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Congress

The next shutdown threat is around the corner

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The longest shutdown in U.S. history is ending. Yet Congress’ most onerous government funding work remains unfinished — setting up a potential repeat early next year.

The bipartisan deal to end the funding lapse includes a long-term agreement on just three of the dozen bills lawmakers need to finish each year to keep cash flowing to federal programs. And those three measures are some of the easiest to rally around — including money for veterans programs, food aid, assistance for farmers and the operations of Congress itself.

Together, they represent only about 10 percent of the roughly $1.8 trillion Congress doles out each year to federal agencies. Under the deal, everything else is funded on a temporary basis through Jan. 30 at levels first set by Congress in March 2024, when Joe Biden was president.

That leaves behind major open decisions about the vast majority of discretionary dollars — including for the military and public health programs — along with the stickiest policy issues. It doesn’t help that House and Senate leaders still haven’t agreed on an overall total for fiscal 2026 spending, amid GOP divisions over how deeply to cut.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise acknowledged this month that the hardest part of the funding negotiations is ahead after President Donald Trump signs the current deal to end the shutdown.

“We’ve got to just find a resolution to get the lights back on,” Scalise said. “But the real negotiation is going to be: Can we get an agreement on how to properly fund the government with individual appropriations bills, packages of appropriations bills?”

If lawmakers don’t figure it all out by the new January deadline, Congress risks another partial shutdown or running most of the federal government on what are essentially two-year-old budgets. Some Democrats are already hinting they are willing to shut down the government again without a deal on Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies that expire at the end of this year.

Compounding the challenge are fears that partisan strife during the six-week shutdown will only complicate the already-grueling task of striking a cross-party compromise.

“If we’re going to function again, we’ve got to be able to trust each other,” senior appropriator Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) told reporters this week, after helping broker the deal to end the shutdown.

The three-bill deal appears to have done little to repair the breach. One of Congress’ top four appropriators, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), objected to how final negotiations played out over the weekend to close out the funding package.

“The entire House was marginalized in this process,” she said Tuesday night during a Rules Committee meeting.

DeLauro accused Senate Republicans of “abruptly” stopping talks in the middle of negotiations, making the bills public before she signed off and secretly adding controversial language without consulting House lawmakers.

In the Senate, leaders have committed to quickly advancing more funding measures. Majority Leader John Thune said senators would be “off to the races” on a second package of spending measures when the chamber gavels back in on Tuesday.

Up to five bills are under consideration for inclusion in that package, covering funding for the military and the departments of Education, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Justice, Transportation, Interior and Housing and Urban Development.

Getting that done will be hard enough. All 100 senators would have to consent to quickly assemble the bills on the floor, likely followed by weeks of debate before a vote on passage. Then top Senate appropriators would need to strike a compromise with their House counterparts.

But the remaining spending bills will be even tougher. Four are so divisive that Senate appropriators didn’t even approve them in committee this summer. Lawmakers in both parties agree it is likely that agencies covered under that slate — among them the departments of Energy, Homeland Security, State and Treasury, including the IRS — will eventually be funded through a stopgap that spans through next September.

Democrats warn that any partisan demands from Trump or hard-liners in the House could deadlock the effort to reach agreements on the nine bills left.

“If they want to add poison pills, obviously the whole thing will fall apart,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a senior appropriator, said in a brief interview.

But Democrats are also motivated to strike bipartisan deals in light of Trump and White House budget director Russ Vought’s moves this year to shift, freeze and cancel billions of dollars Congress already approved.

Senators have been careful to be more explicit in the new trio of funding bills about how the Trump administration must spend the money.

“Obviously, those are not the bills I would have written,” the Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, Washington Sen. Patty Murray, said in a floor speech this week. But those bills, she added, are “immeasurably better than Trump and Vought holding the pen.”

“We have a lot of work ahead, and I know we can get there — passing full-year funding bills to ensure Congress, not Trump or Russ Vought, decides how taxpayer dollars are spent,” she continued.

A couple of the remaining bills, however, are subject to much more profound disputes. An intraparty disagreement over funding levels between Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), for instance, has left the energy bill in limbo.

“I know that is a new experience for everybody on the committee,” Kennedy said this week. “But I’m not backing down.”

