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How Each House Member Voted on the Bill to Avoid a Government Shutdown

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How Each House Member Voted on the Bill to Avoid a Government Shutdown

The House on Thursday night failed to pass a spending measure that would have funded the federal government through mid-March, extended the farm bill for one year, suspended the debt ceiling for two years and provided new disaster aid.

Thursday’s government spending vote

Answer Democrats Republicans Total Bar chart of total votes
2 172 174
197 38 235

Notes: The bill needed a two-thirds supermajority, or 273 of the 409 members voting for or against the measure, to pass. One Democratic member voted present. See a breakdown of individual member votes below.

The bill was considered under a special procedure that suspends the regular rules of the House but requires a supermajority of two-thirds voting yes in order to pass. Nearly all Democrats voted against it, as did a number of hard-right lawmakers who oppose raising the debt limit without additional spending cuts. Congress must extend government funding before a Friday night deadline in order to avoid a shutdown.

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Congressional leaders had scrambled to come up with a new plan after some Republicans, fueled by President-elect Donald. J. Trump and Elon Musk, rejected a separate spending deal struck between Speaker Mike Johnson and Democrats that included several additional policy measures but did not address the debt limit.

How Every Representative Voted

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Trump tells senior FBI ranks to resign or be fired

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Trump tells senior FBI ranks to resign or be fired

The Trump administration has told top officials at the FBI to resign or lose their jobs, Fox News has learned. 

The exact number has not been disclosed, but the ultimatum was allegedly given to senior employees promoted under former director, Christopher A. Wray.

President Donald Trump’s administration took these steps as his nominee to lead the bureau, Kash Patel, said he would not begin his tenure with retribution or focus on past transgressions. 

“I have no interest, no desire and will not, if confirmed, go backwards. There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken,” Patel said at the Senate Judiciary Committee.

MAJOR FBI CHANGES KASH PATEL COULD MAKE ON DAY 1 IF CONFIRMED AS DIRECTOR

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Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s choice to be director of the FBI, appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee for his confirmation hearing, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025.  (AP)

According to reporting from The New York Times, an email to colleagues from one of the senior agents outlined that he had learned he would be dismissed “from the rolls of the F.B.I.” as soon as Monday morning.

“I was given no rationale for this decision, which, as you might imagine, has come as a shock,” he wrote.

FBI logo and seal seen below the American flag

The FBI seal is displayed on a podium before a news conference at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

During the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Patel said he is unaware of any plans of retribution by the Trump administration.

“Are you aware of any plans or discussions to punish in any way, including termination, FBI agents or personnel associated with Trump investigations?” asked Democratic Sen. Cory Booker.

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SPARKS EXPECTED TO FLY AT KASH PATEL’S SENATE CONFIRMATION HEARING TO LEAD FBI

Kash Patel, President Donald Trump's choice to be director of the FBI, arrives for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s choice to be director of the FBI, arrives for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

“I am not aware of that, senator,” Patel replied.

Although Patel has been nominated, a director has not been officially confirmed to take charge, so the news of the ultimatum was alarming for those involved.

Until the vote comes to a close, Brian Driscoll remains the bureau’s acting director.

The FBI declined to comment when reached by Fox News. 

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Opinion: Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship is legally sound

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Opinion: Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship is legally sound

Less than two weeks into this second Trump presidency, the fearmongering has already reached fever pitch. “He can’t do it!” the critics have invariably howled in decrying President Trump’s landmark Day 1 executive order upending the status quo on birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to parents who are neither permanent residents nor citizens. The usual suspects in the punditocracy say Trump’s order is blatantly unconstitutional and that it violates settled law. Perhaps it’s even “nativist” or “racist,” to boot!

Like the Bourbons of old, pearl-clutching American elites have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Because when it comes to birthright citizenship, the virtue-signaling and armchair excoriation is not just silly; it’s dead wrong on the law. Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order on birthright citizenship is legally sound and fundamentally just. He deserves credit, not condemnation, for implementing such a bold order as one of his first second-term acts.

The Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The clause’s purpose was to overturn the infamous 1857 Supreme Court case, Dred Scott, and thereby ensure that Black Americans were, and would forever be, full-fledged citizens.

The clause was understood to apply to Black Americans because, even before emancipation, they had long been universally viewed as “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States — unlike, for example, Native Americans. (Congress did not pass the Indian Citizenship Act, which finally extended birthright citizenship to Native Americans, until 1924.)

Our debate today thus depends on whether, in 1868, foreign citizens or subjects — whether here legally or illegally — were considered “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

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They weren’t.

In the post-Civil War Republican-dominated Congress, the 14th Amendment was intended to constitutionalize the Civil Rights Act of 1866. Rep. James Wilson (R-Iowa), who was then House Judiciary Committee chairman and a leading drafter of the 14th Amendment, emphasized that the amendment was “establishing no new right, declaring no new principle.” Similarly, Sen. Jacob Howard (R-Mich.), the principal author of the Citizenship Clause, described it as “simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already.”

