A high-profile hearing House Republicans had hoped would provide more fodder for their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden quickly descended into petty bickering.

The House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday featured two witnesses invited by Republicans — former Hunter Biden associates Tony Bobulinski and James Galanis — who have previously met with the committee in private interviews. In those meetings, both have claimed that Joe Biden discussed business with Hunter Biden and his son’s associates, which both Bidens have denied.

Democrats, in a memo circulated ahead of the hearing, called Bobulinski and Galanis “discredited,” adding that they “have not shown any wrongdoing or [an] impeachment offense” by Joe Biden. And repeating a dynamic in those private sessions, Democrats on the panel soon started having testy exchanges with Bobulinski on Wednesday, who previously attended a 2020 presidential debate as a guest of then-President Donald Trump’s campaign.

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the panel, teed off against the two witnesses, calling them “loyal servants of Trump world” and “utterly compromised and biased witnesses,” adding that Bobulinski is a “bitterly disappointed wannabe Hunter Biden business partner.”

The hearing is the latest bullet point in the House GOP’s broad impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, which has flailed recently and seems unlikely to lead to a House vote absent clearer evidence. Republican investigators had hoped Hunter Biden would personally attend the public hearing after a closed-door deposition last month, but the president’s son declined. And the attorney for another business partner and planned witness, Devon Archer, also said he couldn’t attend, instead requesting that the committee propose alternative days, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO.

Bobulinski, in his opening statement, vehemently criticized Joe Biden, who he called a “serial liar.” He also accused Raskin and Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) of lying. When Raskin interrupted to ask if the House’s decorum rules applied to witnesses — noting that Bobulinski “called members of this committee liars” — Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said decorum regulations cited by Raskin only applied to members.

“Am I supposed to say it’s my time, Mr. Raskin?” Bobulinski quipped.

It wasn’t just Raskin who sparred with Bobulinski. When Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) said that Bobulinski “provided zero evidence — zero evidence — of any sort of link between Hunter Biden and the president as it relates to the business dealing,” Bobulinski interrupted to call that a “blatant lie.”

“Actually it’s my time, sir,” Garcia said, before continuing.

Bobulinski also took a jab at Hunter Biden’s absence during the hearing, asking: “Should I allow Hunter to give his opening statement first?” Hunter Biden, through his legal team, had said he would only testify if Comer also called a hearing with members of Trump’s family, namely son-in-law Jared Kushner.

The other Republican witness, Galanis, testified from prison — a fact Democrats cited to question his credibility.

“I want to remind people he is sitting in prison, that’s why he can’t be here today. He’s sitting in prison for scamming workers’ pensions. I mean how low can you get?” asked Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.).

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), a member of the Oversight Committee, was also name checked by former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, who was invited by Democrats to testify. Parnas was convicted on charges of campaign finance fraud in 2021.

“My original indictment linked me to an individual referred to as ‘unindicted co-conspirator one.’ We know, now, this individual to be Congressman Pete Sessions who sits on this very committee,” Parnas said.

The committee hearing tensions flared between members, as well. Comer told a Democrat who said they had an inquiry to “state your parliamentary inquiry … we don’t have time for stunts.”

Another GOP member chimed in: “We don’t have time for games by Democrats today.”

Republicans also defeated an attempt by Democrats to subpoena Bobulinski’s phone.

Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to appease his right flank on the unfinalized spending package, using a weekly closed-door GOP meeting on Wednesday morning to champion Republican wins.

In the meeting, Johnson highlighted a boost in detention beds for handling a migration surge at the southern border, billions of dollars in cuts to pandemic-era programs, longstanding anti-abortion rules, measures to limit diversity programs and more. Democrats counter that Johnson is stretching the truth in some of those talking points, accusing him of distorting what’s in the actual bill.

Those alleged GOP victories will likely do little to assuage the concerns of House conservatives, who have already soured on the six-bill spending bundle before its release. They haven’t raised an attempt to boot Johnson from the speakership over the funding bills, but the lack of legislative text combined with a shutdown deadline on Friday is further irritating those rebellious members.

“You don’t need 72 hours to decide you’re going to vote for some 2,000 pages?” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. “If you’re saying you plan to vote for the bill, and you don’t need 72 hours — you’ll just vote for anything, no matter what’s in there, or what’s not in there, you’re going to vote for it? That’s very concerning.”

