The Daily Signal - The Shutdown is OVER, Arctic Frost Lawsuit Provision in CR, US Navy Targets Drones | Nov. 13, 2025

Starting point is 00:00:00 Get no frills delivered. Shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with PC Express Pass. Get your first year for 250 a month. Learn more at PCExpress.ca. The government shutdown is finally over with the House of Representatives passing the almost clean continuing resolution in bipartisan fashion. The Arctic Frost lawsuit provision in the continuing resolution leads to quite a bit of controversy, and the United States Secretary of the Navy prioritizes offense and defense against modern drone warfare. I'm Tony Kennett, host of the Daily Signals Tony Kennett cast syndicated nationally at 7 p.m. Eastern.

Starting point is 00:00:43 It is Thursday, November 13, 2025. This is the Daily Signals, top news in 10. After 43 days of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, the House of Representatives shutdown in U.S. history, representatives finally passed the bill sent over by the Senate, which included some continuing resolution provisions, as well as a couple of extra details. First of all, the House passed the particular continuing resolution with a vote of 222 in the affirmative to 209 against. That means a handful of Democrats broke away from party leadership under Hakeem Jeffries to get the measure over the finish line. Now, in this particular measure, there were three minibus packages of full year funding for the USDA, that being the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, as well as both the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction projects alongside the operations of Congress itself.

Starting point is 00:01:50 This means specifically that SNAP benefits are funded in full for the next calendar year. Everything else is funded until January 30th where we might end up back here yet again. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries used his magic minute to decry the bill and say that this would likely cost Republicans the midterm elections next year. In only two ways, Mr. Speaker, that this fight will end. Either Republicans finally decide to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits this year or the American people will throw Republicans

Starting point is 00:02:29 out of their jobs next year and end the speakership of Donald J. Trump once and for all. That's how this fight ends. Breaking from Jeffrey's leadership, six Democrats ended up siding with Republicans

Starting point is 00:02:44 to end the shutdown. The first of these Representative Jared Golden of Maine, who has often broken with Democrat leadership to vote with Republicans on some pieces of legislation. he has announced he is not running for re-election in 2026, partly because of the radical violence that has taken over many portions of the young Democrat Party. He was joined by representatives Marie Glucentcamp Perez of Washington, Adam Gray of California,

Starting point is 00:03:13 Henry Quayar of Texas, Tom Sozi of New York, and Don Davis of North Carolina. Two Republicans voted against the continuing resolution, Representatives Thomas Massey of Kentucky and Greg Stubb of Florida, that being up near Sarasota, I believe Florida's 17th congressional. On this vote, the yeas are 222, the nays are 209. The bill is passed. The motion is adopted. However, this wasn't a totally clean continuing resolution.

Starting point is 00:03:46 In addition to the provision that Democrats were able to secure that required the Trump administration to attempt to rehire or unlay off, those who had been reduced in force by the executive branch during the shutdown, meaning federal workers laid off, now being brought back on the job. Another provision in this continuing resolution allowed eight Republican senators to sue the federal government at $500,000 per infraction over the FBI's Arctic Frost investigation, in which the FBI illegally monitored U.S. senators, their private communications, tracked their locations, tapped their cell phones, for example. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to the floor of the House to decry this and claim that this was some kind of million-dollar donation to eight

Starting point is 00:04:37 Republican senators. It is great. It is great that Democrats have a line of people who are willing to fight for working-class Americans from coast to coast in this country, because God forbid that we have a member of the Republican caucus who stands up and actually wants to extend the Affordable Care Act so that people with cancer, insulin, and issues across all sorts of health care issues across this country have their health insurance protected and extended throughout 2026. It is unconscionable that what we are debating right now is legislation that will give eight members of the United States Senate over a million dollars apiece. Representative Greg Stubb told Fox News that this was the reason he ended up voting no on the continuing resolution

Starting point is 00:05:24 itself. Obviously, you put out a statement. Are you, is this going to change your vote tonight? I don't think I can vote to give half a million dollars to Lindsay Graham. So unless they strip it out and send it back, I don't think I can support it. And so you don't trust the standalone provision the speaker's talking about, do you? No, the Senate doesn't have, I mean, we can pass it in the House, but the Senate doesn't have to take it up. They send us that bill. Do you think the Senate's going to take that up unless you strip that provision off and send it back they have no obligation to take that up so this really ticked you off when you saw that yeah i don't think that's appropriate at all speaker of the house mike johnson stated that he was quote very angry and quote at not being told

