Congress
Shutdown anxiety rises on Capitol Hill amid Trump chaos
The president in charge during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history has returned to the White House, current government funding expires in less than six weeks — and on Capitol Hill, people are nervous.
It’s not just President Donald Trump’s history of leading the country through a 35-day funding lapse that has lawmakers worried about his appetite for another one in March. It’s also that Trump’s actions in his first two weeks back in office are stifling bipartisan negotiations toward a funding deal as the president — and his “government efficiency” chief, Elon Musk — work to bulldoze the federal bureaucracy while freezing billions of dollars Congress already enacted and firing federal workers.
“I don’t think anybody thinks a shutdown is a good thing. But the politics are such that we could certainly stumble into one without meaning to,” House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, said in a brief interview Tuesday.
The new president’s truculent first days in office have created an especially unfavorable climate on Capitol Hill for landing any cross-party accord, whether that’s a “grand funding deal” ahead of the government shutdown deadline or an agreement to lift the debt limit to prevent the U.S. from defaulting on more than $36 trillion in loans in the coming months.
While the Democratic leader in the House demands that Trump’s funding freeze be “choked off” as part of any funding agreement, Republican lawmakers say it will be Democrats who take the fall for causing a funding lapse if they hold that line. And so the shutdown blame game begins again.
“The president issued an executive order to curb spending. I highly doubt Republicans are going to rescind that. I don’t see that happening,” Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), the chair of the House Republican Conference, said late Tuesday. “That’s on Dems if they want to shut it down.”
Behind closed doors, Cole and Congress’ other three top appropriations are trying to strike a bipartisan deal on the first step toward funding the government by the March 14 deadline: One overall spending total for the military and another for non-defense programs. From there, it usually takes at least a month to negotiate and finalize the dozen individual funding bills. The clock is ticking fast.
The exasperated Democrats sitting opposite Cole at the negotiating table say any good faith agreement with their GOP counterparts is meaningless if Trump disregards the will of Congress by using “impoundment” to withhold funding they pass into law.
“If the White House is not going to honor an agreement and use impoundment, then it is hard to come to agreement,” Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, said in a brief interview Tuesday.
Democrats want Trump to unfreeze foreign aid and billions of dollars already promised to federal contractors and local governments, while also stopping Musk from dismantling agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development. They also want Trump to promise he will sign into law — and then actually follow — whatever bipartisan funding deal they might strike in the coming weeks, especially after he and Musk goaded GOP leaders into disavowing the December spending package all parties had previously approved.
“We need assurances. That’s all I’m going to say,” Murray said.
Congress’ four funding leaders — Murray and Cole, along with Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins and the House’s top Democratic appropriator, Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut — all praised each other’s efforts.
“Everybody in the room of goodwill, wanted to move forward” is how DeLauro described the ongoing funding negotiations between the so-called “four corners.”
But DeLauro is also wary. “Don’t tell me that all bets are off. That we’re going to come to a deal … and then all of a sudden Elon Musk or some other self-subscribed unchecked billionaire decides it’s not to his liking. Hell no.”
Trump already learned lessons on the toll of a government shutdown in late 2018 and early 2019, when funding to parts of the federal government lapsed for five weeks while he faced off with Democrats in Congress over funding for the border wall. It was a fight Trump ended up losing.
“I actually don’t think Donald Trump — having been through it — I don’t think he found it rewarding,” Sen. Kevin Cramer said Tuesday. “So I think he’s pretty serious about getting something done.”
The North Dakota Republican also noted the other main factor at play: the current fury of lawmakers in the minority party who have the power to tank a funding bill they don’t like given the narrow GOP majorities in both chambers. In the House, especially, are a number of fiscal conservatives who never vote for funding bills, no matter what. It means any funding bill will require Democratic support to pass.
“God, I hope that doesn’t happen. I mean, I really don’t,” Cramer said of the prospects of a government shutdown in March. “The Democrats aren’t in much of a mood to help.”
If top lawmakers can’t come to an agreement to keep the government funded, or if Trump bucks that deal, the new president would have some control over what federal efforts would continue beyond the March 14 deadline.
Trying to stem some of the public impact of the partial government shutdown in 2019, his administration tapped into park entrance fees to keep national parks open, a move federal watchdogs found in violation of the law. With Musk empowered now to compel entire government offices to shed staff or shutter entirely, the stakes are higher for what a federal funding lapse could entail this time around.
The effects are also, generally speaking, more difficult to quell the longer a government shutdown lasts, as benefit payments like SNAP food assistance are eventually withheld.