And then there’s the DHS measure, which hasn’t been unveiled, let alone advanced through committee amid a deep partisan dispute over curbing Trump’s immigration agenda.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democrat on the panel that funds DHS, said he wants “real constraints” to prevent what he calls the Trump administration’s “clearly illegal” transfers of funding to support border enforcement and mass deportations.

“It’s going to be really hard to get a bipartisan long-term budget,” Murphy said, pointing to $600 million the administration is now using for detaining immigrants despite Congress explicitly approving it for “non-detention” efforts.

Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, who has clashed with Murphy as his GOP counterpart on the panel, acknowledged appropriators have “a lot of hard work in front of us” when asked this week about the challenge of advancing the next tranche of spending bills.

“I don’t think anyone is naive,” she said.

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

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Congress

How Mike Johnson is scrambling to keep the shutdown short

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Speaker Mike Johnson is planning to meet with Rules Committee Republicans shortly before the panel convenes this afternoon to take up a massive shutdown-ending funding package, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the private plans.

The meeting is expected to include discussion of how to handle conservative hard-liners’ demands to attach a partisan elections bill to the $1.2 trillion spending package.

But any change to the bill could add days more to the three-day partial government shutdown that Johnson is hoping to end Tuesday with House approval of the Senate-passed legislation that combines five full-year funding bills with a two-week extension of Homeland Security spending.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) is vowing to block any move to tee up the Senate-approved package for a final vote unless Johnson moves to attach the elections bill, known as the SAVE Act. With a razor-thin majority, Johnson can afford no more than one Republican defection on a party-line vote.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Monday that GOP leaders haven’t made any final decisions on how to handle the SAVE Act but Trump emphasized in a recent Oval Office meeting that he wanted the funding legislation quickly passed.

“The president obviously really wants this,” he said.

The SAVE Act, which passed the House with scant Democratic support last year, would require citizenship documentation to register to vote and several cut back on mail voting. A new version of the bill would also require photo ID to vote.

Tacking it on to the funding package would essentially guarantee that the government shutdown Johnson and Trump are desperately trying to end as quickly as possible would continue for days — or longer. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned Monday that the SAVE Act was “dead on arrival” in the other chamber, with Democrats arguing it creates unnecessary barriers to voting.

“If House Republicans add the SAVE Act to the bipartisan appropriations package it will lead to another prolonged Trump government shutdown,” Schumer said.

Luna said in an interview Monday that her position has not changed as Johnson faces a growing pressure campaign from both his own members and an army of hard-right online influencers pressing for the election bill’s inclusion.

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Congress

Capitol agenda: Mike Johnson’s shutdown gamble

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House GOP leaders face an uphill battle to pass the revamped government funding package from the Senate, potentially dragging out the shutdown.

Speaker Mike Johnson hopes to pass the five full-year funding bills and the two-week DHS stopgap on Tuesday relying only on Republicans, after Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told him he wouldn’t help secure the Democrats needed to expedite the legislation. GOP leaders will have to quell an internal Republican revolt before they get there.

Here’s how things are shaping up ahead of Tuesday:

— Democrats divided, Republicans seek unity: Most House Democrats who spoke during a private caucus call Sunday evening were against the package, which was negotiated by Senate Democrats and the White House. House Homeland Security ranking member Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) was among the Democrats urging members to oppose it in a Dear Colleague email Sunday night.

But some senior Democrats on the call said they supported the legislation, including Reps. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and New Democrat Coalition Chair Brad Schneider of Illinois, according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the conversation. The disconnect between leadership and other senior members is triggering some hand-wringing among frontline Democrats about what to do next.

Even though some Democrats are signaling they’d vote for the package in the end, it’s not clear whether Johnson can get past the procedural step of adopting a rule with GOP support still uncertain and Democrats unlikely to bail him out.

GOP leaders and White House officials are trying to convince key hard-liners to get on board.

Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) are among the Republicans who want to attach legislation aimed at preventing noncitizens from voting in elections. Some ultra-conservatives oppose the Senate agreement overall and would prefer a Homeland stopgap that lasts six weeks or longer.

Luna said Sunday night that “these appropriations bills will FAIL” if the election citizenship legislation isn’t included.

