It’s NDAA week in the House
Plus: Notes on the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and a sneak peek of my exit interview with Rep. Cori Bush.
👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Welcome back to Once Upon a Hill. Voters in New Jersey and California will see their new senators sworn in today. Andy Kim and Adam Schiff will take their oaths of office this afternoon and replace their temporary placeholders a few weeks before the start of the new Congress. (Laphonza Butler, Schiff’s successor, is the subject of two must-read exit interviews in The Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone.)
This week, OUAH will publish an exit interview I conducted with Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) as she wraps up her tenure representing St. Louis in Congress. Bush was besieged with $9 million in campaign spending from the Israel lobby for her opposition to US support to its Middle Eastern ally in its war in Gaza against Hamas.
Despite her defeat, I came away with the sense Bush has few regrets. Take, for instance, her vote against the bipartisan infrastructure law, for which she was hammered on the campaign trail, in addition to her criticism of Israel: She said the election proved she and her five progressive colleagues who opposed it made the right vote.
Here’s my exchange with Bush:
Let’s talk about the infrastructure law real quickly. Obviously, during the primary you were criticized for your vote. I know you and five of your colleagues opposed splitting infrastructure and Build Back Better. But given how that vote was weaponized against you on the campaign trail, do you still stand by that vote?
Yeah, so we saw that just recently with the latest election where the electorate clearly wanted a government that would deliver on kitchen-table economic issues.
What was in Build Back Better was precisely the priorities that the people want to see, policies that could have been enacted had Democrats remain united and held the line. We pushed for raising the federal minimum wage, which we know has not been raised in 2009. We pushed for the universal pre-K, affordable child care, paid [medical and family] leave, and so much more. Those [free] school meals, permanent expanded child tax credit.
And so I feel validated. I did the right thing. We, as progressives, The Squad, we did the right thing. And if we would have gotten that done, if people were able to point back directly to that and to see how that changed what happens in their kitchen, in their front yard, at their kids’s schools, I think there would have been able to be a different campaign and maybe a different result.
Stay tuned for the full discussion in the coming days.
In the meantime, a few notes on the latest in Syria and the National Defense Authorization Act, one of the final measures Congress must pass before skipping town for the holidays in a few weeks.
The US watched in astonishment with the rest of the world this weekend as rebel forces overthrew President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, freeing its people of more than five decades of authoritarian rule by al-Assad and his father.
Assad fled to Russia and was granted political asylum by the Russian government as rebel troops took over Damascus and collapsed Assad’s regime.
“For the first time in decades, Syrians have a real opportunity to move past the horrors inflicted by Bashar al-Assad and his enablers in Russia and Iran, and beyond the decades of suffering under his family’s brutal rule,” Ben Cardin (Md.), the top Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrat, said in a statement. “The international community, with leadership from the United States, must be prepared to provide Syrians the assistance they need to create the country and the future they deserve and for which they have fought for so long. Today marks the beginning of a new and hopeful chapter for the Syrian people.”
Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, welcomed the end of the Assad regime and called for an inclusive, peaceful transition in Syria.
“Though I am concerned by what may come next, it is important that the aspirations of the Syrian people are met. I am mindful of the concerns of many ethnic minority communities—including Syrian Kurds, Yezidis, and Chaldeans—who must be protected, and of the significant humanitarian needs left unmet by Assad,” Meeks said in a statement. “I stand with the Syrian people and support their desire for an inclusive, peaceful transition and new day free of terrorism, state violence, and systematic repression.”
President Joe Biden said Assad’s fall was made possible in part because Russia, Iran or Hezbollah were unable to support the regime due to US support of Ukraine and Israel which has weakened the Syrian backers.
“Our approach has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East,” Biden added in remarks from the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Sunday.
The president said the strategy going forward is to support Syria’s neighbors—Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and Israel—should any threat arise in the coming days and to help ensure stability in eastern Syria to prevent ISIS from filling a power vacuum. (US Central Command conducted dozens of airstrikes targeting known ISIS camps and operatives in central Syria to prevent the terrorist group from exploiting the situation to reconstitute in the region.)
A senior administration official said the US did not receive any serious outreach from Assad to help him somehow save his government nor would it have considered any such request.
The official said that while the collapse of the regime quickly unfolded, the US was unsurprised it happened.
“All the [intelligence] analysts I spoke to experts believe the regime is very brittle. Russia and Iran did not have the capacity to help in the way it used to.”
Biden said his administration would engage with all Syrian groups to transition away from the Assad regime and remain vigilant against rebel groups to hold them accountable for terrorism and human rights abuses.
He told reporters the US would continue to work on securing the release of Austin Tice, an American journalist and military veteran, who was kidnapped while reporting in Syria in 2012.
