Senate Majority Leader John Thune thought he was giving Republicans a gift when he secured a provision in the shutdown-ending government funding package that could award hundreds of thousands of dollars to senators subpoenaed as part of former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Donald Trump.

It turns out, several of them don’t want it.

Of the eight known Senate Republicans whose phone records were subpoenaed as part of Smith’s probe into Trump’s 2020 election interference, only one so far — Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina — has announced definitive plans to take advantage of the new legislative language that would allow senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 or more if they discover their electronic records were seized without notification.

“Oh definitely,” Graham said at a news conference after the passage of the government funding bill. “And if you think I’m going to settle this thing for a million dollars — no. I want to make it so painful, no one ever does this again … I’m going to pursue through the court system — remedies.”

The others, however, were less enthusiastic or more opaque about their intentions. In public comments, social media posts or statements to POLITICO over the past few days, the seven remaining Senate Republicans declined to publicly commit to seeking compensation for being singled out by Smith — as the Democrats pummel the GOP for endorsing a taxpayer-funded windfall and fellow Republicans in both chambers decry the provision as poorly conceived.

“I think the Senate provision is a bad idea,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) in a statement. “There needs to be accountability for the Biden DOJ’s outrageous abuse of the separation of powers, but the right way to do that is through public hearings, tough oversight, including of the complicit telecomm companies, and prosecution where warranted.”

It could all soon be moot. Republicans in the House were enraged over the provision’s inclusion, and Speaker Mike Johnson responded by promising to hold a vote for a bill that would repeal the legislative language. The effort is expected to pass overwhelmingly with bipartisan support.

Johnson told reporters Wednesday that he had spoken with Thune about the issue earlier in the day, and that he communicated his disapproval of his Senate counterpart’s maneuvering.

It’s not clear what Thune plans to do with the bill, assuming it passes the House. A person familiar with the provision’s introduction into the funding bill, who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, said that Senate Republicans requested that Thune include the language in the legislation.

The person cited a “strong appetite” among the GOP to pursue accountability for the so-called Arctic Frost investigation, a Biden-era probe that Republicans say constituted a weaponization of the Justice Department.

But as it turns out, the provision in the funding bill related to Smith’s probe is already creating political liability for Senate Republicans. Rep. John Rose (R-Tenn.), who is running for governor of his state next year, quickly introduced legislation in the House that would reverse the provision. His challenger for the Republican nomination, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, later said she would vote for a bill to undo the language — but expressed a desire to take some legal recourse as a Smith target.

“Senator Blackburn’s plan has always been to seek a declaratory judgment — not monetary damages — to prevent leftists from violating the constitutional rights of conservatives,” a spokesperson for Blackburn said in a statement.

Even Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who is co-leading the investigation into Smith’s probe with Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), said that while he stood by the provision he wouldn’t act on the cash opportunity.

“I have no plans at this time,” he said in a statement. “If I did sue, it would only be for the purpose of using the courts to expose the corrupt weaponization of federal law enforcement by the Biden and Obama administrations. With the full cooperation in our congressional investigations from the Trump DOJ and FBI, that shouldn’t be necessary.”

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) said he would not seek damages nor did he want taxpayer money.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) tried to distance himself from the provision’s origin story, with a spokesperson saying he only learned about the payout language while reading the bill. He would support a House measure to repeal it, the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for Sen. Cynthia Lummis also emphasized that the Wyoming Republican did not play a role in the provision’s formulation — but added that the lawmaker supported the language.

“We must not allow the politicization of federal agencies to become routine,” the spokesperson said. “Liquidated damages provisions are commonly used and this provision is the only way to hold Jack Smith and wrongdoers accountable.”

A spokesperson for Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), another gubernatorial aspirant, pointed to the lawmaker’s statement on social media, noting that he would “sue the living hell out of every Biden official involved” if Smith was not jailed and Judge James Boasberg — who approved the effort to prevent senators from being notified of the subpoena — was not impeached.

The spokesperson wasn’t clear on whether Tuberville intends to sue the federal government under the provision in the funding bill.

Graham, during his press conference this week, said he believed the language would benefit everyone.

“This wasn’t about investigating me or other Senators for a crime — it was a fishing expedition,” Graham said. “I’m going to push back really hard … that will protect the Senate in the future.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman was hospitalized Thursday morning after falling and hitting his face, sustaining “minor injuries,” his spokesperson said in a statement.