— Bigger DHS deal looks tougher: Key lawmakers continue to raise red flags about striking a deal on a full-year DHS funding bill by the time the two-week CR expires.

Johnson on Sunday panned Democrats’ demands to bar federal immigration enforcement officers from wearing masks and to require them to wear identification. He also signaled unwillingness to negotiate on tightening requirements for judicial warrants for immigration operations. Jeffries is insisting that an agreement on judicial warrants is “a condition of moving forward.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune doesn’t believe Congress can pass a Homeland Security deal in two weeks, telling reporters late last week that “a two-week CR probably means there’s going to be another two-week CR and then maybe another two-week CR after that.”

“I just think it’s going to be really, really hard to get anything done and then actually execute on the procedures and process we have in the Senate, even if there’s an agreement,” he said.

What else we’re watching:   

— Johnson to swear in new Dem: Johnson plans to swear in Houston Democrat Christian Menefee before votes Monday night, pending final certification of his special runoff victory to serve out the rest of the late Rep. Sylvester Turner’s term. Once Menefee joins the House, Johnson will have a single-vote buffer with 218 Republicans and 214 Democrats.

Jordain Carney, Meredith Lee Hill, Mia McCarthy and Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

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Congress

Mike Johnson says House can end government shutdown ‘by Tuesday’

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House Speaker Mike Johnson said he is confident Congress can end the partial government shutdown “by Tuesday” despite steep opposition from Democrats and turmoil within the GOP conference.

Johnson is under pressure to unite his caucus, with lawmakers raising concerns about funding for the Department of Homeland Security as the Trump administration faces scrutiny over its nationwide immigration crackdown that has at times turned violent.

House Republicans are hoping to take up the $1.2 trillion funding package passed by the Senate on Tuesday following a House Rules Committee meeting Monday. The partial shutdown began early Saturday.

GOP leadership in the House originally hoped to pass the bill under suspension of the rules, an expedited process that requires a two-thirds-majority vote, but Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Johnson on Saturday that Democrats would not help Republicans acquire the necessary support for the spending bill.

“I’m confident that we’ll do it at least by Tuesday,” Johnson said in a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have a logistical challenge of getting everyone in town, and because of the conversation I had with Hakeem Jeffries, I know that we’ve got to pass a rule and probably do this mostly on our own. I think that’s very unfortunate.”

The Senate voted Friday to pass a compromise spending package after Senate Democrats struck a deal with President Donald Trump to extend DHS funding for two weeks. The move bought Congress more time to work out a compromise on reforms for Immigration and Customs Enforcement after federal officers fatally shot two people in Minnesota earlier this month.

Speaking to host Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press,” Johnson acknowledged that “there’s been tragedies in Minnesota” — but he also blamed Democrats in the state for “inciting violence,” even as the Trump administration attempts to tamp down pressures in the state.

Johnson praised Trump’s decision to send White House border czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, a step widely seen as a deescalation from the aggressive tactics favored by Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino.

“[Trump] was right to deputize him over that situation,” he said of Homan on NBC. “He has 40 years of experience in Border Patrol and these issues. So I think that this is going to happen, but we need good faith on both sides. Some of these conditions and requests that they’ve made are obviously reasonable and should happen. But others are going to require a lot more negotiation.”

Johnson pushed back in particular on Democratic calls to bar federal immigration enforcement officers from wearing masks and require them to wear identification, telling Fox’s Shannon Bream: “Those two things are conditions that would create further danger.”

He also signaled an unwillingness to negotiate on Democratic demands to tighten requirements for judicial warrants for immigration operations.

Still, House Democrats remained opposed to passing the funding package as is, with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) saying Sunday: “I’m not just a no. I’m a firm no.”

“I just don’t see how in good conscience Democrats can vote for continuing ICE funding when they’re killing American citizens, when there’s no provision to repeal the tripling of the budget,” Khanna said in a Sunday interview with Welker on NBC. “I hope my colleagues will say no.”

Jeffries also signaled Sunday that a wide gap remains between his conference and House Republicans, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that the House must reach an agreement on judicial warrants “as a condition of moving forward.”

“The one thing that we’ve said publicly is that we need a robust path toward dramatic reform,” Jeffries said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The administration can’t just talk the talk, they need to walk the walk. That should begin today. Not in two weeks, today.”

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