Congressional staff are racing to finalize the legislative text of the enormous fiscal 2024 funding package, which is expected to top $1 trillion and covers around 70 percent of federal spending. Congressional leaders are hoping to clear the legislation by Friday, which means Johnson will need to waive a rule that says lawmakers get 72 hours to review text before a vote.

Several Republicans coming out of the closed-door conference meeting said they expect Johnson to ditch that rule, confirming that a vote is likely on Friday. Johnson will have to pass the package under suspension, requiring a two-thirds vote threshold and substantial support from Democrats. And that would leave little time for the Senate to process the package before the deadline.

Some lawmakers are calling for yet another short stopgap bill — which would be the fifth so-called continuing resolution this fiscal year — to buy more time to process the package. Johnson told reporters Wednesday that he didn’t expect to resort to another stopgap, however.

Here are some of Johnson’s talking points about the not-yet-final package:

Defense 

Increases military funding by $27 billion, including a 5.2 percent pay raise for troops.
Cuts funding for climate change efforts within the Department of Defense.
Essentially bars the Pentagon from mandating Covid vaccines.
Cuts funding for diversity and inclusion programs to spending levels signed into law three years ago.
Bars money from going to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, where scientists conducted coronavirus research in the city where Covid first emerged. The Biden administration released intelligence on the lab last year, acknowledging that researchers there fell ill in the fall of 2019, shortly before the pandemic began.

Homeland Security 

Increases immigration detention capacity to 42,000 people Immigration and Customs Enforcement can hold at one time. That’s an increase of about 24 percent from the current detention-bed capacity of 34,000.
Provides enough funding for the Border Patrol to have 22,000 agents. That’s the same level House Republicans approved in H.R. 2, the immigration and border security measure they passed last year and have been calling on the Senate to clear for President Joe Biden’s signature.
Increases funding for technology to monitor U.S. borders by 25 percent.
Cuts funding for non-profit groups and faith-based organizations that provide shelter and other resources to undocumented immigrants crossing the border into the U.S.

State-Foreign Operations 

Cuts funding for the State Department and foreign operations by 6 percent.
Prohibits any flags except the American flag from being flown at U.S. diplomatic facilities.
Maintains current prohibitions on federal funding going to groups that perform abortions or provide abortion counseling.
Bars federal money from going to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Members of the Palestinian aid group have been accused of collaborating with Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Over the weekend, Sen.
Chris Van Hollen
(D-Md.) called those accusations “a flat-out lie.”

Financial Services 

Implements a more than $10 billion cut to the IRS.
Cuts funding by more than $2 billion for Covid-related efforts.
Prevents the Biden administration from banning gas stoves.
Bars funding from being used to cover abortions in federal programs, as well as local programs in the District of Columbia.

Labor-HHS-Education 

Decreases funding by more than $4 billion for Covid-related efforts.
Maintains the half-century ban on federal funding for abortions, known as the Hyde amendment.

What’s next: Appropriators fear text for the six-bill funding bundle could be delayed until Thursday, pushing Congress dangerously close to the deadline and increasing the risk of a brief shutdown. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday that “even with bipartisanship, it’s going to be a tight squeeze to get this funding package passed before the weekend deadline.” He’ll need agreement from all 100 senators to process the package before the deadline.

“I ask my colleagues to be flexible,” Schumer added, “to be prepared to act quickly and to prioritize working together in good faith so we can finish the appropriations process.”

Conservatives, who were never likely to vote for the bill in the first place, are complaining about the rushed timeline.

“I don’t think Republicans should be jamming through a bill that we have less than 72 hours to read and doesn’t do the job on the border,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas). “There is no reason why any Texan or anyone in the Republican conference should vote for this bill.”

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democratic appropriator in the House, said she remains hopeful that the House and Senate will act swiftly before the weekend.

“I’m very optimistic there won’t be a shutdown,” DeLauro said.

The legislation would fund the Pentagon, major health programs, the Department of Homeland Security, foreign aid programs, the IRS and more through Sept. 30, the remainder of the fiscal year.

Jordain Carney and Daniella Diaz contributed to this report.

Mitch McConnell trained his ire on Senate Democrats — and Chuck Schumer — in a floor speech Wednesday, slamming his colleagues on the left for “egregious and hypocritical attempts to influence Israeli domestic politics.”

“They’re an affront to the very independence of the state of Israel, a sovereign nation, a robust democracy and one of America’s closest allies and friends,” McConnell said.

