A gun policy rider on a spending bill set to pass Congress this week is sparking partisan animosity, with Speaker Mike Johnson taking a victory lap during a closed-door House GOP meeting Wednesday and Democrats fuming — both publicly and privately.

The rider at issue preserves gun rights for military veterans who need Veterans Affairs support to manage their benefits. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a leading advocate for gun safety measures, said in a post on X that he would oppose the entire spending bill over the gun rider.

“This provision — which could result in 20,000 new seriously mentally ill individuals being able to buy guns each year — will be a death sentence for many,” Murphy wrote in a thread Wednesday morning. “It’s unacceptable this provision was pushed by Republicans. Democrats shouldn’t have acquiesced.”

During Wednesday morning’s private House GOP conference, Johnson touted Democrats’ opposition to the gun policy rider. It was also one of the main provisions he lauded in a list of the GOP victories when the package was released over the weekend.

Johnson read press reports to his conference, quoting Democrats who expressed “heartburn” about the gun rider and calling it the “largest rollback” for gun safety in the past three decades, according to a Republican in the room, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A version of the gun rider already passed the Senate last fall, with Democratic-aligned Sens. Angus King (Maine), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), Jon Tester (Mont.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.) in support.

But Murphy wasn’t the only one fretting about the rider’s inclusion on Wednesday.

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) highlighted concerns about the language during a closed-door Democratic conference meeting, according to multiple people in the room. And Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) called it “the greatest rollback of the background checks system since it was created” during a brief interview on Tuesday.

Democrats did secure one policy victory on guns in the spending bill, however, securing a seven-year extension on banning so-called ghost guns, or homemade firearms and weapons without serial numbers that are difficult for law enforcement to trace.

Caitlin Emma contributed to this report.

Mitch McConnell is endorsing Donald Trump for president, a move that the Senate GOP leader made after Trump’s only main rival dropped out of the GOP primary.

Despite their nonexistent relationships over the past three years, McConnell has always maintained he would support the eventual Republican nominee — and Nikki Haley’s Wednesday suspension of her campaign unlocked McConnell’s formal endorsement. His decision to formally back Trump amounts to a detente, however involuntary, after a rocky three years between the two men.

It also illustrates that the two men may still need each other politically: McConnell is trying to take back the Senate majority for Republicans at the end of the year, while Trump is trying to win many of the same battleground states required to regain control of the chamber.

“It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States,” McConnell said in a statement. “It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

McConnell did not speak to Trump for three years after the former president tried to overturn his 2020 loss, and Trump sought to oust McConnell as GOP leader after the 2022 midterms. The two did not speak directly about the endorsement, which was negotiated by McConnell adviser Josh Holmes and Trump adviser Chris LaCivita, according to a person familiar with the matter.

McConnell announced last week that he would step down as GOP leader at the end of the current Congress but serve out the rest of his term as Kentucky senator. That means, if Trump wins the presidency in November, the job of steering Senate Republicans alongside the former president will fall to a new leader.

In his statement endorsing Trump, McConnell mentioned only what he sees as the highlights of their four years in office together, “including tax reform that supercharged our economy and a generational change of our federal judiciary — most importantly, the Supreme Court.”

McConnell’s move to deny former President Barack Obama a Supreme Court seat is credited by many conservatives with boosting Trump’s 2016 campaign. And their work together did flip the high court to what most see as a 6-3 conservative majority.

Still, after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, McConnell made no secret of his dim view of Trump’s conduct, judging him “practically and morally responsible” for the violent attack by the former president’s supporters. McConnell and most Senate Republicans voted to acquit Trump at his second impeachment trial, with McConnell arguing that the Senate could not convict a former president but also declaring that “former presidents are not immune from being held accountable” by the legal system/

Publicly, McConnell seems to only be looking forward as he tries to flip the Senate into Republican hands. He said on Wednesday that looks “forward to the opportunity of switching from playing defense against the terrible policies the Biden administration has pursued to a sustained offense geared towards making a real difference in improving the lives of the American people.”

House lawmakers will aim to clear a first group of six government funding measures on Wednesday afternoon, working to beat the first of two looming government shutdown deadlines.

The package will be considered under an expedited process known as suspension of the rules, requiring two-thirds of the chamber’s support. The bill tops out at 1,050 pages.

