The collapse of Paul Ingrassia’s Office of Special Counsel nomination is exposing an exasperated Senate GOP, where even the MAGA faithful can be pushed only so far by a president demanding total fealty.

Hours after President Donald Trump hosted Senate Republicans for Rose Garden cheeseburgers to thank them for helping staff his administration, Ingrassia announced Tuesday evening he was withdrawing from his scheduled confirmation hearing Thursday because he didn’t have enough GOP votes. The White House is now planning to file paperwork to nix his nomination, according to a White House official.

This week GOP senators took relatively provocative steps to signal their dismay with Ingrassia, after POLITICO reported on texts that showed him making racist and antisemitic remarks to fellow Republicans. It followed another POLITICO story earlier this month that reported Ingrassia, the White House liaison to DHS, had been the subject of a DHS internal investigation after a lower-ranking colleague filed, and later withdrew, a harassment complaint. (Ingrassia’s lawyer did not confirm the texts were authentic and denied wrongdoing by Ingrassia at DHS.)

What started with a subtle but striking warning Monday night from Senate Majority Leader John Thune — “He’s not gonna pass” — quietly escalated through Tuesday. Even close Trump allies voiced worries about Ingrassia, whose Thursday nomination hearing had already been punted in July because of antisemitism concerns.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a sometimes Trump critic who helms the committee vetting Ingrassia’s nomination, revealed the rising tensions in an interview with POLITICO Tuesday, hours before Ingrassia said he was stepping back. He vented over Trump’s handling of the nominee and urged fellow Republican senators to “man up” and bring their concerns about Ingrassia to the president. (He declined to say how he would vote.)

“What I say to the president, and to his administration — you need to read the messages,” Paul said. “And guess what? You need to make a decision on whether you want to send him forward.”

In Trump 2.0, Paul said he was “tired of being the only one that has any guts to stand up and tell the president the truth.”

“I hear a lot of flak from Republicans. They want me to do it,” he said. “They say, ‘Well, you’re not afraid of the president, you go tell him his nominee can’t make it.’ … I’m waiting to see a little courage.”

What else we’re watching:   

— Bipartisan shutdown talks hit their limit: With the shutdown now in its fourth week, there are no signs the bipartisan conversations are anywhere close to generating an off-ramp. Senators don’t even agree whether the talks are still happening, let alone what it would take to break the stalemate.

What’s next? Thune is pointing to the end of this week as an inflection point for Republicans to decide if they need to extend the deadline on the House-passed Nov. 21 stopgap.

Dasha Burns and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

The top congressional Democrats contacted President Donald Trump on Tuesday to request a meeting as the shutdown drags into a fourth week.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in comments to reporters after a closed-door caucus lunch that he and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries “reached out to the president today and urged him to sit down and negotiate with us to resolve the health care crisis, address it and end the government shutdown.”

Schumer added he and Jeffries told the White House they were willing to meet “any time, any place” before Trump leaves the country Friday for a weeklong trip to Asian countries.

The two leaders met with Trump at the White House a day before the shutdown started Oct. 1 but emerged without an agreement. Since then, Democratic leaders have clamored for Trump to directly engage on negotiations to end the shutdown, including an agreement on soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act subsidies.

Republicans believe Trump is ready to come to the table to talk about the latter, but only after Democrats agree to reopen the government.

Trump met with Senate Republicans Tuesday to tout their unity in the funding fight. Republicans will force a 12th vote later Tuesday on a House-passed funding bill, which is expected to fail.

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan is asking the Justice Department to prosecute former CIA director John Brennan for allegedly lying to Congress more than two years ago.

It’s the latest move in the GOP’s campaign to leverage the justice system against President Donald Trump’s political adversaries.

In a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Ohio Republican claimed Brennan, who led the CIA during a probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, “knowingly made false statements during his transcribed interview” with the panel back in May 2023.

Jordan’s allegations center around Brennan’s comments at that time regarding the so-called Steele dossier — a series of largely discredited memos created by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, that accused Trump and his allies of orchestrating a sweeping election conspiracy with the Kremlin.

Steele delivered his dossier to the FBI in 2016, and a summary of its allegations was appended to an intelligence community assessment — ordered by outgoing President Barack Obama after Trump was first elected — about Russia’s involvement in that year’s presidential campaign.

“Brennan’s assertion that the CIA was not ‘involved at all’ with the Steele dossier cannot be reconciled with the facts,” Jordan wrote in the new letter to Bondi. “Brennan’s testimony … was a brazen attempt to knowingly and willfully testify falsely and fictitiously to material facts.”

