WASHINGTON (AP) — A $1.7 trillion spending bill financing federal agencies through September and providing more aid to a devastated Ukraine cleared the House on Friday as lawmakers raced to finish their work for the year and avoid a partial government shutdown.

The bill passed mostly along party lines, 225-201. It now goes to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

Passage of the bill represented a closing act for Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s second stint as House speaker, and for the Democratic majority she led back to power in the 2018 election. Republicans will take control of the House next year and Rep. Kevin McCarthy is campaigning to replace her.

He is appealing for support from staunch conservatives in his caucus who have largely trashed the size of the bill and many of the priorities it contains. He spoke with a raised voice for about 25 minutes, assailing the bill for spending too much and doing too little to curb illegal immigration and the flow of fentanyl across the U.S.-Mexico border.

“This is a monstrosity that is one of the most shameful acts I’ve ever seen in this body,” McCarthy said of the legislation.

The speech prompted a quick quip from Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who said “after listening to that, it’s clear he doesn’t have the votes yet,” a reference to McCarthy’s campaign to become speaker.

Pelosi said “we have a big bill here because we had big needs for the country,” then turned her focus to McCarthy:

“It was sad to hear the minority leader say that this legislation is the most shameful thing to be seen on the House floor in this Congress,” Pelosi said. “I can’t help but wonder, had he forgotten January 6th?”

Biden applauded the bill’s approval, saying it was proof that Republicans and Democrats can work together, and “I’m looking forward to continued bipartisan progress in the year ahead.”

“This bill is good for our economy, our competitiveness and our communities — and I will sign it into law as soon as it reaches my desk,” Biden said.

The Senate passed the defense-heavy measure with significant bipartisan support Thursday, but the vote was much more split in the House. Some 30 GOP lawmakers promised to block any legislative priority that comes from those Republican senators who voted for the bill and leadership urged a no vote.

In the end, nine House Republicans voted for the bill. Seven of them are leaving Congress. Only Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Steve Womack of Arkansas are returning. The lone Democrat to vote against the measure was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

The bill runs for 4,155 pages, not including amendments the Senate added. It contains about a 6% percent increase in spending for domestic initiatives, to $772.5 billion. Spending on defense programs will increase by about 10% to $858 billion.

The bill’s passage came only hours before financing for federal agencies was set to expire. Lawmakers had passed two stopgap spending measures to keep the government operating, and a third, funding the government through Dec. 30, passed Friday and was signed by Biden. That ensured services continue until Biden could sign the full-year measure, called an omnibus, into law.

The massive bill wraps together 12 appropriations bills, aid to Ukraine and disaster relief for communities recovering from hurricanes, flooding and wildfires. It also contains scores of policy changes that lawmakers worked to include in the final major bill considered by the current Congress.

Lawmakers provided roughly $45 billion for Ukraine and NATO allies, more than even Biden requested, an acknowledgment that future rounds of funding are not guaranteed with a new GOP-led House.

In a dramatic address to a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told lawmakers that the aid was not charity, but an investment in global security and democracy.

Though Ukraine aid has largely had bipartisan support, some House Republicans have been critical of the effort, arguing the money is better spent on priorities in the U.S.

“How can we send an additional $47 BILLION to Ukraine for security while terrorists, drugs, and criminals flood our southern border?” tweeted Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont.

“$100 billion to Ukraine. Let’s put that in perspective,” tweeted Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., who included past rounds of aid in his count. “That’s more than $200 million this year from each Congressional district. What could your congressman have done for your district with $200 million?”

McCarthy has warned that Republicans would not write a “blank check” for Ukraine in the next Congress. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said after Thursday’s vote he’s having trouble understanding the concerns.

“I’m just befuddled by some of these right-wing Republicans who don’t want to help Ukraine,” Schumer said. “It’s always been, the more hard right you were, the more anti-Soviet you were, but all of a sudden, they’re pro. I hope it’s not a residue of Trump.”

The Senate passed the funding package Thursday by a vote of 68-29 but it takes time for the Senate clerk’s office to review the bill and include amendments that were added that day. As a result, the bill ended up passing with a half-empty House chamber. More than 220 lawmakers sought the option to vote by proxy, and many raced to get out of town before risking canceled flights and spending Christmas in Washington.

Republicans have vowed that abolishing the practice of remote voting will be among their first acts in the majority next year.

The funding bill also contains roughly $40 billion in emergency spending in the U.S., mostly to assist communities across the country recovering from drought, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

And it has scores of policy changes largely unrelated to spending that lawmakers worked furiously behind the scenes to include, else they start from scratch next year in a divided Congress where Republicans will be returning to the majority in the House.

