Senate Democrats are poised for the 10th time Thursday to reject a stopgap spending bill that would reopen the government, insisting they won’t back away from demands that Congress take up health care benefits.
The repetition of votes on the funding bill has become a daily drumbeat in Congress, underscoring how intractable the situation has become as it has been at times the only item on the agenda for the Senate floor. House Republicans have left Washington altogether. The standoff has lasted over two weeks, leaving hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed, even more without a guaranteed payday and Congress essentially paralyzed.
Democrats say they won’t budge until they get a guarantee on extending subsidies for health plans offered under Affordable Care Act marketplaces. They warned that millions of Americans who buy their own health insurance — such as small business owners, farmers and contractors — will see large increases when premium prices go out in the coming weeks. Looking ahead to a Nov. 1 deadline in most states, they think voters will demand that Republicans enter into serious negotiations.
Israel’s National Institute of Forensic Medicine on Thursday identified the remains of two more hostages returned from Gaza, as officials and families warned Hamas to hand over the bodies of those still held.
Amid a fragile truce that paused the two-year war, Palestinians were awaiting a long-promised surge of aid into Gaza, and plans for an international force to deploy there were beginning to take shape.
Since Monday’s exchange, Hamas has returned 10 bodies, nine of which Israel’s military has identified as hostages. Israel said there were 28 total in Gaza before the exchange.
In exchange for the release of the hostages, Israel freed around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees Monday.
An Israeli airstrike targeting the top leaders of Yemen’s Houthi rebels in August killed the chief of staff of its military, officials said Thursday, further escalating tensions between the group and Israel even as a ceasefire holds in the Gaza Strip.
The Houthis have acknowledged the killing of Maj. Gen. Muhammad Abdul Karim al-Ghamari, who had been sanctioned by the United Nations over his role in the country’s decadelong war.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz claimed the killing, saying that al-Ghamari died of wounds he suffered in the attack and had joined “his fellow members of the axis of evil in the depths of hell.”