“These things get worse and worse and worse the longer they go on,” said Bobby Kogan, who served during the Biden administration as adviser to the White House budget director.
Kogan, who now works for the liberal Center for American Progress, said he is “skeptical of the idea that Trump will deliberately shut us down as another way to stop spending, because shutdowns are deeply unpopular.”
But Trump’s funding freeze and unwillingness to abide by funding caps enacted two years ago under then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden create a “real risk.”
Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.
Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley rescheduled a planned vote on Todd Blanche’s nomination as attorney general late Friday in a preemptive move as negotiations between the Trump administration and GOP holdouts continue.
The vote, now set for Tuesday after a scheduled Thursday vote was postponed, isn’t an indication that a deal allowing for Blanche’s confirmation is near, so much as it is a nod to Judiciary Committee rules that require three days of notice for a panel meeting.
There is no sign that President Donald Trump is about to acquiesce to the unflinching demands of Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who wants a controversial settlement agreement between Trump and the IRS substantially pared back.
Cornyn, who lost his primary to a Trump-endorsed candidate, wants the Justice Department to nullify a $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and limit the scope of a tax audit immunity component of the pact.
Trump told reporters earlier Friday the fund is “dead” but added “I wish it weren’t.”
“I’d like to see them compensated,” he added, referring to people he considers victims of government abuse, including participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
To advance Tuesday, Blanche needs to pick up Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another senator on the panel with similar concerns. He can’t lose any GOP votes if he wants to be reported favorably out of the Judiciary Committee.
“Chairman Grassley wants Todd Blanche’s nomination to be successful,” said a Judiciary Committee spokesperson, who declined to be named. “Noticing the markup gives more time for the White House to secure the votes for the President’s nominee. Grassley would like to see Blanche confirmed before the August recess as he has an excellent record restoring law and order and keeping Americans safe.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is zeroing in on one of House Republicans’ biggest contests — a purple district in Nebraska — when he starts his recess campaign sprint.
Scalise will travel to Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District in the Omaha area for an event with Republican Brinker Harding in the coming days, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter granted anonymity to share plans not yet made public. Republicans are digging in to defend the seat, which Kamala Harris won in the 2024 presidential race and is among Democrats’ best pick up opportunities this fall as they seek to flip the House.
Harding is running against Democratic consultant Denise Powell to replace retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon. Bacon, a moderate-leaning Republican, flipped the Omaha district red in 2016.
After Nebraska, Scalise is planning to travel across the country throughout August, including to defend GOP incumbents Mariannette Miller-Meeks’ and Zach Nunn’s key battleground seats in Iowa’s 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts and Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District.
He’ll boost candidates working to flip blue districts like Laurie Buckhout in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, Derek Merrin in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District and Mike LiPetri in New York’s 3rd Congressional District.
Scalise also plans to travel to Michigan, Colorado, South Carolina and Texas for campaign events over the August recess.
President Donald Trump goaded John Cornyn on social media Friday morning, accusing the Texas senator of withholding his vote on Todd Blanche’s attorney general nomination in retaliation for Trump’s central role in his political demise.
Cornyn, who lost his May primary to Texas’ scandal-ridden attorney general, the Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton, has threatened to block Blanche’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee until the White House promises to permanently shelve its $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” in writing — something Trump appears unwilling to do.
“John Cornyn never had a problem with the so called “Fund,” which will not benefit me, but rather the great American Patriots who were hunted down like dogs and whose lives were unfairly and illegally destroyed by the Crooked Joe Biden Administration, until after I decided to Endorse and Support his Republican Primary opponent in Texas, who easily won the Nomination for the United States Senate,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Several Republicans bristled at the fund, which could have been deployed to compensate Americans who faced charges after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and which gives the president and his family audit immunity over taxes. At his July confirmation hearing, Blanche said that the fund, part of a settlement the president reached with the IRS, was defunct. But the administration has been “reluctant to change” the text of the settlement, Cornyn told reporters Thursday.
Trump signaled his continued support for the Jan 6 rioters on Friday.
“I will always feel that these victims of government abuse should be paid back for what they were forced to endure, their lives have been ruined!” he wrote. “Millions of people agree with me, as was proven in my landslide Presidential win, where this was a major subject of debate, and so did John Cornyn, until he lost his Election to an opponent that I Endorsed.”
On Thursday, the president suggested that he could punt a Senate vote on Blanche until after Cornyn — and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — leaves the chamber at the end of the year. Cornyn, however, suggested on social media that there are other Republican senators with concerns about the fund.
“After the midterms, who knows who’s going to be the next United States senator from North Carolina or Texas?” Cornyn told reporters.
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