Expect lots of attention this week on the GOP immigration enforcement bill and whether White House ballroom security funding can be included — we’ve got plenty on that political drama below.

Meanwhile, there’s a quiet scramble underway to get bipartisan legislating done this week before the midterms loom too large — if President Donald Trump doesn’t screw it up.

Before next week’s Memorial Day recess, GOP lawmakers will try to pass bipartisan measures on affordable housing and college athletics regulation.

Legislation with Republican and Democratic backers regulating cryptocurrencies, overhauling the energy permitting process, governing AI use, boosting U.S. manufacturing and reauthorizing a landmark public lands package are also in the works for the coming months.

Interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers revealed a genuine interest in making progress on long-stalled measures in the few short months before the home stretch of midterm campaigning begins. Members of both parties also see passing legislation as critical to combating a narrative with voters that Capitol Hill is mired in all-time political dysfunction and a lack of productivity.

Strikingly, some of the most reliably conservative members are sounding downright conciliatory: Both Rep. Jason Smith of House Ways and Means and Sen. Mike Lee of Senate Energy and Natural Resources say they want to make progress on cryptocurrency taxation and permitting deals.

“I believe in bipartisan work,” Sen. Raphael Warnock said. “But it has been my experience that the closer you get to an election, the harder it is to get that kind of work done. There’s no question about it.”

Still, over the weekend, Trump doused the prospects for bipartisan passage of two measures — the housing bill and a measure reauthorizing government spy powers — when he demanded his signature election security bill ride along.

The SAVE America Act would institute new voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements for federal elections while also banning transgender women from participating in women’s sports, among other provisions.

Combining either bipartisan bill with the SAVE Act, which Trump has called his “No. 1 priority” ahead of the midterms, would almost certainly jeopardize the broader legislations’ chances of getting through Congress.

What else we’re watching: 

— GOP RACES TO RE-WRITE TRUMP BALLROOM FUNDING: The GOP’s own reconciliation bill — which Republican leaders in both chambers will try to ram through this week — may also undermine the bipartisan vibes on Capitol Hill. The Senate Budget panel will meet Wednesday morning to assemble the bill in advance of a marathon vote session potentially stretching from Thursday into early Friday morning. The House would then attempt to take up the legislation for final passage Friday. Over the weekend, the Senate’s parliamentarian handed Democrats a win when she ruled against another Trump priority tucked in the bill to fund up to $1 billion for White House ballroom security and other Secret Service measures

— SCORE ACT HURDLES AHEAD — House Republican leaders might have trouble passing a long-stalled college athletics bill, which is expected to be on the floor during the later part of the week. A handful of Republican hard-liners were noncommittal Friday on whether they would support the procedural rule vote for the bipartisan bill, which addresses name, image and likeness rights for student athletes, among other provisions. The bill, known as the SCORE Act, was already pulled from a scheduled floor vote at the end of last year amid a hard-liner revolt on various aspects of the measure.

Jordain Carney and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

As Republicans and Democrats prepare to battle each other for control of the House and Senate, they are also scrambling to pass legislative priorities that require working together — a tall order after months of bitter infighting.

Before members depart for a Memorial Day recess, the House GOP majority will try this week to ram through a party-line immigration enforcement package but also attempt to pass bipartisan housing affordability legislation and a bill that would revamp college athletics regulations.

Senate Republicans, when not moving the filibuster-skirting immigration bill through their own chamber, are also expected to be conferring with Democratic counterparts on bipartisan deals around a companion college athletics proposal and a framework for overhauling the federal permitting process for energy projects. There’s continued discussion on how to resolve differences on legislation that would fundamentally change how digital assets are regulated after the so-called Clarity Act advanced out of the Senate Banking Committee last week following House passage last summer.

And Rep. Jason Smith of House Ways and Means and Sen. Mike Lee of Senate Energy and Natural Resources, two of the most notoriously partisan committee chairs, struck conciliatory tones in recent days about their desire to work with Democrats on a framework for the taxation of cryptocurrency and streamlining energy permitting, respectively.