One of the most notable examples was a historic revision to federal election law that aims to prevent any future presidents or presidential candidates from trying to overturn an election.

The bipartisan overhaul of the Electoral Count Act is in direct response to former President Donald Trump’s efforts to persuade Republican lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence to object to the certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021.

Among the spending increases Democrats emphasized: a $500 increase in the maximum size of Pell grants for low-income college students, a $100 million increase in block grants to states for substance abuse prevention and treatment programs, a 22% increase in spending on VA medical care and $3.7 billion to provide emergency relief to farmers and ranchers hit by natural disasters, just to name a few.

The bill also provides roughly $15.3 billion for more than 7,200 projects that lawmakers sought for their home states and districts. Under revamped rules for community project funding, also referred to as earmarks, lawmakers must post their requests online and attest they have no financial interest in the projects. Still, many fiscal conservatives criticize the earmarking as leading to unnecessary spending.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal agents took a participant in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol into custody for his alleged role in the insurrection after an hourslong standoff Thursday, authorities said.

Eric Christie, 56, was arrested in the Sherman Oaks neighborhood of the San Fernando Valley, according to Laura Eimiller, an FBI spokesperson.

He initially refused to comply with federal agents’ orders but surrendered without incident after three hours of negotiations, Eimiller said. She would not comment on whether he was armed during the standoff.

Video and photographs from the insurrection, discovered by online sleuths, show Christie at the Capitol last year wrapped in a rainbow flag with a hammer attached to his belt, federal court documents state.

A video captured Christie yelling “this is our Capitol” into a bullhorn while the crowd rushes into the Capitol as police attempted to keep them back, according to court documents filed in connection with his California arrest.

A federal judge on Friday ordered Christie detained, according to Christie’s attorney, George Newhouse.

“We disagreed with the judge’s findings that he is a flight risk,” Newhouse said in an email to The Associated Press. “Mr. Christie will defend himself in Washington D.C. as he believes that his actions were within the zone of protection provided by the First Amendment.”

Christie’s arrest Thursday came the same day as the House Jan. 6 committee released its final report, concluding an 18-month investigation, asserting that Donald Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.

Christie faces federal charges of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly weapon, as well as disorderly or disruptive conduct in restricted building or grounds with a deadly weapon, according to court documents.

NBC News first reported Christie’s arrest.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — With only three months left in the year, the House Jan. 6 committee is eyeing a close to its work and a final report laying out its findings about the U.S. Capitol insurrection. But the investigation is not over.

The committee has already revealed much of its work at eight hearings over the summer, showing in detail how former President Donald Trump ignored many of his closest advisers and amplified his false claims of election fraud after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. Witnesses interviewed by the panel — some of them Trump’s closest allies — recounted in videotaped testimony how the former president declined to act when hundreds of his supporters violently attacked the Capitol as Congress certified Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021.

Lawmakers say there is more to come. The nine-member panel — seven Democrats and two Republicans — interviewed witnesses through all of August, and they are hoping to have at least one hearing by the end of the month. Members met Tuesday to discuss the panel’s next steps.

Because the Jan. 6 panel is a temporary, or “select,” committee, it expires at the end of the current Congress. If Republicans take the majority in November’s elections, as they are favored to do, they are expected to dissolve the committee in January. So the panel is planning to issue a final report by the end of December.

What’s left for the committee in 2022:

HEARINGS

The panel’s Democratic chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, said after the private members’ meeting Tuesday in the Capitol that the committee’s goal is to hold a hearing Sept. 28, but that members were still discussing whether it would happen at all.

“We’ll we’re still in the process of talking,” Thompson said. “If it happens, it will be that date. We’re not sure at this point.”

Members of the committee had promised more hearings in September as they wrapped up the series of summer hearings. Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican vice chairwoman, said the committee “has far more evidence to share with the American people and more to gather.”

“Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break,” Cheney said at a July 21 hearing that was held in prime time and watched by 17.7 million people. “We have considerably more to do.”

It’s unclear if the hearing would provide a general overview of what the panel has learned or if they would be focused on new information and evidence. The committee conducted several interviews at the end of July and into August with Trump’s Cabinet secretaries, some of whom had discussed invoking the constitutional process in the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office after the insurrection.

WITNESSES

The panel has already interviewed more than 1,000 people, but lawmakers and staff are still pursuing new threads. The committee recently spoke to several of the Cabinet secretaries, including former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in July and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao in August.

The committee also wants to get to the bottom of missing Secret Service texts from Jan. 5-6, 2021, which could shed further light on Trump’s actions during the insurrection, particularly after earlier testimony about his confrontation with security as he tried to join supporters at the Capitol. Thompson said Tuesday that the committee has recently obtained “thousands” of documents from the Secret Service.

