Sorry, separate thoughts. Easy standing for now for anyone RIFed. Criminal for people involved if no pardon, 5 years statute of limitations.

More of a mixed bag imo. We won some on merits and lost others on standing, but with spooky undertones. They didn’t follow the reporting but did start following when they lost in court (now appealing much later). Also, we were pushing to create new things a future DOJ could hit them w/.

The power of the purse stuff Congress has proposed has a lot of clever ways creating standing, creating new penalties, going after some of the specific Trump abuses, creating more public reporting to better catch malfeasance, etc. It’s genuinely thoughtful legislation that is more than optics.

Yes but the problem with those is lack of standing. Not the case for these. Easy standing when you’ve been wrongfully terminated.

No, totally different. Full-year funding for Ag, MilCon/VA, Leg Branch. CR for rest of government through Jan 30. Some other stuff, like backpay and anti-RIF language. Section-by-section can be found here:

www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

The D alternative CR had some really clever language that would’ve gone after some of the specific ways Trump was impounding funds. Wasn’t foolproof, but great stuff there. Could have been stronger in ways that would have worked, but some things that would do real things. Didn’t make it into this.

You can do ANYTHING with UC. In the House, they just slap on a rule to create a rule doing wherever they want. In the Senate, you get UC to do whatever you want. Could immediately move to final passage if they had UC. Depends what they theoretically got UC to do. Each one is a negotiation.

To clarify, if Rand Paul had given UC to speed things up, we could have passed the bill much earlier, but he didn’t, so the vote to open the government wasn’t able to take place until like 5 am, with the government technically shutting down at midnight.

Should be clear in case I wasn’t clear enough: the bads are REALLY bad.

Lots of responses to this saying making something double illegal doesn’t matter. True sometimes, but not true here. ADA violations are a huge deal with criminal penalties and there’s easy standing for this one.

Yeah, it creates a negative implication on stuff we were winning on in court, sort of a bummer. But it is very clear and also creates a direct and unequivocal Antideficiency Act violation if he tries to do it during the duration of this CR, which is very nice. Would love for this to become standard.

For my entire career, approps has worked backwards from toplines. A bad practice that artificially constrains spending and deprioritizes actual need. These three bills were done the very very very old-fashioned way. Would love to see more of that.

But again, if Trump can then just ignore the deal….

This is all a long way of saying this thing could all fall apart because of a lot of correct and justified anger, but if it indeed has the votes to pass, and all 100 senators don’t allow it to go faster, we’re looking at Saturday at the earliest.

Alas, I am owned, as a former Senate staffer trying to talk about the House (always a mistake, ban me). @ringwiss.bsky.social points out that the House’s 72-hour rule doesn’t apply when you’re ping-ponging back and forth, so we’d just be looking at the Senate, and then House could go fast.

I actually shouldn’t complain because the senate is worse, but at least I know what I’m talking about there

Thanks very much for this. The people’s chamber is a mystery

Thanks much, and sorry for still not understanding — are you saying that the amendment in the senate doesn’t count as being available, and therefore the clock doesn’t start until it’s posted in the House? Or are you saying there actually is no 72-hour rule that applies here? Or a secret third thing?

Can you say more about this?

Great point from @ringwiss.bsky.social here on having to file cloture on the substitute. You can run the cloture clocks for that and final passage together, but this adds another 30 hours meaning we’d really be looking at Saturday earliest in the Senate if no UC.
bsky.app/profile/ring...