Morning Report — The funding fight’s final stretch (for now)

Congress is almost at the finish line for this month’s spending fight, but lawmakers are kicking the proverbial can down the road until December.

The House will take up a vote today for a three-month stopgap funding bill to prevent a government shutdown on Sept. 30. The measure, which is widely expected to pass with bipartisan support, would fund the government at current levels until Dec. 20. In addition to the extension, called a continuing resolution (CR), the House is expected to vote for more than $230 million for the Secret Service to increase protection for former President Trump and other candidates on the campaign trail.

Today’s vote will mark the final legislative action in the House before the election, and it will be symbolic of the disputes that have dogged the House GOP conference over the last 21 months. It has contributed to a pair of Speaker fights, multiple embarrassing failed votes on the floor and infighting that has spilled into the public view.

“If you’ve been here more than like, a year, it’s all the same thing over and over again,” said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), a former chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

BUT DON’T EXPECT A REPEAT before the holidays: Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is promising that the House will not approve a single, massive “omnibus” bill to fund the entire government in December — a scenario feared by conservatives.

It is a bold promise from Johnson, who has struggled to corral the slim House GOP majority behind an effective strategy to pressure the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House on spending. Last week, hard-liners pushed for a stopgap spending bill that would have extended funding through March 2025, but it failed on the House floor. 

And it would buck precedent: Omnibus bills typically pass Congress when a funding deadline comes close to the holidays, when members are itching to return to their families and districts.

While many conservatives opposed to any kind of stopgap are expected to vote against today’s bill, it is likely to pass due to support from Democrats. The White House also supports the measure, it announced Tuesday.

After that, House lawmakers are leaving town, according to the majority whip's office, an early start to the extended October recess that will allow members in the South to return home as storms brew off the coast.

THE STOPGAP THEN HEADS to the Senate, where Republicans told The Hill’s Alexander Bolton they will allow a short-term government funding bill to pass in the next few days, instead of using it as a bargaining chip to force vulnerable Democrats to vote on a Trump-demanded proposal to add proof-of-citizenship requirements to voter registration.

After Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned it would be “politically beyond stupid” to trigger a shutdown before the election, GOP lawmakers are opting to finish up work and hit the campaign trail as soon as possible. Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) said the Senate could pass the stopgap as soon as Thursday.

“I think our folks, when the bill comes over from the House, are ready to move on it, at least right now,” Thune said Tuesday afternoon.

In other congressional news, the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday moved forward with holding Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of a subpoena to appear before the committee. Blinken argued it was not possible for him to attend the hearing, given his commitments at the United Nations General Assembly in New York (The Hill).

Sweeping Secret Service failures directly contributed to a gunman’s ability to carry out an assassination attempt against Trump at his July 13 rally, an interim Senate report released today found.

Football’s Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre, who said he was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, testified Tuesday on Capitol Hill about Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) fraud (The New York Times).

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LEADING THE DAY

POLITICS & CAMPAIGNS

Vice President Harris and Trump are working to overcome their biggest electoral weaknesses, The Hill’s Niall Stanage writes in The Memo. 

Harris, according to a recent poll, lags behind Trump in Arizona, a state where she’s criticized by conservatives for an influx of migrants at the U.S. southern border. The number of asylum-seekers crossing into this country fell dramatically after Biden imposed new restrictions in June.

Harris, barreling headlong toward a political vulnerability, is planning a border visit Friday while she’s in Arizona.

Trump, for his part, is grappling with abortion issues, an Achilles heel as he seeks support from women and young voters. He applauds Roe’s demise, embraces states’ control over abortion laws and sidesteps questions about whether he’d veto proposed federal legislation to ban abortion.

Harris, speaking during an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio broadcast Tuesday, highlighted the contrast with Trump and her advocacy for reproductive rights. She repeated that she’s willing to alter the Senate’s filibuster rule that requires 60 votes to take up legislation if it meant trying to enact a federal right to abortion.

“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe,” Harris said of the position she initially staked out in 2022. “And get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat turned independent who is retiring at the end of the session, said Tuesday he won’t endorse Harris for president because of her willingness to change the filibuster for abortion rights. “Shame on her,” he scolded. “She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy.”

