Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) ambushed the Senate GOP on Wednesday by using a procedural loophole to file an amendment on a must-pass national defense bill that would force the release of all government records pertaining to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Schumer offered the amendment to to the National Defense Authorization Act, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) hopes to pass before Congress leaves town for Rosh Hashanah later this month.
The amendment is the same Epstein transparency bill pushed by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), which Trump opposed and did not receive enough support from Republicans in the House to force a vote.
The Hill’s Alexander Bolton writes:
“Schumer took advantage of Republicans not immediately filling the amendment tree to the defense authorization measure. Thune and his leadership team were in the process of negotiating amendments when Schumer jumped in front of the line by offering his Epstein-related proposal.”
This comes as Congress must pass a bill to continue funding the government to avoid a shutdown at the end of the month, with only 8 legislative work days remaining in September.
The White House is seeking a funding stopgap that would last until Jan. 31, a longer funding patch than Congressional Republicans had been considering.
Schumer on Wednesday warned the proposals Republicans are considering don’t have enough Democratic support to pass the Senate.
“What the Republicans have proposed is not good enough to meet the needs of the American people and not good enough to get our votes,” Schumer told reporters.
In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is seeking to move a continuing resolution (CR) combined with updated allocations for several agencies.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Democrats won’t support a “clean” CR that maintains current spending levels.
“A continuing resolution that continues the failed policies of the Republican Party that we voted against is not the type of policy that actually meets the needs of the American people,” Jeffries said.
MEANWHILE…
The first excerpt from former Vice President Kamala Harris‘s new book is out, and she’s pointing fingers at President Biden and his staff for her 2024 election loss to President Trump.
Harris said Biden’s decision to run for reelection amounted to “recklessness,” but she argued that it would have been “self-serving” of her to ask him to step aside, according to an excerpt from her book published by The Atlantic.
“‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness,” she added. “The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision,” she writes.
Harris’s new book is called “107 Days,” emphasizing the short runway she had to run for president after Biden dropped out in the middle of the campaign following a disastrous debate performance that cemented concerns about his age and ability to run the country.
Harris acknowledges in the book that Biden “got tired,” but she said she doesn’t believe that his struggles in office were due to “incapacity.”
The nation shifted to the right in 2024, with Trump winning every swing state and becoming the first GOP candidate to win the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004.
In another excerpt, Harris accused Biden’s staff of repeatedly undermining her during her term as vice president.
“I often learned that the president’s staff was adding fuel to negative narratives that sprang up around me,” Harris wrote.
“Their thinking was zero-sum: If she’s shining, he’s dimmed. None of them grasped that if I did well, he did well,” she added.
