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House approves stopgap funding bill, putting shutdown ball in the Senate’s court

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The House has passed a seven-week stopgap funding bill, putting Congress on a path to avert a government shutdown Oct. 1, when current funding is set to expire. That is, if the Senate can pass the measure, too.

The 217-212 vote went almost along party lines — a victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, who could only afford to lose two votes if all Democrats stuck together in opposition. GOP Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Victoria Spartz of Indiana voted “no,” while Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) voted “yes” in the only party defections.

The short-term patch spearheaded by Republicans is aimed at buying lawmakers more time to negotiate new funding levels for agencies across the federal government. But Democrats in both chambers are irate Republicans are plowing ahead with a product they say was crafted with little input from their side of the aisle.

As such, the measure is expected to fail in the Senate later Friday, prolonging the brinksmanship as lawmakers prepare to leave town for a weeklong break ahead of the midnight deadline at month’s end.

Democrats are continuing to demand any funding measure include an extension of expiring enhanced subsidies for Obamacare insurance, which GOP leaders say should be dealt with outside the government funding process. They have introduced an alternative funding measure that would float federal operations for just a month and include the health care language, along with provisions designed to prevent President Donald Trump from clawing back funding previously approved by Congress.

“When Donald Trump says don’t even bother to deal with Democrats, he says he wants a shutdown. Plain and simple,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday. “You need our votes. To say not to bother with us is saying you don’t want a shutdown.”

The Senate will take procedural votes on both parties’ offers Friday afternoon; each is expected to fail to achieve the necessary 60-vote threshold to succeed, putting lawmakers no closer to a solution to avoid a shutdown.

The House-passed bill would keep federal agencies funded through Nov. 21. It would allow the Trump administration to spend more freely on the WIC nutrition program that serves low-income pregnant women, infants and children, satisfying a request made by the White House.

It would release the D.C. government’s full budget, which is mostly funded through locally raised revenue. Congress blocked the capital city’s authority to spend its own tax dollars back in mid-March, creating a roughly $1 billion hole in the city budget.

The legislation also would allocate $30 million for lawmaker security and $58 million to provide enhanced protection for members of the executive branch and justices on the Supreme Court — reflecting a major priority for Congress amid a surge of political violence and the assassination of Charlie Kirk.

In prior days, Johnson has heard from a number of his members demanding that even more money for lawmaker security be included in the government funding package — beyond the $30 million that had already been tacked on to bolster the program that coordinates Capitol Police and local law enforcement to protect members when at home in their districts.

Minutes before the vote, House GOP leaders pitched several holdouts on a standalone member security package in October, according to three people with direct knowledge. Johnson is also directing his colleagues to focus on changes to the full-year fiscal 2026 legislative branch spending bill, which is in the thick of bipartisan and bicameral negotiations and will be the vehicle for additional security investments.

Last minute headaches aside, this House-passed bill marks the second time this year that Republicans have managed to pass government funding legislation without needing any Democratic support. It also marks the continuation of a major shift for the House GOP Conference, where fiscal conservatives who rarely vote for spending bills signed on, saving Republicans from needing Democratic support to bail them out.

Even more striking was the unity among those conservatives advocating for a continuing resolution, which has for many years been anathema to House hard-liners like those in the Freedom Caucus. But these fiscal hawks banked on the stopgap solution being a more conservative deal than a bipartisan negotiated funding patch. Plus, Trump called on House Republicans to clear the measure this week.

Jennifer Scholtes and Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

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Congress

DHS stopgap set for quick House action after Rules Committee vote

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The House Rules Committee advanced a measure Friday evening that would fund the entirety of the Homeland Security Department through May 22 — without setting up debate or a separate vote on the funding bill itself.

The panel, after a raucous meeting that devolved into shouting at multiple points, voted 8-4 on party lines to advance the measure to the floor.

The rule includes a “deem and pass” provision, a tactic that allows legislation to be passed by the House automatically once the rule itself is adopted. While there will be one hour of floor debate and a vote on the rule, there will not be a standalone House vote on the DHS spending bill.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) described himself as needing “a neck brace” from the whiplash of hearing Republicans argue for hours that the Senate’s early-morning voice vote on a different DHS funding measure was “shameful” for lack of transparency and accountability.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) accused the Senate of moving their bill “in the middle of the night, with the smell of jet fumes in the air,” lamenting that the House was left “to take it or leave it.”

House leaders, McGovern suggested, have chosen a similar path by fast-tracking the eight-week DHS stopgap.