What to keep an eye on: Watch for how many Republicans Speaker Mike Johnson loses on the vote.

Conservatives panned the compromise package, trotted out by congressional leaders over the weekend. The House Freedom Caucus said in a statement that “House Republicans Strike Out” and that the package “surrenders Republicans’ leverage” for border security negotiations.

Assuming it passes, we’ll see how quickly the Senate can move to take up and pass the package. Friday is the first of the pair of shutdown deadlines, with the next coming March 22.

The upper chamber has a series of votes scheduled throughout the day on various long-delayed federal nominations, including Ronald Keohane’s to be an assistant secretary of Defense.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to retire at the end of the year makes at least one thing very clear: The filibuster is in big trouble.

Two of its staunchest defenders in the Democratic Caucus, Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), are now leaving. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stepping down as GOP leader won’t do anything to shore up the Senate’s 60-vote requirement on most legislation.

That’s good news to filibuster haters — and a “scary situation” for Manchin.

“It’s time to get rid of the filibuster. The filibuster has been anti-Democratic and has done a whole lot more harm than good,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). “If [Republicans] have legislation they wanted to pass. And the filibuster stood in the way? The filibuster would be toast. It’s total politics.”

Republicans are now starting a race to succeed McConnell, who cut multiple bipartisan deals with Sinema and Manchin in recent years and sought to raise the debt ceiling so the two moderates wouldn’t vote to change the rules. McConnell also refused to change the filibuster when Donald Trump was president as he urged GOP senators to end the longstanding supermajority requirement before Democrats did.

Filibuster politics are highly situational, and both parties have used the legislative tool in recent years to block bills in the Senate — though some Republicans believe their party benefits more from the filibuster. Already the nomination filibuster is no more: Democrats scrapped it for most nominees in 2013 and McConnell finished the job by axing its use on Supreme Court nominees in 2017.

And it’s easy to defend the legislative filibuster from the minority position, as Republicans have the past four years. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he was “sure” a Republican majority would keep the filibuster.

But if GOP senators have a good November, McConnell’s successor could easily face intense pressure from Trump and his allies to scrap the rule.

“It’s going to be up to us, and for sure whoever the leader is, to defend the institution. And the role the Senate plays constitutionally,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), who is running against Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in the leader race. “We’ve got to make sure, if we get the majority, that we have a majority of Republicans committed to its defense.”

Cornyn said the filibuster is in “good shape” if Republicans get the majority but he’s “worried about it” if Democrats win this fall. After all, Democrats were just two votes away from dealing a huge blow to the rule two years ago, when the party sought to use the issue of voting rights as the impetus for a high-profile vote to weaken the filibuster in 2022. They only failed due to opposition from Manchin and Sinema.

But if Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) wins his race, Democrats hold the Senate, Biden wins reelection and the party takes the House, another effort to scrap the supermajority threshold seems almost certain. Kari Lake, who is running against Gallego, praised Sinema on Tuesday for showing “courage” on the filibuster and insisted she would not vote to change it.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who may be the most conservative Democrat left in the Senate if he wins a tough reelection bid this fall, said he does not want to abolish the filibuster altogether but would like to make it harder for individual senators to stop bills: “A talking filibuster is not necessarily a bad thing.”

And Democratic leaders aren’t shy about the fact that they still want “real changes in the Senate rules,” as Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) put it.

“This is no longer a deliberative, legislative body,” he said. “We’ve got to change the current set of rules as they are now. I think the Senate is drifting into obscurity.”

Six Senate progressives are calling for the revival of a committee to investigate alleged war profiteering by some of America’s top defense contractors, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and his colleagues want leaders to reestablish the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, a panel led during World War II by then-Sen. Harry Truman (D-Mo.). The panel, known as the “Truman Committee,” looked into the defense industry’s profits to ensure they weren’t ripping off the government during an era-defining fight.

The six progressive senators contend major defense contractors, namely Lockheed Martin and RTX Corporation, overcharged the government and used the cash influx to reward shareholders. The senators want Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to revive the Truman Committee as the U.S. hands out military contracts to support the war in Ukraine.

