Louisiana’s Legislature has passed a new congressional map, brushing off opposition from the Bayou State’s own Speaker Mike Johnson and positioning Democrats to pick up an additional seat in the midterms.

The Louisiana Legislature finalized the map Friday. GOP Gov. Jeff Landry is expected to sign it into law soon.

The new map was spurred by a 2022 federal court ruling that the state’s congressional lines likely violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting power of Black Louisianans. The 2022 midterms, which used the soon-to-be-former map, saw five white Republicans and one Black Democrat elected in a state where Black residents represent roughly a third of the population.

The court ordered the state to draw a second majority-Black district. The Louisiana Legislature complied, sacrificing Rep. Garret Graves’ (R-La.) seat and drawing a new district that snakes from northwest Louisiana all the way down to East Baton Rouge.

The new 6th district now has a majority-Black voting age population and will almost assuredly elect a Democratic representative later this year.

In doing so, the Legislature brushed off Johnson, who in a statement earlier this week had urged state lawmakers to continue fighting the court order. That likely would have resulted in a court-drawn map for the 2024 elections. The speaker also suggested the Legislature could draw a map that does “not require the unnecessary surrender of a Republican seat in Congress.”

Republican state lawmakers stressed that they believed that if they had not drawn a map now with a second majority-Black district, the court would have dictated the map itself without their input. Legislators there said they prioritized protecting Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.), the only woman in the delegation.

Graves has publicly complained that the new map would not withstand scrutiny in the courts, particularly due to the shape of the new district. But with its passage — which had bipartisan support in the state Legislature — Graves finds himself without a natural political home base.

A lawyer for Kevin Morris is accusing House Republicans of misrepresenting the Hunter Biden confidant’s closed-door testimony this week.

Morris’s lawyer, in a letter to Oversight Chair James Comer, accused the Kentucky Republican of including “cherry‐picked, out of context and totally misleading descriptions” in his public readout of the private deposition.

“You did not treat Mr. Morris fairly and engaged in your standard practice of partially and inaccurately leaking a witness’s statements. … I demand you now release the entire transcript of Mr. Morris’ interview,” Bryan Sullivan, Morris’s attorney, wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO.

An Oversight Committee GOP spokesperson rebuffed Sullivan’s accusation, predicting that the “transcript will affirm Chairman Comer’s readout of the interview with Kevin Morris,” an attorney who has also advised Hunter Biden.

“The Committee intends to release the transcript soon but we do not have it from the court reporter at this time,” the spokesperson added.

In a lengthy statement released Thursday after the deposition, Comer said Morris was “paying Hunter Biden’s tax liability to insulate then-presidential candidate Joe Biden from political liability.” He added that “since Kevin Morris has kept President Biden’s son financially afloat, he’s had access to the Biden White House and has spoken to President Biden.”

But Sullivan, in his letter, said Comer’s statement is “intentionally misleading” and gives “the impression that there is some sort of deeper relationship with President Biden.”

“Mr. Morris testified that he has only had cursory communications with President Biden at public events like Mr. Biden’s daughter’s wedding, and said basic courtesy things as ‘hello’ and ‘how are you’ and President Biden making comments about Mr. Morris’ unkempt hair style that lasted a few minutes,” Sullivan wrote, adding that Morris also “testified that he has only been to the White House a few times.”

Sullivan also accused Comer of misrepresenting political donations Morris made, details of loans Morris gave to Hunter Biden including using quote marks around the word loan in his public statement, and a previous email Morris had sent about the money

Morris is the latest closed-door interview conducted as part of Republicans’ sweeping impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, which has largely focused on the business deals of his family members. Lawmakers, and staff, from both parties took part in the interview, which is one of several scheduled as Republicans look to wrap up their probe in a matter of weeks.

Republicans voted last year to formalize the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, but still appear short of the votes to actually recommend booting him from office. Though they’ve found evidence of Hunter Biden using his last name to try to bolster his own influence, and poked holes in previous statements by Joe Biden and the White House, they’ve struggled to find direct evidence that actions taken by Joe Biden as president or vice president were meant to benefit his family’s business deals.

The House cleared a stopgap spending bill on Thursday afternoon that officially keeps federal agencies funded through early March, sending the measure to President Joe Biden’s desk.

The chamber approved the shutdown-averting legislation hours after the Senate’s relatively speedy passage, with lawmakers hoping to avoid travel complications caused by an impending snowstorm set to bear down on Washington, D.C. The measure, known as a continuing resolution, passed with mostly Democratic support in a 314-108 vote, a point sure to irritate conservatives who are already fuming over spending.

With parts of the government now funded through March 1 and March 8, leading appropriators have a tremendous amount of work to do in just a matter of weeks. They’re looking to finalize a dozen annual spending bills that Congress has so far failed to pass as House conservatives seek deeper cuts.

