Donald Trump has a big speaking engagement Wednesday night — and there’s no telling whether he’ll help or hurt the GOP’s Capitol Hill agenda.

The president is slated to address House Republicans at the NRCC’s annual dinner — the day after Democrats flipped a Florida statehouse seat that includes his home at Mar-a-Lago.

The last time Trump addressed the GOP conference, earlier this month in Florida, he sparked a slew of headaches for his party by insisting on passage of a partisan elections bill that has little chance of becoming law.

This time could be no different. Trump has so far hardly delivered a ringing public endorsement of a potential deal to end the DHS shutdown he reportedly signed off on, and which congressional Republican leaders need him to back if it has a chance of passing in the coming days. He also has yet to intervene in a standoff between the two chambers over a housing affordability package Republicans want to use as a centerpiece of their midterm messaging.

Here’s what we’ll be listening for:

— DHS deal or no deal?: Trump could make or break a potential agreement to end the DHS shutdown, which got a cool reception Tuesday on Capitol Hill across the board even ahead of Democrats’ expected counteroffer Wednesday.

Part of the proposal Republicans brokered with the White House includes attempts to morph sections of the SAVE America Act into a party-line budget reconciliation bill. But many conservatives see that a cop out from having to pass the full GOP elections overhaul bill, which does not currently have the votes to overcome the Senate filibuster. The House Freedom Caucus called it “gaslighting.”

Republicans are also getting a reality check on whether pursuing another reconciliation effort is even feasible. While Republicans are vowing to plow ahead, many predict the treacherous process will ultimately fail.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a Budget Committee member who chairs the Republican Steering Committee, predicted it would be “very difficult” to get the votes for reconciliation and compared it to a “pipe dream.”

— Housing stalemate: For weeks, Republicans have wanted the president to help resolve the impasse between the House and Senate over their competing housing proposals.

The stalemate doesn’t appear close to resolution, especially if Trump continues to stay out of the fight. House Republicans on Tuesday shot down one idea the Senate floated to get the House to accept its legislation. It would have attached a slate of community bank deregulatory bills to a separate cryptocurrency package.

“So our good stuff for their bad stuff — not sure I buy that,” said Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), who serves as vice chair of House Financial Services.

Despite Trump insisting earlier that Republicans don’t need to show they’re committed to lowering costs of everyday goods and services to win elections in November, plenty of GOP lawmakers worry about the political price of failing to enact a unified vision for making housing more affordable.

What else we’re watching: 

— No polymarket for politicians?: Reps. Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.) and Adrian Smith (R-Neb.) will introduce bipartisan legislation Wednesday morning to prohibit members of Congress, the president, the vice president and others in the executive branch from trading in certain prediction markets, according to bill text shared exclusively with Blue Light News.

The Preventing Real-time Exploitation and Deceptive Insider Congressional Trading Act, or PREDICT Act, would also extend to dependents and spouses of lawmakers, senior congressional staff, political appointees and senior executive branch employees, including special government employees.

— Bipartisan energy in tax policy: The House Ways and Means Committee will mark up five bills with cross-party appeal Wednesday morning as Hill taxwriters consider what policies might be included in a year-end bipartisan tax package. Among the items on a docket is a measure that would allow taxpayers to temporarily write off disaster-related losses without itemizing their deductions.

Katherine Tully-McManus, Jennifer Scholtes, Jordain Carney, Meredith Lee Hill, Jasper Goodman and Bernie Becker contributed to this report.

Republicans are hitting the gas on a new party-line policy bill. They are fully aware it might end up in the ditch.

The renewed push for budget reconciliation — spawned out of a Monday meeting between President Donald Trump and a group of GOP senators — marks the best shot Republicans have had in months to enact key agenda items without Democratic cooperation. House and Senate conservatives have clamored for a second attempt this Congress, following last summer’s tax-cuts-focused megabill, without much success.

But GOP leaders face a tall order in wrangling their thin margins and the hodgepodge of policy ideas already being pitched by their competing factions — or watching the effort collapse due to infighting.

Underscoring the massive challenge, some Republicans are stressing they aren’t committing to pass another bill under the reconciliation process — which could allow them to avoid a Democratic filibuster in the Senate — they are just promising to give it a try.

“The odds would be like 100 percent,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in an interview about the chances Republicans will attempt another reconciliation bill. “Now, do we pass it?”

The latest vision for a GOP reconciliation bill would build the legislation around new funding for immigration enforcement that Democrats are refusing to pass, plus parts of the SAVE America Act — the Republican elections overhaul that doesn’t have a path to passing the Senate. GOP lawmakers believe incentives for states to adopt new policies such as voter ID rules could comply with the Senate’s strict rules for reconciliation.

“I would keep it as simple as possible so it could pass,” Johnson said.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said in an interview that keeping the bill narrow would help raise the odds that Republicans would be able to get something across the finish line.

“If you want to keep all of our members tight … we need to agree to the parameters and not allow scope creep,” Tillis said.