The committee has also pursued an interview with conservative activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, who’s married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Lawmakers want to know more about her role in trying to help Trump overturn the election. She contacted lawmakers in Arizona and Wisconsin as part of that effort.

TRUMP AND PENCE

Members of the committee are still debating how aggressively to pursue testimony from Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence.

Some have have questioned whether the committee needs to call Pence, who resisted Trump’s pressure to try and block Biden’s certification on Jan. 6. Many of his closest aides have already testified, including Greg Jacob, his top lawyer at the White House who was with him during the insurrection as they hid from rioters who were threatening the vice president’s life. Jacobs characterized much of Pence’s thought process during the time when Trump was pressuring him.

The panel has been in discussions with Pence’s lawyers for months, without any discernible progress. Still, the committee could invite Pence for closed-door testimony or ask him to answer written questions.

The calculation is different for the former president. Members have debated whether they should call Trump, who is the focus of their probe but also a witness who has fought against the investigation in court, denied much of the evidence and floated the idea of presidential pardons for Jan. 6 rioters. Trump is also facing scrutiny in several other investigations, including at the Justice Department and over the classified documents he took to his private club.

HOUSE REPUBLICANS

Another bit of unfinished business is the committee’s subpoenas to five House Republicans, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

In May the panel subpoenaed McCarthy, R-Calif., and Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama. The panel has investigated McCarthy’s conversations with Trump the day of the attack and meetings the four other lawmakers had with the White House beforehand as Trump and some of his allies worked to overturn his election defeat.

The five Republicans, all of whom have repeatedly downplayed the investigation’s legitimacy, have simply ignored the request to testify. But the Jan. 6 committee seems unlikely to meet their defiance with contempt charges, as they have with other witnesses, in the weeks before the November elections. Not only would it be a politically risky move, but it is unclear what eventual recourse the panel would have against its own colleagues.

FINAL REPORT

The committee must shut down within a month after issuing a final report, per its rules. But lawmakers could issue some smaller reports before then, perhaps even before the November elections. Thompson said earlier this summer that there may be an interim report in the fall.

The release of the final report will likely come close to the end of the year so the panel can maximize its time. While much of the findings will already be known, the report is expected to thread the story together in a definitive way that lays out the committee’s conclusions for history.

LEGISLATIVE RECOMMENDATIONS

The committee is expected to weigh in on possible legislative changes to the Electoral Count Act, which governs how a presidential election is certified by Congress.

A bipartisan group of senators released proposed changes over the summer that would clarify the way states submit electors and the vice president tallies the votes. Trump and his allies tried to find loopholes in that law ahead of Jan. 6 as the former president worked to overturn his defeat to Biden and unsuccessfully pressured Pence to go along.

The Jan. 6 panel’s final report is expected to include a larger swath of legislative recommendations.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — An original script for Donald Trump’s speech the day after the Capitol insurrection included tough talk ordering the Justice Department to “ensure all lawbreakers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law” and stating the rioters “do not represent me.” But those words were crossed out with thick black lines, apparently by Trump, according to exhibits released by House investigators.

Virginia Rep. Elaine Luria, a Democratic member of the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, tweeted out a short video Monday that included testimony from White House aides discussing Trump’s speech on Jan. 7 and a screenshot of the speech, with notes and with lines to be deleted. In one of the clips, Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, confirms to the panel the document “looks like a copy of a draft of the remarks for that day” and the writing “looks like my father’s handwriting.”

When the committee asked White House aide Jared Kushner, Ivanka’s husband, why Trump crossed out specific lines, he responded, twice: “I don’t know.”

The panel released the 3:40-minute video as a follow up to its final summer hearing last week, in which the investigators showed outtakes from Trump’s videotaping of the speech. In the outtakes, Trump becomes frustrated and discusses the wording with the staff present, including Ivanka. At one point, he tells them “I don’t want to say the election is over.” Angry, he pounds his fist.

The committee is releasing the additional material in an effort to push out even more evidence after eight summer hearings laid out findings from more than 1,000 interviews in its yearlong investigation. Members of the committee say the investigation continues, and they will hold more hearings in the fall.

They are aiming to convey a consistent message about Trump and his actions before, during and after the insurrection — that he repeatedly lied about widespread fraud, even against the advice of his closest aides, and sparked the violent actions of his supporters. And when the rioters broke into the Capitol, he did nothing to stop them.

In her Monday tweet, Luria said, “It took more than 24 hours for President Trump to address the nation again after his Rose Garden video on January 6th in which he affectionately told his followers to go home in peace. There were more things he was unwilling to say.”

