. Your ability to get the next deal done is enhanced. The view from the public, while not perfect, is better if you take action than if you sit and dither.”
McHenry was instrumental in securing the speakership for former GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California, and he remains bitter that eight House Republicans teamed with all House Democrats to remove him from the speakership in October – forcing McHenry to serve as a temporary speaker while Republicans stumbled through a series of votes and failed candidacies before settling on Johnson.
“We went through five choices and Mike Johnson’s the fifth choice,” McHenry said. “He has not been around these leadership decisions. He’s had a really tough process. We’ve thrown him into the deepest end of the pool with the heaviest weights around him and (we’re) trying to teach him how to learn to swim. It’s been a rough couple of months.”
McHenry said House Republicans remain disorganized in the wake of McCarthy’s departure.
“[McCarthy] was highly successful in the 10 months of his speakership,” McHenry said. “We didn’t have a single failed rule. Since then we’ve had five rules fail, which is a terrible mark for a majority.”
The House typically functions at the direction of the majority party. It sets the legislative agenda and enforces the rules under which bills are debated.
“If you’re in charge, you dictate the terms of debate. If you don’t pass that rule, you have, in essence, handed the House floor over to the minority party to do what they will. We did it zero times under Kevin McCarthy’s leadership. Since then, we’ve done it five times.”
Sizable House majority supports Ukraine, Israel aid bill, but Johnson is standing in the way, says McHenry
McHenry also said there’s a sizable majority of House Republicans and Democrats who support the Senate-passed national security bill that includes military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.
“They support 80 to 90% of what’s in the bill,” McHenry said. “About two-thirds of the House is of that opinion. It will get done. It will just be a question of how it gets done and how long it will take to get done.”
But the current impediment, McHenry said, is Johnson.
“What is axiomatic about the House is that any speaker can stand in the way of the majority will on the House floor for a period of time —but not permanently,” McHenry said. “My hope is that the speaker will come around to seeing this in a very sensible way.”
Absent Johnson relenting and allowing a vote on the Senate bill, McHenry said two obscure parliamentary maneuvers could circumvent Johnson – a discharge petition or defeating the previous question. Both would require Democrats and enough Republicans to unite and force consideration of the bill. McHenry said the discharge petition – where a majority of House members publicly sign a petition to bring a bill to the floor – did not have better than a 30% chance of working. Slightly more likely, he said, was defeating the previous question, whereby a majority forces an immediate vote on a bill that is not on the floor. Defeating the previous question is almost never successful.
“We’ve not done this in generations in the U. S. House of Representatives,” McHenry said. “Defeating the previous question is something like a nuclear device. It is a vast act of war. That is the other mechanism to bring this bill to the floor.”
McHenry said the death of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny should motivate Republicans to support billions more in military and economic aid for Ukraine.
“It should show the barbaric regime that is in place in Moscow,” McHenry said. “They have not changed…It should be an enhancement for policymakers to see what’s at stake. Human life is at stake. Western civilization is being tested in a major way. The first world is being challenged. Civil society is being challenged…We are the great democracy on the globe. And we should be the example to the rest of the world and have a safety umbrella for the rest of the world so we can have economic prosperity.”
McHenry rejects comparisons Trump made of his charges to Navalny’s
McHenry also rejected former President Trump’s assertion that the criminal and civil charges he faces are comparable to the persecution and assassination attempts Navalny faced in Russia.
“While [Trump] has been targeted politically, and I believe he has, by prosecutors, the barbaric state of the Putin regime is in no comparison to American jurisprudence – broadly or specifically,” McHenry said. “Nor [comparable] to the ramifications of being put in American prison versus any other prison in the world.”
McHenry would not say whether he thought charges against Trump for actions leading up to and during the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 were warranted, but he denounced the advice Trump was given, as well as his rhetoric around the 2020 election.
“There was a lot of stupidity by the president’s legal team in the [2020] election and in the aftermath of the [2020] election,” McHenry said. “I think there are a lot of politicians who made a lot of stupid statements that will not wear well in history, nor in any court of law, nor (with) someone who cares about the Constitution.”
