Congress Avoids a Government Shutdown by Giving Donald Trump Almost Nothing He Wanted

Welcome to WHAT NOW, a morning round-up of the news/fresh horrors that await you today.

Congress reached a budget deal late Sunday to fund the government through the end of September, effectively kicking the can down the road on talk of a full-scale shutdown.

Although the bipartisan spending bill handed victories to both parties, Politico points out that President Donald Trump got very little of what he wants out of the deal. The administration had demanded funding to start construction on Trump’s southern border wall and a rider to block funding to sanctuary cities, neither of which were included in the legislation. The president also only got about half the trumped-up defense spending he wanted, to the tune of a $25 billion increase to current levels, but he was handed $1.5 billion to update border security technology.

The bill also contained provisions to permanently extend coal miners’ health benefits—a major victory for Appalachian senators like Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—but the Democrats lost out on a permanent commitment to funding the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance subsidies for low-income Americans.

The deal is likely to pass through Congress this week, and with one major crisis averted, the Republicans’ beleaguered legislation to replace the Affordable Care Act will again take center stage. Last we heard, the right-wing Freedom Caucus had finally jumped on board with a version of the plan that did not contain protections for pre-existing conditions.

WHAT ELSE?

• Texas police shot and killed Jordan Edwards, a black, 15-year-old freshman, as he was leaving a house party in a Dallas on Saturday night.
• Sebastian Gorka, the Trump national security aide who’s probably the closest we’ve got to a bonafide Nazi in the White House, is expected to leave his post.
• A gunman opened fire on a pool party Sunday night at an apartment building in San Diego, leaving one dead and six injured. The suspect was identified as Peter Selis, 49, who is white, and his victims, some of whom remain in critical condition, were four black women, two black men, and a Hispanic man, according to CNN.
• Trump had a “very friendly conversation” with President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines on Saturday. Duterte, whose relationship with former President Obama included publicly calling him the “son of a whore,” has bragged about personally carrying out extrajudicial killings of suspected drug offenders.

WHAT FRESH HELL