Trump has long harbored hostility toward Brennan for his role in probing Russia’s ties to the 2016 campaign — and the fact that, once Brennan left office, the ex-CIA director continued to be an outspoken critic of the president.

Brennan is also reportedly already under investigation by the DOJ, but his attorney did not immediately return a request for comment.

Criminal referrals from Congress typically carry limited weight with the Justice Department, particularly in matters in which the evidence forming the basis for a potential criminal charge has been public for years. But Trump has made no secret in recent weeks that he expects his prosecutors to criminally charge his political opponents and has publicly pressured Bondi to act quickly in all these cases. In this environment, a referral from a close Trump ally in Congress might draw the president’s attention and spur officials to action.

After a public plea to Bondi to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey, for instance, Trump also engineered the ouster of a top federal prosecutor who resisted bringing those cases — instead installing his former personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, to a powerful U.S. attorney position.

In less than three weeks, Halligan brought charges against Comey and James, who now say they’re being targeted as part of Trump’s political vendetta.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Thirteen vulnerable Republicans are urging Speaker Mike Johnson to “immediately turn our focus” to extending Obamacare subsidies after the government reopens.

The group, led by GOP Reps. Jen Kiggans of Virginia and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, laid out its case Tuesday in a new letter to Johnson, reminding him that millions of Americans face skyrocketing health insurance premiums as a result of the expiration of the subsidies at the end of the year.

While the moderate members acknowledge Republicans must not cede to Democratic demands that the subsidies be extended during the shutdown, they also emphasize that Johnson must help the party “chart a conservative path” forward on the credits immediately after the shutdown ends.

“Allowing these tax credits to lapse without a clear path forward would risk real harm to those we represent,” wrote the lawmakers. “Our Conference and President Trump have been clear that we will not take healthcare away from families who depend on it.”

Conversations have already started around pairing an extension of the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits with conservative health care policy priorities. There are discussions about making changes to the structure of the tax credits themselves, for instance instituting new minimum out-of-pocket premiums for all enrollees and imposing an income cap for eligibility.

House GOP leaders are engaged in early, informal conversations with White House officials about potential changes, too. Still, many hard-liners remain dug in against any extension, which Republicans across the political spectrum caution would be a political mistake heading into the midterms.

The Republicans said in their letter that they agree with their conservative colleagues that changes are needed: “Let us be clear: significant reforms are needed to make these credits more fiscally responsible and ensure they are going to the Americans who need them most.”

But with no resolution in sight to the 21-day government funding standoff between the two parties, the letter signals mounting GOP anxiety about the issue as Nov. 1 fast approaches. That’s the date for open enrollment in plans under the Affordable Care Act, at which point it might be too late to avoid massive premium hikes.

State insurance officials have warned that an expectation that the enhanced tax credits will expire has already been baked into updated insurance rates, and it will be difficult to update those rates if Congress passes an extension in November or December.

Kiggans introduced a bill in September that would extend the subsidies for a year, which currently has the support of 28 co-sponsors, equally divided between the two parties. Twelve of the signers of the Johnson letter are supporters of the Kiggans measure.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune signaled Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s embattled nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel should not go forward with a confirmation hearing later this week.

Paul Ingrassia used a racial slur in a private text group where he also said the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and that he has “a Nazi streak,” POLITICO reported Monday. That followed an earlier report about a sexual harassment complaint against the 30-year-old White House official that was investigated and later withdrawn.

Asked if it would be a mistake for Ingrassia to appear before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for a scheduled Thursday hearing, Thune laughed then said, “Yeah.”

Ingrassia doesn’t appear to have the votes to advance out of the panel, with all Democrats expected to oppose him as well as at least three Republicans, and GOP leaders don’t believe he has the votes to be confirmed by the full Senate.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a senior member of the Homeland Security Committee, said the White House “ought to withdraw” Ingrassia, saying his nomination was not salvageable.

“It never should’ve gotten this far,” Johnson told reporters.

An attorney for Ingrassia, Edward Andrew Paltzik, said in a statement, “We do not concede the authenticity of any of these purported messages” and that “even if the texts are authentic, they clearly read as self-deprecating and satirical humor.”

“In reality, Mr. Ingrassia has incredible support from the Jewish community because Jews know that Mr. Ingrassia is the furthest thing from a Nazi,” Paltzik said.

Speaker Mike Johnson said in an interview Tuesday morning he would allow a floor vote on a bipartisan bill compelling the full release of the Jeffrey Epstein files — once the House comes back into session following the end of the government shutdown.