Keeping the scope of the reconciliation bill narrower would have an added political benefit for Senate Republicans — it would limit the slate of issues on which Democrats could force simple-majority votes as they try to squeeze vulnerable GOP incumbents just months before the midterms.

But there is already outright skepticism, and in some cases early signs of opposition, inside the Senate GOP. Republicans can lose up to three senators and still pass a party-line bill.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is facing a tough reelection bid, said she thought reconciliation was not a “good approach.” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), a Budget Committee member who chairs the Republican Steering Committee, predicted it would be “very difficult” to get the votes and compared it to a “pipe dream.”

“You know me, I’m not a big fan of reconciliation,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) added when asked if she wanted to pursue a new party-line bill.

It’s not just the Senate where GOP leaders are facing an uphill battle to pass both a budget resolution — a key prerequisite for reconciliation — as well as the bill itself.

A big risk of pursuing a second reconciliation bill is House conservatives seeking to include potentially billions of dollars in cuts to the social safety net and other long-brewing proposals that will “scare the hell out of” vulnerable Republican lawmakers ahead of the midterms, according to one senior House GOP aide granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamics.

Even House GOP chatter about trying to add in extra Pentagon funding is sparking warnings from their Senate counterparts. One GOP senator, also granted anonymity to speak candidly, predicted that a heavy injection of defense spending could “kill the whole thing.”

Several House Republicans granted anonymity to speak candidly about the dynamics said they do not believe GOP leaders will be able to muster the multiple near-unanimous GOP votes needed to get another reconciliation bill through the House.

At a leadership meeting Tuesday, senior House Republicans voiced concerns about whether adding the SAVE America Act to a reconciliation bill would be a futile exercise, according to two people in the room.

That’s because of procedural reality: Most of the contentious elections bill won’t pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian, whose guidance on the reconciliation process is typically final.

The House Freedom Caucus called the Senate GOP plan “gaslighting” Tuesday morning. And Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said Tuesday that it’s “hard to imagine” how it could pass under the budget process.

“And by ‘hard’ I mean ‘essentially impossible,’” Lee added on X.

Republicans are discussing how they might induce states to implement some of the SAVE America Act’s voter ID requirements. Senate Budget Committee Republicans met Tuesday for what senators described as a meeting to “touch gloves” as members plotted how to enact ICE funding and parts of the election bill. Senate Republicans also discussed pursuing another reconciliation bill during a closed-door lunch Tuesday.

House Administration Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) separately circulated a list of proposals with key GOP offices on his side of the Capitol that would mandate or financially incentivize states to implement voter ID laws, require proof of citizenship for voter registration, share voter data with federal agencies for verification and conduct post-election audits, among other items, according to a document obtained by POLITICO.

Some of those items appeared unlikely to pass scrutiny with the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, whose rulings tend to be the final word on the reconciliation process.

GOP senators could overrule her, but Majority Leader John Thune vowed Tuesday that they would comply with her guidance. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) also batted away a question about overruling her, calling it a “hypothetical.”

But Republican leaders are otherwise being careful not to make any pronouncements about where the latest reconciliation push will end up. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said only that they are “looking at a lot of different options to see if we’ve got a consensus.”

Thune added that he would need to be “pretty sure” any proposal has the requisite 50 votes before the Senate embarked on the initial and time-consuming step of approving a budget resolution, which unlocks the reconciliation process.

“We’re just trying to make sure we keep our expectations realistic,” he said.

House Republicans are rejecting the prospect of accepting a Senate housing package in exchange for the upper chamber including a slate of community bank deregulatory bills in pending cryptocurrency legislation, dashing hopes that the trade could resolve a housing bill standoff between the two bodies.

“So our good stuff for their bad stuff — not sure I buy that,” said Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.), who serves as vice chair of the House Financial Services Committee.

Senate Banking Republicans discussed the possible trade at a closed-door meeting last week. Sen. Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican who chairs a Senate Banking subcommittee on housing, helped pitch the idea to other GOP senators. But House lawmakers say adding their bipartisan banking bills to the crypto market structure measure is not enough to get them to swallow a Senate-approved housing affordability package that they hope to amend.

“There’s other things in the housing bill that we need to look at,” said Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.), who chairs a House Financial Services subcommittee on housing.

A spokesperson for Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Scott and Senate Banking ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are pushing the House to accept their bill as-is.

The House included the community bank deregulatory measures in a housing bill it passed in February, but the provisions were left out of the housing measure that the Senate passed this month. The banking bills, which supporters say will increase access to mortgages, are a priority for House Republicans, but they say they have an array of outstanding issues with the Senate’s housing bill that need to be addressed.

“This needs to be part of a conversation,” said Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa), who sits on House Financial Services. “Simply throwing something over from the Senate and expecting everybody to get on board with a half-baked idea doesn’t get us to where we need to be.”

Rep. Andy Barr, a senior Kentucky Republican on House Financial Services who is running for Senate, indicated he likes the idea of tucking bank deregulatory measures into the crypto legislation. But, he said, “we want some of our housing ideas included, too.”

“I don’t know why they wouldn’t entertain some of our bipartisan housing ideas,” he said.

Katherine Hapgood contributed to this report.