World
Last-minute budget bill to prevent US government shutdown prevails in House
A last-minute budget bill has passed in the United States House of Representatives to keep the federal government funded and running through mid-March, averting an impending shutdown.
The continuing resolution now progresses to the Senate with only hours to spare before the shutdown is slated to take effect on Saturday at 12:01am local time (05:01 GMT).
On Friday evening, the temporary budget legislation sailed through the House with an overwhelming 366 votes in support.
Only 34 representatives, all Republican, voted against the bill. One Democrat, Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas, abstained by voting “present”.
“We are really grateful that tonight, in bipartisan fashion with overwhelming majority of votes, we passed the American Relief Act of 2025,” Mike Johnson, the House speaker, said in a news conference after the vote.
The stopgap bill, however, omitted one key issue that had stalled recent negotiations: the debt ceiling.
Normally, Congress weighs federal spending separately from the debt ceiling, which limits how much the government can borrow.
But this week, President-elect Donald Trump scuttled an earlier bipartisan bill in part because it did not extend or abolish the debt ceiling, which he compared with a “guillotine” dangling over his incoming administration.
The debt ceiling has become a divisive issue among Republicans, some of whom feared extending or eliminating it would pave the way for unfettered government spending.
Trump, for his part, threatened to set up primary challenges for any Republican who opposed his plan. He signalled that he preferred the debt ceiling debate to happen under the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden, a Democrat and his erstwhile election rival.
“Unless the Democrats terminate or substantially extend Debt Ceiling now, I will fight ‘till the end,” Trump said in a social media post on Wednesday. “This is a nasty TRAP set in place by the Radical Left Democrats! They are looking to embarrass us in June when it comes up for a Vote.”
Trump’s opposition to this week’s bipartisan legislation put him at odds with Johnson, another top Republican leader. Johnson’s predecessor for the speakership, Republican Kevin McCarthy, was ousted last year in a historic vote over his role in passing a bipartisan spending bill.
After the first bipartisan bill was scuttled on Wednesday, Trump backed another version that failed in the House a day later, on Thursday. All Democrats opposed it, as well as 38 Republicans.
Friday’s bill managed to restore Democratic support after closed-door negotiations. In his remarks after the vote, Johnson tried to cast the latest spending deal as a win for Trump’s America First economic platform.
“This is America First legislation, because it allows us to be set up to deliver for the American people,” Johnson said.
He also hinted at changes to come in January, when a new Congress is sworn in and Donald Trump takes office for a second term. When that happens, Republicans will hold majorities in both chambers of Congress.
“In January, we will make a sea change in Washington,” Johnson said. “Things are going to be very different around here. This was a necessary step to bridge the gap, to put us into that moment where we can put our fingerprints on spending for 2025.”
Like earlier bills, the temporary stopgap measure that passed on Friday contains approximately $10bn in farm aid and $100bn in disaster relief, a priority after the destruction of hurricanes like Helene and Milton.
But the sabre-rattling that had accompanied an earlier version of the bill had largely subsided by Friday night, with Trump allies like billionaire Elon Musk striking a conciliatory note.
Musk, who had decried a Wednesday version of the bill as “criminal”, praised Speaker Johnson after the vote on Friday night for streamlining the legislation.
“The Speaker did a good job here, given the circumstances,” he wrote on his social media platform X. “It went from a bill that weighed pounds to a bill that weighed ounces.”
Democrats, meanwhile, questioned Musk’s growing influence over the Republican Party. Musk is slated to advise Trump’s incoming administration in a new role, as part of a nongovernmental, yet-to-be-established agency known as the Department of Government Efficiency.
“Obviously, the thing Donald Trump wanted, he didn’t get,” Representative Jared Moskowitz of Florida told reporters as he walked down the Capitol steps. “It looks like Elon got some of the things he wanted. So that’s interesting.”
Moskowitz credited the Democrats for giving the Republicans the majority needed to pass the bill in the House, despite internal dissent within the right-leaning party.
“The drama that went on here for the last two days didn’t need to happen,” he said. “And we literally wound up in the same place we were always going to wind up in, which was the Democrats providing the majority of the votes to keep the government home open and deliver for the American people.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Virginia’s bid to restore a congressional map that would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided House of Representatives.
