Congressional leaders are preparing to force government funding legislation worth $1.7 trillion into law next week as the federal government staggers toward yet another shutdown deadline.
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Government funding bills not ‘home runs’, Johnson says, but include GOP policies
House Speaker Mike Johnson (La.) told members of his Republican conference Friday night that some elements of the spending bills lawmakers will consider are “not home runs and grand slams,” according to a partial transcript of the GOP conference call obtained by The Washington Post, but carried plenty of wins on policy and spending cuts with which the GOP should be pleased.
“I don’t think anybody on this call thinks that we’re going to be able to use the appropriations process to fundamentally remake major areas of policy,” Johnson said. “If you’re expecting a lot of home runs and grand slams here, I admit you’ll be disappointed. But we will be able to secure a number of policy victories, both in bill text and report language, or other provisions and cuts that severely undermine the [Biden] administration’s programs and objectives,” he said, without providing specific details. These bills will be littered with singles and doubles that we should be proud of, especially in our small majority.”
Not all Republicans were pleased with the outcome. “We are not winning,” said one person familiar with the call, who, like others in this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Johnson did not discuss specific policy provisions on the call, multiple people said.
Multiple people familiar with House and Senate negotiations said leaders were nearing an agreement on legislation to fund the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Veterans Affairs, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development. Spending authority for those agencies is set to expire next weekend. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss fragile negotiations.
Funding for the remaining 80 percent of the federal government — including the departments of Commerce, Justice, State, Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services — expires on March 9, but lawmakers may need more time to piece together legislation for those agencies, the people said.
“We have a serious issue with the clock,” Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), one of the chief House negotiators, told The Post on Friday. “We’ve been given basically no time. But within that, we are hustling through it. My team has been working around-the-clock, literally around-the-clock. I mean, trading papers at 2 in the morning.”
Congressional leaders are expected to consider a stopgap funding bill — called a continuing resolution, or CR — to maintain the budgets of those agencies at current spending levels until mid-March, the people added. It would be the fourth such law passed since Sept. 30, when the last fiscal year ended.
Congress funds the government through 12 spending bills, called appropriations. The funding that expires on March 2 represents four of those bills.
Diaz-Balart said that if the House and Senate were able to approve funds for those agencies, and negotiations on the rest continue to advance at a steady pace, there was a possibility the other deliberations could also be finalized. He declined to answer questions about specific policy priorities.
All the plans, though, are tenuous at best. One person familiar with the negotiations said Republicans were bracing for a social media post or statement from former president Donald Trump that could derail the spending agreements — just as Trump did to kill a Senate immigration compromise only weeks ago.
Other Republicans are eyeing the relationship between Johnson and the archconservative House Freedom Caucus, a band of GOP rebels who have called on the speaker to shut down the government unless he can win spending cuts or hard-right policy provisions, called “riders” because they ride along in often unrelated legislation.
The Freedom Caucus on Tuesday wrote to Johnson with a list of 21 rider demands, including policies to eliminate Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s salary, block key components of President Biden’s climate agenda and cut off funding for the World Health Organization and several U.N. relief agencies.
The group has also blocked procedural votes on the House floor to protest what members consider excessive government spending. That has required Johnson to lean instead on the House’s Democratic minority to move legislation, including two previous stopgap government funding measures — further upsetting the hard-right caucus.
Freedom Caucus members say they would prefer Congress pass a year-long continuing resolution, which would trigger automatic across-the-board spending cuts that would take effect in May.
Under those cuts, called sequestration, every domestic federal program — save for Social Security, Medicare, veterans’ and debt payments — would face a 7 to 10 percent budget cut. The speaker should use that threat, Freedom Caucus members argue, to extract steeper spending cuts from Democrats in the appropriations bills.
“If the Democrats know, and they do, that we will not risk a government shutdown, then all they have to do is say no to whatever we ask for, and then we’re going to surrender, because we won’t suffer government shutdown. That is the bottom line,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), chair of the Freedom Caucus, told The Post. “The only leverage you have when you only control one house is to refuse to make a deal and to refuse to fund the government under the conditions at which the Democrats are demanding that you fund it. Don’t give Biden the money for the policies that you disagree with. And we’re not willing to do that, apparently.”
Johnson and GOP defense hawks in the House have rejected that approach because sequestration would not exempt defense spending.
A spokesperson for Johnson said in a statement that the speaker “has held regular meetings with members, including appropriators and House Freedom Caucus members, on the status of [the appropriations bills].”
In January, Johnson made the policy riders a priority for House negotiators after he agreed to a top-line spending amount with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) that some conservatives said was too high. But negotiators have jettisoned most of those proposals, the people familiar with the talks said, because many were too inflammatory to garner support from House Democrats. They would also surely perish in the Democratic-controlled Senate, which has to adopt the spending measures as well.
Senate Democrats on Friday also pressured Johnson to consider additional spending legislation to fund emergency assistance for Ukraine. The upper chamber this month passed a $95 billion defense spending bill that included money for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies.
The speaker rejected that legislation, favoring instead an approach that splits Ukraine funding from other aid, or pairs it with harsh Trump-era immigration policies.
