Congress has adjourned for the holidays having made no tangible progress toward funding the government ahead of a shutdown looming less than six weeks away.

The most conspicuous sign that Congress faces real obstacles before the Jan. 30 funding deadline came late Thursday, when Senate leaders gave up on passing a spending package and sent members home for two weeks, despite working for more than a month to appease senators who had objections.

But the impediments to reaching a deal that can pass both chambers are more extensive, starting with the fact that Republicans and Democrats on both ends of the Capitol have yet to start negotiating the details of the nine pending funding bills. The lack of bipartisan offer-trading is raising the likelihood of another short-term punt — or another shutdown.

“We wasted a lot of time because the Senate’s not negotiating yet,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in an interview last week. “When they’re ready to negotiate, we can move fast.”

Cole and his counterpart, Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine), just reached an agreement over the weekend on overall totals for the remaining spending bills Congress needs to pass. Lawmakers already passed three as part of the package that ended the shutdown last month — funding veterans and agriculture agencies, federal food aid and the Food and Drug Administration, along with Congress itself, through Sept. 30.

For more than a month Cole and Collins had been trying to bridge differences on key numbers while Senate leaders tried to advance a funding package that reflects consensus from only their side of the Capitol. Last week’s heave failed, but senators expect to try again in early January.

“We have different dynamics in our caucuses that we need to deal with,” Collins said this month as she left a meeting with Cole.

Democrats have been growing impatient. “They wasted all that time during the summer,” said Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the House’s top Democratic appropriator, about House Republicans spending the better part of this year crafting partisan funding bills.

Then Democrats had to wait for their GOP counterparts to strike the “majority to majority” deal on funding totals that finally arrived Saturday.

“Democrats are prepared. We’re ready to move. Let’s go,” DeLauro said.

Even if top appropriators can manage to agree on the nine remaining funding bills, other thorny dynamics threaten to complicate final passage in each chamber. The pitfalls include the mismatch between what appropriators want to spend and the demands of House fiscal hawks seeking flat funding for agencies — as well as the fact that Democrats will need to help pass any spending bills in the Senate, as they acutely illustrated with this fall’s record 43-day shutdown.

The totals top Republican appropriators just agreed upon are not public. But Cole said the deal will ensure overall funding would be below the level laid out in the stopgap funding patch enacted last month.

Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, chair of the House Freedom Caucus and a top Republican appropriator, said last week that he wants funding for the Pentagon and the largest nondefense agencies to be “no more than what was enacted” for the fiscal year that ended in September.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) has the same idea: “I don’t want any spending higher than current-level spending,” he said. “If they’re busting the current levels, then they’re going to have to demonstrate to me why.”

If House hard-liners aren’t appeased when the funding bills come together, they could start making threats to Speaker Mike Johnson and other GOP leaders, who already are on the outs with House Republicans over their handling of health care assistance this month.

“You can expect the smoke to start coming up from over that hill and that hill and that hill,” said Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), who chairs the Homeland Security spending panel. “And there might even be some open flame.”

Amodei said some of his colleagues are openly talking about the potential for another shutdown. But many others think it is more likely that Congress is headed for another punt at current funding levels for the remaining nine bills.

Last week, Johnson told his conference in a closed-door meeting that he wants to pass those bills by the Jan. 30 deadline — a goal that many in the GOP ranks consider aspirational at best. One House Republican granted anonymity to describe the private meeting said he turned to one of his colleagues and whispered, “I wouldn’t bet on that on Polymarket,” referring to an online prediction market.

Senate leaders have their own conflicting demands to manage. Fiscal conservatives repeatedly objected to starting debate on a five-bill funding package in recent weeks, citing opposition to earmarks as they also sought promises related to other legislation.

But it was Democrats who blocked movement in the final days before the Senate adjourned Thursday. One late-breaking demand by Colorado’s senators was to reverse the White House’s move last week to dismantle a federal center in the state that supports research in climate and weather science.

Still, following the acrimony of the shutdown this fall, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Majority Leader John Thune are at least projecting a unified front on government funding ahead of the January deadline.

“Both Thune and I are in agreement that we’re going to work through the process and get the appropriations bills done,” Schumer told reporters late Thursday after Senate leaders decided to adjourn without passing the funding package.

Since top Republican appropriators reached an agreement on overall totals after Congress adjourned, lawmakers hope some negotiating can be done before they return to town Jan. 5.

“Staff has been instructed to — whatever they’re doing — take their laptops with them,” DeLauro said.

When Congress reconvenes, both chambers are only scheduled to be in session for three weeks before the shutdown deadline — with the House slated to be out of session the week immediately before.

Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales, a Republican appropriator, said he was hopeful his party’s leaders would keep lawmakers in town to pass any deal that might come together.

“This is people’s political livelihood on the line,” he said. “We’ve got to get this done. Nobody leaves.”

Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

As Republicans in his state’s legislature considered joining a Donald Trump-backed effort to redraw congressional maps in the GOP’s favor, Rep. Frank Mrvan kept quiet.

The new lines would have doomed the low-key Democrat representing Indiana’s northwest corner, but only now — after Republicans in the state Senate roundly rejected the Trump push — is he speaking out with a message for both parties: It’s time to lay down arms on redistricting.

“I do not believe all-blue and all-red states benefit anyone,” Mrvan said in an interview. “We need to have unifying factors that bring our country together again, like lowering health care costs and being able to make sure that when someone goes to a grocery store, they can afford beef and provide for their families and have safe communities. I don’t know if it’s a priority to manipulate maps for one party or the other to be in the majority.”

While Indiana’s attempt at mid-decade redistricting is now in the rearview mirror, other states have not ruled it out. The GOP-controlled Florida legislature is now exploring new maps, but so are the Democratic majorities in Maryland and Virginia. Both parties are also closely watching a forthcoming Supreme Court decision on the Voting Rights Act that could prompt new maps in southern states.

