Tucked into an upcoming agreement to fund the government is a provision that only American flags can be flown over American embassies.
Embassies sometimes display flags such as the rainbow LGBTQ+ flag to celebrate Pride Month or other occasions. The spending agreement prohibits this practice and any other flags from being flown overhead, a source familiar told DailyMail.com.
Republicans in the House of Representatives and Democrats in the Senate struck a deal behind closed doors to fund six government agencies ahead of Friday’s deadline for a partial government shutdown.
The text of the $1 trillion deal still has not been made public, with the clock ticking to give lawmakers time to read and vote on the bill before Friday at 11:59 p.m.
The proposal is expected to pass both chambers despite opposition from the right flank, and President Joe Biden is expected to sign it into law.
A rainbow flag is raised on a pole beneath the American flag outside the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria
An American flag and an LGBTQ Pride flag on the facade of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow on June 25, 2020
The deal will provide money for the Departments of Defense, Financial Services, Homeland Security, Labor-HHS-Education, State Foreign Operations and the Legislature.
The bill is also expected to include 12,000 new special immigrant visas for Afghan allies and a one-year extension of international HIV/AIDS prevention efforts. Republicans, meanwhile, are expected to tout funding for additional migrant detention beds.
A focus of the deal is the financing of a United Nations program that provides aid to Palestinian refugees. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNWRA) has been providing healthcare, food, infrastructure and education in Gaza for decades.
Recently, however, the agency has become infamous because twelve of its 30,000 employees are alleged to have participated in the October 7 massacre, which resulted in the murder of more than a thousand Israeli civilians.
After allegations that some UNRWA employees were Hamas sympathizers, Republicans demanded that the organization’s funding be stopped.
UNRWA currently receives funding through the State Department’s annual funding bill, which is included in the deal Johnson released on Sunday.
US Embassy in Denmark prepares for Copenhagen Pride 2017
A Black Lives Matter banner, a United States national flag and a rainbow flag are hung on the facade of the US Embassy building in Seoul
“There will not be a dime for UNRWA in any bill I support,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the top Republican on the subcommittee that oversees the U.N. agency, said on the Senate floor Thursday.
His sentiment is shared by the Senate’s top Republican appropriator, Susan Collins of Maine.
“We can route the funding through other agencies,” she said recently. ‘We are not going to support UNRWA.’
Democrats also condemned the actions of UNRWA staff who helped Hamas, but reaffirmed the group’s importance in delivering aid to Palestinians who need it.
“UNRWA is a necessity to get the tremendous amount of aid we need,” Rep. Laura DeLauro, D-Conn., the top Democratic appropriator in the House of Representatives, said recently.
Congress previously approved a $460 billion funding deal on March 8, just hours before the money allocated for the agencies ran out.
The deal “delivered significant Conservative policy victories” amounting to around $460 billion, despite a “divided government” and rejected “left-wing proposals”, Chairman Johnson said at the time.
That bill included funding for six federal agencies – including Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy-Water, Domestic-Environment, Military Construction-VA, and Transportation-HUD.
It also imposed “deep cuts” to the EPA (10%), ATF (7%) and FBI (6%), which Johnson said “have threatened our freedoms and our economy.”
The release of the text of the spending bills gives lawmakers 72 hours to look at them before a vote, likely this week.
The next votes in the House of Representatives on legislative matters are expected Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.
