New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen will not seek reelection, she announced Wednesday, becoming the third Senate Democrat to announce their retirement ahead of the midterms.

Shaheen, who is 78 and was first elected to the Senate in 2008, said she made the “difficult” decision to step aside: “It’s just time.”

“There are urgent challenges ahead, both here at home and around the world, and while I’m not seeking reelection, believe me, I am not retiring,” Shaheen said in a video.

New Hampshire will be a critical battleground in the fight over control for the Senate, but it was already a challenging map for Democrats to retake the majority even before the retirements.

House Republicans passed their stopgap funding bill Tuesday evening, which means Senate Democrats can now no longer delay their long-dreaded decision: Do they give up a chance to stand up to Donald Trump or let the government shut down in three days?

Democrats plan to huddle around lunchtime to try and hash out their strategy for confronting the government funding fight. They have already held one “vigorous discussion,” and even the chattiest senators emerged from their Tuesday meeting tight-lipped about their strategy. Many declined to say if they were unified in their approach.

They don’t appear to be. Republicans need at least eight Democrats to vote in favor of the six-month stopgap, given GOP Sen. Rand Paul’s expected opposition. Sen. John Fetterman is expected to cross party lines. But most of the 20 Democrats we surveyed in the minutes after the continuing resolution passed the House were noncommittal — particularly among the swing-state set.

A few are varying shades of “no.” Sen. Jeff Merkley said he will oppose it, while Sen. Richard Blumenthal is a “likely no.” Sen. Alex Padilla said he would not be in favor unless it offered California disaster aid after the Los Angeles wildfires.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer hasn’t said a word publicly since the House vote. Sen. Elizabeth Warren issued a charge of her own: “Democrats in the House have shown us they are united,” she told reporters after all but one House Democrat voted against the stopgap. “Why should it be different in the Senate?”

But Senate Democrats are agonizing over a few things: Getting blamed for the shutdown, especially after House GOP leaders sent members home for recess, is a big consideration. And they’re worried it would give Trump — who’s set to be on Blue Light News today for the annual Friends of Ireland luncheon — unchecked authority to shutter even more parts of the federal government. That’s an especially fresh concern after his administration moved Tuesday to gut the Education Department.

“A shutdown is uncharted territory when you’ve got an administration that, at least in some ways, probably would welcome a shutdown because that would give the president almost unlimited power in deciding who’s essential, who’s nonessential, holding up agencies,” Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, told reporters. “That’s the dilemma that’s being discussed.”

What else we’re watching:

• Dem retreat: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is looking to get his caucus on the same page at their annual retreat that starts Wednesday, especially after a disjointed response to Trump’s joint address to Congress last week. Democrats’ challenge: How do they channel the anti-Trump energy of the Democratic base — and many of their members — while calibrating their message to the swing voters they need to win?
• Johnson and Thune meeting: Johnson met with the Senate majority leader on Tuesday as the top congressional Republicans look to hash out their other big problem: a path forward for Trump’s sweeping domestic policy agenda. “Both of us understand we’ve got to get this done. We’re trying to figure out the best way to do that,” Thune said afterward.
• Visa revisions: House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan is eyeing his party’s flagship immigration bill as the legislative vehicle for giving Musk the overhaul he wants on high-skilled visa rules. Musk has pushed for increasing immigration levels for those with expertise in science, technology and engineering.

Nicholas Wu, Brendan Bordelon and Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.

Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday gave his most candid assessment yet of billionaire Elon Musk’s influence in Congress and the potential threat he poses to legislative dealmaking: “He can blow the whole thing up.”

Johnson, during a fireside chat at Georgetown University’s Psaros Center, described his work as speaker as managing a “giant control panel” with dials for his GOP members, one for President Donald Trump and one for Musk.

“Elon has the largest platform in the world, literally,” Johnson said of the X owner and head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. “And if he goes on and says something that’s misunderstood or misinterpreted about something we’re doing, he can blow the whole thing up.”

“So I spend a lot of time working with all these dials and all these folks, and I just run around all day and make sure everybody’s happy,” he added.

Johnson knows the depths of Musk’s influence from personal experience. In December, Musk helped tank a bipartisan government funding bill that the speaker negotiated, triggering chaos on Capitol Hill just before the holidays.

Musk, who is leading efforts to slash the federal bureaucracy under Trump, has stayed out of Johnson’s latest push to pass a stopgap plan to keep the government open through September. Speaking just after the House passed the bill Tuesday, Johnson called it “a feat” that Republicans were able to do so without needing help from Democrats.

With the funding bill heading to the Senate, Johnson said it would be up to “one man alone” — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — to avert a shutdown Saturday.