McConnell’s remarks come ahead of a scheduled remote address by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Senate Republicans on Wednesday. And they follow a speech by the majority leader last week that included the New York Democrat’s harshest rebuke of Israel yet. Schumer said “Israel must make some significant course corrections” and called for new elections to replace Netanyahu.

“Our Democratic colleagues don’t have an anti-Bibi problem,” McConnell said. “They have an anti-Israel problem. What else are we supposed to make of the way Democrats have fallen in line behind the position the Democratic leader expressed here on the floor last week?”

The pointed back-and-forth between the Senate leaders captures the political churn caused by growing Democratic concerns about humanitarian conditions in Gaza. On Wednesday morning, a group of Senate Democrats penned a letter to President Joe Biden calling on his administration to establish a path for recognizing a non-militarized Palestinian state.

The letter, led by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), was signed by 19 Democrats in total. That number includes Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), who are both up for re-election this year in vulnerable seats.

“Given the severity of the current crisis, this moment requires determined U.S. leadership that must move beyond facilitation,” the letter wrote, seeking U.S. engagement with a state that would “be governed by a revitalized and reformed Palestinian Authority,”

Schumer’s speech from last week continues to also divide House Democrats — many of whom called it a necessary rebuke that represents how many staunch supporters of Israel feel toward Netanyahu’s leadership.

“He said what a lot of us are already keenly aware of: You can love Israel without loving Netanyahu,” said Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) in an interview of Schumer, , who is the highest-ranked Jewish elected official in American history.

“We have a lot of familiarity with people who think that their personal fortunes are bigger than the country they represent.”

And Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), another prominent Jewish Democrat, praised Schumer’s remarks while not mincing words about Netanyahu’s leadership.

“I view Netanyahu as the worst leader in Jewish history — not Israeli history, Jewish history,’ Nadler said in an interview. “His only plan as to how to keep himself in power. That’s all he cares about. He’s leading to catastrophe for the Israelis and for the Palestinians.”

However, that’s not the consensus view among Democrats toward Schumer’s remarks. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), previously the chamber’s number two Democrat, criticized the approach by the Senate majority leader.

“My own view is that it would have been better for him to do that privately rather than giving a sense of solace to the terrorists — to Hamas,” Hoyer said in an interview.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), a staunch Israeli ally, declined to comment on Schumer’s remarks.

Asked if it was appropriate for Netanyahu to respond in U.S. media, Hoyer didn’t directly reply: “We’re in a time when you need to focus on defeating Hamas and we need to ameliorate the injury and carnage to innocent children and noncombatants.”

House Democrats indicated frustration that government funding measures expected to be considered this week will limit U.S. funding for the main United Nations relief agency for Palestinians, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency or UNRWA. But they conceded those restrictions were likely necessary to ensure government funding gets done, given GOP resistance to significant further aid through the agency.

“It really complicates our ability to effectively surge humanitarian relief to Gaza. UNRWA is the agency on the ground that does it better and more than anyone else,” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), echoing critiques of other members. “It’s very wrongheaded to completely zero out funding for UNRWA because of a few bad apples.”

The exact language of the aid restrictions in the spending deal has not yet been released.

Sen. James Lankford is pursuing a leadership bid for next Congress, a move that means the top five Senate GOP positions now have candidates.

The Oklahoma senator will run for the vice chair position of the Senate Republican Conference, the No. 5 job in the hierarchy. The current vice chair, Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), is running for the Republican Policy Committee chairmanship, the No. 4 job.

Lankford will announce his bid Wednesday morning and said in a statement that he will “personally ask each of my colleagues for their support in the days ahead.”

“As senators, we were elected to do hard things and to solve problems by doing the right thing, the right way. It is my desire to serve our conference in every way I can as we work together to solve the challenges our nation faces,” Lankford added in a statement to POLITICO confirming his bid.

Earlier this Congress, Lankford was tasked with the toughest job in Washington: Cutting a bipartisan border security deal as a way to unlock Ukraine aid. For weeks, Lankford labored to cut a deal with Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). But when they finally announced it, most Republicans rejected it as former President Donald Trump lobbied against it.

Even so, Lankford was widely praised for his work, and it’s not apparent it’s hurt his standing in the conference. Lankford previously served in the House for two terms, winning a leadership post there before being elected to the Senate in 2014.

On Congress’ iPhone, there’s still three dots floating, as Capitol Hill waits for the text.

