Congress, White House on a Slow Shutdown Roll: Starting Line

Government Limbo

With about a week and a half left before the next fiscal year begins, don’t hold your breath on anything happening soon to avoid a government shutdown.

President Donald Trump’s latest comments about negotiating with Democrats are a reminder of the difference between a get-together and getting together. “I’d love to meet with them, but I don’t think it’s going to have any impact,” Trump told reporters over the weekend. “They want all this stuff, they haven’t changed, they haven’t learned from the biggest beating they’ve ever taken, just about.”

One of the minority party’s key demands is to make sure Obamacare premiums don’t suddenly spike. They want to add that language to a stopgap spending measure.

The House and Senate both are off this week, with senators scheduled to return on Sept. 29, just ahead of the government shutdown deadline, and representatives back on Oct. 7, well into the new fiscal year. Jonathan Tamari has the state of play in this morning’s Congress Tracker.

See Also: Democrats Embrace the Cruz Shutdown Strategy They Once Loathed

Visa Fee Faces Likely Challenges

Trump signed a proclamation Friday that would move to extensively overhaul the H-1B visa program, requiring a $100,000 fee for applications in a bid to curb overuse. The fee, however, flouts clear requirements of federal immigration law and will invite immediate lawsuits, attorneys say.

The fee, which took effect Sunday, could also have devastating effects on businesses that expected to add workers through the specialty occupation visa program this fall. It would be imposed as a condition of US entry for foreign workers hired through the H-1B program popular with the tech sector, although it’s unclear what it would mean for visa holders already in the country. Read More

Also Read:

• Trump’s Pricey H-1B Visas Alarm Prospects Aiming for US Jobs
• Trump Unveils Gold, Platinum Visas to Cost Up to $5 Million

Redistricting Begins Today in Two States

Two more states are starting the process of revising congressional district lines, Greg Giroux reports.

Ohio’s constitution requires a new map because the one put in place after the 2020 Census wasn’t bipartisan and therefore had to be temporary. A likely scenario there is for the Republican-dominated legislature to miss a Sept. 30 deadline to pass a map supported by a majority of both parties. That would trigger action by the GOP-dominated Ohio Redistricting Commission, with an Oct. 31 deadline to approve new lines in a bipartisan vote. If it doesn’t, the legislature could do its own, at the risk of lawsuits under anti-gerrymandering constitutional provisions. Don’t expect anything to get settled quickly there.

Utah is going to move faster. The state’s Legislative Redistricting Committee will hold two public meetings this week and publish a proposed map on Thursday. It’s revising the state’s four-district map after a judge ruled that the legislature unconstitutionally repealed and replaced a voter-approved anti-gerrymandering initiative. Read More

Kirk Aftermath

In the days before yesterday’s memorial service for slain activist Charlie Kirk, the head of the FCC changed the national conversation around that killing by saying there could be repercussions against ABC for comments made about Kirk’s supporters by late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) called that “mafioso” behavior, and another GOP senator now has added to the criticism. Kentucky’s Rand Paul (R) said on NBC’s Meet the Press that the media regulator “has got no business weighing in on this.”

“Any attempt by the government to get involved with speech, I will fight,” Paul said.

Trump and other Republicans have supported the push on broadcasters. “The FCC has a responsibility to call balls and strikes,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said on Fox News Sunday. Read More

See Also:

• Trump Mourns ‘Martyr’ Kirk as GOP Seeks to Energize Young Voters
• Vance’s Leading Role After Kirk Killing Fueled By Personal Bond
• Kimmel Embroils Disney’s Iger in Culture Wars He Tried to Avoid

How Well Do You Know Washington — Big Purchase Edition

Trump’s vision for a space-based missile defense system is shifting from the idea stage to the show-us-plans-for-spending-$151 billion stage.

How does the formal request for Golden Dome vendor proposals depart from common requirements in other large Pentagon contracts?

A) Losing bidders are being told that rejections are temporary and they can try again
B) No cost or pricing data are required
C) Subcontracting plans must be part of the bids
D) Winners will have to meet cybersecurity standards that aren’t in force for current contracts.

Scroll down for the answer.

Eye on Tariffs

US companies are being pitted against each other over how tariffs should apply to their products. Businesses are able to suggest that their competitors’ products be subject to tariffs through a process that so far has produced lopsided results, Isabel Gottlieb reports.

Earlier this year, the Commerce Department granted virtually all requests to tariff certain products not already falling under another tariff measure or investigation. No rebuttals arguing against them were granted.

The filings in the tariff cases show the complexity of the arguments for protecting US factory production this way. LG Electronics wrote that raising the price of imported household appliances would lead to lower demand, “directly undermining the very type of domestic manufacturing capacity these tariffs are meant to protect.” Read More

Producer Squeeze

Before your groceries got to the store, somebody had to decide to plant the vegetables or raise the animals. Under Trump’s trade wars, farming is a bruised part of the US economy, with demand from foreign customers drying up for key US crops. These four charts show the receipts. Read More

See Also:

• House Bill to Seek Coffee Import Exemption From Trump’s Tariffs
• US House China Panel Urges Probe of Anker Over Tariffs

Did You Ace the Quiz?

Give yourself a star if you selected Option B — No pricing data required. Though typically required on proposals worth $2 million or more, for Golden Dome the contracting officer is tasked with determining if a vendor “is not likely to offer other than fair and reasonable pricing.”

The other quiz choices are there to entertain procurement professionals. It’s common for companies that lose out on a contract to have future opportunities (Option A) and for proposals to include subcontracting plans (Option C).

As for cybersecurity standards (Option D), BGOV analysts Maika Ito and Paul Murphy flag that that even though the Pentagon’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification doesn’t take effect department-wide until Nov. 10, those meeting Golden Dome’s Oct. 10 bidding deadline also will have to comply. Read More

Before You Go

Vaccine Uncertainty: As states in the northeast and on the West coast band together to try to maintain the vaccine standards in place under previous administrations, Celine Castronuovo talked to experts who predict a future red state-blue state divide on deaths from infectious diseases. Read More

Rookie Nominee: Trump said he plans to nominate one of his White House aides to be US attorney in Eastern Virginia, replacing a prosecutor who was forced out for not bringing fraud charges against New York’s attorney general. Lindsey Halligan has never been a prosecutor. She was a member of Trump’s criminal defense team starting in 2022, representing him against charges of mishandling classified documents. Read More

Pravda, He Said: The Pentagon is requiring journalists to agree to use only pre-approved information about the military or lose their credentials. Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who served in the Air Force for about 29 years before coming to Congress, posted on X that the new press policy is “so dumb” he found it hard to believe. “We don’t want a bunch of Pravda newspapers only touting the government’s official position,” he said, referring to the Soviet outlet. “A free press makes our country better.” Read More

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