“We believe he is alive. We think we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence of that.”
He said the US must ”identify where he is” first before the US considers the possibility of a mission to rescue him.
President-elect Donald Trump argued on his Truth Social app that Assad’s overthrow could serve as the pretext for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.
“There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin,” Trump wrote. “Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse. I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The World is waiting!”
The House and Senate Armed Services Committees released the text of the NDAA, the sprawling legislation that sets funding and policies for US military programs.
The final NDAA text calls for $883.7 billion in discretionary funding, a price tag that will cost party leaders votes from their respective far-right and -left flanks. It includes a 14.5 percent pay raise for junior enlisted servicemembers along with other pay and compensation reforms. Birth control from retail pharmacies and the national mail-order pharmacy is now converted without a copay and provisions to bolster child care and spousal support also made the cut. The NDAA significantly invests in the American industrial base, science and technology, and environment and energy.
But it bans diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, supports the deployment of National Guard troops at the southwest border to intercept migrants and drugs and explains US-Israel military exercises. The final bill also features a provision banning medical treatment to minor military dependents who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, accused Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) of upending what had been a bipartisan process by pandering to the most extreme elements of his party to ensure that he retains his speakership next month.
“Blanketly denying health care to people who clearly need it, just because of a biased notion against transgender people, is wrong. This provision injected a level of partisanship not traditionally seen in defense bills,” Smith said in a statement. “I urge the Speaker to abandon this current effort and let the House bring forward a bill—reflective of the traditional bipartisan process—that supports our troops and their families, invests in innovation and modernization, and doesn’t attack the transgender community.”
The House Rules Committee will meet this afternoon to prepare the bill for floor action later this week. This will be the first hurdle Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) will have to clear in his hopes to pass the NDAA with his party’s blessing and a final simple-majority vote instead of through a fast-track procedure that would require a substantial number of Democratic votes.
In addition to the NDAA, lawmakers will still need to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open into next year. Top party leaders are expected to attach a one-year extension to the farm bill and billions of dollars in supplemental funding to replenish several disaster aid programs. ICYMI: I explained these priorities in detail last week.
Do you have questions about the lame-duck session or the incoming Trump presidency? Drop me a line at michael@onceuponahill.com or send me a message below to get in touch and I’ll report back with answers.
Happenings
The House will meet at 12 p.m. Votes are canceled to allow members to attend a holiday reception at the White House.
The Senate will meet at 3:00 p.m. and vote at 5:30 p.m. to confirm Tiffany Johnson to be US District Judge for the Northern District of Georgia.
Read All About It
“Return-to-work mandates are an invisible pay cut” by Catherine Rampell: “They also might signal a weakening economy.”
“UnitedHealthcare CEO’s killing exposes widespread fury at a broken system” by Jon Skolnik and Caitlin Dewey: “Social media has overflowed with mockery and disdain after the death of Brian Thompson, exposing a deep-seated ire at the health insurance industry.”
“How the GOP’s trans panic has shades of Putin’s anti-LGBTQ+ playbook” by Miriam Elder: “When it comes to trans rights, will Democrats be the willing handmaidens of the hard right?”
“As more older adults live alone, resources are cropping up to help them” by Judith Graham: “There are several Facebook groups for solo agers, as well as in-person groups springing up across the country.”
“The weed industry isn’t feeling too anxious about Trump 2.0” by Mary Jane Gibson: “Marijuana entrepreneurs and advocates may not like Trump, but many are cautiously optimistic—and see opportunity in the upcoming administration.”
“Democrats are leaving X. X left them first.” by John Herrman: “Elon Musk fundamentally changed the terms of the platform.”
“Why so many Americans prefer sprawl to walkable neighborhoods” by Harry Stevens: “Building more 15-minute neighborhoods would cut pollution and conserve nature. But do Americans want to live in them? See how walkable your neighborhood is.”
“The rich can afford personal care. The rest will have to make do with AI” by Allison Pugh: “From personal trainers to in-person therapy, only the wealthy have access to human connection. What are the options for the less advantaged?”
“The inside story of Apple Intelligence” by Steven Levy: “Apple’s leaders claim the company wasn’t late to generative AI, but instead following what has become its familiar playbook: try to be the best, not the first.”
“How did Taylor Swift juice the economy? We tracked one friend group’s spending” by Hannah Miao: “Manicures, brunch, cocktails, friendship bracelets. How five women (and two husbands) splurged on an Eras Tour road trip.”
“Spotify Wrapped, TikTok—maybe the algorithms are losing their touch” by Angela Watercutter: “Once the cause célèbre, this year lots of folks turned cold on Spotify Wrapped. TikTok’s year in review also felt unsurprising. Maybe our platforms know less about us than we think.