House to repeal controversial Senate phone-records provision
Plus: Schumer demands a briefing on Trump’s military plans in Venezuela, senators introduce a bill targeting algorithmic rent-setting and a senior Democrat rails against GOP health care alternatives.
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FIRST THINGS FIRST
The House is expected to vote during an evening series in less than an hour to repeal a provision tucked into last week’s government funding bill that ended the shutdown. It allows eight senators to sue the Justice Department over phone records obtained in the Jan. 6 probe, effectively giving a small group of lawmakers special legal protections the public doesn’t get.
The vote marks a rare break between the Republican-controlled chambers that have otherwise marched in lockstep to advance Trump’s second-term agenda and reveals a fissure over a carve-out that even House Republicans now view as politically and ethically indefensible.
The provision was inserted without transparency and has sparked a blame game over who pushed it into the bill. In an additional layer of intrigue, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters on Tuesday evening that he consented to adding the because he wanted to make sure that at least Democratic senators were protected from Bondi and others who might go after them in the future.
“We made it go prospective, not just retroactive,” Schumer said. “But I’d be for repealing all the provisions—all of it. And I hope that happens.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told me on Wednesday morning that he had not had a conversation with Schumer about the top Senate Democrat’s consent for the provision.
“What I can tell you is that during the Rules Committee [hearing] that House Republicans had last week, they expressed their outrage at this Republican senatorial slush fund that was put into the spending agreement that they all voted for, notwithstanding the outrage that eight Republican senators have basically built into law a slush fund that will give those senators millions of taxpayer dollars,” Jeffries added.
House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) told reporters last week that Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) was responsible for including the provision in the final bill.
But Collins told reporters on Tuesday evening that it was the product of negotiations on member security between Schumer and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who, as recently as this afternoon, has defended the provision.
“That was something that the leaders put into the bill,” Collins said. “I played no role in that whatsoever.”
A spokesperson for DeLauro told me she stood by her comments.
The measure will be considered under suspension of the rules, a process reserved for noncontroversial bills that limits debate, prohibits amendments and requires a two-thirds majority to pass. That it was placed on the suspension calendar also indicates bipartisan dissatisfaction with the provision. It remains unclear if the Senate will consider the bill if the House passes it as expected tonight.
“Apparently, there’s no agreement between Speaker [Mike] Johnson and Leader Thune that the Senate Republicans will take up that provision, which reinforces the point that everything that House Republicans do is for show,” Jeffries said. “It’s not serious. It’s not designed to get an end result.”