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Johnson delays budget vote as GOP defectors balk

WASHINGTON (NYT) — Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday was forced to delay a vote on the Republican budget blueprint to unlock President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda, after conservatives balked at a plan that they said would add too much to the nation’s debt.

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In a dramatic scene on Capitol Hill, Johnson huddled with the holdouts in a room off the House floor for over an hour before the vote was scheduled to begin.

It has been a tried-and-true tactic for Johnson, who has previously succeeded at wearing down conservative opposition on the House floor by essentially daring would-be defectors to derail planned votes on Trump’s priorities.

But Wednesday night was a rare instance in which the hard-right Republicans refused to blink, and it dealt the speaker a bruising setback.

Johnson emerged from the closed-door meeting Wednesday night and told reporters the House would vote on the measure “probably tomorrow, one way or the other.”

There were still “a small subset of members who weren’t totally satisfied” with the bill, he said. Those lawmakers said they were seeking more assurances that the Senate would ultimately come up with deeper spending cuts.

Trump had lobbied hard for the measure, and on Wednesday, he declared on social media that “it is more important now, than ever, that we pass THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL.”

But as of Wednesday night, his entreaties had failed to sway a small but persistent band of ultraconservative Republicans who view the issue of reining in the nation’s debt and federal spending as their most important priority.

US Senate confirms Trump’s Wall Street regulator

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed Paul Atkins as President Donald Trump’s choice to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, installing the business-friendly lawyer atop an agency in the throes of major change.

In a largely party line vote, the Senate voted 52-44 to confirm Atkins, who previously served as an SEC member from 2002 to 2008. Trump’s Republican Party holds 53 out of 100 seats in the U.S. Senate.

Atkins, a Washington lawyer with extensive experience and past ties to the crypto industry, arrives at an SEC in tumult.

Its ranks are severely depleted amid historic market volatility and staff members fear further cuts while Trump ally Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency scrutinizes the agency and interim leadership pursues restructuring under a White House mandate.

Since taking office on January 20, the Trump administration has downsized several federal agencies to cut spending, which has cost more than 200,000 workers their jobs.

In his confirmation testimony last month, Atkins said he would “definitely” work with DOGE in cost-cutting efforts at the agency.

Atkins’ prior voting record suggests he may curtail SEC enforcement and Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, has sharply criticized what she called Atkins’ poor policy judgments ahead of the 2008 financial crisis.

Atkins told the Banking Committee he planned to pursue “appropriately tailored” regulations under a narrower view of the agency’s legal authority.

In financial disclosures, Atkins revealed assets held jointly with his wife of at least $328 million and potentially exceeding $589 million.

Man sentenced for cache of rare eggs, taxidermy birds

NEW YORK (NYT) — The roseate spoonbill is not native to New York. But on Wednesday, the tall, pink-winged creature appeared in Brooklyn federal court.

The Uruguayan bird, dead and stuffed, perched in front of prosecutors as its former owner, John Waldrop, was sentenced to three years of probation for illegally importing it along with hundreds of other items of taxidermy and thousands of eggs.

Waldrop, a Georgia orthopedic surgeon, was also ordered by Judge Rachel P. Kovner to pay a $900,000 fine for importing the mounted birds, many of which were rare.

For more than four years, Waldrop, with the help of his property’s caretaker, illegally imported hundreds of rare birds and eggs to adorn the interior of his lake house in Cataula, Georgia. His makeshift museum featured roughly as many stuffed birds as there are people in Cataula, a town of around 1,400 outside Columbus.

Last August, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy and violating the Endangered Species Act.

“My love for birds is extraordinary,” Waldrop, 76, told Kovner on Wednesday, as he held back tears. “Even this event won’t diminish my love for them and the wild.”

Along with the roseate spoonbill, prosecutors displayed mounts of a Eurasian eagle-owl and an eastern imperial eagle that had been seized from Waldrop’s residence. The birds faced Kovner as she read out Waldrop’s sentence.

In arguing for a lighter sentence, Paul Fishman, a lawyer for Waldrop, described his client as a lifelong lover of avian life who had suffered from “quite a number of maladies.” He said Waldrop maintained a habitat for eagles on his property next to where he kept his taxidermy.

In a letter to the judge in support of Waldrop, the sheriff of Harris County, Georgia, said he would take local elementary schoolers to the lake house to see “Dr. Waldrop’s zoo.”