Trump’s reference to Jan. 6 defendants as “hostages”
McHenry also disagrees with Trump’s reference to those convicted – either by trial or plea deal – of action at the Capitol riot as “hostages.”
“No,” McHenry said. “Our legal system works….[But] we have this outsized rhetoric in an attempt to get further to the right to get political power…With social media and where we are now politically is that the loudest and stupidest person is viewed as the most conservative or the most liberal. It has nothing to do with policy. It has everything to do with style. It has everything to do with scoring political points or raising political cash.”
Even so, McHenry said it’s not frustration that’s leading him to retire at the end of this term.
“I’m happy with the course I’ve taken,” McHenry said. “I am disappointed at the state of Congress, though.”
Executive producer: Arden Farhi
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The escalating fighting between Israel and Hezbollah continued Saturday as both sides traded strikes as the war in Gaza nears one year.
The Israel Defense Forces said its air force struck Hezbollah fighters inside a mosque in southern Lebanon that they said was used as a command center to “plan and execute terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel.”
The mosque was adjacent to Salah Ghandour Hospital in the town of Bint Jbeil. The hospital said in a statement that Israeli forces had shelled it after being warned to evacuate. The shelling “resulted in nine members of the medical and nursing staff being injured, most of them seriously,” while most of the medical staff were evacuated. On Thursday, the World Health Organization said 28 health workers in Lebanon had been killed in the past 24 hours.
ANWAR AMRO/AFP via Getty Images
At the same time, 12 Israeli airstrikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs, including one that badly damaged a large hall Hezbollah used to hold ceremonies, Lebanon’s state news agency said.
Later in the day, more strikes hit the area, from which tens of thousands of people have fled over the past two weeks.
Israeli airstrikes also hit areas in southern and eastern Lebanon, according to state media. At least six people were killed, according to NNA.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said it launched a series of rockets at an Israeli air base near Haifa, about 30 miles from the Lebanese border. Israeli police said fragments of interceptors fell in several sites but no injuries were reported, according to the Associated Press.
Israel has sharply expanded its strikes on Lebanon in recent weeks after nearly a year of exchanging fire with the Iran-backed Hezbollah — long designated a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and many other nations. The IDF has been carrying out nightly bombardment of Beirut’s once densely populated southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hezbollah. Overnight, a military spokesman issued three alerts for residents there to evacuate.
Houssam Shbaro/Anadolu via Getty Images
Nearly a week of Israeli ground operations in southern Lebanon, near Israel’s northern border, and two weeks of airstrikes in that region and in southern Beirut — both Hezbollah strongholds — had killed more than 2,000 people, the health ministry said. More than 1 million people have been driven from their homes, including tens of thousands under Israel evacuation orders in almost 100 towns and villages near the border.
Hezbollah started launching those attacks in support of its ideological ally Hamas, which is also backed by Iran, the day after Hamas sparked the ongoing war in Gaza with its Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel. The IDF says Hezbollah militants have fired over 10,000 rockets across the border since Oct. 8, 2023. The vast majority of them have been intercepted by Israel’s advanced missile defense systems.
Israel conducts more ground raids
The Israeli military said on Saturday its special forces were carrying out ground raids against Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon, destroying missiles, launchpads, watchtowers and weapons storage facilities. The military said troops also dismantled tunnel shafts that Hezbollah used to approach the Israeli border.
Some 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes since Israel escalated its strikes in late September aiming to cripple Hezbollah and push it away from the countries’ shared border. On Tuesday, Israel launched what it calls a limited ground operation into southern Lebanon.
Nine Israeli troops have been killed in close fighting in the area in the past few days, which is saturated with arms and explosives, the military said.
Americans attempt to leave Lebanon
The U.S. government has warned Americans not to travel to Lebanon since mid-September and urged any citizens in the country to leave via commercial travel routes. As of Friday night, the U.S. State Department has assisted approximately 500 U.S. citizens, permanent residents and their families to leave Lebanon on flights organized by the agency.