There’s also a desire for collaboration not just between the parties but between Republican-led chambers, too — a sentiment GOP senators shared with Speaker Mike Johnson last week when he crossed the Capitol to attend the Senate Republicans’ weekly closed-door luncheon.

“Let’s be working on things” was the message Senate Republicans conveyed to Johnson, according to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “Progress on things like that are good.”

Johnson, in an interview later, called the meeting “a great visit” where “we talked about how the two chambers can and should work closely together. We’re committed to that.”

Interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers revealed a genuine interest in making progress on long-stalled measures in the few short months before the home stretch of midterm campaigning begins. Members of both parties also see passing legislation as critical to combating a narrative with voters that Capitol Hill is mired in all-time political dysfunction and lack of productivity.

“I believe in bipartisan work,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.). “But it has been my experience that the closer you get to an election, the harder it is to get that kind of work done.”

Despite the happy talk amid the rapidly closing window for legislative action, however, real challenges and a lack of trust remain. The latest curve ball: President Donald Trump’s social media post over the weekend proposing Republicans wedge a partisan election security bill into the pending housing affordability package or a reauthorization of a key spy authority.

Even before that demand, however, Johnson — who often finds himself trying to cater to his most conservative members to move bills on the House floor — wasthreatening to blow up bipartisan and bicameral negotiations on the housing bill, which the GOP sees as central to its midterm message on lowering costs for everyday Americans. The speaker has said he plans to put the measure on the floor this week and allow his members to vote on policy changes Senate Republicans and the White House warn they can’t accept.

Johnson is also negotiating changes to the college athletics bill known as the SCORE Act. That’s to appease hard-liners who have issues with provisions in the bill relating to scholarships for international students, among other things. Already, some tweaks were made to woo Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), a former holdout.

“We don’t know the status of the overall bill. It really just depends on what Speaker Chip Roy says we can do,” quipped Rep. Shomari Figures of Alabama, one of the Democrats who has been working on the legislation that would set new standards for how college athletes are paid.

Trump has made it clear he wants to see passage of the SCORE Act, saying in recent months he’ll use his executive authority to enforce a set of rules surrounding eligibility, transfers and compensation in college sports that aim to protect college athletes.

Lawmakers also said in interviews this week that there are bipartisan talks underway about a reauthorization of a landmark public lands package known as the Great American Outdoors Act, a regulatory framework governing the use of artificial intelligenceand a bill to boost American manufacturing.

Smith, of Missouri, told attendeesof a tax conference Thursday that the Ways and Means panel can “do things on health care, trade and tax from a bipartisan perspective, and I intend to do that in the next few months.”

Lee, of Utah, in a recent interview said there was “a lot of shared interest” in a permitting deal and that lawmakers are exchanging drafts with hopes of releasing bill text in the coming weeks.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), meanwhile, emphasized there’s also a list of must-pass bills that can’t be ignored. That includes the government funding bills, the farm bill and a surface transportation bill.

The House passed its first appropriations bill last week to fund the Department of Veterans Affairs in an encouraging 400-15 vote, but other funding bills won’t be so easy. It also passed its version of the farm bill earlier in the month alongside a separate measure to allow year-round sales of a gasoline blend known as E15, which a Senate GOP aide last week called a “nonstarter.”

“All of them have to be done,” Lankford said. “This is not a ‘pick your favorite child.’ … Whatever we can get on first and get going, we need to get going on it.”

Mia McCarthy and Brian Faler contributed to this report.

The fight for voting rights, self-governance and eventual statehood for the nation’s capital has had one consistent national face for nearly three decades: House Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Now the 88-year-old Democrat is retiring after having been a diminished presence in recent years, and the candidates to replace her in Congress are debating how to redefine a job that comes with little concrete power but a significant public megaphone.

They are seeking to balance the need to be an aggressive national advocate as President Donald Trump chips away at the District of Columbia’s autonomy with the delegate’s historical role as a behind-the-scenes operator who works inside the halls of Congress to get things done on the city’s behalf.

Norton, who came of age in the Civil Rights Movement, saw success on both fronts. She helped engineer aid for the city in the 1990s and secure local control of key federal property, among other lobbying triumphs. She also occasionally garnered national attention for the city’s status — including multiple viral appearances on “The Colbert Report.”

