House Republican leaders are having to salvage their party-line megabill a lot sooner than they thought.

A surprise holdout by ultraconservative members of the House Budget Committee Thursday is forcing Speaker Mike Johnson to entertain significant changes to the GOP sweeping domestic policy bill, endangering his ambitious Memorial Day timeline for House passage.

The hard-right objections surrounded missing fiscal scores for the legislation and ongoing concerns about the depth of Medicaid cuts that Republicans are prepared to make. One option under serious discussion as a concession to fiscal hard-liners is moving up the onset of work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries by two years — from 2029 to 2027.

Three Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the negotiations confirmed the possible change, and Johnson himself was overheard discussing the proposal with House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington as the two left a Capitol Hill meeting Thursday.

“We’re working to settle all the pieces, so stay tuned,” Johnson said. Later he promised that the package “will clear the Budget panel Friday.”

The urgency of addressing the hard right’s concerns was heightened when several conservative members of the Budget Committee suggested they would withhold their votes at a scheduled Friday meeting. The panel needs to package up various pieces of the bill advanced by other committees and send it to the floor, a perfunctory but necessary step toward passage that is now threatened by the holdouts.

Johnson huddled with several of them just off the House floor Thursday evening, including GOP Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Ralph Norman of South Carolina. Both said they would vote no in the Budget Committee on the existing bill. Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma and Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin also declined to commit to supporting the bill.

The group demanded three key changes, according to two Republicans granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations: speeding up the phase-out of tax credits enacted under former President Joe Biden; immediately removing immigrants in the country illegally from any Medicaid access, rather than allowing states several years to comply; and moving up the Medicaid work requirement start date.

“We’ll kill it,” Norman said leaving the meeting. “I don’t want to. But I will.”

Norman and Roy both said they were pushing for the work requirements to hit as soon as possible, in the fall of 2026. Hardliners and GOP leaders are expected to hold a call late Thursday evening, with just hours to spare before the Budget panel meeting Friday.

Such a move could create tens of billions more savings for Republicans’ megabill, the centerpiece of President Donald Trump’s agenda on taxes, energy and the border, while helping satisfy conservatives’ demands for deeper cuts. It would also create deeper coverage losses more quickly, potentially ahead of the 2028 presidential election.

Crucially, Republican moderates appear to be on board with the accelerated timeline, which could give leaders more space to address their own concerns — including the highly contentious state-and-local-tax deduction, or SALT.

Several moderate Republicans huddled separately with Johnson throughout the day Thursday, raising concerns about shifting Medicaid and SNAP food aid costs to states, changes to a federal pension program and other issues they want changed before the bill hits the House floor, according to three other Republicans with direct knowledge of the talks.

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said in an interview he was promised that a controversial change to ban legal immigrants from accessing federal food assistance would be stripped before the bill hits the floor. Senior Republicans added the provision from Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) to the Agriculture panel’s portion of the bill this week.

As for moving up the start date of some Medicaid changes, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise told reporters to expect the requirements to come sooner than originally planned and that Republicans would revise the bill. He said the change could help leaders address the SALT demands from a separate group of Republicans.

“I think everybody in the room wants that,” Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.) said leaving a briefing Thursday afternoon, and asked if he wants work requirements moved up. “I think they’re going to move it up.”

Bacon, a key moderate, also said in an interview that he’s comfortable moving the timeline up. Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) told reporters that when the requirements begin is “not that consequential.”

Still, the White House would still need to sign off on the move; Trump and most of his senior aides have been in the Middle East this week, leaving Johnson and other GOP leaders to settle the various policy skirmishes themselves. But the speaker has remained in contact with the president while he’s been overseas.

Quickly implementing the Medicaid changes could be difficult. Most states will have to update their systems to incorporate the new work requirements, which they will be responsible for enforcing. The bill includes $100 million in federal grants to help update those systems; only Georgia currently has a work requirement program in place.

Arrington said Thursday afternoon that a committee markup Friday is “absolutely” possible but separately told reporters it wasn’t clear that the meeting could continue as scheduled given the sheer scale of issues raised inside the closed-door meeting.

Even if GOP leaders agree to tweak the package before passage, it can’t be amended during the Budget meeting Friday. The next opportunity for changes would come in the House Rules Committee, which Johnson wants to meet Monday to prepare the bill for floor debate.

“It’s what we do around here,” Johnson said. “We’re working to settle all the pieces.”

Robert King, Jennifer Scholtes and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

Speaker Mike Johnson is racing to resolve a suite of remaining issues with the GOP megabill just days before he hopes to put it up for a floor vote.

Warring factions inside the House Republican Conference huddled with the speaker Thursday, jockeying primarily over what to do about SALT — the state-and-local-tax deduction.

But other disagreements are also raging around major spending cuts for Medicaid, clean energy tax credits enacted under former President Joe Biden and a slew of other issues that are part of a complex funding puzzle.

