Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) on Tuesday backed off the idea of forcing votes on so-called rifle shot funding bills to pay some federal workers during the shutdown, including troops and air traffic controllers. “This piecemeal approach, where you do one-off here, one-off there to make it seem more politically palatable to somebody or less painful, that’s just the wrong way to do this,” he told reporters on the 28th day of the shutdown. “There’s just a simple way to do it — it’s to pic

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Friday touted the House’s passage of a seven-week stopgap government funding bill, calling it the “responsible thing to do.” “We could have turned this into a partisan measure, and we chose not to do that. We’re trying to operate in good faith here,” he told reporters after the vote. The vote was 217–212, with one Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden (ME), voting in favor, and two Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie (KY) and Victoria Spartz (IN), voting against. The continuing

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