In a post to the Democrat’s account on X, a spokesperson said Fetterman fell to the ground after feeling lightheaded on an early morning walk near his home in Braddock, Pennsylvania. He was transported to a hospital in Pittsburgh “out of an abundance of caution,” where doctors determined the dizzy spell was caused by a “ventricular fibrillation flare-up,” a heartbeat irregularity.

“Senator Fetterman had this to say: ‘If you thought my face looked bad before, wait until you see it now!’” the spokesperson relayed in the post.

Fetterman — who returned to his Pennsylvania home after the Senate’s vote to reopen the government on Monday — chose to stay at the hospital so doctors could “fine-tune his medication regimen,” though his team said he’s “doing well” and receiving routine observation. The post did not specify how long the senator is expected to remain at the hospital.

The incident is the latest in a series of health challenges the Pennsylvania senator has faced since his campaign for the seat. He was hospitalized due to a stroke in 2022 just days before winning the state’s Democratic Senate primary. He also spent several nights in the hospital in 2023 for a similar lightheadedness spell, but testing showed no signs of stroke or seizure, his office said at the time.

The senator checked himself into a hospital days later to receive inpatient care for clinical depression — something he’s lived with throughout his life and has since been vocal about in public appearances.

“It’s a risk that I wanted to take because I wanted to help people and know that I don’t want them to suffer the way — or put any kinds of despair that I’ve been in. And if that conversation helps, then that’s — I’m going to continue to do that,” Fetterman told NBC’s Kristen Welker in 2023.

A federal judge on Thursday declined to toss federal assault charges against New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver.

The first-term Democrat was charged with assaulting law enforcement officers following a chaotic scrum outside an immigration detention facility in May.

McIver argued that the prosecution — led by Alina Habba, a former personal attorney to President Donald Trump whom he picked to be the state’s top federal prosecutor — was unfair and that she was shielded from the charges by the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which grants members of Congress a form of immunity that is mostly impenetrable in investigations relating to the official duties of lawmakers.

U.S. District Judge Jamel Semper, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, disagreed and refused to toss two of the three counts, while reserving judgment on a third until he sees more evidence.

“Defendant’s active participation in the alleged conduct removes her acts from the safe harbor of mere oversight,” he said. “Lawfully or unlawfully, Defendant actively engaged in conduct unrelated to her oversight responsibilities and congressional duties.”

McIver is accused in a three-count indictment of slamming a federal agent with her forearm, “forcibly” grabbing him and using her forearms to strike another agent. Allegations of physical violence by a sitting member of Congress are rare.

The alleged assaults occurred during a 68-second span in the midst of a three-hour oversight visit to the Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, New Jersey, when McIver and fellow Democratic Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman and Rob Menendez were part of a chaotic scene as immigration agents moved to arrest city Mayor Ras Baraka on a trespassing charge that was later dropped.

Semper seemed to draw a line between alleged contact inside a gated area at Delaney Hall, which the congressional Democrats were allowed to inspect, and actions outside, which is where agents moved to arrest Baraka and where prosecutors allege that McIver committed two crimes: assaulting an agent and impeding that arrest.

The count Semper did not fully rule on involves alleged contact between McIver and an agent inside the gated area after the scrum outside the gate.

The ruling — which is likely to be appealed — is a victory for Habba’s office. While she calls herself the “acting U.S. Attorney,” another judge in August ruled she was unlawfully serving in that role. An appeals court is now considering that ruling.

Semper also rejected a more long-shot attempt by McIver’s attorneys to dismiss the whole case based on selective prosecution. McIver’s team argued for that based on Trump pardoning hundreds of people who attacked police at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and the Justice Department dropping numerous additional assault cases at Trump’s direction, despite video evidence of the attacks.

“Irrespective of the pardon, the January 6 defendants are not similarly situated to Defendant because the facts and circumstances surrounding their criminal cases are unambiguously distinct,” Semper wrote.

While McIver quoted Trump and Habba’s rhetoric to claim vindictive prosecution — including Habba’s wish to “turn New Jersey red” — Semper ruled that McIver failed to demonstrate the case against her is “the result of personal animus harbored by the prosecution.”

Spokespeople for McIver and Habba did not immediately comment on the ruling.

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.

The House passed a government funding package late Wednesday that will close out the longest shutdown in history.

Members returned to Washington after a 54-day recess to vote on the shutdown-ending bill brokered across party lines in the Senate. They voted 222-209, with just a handful of Democrats breaking with their leadership to get the measure over the finish line.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign the measure into law before the end of the night, setting up federal operations to resume Thursday morning.

