Kay Granger

Rep. Kay Granger’s son is walking back comments he made earlier this week in which he expressed optimism that his mom’s new post on the Appropriations Committee would help him secure federal funding to finish a controversial city flood-protection project in Fort Worth, Texas.

J.D. Granger, the executive director of the Trinity River Vision Authority, also backtracked on his suggestion that his mother, an 11th-term Texas Republican, would retire upon the project’s completion.

With her ascendance to the top post among Republicans in the powerful House Appropriations Committee, GOP Rep. Kay Granger is in position to deliver federal funds to a years-long project to protect her Texas district from floodwaters.

The director of that project? Her son, J.D. Granger, head of the Trinity River Vision Authority.

House Republicans last week selected their new committee leaders to replace nine retiring GOP chairmen. 

The new leaders, however, will serve as ranking members since House Republicans will be in the minority next year. 

Texas Rep. Kay Granger will likely take over as the House Republicans’ lead appropriator in January after the GOP Steering Committee recommended her on Thursday.

The full House GOP Conference is expected to ratify the decision Friday. While it’s possible the conference could overrule the Steering panel recommendation, conference approval is typically a formality.

Roughly half of the House’s 21 committees will have new Republican leadership next year, creating several competitive races among colleagues looking to move up the ranks.

The majority of the openings come from retiring GOP chairmen, most of whom have reached the six-year limit Republicans place on their committee leaders.

When Kathy Warden takes over as CEO of Northrop Grumman in January, women will run three of the primes, as the largest American defense firms are known.

Warden joins Marillyn Hewson at Lockheed Martin and Phebe Novakovic at General Dynamics as CEOs, while executive vice president Leanne Caret heads Boeing’s defense business.

The United States’ plans to sell the stealthy F-35 jet to a key NATO ally could allow Russia to study the most expensive weapons program in Pentagon history like a lab sample — a threat that has drawn the attention of several senators intent on protecting the pricey plane.

Turkey is just one of many NATO members that plans to buy the American-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, but it is the only country in the alliance that has also inked a deal to purchase the Russian-made S-400 missile defense system.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard C. Shelby told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Tuesday that he hoped for an improvement in relations between the United States and the Russian Federation.

“We have a strained relationship, but we could have a better relationship between he U.S. and Russia, because there’s some common interests around the world that we hopefully can work together on,” Shelby said, according to video from the meeting in Moscow. “We can be competitors. We are competitors, but we don’t necessarily need to be adversaries.”

A nearly $15 billion package of spending cuts is now in the Senate’s court after the House late Thursday voted 210-206 to pass the “rescissions” measure.

Most Republicans voted to narrowly put the cuts package over the top, though there were 19 GOP defections. Democrats voted unanimously against the measure.

The House of Representatives hasn’t had two women lead a committee since the Select Committee on the House Beauty Shop was eliminated in 1977.

All of that could change in January.