Bad News for Trump’s Legislative Agenda

The success of President-Elect Donald Trump’s legislative agenda will depend on whether Republicans can close ranks in Congress. They nearly failed on their very first vote. Mike Johnson won reelection as House speaker by the narrowest of margins this afternoon, and only after two Republican holdouts changed their votes at the last minute. Johnson won on the first ballot with exactly the 218 votes he needed to secure the required majority. The effort he expended to keep the speaker’s gavel portends a tough slog for Trump, who endorsed Johnson’s bid.…

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After August recess, Congress still has a full agenda

Congress managed to take care of all the spending bills it needed to before heading out the door for August recess. Lots is still on the agenda, though, for when it returns — including a local matter concerning Reagan International Airport. Plus, there’s been some rare bipartisanship as members share in the one thing they can still always agree on: dressing down a federal official. For more on this, Federal News Network executive producer Eric White spoke to WTOP Capitol Hill correspondent Mitchell Miller on the Federal Drive with Tom…

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Trump’s Stop-and-Frisk Agenda

Even as Donald Trump relies on unprecedented support from Black and Latino voters, he is embracing policies that would expose their communities to much greater police surveillance and enforcement. The policies that Trump is pledging to implement around crime and policing in a second presidential term would reverse the broad trend of police reform that accelerated after the murder of George Floyd, four years ago today. Trump has endorsed a suite of proposals that would provide cities with more funds to hire police officers; pressure officials in major cities to…

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That new federal regulatory agenda has generated opposition

The Biden administration recently declared a new approach to federal regulation it said would modernize and streamline it. The new framework has drawn opposition from business. For one point of view,  Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Chad Whiteman, the vice president of Environment and Regulatory Affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Interview transcript: Tom Temin Now, this does a lot of things, including electronic handling of bots and this kind of thing, which probably are useful updates. But I’m guessing, the big change that has industry worried…

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Congress continues to work on what amounts to an agenda for the lame duck session

Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Federal Drive’s daily audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne. The remaining days of the 117th Congress leave both chambers with a bit of an agenda. Perhaps topping the list for the Senate is keeping its record of passing Defense authorization bills by the end of the calendar year. To get an update on all this, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin spoke with Bloomberg Government deputy news director Loren Duggan. Interview transcript: Tom Temin: And now the lame duck is paddling away.…

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Russia’s nuclear threats will top agenda for Biden at NATO summit in Brussels

Russia’s threat of a nuclear attack will be among the key topics discussed by President Biden and U.S. allies during the NATO summit this week, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Wednesday. A Kremlin spokesperson said this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin could use nuclear weapons if he perceived … The Washington Times stories: White House

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