But Norton has hardly been a cable-news fixture or social-media standout, and many of the younger candidates to replace her are hoping to change that.

“I believe that, where we are in history, the delegate needs to have a higher national profile,” Robert White, one of two D.C. Council members in the race, said in an interview. “Because people can’t support an issue that they don’t understand, so I need to make sure the rest of the nation understands D.C.”

Brooke Pinto — the other local legislator who, like White, is considered a front-runner — played up the communications demands while also saying the more prosaic parts of the job cannot be neglected.

“This seat has to be held by someone who can manage that legislative process and build those coalitions,” Pinto said, “but also can be an effective and authentic messenger to people across the city, across the country and across the world.”

Pinto, 33, and White, 44, are battling ahead of the June 16 election for the Democratic nomination — which tends to guarantee victory in the deep-blue District — alongside former federal nuclear regulator Greg Jaczko, former Norton aide Trent Holbrook and former Justice Department and DNC official Kinney Zalesne. It is the first time since 1990 that Norton won’t be on the ballot.

The victor will inherit what is both one of the most consequential political offices in the District and one of the least inherently powerful. Delegates do not get a vote on the House floor, denying them the foundation of political clout in the House, but Norton was able to carve out spheres of influence on the Oversight and Transportation committees and as a key intermediary on matters involving the city.

“Most of the power is not in law, it is in tradition,” White said. “If the next person stepping into the role doesn’t know where the power is, it’s gone, and it will take at best several decades to reaccumulate it.”

But Trump’s recent hardball moves — including commandeering the D.C. police department for a time and sending in National Guard troops to patrol the city, not to mention undermining the city’s economy by decimating the federal workforce — have put more emphasis on resistance tactics than backroom operating.

Pinto said she would bring D.C. residents into other states to educate them on the city’s unique issues, arguing there must be electoral consequences for lawmakers who fail to support D.C.

“We have to really support our friends who are pro-D.C. statehood,” she said. “And we have to make clear to people who are not supportive that they are not on this team.”

Statehood has long been the north star for D.C. activists, but it has not been a front-burner issue for national Democrats. Norton spent years pursuing efforts to gain only partial congressional voting rights for the city but later engineered a pair of successful House votes backing statehood, which was also added to the 2024 Democratic platform.

While D.C. statehood would mean adding two likely Democrats to the Senate as well as a full member of the House, party leaders have not fully embraced the issue — even when they last controlled Congress and the White House under former President Joe Biden.

Several candidates said they would be pushing their fellow Democrats to put the District closer to the top of the party’s priority list.

“D.C. issues are on the list of Democratic priorities, but they’re never at the top,” Zalesne, 59, said. “So in order to elevate our issues, we have a lot of relationship-building to do and a lot of advocacy and persuasion to do.”

Holbrook, 40, said in an interview he would “be a little bit more aggressive in calling out people who attack our home rule, especially the Democratic side.”

Zalesne is leaning heavily on her party-insider cred in her campaign, touting endorsements from Democratic Reps. Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico, Suhas Subramanyam of Virginia and Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey.

White has the backing of PACs affiliated with the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus, as well as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), while Pinto has the support of Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.).

White has also talked about campaigning in swing districts and targeting lawmakers who have gone after the city. But he is also making the case that Democratic Party leaders should embrace D.C. statehood as a way to offset recent GOP political hardball: If Democrats can invest in redistricting to gain a political edge, he argued, why shouldn’t they also promote statehood?

The new delegate will have to build close ties with a relatively new House Democratic leadership team fronted by New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who has consistently voted to protect D.C.’s autonomy but said little about expanding it.

The irony is that many of the District’s biggest congressional wins in recent decades have come only with the participation of Republicans. A longtime Norton goal — transferring the land under RFK Stadium to city control for development — occurred in 2024 with the backing of scores of GOP lawmakers.

That has candidates like Pinto appreciating the tightrope Norton walked for so many years, even as they pledge to inject more energy into the office she held.

“I really want to build on that legacy, and I also recognize that in 2026 … with a hyperpartisan political environment, we also have to do things a little bit differently,” Pinto said.