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House to vote on stopgap funding bill as lawmakers scramble to avoid government shutdown

Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog.

House speaker Mike Johnson will launch a floor vote to pass the stopgap funding bill designed to keep the federal government fully funded through early December, removing the possibility of a shutdown before the midterm elections.

“The first thing is we’ve got to make sure this government gets funded and we don’t have another Democratic shutdown,” he told reporters as he prepared to open the chamber for business.

The short-term funding bill underwent some significant changes in the Senate, which made it more palatable for Democrats.

It delays a proposed rule from the Office of Management and Budget that would give political appointees more power over the distribution of federal grants. It also includes language to ensure the administration cannot transfer funds to the Border Patrol.

But a provision that delays for one month a federal ban on intoxicating hemp THC products has prompted criticism from many GOP lawmakers.

As a result, GOP leaders will probably place the bill on a fast-track process that avoids a separate procedural vote, bypassing any Republican efforts to block or stall the legislation.

Suspension bills require a two-thirds vote to pass, meaning a significant number from both parties need to support the measure for it to pass and advance to Trump’s desk. The funding vote will most likely take place later today.

In other developments:

The Supreme Court allowed Donald Trump to continue building his $400m White House ballroom project. In a 5-4 decision along political lines, the justices found that a group issuing a legal challenge against the ballroom did not have standing to bring their case. Trump celebrated with a post on his Truth Social platform while Democrats criticized the decision.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is stepping down from his role after 18 months on the job, leaving another top military position vacant. Driscoll and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had reportedly butted heads for some time.
Trump vowed further strikes on Iran and called it a “failed nation”. The remarks came as Washington and Tehran exchanged their first military strikes in a month.
JD Vance gave a speech in Michigan that included an attacked against Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. “There’s something about Abdul El-Sayed that is very, very evil,” Vance told the crowd.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent accused Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney of turning their trade dispute into a “political shouting match”. Carney had rejected the Trump administration’s terms that would have given the US government extensive power over Canada’s trade policy.
California Governor Gavin Newsom vowed to block the appointment of election denier Tina Peters, who was convicted in 2024 in relation to a plot to chase pro-Trump election conspiracies. Newsom announced he would take measures to prevent Peters from working as an election consultant for Northern California’s Shasta county.

Key events

There’s more from Jamieson Greer’s Politico interview worth highlighting, as his comments strongly suggest that both countries might face these taxes for the long-haul.

Greer reportedly said that Canadian officials “already have the best deal in the world” with US tariffs on the country’s aluminum and steel. While the Trump administration was open to participating in Canada’s “Fortress North America” pitch to fight bargain Chinese goods from filling both countries’ markets, the country wanted too much, Greer said.

“We will bear hug you on this idea of Fortress North America, and we offered that to them, and they looked at it square in the face,” Greer remarked. “They went back to Ottawa, discussed it further, and they came back and said, ‘No, not unless we get these additional things,’ and then they walked away.”

The unacceptable asks from Canada, Greer said, included lighter taxes on heavy-duty trucks. He said that these requests torpedoed the trade talks. (Canadian officials, on the other hand, attributed the collapsed negotiations to White House disagreement over who was directing trade talks, per Politico)

“Was that political? I don’t know. Was it economic? … I’m not sure how much economic sense it makes because the choice is not between the current tariffs and … you know, duty-free trade. Like, that is that. Those weren’t the options,” Greer also said.

US trade official downplays Canada trade war: ‘It’s more their emergency than ours’

US trade representative Jamieson Greer downplayed the potentially disastrous impact of a trade war with Canada, telling Politico: “It’s more their emergency than ours.”

“There are no negotiations happening on trade right now,” Green also told the website.

Greer’s comments come just over one week after US-Canada trade talks imploded. The US instituted 50% tariffs on $20bn in Canadian goods.

Canada, the US’s second-largest trading partner, announced it would impose retaliatory tariffs on $20bn of American goods starting on 8 September. Now, US residents are poised to feel extreme pressure from Trump’s tariffs and Canada’s retaliatory measures, including on day-to-day items.

Canada has threatened to impose a 25% to 50% tariff on “toilet paper or face tissue stock,” for example. As the US imported $328m in toilet paper from Canada in 2024, per the World Bank, the country is by far the largest exporter of this product to the US. Major retailers source many of their paper products from Canada.

Greer placed the escalating trade war on the US’s northernmost neighbor, insisting “it’s not clear Canada wants a deal.”

“If Canada believes that prohibiting and banning American goods and services is appropriate, then obviously that’s something that the United States should consider as well,” he reportedly said.

The US will aim to persuade G20 members to take a hands-off ⁠approach to regulating AI, according ⁠to a Trump White House official, at a gathering of industry titans and commerce ministers that begins on Tuesday in North Carolina.

Leaders are convening at a key moment in the AI ⁠sector’s development and the global debate over how to govern it, and as the US faces an increasing threat from China for AI supremacy, Reuters reported.

