by Alexis Simendinger & Kristina Karisch
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), 81, froze for 20 seconds in silence while speaking during a briefing for the news media in the Capitol on Wednesday and was escorted to his office by concerned colleagues, but returned later to resume taking questions. He said, “No, I’m fine,” when asked by a reporter whether his episode was related to a concussion he suffered this spring, for which he was hospitalized and then treated in rehab. McConnell then answered a question at some length about Hunter Biden, The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reported.
The Hill’s Al Weaver reports that one Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss McConnell’s health observed that the GOP leader has been more reticent at Republican lunch meetings. The lawmaker speculated that McConnell may be having troubling hearing the conversations at the lunch, just as he sometimes has trouble hearing reporters’ questions at press conferences. A second Republican senator told The Hill that McConnell does not appear fully recovered from his springtime fall.
“I love Mitch McConnell, he is one of the most strategic political thinkers that we have. I have such admiration and respect for him but I do fear that — you can call it low energy — he is not himself,” the lawmaker said.
On July 14, McConnell tripped and fell while disembarking from a plane at Reagan National Airport, according to two sources familiar with the incident. He was not seriously hurt and was seen later that day at the Capitol, where he interacted with at least one reporter (NBC News).
Meanwhile, House Republicans are showing small signs of progress as leaders try to wrangle the conference’s various factions together to pass their first batch of federal funding bills this week, The Hill’s Aris Folley and Mychael Schnell report. The House cleared a key procedural hurdle Wednesday by voting to begin debate on legislation to fund military construction, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and related agencies for fiscal 2024 — but not without hours of drama as conservatives press for deeper spending cuts. However, as The Hill’s Emily Brooks and Schnell write, plans to move an appropriations bill funding agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration to the House floor were brought to a halt amid internal GOP division over whether to further slash spending and a provision related to abortion. One House Republican told The Hill that they do not expect the bill to come to the floor at all this week as scheduled, punting its consideration until when the House returns in mid-September.
Politico: House GOP notches early win in bid to unite party on spending — but pitfalls remain. Conservatives say they’re closing in on agreement to broader funding cuts. And other senior Republicans are getting more alienated as party leaders slash.
“We’re not bringing the bill up. We’re not gonna be here Friday to vote on the ag approps,” the GOP lawmaker said.
Ostensibly focused on national security, three former defense officials on Wednesday delivered explosive testimony at a House hearing about unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), warning of potential national risks. As The Hill’s Ellen Mitchell reports, the witnesses before the House Oversight subcommittee — a former Navy pilot, a retired Navy commander and an ex-Air Force intelligence official — stressed that the government has been far too secretive in acknowledging such incidents, prompting calls from lawmakers for the intelligence community to be more forthcoming.
The hearing appeared to unite lawmakers in a push for answers after decades in which politicians were hesitant to discuss unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and other intrigues about possible extraterrestrial life lest they become a laughingstock. Members also worried the sightings could be tied to unfamiliar military technology owned by adversaries.
“UAPs, whatever they be, may pose a serious threat to our military and our civilian aircraft, and that must be understood,” said the subpanel’s ranking member, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.). “We should encourage more reporting, not less on UAPs. The more we understand, the safer we will be.”
Former intelligence official David Grusch, one of the witnesses at the hearing, made far-reaching claims about possible U.S. government cover-ups of contact with UFOs and nonhuman pilots, but he could not offer any hard evidence to substantiate his claims — largely due to his fears of prosecution for sharing classified data in a public setting, he told Congress. Grusch said that during his time as co-lead of the Pentagon’s UAP task force, fellow intelligence officials leaked to him the existence of the secret program focused on retrieving — and attempting to reverse engineer — nonhuman craft. He was unable to provide details, and members complained that they had been denied access to a hearing room where they could hold a fully secure interview.
NBC News: Here are the five most memorable moments from Congress’s UFO hearing.
A key congressional committee is set to vote this week on several bills that would develop a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies, a milestone for Capitol Hill in its efforts to codify federal oversight for the digital asset industry. The crypto industry has been in the regulatory crosshairs since investors were burned last year by sudden collapses of Celsius Network, Voyager Digital, FTX and other companies (Reuters and Politico)
A Senate bill that takes aim at credit card “swipe fees” is unlikely to hitch a ride on the annual defense spending bill, writes The Hill’s Taylor Giorno. There had been talk of tagging the swipe fee bill onto the must-pass legislation, but since the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) announced Sunday he’d tested positive for COVID-19 for the third time this year and is absent from Washington, that’s unlikely. The lobbying battle over swipe fees is heating up, with the bill’s supporters saying they’ll try to attach it to another must-pass bill and its critics blanketing TV, radio and digital platforms with ads warning the bill would cut funding for popular points programs.
House Judiciary Committee Republicans appeared split in their appetite for impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Wednesday, with many largely refraining from discussions of booting him from office, to the surprise of some Democrats on the panel. The hearing wasn’t entirely free of fireworks. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) repeated the once popular GOP refrain that he should resign or face removal, telling Mayorkas he’d reached the “inevitable conclusion” that the Homeland Security secretary should quit or “that leaves us with no other option. You should be impeached.”
Democrats previewed an argument addressing GOP claims floated at different turns over Mayorkas’s tenure, noting the drop in border crossings following the implementation of new Biden administration policies. But most of the GOP seemed to carefully skirt the “I” word, a factor one GOP aide privately told The Hill was because “I think everyone has moved onto bigger fish.”