On today’s show: House Speaker Mike Johnson introduced a stopgap spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown scheduled for Friday. NBC News reports that Trump is on board but that it’s unclear if Republicans have the votes to pass the bill in either chamber. Sanne Wass, a reporter in Denmark for Bloomberg, joins to discuss how Trump’s comments about taking over Greenland have shaken up the territory’s upcoming elections. The Wall Street Journal’s Kristina Peterson explains the push to eliminate soda from SNAP benefits. Plus, the measles outbreak in Texas gets worse, violence in Syria has killed more than 1,300 in just a few days, and Canada’s Liberal Party chooses Trudeau’s successor. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Full Episode
Good morning. It's Monday, March 10th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, Greenland votes on the future of the island. Should food stamps pay for soda? And Canada's Liberal Party selects Trudeau's successor. But first, a big week for lawmakers in Washington as a partial government shutdown is set to begin Friday.
Over the weekend, Speaker Mike Johnson introduced a stopgap spending bill that would keep the government funded through September. Included in the bill is a slight increase in defense spending, totaling around $892 billion, and a small cut to non-defense spending, totaling around $708 billion.
The bill also adds an additional $485 million for ICE, a $20 billion cut to IRS enforcement, and an additional half billion dollars for WIC, the federal program that provides grocery assistance for low-income women and children. Here's Speaker Johnson talking to reporters in the halls of Capitol Hill about the bill.
I believe we'll pass it along to party lines, but I think every Democrat should vote for the CR. It is a fundamental responsibility we have to fund the government, and a clean CR with a few minor anomalies is not something that they should vote against, so we'll see what they do.
Democrats came out quickly against the bill. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in a statement with party leadership, criticized it for not explicitly protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Representative Rosa DeLauro, a top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, called the domestic cuts in the bill a power grab by Trump and Elon Musk.
Here she is speaking to MSNBC yesterday.
It's a blank check to Elon Musk and to President Trump. And it allows them what I call, this is stealing. This is stealing taxpayers' dollars.
President Trump voiced his support for the proposed spending bill, posting on social media that all Republicans should vote yes and that, quote, we have to remain united, no dissent. That's, of course, because Republicans have only two votes to spare in the House. But a number of Republicans who in the past were against these types of stopgap measures are now saying they will support it.
Typically, I am not for a continued resolution because we ought to pass our appropriation bills in time.
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