If lawmakers fail to clear those bills over the next six weeks, appropriators warn that Congress might have to fall back on yet another a stopgap spending bill, this time through the rest of the fiscal year. That would saddle federal agencies with flat budgets or, worse, steep funding cuts.

“It’s really hard to think that we’re going to get this done by March, but we have to get it done by the 1st of March,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a senior appropriator. “Otherwise, there will be a CR till the end of the year.”

“Let’s quit playing political games and get the damn thing done,” he added.

Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), another senior appropriator, said Congress has left agencies in “a terrible position, having to spend money exactly like they did the last fiscal year. They can’t get rid of old programs that don’t work. They can’t generate new programs. It’s a terrible way to do business.”

He added: “I think you do start risking a full-year CR if you don’t get this thing done in the foreseeable future.”

The most recent stopgap spending bill is the third passed by Congress — so far — in the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1, with House Republican infighting hobbling the appropriations process. Passing all 12 real spending bills, and not short-term patches, will require a massive bipartisan lift that could further land Speaker Mike Johnson in hot water with his right flank.

Earlier this month, Johnson struck a deal on a government funding framework with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, setting defense and nondefense spending levels for the current fiscal year that closely mirror those in the debt limit package negotiated by Biden and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last summer.

House conservatives, enraged by Johnson’s agreement with Schumer, now say they’re determined to fight for conservative policy wins across a dozen spending bills — on thorny issues like abortion, for example — which have no shot at success in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

The House Freedom Caucus urged Republicans to oppose the stopgap shortly before the passage vote, adding that the measure does nothing to “secure the border.” Earlier Thursday, conservatives unsuccessfully urged Johnson to attach Republican border security legislation as an amendment, which he denied.

Haggling over the broader spending bills can’t begin in earnest, however, until leading appropriators lock down a deal on funding totals for all 12 of them. It’s a critical next step that has consumed the last couple weeks for Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and her House counterpart, Chair Kay Granger (R-Texas).

“This has been dragging on for a long time and I really don’t know why,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), the top Republican appropriator in the Senate, who added that she’s “concerned” about the lack of a resolution.

Just that step of the process could take several weeks, a problem for top appropriators who are under an obvious time crunch. Still, many of them expressed optimism on Thursday that it would be possible. Murray said in a floor speech before the Senate passed the stopgap that she has been “working nonstop” with colleagues in both chambers to get things moving “as quickly as we possibly can.”

“Passing this measure will allow us the time we need to hammer out those funding bills for [fiscal 2024], after many months of needless delays,” she added.

Hunter Biden plans to testify behind closed doors as part of House Republicans’ sweeping impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden on Feb. 28.

Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) and Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) announced the private deposition with the president’s son on Thursday, following a week of negotiations with his lawyers.

“Hunter Biden will appear before our committees for a deposition on February 28, 2024. His deposition will come after several interviews with Biden family members and associates. We look forward to Hunter Biden’s testimony,” Jordan and Comer said in a statement.

A person familiar with the negotiations between committee staff and Hunter Biden’s attorneys confirmed the date.

It’s a significant U-turn from just a week ago, when House Republicans were threatening to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a prior subpoena for a closed-door deposition last month. Instead, Hunter Biden appeared outside the Capitol to reiterate his offer of a public hearing. His team had voiced concerns that any private testimony could be selectively leaked.

But that stalemate shifted on Friday. As House Republicans officially scheduled a contempt vote, Hunter Biden’s legal team said that if Republicans would issue new subpoenas that they could comply with a deposition. That kicked off a flurry of behind-the-scenes negotiations, and the House GOP hit pause on their contempt plans.

The person familiar with the negotiations, pointing back to worries about selective leaks, noted that Hunter’s team has been in discussion with committee staff “regarding a way for Hunter to provide the facts in a way that addresses his concern.”

Republicans view Hunter Biden as a key witness in their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, which has largely focused on his family’s business agreements. Republicans are hoping to make a call in a matter of weeks on whether or not to move forward with articles of impeachment against the president.

House Republicans voted to formalize their inquiry last month. But they still face skepticism within their own ranks, since some lawmakers want to see a “smoking gun” before they vote to actually impeach. That currently leaves investigators short of the votes needed to recommend ousting Biden from office.

Though Republicans have found evidence of Hunter Biden using his last name to bolster his own influence and poked holes in previous statements made by Joe Biden and the White House, they have yet to show irrefutable evidence that actions taken by Joe Biden as president or vice president were meant to benefit his family’s business arrangements.

Donald Trump helped kill Congress’ last big bid for an immigration compromise. As the Senate closes in on its next attempt, members of both parties are prepared for the former president to try it again.

Speaker Mike Johnson’s televised acknowledgement that he’s consulting with Trump on border policy is giving déjà vu to senators who witnessed the Trump administration’s 2018 squashing of a plan to pair border security provisions with help for undocumented immigrants. This time around, the Senate is on the verge of a different deal — linking border and immigration restrictions with Ukraine aid — while Trump’s influence in the GOP is peaking again.