The Jan. 7 speech was seen by his aides as an effort to make up for his inaction the day before when he waited hours to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol – and when he did, in a video filmed in the Rose Garden, he told the rioters that they were “very special.” In the video released by Luria, Trump aide Jared Kushner says he had spoken with other aides and they were trying to put remarks together for the president. “We felt like it was important to further call for de-escalation,” Kushner testified to the committee.

It is unclear who wrote the original text in the document.

In the original line “I am outraged and sickened by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem” the word “sickened” is crossed out. So are the later lines, “I want to be very clear you do not represent me. You do not represent our movement.” But he left in, “You do not represent our country.” The line “you belong in jail” was replaced with “you will pay.”

These lines also deleted: “I am directing the Department of Justice to ensure all lawbreakers are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We must send a clear message – not with mercy but with JUSTICE. Legal consequences must be swift and firm.”

In recent testimony, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson – who also testified in person in a surprise hearing last month – said the scramble to get Trump to speak again on Jan. 7 was partly because of “large concern” within the White House that some of his Cabinet officials might try to invoke the constitutional process of the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.

The newly released video includes testimony from John McEntee, then the director of the White House presidential personnel office and one of Trump’s closest aides at the time. McEntee says that Kushner asked him to “nudge this along” to make sure that Trump delivered the speech. McEntee confirmed that Trump was reluctant to give the speech.

Pat Cipollone, the top White House lawyer, also testified that he believed Trump should have forcefully laid out the consequences for the rioters.

“In my view, he needed to express very clearly” that the rioters “should be prosecuted, and should be arrested.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Abortion, guns and religion — a major change in the law in any one of these areas would have made for a fateful Supreme Court term. In its first full term together, the court’s conservative majority ruled in all three and issued other significant decisions limiting the government’s regulatory powers.

And it has signaled no plans to slow down.

With former President Donald Trump’s appointees in their 50s, the six-justice conservative majority seems poised to keep control of the court for years to come, if not decades.

“This has been a revolutionary term in so many respects,” said Tara Leigh Grove, a law professor at the University of Texas. “The court has massively changed constitutional law in really big ways.”

Its remaining opinions issued, the court began its summer recess Thursday, and the justices will next return to the courtroom in October.

Overturning Roe v. Wade and ending a nearly half-century guarantee of abortion rights had the most immediate impact, shutting down or severely restricting abortions in roughly a dozen states within days of the decision.

In expanding gun rights and finding religious discrimination in two cases, the justices also made it harder to sustain gun control laws and lowered barriers to religion in public life.

Setting important new limits on regulatory authority, they reined in the government’s ability to fight climate change and blocked a Biden administration effort to get workers at large companies vaccinated against COVID-19.

The remarkable week at the end of June in which the guns, abortion, religion and environmental cases were decided at least partially obscured other notable events, some of them troubling.

New Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was sworn in Thursday as the first Black woman on the court. She replaced the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, who served nearly 28 years, a switch that won’t change the balance between liberals and conservatives on the court.

In early May, the court had to deal with the unprecedented leak of a draft opinion in the abortion case. Chief Justice John Roberts almost immediately ordered an investigation, about which the court has been mum ever since. Soon after, workers encircled the court with 8-foot-high fencing in response to security concerns. In June, police made a late-night arrest of an armed man near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home, and charged him with attempted murder of the justice.

Kavanaugh is one of three Trump appointees along with Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett who fortified the right side of the court. Greg Garre, who served as President George W. Bush’s top Supreme Court lawyer, said when the court began its term in October “the biggest question was not so much which direction the court was headed in, but how fast it was going. The term answers that question pretty resoundingly, which is fast.”

The speed also revealed that the chief justice no longer has the control over the court he held when he was one of five, not six, conservatives, Garre said.

Roberts, who favors a more incremental approach that might bolster perceptions of the court as a nonpolitical institution, broke most notably with the other conservatives in the abortion case, writing that it was unnecessary to overturn Roe, which he called a “serious jolt” to the legal system. On the other hand, he was part of every other ideologically divided majority.

If the past year revealed limits on the chief justice’s influence, it also showcased the sway of Justice Clarence Thomas, the longest-serving member of the court. He wrote the decision expanding gun rights and the abortion case marked the culmination of his 30-year effort on the Supreme Court to get rid of Roe, which had stood since 1973.

Abortion is just one of several areas in which Thomas is prepared to jettison court precedents. The justices interred a second of their decisions, Lemon v. Kurtzman, in ruling for a high school football coach’s right pray on the 50-yard line following games. It’s not clear, though, that other justices are as comfortable as Thomas in overturning past decisions.

The abortion and guns cases also seemed contradictory to some critics in that the court handed states authority over the most personal decisions, but limited state power in regulating guns. One distinction the majorities in those cases drew, though, is that the Constitution explicitly mentions guns, but not abortion.

