The letter, written by White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), reiterates a veto threat of the bill, while insisting that Congress will have a say in reviewing and affecting the ultimate outcome. But in far more detailed and foreboding terms than normal, McDonough lays out the administration’s concerns should Corker’s Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015 end up becoming law.

The bill, he writes, would “likely have a profoundly negative impact on the ongoing negotiations — emboldening Iranian hard-liners, inviting a counter-productive response from the Iranian majiles; differentiating the U.S. position from our allies in negotiations; and once again calling into question our ability to negotiate this deal.”

“Put simply,” adds McDonough, “it would potentially make it impossible to secure international cooperation for additional sanctions, while putting at risk the existing multilateral sanctions regime.”

Coming just days before the March 24 deadline for a political framework for the final nuclear agreement, the Saturday night letter — three pages, single spaced, in length — is the latest indication of rising tensions between the White House and the Hill. At times assertive and, at others, combative, the letter warns Corker that his bill, which would give Congress the right to vote up or down on the final nuclear agreement, would cripple U.S. negotiators and lead Iran and international negotiating partners to question the U.S.’ ability to follow through on its end of the bargain.

It comes after months of Congress trying to insert itself into the negotiations between Iran, the U.S. and five partner countries. While the White House maintains it is nearing an agreement that will ensure Iran’s nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, lawmakers have insisted that President Barack Obama is prepared to sign a “bad deal” that will leave too much of Iran’s nuclear facilities intact, allowing it to covertly develop a nuclear weapon. These concerns have been echoed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, against the wishes of the White House, delivered a contentious speech on the House floor, warning that the current deal will “all but guarantee” Iran nuclear weapons.

Matters came to a climactic point this past week, when Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) drafted a letter, signed by 46 other Republican senators, to Iranian leadership. The letter warned that any agreement could easily be reworked by Congress, or even overturned by a future president. The White House and Democratic lawmakersslammed the letter as a blatant attempt to undermine negotiations and the credibility of the White House.

Notably absent from the signatories was Corker, who had been trying to recruit Democratic senators to build a veto-proof majority for his bill. Cotton’s letter appears to have complicated those efforts. McDonough’s letter — from a wildly different philosophical vantage point — is designed to shelve it entirely.

“The Administration’s request to the Congress is simple: let us complete the negotiations before the Congress acts on legislation,” writes McDonough. “We understand that Congress will make its own determinations about how to respond, but we do not believe that the country’s interests are served by congressional attempts to weigh in prematurely on this sensitive and consequential ongoing international negotiation aimed at achieving a goal that we all share: using diplomacy to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.”

At the heart of the administration’s concern with Corker’s legislation are two separate issues. The first is the overarching message that the final vote of “approval” on the deal is within the purview of Congress. McDonough, in his letter, concedes a Republican concern: that the United Nations will have a role in implementing a final agreement. But that, he notes, is because the U.N. is the only entity with the authority to terminate the U.N. Security Council’s sanctions on Iran.

McDonough also assures Corker that the Senate will play a role — “and will have to take a vote” — in any final agreement. But that vote, he says, should come further down the line. There is ample precedent for a non-legally binding international treaty premised on political commitments, McDonough argues. And much of his letter is spent listing prior cases, the most recent being the U.S.-Russia framework to remove chemical weapons from Syria.

The second concern in the letter is that Corker’s bill eliminates one of the primary tools at the president’s disposal to make sure that any Iran deal is successful. Under current law, only Congress can eliminate the statutory sanctions regime against Iran. The president, however, has the power to suspend them through waivers. Corker’s bill would complicate that, prompting administration concerns that they’d lose a critical tool to make the final framework work.

“The deal we are negotiating will allow us to retain significant leverage, as Iran would face severe consequences for any violation since we would have the capacity to swiftly re-impose punishing sanctions if Iran does not meet its commitments,” writes McDonough.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans inched closer to embracing a stopgap measure to prevent a Department of Homeland Security shutdown on Thursday, a day before the agency runs out of money.