“I hope he will dissuade people” from supporting any bipartisan border plan that emerges this year, said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). “Can he? I don’t know… Maybe. Maybe not.”

Now that he’s won the Iowa caucus and is barreling toward the GOP nomination, Trump has reason to feel emboldened about his ability to sway congressional Republicans. If Trump goes all-out against the emerging border-Ukraine compromise, it’s even harder to imagine that Johnson would go along — and GOP senators might start peeling off into the no camp, too.

Trump appeared to begin making his stance clear on Thursday, posting on social media that he does “not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people.” Conservative Fox News host Laura Ingraham said on Wednesday night that the former president opposes an emerging Senate deal and wants Johnson to come out against it too.

“It’s certainly not helpful,” Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said of Trump’s potential opposition. “But in the end, people are going to have to do what they think is right.”

About six years ago, a bipartisan group of senators hashed out a significant border security deal that would have also protected hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation. At that time, Trump and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell were aligned on defeating the legislation, which went down on the floor. This time, however, McConnell is pushing back against Johnson and Trump’s resistance.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a lead sponsor of the 2018 border legislation, readily remembers the vote total (54) that brought down that immigration measure. It fell short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster even as Republicans held the House, Senate and White House. And Senate Republican leaders are now trying to remind Trump that if he wins back the presidency, he won’t get the sort of concessions that Democrats are considering now.

Rounds said in an interview that some Senate Republicans are working behind the scenes to get Trump on board with this year’s legislation, telling him it would help future presidents: “Whether he believes that or not, I don’t know. But I do.”

“Anytime you have a Republican frontrunner for the presidency, people will listen to what he’s got to say. But there’s a lot of really good logic involved in trying to get something done now,” Rounds added. “That would be helpful for this administration, but absolutely necessary for the next administration.”

The trio of senators working on this year’s immigration compromise have not yet clinched a deal, but their agreement would likely strengthen asylum standards, give the government new expulsion authorities for migrants and potentially curb presidential parole powers.

It would not include a path to citizenship for young, undocumented immigrants; for that and other reasons, it’s a far more conservative template than the 2018 bill. Instead, it would ride alongside a massive foreign aid bill that many Republicans also support.

“It was very different. There’s no path to citizenship in the bill. This isn’t about immigration, this is about border security. It’s a very, very different bill,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who opposed the 2018 legislation but was involved in the talks that produced it.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) was also in the room for those 2018 immigration talks and is now the lead negotiator on a Ukraine-border deal. Lankford has not endorsed Trump yet, though several of the former president’s backers for 2024 are in favor of a deal, including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.).

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he hopes Trump wouldn’t be able to tank the bill: “I think there are enough people like Lindsey Graham — who apparently are supporting it — that should help.”

Lankford said he did not read Trump’s comments as fatal, or even that critical.

“He was just saying we need to be able to fix everything,” Lankford said. “I don’t take it as adamantly opposed to this.”

Even if Trump does come out against the legislation, nine or more GOP senators could still shrug off his opposition. McConnell and Trump do not speak, and for now — with McConnell singularly focused on passing the agreement — it appears that the emerging deal could pass the Senate.

But senators want a bigger vote total to put pressure on the House, where the situation is much dicier. Few House Republicans supported the Senate’s recent bipartisan compromises on infrastructure, gun safety and same-sex marriage. Because Johnson faces regular threats to his speakership from the right, he’ll need broad GOP buy-in to call a vote on the Senate’s plan.

“That makes it harder,” said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah.). “President Trump obviously has a big influence in our party, and on some people more than others.”

But, Romney added, “we need to do something rather than to do nothing.”

Former Rep. Justin Amash, who left the Republican Party following a crescendo of Donald Trump criticism, said Thursday that he’s mulling a return to the GOP and a jump into Michigan’s open Senate contest.

“Contenders for the seat who are uninspired, unserious, and unprepared to tackle the chief impediment to liberty and economic prosperity—an overgrown and abusive government that strives to centralize power and snuff out individualism,” Amash wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, as he laid out his case for possibly entering the contest.

Amash didn’t outline a timeline for a decision but said “the stakes are high: freedom, social cooperation, and human progress itself.”

He gained national attention in 2019 when he became the first Republican to say Trump committed impeachable offenses, later leaving the party to become an independent. He flirted with running for president in 2020 on the Libertarian Party ticket, but ultimately didn’t pursue the bid.

There’s no clear frontrunner right now in the race for the GOP nomination to succeed retiring-Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). Among the contenders: former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, businessman Sandy Pensler, former Rep. Mike Rogers (R) and former Rep. Peter Meijer (R) — who succeeded Amash in Congress and also criticized the former president before recently reversing himself and vowing to support Trump if he wins the party’s 2024 nomination.