The relevant part of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 reads: “All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.” In other words, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” necessarily excludes those “subject to any foreign power.” As then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lyman Trumbull (R-Ill.) said during the ratification debate, “subject to the jurisdiction” means subject to the United States’ “complete” jurisdiction — that is, “not owing allegiance to anybody else.”

And so the 14th Amendment, properly understood, does not constitutionally require that a child born in the U.S. to noncitizens be granted citizenship. (Whether Congress passes additional rights-bestowing laws is a separate matter.)

This understanding was unchallenged for decades. In the “slaughterhouse cases” of 1873, Justice Samuel Miller interpreted the Citizenship Clause as “intended to exclude from its operation children of … citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.” And in the 1884 case of Elk vs. Wilkins, Justice Horace Gray held that “subject to the jurisdiction” means “not merely subject in some respect or degree to the jurisdiction of the United States, but completely subject to their political jurisdiction, and owing them direct and immediate allegiance.”

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It’s true that Gray inexplicably reversed course in an oft-cited 1898 case, United States vs. Wong Kim Ark. Over a powerful and compelling dissenting opinion, Gray held that there is some level of birthright citizenship for U.S.-born children of lawfully present noncitizens. But even in that wrongfully decided case, the court emphasized that its holding was limited to children of “resident aliens” who were under “the allegiance” of the United States. The court repeatedly emphasized that its holding applied only to children of those legitimately “domiciled” here.

In no world whatsoever does Gray’s pro-birthright citizenship opinion in Wong Kim Ark apply to children of people in the U.S. illegally. Eighty-four years later, in Plyler vs. Doe, the court dropped in a superfluous footnote indicating that Wong Kim Ark also applies to the children of people in the U.S. illegally. But this nonbinding footnote from Justice William J. Brennan Jr., a leading liberal, does not the “law of the land” make.

Extending birthright citizenship that far is, at best, a live and unsettled legal debate. But the original meaning of the 14th Amendment is quite clear. Its authors would have been aghast at the notion that people who broke our laws could then be afforded birthright citizenship for their children. The drafters likely foresaw, as so many today do not, the tremendous perverse incentives induced by such an ill-conceived policy.

The legal eagles so eager to call out President Trump are wrong. And he, yet again, is right.

Josh Hammer is a senior editor-at-large for Newsweek. This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer

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Kash Patel vows to 'do everything' to help GOP senator expose Epstein files

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Kash Patel vows to 'do everything' to help GOP senator expose Epstein files

Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the FBI, pledged Thursday to work with a top Republican senator on exposing who worked with Jeffrey Epstein in trafficking and exploiting children.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., quizzed Patel about how he would handle the Epstein case. The sex-trafficking financier died in 2019 while awaiting trial. Nearly 200 names that had previously been redacted from court documents in a lawsuit against his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell were made public last year.

However, Blackburn said there is still more to be known, including the names of those who flew on his plane and accomplices.

KASH PATEL FLIPS SCRIPT ON DEM SENATOR AFTER BEING GRILLED ON J6 PARDONS: ‘BRUTAL REALITY CHECK’ 

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., questions Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s choice to be director of the FBI, during Patel’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025.  (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

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“I want to talk to you about the Epstein case. I have worked on this for years trying to get those records of who flew on Epstein’s plane and who helped him build this international human trafficking sex trafficking ring,” she said.

She used her remarks to take a jab at former Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin.

“Now, earlier, I urged then Chairman Durbin to subpoena those records, and I ended up being blocked by Senator Durbin and Christopher Wray. They stonewalled on this,” she said. “And I know that breaking up these trafficking rings is important to President Trump. So will you work with me on this issue? So we know who worked with Jeffrey Epstein in building these sex trafficking rings?” she asked.

KASH PATEL HAMMERS ‘GROTESQUE MISCHARACTERIZATIONS’ FROM DEMS AMID FIERY FBI CONFIRMATION HEARING 

Mug shot of Jeffrey Epstein

Jeffrey Epstein mugshot from 2019 after federal authorities filed trafficking charges against him. (Kypros/Getty Images)

“Absolutely, Senator,” Patel responded. “Child sex trafficking has no place in the United States of America. And I will do everything, if confirmed as FBI director, to make sure the American public knows the full weight of what happened in the past and how we are going to counterman missing children and exploited children going forward,” he said.

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Following the exchange between Blackburn and Patel, Durbin requested to respond to Blackburn’s jab at him and accused the Tennessee senator of “falsely” accusing him “of preventing releasing the names of Jeffrey Epstein’s network.”

“My office subsequently reached out to hers to try to identify what records she was actually seeking. We did not receive a response,” he added.

Blackburn fired back and said she had “raised the issue with Chairman Durbin. I had raised it on the floor that we wanted to get these records… You sought not to recognize me.”

Patel’s nomination has sparked early criticism from some Democrats ahead of his confirmation hearing, who have cited his previous vows to prosecute journalists and career officials at the Justice Department and FBI that he sees as being part of the “deep state.”

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Democrats had pointed to Patel’s record and a book, “Government Gangsters,” released in 2023 that claimed that “deep state” government employees have politicized and weaponized the law enforcement agency – and explicitly called for the revamp of the FBI in a chapter dubbed “Overhauling the FBI.”

Fox News’ Emma Colton and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.

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