The package includes a three-bill “minibus” of full-year funding for the Department of Agriculture and the FDA, the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction projects and the operations of Congress. The trio of bills is the result of months of bipartisan, bicameral negotiations between top appropriators.

Under the measure, all other agencies are funded through Jan. 30, giving some — but not much — time for another round of spending fights among appropriators who want to avoid another stopgap for the remainder of the fiscal year.

Two Republicans joined Democrats in opposition to the measure, Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Greg Steube of Florida. Otherwise, Speaker Mike Johnson’s conference stuck together to back the funding package endorsed by the president.

Democrats were largely united in opposition to the package, which did not address their primary demand during the government shutdown: passage of legislation to extend enhanced tax credits under the Affordable Care Act that are set to expire at the end of the year, driving up premiums for more than 20 million Americans.

Under the terms of the agreement in the Senate, Democrats will get a vote in mid-December on a bill to extend the subsidies. The Democrats who negotiated the bipartisan arrangement lauded this concession from GOP leaders as a victory, and a chance to win over Republicans who might be convinced to pursue a compromise. But Speaker Mike Johnson was not part of these negotiations and has refused to promise a similar vote in the House.

House Democrats are furious about the concession from their Senate colleagues and believe they now have little to no leverage to force a vote on the extension many Republicans oppose as wasteful and impractical.

“There’s only two ways that this fight will end,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a floor speech before the vote. “Either Republicans finally decide to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits this year, or the American people will throw Republicans out of their jobs next year and end the speakership of Donald J. Trump once and for all.”

Still, six moderate Democrats ended up siding with Republicans to end the shutdown. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, the only Democrat to vote for the stopgap back in September, voted “yes” again. He was joined by Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, Adam Gray of California, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Tom Suozzi of New York and Don Davis of North Carolina.

“I think the progress the Democrats have made by actually getting a year extension on the SNAP program in the Agriculture bill specifically is appropriate,” said Gray in explaining his support. “We need to take the poor families and working families that are in need of these programs out of the middle of a fight that was never appropriate.”

While House members were not involved in the handshake agreements that were forged in the Senate to win Democratic votes, House appropriators were involved in negotiating the minibus.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) on Tuesday night at the House Rules Committee meeting celebrated that House earmarks survived the bicameral conference for both the military construction and agriculture divisions, “reflecting Congress’ clear control over the power of the purse” at a time when the Trump administration has repeatedly moved to make its own decisions about government spending.

The agreement negotiated in the Senate, which paved the way for enough Democrats to agree to advance the funding package, included a guarantee that the White House would rehire all federal employees who were fired early in the shutdown as part of the administration’s “reductions in force” across agencies. The White House has also pledged that all federal workers would receive back pay for the duration of the shutdown.

Agencies will be required to give written notice to Congress that it has both delivered the back pay and rehired laid-off employees.

Future blanket firings would be limited with a broad prohibition on reductions in force in any department or agency at least until the Jan. 30 end date of the continuing resolution.

Eleventh-hour controversy emerged as House lawmakers on both sides of the aisle balked at a provision originating in the Senate that would allow senators, but not House members, to sue the government for having their electronic data collected without their knowledge.

The language was tucked into the portion of the minibus that funds the operations of Congress by Senate Majority Leader John Thune and without consultation with appropriators in his chamber or leadership in the House. It could allow eight Republican senators to receive a $500,000 payout each following revelations that their phone records were subpoenaed as part of former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.

The GOP grumblings played out Tuesday night during a House Rules Committee hearing on the funding bill, with Republican Reps. Chip Roy of Texas, Morgan Griffith of Virginia and Austin Scott of Georgia describing their disapproval. Scott said the provision should be removed, while Chip called it a “self-serving, self-dealing” provision. Cole said he was “surprised” to see the provision added and questioned whether it should be included.

House Republicans didn’t tank the funding package over the provision but already have plans to hold a vote to reverse the language next week once the government is reopened, though it is unlikely the Senate would take up that standalone bill.

“I’m not voting to give Lindsey Graham half a million dollars,” Steube told reporters ahead of the vote. He was referring to the South Carolina Republican who was among those singled out in Smith’s investigation.

Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

House Democrats are back at work — and, boy, are they mad.