GOP leaders huddled with their conference behind closed doors to gauge support for a three-week continuing resolution that would keep DHS running, a day after the Senate intensified pressure on the lower chamber by preparing to vote on a “clean” DHS funding bill.

House members leaving the meeting expressed disappointment in Senate Republicans, who on Wednesday reached a deal with Democrats to advance a measure that would fund DHS absent any riders aimed at blocking President Barack Obama’s executive actions on immigration. Frustration was especially palpable among House conservatives, who refused to throw in the towel on using the power of the purse to curb Obama actions that would provide deportation relief and work permits to millions of undocumented immigrants.

“I would like to have seen more cloture votes taken and the Democrats who are actually the ones at the helm of forcing this impossible conundrum to be pointed out to the public in a better way,” Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) said of the Senate, adding that he wasn’t sure how he would vote on a short-term continuing resolution.

Several rank-and-file members who talked to reporters after the meeting cast doubt over whether House GOP leaders would have enough votes for their plan, which a leadership aide confirmed was to pass a short-term continuing resolution on Friday, as well as a motion to go to conference with the Senate. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said earlier in the day that she told House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that Democrats were not interested in supporting a continuing resolution.

A House Democratic leadership aide said Democrats will be encouraged to vote against the short-term bill. “If House Republicans want to end up with another manufactured crisis that risks our national security in a matter of days, they can do it with 218 votes of their own,” the aide said.

The House gambit to go to conference isn’t likely to get a warm reception in the Senate, where at least some Democrats would need to agree to it. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said unequivocally earlier in the day that Democrats would not allow a conference, calling it “a waste of time.”

House Republicans said they think that may change.

“Harry Reid isn’t God. We’ll see how he does,” said Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), who chairs the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. Carter said he would support a clean full-year bill or the short-term plan.

Part of the equation is a lawsuit against the president’s executive action filed by 26 states, being considered by a federal judge in Texas. The judge issued a preliminary injunction last week that halted Obama’s new executive action programs from moving forward as he considers their constitutionality. The Obama administration is seeking a stay of that decision that would allow the programs to begin, and is appealing.

The three-week continuing resolution may fund DHS until further rulings in the lawsuit, but it’s more likely that the legal process will stretch out for months.

Still, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said the sense among House Republicans was that the court was moving in their favor, so they were winning the broader fight against Obama’s executive actions. A short-term continuing resolution and a House-Senate conference, he added, would buy Republicans more time to see how the issue plays out in the courts while putting the onus back on Democrats.

“I think a lot of them would feel pressure,” Cole said. “It’s not an unreasonable request. I think it’d be pretty hard for them once we guaranteed funding to say we don’t want to sit down and talk about it at all.”

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) told reporters he thought the plan was a good idea, except it wasn’t clear how Republican leaders planned to actually get the Senate to go to conference.

“Without the conference, we’re just punting and passing the baton on to something else,” Labrador said.

Not all Republicans supported the strategy, with some citing how it would look to risk a DHS shutdown amid high-profile terrorist threats, and others not seeing the point in stirring up the same fight in just three weeks.

Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) told reporters his message to his colleagues during the meeting was that “bad tactics yield bad outcomes.”

“I think at this point we’ve engaged in an exercise of tactical malpractice, self-delusion and self-destruction,” Dent said. “Some folks have a harder time to face the political reality than others. Some people want to be able to save face and get something from the Senate … and I said we’re not going to get anything.

The men were laborers, gone for months on end, who sent home hard-earned money to feed entire families. They left their impoverished home in Egypt to work in Libya for a better future, despite the dangers. What they found instead was a militant group hell-bent on humiliating and harming them because they were Christian. While most of the people killed by the Islamic State have been Muslim, the group’s recent propaganda video made a point to threaten Christianity as a religion. The fact that the 21 men were Egyptian made them even more sought-out targets: citizens of a country cracking down on Islamists both within its own borders and inside Libya.