It remains unclear precisely when bill text of the six-bill government funding agreement will be released, kicking off the 72-hour clock for House members to review the deal (a clock that could, theoretically, be waived).

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a senior appropriator, told reporters he didn’t think a short funding stopgap would be needed over the weekend, but “it really does depend on the House.”

He expressed confidence, though, that the measure would get through. “We’re not really known for doing the right thing. But maybe this time we will,” Tester said. “We’ve wasted enough taxpayer dollars with these [continuing resolutions].”

While we wait: Both chambers are in. The Senate will vote at noon and throughout the afternoon on judicial nominations. The House plans to vote in the afternoon on two energy measures: One barring the president from imposing a hydraulic fracking ban for oil and gas and another blocking royalty rate increases for oil companies drilling on public lands.

Off the floor, the House Oversight Committee holds a hearing on allegations of “influence peddling” by President Joe Biden at 10 a.m. And Senate Republicans will hold a special conference meeting to discuss the future of their leadership once current Minority Leader Mitch McConnell steps aside.

Senate Democratic leaders and the White House have a ton of work to do to confirm a historic judicial nominee. They aren’t giving up just yet as they face hurdles in their own caucus.

In interviews on Tuesday, several Senate Democrats expressed reservations with the nomination of Adeel Mangi for a seat on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. President Joe Biden and senior Democrats are standing behind Mangi amid attacks from Republicans that critics knock as Islamophobic, though it’s plainly clear they don’t yet have the votes.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he’s getting questions about Mangi from his Democratic colleagues.

“He’s an excellent nominee,” the Illinois Democrat and Senate majority whip said in an interview. “I know a lot of the other information that’s been generated on the other side is distorted and unfair. So, he’s not without controversy, but I think he’s an extraordinary individual.”

It’s a rare judicial snag for the Senate Democratic majority and Biden, who have generally worked seamlessly on judges — with a few exceptions. And Mangi’s nomination is historic: He would be the first Muslim appeals court judge if confirmed.

Republicans do not appear willing to provide any votes for Mangi at the moment, with many criticizing him for his role as an adviser to the director of Rutgers University’s Center for Security, Race and Rights, which GOP critics said brought antisemitic speakers to campus. Mangi denied knowledge of the speakers amid Republican questioning.

Without GOP support, Mangi needs 50 of the 51 Senate Democratic-caucusing members to support him, a tough task in an election year in which Democratic incumbents are defending seats in purple and red states. Three Democrats — Jon Tester (Mont.), Tammy Baldwin (Wis.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) — declined to say they’d back the pick in interviews Tuesday. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), another swing vote on judicial picks, said he was not aware of Mangi.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said Biden is proud to have nominated Mangi for the post and urged Senate Democrats to ignore “a malicious and debunked smear campaign” against his nomination.

“Every Senate Democrat should side with the qualities that make America exceptional — which Mr. Mangi embodies — not the hateful forces trying to force America into the past,” he told POLITICO in a statement.

Still, it’s going to take a serious whipping effort.

“I do” have concerns, Cortez Masto said, denying she agreed with attacks advanced by Republicans. “My concern is with respect to the organization that supports individuals who kill police officers.”

That organization appears to be the Alliance of Families for Justice, on whose board Mangi sits and which describes its mission as to “support, empower and mobilize families and individuals impacted by the criminal justice system.”

Tester said “we’re still taking input and I have not developed a position yet,” while Baldwin said in an interview that “I thoroughly look at every nominee who comes before the Senate — and I will be doing the same with him.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), the chief deputy whip, said because floor action is not imminent the whip team hasn’t fully ascertained whether Mangi can be confirmed. But he also said it’s too early to declare the nomination finished.

Biden formally nominated Mangi in November 2023 to sit on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The Senate Judiciary Committee advanced his nomination in January on a party-line 11-10 vote. It’s also possible the Senate could move to confirm him after the election. CNN reported last week that the White House is aware of the challenges in confirming Mangi.

One former Republican judicial appointee, Timothy Lewis, urged “the Senate to treat Mr. Mangi with the same respect that I received in 1992” when the chamber confirmed him to an appeals court post as “one of only two Black judges to be nominated to a federal appellate court by President Bush.” The American Bar Association rates Mangi, a veteran New York-based litigator, as “well qualified” for the federal bench.