The court’s order, issued without any noted dissent, is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.
In recent days, the justices have sided with Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana who hope to redo their congressional maps to produce more GOP-leaning seats following the court’s voting rights decision.
But the Virginia situation was different, stemming from a 4-3 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that struck down a constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month.
The state court found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in Virginia’s general election last fall.
The Supreme Court typically doesn’t intervene in state court proceedings unless they present an issue of federal law. Virginia Democrats had hoped to persuade the justices that the Virginia court misread federal law and Supreme Court precedent that hold that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.
Virginia’s amendment had been intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two parties.
That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision.
The state’s attorney general, Democrat Jay Jones, slammed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, saying it was another example of what he described as a national attack on voting rights and the rule of law.
“Let’s be clear about what is happening. Donald Trump, Republican state legislatures, and conservative courts are systematically and unabashedly tilting power away from the people for Trump’s political gain,” Jones said in a statement issued late Friday night.
The state’s top Democrats had disagreed about whether it was even too late for help from the Supreme Court. “Time grows short, but it is not yet too late,” lawyers for the Democratic leaders of the legislature as well as the state told the justices in a brief filed Friday.
A day earlier, the office of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger already had confirmed that the state will hold this year’s elections under the current districts established in 2021. Last month, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Steve Koski said a court order was needed by this past Tuesday to set the district lines for primary elections on Aug. 4.
Spanberger reacted to Friday’s decision by saying both courts had nullified the votes of the more than 3 million Virginians who cast ballots in the April 21 special election.
“These Virginians made their voices heard — casting their ballots in good faith to push back against a President who said he’s ‘entitled’ to more seats in Congress before voters go to the polls,” she posted on her X account.
The leader of the state Republican Party said the justices made the right call.
“Wisely, the Supreme Court of the United States has confirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia,” state party chairman Jeff Ryer said. “This should once and for all put to rest the Democrats’ effort to disenfranchise half of Virginia.
___
Associated Press writer Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.
World
Trump says Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, killed in US-Nigerian operation
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President Donald Trump announced late Friday that U.S. and Nigerian forces carried out an operation that killed a global ISIS leader.
Trump identified the terrorist as Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, whom he described as ISIS’s second-in-command globally.
“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing,” Trump continued. “He will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans.”
100 US TROOPS LAND IN NIGERIA AS ISLAMIC MILITANTS THREATEN WEST AFRICA REGIONAL SECURITY
President Donald Trump sits at a table monitoring military operations during Operation Epic Fury against Iran at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 2. (The White House via X Account/Anadolu/Getty Images)
Trump also thanked the Nigerian government for its cooperation in the mission.
“With his removal, ISIS’s global operation is greatly diminished,” he added.
Additional details surrounding the mission were not immediately available.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.
US MILITARY IN SYRIA CARRIES OUT 10 STRIKES ON MORE THAN 30 ISIS TARGETS: PHOTOS
The announcement comes after U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said it carried out multiple strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria in February as part of a joint military effort to “sustain relentless military pressure on remnants from the terrorist network.”
CENTCOM said U.S. forces struck ISIS infrastructure and weapons-storage targets using fixed-wing, rotary-wing and unmanned aircraft.
DEADLY STRIKE ON US TROOPS TESTS TRUMP’S COUNTER-ISIS PLAN — AND HIS TRUST IN SYRIA’S NEW LEADER
The U.S. military carried out ten strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria following a December ambush that killed U.S. troops. (CENTCOM)
Trump told reporters on Jan. 27 that he had a “great conversation” with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“All of the things having to do with Syria in that area are working out very, very well,” he said at the time. “So, we are very happy about it.”
CENTCOM announced in February that more than 50 ISIS terrorists had been killed or captured and more than 100 ISIS infrastructure targets struck during two months of targeted operations in Syria.
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The U.S. launched Operation Hawkeye Strike in response to an ISIS ambush that killed two U.S. service members and an American interpreter Dec. 13, 2025, in Palmyra, Syria.
Fox News Digital’s Ashley J. DiMella contributed to this report.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks have killed 2,951 people since March 2 with at least 8,988 wounded.
Published On 16 May 2026
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