On Jan. 3 at around 2:30 a.m. in the coastal Libyan city of Sirte, masked gunmen began knocking on doors, according to survivors. They were looking for Christians marked with traditional tattoos on their hands that identified them as Copts, an ancient Christian sect in Egypt. Some men were pulled from their beds at gunpoint. Others hid and prayed, only to later see their captured friends and family members decapitated in a widely circulated and highly produced Islamic State video.

But in this tight-knit village, these men will not be remembered for their brutal murders. They are remembered as beloved husbands, sons, brothers, cousins and friends. In death, their lives are celebrated.

Here are the lives they lived, as told by family members.

Hani Abdel Messihah, 32

Magda Aziz, 29, holds the photo of her late husband, killed by ISIS, as she sits in her home in Al Aour, Egypt, on Tuesday.

Hani loved his four children — three girls and a boy, the youngest — more than anything in the world, his family says. He was gentle and kind, always making a joke whenever he could. His wife Magda Aziz, 29, will forever remember his laugh.

“I felt like he was an angel,” Magda said of her deeply devout husband. “There was a prayer in anything he said.”

Hani desperately wanted to come home after eight months laboring in Libya. He was sick and tired of the relentless violence and the constant threat of kidnapping. But leaving was a difficult choice. There was money in Libya, unlike in Al Aour, money that he needed to support Magda and his children. But he finally decided to come home to his family, she said. He was killed before he ever got a chance to leave.

“He took care of all of us,” Magda explains, weakly. The women around her nod in unison, passing around a faded photograph of the smiling father with his little boy.

“He was so kind,” Magda says. “He gave us hugs and kisses.”

Hani Abdel Messihah, 32, killed by ISIS in Libya, smiles with his young son in a worn photograph.

Magda will never forget the last conversation she had with her husband. He called on New Year’s wanting to speak with each of his children. The couple exchanged tender words. He asked if she wanted or needed anything — he would try to get it to her, whatever it was. She remembers saying, “I want you safe.” And he asked her to pray for him. She never heard from Hani again.

When she saw the video of his beheading on Egyptian television, her family cried so hard that she says neighbors called an ambulance. She doesn’t talk much about how she feels now, apart from the fact that she’s still in shock.

“I miss him,” she says with a whisper.

Her three daughters sit around her, clinging to their mother. The oldest girl begins to weep as the younger two stare off, unable to comprehend the grief around them.

“Your dad is in the sky,” a relative says, hoping to console the little girl. “He’s in the heavens.”

Video by May Kamel.

Yousef Shoukry, 24

Shenouda Shoukry holds up a photo of his brother of Yousef Shoukry (pictured right), a 24-year-old Coptic Christian beheaded by the Islamic State.

Yousef was a quiet young man with the heart of a child, his family says. All he wanted to do was find a job and start a family.

But after leaving the army after high school, there were few job prospects. He couldn’t live the life he wanted, his mother, Theresa, recalls, sitting in her home surrounded by family.

But the Libyan border wasn’t too far, and many men before Yousef had gone to work there already. He decided to leave Egypt. His mother begged him not to go, but he wouldn’t listen. She says that his faith gave him the courage to go to Libya in the face of danger. “I have one God, he’s the same here and there,” she remembers Yousef saying.

A mother and son mourn the loss of Yousef Shoukry.

A steady stream of women walk into the room, all dressed in black. They reach out to comfort the grieving mother.

“He’s a martyr,” she says, holding her cross close to her heart. “I know he’s in a better place.”

Everyone in the family looked up to Yousef. His sister says he was curious and always in good spirits, despite the family’s hard circumstances.

His older brother, Shenouda, 27, the middle brother of four, says he was always proud of him.

“He lived according to the book,” he said, holding a photo of Yousef as a young soldier. “I can’t remember something he did wrong.”

Yousef always joked with Shenouda to hurry up and get married so it could be his turn. He was saving up to support a family.

The last time the family spoke with Yousef was when he called on New Year’s. “I told him I’d pray for him,” she remembers. “I said: ‘May God make your life easier.'”

Theresa refused to watch the video showing her son beheaded. But her other son says he made himself watch it.

