Congress Rushes to Defuse January 30 Shutdown Threat

Courtroom sketch of Maduro and his wife at their arraignment
Reuters
By Yuval Rosenberg and Michael Rainey

Happy 2026! We're back (and only slightly grumpy about it). Congress is back, too, with new challenges and lingering issues to deal with this month. Here's your evening update.

Maduro Pleads Not Guilty in a New York Court

It's Monday. It's January. It's 2026. It might have been nice to ease into this new year, but instead we started it with a geopolitical bang as U.S. forces ousted authoritarian Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a stunning predawn operation on Saturday. Maduro was in a New York City courtroom today, where he told a judge he had been "kidnapped" and pleaded not guilty to federal charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine-importation conspiracy and weapons charges. "I am a decent man. I am still president of my country," he said.

The audacious raid that captured Maduro in Caracas - and subsequent comments by President Donald Trump that the United States would now "run" Venezuela - rattled the global order and sparked furious criticism and debate about the potential fallout among officials both here and abroad. Trump further fanned those flames by renewing his call for the United States to take over Greenland, a Danish territory, and by issuing threats against Colombia.

Congressional leaders were scheduled to get a briefing on the situation late this afternoon, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that the Senate will vote this week on a measure that would require that the administration to get approval from Congress for any further military action in Venezuela. That'll add to a slew of issues lawmakers must address, including a House vote on the Affordable Care Act subsidies that expired at the end of 2025 and a January 30 deadline to fund the government and avoid another shutdown.

Speaking of which...

Appropriators Release Bipartisan Three-Bill Funding Package

Bipartisan congressional appropriators on Monday released the text of a negotiated three-bill funding package they aim to pass before current funding expires at the end of the month. The legislation bundles full-year funding for the departments of Commerce, Justice, Energy and Interior as well as federal science programs, water development and the Environmental Protection Agency.

As House Republican leaders prepare to bring the package to a floor vote this week, lawmakers from both parties praised the compromise legislation.

"This is a fiscally responsible package that restrains spending while providing essential federal investments that will improve water infrastructure in our country, enhance our nation's energy and national security, and spur scientific research necessary to maintain U.S. competitiveness," said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican appropriator in the Senate.

House Speaker Mike Johnson highlighted Republican efforts to avoid the sort of "bloated omnibus bill" that conservatives have long opposed. "As these bills come to the floor, we are reaffirming our commitment to return to regular order, restore accountability to the process, and be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars," he said in a statement.

Democrats said that the bills exclude Republican poison pills and reject more than $163 billion in proposed cuts to public services. They added that the package would protect funding for Democratic priorities, including clean energy, environmental protection, scientific research and public safety grants - and rein in efforts by the Trump administration and White House budget director Russ Vought to exert more control over spending.

"This legislation is a forceful rejection of draconian cuts to public services proposed by the Trump Administration and Republicans in Congress," said Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee. "Perhaps most importantly, this legislation reasserts Congress's power of the purse. Rather than another short-sighted stopgap measure that affords the Trump Administration broader discretion, this full-year funding package restrains the White House through precise, legally binding spending requirements. There is still much more work to do before January 30, but this is an important first step."

Congress had previously passed three of the 12 required annual spending bills as part of the November deal to end the 43-day government shutdown. Passage of this trio of bills would leave six other annual spending measures to be completed for fiscal 2026, including those covering Defense and the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Education.

The bottom line: With time running short - the House has just 12 legislative days this month while the Senate has just 15 - Congress will need another big, bipartisan breakthrough or, more likely, another stopgap spending bill to prevent a partial shutdown at the end of the month.

Global Minimum Tax Deal Wins Approval, With Exemptions for US

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development announced Monday that 147 nations have finalized a two-track agreement on a global minimum tax for corporations.

The agreement, which updates an earlier blueprint from 2021, defines a 15% minimum global tax rate for multinational firms in each country in which they operate, with exemptions for large U.S. companies.

President Trump threatened to pull the U.S. out of the tax framework last year, and Republican lawmakers threatened to impose a "revenge tax" on foreign companies in response to their home-country tax policies, pushing negotiators to create a two-track system that addresses U.S. concerns. The final agreement blocks foreign countries from imposing taxes on local operations of U.S. corporations.

"This side-by-side agreement recognizes the tax sovereignty of the United States over the worldwide operations of U.S. companies and the tax sovereignty of other countries over business activity within their own borders," Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday in a statement.

In a joint statement, Republican House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo said the agreement respects "U.S. tax sovereignty" and warned that they were ready to retaliate if countries "slow walk" its implementation.

Manal Corwin, the OECD tax official who led the effort, said keeping the U.S. in the agreement helped affirm an international commitment to maintaining minimum tax rates, even if the U.S. is partially exempt.

"This outcome is a far better outcome than one that would have involved threats of retaliation or countries doing their own thing," said Corwin, per The Wall Street Journal.

Critics, though, expressed disappointment that the U.S. had won exemptions from the agreement. Zorka Milin, policy director at the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition, a non-partisan group based in Washington that advocates for tax fairness and transparency, said the agreement will allow large U.S. corporations to continue to park profits in tax havens. "The Trump administration has chosen to prioritize maintaining rock-bottom taxes for big corporations to the detriment of ordinary Americans and our allies across the globe," she said.

Alex Cobham, chief executive at the Tax Justice Network, a British group that seeks to reduce international tax avoidance, said the agreement would cost some countries billions of dollars in lost revenues. "OECD countries, including EU countries and the UK, just forfeited to Donald Trump their sovereign right to tax businesses operating within their own borders," Cobham said in a statement. "This is an alarming subjugation of state sovereignty - and yet it is being spun as a landmark tax deal."

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