Other nations are also working to evacuate their residents from Lebanon. Germany has evacuated 460 citizens on German military flights, while a Dutch military transport plane carried more than 100 citizens out of Lebanon. There were also citizens of Belgium, Finland and Ireland who were repatriated on that flight.
ROB ENGELAAR/ANP/AFP via Getty Images
“It’s great that these people are safely back in the Netherlands. These have been tense times for them,” Christiaan Rebergen, secretary-general of the foreign ministry, said after they landed Friday.
Fighting ongoing in Gaza
Palestinian medical officials say Israeli strikes in northern and central Gaza early Saturday have killed at least nine people, including two children.
One strike hit a group of people in the northern town of Beit Hanoun, killing at least five people, including two children, according to the Health Ministry’s Ambulance and Emergency service.
Another strike hit a house in the northern part of Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least four people, the Awda hospital said. The strike also left a number of wounded people, it said.
The Israeli military did not have any immediate comment on the strikes but has long accused Hamas of operating from within civilian areas.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli military had warned residents in parts of central Gaza to evacuate, saying its forces would soon operate there in response to Palestinian militants.
The warnings cover areas along a strategic corridor in central Gaza, which was at the heart of obstacles to a ceasefire deal earlier this summer. The military warned Palestinians in areas of Nuseirat and Bureij refugee camps, located along the Netzarim corridor, to evacuate to an along Gaza’s shore called Muwasi, which the military has designated a humanitarian zone. It’s unclear how many Palestinians are currently living in the areas affected by the order, parts of which were evacuated previously.
Almost 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza during the almost year-long war, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths.
CBS News
1-month-old twins who died with mother believed to be the youngest-known Hurricane Helene victims
Month-old twin boys are believed to be the youngest known victims of Hurricane Helene. The boys died alongside their mother last week when a large tree fell through the roof of their home in Thomson, Georgia.
Obie Williams, grandfather of the twins, said he could hear babies crying and branches battering the windows when he spoke with his daughter, Kobe Williams, 27, on the phone last week as the storm tore through Georgia.
The single mother had been sitting in bed holding sons Khyzier and Khazmir and chatting on the phone with various family members while the storm raged outside.
AP
Kobe’s mother, Mary Jones, was staying with her daughter, helping her take care of the babies. She was on the other side of the trailer home when she heard a loud crash as a tree fell through the roof of her daughter’s bedroom.
“Kobe, Kobe, answer me, please,” Jones cried out in desperation, but she received no response.
Kobe and the twins were found dead.
“I’d seen pictures when they were born and pictures every day since, but I hadn’t made it out there yet to meet them,” Obie Williams told The Associated Press days after the storm ravaged eastern Georgia. “Now I’ll never get to meet my grandsons. It’s devastating.”
The babies, born Aug. 20, are the youngest known victims of a storm that had claimed more than 200 lives across Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and the Carolinas. Among the other young victims are a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy from about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south in Washington County, Georgia.
“She was so excited to be a mother of those beautiful twin boys,” said Chiquita Jones-Hampton, Kobe’ Jones’ niece. “She was doing such a good job and was so proud to be their mom.”
Jones-Hampton, who considered Kobe a sister, said the family is in shock and heartbroken.
In Obie Williams’ home city of Augusta, 30 miles east of his daughter’s home in Thomson, power lines stretched along the sidewalks, tree branches blocked the roads and utility poles lay cracked and broken. The debris left him trapped in his neighborhood near the South Carolina border for a little over a day after the storm barreled through.
He said one of his sons dodged fallen trees and downed power lines to check on Kobe, and he could barely bear to tell his father what he found.
Many of his 14 other children are still without power in their homes across Georgia. Some have sought refuge in Atlanta, and others have traveled to Augusta to see their father and mourn together, he said.
He described his daughter as a lovable, social and strong woman. She always had a smile and loved to make people laugh, he said.
And she loved to dance, Jones-Hampton said.
“That was my baby,” Williams said. “And everybody loved her.”
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