A number of outside groups, including the AFL-CIO, the Anti-Defamation League, a coalition of Jewish groups and the National Organization of Black Women in Law Enforcement, and the White House have vigorously defended Mangi’s nomination in recent days, slamming GOP senators’ questioning over the Israel-Hamas war and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as “Islamophobic.”

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), one of the leading Mangi backers, said he spoke out in a recent Democratic caucus meeting about the selection and a concerted dark money push to tank his nomination. The Judicial Crisis Network is running ads urging Tester and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), both incumbents, to vote against Mangi and called the nominee an “antisemite.”

“I’m concerned about the outrageous attacks that are happening to him that have nothing to do with fact,” Booker said in an interview, likening the volley of criticism to “slander” against the nominee.

Top lawmakers and the White House have finally reached a deal to close out the government funding fight that began more than a year ago, when Kevin McCarthy first took the speakership.

But it’s already too late to guarantee the monumental bipartisan agreement isn’t punctuated by a brief government shutdown. In the parlance of the George W. Bush administration’s terrorism risk alerts, the threat of a closure is firmly in the yellow zone.

Whether funding will lapse early Saturday morning for the Pentagon and key non-defense agencies is largely up to Speaker Mike Johnson, who will have to decide this week between three choices: Bend House rules to speed up passage, embrace a short funding patch to buy more time — or let federal cash stop flowing to most federal programs for a few days.

The speaker has not yet said whether he’ll stick to a pledge giving his members 72 hours to review the legislation, a move that would ratchet up the chances of Congress blowing past its deadline since that text is still being drafted.

Asked Tuesday about adhering to the 72-hour promise, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) said, “That’s up to the speaker.”

Even if Johnson calls a House passage vote before the Saturday morning deadline, the government funding plan could still stall in the Senate, where leaders will need the agreement of all 100 members to fast-track debate. That process is already guaranteed to be politically tricky, with Republican senators eager to request amendment votes on issues ranging from immigration to earmarks.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor Tuesday that he’s “hopeful we can finish the appropriations process without causing a lapse in government services.”

“We haven’t had a government shutdown since 2019. There’s no good reason for us to have one this week now that we’re getting very close to finishing the job,” he said.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) likened passage of the six-bill funding package to “legislative tyranny,” with no time to review a package that “will be considerably more than 1,000 pages long and contain hundreds of earmarks.”

“We now can’t expect to see the spending bill until Wednesday,” Lee complained, “even though” congressional leaders expect it to clear the Senate by Friday night.

A shutdown would last less than a week and would likely cause minimal disruption to most federal agencies, but both sides acknowledge that it wouldn’t look good to voters. The Biden administration could even tell departments to hold off on deploying shutdown procedures, if the bill is quickly headed for President Joe Biden’s desk.

Each president has the power to lessen, or escalate, the severity of a government shutdown. In 2019, when funding lapsed for many federal agencies for 35 days, then-President Donald Trump tried to downplay the effects of the shutdown as he worked to convince Democrats to fund the border wall. In 2013, then-President Barack Obama ensured maximum disruption to federal programs as he waited for House Republicans to cave on demands for fiscal reforms and axing Obamacare.

This time, it behooves Biden to direct federal agencies to carry out as much of their duties as possible without funding coming in.

A decision by Johnson to observe the 72-hour pledge would do little to quell the already-swirling Republican angst over the spending package that’s now expected to be released late Tuesday or sometime Wednesday. Conservatives are complaining that the six-bill funding bundle was largely negotiated behind closed doors and will ultimately get dropped on lawmakers at the last minute, despite party leaders’ long-running promises to avoid this outcome.

Some Republicans are blaming the White House for the delay, noting that the Biden administration jumped in over the weekend and rejected a fallback plan that would have saddled the Department of Homeland Security with a flat budget through the rest of the fiscal year. White House officials insisted that a year-long stopgap would have been detrimental to border security efforts ahead of an anticipated spring migration surge.

Johnson successfully split a dozen annual appropriations bills into two packages for the current fiscal year, pushing to avoid a dreaded “omnibus,” the Hill terminology for the bundling of 12 measures to maximize efficiency and minimize political risk.

But that’s done little to appease Johnson’s right flank, who are lamenting the same old behind-the-scenes negotiating, with much of the decision-making clustered at the leadership level.

Aggressive fiscal hawk Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said Congress is back in “swamp mode, where the omnibus is written behind closed doors.”

“Members are told to take it or leave it, and although Republicans control the House, more Democrats vote for it than Republicans because it spends more money than when [Nancy] Pelosi was in charge,” Massie posted on X.