“There’s a name for all this: war profiteering. These companies’ greed is not just fleecing the American taxpayer; it’s killing Ukrainians. A contractor padding its profit margins means that, for the same amount of federal spending, fewer weapons reach Ukrainians on the front lines,” wrote Sanders alongside Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

The goal, they continued, would be “to provide dedicated resources and staff to investigate war profiteering, the effects of consolidation in the defense industry, the lack of sufficient oversight over U.S. military spending, and options for further use of the Defense Production Act or other federal authorities to provide for the national defense in a more cost-effective and transparent manner.”

The letter faults RTX for a sevenfold price increase over the last 30 years for Stinger missiles, which the U.S. has sent to Ukraine, and its plans for $37 billion in stock buybacks through 2025. A buyback is when companies purchase their own shares from the market, which increases value for shareholders.

Lockheed, meanwhile, “received $46 billion in unclassified contracts in 2022, and returned about one quarter of that amount to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks,” the letter says.

The lawmakers note that Congress has authorized a defense budget of more than $900 billion for this year, and the House is considering the Senate’s $95 billion supplemental package, which would further increase military spending.

Sanders said in an interview that given the massive amounts being spent and the importance of Ukraine’s fight, now’s the time to get serious about oversight.

“The Pentagon, as you may know, is the only major federal agency that has not been able to withstand an independent audit,” Sanders said. “There is zero doubt in my mind that there’s massive cost overruns, that there’s fraud.

“Right now, there’s a request for billions of dollars to help the people of Ukraine fight against [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s invasion, and I support that. But what we want to make sure of is that money is used to help the Ukrainian army get the military supplies they need and not simply to profit large American corporations and their shareholders — and that’s why we’re looking at the Truman Committee as a model.”

“Supporting the United States government, allies and partners to help deter and respond to an ever-changing 21st-century threat environment remains our number one priority,” Lockheed said in a statement, “and we look forward to continuing to partner with our customers to further their national security objectives.” A spokesperson for RTX declined to comment.

This would not be the only panel to examine this issue in modern times. In 2009, the Senate formed the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting, which delved into deals made during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. “There was rampant fraud, waste and abuse following the invasion of Iraq,” then-Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) said at the time.

It’s unclear if Schumer would agree to the panel’s restoration. But the progressive senators at a minimum want a national discussion about America’s military spending, the consolidation of the defense industry and the potential for fraud when the U.S. sends weapons abroad.

The call comes less than a week before the Biden administration releases its fiscal 2025 budget request, which will be higher than the previous year’s based on the bipartisan budget deal negotiated last year.

“Americans want to see, no matter what your political point of view is, that when you spend a dollar it’s used for the purpose that it was designed for, not to make huge profits for a handful of large defense contractors,” Sanders said.

A congressionally mandated commission’s report aimed at convincing the Pentagon and Congress to reform their budget planning process is due to be released Wednesday..

One of the commission’s interim recommendations would be to give the Defense Department more flexibility to use its budget, to counteract Congress’s repeated use of stop-gap spending bills.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is throwing his weight behind an effort to instate term limits for the next Senate Republican leader, as he seeks to differentiate himself from the still emerging field.

“One reason I am running to be the next Republican Leader is because I believe the Senate needs more engagement from all of my colleagues, and that includes the opportunity for any Member to serve in Leadership,” the Texan wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I will support a conference vote to change the rules and institute term limits for the Republican Leader.”

Cornyn’s only declared opponent — to date — is current Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.), though the field could well grow in the ensuing months. He previously held the spot currently occupied by Thune and also served twice as the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced she will not run for reelection this year, setting up a race between Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake to succeed her.

The first-term senator, who left the Democratic Party to become an independent, said she believes in her approach to politics, “but it’s not what America wants right now.”

“Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done. I will leave the Senate at the end of this year,” Sinema said in a video message posted to social media on Tuesday.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer met with a member of Israel’s war cabinet, Benny Gantz, on Tuesday at the Capitol as Congress pursues a path forward for additional aid.

Neither man took questions from assembled journalists as they shook hands. Schumer is the highest-ranking Jewish lawmaker in U.S. history.

Gantz is a top rival to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and made the trip in defiance of the longtime Israeli leader. He’s seen as a potential successor to Netanyahu and met with Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will also meet with the Israeli official on Tuesday.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is also expected to meet privately with Gantz on Tuesday, though his office did not immediately provide details of that visit. Gantz also huddled with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday.