The White House is holding off on further DHS funding negotiations until the Senate confirms Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin to lead the agency, according to a White House official, granted anonymity to share internal thinking.

Democrats have previously canceled meetings, and given Mullin is close to confirmation, the official said, aides to President Donald Trump believe it’s better to wait so he can be a “full and active” participant in funding talks from the DHS side.

The White House earlier in the day rejected a Monday morning meetingwith a bipartisan group of senators who have been negotiating to end the DHS shutdown. Democrats had previously canceled a Saturday meeting.

The Senate is scheduled to vote on Mullin’s confirmation shortly before 8 p.m. Monday.

Some Senate Republicans are aiming to meet with Trump on Monday night to discuss the DHS funding situation, although no meeting has been officially scheduled.

The meeting, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, would be to try to pitch Trump on a plan to fund all of DHS except specific pieces of ICE, which have already been funded through last year’s megabill.

Trump was in Memphis, Tenn., earlier in the day, attending an anti-crime event and paying a visit to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s former home.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he expected additional meetings Monday but declined to say who was involved: “Conversations continue,” he said.

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Sen. Josh Hawley is launching an investigation into how the dominant player in credit scoring prices its services for the mortgage market.

The Missouri Republican sent a letter Monday to Fair Isaac Corp., known more widely by its acronym FICO, announcing his intention to investigate the company’s price increases for credit scores. The lawmaker also sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to do the same. Hawley argues that the increasing cost of credit scores is straining homebuyers in an already unaffordable market.

“These price increases are most damaging to the Americans who can least afford them. First-time homebuyers bear a disproportionate burden of the cost,” Hawley wrote in the letter to FICO, which was obtained exclusively by Blue Light News.

Hawley, who chairs a Judiciary Committee subpanel, added in his letter to the FTC that he wants the agency to “investigate unfair methods of competition and unfair or deceptive acts or practices” and that he believes it’s well-positioned “to investigate anticompetitive behavior at FICO” separate from his own probe.

FICO did not immediately return a request for comment.

Hawley has weighed in on the issue of rising credit score pricing before, but Monday’s letters draw one of the GOP’s key populist messengers further into a battle between FICO’s near-monopoly power and what some call an oligopoly of the three major credit bureaus, TransUnion, Equifax and Experian.

He is requesting FICO hand over a slew of documents and records as part of the investigation, which he said could meld into a separate, larger Judiciary Committee investigation into “potentially anticompetitive practices in the credit scoring market.”

FICO sells its algorithm for determining credit scores to the three bureaus, which collect consumer data to produce a larger credit report. (The bureaus are rolling out a competitor model, VantageScore.) Lenders use credit reports to determine potential homebuyers’ eligibility for a loan and charge those homebuyers for the cost of purchasing that information.

The credit bureaus raised alarm last year over significant increases in FICO’s prices — from 60 cents to $10 over the last five years. Lenders say that those costs can inflate to hundreds of dollars added to a homebuyer’s mortgage.

The White House turned down a Monday morning meeting with a bipartisan group of senators who have been negotiating an end to the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, according to three people granted anonymity to disclose private discussions.

“Hopefully, a meeting gets set soon once Senate Republicans and the White House get on the same page. This comes as there’s been some positive headway in talks, particularly on body-worn cameras, sensitive locations, officer IDs, and training standards, with conversations continuing on masks, warrants, and use of force standards,” one of the people said.

Senators had hoped to meet Monday with Trump’s border czar Tom Homan morning after a Saturday meeting was canceled by Democrats.