“You’re in charge,” he told Rules Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). “You can do whatever the hell you want to do.”

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Rand Paul weighs a 2028 presidential bid

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is considering a bid for president in 2028, as Republicans jockey for the future of the GOP post-Trump.

In a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview airing Sunday, a reporter asked Paul about an article that implied he would be running for president.

“We’re thinking about it,” Paul said. “I would say fifty-fifty,” adding that he would make a final decision after the midterm elections.

Paul ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 with a libertarianism-focused campaign but ultimately dropped out after a poor performance in the Iowa caucuses and a shortage of cash. He instead ran for reelection to the Senate.

Paul has had a complex relationship with his own party and with President Donald Trump, often finding himself the lone Republican on certain issues. More recently, he was the only Republican to support a joint resolution that would limit Trump’s war powers in Iran.

His father, former Rep. Ron Paul, also ran for president three times: first as a Libertarian in 1988, and twice as a Republican in 2008 and 2012.

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Congress

‘Meltdown’: DHS shutdown set to drag on after House GOP rejects Senate deal

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House Republicans moved Friday to further extend the six-week shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security by rejecting a Senate bill that would fund the vast majority of DHS agencies through September.

Instead, Speaker Mike Johnson proposed a temporary extension of DHS funding through May 22 — a plan that has uncertain prospects in the House and certainly won’t pass the Senate before the shutdown becomes the longest funding lapse in U.S. history Saturday.

But Johnson said House Republicans simply could not swallow the Senate bill, which omits funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Border Patrol and some other parts of Customs and Border Protection.

“The Republicans are not going to be any part of any effort to reopen our borders or to stop immigration enforcement,” he said. “We are going to deport dangerous criminal illegal aliens because it is a basic function of the government. The Democrats fundamentally disagree.”

The move toward an eight-week stopgap creates a tactical gulf between Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who called an end to weeks of abortive bipartisan talks Thursday and pushed through the funding bill in hopes of tacking on funding later for ICE and CBP in a party-line budget reconciliation bill.

President Donald Trump has largely stayed out of the GOP infighting on Capitol Hill, keeping his criticism trained on Democrats. He ordered DHS to pay TSA officers Thursday as long security lines snarls more U.S. airports.

Johnson played down the split with his Senate counterpart, saying the Democratic leader there bore more blame for the impasse.

“I wouldn’t call John Thune the engineer of this,” he said. “Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the Senate have forced this upon the Senate. I have to protect the House. … Our colleagues on this side understand this is not a game. We are not playing their games.”

Thune said early Friday morning he did not speak directly to Johnson in the final hours leading up to the Senate’s voice vote, but he said they had texted. He acknowledged he did not know in advance how the House would handle the Senate bill.

“Hopefully they’ll be around, and we can get at least a lot of the government opened up again, and then we’ll go from there,” he said.

Johnson made his game plan clear with House Republicans on a private call just minutes before addressing reporters in the Capitol, according to four people granted anonymity to describe the call. He warned that a failure to advance the short-term DHS stopgap would upend GOP plans for a reconciliation bill, the people said.

He suggested the Senate could quickly clear the stopgap measure once it passes the House. Most senators have left Washington for a recess running through April 13, but Johnson said the chamber could approve the House measure by unanimous consent at a planned pro forma session Monday.

But some House Republicans on the private call, including Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, aired doubts it could pass the Senate — or even the House. Some fellow GOP centrists argued that the House should just swallow the Senate bill and end the standoff.

The House plan for a 60-day stopgap won a cold reception in the Senate, with even Republicans warning it will only prolong the partial government shutdown.

The plan is instead fueling frustration among both Republicans and Democrats who view House Republicans as essentially throwing temper tantrum. Three people granted anonymity to speak candidly each described the House as having a “meltdown.”

Schumer publicly slammed the House GOP plan Friday, saying it was “dead on arrival” across the Capitol, “and Republicans know it.”

A Senate GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly added that the quickest way to end the shutdown is for the House to pass the Senate bill.

Five people granted anonymity to comment on Senate dynamics said there was no possibility that Democrats would let the House GOP plan pass during the Senate’s brief pro forma sessions over the next two weeks. It would only take one Democratic senator to show up and object to any attempt to pass it.

The bill, according to the five people, also can’t get 60 votes in the Senate once the chamber returns. Democrats have previously rejected even shorter stopgaps, leaving some to privately question why House Republicans would ever think their plan would work.

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