Inside the meeting, lawmakers discussed how to make more room for SALT, with some lawmakers still favoring a tax hike on the wealthiest Americans to make all the math work, according to two Republicans granted anonymity to describe the private talks. GOP leaders have pushed back against such a move. SALT Republicans, including a die-hard group of five New Yorkers, reiterated in the meeting that they would not accept the $30,000 cap currently in the megabill draft.

The speaker also brought Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) into the conversation via speakerphone, according to the people, after SALT members asked her to leave a recent meeting amid concerns she was more sympathetic to her Republican colleagues on the Ways and Means Committee than her fellow New York lawmakers.

Another Republican involved in the talks, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said they were optimistic that the speaker would “pull a rabbit out of a hat again.” Negotiators in the room were working to find “a sweet spot” on SALT and things were moving in a positive direction, the Republican said.

Lawmakers submitted a host of requests for estimates of how certain changes would fit together, and they are now waiting to get the data before making bigger alterations. Many “more details” are needed to figure out the funding puzzle around SALT, according to another person with direct knowledge of the talks.

Johnson, leaving the meeting at one point, told reporters he was committed to working through a slew of major issues potentially impeding passage of the party-line package central to enacting President Donald Trump’s domestic agenda.

“I’ve committed to working through the weekend on it,” Johnson told reporters. He added they would get to “a point” where it can go on the floor.

He was optimistic that the bill could still pass the chamber by his Memorial Day target, but significant hurdles remain.

Hard-liners are pushing for deeper Medicaid cuts — including moving up the start date of the new federal work requirements embedded in the bill, which currently wouldn’t go into effect until 2029. Moderates are wary of making deeper cuts to Medicaid and are expecting to meet with GOP leaders later Thursday.

“For me, the numbers matter. I don’t want to, you know, get further into debt, and the deficit is important to me,” Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas) said. “The numbers don’t add up.”

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said lawmakers need to factor in Medicaid work requirements and how to ensure states that have not yet expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act aren’t incentivized to expand.

One key hard-right negotiator, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), left the meeting early after again panning the current bill in a morning TV appearance.

GOP leaders want to advance the megabill next week, sending it first to the Budget Committee Friday, then to the Rules Committee and — they hope — on to the floor.

“It’s going to come up in Rules on Monday, and we’ll be voting on it next week,” said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), leaving the closed-door meeting Thursday.

Hailey Fuchs, Benjamin Guggenheim and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

Democratic lawmakers are trying to block billions of dollars in arms sales to two Middle Eastern countries to protest investments in President Donald Trump’s personal business and a jet offered to him.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) plans to force a vote on five major arms sales to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar valued at $3.5 billion following Qatar’s offer to gift a luxury Boeing aircraft to use as Air Force One and the UAE’s move to invest $2 billion in Trump’s cryptocurrency venture. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) plans to co-lead the measures to block UAE arms sales.

The vote offers Democrats — who have struggled to form a message in opposition to Trump’s agenda — a line of attack that could resonate with voters. And it deals a tough vote to Republicans, who will have to choose between their allegiance to the president and their ethical and logistical concerns.

The resolutions target the sale to Qatar of MQ-9 Reaper drones and joint direct attack munitions, as well as other munitions and radar systems worth $1.9 billion.

“This isn’t a gift out of the goodness of their hearts — it’s an illegal bribe that the president of the United States is chomping at the bit to accept,” Murphy said in an interview. Unless Qatar revoked its offer to give Trump the plane, he said, he would move to block the arms sale.

The lawmakers are trying to introduce similar resolutions to block sales to the UAE of around $1.6 billion, including Chinook helicopters, munitions and support for the UAE’s fleet of Apache and Black Hawk helicopters.

The measures will be introduced as so-called joint resolutions of disapproval, which would force a floor vote. It’s unclear whether the resolutions will pass, but they could gain the support of a few Republican lawmakers uncomfortable with the arrangements.

Administration officials and some Republican allies in Congress have dismissed the criticism leveled by Murphy and others against the president.

“Chris Murphy is running for president,” Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair, said Tuesday on Fox News, in response to Murphy’s criticism of the potential deals. “The Middle East is, like I said, changing every day. The more President Trump can convince those people that they should have an investment in the United States, the closer we get the less likely we are to have problems.”

The White House National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.

The Qatar plane deal has opened a fresh — and rare — instance of Republicans joining Democrats to push back against the Trump administration.

Republicans, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), have voiced skepticism, if not outright opposition, over the optics and logistics of Trump’s plans to accept a luxury jet from a Middle Eastern nation.

Lawmakers and experts argue the gift would come at a huge cost to taxpayers since officials would need to overhaul the jet to meet security needs. Trump has proposed that the jet, after his time in office, would stay at his presidential library, which some lawmakers have criticized as inappropriate.

“I have some concerns about the aircraft coming to the United States from the Qataris, from a security aspect,” House Armed Services Vice Chair Rob Wittman (R-Va.) said Thursday at POLITICO’s Security Summit. “Air Force One has a very specific function, has things that it has to have on board. All the questions, too, of accepting gifts from foreign governments, all those ethical questions, I think all those are very pertinent questions that need to be answered.”