“I saw that he had strength in his last moments,” the 27-year-old man said, insisting that there was a heavenly light shining on his brother’s face, even after he was decapitated. “And that consoled me.”

Video by May Kamel.

Towadros Yousef, 42

A Coptic Christian man holds up the ID of his brother, Towadros Yousef, who was murdered by the Islamic State.

Long before he was murdered by extremists, Towadros was sacrificing so that his family could live better lives. A year and a half ago, he traveled from his village of Al Aour to Libya. Far from the comfort and safety of home, the 42-year-old father of three — two boys and a girl — labored away to provide for his family.

He was an introvert, the quiet one in the room. “He wasn’t one to make a lot of noise about anything,” his brother remembers, smiling. But he was a fighter, determined to give his children a better life than he had.

“He was a really hard worker,” his older brother, Bebawi Yousef, 34, says, sitting in the pew of a small church in Al Aour. “He loved working.”

Life in Libya was difficult, to say the least, but it was worth it for Towadros to put food on his family’s table. He was a family man, above all else.

“He was happiest being with his family and kids,” Bebawi says fondly. “He was a kind person.”

Bebawi Yousef sits in a pew at the church in Al Aour, Egypt, on Tuesday during a ceremony mourning the loss of 21 Coptic Christians, including his older brother, who were murdered by ISIS.

Bebawi remembers his last conversation with his brother with regret. Towadros called to see how everyone was and he said he wanted to come home, finally. He was ready. The doting father was worried that something bad would happen to him and he wouldn’t be able to support his family anymore.

“We told him to wait,” Bebawi recalls. “Because they were targeting Christians. We said, ‘If you come now at New Year’s, it’s dangerous.'” The family thought he was safer staying put than traveling on the dangerous roads back to Egypt.

Up until the last moment, Bebawi was ready to do anything to help save his brother. He traveled from Al-Aour to Cairo to talk on an Egyptian television show to raise awareness about the case of the kidnapped Copts. Five minutes before going on air, he received the fateful call from his local priest.

“My condolences,” Bebawi remembers him saying. “It’s over. They’ve passed.”

He can’t believe that Towadros is gone. “I was trying to hold onto the last bit of hope,” he says somberly.

Maged Suleiman Shahata, 40

The brother of Maged Suleiman Shahata, a Coptic Christian killed by ISIS, shows a photo of his brother’s ID card at a church in Al Aour, Egypt, on Tuesday.

Maged was born into poverty and so were his children. But the father of three was determined to change their futures.

“My brother, the way they lived,” he said, shaking his head at the family’s poverty. “It was him and his wife and three children in one room together.”

“That’s how hard life is here,” he said, sitting in a Coptic Church surrounded by mourners. “That’s how hard he worked. He was fed up with having no money. There is no work in the south.”

Maged ventured to Libya, like many others from his village, hoping to earn enough money to change his family’s life. Maged was proud that despite their poor financial situation, his oldest daughter was in college. It made the long, hard, dangerous work in Libya worth everything.

Emat Suleiman Shahta mourns the loss of his brother who was beheaded by ISIS.

Emad spoke with his brother just hours before he was kidnapped. He asked Maged about another group of Christians who had just been snatched up by ISIS, worried that it could happen to him, too. Maged’s last words to him, he painfully remembers, were that his phone credit was out. “I didn’t know what that would mean,” he said, upset that he didn’t get a chance to say goodbye or tell him how much he meant to him.

“He was a very sweet man,” Emad said. “Easily embarrassed.”

Video by May Kamel.

Emad mourns his brother’s death, but he isn’t consumed with hatred. Instead, he looks past the senseless killing and finds hope in his belief that Maged and the other 20 men are now in a safe place where no one can hurt them.

“We are proud that they went to the father in the sky,” he said with a warm smile.

A banner showing the faces of Coptic Christians killed by ISIS hangs from the painted ceiling of the Coptic Church in Al Aour, Egypt, on Tuesday.

Here are the names of the rest of the Christian men killed by the Islamic State in Libya, according to a list provided to The WorldPost by a Coptic church representative in Minya.

