House funding vote puts Senate Democrats in a bind: From the Politics Desk
Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, we dive into the next steps on Capitol Hill after the House passed a short-term funding bill with a government funding deadline fast approaching. Plus, Steve Kornacki looks into voter trends that are shaping Wisconsin’s upcoming Supreme Court election, the first major battleground state race of 2025.
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— Adam Wollner
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The pressure is on Senate Democrats after the House passes a funding bill to avert a shutdown
Speaker Mike Johnson passed another major test today in the narrowly divided House, muscling through a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown.
It puts Senate Democrats in a politically precarious position, with government money sent to run dry Friday night.
The six-month funding bill passed 217-213, Scott Wong, Kyle Stewart, Sahil Kapur and Rebecca Kaplan report from Capitol Hill. Just one House Republican, the conservative Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, voted against it. And just one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden, who represents a district President Donald Trump carried in Maine, voted for it.
The outcome is a victory for GOP leaders and the White House, who do not want to see a shutdown in the first two months of the new administration and are eager to move on to advancing Trump’s agenda on the border, taxes and other policy areas.
Over the past several days, Trump and his top aides called undecided Republicans to urge them to back the funding bill, multiple sources familiar with the calls told NBC News. And ahead of the vote Tuesday morning, Vice President JD Vance huddled with House Republicans at the Capitol to rally support.
Rep. Kat Cammack, R-Fla., one of the Republicans who were on the fence, voted for the bill after she said she visited the White House earlier in the day.
But the drama is far from over. Republicans control 53 seats in the Senate, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has made clear he’s firmly against the funding bill. That means at least eight Democratic senators would have to support it to cross the Senate’s 60-vote threshold and send it to Trump’s desk.
House Democratic leaders were staunchly against the bill. They blasted Republicans for drafting the bill on a partisan basis and argued they gave the Trump administration too much discretion in how to spend certain pots of money.
Senate Democratic leaders, however, have stayed mum. After an unusually long Senate Democratic lunch meeting on Tuesday, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., declined to state his position on the bill, a sign that his members lack consensus on the path forward.
Publicly, many Senate Democrats said they wanted to see how the House voted first before weighing in. But Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said he would vote for the bill.
“I refuse to burn the village down and to claim to save it,” Fetterman said. “I probably won’t agree with many facets of that CR, but when the choice is about shutting the government down, I don’t want to be involved with that.”
Read more →
Massie fallout: Trump’s patience appears to be running thin with Massie, who also voted against the House GOP’s budget resolution last month. Trump said on Truth Social he would “lead the charge” to find a primary opponent to challenge him next year.
But as Melanie Zanona reports, that didn’t sit well with Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas. During a closed-door House GOP caucus Tuesday morning, Roy said he didn’t appreciate Trump’s threat, according to two sources in the room. Roy also called on Republican leadership to stand up for Massie, which Johnson later did at a news conference. Read more →
What to know from the Trump presidency today
- The Education Department is preparing to lay off roughly half its workforce.
- The U.S. will immediately lift a pause on intelligence sharing and resume providing security assistance to Ukraine after delegates from Kyiv agreed to accept the Trump administration’s proposal for an interim 30-day ceasefire with Russia.
- Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he had agreed to suspend a 25% surcharge on electricity imports into the U.S. after conversing with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick in the wake of Trump’s threats to hike steel and aluminum tariffs on the nation by 50%.
- Tesla delivered five of its vehicles to the White House and parked them on a driveway for Trump to personally inspect, hours after he said on Truth Social that he planned to buy a Tesla to demonstrate his support for Elon Musk and for the slumping car company.
- The U.S. Agency for International Development is instructing its staff in Washington to shred and burn documents, according to an email obtained by NBC News.
- Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said that she had stripped security clearances of dozens of former Biden officials and attorneys involved in Trump-related cases.
The voter trends shaping the first big battleground state race of 2025
By Steve Kornacki
In three weeks, we’ll get our first battleground state readout of the post-2024 political landscape.
Wisconsin’s election on April 1 for a seat on the state Supreme Court is nonpartisan in name only. Prominent Republican donors and activists are squarely behind conservative Brad Schimel, while Democrats are with liberal Susan Crawford.
Turnout will be far lower than in November, and the electorate figures to be skewed toward voters who are more politically engaged and partisan, making this an imperfect test. But the outcome will at least offer clues about how the political winds might be shifting in what is arguably America’s premier swing state.
There are a few key patterns and trends that enabled President Donald Trump to flip the state in November that will be under the microscope next month.
Where Republicans made gains
Eight of the 10 counties where Trump improved his performance the most from the 2020 elections are in the southwestern part of the state, in what is called the “Driftless Area” (a nod to the unique topography that resulted from the lack of glacial coverage more than 10,000 years ago).
Politically, it represents a significant growth opportunity for the GOP, having remained loyal to Democrats until more recently than other small towns and rural parts of the state. It was Trump’s emergence in 2016 that triggered the area’s movement toward the GOP.
Does this represent a partisan realignment that is ongoing and that will allow Republicans to build an even bigger advantage here going forward? Or is it more tentative and Trump-specific, offering Democrats a chance to stabilize and improve their performance without Trump on the ballot? Notably, the area did return to its Democratic roots in recent state Supreme Court races.
Where Democrats are in growth mode
The “WOW” counties of Washington, Ozaukee and Waukesha outside of Milwaukee have historically been the biggest vote bank in the state for Republican candidates, and all favored Trump by double digits last year. But the GOP’s advantage has been receding.
The GOP’s declines here match the national trend of the last generation or so of highly educated, professional-class, white suburbanites shedding their previous Republican allegiance — which accelerated drastically with Trump’s emergence.
Even while losing ground statewide, Democrats modestly improved their performance in the WOW counties last November. In Ozaukee and Waukesha, Harris won a higher share of the vote than any Democratic presidential nominee there since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
That the Democratic gains have been particularly stark in Ozaukee is no surprise. Outside of Dane County (home of the University of Wisconsin-Madison), it has the highest concentration of white, college-educated voters in the state.
Last November, Democrats were banking on even bigger gains in the WOW counties, which could have pushed Harris over the top statewide. Still, Democrats see an opportunity to make further strides here and to cement them, with Republicans hoping to arrest their slide without Trump at the top of their ticket.
Read more from Steve →
🗞️ Today’s other top stories
- 📉 Taking stock: Trump has previously pointed to the stock market as a key indicator of his administration’s economic success. Now, as markets dip, he’s changing his tune. Read more →
- 📉 Taking stock, cont.: Speaking of, the S&P 500 failed to escape another day of losses Tuesday amid a roller-coaster trading session. Read more →
- 🗳️ He’s running: Michigan Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist launched his campaign for governor, joining a growing Democratic primary in a closely divided battleground state. Read more →
- 🗳️ She’s running: Former Democratic Rep. Katie Porter announced that she is running for governor of California, but a potential bid from former Vice President Kamala Harris looms large. Read more →
- 🌏 If it’s Tuesday: Greenland is holding its parliamentary elections, a test for the territory’s independence as Trump sets his sights on acquiring it. Read more →
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Bridget Bowman.
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