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Months after the partisan clash that led to the longest shutdown in history, lawmakers have agreed on spending bills that look far different from what the president wanted.
Congress is quietly rejecting almost all of the deepest cuts to federal programs that President Trump requested for this year, turning back his efforts to slash funding for foreign aid, global health programs, scientific research, the arts and more in a bipartisan repudiation of his spending plans. The latest rejection of his budget blueprint came on Wednesday, after the House voted 341 to 79 to pass a pair of bills to fund the State and Treasury Departments, as well as other foreign aid programs, providing money for agencies that Mr. Trump had proposed eliminating entirely.
All told, while lawmakers have agreed to make modest trims to a number of programs that Mr. Trump has wanted to eviscerate — and to zero out some others — the spending bills that they are now moving through Congress reflect the political reality that any funding measure must be bipartisan in order to avoid a Democratic filibuster in the Senate and become law.
It is a striking pivot just months after the partisan clash last fall that led to the longest government shutdown in history. Lawmakers are now in the process of negotiating and approving a series of spending bills before a Jan. 30 shutdown deadline. Appropriators in both the House and the Senate have come to bipartisan agreements on eight of the 12 bills that fund the government. The Senate was racing to clear three measures that passed the House last week with money for the Commerce and Justice Departments, as well as for environmental programs.
Even some programs that have long been despised by conservatives are instead set to sustain only modest cuts, including Voice of America, the National Endowment for Democracy and the National Endowment for the Arts. The legislation to fund the State Department and other foreign assistance programs alone provides over $19 billion more than Mr. Trump’s request — though it would constitute a cut of $9 billion below current levels.
Voice of America, the federal news network the Trump administration has sought to dismantle, is set to receive about $653 million, half a billion more than what Mr. Trump requested to “support the orderly shutdown” of the agency. Lawmakers had previously provided $867 million to the broadcaster. “There’s a long history of international aid being viewed as an effective tool on a bipartisan basis, and I think that this bill re-establishes that bipartisan foundation,” said Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, the top Democrat on the subcommittee overseeing funding for the State Department and foreign aid programs.
House and Senate negotiators also rejected a proposal advanced by the White House to cancel $16.5 billion in previously approved funding for the Internal Revenue Service that Democrats included in 2022 in their sprawling climate and domestic policy law. And they endorsed keeping scientific funding levels at the National Science Foundation and at NASA essentially flat, making only slight trims rather than the major cuts the White House had proposed.
In some ways, the spending bills confirm the worst fears of conservatives on Capitol Hill, who have worried that even with a Republican governing trifecta, they would be unable to enact the kind of major spending cuts they have long agitated for.
Some Democrats also are unhappy with the emerging spending package, believing that their party should use the leverage it has in the appropriations process to try to rein in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. That could still emerge as a sticking point to a final agreement; the bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security is among the toughest to negotiate and has yet to be agreed upon.
But overall, the bipartisan consensus around the spending measures is strong. Republican leaders who helped negotiate them championed the trims in the spending bills, arguing that the overall reduction in funding compared with last year’s levels constituted a major win. And they noted that the bills represented a return to the practice of writing and passing individual spending bills, rather than lumping all 12 together into a behemoth package, or enacting an emergency stopgap measure to keep funding flat.
Whether the administration ultimately spends the money that lawmakers appropriate is still an unanswered question. Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, has made clear that he believes the president has the authority to disregard congressional directives in order to spend less money than lawmakers approved.
And members of Congress omitted language they had considered including in the legislation aimed at limiting Mr. Trump’s ability to circumvent them.
“If they’re going to violate the underlying statute, then passing a new statute that says they have to abide by the old one is silliness,” Mr. Schatz said. “I also think that it’s a little harder for them to send rescissions packages, and to do great violence to the agencies, if this is a bill passed by Republicans in Congress and signed by the Republican president.”
Note: Text emphasis in the above report was added.
Exclusive: US is less feared by its traditional adversaries, while its allies feel ever more distant, results show
A year after Donald Trump’s return to the White House, a global survey suggests much of the world believes his nation-first, “Make America Great Again” approach is instead helping to make China great again. The 21-country survey for the influential European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) thinktank also found that under Trump, the US is less feared by its traditional adversaries, while its allies – particularly in Europe – feel ever more distant.
Most Europeans no longer see the US as a reliable ally and are increasingly supportive of rearmament, it found, while Russians now see the EU as more of an enemy than the US, and Ukrainians are looking more to Brussels than to Washington for support. The poll, of nearly 26,000 respondents in 13 European countries, the US, China, India, Russia, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa and South Korea, found majorities in almost every territory surveyed expected China’s global influence to grow over the next decade.
These ranged from 83% in South Africa, 72% in Brazil and 63% in Turkey through 54% in the US, 53% in 10 EU states and 51% in India to 50% in the UK. Most EU citizens expected China to soon lead the world in electric vehicles and renewable energies. Moreover, few seemed concerned about it. The polling found that only in Ukraine and South Korea did majorities view China as a rival or an adversary, while more people in South Africa, India and Brazil saw China as an ally than they did two years ago. In South Africa (85%), Russia (86%), and Brazil (73%), majorities view China either as a necessary partner or as an ally. The EU view was unchanged: 45% see China as a necessary partner. Many countries expect their relationship with China to strengthen.
At the same time, while many believe the US will remain influential, outside Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey there was no majority – including in the US itself – for the view that American influence was likely to grow any further. Amid increasingly favourable views of China, the status of the US as an ally has declined across almost all the countries surveyed, with India the only one where a majority still feels the US is an ally, sharing the country’s values and interests.