5. Milad Makeen Zaky
6. Abanub Ayad Atiya
7. Kirollos Shokry Fawzy (Kirollos Bashree Fawzy)
8. Bishoy Astafanus Kamel
9. Malak Ibrahim Sinweet
10. Girgis Milad Sinweet
11. Mina Fayez Aziz
12. Samuel Alham Wilson
13. Samuel Astafanus Kamel
14. Ezat Bishri Naseef
15. Loqa Nagaty Anees
16. Munir Gaber Adly
17. Esam Badir Samir
18. Malak Farag Abram
19. Sameh Salah (Sameh Salah Farug)
20. Girgis Sameer Maglee
21. Unknown (While the Egyptian government has said that all 21 men were Coptic Christians, a document compiled by the church in Minya and provided to The WorldPost lists only 20 names)

In a Wired op-ed, Wheeler said he is proposing the FCC use its authority under Title II of the Communications Act to protect consumer broadband Internet. This move will allow the FCC to stop Internet service providers from charging content providers like Netflix more money for reliable Internet access.

“Using this authority, I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest open Internet protections ever proposed by the FCC,” he wrote.

WASHINGTON — Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler revealed a big win for net neutrality advocates on Wednesday, asking for strong authority to enforce open Internet protections.

In a Wired op-ed, Wheeler said he is proposing the FCC use its authority under Title II of the Communications Act to protect consumer broadband Internet. This move will allow the FCC to stop Internet service providers from charging content providers like Netflix more money for reliable Internet access.

“Using this authority, I am submitting to my colleagues the strongest open Internet protections ever proposed by the FCC,” he wrote.

complaints about unfair interconnection activities on a case-by-case basis.

Until recently, a Title II plan was a pipe dream for net neutrality advocates. But President Barack Obama came out in support of Title II reclassification and bright-line rules in November, and Wheeler, who had reportedly been considering alternative approaches, appears to now be on board.

A senior FCC official addressed the effect of the president’s announcement on Wheeler’s decision-making on a call with reporters Wednesday. “It was actually the aftermath of the president’s announcement that proved to be so important,” the official said, citing reactions from financial analysts and ISPs such as Sprint. “That reaction demonstrated convincingly that Title II could be tailored for the 21st century without harming investment.”

Advocates applauded Wheeler’s proposal. “I’ve gotten messages from people in the start-up community where they’re pinching themselves to make sure it’s real, they’re really pumped,” said Marvin Ammori, a lawyer who advises major tech companies and supports net neutrality.

However, the announcement signals a major blow to telecom and cable companies who have been fighting Title II. Doug Brake, telecommunications policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said in a statement that the decision is an “unjustified, overblown response to what has in actuality been a by-and-large hypothetical concern.”

On Capitol Hill, Republicans are still waging a last-ditch legislative effort to strip the FCC of the authority to enforce strong Internet protections, but that campaign has little support among Democrats. Net neutrality advocates will also be watching to see whether the FCC proposal will provide any additional loopholes for telecommunications and cable companies, although Wheeler’s announcement seems to indicate that they will get the bright-line rules they have been asking for.

“We look forward to seeing the exact details of the FCC’s rules,” David Segal, executive director of Demand Progress, an Internet activism group, said in a statement. “All indications point to this announcement as reassuring for the future of the Internet, free speech and American innovation.”

Wheeler added, “Broadband network operators have an understandable motivation to manage their network to maximize their business interests. But their actions may not always be optimal for network users.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) argued Monday that debate over whether to allow parents more choice in the vaccination of their children was a matter of “freedom,” citing personal knowledge of kids “who wound up with profound mental disorders” after receiving immunizations for diseases like Hepatitis B and measles.

“I don’t think there’s anything extraordinary about resorting to freedom,” the potential 2016 presidential candidate, who is a ophthalmologist, said in an interview with CNBC.