“Speaker Johnson, come to Ukraine,” Schumer said Friday at a news conference in Lviv, Ukraine, alongside the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. “See what we saw, witness what we’ve witnessed, and we’re confident that if you did that, you would understand how important it is to have this aid.”
First responders work at the scene of an explosion and fire at Bristol Health & Rehab Center on Tuesday in Bristol, Pa.
Monica Herndon/The Philadelphia Inquirer/AP
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BRISTOL, Pa. — A thunderous explosion Tuesday at a nursing home just outside Philadelphia killed at least two people, collapsed part of the building, sent fire shooting out and left people trapped inside, authorities said.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said in a news conference several hours after the explosion that at least two had been killed after emergency responders braved the flames and a heavy odor of gas to evacuate residents and employees.
Fire officials said they were in “rescue mode” five hours later, with responders still digging by hand and using search dogs and sonar to locate potential victims.
The explosion happened at Bristol Health & Rehab Center in Bristol Township, just as a utility crew had been on site looking for a gas leak.
A plume of black smoke rose from the nursing home, as emergency responders, fire trucks and ambulances from across the region rushed there, joined by earthmoving equipment.
Authorities did not identify those who died and did not know the total number of those injured after residents and employees were evacuated to hospitals.
Shapiro asked his fellow Pennsylvanians to take a moment to pray “for this community, for those who are still missing, for those who are injured, and for those families who are about to celebrate Christmas with an empty chair at their table.”
The town’s fire chief, Kevin Dippolito, said at the Tuesday evening news conference that there were five people still unaccounted for, but he cautioned that some may have left the scene with family members.
Dippolito described a chaotic rescue where firefighters found people stuck in stairwells and elevator shafts, and pulled residents out of the fiery building through windows and doors.
Emergency personnel work at the scene of an explosion and fire at Bristol Health & Rehab Center on Tuesday in Bristol, Pa.
Monica Herndon/The Philadelphia Inquirer/AP
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They handed off patients to waiting police officers outside, including one “who literally threw two people over his shoulders,” Dippolito said. “It was nothing short of extraordinary.”
Bucks County emergency management officials said they received the report of an explosion at approximately 2:17 p.m. and said a portion of the building was reported to have collapsed.
Willie Tye, who lives about a block away, said he was sitting at home watching a basketball game on TV when he heard a “loud kaboom.”
“I thought an airplane or something came and fell on my house,” Tye said.
He got up to go look and saw “fire everywhere” and people escaping the building. The explosion looked like it happened in the kitchen area of the nursing home, he said. Tye said some of the people who live or work there didn’t make it out.
“Just got to keep praying for them,” Tye said.
Shapiro said a finding that the gas leak caused the explosion was preliminary.
The local gas utility, PECO, said its crews had responded to reports of a gas odor at the nursing home shortly after 2 p.m.
“While crews were on site, an explosion occurred at the facility. PECO crews shut off natural gas and electric service to the facility to ensure the safety of first responders and local residents,” the utility said in a statement.
Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, press secretary at the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, said investigators from the safety division were headed to the scene. Finding that the explosion was caused by a gas leak won’t be confirmed until his agency can examine the scene up close, he said.
Musuline Watson, who said she was a certified nursing assistant the facility, told WPVI-TV/ABC 6 that, over the weekend, she and others there smelled gas, but “there was no heat in the room, so we didn’t take it to be anything.”
The 174-bed nursing home is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of Philadelphia. Its owner, Saber Healthcare Group, said it was working with local emergency authorities. The facility had been known until recently as Silver Lake Healthcare Center.
The latest state inspection report for the facility was in October and the Pennsylvania Department of Health found that it was not in compliance with several state regulations.
The inspection report said the facility failed to provide an accurate set of floor plans and to properly maintain several stairways, including storing multiple paint buckets and a bed frame under landings.
It also said the facility failed to maintain portable fire extinguishers on one of the three levels and failed to provide the required “smoke barrier partitions,” which are designed to contain smoke on two floors. It also said it didn’t properly store oxygen cylinders on two of three floors.
According to Medicare.gov, the facility underwent a standard fire safety inspection in September 2024, during which no citations were issued. But Medicare’s overall rating of the facility is listed as “much below average,” with poor ratings for health inspections in particular.
Trump was listed as a passenger on eight flights on Epstein’s private jet, according to emailpublished at 11:58 GMT
Anthony Reuben
BBC Verify senior journalist
One of the Epstein documents, external is an email saying that “Donald Trump traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware)”.
The email was sent on 7 January 2020 and is part of an email chain which includes the subject heading ‘RE: Epstein flight records’.
The sender and recipient are redacted but at the bottom of the email is a signature for an assistant US attorney in the Southern District of New York – with the name redacted.
The email states: “He is listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996, including at least four flights on which Maxwell was also present. He is listed as having traveled with, among others and at various times, Marla Maples, his daughter Tiffany, and his son Eric”.
“On one flight in 1993, he and Epstein are the only two listed passengers; on another, the only three passengers are Epstein, Trump, and then-20-year-old” – with the person’s name redacted.
It goes on: “On two other flights, two of the passengers, respectively, were women who would be possible witnesses in a Maxwell case”.