Those decisions do not seem especially popular with the public, according to opinion polls. Polls show a sharp drop in the court’s approval rating and in people’s confidence in the court as an institution.

Justices on courts past have acknowledged a concern about public perception. As recently as last September, Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “My goal today is to convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks.” Barrett spoke in at a center named for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who engineered her rapid confirmation in 2020 and was sitting on the stage near the justice.

But the conservatives, minus Roberts, rejected any concern about perception in the abortion case, said Grove, the University of Texas professor.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion that “not only are we not going to focus on that, we should not focus on that,” she said. “I’m sympathetic as an academic, but I was surprised to see that coming from that many real-world justices.”

The liberal justices, though, wrote repeatedly that the court’s aggressiveness in this epic term was doing damage to the institution. Justice Sonia Sotomayor described her fellow justices as “a restless and newly constituted Court.” Justice Elena Kagan, in her abortion dissent, wrote: “The Court reverses course today for one reason and one reason only: because the composition of this Court has changed.”

In 18 decisions, at least five conservative justices joined to form a majority and all three liberals were in dissent, roughly 30% of all the cases the court heard in its term that began last October.

Among these, the court also:

— Made it harder for people to sue state and federal authorities for violations of constitutional rights.

— Raised the bar for defendants asserting their rights were violated, ruling against a Michigan man who was shackled at trial.

— Limited how some death row inmates and others sentenced to lengthy prison terms can pursue claims that their lawyers did a poor job representing them.

In emergency appeals, also called the court’s “shadow” docket because the justices often provide little or no explanation for their actions, the conservatives ordered the use of congressional districts for this year’s elections in Alabama and Louisiana even though lower federal courts have found they likely violated the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the power of Black voters.

The justices will hear arguments in the Alabama case in October, among several high-profile cases involving race or elections, or both.

Also when the justices resume hearing arguments the use of race as a factor in college admissions is on the table, just six years after the court reaffirmed its permissibility. And the court will consider a controversial Republican-led appeal that would vastly increase the power of state lawmakers over federal elections, at the expense of state courts.

These and cases on the intersection of LGBTQ and religious rights and another major environmental case involving development and water pollution also are likely to result in ideologically split decisions.

Khiara Bridges, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, law school, drew a link between the voting rights and abortion cases. In the latter, Alito wrote in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that abortion should be decided by elected officials, not judges.

“I find it to be incredibly disingenuous for Alito to suggest that all that Dobbs is doing is returning this question to the states and that people can battle in the state about whether to protect fetal life or the interest of the pregnant person,” Bridges said. “But that same court is actively involved in insuring that states can disenfranchise people.”

Bridges also said the outcomes aligned almost perfectly with the political aims of Republicans. “Whatever the Republican party wants, the Republican party is going to get out of the currently constituted court,” she said.

Defenders of the court’s decisions said the criticism misses the mark because it confuses policy with law. “Supreme Court decisions are often not about what the policy should be, but rather about who (or which level of government, or which institution) should make the policy,” Princeton University political scientist Robert George wrote on Twitter.

For now, there is no sign that either the justices or Republican and conservative interests that have brought so many of the high-profile cases to the court intend to trim their sails, Grove said.

That’s in part because there’s no realistic prospect of court reforms that would limit the cases the justices could hear, impose term limits or increase the size of the Supreme Court, said Grove, who served on President Joe Biden’s bipartisan Supreme Court commission on court reforms.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Bob Dole’s casket will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol on Thursday as congressional leaders honor the former Republican presidential candidate and World War II veteran who served in Congress for 36 years.

Dole died Sunday at the age of 98. He was a leader known for his caustic wit, which he often turned on himself but didn’t hesitate to turn on others, too. He shaped tax and foreign policy and worked vigorously to help the disabled, enshrining protections against discrimination in employment, education and public services in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The U.S. Capitol has been considered the most suitable place for the nation to pay final tribute to its most eminent citizens by having their remains lie in state. The commemoration will include a formal arrival and departure ceremony.

“Senator Dole was an extraordinary patriot, who devoted his entire life to serving our nation with dignity and integrity,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Dole, representing Kansas, served four terms in the House and more than four terms in the Senate. He won the Republican nomination in 1996, but was defeated when President Bill Clinton won a second term. He was also 1976 GOP vice presidential candidate on the losing ticket with President Gerald Ford.

“Those of us who were lucky to know Bob well ourselves admired him even more,” said Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate. “A bright light of patriotic good cheer burned all the way from Bob’s teenage combat heroics through his whole career in Washington and through the years since. We look forward to honoring his life and legacy at the Capitol.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he didn’t get to serve with Dole, but “his reputation and his achievements, and most of all his character preceded him.”