After Trump kicked off the mid-cycle redistricting push by prodding Texas Republicans to draw new lines that could oust as many as five Democrats in 2026, many House lawmakers aired private concerns about the disruptive and divisive process that was not guaranteed to net GOP seats in the midterms. Many fewer spoke out publicly, given fear of retribution from Trump.

Now a growing number of Democrats are eager to exact revenge. California Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed through a ballot measure that will allow Democrats to offset the Texas losses, but some are eager for more — with Mrvan among the few who have been willing to say that would be a bad idea.

Rep. André Carson, the other Indiana Democrat whose district was at grave risk in a redistricting scenario, defended the blue states that are still looking to act, saying it was “all a reaction to what happened in Texas.”

“My hope is that this will inspire other legislative bodies to push back against Donald Trump’s very extremist agenda that is helping himself but hurting Americans,” Carson said. Pressed on blue-state redistricting, he said those legislatures “are going to have to make that decision on their own.”

Carson and Mrvan among a dwindling number of midwestern Democrats in an increasingly coastal caucus who just survived a political near-death experience. The fact is, they might have only gotten a temporary reprieve: Post-census redistricting just six years away could put them in peril once again.

Mrvan has already been targeted by national Republicans, winning a costly 2022 race by about 6 points. But he described working quietly behind the scenes to convince statehouse leaders that drawing him out of his seat would be a bad idea.

The 31-19 final vote killing the proposal didn’t have anything to do with pressure from him, Mrvan emphasized, but he had been in touch with GOP state senators who had been victims of harassment including “swatting” incidents to check on their safety.

“I think it was very clear they were going to vote their conscience and what they believed in, and there is no inside track that they were sharing with me the process and what was going on,” he said — while also personally thanking four GOP state senators in his district who opposed the redraw “for their act of courage and for unifying our state.”

One message Mrvan did send, he said, was that “redistricting would not benefit the state of Indiana.” As the only Hoosier on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, he argued, his ouster would “take away that leverage” in Congress on major state projects requiring bipartisan cooperation.

He cited recent indications from the owners of the NFL’s Chicago Bears that they could relocate the team from its longtime lakefront stadium just over the state line to Mrvan’s district. “We’re already gathering in a bipartisan way to say we welcome the Bears,” he said.

Carson said he, too, took a soft-touch approach — remaining in communication with GOP members of the congressional delegation and state legislators but allowing them “the freedom and the sovereignty that they have to make decisions, because it is their body.”

“But all hands were on deck,” Carson added.

Both Democrats also said they were in touch with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries starting over the summer as the redistricting push began. Carson recalled that Jeffries pledged support and resources and was “sensitive” to the dynamics of the fight as a former state legislator.

In the end, Carson said, a respectful approach and Indiana’s distinctly midwestern political culture won out over national browbeating.

“I’ve said all along, Hoosiers do things very differently,” he said. “The majority of Hoosiers did not agree with this new unfair map, and Hoosiers made sure the statehouse knew it.”

After appearing in a closed-door deposition with the House Judiciary Committee earlier this week, Jack Smith, the former special counsel who led the criminal cases against President Donald Trump, still wants the chance to defend his work in a public hearing – and defend himself against continued Republican attacks.

Attorneys for Smith are pressing for their client to be allowed to testify in an open forum in a new letter to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, obtained first by Blue Light News.

“[We] reiterate our request for an open and public hearing,” Smith’s lawyers, Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski, wrote to Jordan. “During the investigation of President Trump, Mr. Smith steadfastly followed Justice Department policies, observed all legal requirements, and took actions based on the facts and the law. He stands by his decisions.”

Breuer and Koski also requested that the videotape of Smith’s testimony be released in full so that he can speak to the public directly “rather than through second-hand accounts.”

Smith’s deposition spanned more than eight hours Wednesday, as he spoke to House Judiciary members under oath and stood by his decisions to levy criminal charges against the then-former president for allegedly mishandling classified documents and attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

According to portions of his statement shared with Blue Light News, Smith argued the evidence in his office’s possession would have provided proof of the President’s criminal behavior “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

He never got to fully present that evidence, as Smith was forced to drop both his cases as a result of Justice Department policy that prevents prosecuting the current occupant of the White House. But Trump and his allies have continued to paint Smith as a villainous leader in the campaign to politicize the Biden-era Justice Department.

House and Senate Republicans have vowed to investigate Smith and his office’s work in a crusade that has only become more intense in the wake of revelations that Smith requested phone data for Republican members of Congress as part of his election subversion probe.

Jordan, who has separately already referred Smith’s senior assistant special counsel for criminal prosecution for failing to cooperate with his investigation, said he has not ruled out allowing the Biden era special counsel to testify in an open forum.

There are relatively few details about Smith’s remarks and the exchanges with lawmakers, beyond the portions of his statements shared with reporters. Members of the Judiciary Committee leaving the deposition Wednesday provided relatively few details.

Amid an ongoing Justice Department campaign to levy criminal charges against the president’s perceived enemies, Smith is also navigating a complicated legal minefield: His testimony is hamstrung by grand jury secrecy rules, DOJ policy and an order from a federal judge that a volume of his report surrounding the classified documents case remain under seal.

It’s not clear to what extent Smith told Congressional investigators he could not provide certain information due to the various restrictions on his testimony.

Democrats have argued the decision to hold the private deposition deprived the American public of important information about the president and amounted to an effort to distort the record of Smith’s testimony.

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, was still hopeful Smith could be given the chance to speak publicly.

“I think somebody should prepare Donald Trump for it, because he will be devastated and humiliated by what he hears,” Raskin said in a brief interview Thursday.