In 2022, Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison, external for crimes including conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts and sex trafficking of a minor.
Trump was a friend of Epstein’s for years, but the president has said they fell out in about 2004, years before Epstein was first arrested. Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein and his presence on the flights does not indicate wrongdoing.
We have contacted the White House for a response to this particular file.
Dr. Tyler Jorgensen sets “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on a record player at Dell Seton Medical Center in Austin Texas. He uses vinyl records as a form of music therapy for palliative care patients.
Lorianne Willett/KUT News
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AUSTIN, TEXAS — Lying in her bed at Dell Seton Medical Center at the University of Texas at Austin, 64-year-old Pamela Mansfield sways her feet to the rhythm of George Jones’ “She Thinks I Still Care.” Mansfield is still recovering much of her mobility after a recent neck surgery, but she finds a way to move to the music floating from a record player that was wheeled into her room.
“Seems to be the worst part is the stiffness in my ankles and the no feeling in the hands,” she says. “But music makes everything better.”
The record player is courtesy of the ATX-VINyL program, a project dreamed up by Dr. Tyler Jorgensen to bring music to the bedside of patients dealing with difficult diagnoses and treatments. He collaborates with a team of volunteers who wheel the player on a cart to patients’ rooms, along with a selection of records in their favorite genres.
“I think of this record player as a time machine,” he said. “You know, something starts spinning — an old, familiar song on a record player — and now you’re back at home, you’re out of the hospital, you’re with your family, you’re with your loved ones.”
Daniela Vargas, a volunteer for the ATX-VINyL program, wheels a record player to the hospital room of a palliative care patient in Austin, Texas.
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The healing power of Country music… and Thin Lizzy
Mansfield wanted to hear country music: Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, George Jones. That genre reminds her of listening to records with her parents, who helped form her taste in music. Almost as soon as the first record spins, she starts cracking jokes.
“I have great taste in music. Men, on the other hand … ehhh. I think my picker’s broken,” she says.
Other patients ask for jazz, R&B or holiday records.
The man who gave Jorgensen the idea for ATX-VINyL loved classic rock. That was around three years ago, when Jorgensen, a long-time emergency medicine physician, began a fellowship in palliative care — a specialty aimed at improving quality of life for people with serious conditions, including terminal illnesses.
Shortly after he began the fellowship, he says he struggled to connect with a particular patient.
“I couldn’t draw this man out, and I felt like he was really struggling and suffering,” Jorgensen said.
He had the idea to try playing the patient some music.
He went with “The Boys Are Back in Town,” by the 1970s Irish rock group Thin Lizzy, and saw an immediate change in the patient.
“He was telling me old stories about his life. He was getting more honest and vulnerable about the health challenges he was facing,” Jorgensen said. “And it just struck me that all this time I’ve been practicing medicine, there’s such a powerful tool that is almost universal to the human experience, which is music, and I’ve never tapped into it.”
Dr. Tyler Jorgensen plays vinyl records as a form of music therapy for palliative care patients in Austin, Texas. Willie Nelson’s albums are a perennial hit.
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Creating new memories
Jorgensen realized records could lift the spirits of patients dealing with heavy circumstances in hospital spaces that are often aesthetically bare. And he thought vinyl would offer a more personal touch than streaming a digital track through a smartphone or speaker.
“There’s just something inherently warm about the friction of a record — the pops, the scratches,” he said. “It sort of resonates through the wooden record player, and it just feels different.”
Since then, he has built up a collection of 60 records and counting at the hospital. The most-requested album, by a landslide, is Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours from 1977. Willie is also popular, along with Etta James and John Denver. And around the holidays, the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s A Charlie Brown Christmas gets a lot of spins.
These days, it’s often a volunteer who rolls the record player from room to room after consulting nursing staff about patients and family members who are struggling and could use a visit.
Daniela Vargas, the UT Austin pre-med undergraduate who heads up the volunteer cohort, became passionate about music therapy years ago when she and her sister began playing violin for isolated patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. She said she sees similar benefits when she curates a collection of records for a patient today.
“We are usually not in the room for the entire time, so it’s a more intimate experience for the patient or family, but being able to interact with the patient in the beginning and at the end can be really transformative,” Vargas said.
Often, the palliative care patients visited by ATX-VINyL are near the end of life.
Jorgensen feels that the record player provides an interruption of the heaviness those patients and their families are experiencing. Suddenly, it’s possible to create a new, positive shared experience at a profoundly difficult time.
“Now you’re sort of looking at it together and thinking, ‘What are we going to do with this thing? Let’s play something for Mom, let’s play something for Dad.’” he said. “And you are creating a new, positive, shared experience in the setting of something that can otherwise be very sad, very heavy.”
Other patients, like Pamela Mansfield, are working painstakingly toward recovery.
She has had six neck surgeries since April, when she had a serious fall. But on the day she listened to the George Jones album, she had a small victory to celebrate: She stood up for three minutes, a record since her most recent surgery.
With the record spinning, she couldn’t help but think about the victories she’s still pursuing.
“It’s motivating,” she said. “Me and my broom could dance really well to some of this stuff.”
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