Starting point is 00:06:00 about this particular provision inserted into the continuing resolution until it was discovered earlier yesterday afternoon when the bill was already filed and procedural votes bringing the house back into session would lead to this continuing resolution being voted on in final fashion. Earlier that you would repeal that FBI provision that's in the bill right now. Do you have assurances from Leader Thune that he will bring it up in the Senate? Well, I did call Leader Thune this morning. I want to say that he is a he's a principled leader. I've enjoyed working with him. We've got a great working relationship and a good friendship. He's a trustworthy, honest broker and that's why I was so surprised when we found out about that provision it was put in our

Starting point is 00:06:44 clean CR at the last moment I'm just to be honest I'm very transparent with you all I was very angry about it I was and a lot of my members called me and said did you know about it I did we had no idea that was dropped in at the last minute and I did not appreciate that nor did most the house members many of them are very angry about that so we will be bringing that up we'll probably pass it on suspension early next week and we'll send it over to the Senate I had a conversation with Leader Thune early this morning about it. I think he regretted the way it was done, and we had an honest conversation about that. I didn't ask him for any commitment at that time because I had a lot on my plate today,

Starting point is 00:07:18 and I've been busy ever since that conversation we had early this morning. But I'm going to speak as truthfully to him as I am to all of you and tell you that I think that was way out of line. I don't think that was a smart thing to do. I don't think it was the right thing to do, and the House is going to reverse it. We're going to repeal that, and I'm going to expect our colleagues in the Senate to do the same thing. Lastly, I had the opportunity yesterday to head to Fort Wayne, Indiana, for a defense summit organized by Senator Jim Banks of Indiana, in which Secretary of War Pete Hegeseth and the Secretary of the United States Navy,

Starting point is 00:07:48 John Phelan, took the opportunity to tell a lot of the assembled about the United States policies regarding military production and infrastructure, as well as the policies of the United States both at home and abroad. You can see the fulsome coverage of that in last night's episode of the Tony Kinnett cast. Particularly, though, I was able to, to ask the Secretary of the Navy about what the United States was doing in order to ensure that we were prioritizing drone countermeasures in the era of modern suicide drones and drone warfare advancements that we've seen in the Russo-Ukrainian War, as well as in China and in the Middle

Starting point is 00:08:25 East. Here was my question and the Secretary's response. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Tony Kennett, Daily Signal, and who's your native? Just a quick question on China's rapid advancement in drone measures. The Navy has its work cut out for it, as is the Air Force in developing rapid countermeasures for those. Also with the reports that China is deploying a lot of their potential suicide drone systems on those little coral reef points they call islands to expand their coastline. Does the administration, I know you earlier mentioned, the undersecretarian respect to technological advancement, how much is the Navy focusing on deploying drone countermeasures on new ship

Starting point is 00:09:05 builds and in our installations? Yeah, so, you know, we, across the Navy, we had over 70 programs doing research of which probably close to half were doing the same thing. And that is why we centralized the process. That's why I took one of our outstanding admirals, Admiral Seco Ocano, who's a one-star and brought her up to a three-star to basically stand up this new group, to basically consolidate, organized our unmanned efforts and make sure we were testing in real time and adapting in real time. And we are trying out multiple programs right now, particularly in the Indo-Pacific,

Starting point is 00:09:48 both defense, ISR, offense, across the board. Making sure this integrates in with the systems will be one of the key facts that we need to get our arms around because you can have all these systems, but if they can't communicate with one another, you're going to have a problem. So these are things that we are focusing on, and we thought by centralizing it, it would allow us to move quicker and faster. And I think one of the things that, you know, I'll be talking to the senator about and of the guys on the hill is we cannot programmatically fund our unmanned efforts. If we do, then we will be building obsolete things. The speed of iteration in unmanned is incredible, and it is happening very fast.

Starting point is 00:10:33 So just to give you an example, in the Ukraine, if I had bought what they were using six months ago, it is five generations behind. So we can't programmatically fund this and say, this is it, this is what we're going to build. We have to build adaptability and iteration inside to that procurement cycle, and that's something that they did

Starting point is 00:10:55 in the one big beautiful bill, which we greatly appreciate, which allows us to get that sort of iteration, and hopefully we'll continue to do that. But it is a key point. I think unmanned has changed the nature of warfare, but also, you know, look, you have to realize in the Indo-Pacific,

Starting point is 00:11:14 you've got the tyranny of distance. You know, drones traveling very far with ordinance, you know, that's a big challenge. And so understand that how they're used and how you defend against them is going to be a very big deal, but that integration will be the key to victory in my mind. Before you go, head down to the description and make sure you're subscribed to the Tony Kinnettcast and join us tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern for a roundup of the day's news and nonsense.

Starting point is 00:11:42 I'm Tony Kinnett, and this has been The Daily Signals, top news in 10. Take care. Thank you.

The Daily Signal - The Shutdown is OVER, Arctic Frost Lawsuit Provision in CR, US Navy Targets Drones | Nov. 13, 2025

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