Senate Approves $626b Defense Bill

Punchbowl News: “It’s an inauspicious start to Trump’s relationship with Johnson who, theoretically, is his governing partner. Trump privately trashed Johnson to senators, saying the speaker ‘mishandled’ the situation, according to GOP sources…” “As of right now, there’s no clear path forward on how Congress plans to avoid a shutdown in just two days…” “A face plant of this nature could imperil Johnson’s political future.

“House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N. Y.) suggested Wednesday that Democrats will oppose any federal spending bill that strays from the bipartisan deal announced a day before, accusing GOP leaders of reneging on the agreement at risk of a government shutdown,” The Hill reports. Said Jeffries: “You break the bipartisan agreement, you own the consequences that follow.”

For a brief moment in November, the TheoBros, a network of militant Christian nationalist influencers, made news when Donald Trump nominated one of their allies, former Fox News commentator Pete Hegseth, to lead the Department of Defense. Hegseth attends a church that is affiliated with the TheoBro movement, and he has cited TheoBro patriarch Doug Wilson, a pastor in Moscow, Idaho, as someone who has had a major influence on him.

This article is part of The D. C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. If you want to understand both political parties’ unmooring at this moment, you might look at perhaps the most unlikely of proxies: none other than Matt Gaetz, the bomb-throwing former House member and failed nominee to become Donald Trump’s newest Attorney General. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Multiple media outlets reported Wednesday that the House Ethics Committee had secretly voted to release its report into Gaetz in the coming days.

Democrats went with the old guy with experience over AOC to lead them in the House Oversight Committee after Jamie Raskin went to Judiciary. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez had been Vice Ranking Member, or Raskin's #2. Some Democrats aren't happy about this, but it's more or less how things in Washington work.

By FARNOUSH AMIRI and LISA MASCARO WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Ethics Committee voted in secret to release the long-awaited ethics report into ex-Rep. Matt Gaetz, raising the possibility that the allegations against the Florida Republican who was President-elect Donald Trump’s first choice for attorney general could be made public in the coming days. The decision by the bipartisan committee was made earlier this month, according to a person familiar with the vote who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity Wednesday.