Chuck Schumer will vote for GOP funding bill, reducing shutdown odds

USA Today

14-03-2025

Chuck Schumer will vote for GOP funding bill, reducing shutdown odds | The Excerpt
On Friday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., says he will vote to advance the Republican funding extension ahead of a government shutdown deadline Friday. USA TODAY White House Correspondent Joey Garrison discusses a judge's order to reinstate tens of thousands of fired probationary workers. A Reuters/Ipsos poll finds most Americans believe President Donald Trump is being too 'erratic' on the economy. The Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to let birthright citizenship changes proceed. USA TODAY National Correspondent Elizabeth Weise talks about the arrival of spring bird migration season.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Friday, March 14th, 2025. This is The Excerpt.
Today, promising signs on avoiding a government shutdown, but the clock is ticking. Plus, a judge orders tens of thousands of fired workers reinstated and it's peak spring migration season for birds.
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Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said he will vote to advance the Republican funding extension to potentially avoid a government shutdown at the end of the day today. Schumer's announcement significantly increases the chances that enough Democratic senators will side with Republicans to avoid a shutdown, despite widespread frustration with the GOP plan among the conference. Still, speaking to reporters, Schumer would not say whether there were enough Democrats who planned to join him to stop a shutdown. Schumer's position will also likely bring blowback from the left wing of the party, which has been pushing lawmakers to show they are willing to fight President Donald Trump's efforts to remake the federal bureaucracy. You can stay up on all the latest with lawmakers' push to avoid a shutdown on USAToday.com.
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The Trump administration has been ordered to reinstate tens of thousands of fired probationary workers. I caught up with USA TODAY White House correspondent Joey Garrison for a closer look at the US District judge's ruling. Hello, Joey.
Joey Garrison:
Hey there. Thanks for having me on.
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for hopping on, Joey. So another busy news day here. What did a California judge rule yesterday and what does this now mean for recently fired probationary workers? Who does this really impact?
Joey Garrison:
A federal district judge in San Francisco ruled that all the tens of thousands of probationary workers at six specific departments must be reinstated to their positions. This comes after we've had a couple of different waves of terminations pushed by the Trump administration. This was the initial wave that affected what are known as probationary workers. These are people who have been hired to the federal government or promoted to a new position within the past year. They lack a lot of the civil service protections that career government employees have, and so they're more easily fired and that's why they were targeted.
The judge ruled that the Office of Personnel Management that executed these firings did not have the authority to order departments to make the terminations and so therefore acted unlawfully. And so as a result of that, the administration has been ordered to reinstate these workers, but it's unclear whether the Trump administration in fact, will do that. You've heard it from a number of Trump officials since Trump was inaugurated for his second term, that they feel that it's the executive branch, the president who has ultimate authority and that district judges don't actually have this power. Of course, that would be an extraordinary thing, but I think moving forward, we're going to have to figure out how this plays out from here. Whether these workers actually are told, "Hey, your terminations have been rescinded here."
Taylor Wilson:
Well, Joey, just in the immediate aftermath of this judge's decision, what did we hear from the White House? Really how are they responding here?
Joey Garrison:
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary accused the judge of, "Attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the executive branch," and vowed that the Trump administration will immediately fight back against this ruling. And so that's obviously signaling, though they didn't say it, an appeal, but by the fact that they're arguing that the judge is acting unlawfully here, I'm still curious whether they actually are going to comply with the order.
Normally, historically, after such an order like this, you would get some sort of statement that says, "We're going to comply with the order as the judge has said," but we didn't hear that. And so I think it leaves an open-ended question there.
The six departments that are affected in this, in which reinstatements have been ordered are the Departments of Defense, Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Interior, and Treasury. Now, this decision by the judge was in response to a case lawsuit filed by government employee unions, nonprofits that had cited a number of other additional federal departments as well. But this ruling only applies to these six.
Taylor Wilson:
And how did this ruling land with union officials, Joey?
Joey Garrison:
Yeah, obviously they celebrated the ruling, but they made clear that they want to see all the recently fired federal workers be reinstated. Now, just so happened that this ruling came on Thursday, which federal departments faced a deadline to provide so-called plans for large scale reductions in force. And this goes beyond just the probationary workers who were targeted a few weeks ago with terminations for broader, deeper cuts across those departments. We've seen some of those leaked already or released. For example, the Department of Education Planning to cut 1300 Department of Ed workers. VA administration has talked about cutting 76,000 of its employees. This ruling does not apply to that round of RIF, reductions in force. And so I do wonder whether this is going to provide possible template for future litigation quickly from the same groups who brought this lawsuit.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, great explainer. Joey Garrison is a White House correspondent with USA TODAY. Thank you, Joey.
Joey Garrison:
Hey, thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
The majority of Americans believe President Donald Trump is being too erratic in his moves to shake up the economy. That's according to a new Reuters Ipsos poll. 57% of respondents, including one in three Republicans, said the president's policies have been unsteady as his efforts to tax imports have set off a global trade war. Trump's tariffs and refusal to rule out a recession have rattled the stock market. The S&P 500, for instance, has lost more than $3 trillion in value since its all-time peak last month.