As other polls have also shown, the change in perceptions of the US among EU citizens is marked: only 16% now consider the US as an ally, with a striking 20% seeing it as either a rival or an enemy. Elsewhere, perceptions of America are in decline. In most countries, too, the survey showed expectations of Trump himself had fallen, sometimes dramatically. Fewer people felt the US president’s re-election was good for US citizens, their own countries or for peace in the world than 12 months ago.
The survey, the fourth in a series, was carried out with Oxford University’s Europe in a Changing World project. It suggests that with the world’s balance of power shifting, people’s perceptions of Europe are changing too – most notably in Russia. With the war in Ukraine set to enter its fifth year in February, respondents in Russia are now more likely (51%) to see Europe as an adversary than last year (41%), and less likely (37%) to consider the US as such than they were 12 months ago (48%).
Ukrainians, on the other hand, are more likely to see Europe as an ally (39%) than the US (18%, down from 27% last year). Views of Europe are also changing in China, where 61% of respondents see the US as a threat, but only 19% think the same of the EU. The report’s authors, Ivan Krastev of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, Mark Leonard of the ECFR and the historian and Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash, said this did not appear to be because Chinese citizens did not take the EU seriously.
In fact, the survey showed that, unlike in many countries, a majority (59%) in China considered the EU to be a great power, with 46% also seeing the bloc as mostly a partner – a view shared, despite Trump’s anti-EU rhetoric, by 40% of Americans. Optimism about the EU, however, is not shared by many Europeans. Most (46%) do not believe the EU is a power able to deal on equal terms with the US or China, a sentiment that has increased over the past year (up from 42% in 2024). Many Europeans also doubt the future will bring any good for their countries (49%) or the world (51%), worrying about Russian aggression against their country (40%) and a major European war (55%). More than half (52%) support increasing defence spending.
The authors said the poll revealed “a world in which US actions were boosting China”, adding that Trump’s intervention in Venezuela and territorial ambitions in Greenland suggested “he has decided it is better for a great power to be feared than to be loved”. “Europe could end up squeezed or simply ignored,” they said, adding: “Political leaders in Europe should no longer ask themselves whether their own citizens grasp the radical nature of the current geopolitical changes. They do.” Europeans see the old order is over, they said. European leaders must now be “realistic and daring at the same time”, finding “new ways not just to manage in a multipolar world, but to become a pole in that world – or disappear among the others”.
My experience on food inflation is munch higher than 3.1%; more like 30% in 2025 ! That is from comparing grocery store receipts from a year ago and today prices.
Over Christmas holiday, we experience restaurants and lodging also went up double digits. So we cut out shopping at Amazon by 90%, and limited our holidays spending by 50%. We spent time to called our friends and family, and visit them if they are nearby. Consumers do have choices.
Yes, they do. And those choices will ultimately hurt business profits and economic growth. Right now outsized government and AI spending may be obscuring that.
Am I wrong or when this thread started could be called the gold old days? Last June we had no idea what kind of shit was about to go down. Horrible news happened almost daily, not hourly, and the evilness of his intent was not yet clear. Even to this pessimist last June I never thought it could get this sick this quickly.
Senate Republicans blocked an effort to curb the Trump administration’s military action in Venezuela, a victory for the president who was incensed that some Republicans tried to tie his hands on a key foreign policy.
If we want to understand how this could be allowed to happen, just turn your eyes to the spineless elected officials on the Hill in DC. Devoid of a soul, they enable a dictator.
James Rodden, an ICE lawyer in Dallas, was exposed for running a white-supremacist X account praising Adolf Hitler, was pulled from court schedules. Now he is back, badge on, no explanation given. ICE refuses to comment.
The Texas Observer conducted an investigation which identified James Rodden—an ICE prosecutor— as the operator of a racist X account.
"ICE responded in a letter last March to Congressman Marc Veasey, who represents part of Dallas, stating that the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) 'understands the seriousness of the allegations and will ensure the allegations are addressed appropriately, fairly, and expeditiously' and that typically 'OPR administrative investigations are completed within 120 days.' ICE has not provided any further information since."
"'I will not let this go unnoticed,' said Veasey in a statement to the Observer. 'White supremacists should not hold positions of authority in our justice system, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that Rodden is held accountable.'"
-Filling positions of authority with White Supremacists. -Weakening us against or enemies and adversaries. -Pushing prices ever higher. -imposing a massive tax on imported goods. -Destroying 70,000 manufacturing jobs since April 2025. -Assaulting people for exercising their First Amendment RIGHTS. -Directing the DOJ to persecute detractors, including decorated veterans.
Comments
as the operator of a racist X account.
"ICE responded in a letter last March to Congressman Marc Veasey, who represents part of Dallas,
stating that the ICE Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) 'understands the seriousness of the allegations
and will ensure the allegations are addressed appropriately, fairly, and expeditiously'
and that typically 'OPR administrative investigations are completed within 120 days.'
ICE has not provided any further information since."
"'I will not let this go unnoticed,' said Veasey in a statement to the Observer.
'White supremacists should not hold positions of authority in our justice system,
and I will do everything in my power to ensure that Rodden is held accountable.'"
https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-prosecutor-racist-account-back-at-immigration-court/
-Weakening us against or enemies and adversaries.
-Pushing prices ever higher.
-imposing a massive tax on imported goods.
-Destroying 70,000 manufacturing jobs since April 2025.
-Assaulting people for exercising their First Amendment RIGHTS.
-Directing the DOJ to persecute detractors, including decorated veterans.
Been a busy year!