Congress opens under deep divisions, federal shutdown

WASHINGTON — A truly divided government will greet Congress as it fully opens its new session Thursday, with nine federal departments closed in a spending-bill showdown and Democrats ending Republicans’ unified reign by taking control of the House.

The partisan battle over President Donald Trump’s demand for billions of dollars to build a border wall, or some version of it, will set the tone for what is likely to be another tumultuous two years in the nation’s  capital with more frequent clashes between Congress and the White House.

Congress now faces the daunting task of seeking consensus amid gridlock, the start of the 2020 presidential campaign, an unpredictable president, House Democrats’ probes of Trump, and a possible recession, said James Thurber, a government professor at American University.

On Capitol Hill, the balance of power will shift as Republicans lose control over the House, setting the stage for a raft of Democratic priority legislation that mostly will hit a wall in the Republican-controlled Senate under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

McConnell, who protects the president and House Republican legislation, said before the shutdown that he  would focus on approving Trump’s judicial nominations, which already have set a record for appellate courts, and other Trump appointees.

On Thursday, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is expected to be elected to a historic return as the first and only woman House speaker, taking over the role of leader of the Democratic opposition to Trump from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

In emails and tweets, Pelosi said she will immediately put her stamp on the lower chamber by passing a package of new rules and bills to reopen the government — “just the first sign of things to come in our new Democratic Majority committed to working #ForThePeople.”

Those rules will give more power to committees, institute ethics measures such as barring House members from sitting on corporate boards — as Rep. Chris Collins (R-Buffalo) did when federal prosecutors indicted him for insider trading — and require more staff diversity.

It will even allow religious headwear to be worn in the House chamber, a nod to Ilhan Omar, a Muslim and new representative from Minnesota who wears a headscarf.

Pelosi will offer Republican-approved appropriations for eight of the unfunded federal departments and other agencies through September, and  another would fund the Homeland Security Department, which controls the border, until Feb. 8, to allow further negotiation.

But Trump has rejected it already and McConnell won’t bring a bill to the Senate floor.

Next, Pelosi said, House Democrats will bring up H.R. 1, a package of measures to remake campaign finance laws to require more donor identification, make it easier to vote and stiffen ethics requirements for lawmakers.

With an eye on special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation and the 2020 election, House Democrats have promised to launch probes and issue subpoenas on everything from Trump’s tax filings and connections with Russia to his policies on immigration, health care and the environment.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-Manhattan), the incoming chairs of the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, said last month that Trump might be implicated in possibly impeachable offenses.

Still, both parties face internal unrest.

Pelosi must hold together a more diverse, younger caucus that includes both pro-business centrists and a group pushing the party left, personified by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who ousted veteran Rep. Joe Crowley (D-Queens). On Thursday, members of both of those groups will vote against Pelosi. 

Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-Garden City), a pro-business New Democrat member, will not vote to make Pelosi speaker. Ocasio-Cortez and others will vote against her rules package because it requires legislation to be paid for, which she complained would “hamstring” health care and other bills such as her “New Green Deal,” a crash project to save the environment.

Republicans also have dissenters. The House has the conservative House Freedom Caucus, and incoming Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) criticized the president in a Washington Post opinion piece on Wednesday.