“We sometimes give five or six vaccines all at one time,” he said of immunizations of newborns for Hepatitis B. “I chose to have mine delayed….Do I think it’s ultimately a good idea? Yeah. So I had mine staggered over several months. I’ve heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children, who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines. I’m not arguing that vaccines are a bad idea, I think they’re a good thing. But I think parents should have some input. The state doesn’t own your children, parents own their children, and it is an issue of freedom. ”

For the record, the scientific community overwhelmingly supports childhood vaccinations, and there is virtually no evidence that the measles vaccine is unsafe.

Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) made an argument similar to Paul’s in 2012, claiming that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine could do permanent damage to young girls.

“There’s a woman who came up crying to me tonight after the debate. She said her daughter was given that vaccine,” Bachmann said. “She told me her daughter suffered mental retardation as a result. There are very dangerous consequences.”

Paul isn’t the only would-be presidential candidate who is facing scrutiny over his position on child vaccinations. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) also said parents should have “some measure of choice” when it comes to vaccinating their children, before walking back his comments in a statement on Monday.

Here’s where the rest of the field stands on the issue.

The budget foresees a $474 billion deficit, which is 2.5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. It projects deficits stabilizing at that rate over a 10-year period, senior administration officials said.

Obama’s budget fleshes out proposals from his State of the Union address last month and helps highlight Democratic priorities for the last two years of his presidency and the beginning of the 2016 presidential campaign.

But it is as much a political document as a fiscal road map and would require approval from the Republican-controlled Congress to go into effect.

“There are going to be areas where we get big disagreements, but what I want us to focus on is the areas … we have in common,” Obama said on NBC’s “Today” show.

“And we’ll have some battles along the way, but there’s going to be a whole bunch of stuff that we can do that’s really productive.”

The president is scheduled to speak about the budget at 11:55 a.m. EST (1655 GMT) from the Department of Homeland Security, a site the White House chose to emphasize its insistence that Republicans fund the agency charged with implementing his controversial executive actions on immigration.

Republicans have said they see room for compromise in areas such as tax reform and infrastructure, but many of Obama’s programs, which were rolled out in the weeks before the budget’s release, have landed with a thud.

“When … he devotes his time and energy to talking about the new tax-and-spend policies that progressives like and Republicans universally oppose, he signals to Congress that he is once again looking to argue rather than to legislate,” said Keith Hennessey, a former economic adviser to Republican President George W. Bush.

Democrats, however, viewed the budget as a statement of their priorities and a chance to demonstrate that they represent the party that champions middle-income Americans.

“(It) affords him an opportunity to contrast his vision of helping the middle class with the Republican Congress’ approach of exacerbating inequality, ignoring the middle class and making the burdens of those who want to enter it even greater,” said Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, which has close ties to the White House.

INFRASTRUCTURE, TAX REFORM

The budget achieves some $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years, officials said, through healthcare, tax and immigration reform, but the forecast assumes Republican support for Obama’s programs, which is unlikely.

Republicans have blocked immigration reform legislation in the House of Representatives, for example, and Obama’s budget assumes passage of such a bill.

The administration foresees a continuation of the decline in unemployment, forecasting a rate of 5.4 percent in 2015. The rate currently stands at 5.6 percent.

It also proposes a new infrastructure bank, a 6 percent increase in research and development, and a controversial consolidation of U.S. government agencies. Obama has previously proposed combining trade agencies, but the proposal fizzled.

The budget sets aside $14 billion to strengthen U.S. cybersecurity defenses after a spate of high-profile hackings.

It calls for a one-time, 14 percent tax on an estimated $2.1 trillion in profits piled up abroad by companies such as General Electric and Microsoft, while imposing a 19 percent tax on U.S. companies’ future foreign earnings.

It proposes a 7 percent rise in U.S. domestic and military spending, ending “sequester” caps with reforms to crop insurance programs and closing tax loopholes such as one on “carried interest.” Those moves would help fund investments in infrastructure and education.

The budget would also reform rules governing trust funds and raise the capital gains and dividend rates to 28 percent from the current top rates of 23.8 percent.

In foreign policy, the budget funds efforts to defeat Islamic State militants and support NATO and European allies against Russian aggression, the White House said.

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