Dole received two Purple Hearts for his valor in World War II. Throughout his political career, he carried the mark of war. Charging a German position in northern Italy in 1945, Dole was hit by a shell fragment that crushed two vertebrae and paralyzed his arms and legs. The young Army platoon leader spent three years recovering in a hospital and never regained use of his right hand.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden first announced the framework he’d reached with a bipartisan group of senators for a big infrastructure bill, he said it meant more than building roads and bridges.

Agreement, he said two months ago, would send a signal “to ourselves and to the world that American democracy can deliver.”

The senators who led the legislation to passage Tuesday agreed.

“We all knew that, quite honestly, that the world was watching,” said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.

Approved on an overwhelming 69-30 vote, the nearly $1 trillion package would boost federal spending for major improvements of roads, bridges, internet access and other public works in communities from coast to coast. The bill goes next to the House.

What should have been a routine task — Biden recalled infrastructure as “probably the least difficult thing to do” when he was a senator — became an exercise in showing how damaged the legislative process has become in partisan Washington and how a president and core group of senators were determined to try to fix it.

Powering past skeptics, the five Democratic and five Republican senators who negotiated the deal were interested in Biden’s call to “build back better” after so many failed attempts at an infrastructure overhaul. But they also wanted to build back the confidence of Americans and the world that the U.S. government could tackle big problems.

“We really realized that this was going to be important for the country and I think it’s important for the institution,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said recently after a long day at the Capitol. “I’m really worried that everybody believes that we’re as dysfunctional as we appear to be, and so prove otherwise, it’s kind of important.”

Since Biden took office, small groups of senators had been talking and meeting quietly on their own and sometimes with the White House, searching for ways to reach across the aisle on a range of issue — among them the minimum wage, immigration and infrastructure.

Many were alumni of the bipartisan coalition that stitched together a year-end COVID-19 relief package and saw an opportunity for compromise in the evenly split 50-50 Senate, where typically 60 votes are needed to advance any legislation over an opposing filibuster.

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Murkowski held private lunches with senators in a committee room. Others hosted dinners at their homes.

These were the early days of the Biden administration, not long after rioters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in the deadly insurrection that shattered civic norms and left a deepening unease among lawmakers.

Biden had delivered an inaugural address with a call for unity after the turbulent 2020 election, and some of the Republican senators had joined in voting to convict Donald Trump of inciting the insurrection to upend Biden’s presidency. The former president was ultimately acquitted in his impeachment trial.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said those issues, along with the history of failed efforts to invest in infrastructure, were on her mind as she joined the effort.

“It was a major motivation for me,” Collins said, “to demonstrate to the American people that we could overcome the hyper-partisanship in Washington on a very important issue that administrations of both parties have been calling for, for the past 20 years.”

Biden had been in talks with another coalition led by West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican, but once that effort collapsed, he reached out to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Democratic senator from Arizona.

A newer lawmaker, better known for her purple pandemic wig and chatting on the GOP side of the Senate aisle, Sinema made no secret of her reluctance to embrace Biden’s big infrastructure plan, which initially topped $4 trillion.

She had already been working behind the scenes with Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and others in what another member of the group, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, described as a “backburner” coalition. They became the group of 10.

The White House sprang into action, eventually engaging in hundreds of meetings and phones calls with lawmakers of both parties in the House and Senate. The administration coordinated visits by members of the president’s “Jobs Cabinet,” and counselor Steve Ricchetti became a fixture on Capitol Hill.

“If there was a special sauce it was relationships,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in an interview.

The president was highly engaged, briefed multiple times a day about the talks and often directing the strategy. He worked the phones.

Biden “was able to establish a tone,“ Buttigieg said.

Trump, like previous presidents, had sought to assemble an infrastructure package during his time at the White House, but often sent mixed signals to negotiators and frustrated lawmakers by threatening to withdraw support from items to which he had previously committed. But senators said it was clear when Biden sent his top aides to talk with the senators, “they had the president’s proxy,” Collins said. “That made a difference.”

As final weeks of negotiations moved to Portman’s basement office at the Capitol, the group popped bottles of wine and ordered pizza for the difficult late-night sessions. Tempers flared, frustration mounted and exhaustion set in.

“We didn’t fully throw pizza,” said Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia. But there were “lots of time when people do get mad with each other.”

The whole deal almost collapsed the June day it was first announced when Biden suggested at a news conference he would not sign it into law without also having his broader $3.5 trillion package alongside it, infuriating the Republicans who staunchly oppose that bill.

Collins was waiting at the airport for a flight back home to Maine when she read the headline and immediately called Biden’s top staff for an explanation.