Besides the Pentagon and DHS, funding is set to lapse Saturday morning for the departments of State, Labor, Education and Treasury, along with the IRS and foreign operations. A shutdown would also hit federal housing and health programs, as well as congressional operations.

Jordain Carney contributed to this report. 

Two retired U.S. generals criticized the 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as they diverged from President Joe Biden’s position on the military exit.

Retired Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, the former commander of U.S. Central Command, and retired Gen. Mark Milley, former Joint Chiefs chair, said the exit from Afghanistan in August 2021 came up short, even as the country prepared to enter its second full decade in the conflict.

”If there was culpability in this attack, it lies in policy decisions that created the environment,” McKenzie said in testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “I — and I alone — bear full military responsibility for what happened at Abbey Gate,” he said, referencing a suicide bombing which killed 13 servicemembers.

Milley was quick to say the impacts from the withdrawal were not due to Biden’s ultimate decision alone also but that “it was the cumulative effect of many decisions over many years of war.” However, he was quick to offer praise to the U.S. military troops who jumped in during the chaotic evacuation.

“To all veterans of Afghanistan, hold your heads high. Each of you did what the country asked of you under extreme circumstances,” Milley said. “It was a pretty consistent assessment … that the withdrawal of the military forces and the contractors and the NATO forces that went with it would ultimately” lead to a collapse of the government.

Both generals appeared voluntarily before the committee and testified the evacuation plan came “too little, too late” in light of the situation on the ground.

This is not the first time the generals have testified on their disagreements with the administration’s stance on the withdrawal. Both told the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2021 that they disagreed with Biden’s decision on the matter, a rare break for two sitting generals from the commander-in-chief.

Foreign Affairs Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who has clashed with the State Department over records related to the withdrawal, offered his assessment of the Biden administration’s approach to ending the conflict: “Fail they did.”

“I will not rest until I get to the bottom of this tragedy. You deserve answers,” the Texan said, addressing the families of some of the 13 servicemembers killed in the Abbey Gate attack. “The American people deserve answers. And I intend to deliver.”

McCaul indicated that “we will have an agreement” to boost the number of Afghani citizens eligible for special immigrant visas, though the exact total remains under negotiation.

Ranking member Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) argued a proper understanding of the conflict requires reviewing the actions taken “over four administrations” in the region.

“There’s not really anything new that was learned today because you’ve testified to it before,” Meeks said.

Joe Gould contributed to this report.

Speaker Mike Johnson and the White House locked in a deal on full-year funding for the Department of Homeland Security on Monday, our Caitlin Emma and Jennifer Scholtes reported, clinching the final piece of the funding puzzle.

On Tuesday morning, leaders made the official announcement of the deal, and noted drafting of the text will begin immediately. (More on that below.)

But as the weekend deadline on government funding approaches, a (brief) shutdown may still be in the cards. Here’s why:

These things always take time. Negotiators and staff must turn that agreement into legislative text, a process that inevitably takes some time.

The 72-hour-rule: Johnson has promised members at least 72 hours to read and review legislation. Depending on when text eventually emerges, that could carry us into the weekend and a short shutdown. The speaker might always try to waive this rule, potentially provoking a rebellion from his far-right flank (who are already out in opposition).

The Senate factor: Assuming the package does eventually pass the House, the rules of the Senate mean any one senator can slow down consideration. Leaders have been able to reach agreements on prior packages of amendment votes to placate conservatives displeased with the funding bills, but we’ll see if one materializes here.

Could it go faster? Passage of these funding bills may be the last thing standing in the way of both chambers from a scheduled two-week recess. In March Madness terms, Jet Fumes are a No. 1 seed that usually wins.

What’s in this hefty package? Six bills — Homeland Security, Defense, Financial Services-General Government Labor-HHS, Legislative Branch and State-Foreign Operations — that collectively fund about 70 percent of the federal government.

Meanwhile: Both chambers return to Washington on Tuesday as they await text of the funding package. The Senate will vote on the confirmation Nicole Berner to a spot on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. House lawmakers will vote on suspensions at 6:30 p.m., including a bipartisan effort to modernize the process of getting your passport.

Also, for your radar: The House Rules Committee meets at 4 p.m. to tee up consideration of several pieces of energy legislation. The House Foreign Affairs Committee will hear testimony at 1 p.m. from two former generals — Mark Milley and Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie — on the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.