Presented by BP.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Playbook Deputy Editor Zach Stanton. It is Monday, December 23rd,

and here's what's driving the day. Over the weekend, the federal government nearly avoided

a shutdown after the House and Senate passed a spending patch that funds the government at its

current levels until March, when they get to do this all over again, and provides financial

aid for farmers and delivers $110 billion in disaster relief after the devastating storms

this fall in America's Southeast. But it's worth clocking what wasn't in the bill, especially

something that President-elect Trump specifically asked for,

the lifting of the federal debt limit. And despite playing footsie with the possibility of including

it, lifting the debt limit was cut from the bill after it was clear that adequate support for

the proposal, which is highly controversial, especially among small government conservatives,

was just not there. Instead, the debt limit will

need to be raised in the coming months, exactly something Trump was trying to avoid. And that's at the

heart of one of the big political dynamics that we're going to be watching today and over the holidays,

the relationship between Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson. When the House passed the government

funding patch just before a

shutdown Friday, a very relief Speaker Johnson proclaimed to reporters that President-elect Trump

was, quote, certainly happy about this outcome, unquote. But new reporting from our own Rachel

Bade suggests that coming out of this whole brouhaha, Trump is not happy with how things played out,

and that in Trump world, Speaker Johnson's standing has lost some of its luster.

And here with me to talk more about that is Political Capital Bureau Chief and Senior Washington columnist Rachel Bade.

Good morning, Rachel.

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