Tester, sitting on his tractor at home in Montana, was dumbfounded.

Biden sent a lengthy statement two days later assuring the group that he would fight for both bills and putting negotiations back on track.

After Tuesday’s overwhelming vote in the Senate, the president called Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and each of the 10 senators personally, reaching Sinema in the Senate cloakroom.

“They sent me a note. It said, ‘Biden on three for you.’ I literally said, ‘I don’t know what that means,’” Sinema told The Associated Press.

“He said congratulations and we spent some time talking about how important this victory is, not just for the work we’re doing on infrastructure but also to demonstrate that bipartisanship is still alive and our Congress can function,” she said.

“And then we talked about continuing to work together to get this bill across the finish line and onto his desk.”

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Under “Golden State Stimulus II,” qualifying individuals with incomes between $30,000 to $75,000 will receive a $600 stimulus check and qualifying families with kids, including undocumented families, will get an additional $500.

California Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer previously told the Sacramento Bee that payments will begin to be issued in early September.

First proposed in May, Newsom’s “Golden State Stimulus II” is an extension of the program that sent payments out to individuals earning $30,000 and under in April. If you already received a check, you can’t receive a second one.

Most Californians who qualify for the stimulus don’t need to do anything to receive the payment.

“The plan creates the biggest state tax rebate in American history, expanding direct payments to middle class families for a total of $12 billion in stimulus payments that will go directly to middle class Californians and families,” according to a statement from the governor’s office.

State officials estimated that roughly two out of every three Californians will receive stimulus payments. The state budget was signed 11 days after the July 1 deadline, delaying the arrival of the checks by a couple of weeks.

Amy Graff | Contributed

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The accord marks a major step in the party’s push to meet Biden’s goal of bolstering an economy that was ravaged by the pandemic and setting it on course for long-term growth — and includes a Medicare expansion of vision, hearing and dental benefits for older Americans, a goal of progressives.

But Democrats behind the agreement face possible objections from their rival moderate and progressive factions, and will have to work hard to convert their plans into legislation they can push through the closely divided Congress over what could be unanimous Republican opposition.

“We are very proud of this plan,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told reporters. “We know we have a long road to go. We’re going to get this done for the sake of making average Americans’ lives a whole lot better.”

Biden was set to attend a closed-door lunch at the Capitol on Wednesday with all Senate Democrats “to lead us on to getting this wonderful plan” enacted, Schumer said.

All told, the ambitious proposal reflects Biden’s vision for making the most substantive potential investments in the nation in years, some say on par with the New Deal of the 1930s. Together with a slimmer, $1 trillion bipartisan effort of traditional road, highway and public works also being negotiated, they represent close to the president’s initial $4 trillion-plus effort that could reach almost every corner of the country.

The Democrats’ goal is to push a budget resolution reflecting Tuesday’s agreement through the House and Senate before lawmakers leave for their August recess. The resolution sets only broad spending and revenue parameters, leaving the actual funding and specific decisions about which programs are affected — and by exactly how much — for later legislation.

Nonetheless, approving a budget will be a major boon for the Democrats’ effort to enact their subsequent funding bill. That’s because the budget contains language that would let Democrats move the follow-up spending measure through the 50-50 Senate with just a simple majority, not the 60 votes Republicans could demand by using a bill-killing filibuster.

The later spending legislation will likely not start moving through Congress until the fall.

Separately Tuesday, a bipartisan group of senators continued working on a third measure that would spend around $1 trillion on roads, water systems and other infrastructure projects, another Biden priority. Biden and 10 senators — five from each party — had agreed to an outline of that compromise measure last month, and bargainers have worked ever since to flesh it out.

In discussing the budget agreement, Schumer and other lawmakers did not respond when asked if they had the support of all 50 Democratic senators, which they will need to succeed. They also have virtually no margin for error in the House, where they will be able to lose no more than three Democratic votes and still prevail.

Moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., might still demand further changes to reduce the plan’s price tag and impact on already huge federal deficits. Progressives in both chambers might insist on beefing it up or other changes.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the Budget Committee chairman, and other progressives pushed initially for a $6 trillion budget top line while party moderates insisted on a far lower price tag. Biden had proposed around $4.5 trillion.

The Democrats’ announcement Tuesday left many questions about their budget accord unanswered. These included how much it would raise through tax increases on the wealthy and corporations and other revenue to pay for its costs; how much would be spent on specific programs; and how Biden’s proposals would be curtailed or eliminated to fit into the legislation. Schumer said the proposal would call for financing Biden’s budget priorities “in a robust way.” He also said it would include a priority of Sanders and other progressives: an expansion of Medicare, the federal health insurance program for older people, to cover dental, vision and hearing services.