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President Trump in an emergency request yesterday asked the Supreme Court to allow restrictions to birthright citizenship to take effect for some, as challenges to his executive order are litigated. Multiple judges in separate cases across the country have blocked the order from going into effect, and appeals courts have declined to lift the holds. The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to limit the scope of the pauses to specific challengers and to allow the administration to develop guidance on how it would implement Trump's directive if it's upheld.
Trump wants to end automatic citizenship for children born in the US if neither of their parents is lawfully in the country. And he says he believes the Supreme Court justices will agree that he can take the step as part of his effort to bolster immigration enforcement. Democratic state attorneys general, immigration rights advocates, and others challenging the order argue the Supreme Court made it clear all the way back in 1898 that the 14th Amendment citizenship clause guarantees children born in the US the right to automatic citizenship, regardless of their parents' immigration status.
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It is peak spring bird migration season. I spoke with USA TODAY national correspondent Elizabeth Weise about what to look out for. Hello, Beth.
Elizabeth Weise:
Hey, how's it going?
Taylor Wilson:
Good. Good. Thanks for hopping on on this fun story. So just tell us at the start here, Beth, about this peak migration season and really what we're seeing happen right now.
Elizabeth Weise:
And this was kind of fascinating to me because I frankly did not know this. I am not a bird watcher really. I like birds, but I listen to them using this app Merlin, but I can never actually see them. You know that birds migrate, you see geese and you're like, "Oh, they're going south for the winter." But it turns out in the spring in the US there can be as many as 500 million birds flying over us at night when we can't see them because they're all on their way to the spring. They're going north to where they're going to nest and eat, and then in the winter they're going south where there's more food.
Taylor Wilson:
I'm just curious. There are a few animals that do this, but birds in particular just fascinate me when it comes to migration. Why do they do this?
Elizabeth Weise:
Not all of them do, but a lot of them do. And basically they are following the food source. So in the spring, things warm up, plants start greening up. When the plants green up, the insects come out. And so a lot of times these birds are eating the insects. And so they call it the pulse of life that moves northward. And the birds are following that because that's their food source. They end up where is the best match for the kinds of food or insects or whatever they like to eat, and that's where they will nest and have their chicks and bring in the next generation. And then when the fall starts to hit and those food sources go away, they come south again to where there is food.
Taylor Wilson:
So Beth, is that the big indicator for them when the bugs come out? I'm just curious like how they know when, where and how to migrate.
Elizabeth Weise:
If you could figure that one out, you could win the Nobel Prize. We don't really know. We know that there's a lot of things involved because if you think about it, the birds that migrate are often the ones that were born this year. They've never done it before. So how do they know? They think it's the length of day, it's the location of the sun, at night, the location of the stars. There are probably some that are sensing the earth's magnetic field. So it's kind of one of those mysteries. We're starting to understand it a little bit, but there there's a lot we don't get.
Taylor Wilson:
So what are some different types of migrations to look out for?
Elizabeth Weise:
There's these ones called altitudinal migrants. They live in mountains and in the spring they move uphill because it's warmer and there are bugs there. And then in the winter they move downhill because they're going to where it's not as cold and there's still some food. And those are things like mountain chickadees and rosy finches. And then you get these short-term migrants and they may just go a couple of hundred miles because they're just looking for a better food source. Medium-distance migrants, they might breed in the Northeast, but they go down to the southeast.
And then you get these crazy, and these are the ones that National Geographic does amazing specials on. These are these long-distance migrants who fly thousands of miles. They can go from Alaska all the way down to the Amazon in South America. And those are just the amazing ones. Those are Blackpoll warblers and the Arctic tern, Hudsonian godwits. They're amazing. And some of them fly the whole way. They don't even stop to eat.
Taylor Wilson:
Beth, is there anything unique about migration in this moment in time? Any impacts from climate change? The human aspect here? What can you tell us about migration this year?
Elizabeth Weise:
Well, yeah, there's always a climate change impact, sadly. The problem is that these birds evolved to migrate when the seasons were changing. They evolved to get to certain places when spring had arrived, and that's when all the insects were there because that's when everything was budding or blooming. The problem is things are getting warmer in the spring and things are not cooling down as much in the winter. And so sometimes the birds may migrate as they have always migrated and they arrive someplace. And the food supply that had always been there for them isn't there, and then not as many birds survive. There was a report out showing that US bird populations are, in fact, still falling. And part of that is that they are hardwired to go to these places and look for these foods. And those foods are not always there in the amounts that they are used to, and some of them starve to death.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Elizabeth Weise is a national correspondent with USA TODAY. Beth, I always love talking about the animal kingdom with you. Thanks for hopping on.
Elizabeth Weise:
Happy to be here.
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Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We're produced by Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan, and our executive producer is Laura Bailey. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.