“If it hits 218, it comes to the floor,” Johnson said of the discharge petition, a procedural maneuver that allows members to bypass leadership to force a floor vote on legislation if it receives that requisite number of lawmaker signatures.

The discharge petition, led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), will reach that threshold once Johnson swears in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who won a special election weeks ago to succeed her late father, Raúl Grijalva. Johnson, however, has said he will not officially seat her until Democrats in the Senate vote on House-passed legislation to fund the government — a decision Democrats say is driven by his desire to keep a vote on the Epstein files at bay.

Johnson also insisted he would not stand in the way of allowing the bill to come to the floor, as he has done in recent months. “No, we’re not — that’s how it works: If you get the signatures, it goes to a vote.”

That he won’t seek to a block a vote on the discharge petition if it gets 218 signers echoes comments he has made privately to fellow House Republicans for months. But Johnson also has in the past worked with senior House GOP leaders to circumvent that outcome, including by adjourning the House early for the August recess and shutting down the Rules Committee, which sets parameters for much of the chamber’s floor activity.

White House officials and senior Republicans also have, for weeks, been waging a quiet pressure campaign to get the three female Republicans to remove their names from the discharge petition — without success.

In any event, Johnson added, the Massie-Khanna vote was now “totally superfluous … All this work’s been done and will continue to be done.”

His comments follow lengthy remarks at a press conference earlier Tuesday morning, where Johnson praised the work of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee for leading an investigation into the late, convicted sex offender. So far, he said, the panel has released 43,000 pages of documents, issued many deposition subpoenas and received suspicious activity reports from the Treasury Department’s financial records.

Among the files now public are Epstein’s personal phone logs, financial ledgers and daily calendars.

“The bipartisan House Oversight Committee is already accomplishing what the discharge petition, that gambit, sought and much more,” Johnson said, at the press conference, adding that all “credible information” would be released to the public as part of the panel’s monthslong probe into the matter, while taking precautions to protect Epstein’s accusers.

“I’ve met with some of the Epstein victims,” Johnson said. “We’re working around the clock to ensure that justice is served and also as part of the oversight to figure out why justice has been delayed for so long.”

Still, Johnson lamented, “some Democrats and sadly even a couple Republicans have tried to make this a political issue.”

House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), also on hand for the press conference Tuesday, said his committee’s work has demonstrated that President Donald Trump was not implicated in the Epstein case, despite Trump’s admitted relationship with Epstein years ago.

Comer added that the panel was working to bring former President Bill Clinton, whose relationship with Epstein has also been long chronicled, in for a deposition. He later told reporters that Clinton’s legal team has been cooperating with his office toward that end.

The Justice Department, though, has signaled it will only resume cooperation with the committee to transmit information to Capitol Hill once the government shutdown ends.

Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie has officially drawn a Donald Trump-backed challenger.

Ed Gallrein, who preemptively earned the president’s endorsement last week, launched his campaign Tuesday to oust the seven-term lawmaker Trump began targeting earlier this year over Massie’s opposition to Republicans’ megalaw.

“This district is Trump Country. The President doesn’t need obstacles in Congress — he needs backup,” Gallrein said in a statement. “I’ll defeat Thomas Massie, stand shoulder to shoulder with President Trump, and deliver the America First results Kentuckians voted for.”

Trump hailed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL captain who ran unsuccessfully for state Senate last year, as a “WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN” in a Truth Social post last week. He also said Massie “must be thrown out of office, ASAP.”

Massie is dismissing Gallrein as a threat, casting his opponent to POLITICO last week as a “failed candidate and establishment hack.” He later took to X to post vote totals showing he outran Gallrein in the counties they overlapped last year. And he recently posted the biggest fundraising quarter of his career, hauling in $768,000 from July to September and entering October with more than $2 million in cash on hand.

The president has been searching for a challenger to Massie since the Kentuckian voted against the “big, beautiful bill.” Trump’s political operation launched a super PAC aimed at unseating Massie in June, as the representative pushed to reassert congressional authority over Trump’s military actions in Iran. The group, MAGA KY, has spent $1.8 million on independent expenditures so far.

Trump’s effort is coming to a head just as Massie is poised to secure the required 218 signatures to end-run Speaker Mike Johnson and force a floor vote on compelling release of the Justice Department’s entire file on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump and his team also vetted state Sen. Aaron Reed, who narrowly defeated Gallrein in the GOP primary for that seat last year. Some Republicans had hoped former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron would drop his bid to replace retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell and enter the race against Massie instead.

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.