Sanders said the agreement would end an era in which, he said, rich people and big companies weren’t bearing enough of the burden of financing government programs.

“Those days are gone,” he said. “The wealthy and large corporations are going to start paying their fair share of taxes, so that we can protect the working families of this country.”

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a leading moderate who helped shape the budget package, said the measure would be fully paid for with offsetting revenue but provided no detail. Biden has proposed financing the measure with higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and beefing up the IRS’s budget so it can collect more revenue from scofflaws.

The budget will include language calling for no tax increases on people making less than $400,000 a year, a Biden demand, or on small businesses. The provision was described by a Democratic aide who requested anonymity to discuss the negotiations.

On infrastructure, senators from both parties met Tuesday evening and their bipartisan deal appeared back on track, after days of disputes. Lawmakers said they were aiming for a new Thursday deadline to wrap up the details despite opposition from business leaders, outside activists and some GOP senators over how to pay for it.

The bipartisan infrastructure effort was thrown into doubt earlier Tuesday when Republicans said it was unlikely it would be ready for a vote next week, as hoped.

But senators exiting the meeting suggested they hadn’t so much resolved the questions over how to pay for the package but moved past them — apparently accepting that some of the proposed revenue streams may not pass muster in formal assessments by the Congressional Budget Office, the lawmakers’ nonpartisan fiscal scorekeeper.

Manchin said he hoped that the CBO’s score, as it is called, would show that “everything’s paid for. If not, we’ll have to make some adjustments.”

Even if the bipartisan group can meet its new deadline for agreement, it’s still a long shot the bill would be ready for a vote next week.

Senators have struggled to agree to revenue streams to fund the $1 trillion plan, which includes about $579 billion in new spending beyond regular expenditures already funded by gas taxes and other sources. At least 10 Republican senators would be needed to back the infrastructure bill, joining with all 50 Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold because it would still be vulnerable to a filibuster.

ALAN FRAM and LISA MASCARO | AP News

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Hundreds of child care providers in California marched and chanted Thursday outside the state Capitol demanding higher wages, a topic that appears to be the final sticking point in budget negotiations between lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“We are essential workers and it’s about time that we’re treated like it,” Miren Algorri, a child care provider in San Diego, declared to the crowd. She said Newsom is treating such workers like they are “disposable.”

Millions of California children are eligible for state-subsidized child care programs, but the workers who take care of them them say they are often paid less than minimum wage after expenses.

The state sets provider rates through the budget, and the workers haven’t seen an increase in their pay in four years. This year, providers are also negotiating their first contract after Newsom signed legislation in 2019 allowing them to unionize.

How much to raise the rates is the last unresolved budget issue between Newsom and lawmakers, Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon said. They have only a few days left to reach an agreement, because the budget must be signed by Newsom by June 30. Rendon, a Democrat who worked in the child care industry before entering politics, said raising provider rates is the chamber’s “No. 1 priority.”

Newsom has proposed creating 100,000 new subsidized child care slots, while lawmakers want to create 200,000 new slots. They’ve proposed $1.1 billion more in spending than Newsom for “child care rate reform.” Most child care workers are women, and many are women of color.

Child Care Providers United, the new union, organized the rally at the Capitol grounds, which featured hundreds of workers in yellow shirts that said “raise the rates” as they chanted “no contract, no peace.” They were also joined by state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins and two national union presidents — Lee Saunders of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and Mary Kay Henry of the Service Employees International Union.

It’s not unusual for unions to publicly rally for higher wages. But this year’s dispute comes as Newsom tries to keep Democrats united behind him in the face of an expected recall election. Since his first months in office, Newsom has said he’s committed to advancing equity for children and their caregivers. But where his administration comes down on pay could prompt some providers to rethink their political support.

“I’ve always supported him, however now I’m reconsidering,” said Justine Flores, a provider from Los Angeles and member of the bargaining committee.

Amanda Kidd, a union member who cares for her mother with disabilities, felt similarly.

“If he doesn’t sit here and actually bargain with us, actually sit there and raise our rates and actually treat us like the essential workers he said we are, then what’s the point in supporting him?” she said.

Ella Taylor of Sacramento, a child care provider for 20 years, now alongside her daughter, says she will support Newsom but hopes he’ll step up and raise wages.

Pay rates for child care providers vary based on a number of factors. Union leaders say Newsom’s administration is offering them lower raises than what they’re seeking and has been difficult to get to the bargaining table.

The governor’s office directed questions to the California Department of Human Resources.

“The Administration is working hard on a collective bargaining agreement that offers fair reimbursement rates to child care providers,” Amy Palmer, acting spokesperson for the department, said in a statement.

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