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ZOOM IN

ADMINISTRATION

FAREWELL: Biden on Tuesday addressed the United Nations General Assembly for the final time as president, highlighting the ongoing global turmoil and need for peace as he nears the end of his decades of foreign policy work as an elected official. During his remarks in New York, Biden recounted his decision not to seek reelection, calling it a “difficult” choice because he sought to do more.

The president called on countries to band together amid the heightening conflict in the Middle East, Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and growing global concerns about China’s influence.

“I truly believe we’re at another inflection point in world history,” Biden said. “The choices we make today will determine our future.”

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COURTS

CHARGED: Prosecutors charged Ryan Wesley Routh with attempted assassination Tuesday. The decision followed evidence resulting from the investigation after his arrest near Trump’s South Florida golf course Sept. 15. Routh did not fire his weapon and never had a line of sight on Trump while crouching behind shrubbery along the edge of the course for nearly 12 hours, according to law enforcement officials. If convicted, Routh could be sentenced to life in prison. Additional charges Tuesday: possession of a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence and assaulting a federal officer. Routh is being held without bond pending trial.

LEGAL BATTLES around the 2024 elections are beginning to heat up. Republicans have filed challenges in major swing states nationwide that revolve around proof-of-citizenship requirements and mail ballot deadlines, while Democrats are challenging state election officials who have expanded their roles. The Hill’s Ella Lee and Zach Schonfeld report the blitz of litigation, much of which echoes the 2020 legal challenges of Trump’s election fraud claims, threatens to sow confusion among election officials and voters. 

DEADLY BLACKOUTS that killed hundreds of people across Texas in 2021 — outages widely blamed on failures to properly insulate gas pipelines — may have had a more nefarious cause, a new lawsuit alleges. Those blackouts left tens of millions of Texans without power or water for days. The outages were widely blamed on failure by major oil and gas and pipeline companies to properly winterize their infrastructure.

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ELSEWHERE

INTERNATIONAL

MIDDLE EAST: An Israeli airstrike on Beirut killed a senior Hezbollah commander on Tuesday, a new blow to the Lebanese militant group. Cross-border rocket attacks by both sides are increasing fears of a full-fledged war in the Middle East.

 Since Monday, Israeli strikes have killed at least 569 people, including 50 children, and displaced tens of thousands, according to Lebanon’s Health Ministry. Israel intercepted a missile fired by Hezbollah at Tel Aviv early Wednesday morning. Israel has been preparing for its next war against Hezbollah for nearly a decade, and a full-scale conflict has seemed increasingly inevitable. Now, with Hamas diminished in Gaza, experts say Israel is putting its battle plan in motion.

“This is an escalation that was just a matter of time from an Israeli perspective,” Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israel Democracy Institute, told The Washington Post. “The vast majority of Israelis understand that this situation is unsustainable.”

UKRAINE: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the war with Russia could end sooner than some people think. “I think that we are closer to peace than we think,” he told ABC News.

He added that Ukraine could push Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the conflict, but only if Kyiv was coming from a "strong position" — once again calling on his Western allies to strengthen the Ukrainian army. Zelensky is in New York to lobby leaders for a loosening of restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western missiles for deeper strikes on Russian territory, with Kyiv angry over yet another setback while the U.S. considers the possibility of Moscow’s backlash.

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THE CLOSER 

And finally … 🐧 🦛 Cue the awwws. Two baby zoo animals have taken the internet by storm, uniting the world in its appreciation for cute — and often rotund — animals that look like they’re living their best lives. 

Meet Pesto, the king penguin chick whose sheer size — and fluffy plumage — has made him a star in Melbourne, Australia. Now 9 months old, he recently weighed in at about 46.3 lbs, making him the biggest penguin chick Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium has ever seen. His impressive girth is largely genetic (he’s the biological offspring of the aquarium’s biggest penguin) and down to his diet: a whopping 25 fish a day.

Then there’s Moo Deng, a Thai pygmy hippopotamus with a winning personality. She’s excitable and feisty, often gnawing on her keeper’s hands, boots or knees. (Workers at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Chon Buri, Thailand, south of Bangkok, think she’s teething.) Her name, which translates to “bouncy pork,” was chosen by a poll on the zoo’s Facebook page.

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