The two-day meeting will be hosted by US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick and White House tech adviser Michael Kratsios, formerly of data and evaluations provider Scale AI. Kratsios will push for a “pro-growth vision for the future of emerging technologies,” ‌he said in a statement.

A United ‌Nations panel recently warned that AI’s developments are outpacing scientific understanding and government policy. Recent events, including a hack triggered ‌by a rogue OpenAI agent that compromised the infrastructure of AI company Hugging Face, added to concerns about how closely leading AI companies are monitoring tests of their products.

AI agents are programs that run with minimal human supervision.

Dharna Noor

Donald Trump this month announced plans to rescind a landmark rule that has protected old-growth forests in the US for 25 years. If finalized, the rollback is expected to benefit the companies that Tom Schultz, chief of the US Forest Service, represented in his previous roles as a timber industry lobbyist and executive, according to research by consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen.

The Roadless Area Conservation Rule, more commonly known as the “roadless rule”, was adopted in 2001 to limit development in roughly 45m acres of national forest. Industry interests and Republican representatives have long lobbied for the rule’s rescission, which would open up those swaths of untouched land to road construction, drilling and logging.

In a statement, Schultz described the move as “the best way to restore the balance, reduce wildfire risk, and secure the long-term health of our forests and neighboring communities”. But studies suggest it could put 400 threatened and endangered species at risk and imperil ecosystems.

Industry interests will be the main beneficiaries of the change, advocates fear.

In an emailed statement, a Forest Service spokesperson, who did not provide their name, noted that Schultz had also held positions in Idaho and Montana government.

“Chief Schultz’s appointment reflects the administration’s recognition that the Forest Service’s current challenges require leadership with broad federal land management experience, not just internal tenure,” the person said.

Schultz is the first-ever Forest Service chief who did not previously work within the agency itself. Before Trump tapped him for the job, he served as president of the Federal Forest Resource Coalition, a trade association representing companies that purchase timber from the federal government, and was also vice-president of resources and government affairs at Idaho Forest Group, a major lumber manufacturer.

Michael Sainato

House Republicans are investigating several US labor unions based on claims from far-right nonprofits alleging union dues are being used for illegal political funding.

Republicans on the House’s education and workforce committee opened the investigation this summer after multiple reports from the conservative thinktanks targeted unions and their spending, claiming that unions are using member dues to support Democratic causes.

While unions are allowed to advocate for political causes, they are prohibited from using union dues to directly fund specific candidates or political action committees (Pacs). Union members can voluntary donate to labor union’s political action committees.

The unions under investigation include the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), United Auto Workers, United Steelworkers, Smart Transportation Division (Smart-TD), Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division (BMWED).

The allegations come from research reports by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a “dark money” nonprofit that counts Project 2025 architect the Heritage Foundation as a donor, and the Freedom Foundation, a conservative thinktank whose chairman once protested against Labor Day, claiming “I can’t think of a problem in society that can’t be traced in some way back to the abuses of organized labor.”

Thousands of American service members are about to descend on eastern Thailand, as the USS Abraham Lincoln makes a port call near the city of Pattaya.

The aircraft carrier sailed past Singapore over the weekend on its way back to the US after a lengthy deployment in the Middle East as part of the US war against Iran.

The Lincoln is expected to dock at a port in Chonburi province this week, according to Thai officials.

More than 5,000 American service members are onboard and many are expected to visit Pattaya, according to the city’s Mayor Poramet Ngampichet, who hopes the port call will boost the local economy. He said destroyer USS Frank E Petersen Jr will dock at a different port.

“For Pattaya to be seen as an important vacation spot is something that we have aimed for,” Poramet said. “We welcome more visits of the troops in the future, whether for a drill or a vacation, before they go back to the US.”

Massachusetts primaries test Democratic appetite for generational change

Generational ⁠change is on the ballot ⁠in Massachusetts on Tuesday as Democratic voters choose whether to renominate 80-year-old progressive senator Ed Markey or replace him on the ballot with 47-year-old representative Seth ⁠Moulton.

Markey, who has served in Congress for nearly 50 years, is backed by leading progressives such as senator Bernie Sanders and representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as well ⁠as most members of the state’s congressional delegation, including senator Elizabeth Warren.

No members of the delegation have endorsed Moulton, a moderate US Marine Corps veteran ‌whose supporters include New Jersey ‌Governor Mikie Sherrill and the Democratic organization VoteVets, Reuters reported.

The Boston Globe’s editorial board is also behind Moulton, casting ‌him as a necessary agent of change with “proven leadership skills” and positions on key issues that align with most voters.

Markey has a nearly $2m fundraising advantage over Moulton, and Markey has led in recent polls by a double-digit margin. The primary winner is heavily favored to win in November.

Democrat Kamala Harris carried the state by nearly 25 percentage points in 2024.

A similar generational challenge is playing out in the Boston area, where moderate representative Stephen Lynch, 71, is facing progressive attorney Patrick Roath, 39.