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Good morning. I'm Anna Palmer and welcome to the Daily Punch, brought you by Punchable News.

It's Wednesday, September 20th, 2023.

Let's get into the mix.

Here are your Washington headlines of the day. Number one, Speaker Kevin McCarthy's options to avoid a government shutdown.

Number two, Senator Tommy Tuberville faces the heat from his own party on his military holds.

And number three, the latest from the vault on cannabis banking.

All right. Good morning, everyone. Let's get right to it. This has been a very busy 48 hours on Capitol Hill.

First things first. Let's do a quick recap here of what happened in the house on Tuesday, where all the action is or isn't happening when it comes to government funding. Then I'm going to talk a little

bit about Speaker Kevin McCarthy and what he may or may not do next. First of all, House Republicans

were forced to pull the plug on a procedural vote for a 30-day stopgap funding measure

to keep the federal government open past September 30th because, well, they didn't have the votes.

Just hours later, the Republican leadership team suffered another embarrassing defeat on the floor

when five conservative GOP lawmakers cross the aisle to vote with

Democrats to bring down the rule for the Pentagon's spending bill. So all in all,

Tuesday was a bad day for McCarthy and House Republicans. So what's next? Based on our reporting,

there are three general directions McCarthy can take with government funding.

There's the quote unquote kitchen sink approach, the bipartisan path, or do nothing at all.

...