They’re mad at the Senate Democrats who cut them out of negotiations and cut the deal to reopen the government after a record 43-day shutdown. They’re mad at Speaker Mike Johnson for keeping the House out of session all that time for what they’re calling a “seven-week paid vacation.” And they’re mad that, after all that, there’s still no clear path forward on meeting their key demand — an extension of health insurance subsidies that expire next month.

Their fury was evident across the Capitol in the 24 hours leading up to Wednesday’s decisive vote reopening the government as they took stock of a long, bitter fight that ended without a clear win and left many spoiling for fights and in little mood to compromise with Republicans.

That sour mood stands to linger with another shutdown deadline approaching in January and members hoping to somehow forge a bipartisan compromise on the insurance subsidies in the coming weeks.

“The Senate says they will have a vote [on the subsidies],” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. “Do I trust any of them? Hell no.”

Speaking to reporters ahead of the final vote Wednesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed to keep up the fight — even as Democrats’ procedural options remain limited. One casualty of the shutdown was Jeffries’ once-cordial relationship with Johnson, which descended into mudslinging as the standoff ground on and frustration mounted.

“Institutionally, Mike Johnson did great damage to the House of Representatives by castrating his Republican majority and keeping his extremists on a taxpayer-funded vacation for more than seven weeks,” Jeffries said.

The “vacation” epithet was a popular one for Democrats returning to the Capitol this week, and it grated on the ears of Republicans who blame the other party’s intransigence for the record shutdown.

During a late-night hearing Tuesday, Rules Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) interrupted Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.) after she sarcastically welcomed Republicans back from the extended recess.

“I am sick and tired of hearing you say we had an eight-week vacation,” Foxx said. “I worked every day — I don’t know about you — but I don’t want to hear another soul say that.”

Ansari refused to back off: “I hope you all enjoyed yourselves while American families [were] terrified that their health insurance premiums were going to double or triple,” she fired back

Adding to the partisan tension surrounding the shutdown was Johnson’s decision not only to keep the House out of session but to also not swear in Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz) until the shutdown ended.

Democrats packed the House floor for Grijalva’s swearing-in Wednesday. Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.), introducing his new colleague, at first joked about how “it has been a minute since we have all been together” before levying more heated attacks on Johnson.

“At one point, the speaker said, ‘Bless her heart, she is representative-elect, she doesn’t know how it works around here,’” Stanton said. “Bless his heart, because here’s how it should work … When the American people vote, this chamber respects their will and seats them immediately. Politics should never come into play.”

In her own speech, Grijalva criticized Republican leaders for denying her district “access to the basic services that every constituent deserves.”

“This is an abuse of power,” she said. “One individual should not be able to unilaterally obstruct the swearing in of a duly elected member of congress for political reasons.”

But Grijalva and Johnson were all smiles when they posed together after she was formally sworn into the House.

“I really like this lady. I think she’s going to be an excellent member of Congress,” Johnson said.

Republicans displayed some anger of their own Wednesday. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) used his floor time to decry Democrats for their “extremist” positions and sparking the record shutdown. “You should all be ashamed of yourselves for inflicting this pain on the American people … not paying our troops, our federal employees, our air traffic controllers,” he shouted. “It’s a disgrace, and you should all hang your heads in shame.”

That prompted a warning from Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), who was presiding over the House at the time, to cool things down: “I fully recognize that there’s a lot of pent-up anxiety and emotions have been elevated somewhat, but please.”

The tensions stand to color the House’s work over the coming weeks. Johnson is promising additional session days and late nights to catch up on the weeks of lost legislative time.

To jump-start progress on the expiring insurance subsidies, Democrats launched a longshot procedural maneuver known as a discharge petition to force a three-year extension of the credits for a vote, but it is unlikely enough Republicans will sign on to ensure its success. More likely, any compromise will have to be forged in the Senate, something in which House Democrats showed little faith this week.

And then there’s the next spending deadline, coming on Jan. 30, when many of the factors that led up to the shutdown over the last seven weeks are likely to be unchanged. Leading up to the 43-day shutdown, Democrats pushed for funding guardrails on the Trump administration in addition to the health care provisions — and got neither in the end.

“I do think at some point it is important for Democrats to have a backbone and really fight for the American people,” said Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).

“I’m not going to vote to endorse their cruelty,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) when asked about the prospect of another shutdown. “And that’s the way I view them not extending the ACA tax credits.”

Jeffries separately cautioned that a laundry list of other items on the House’s agenda, including passage of the annual defense authorization bill, could be threatened if Republicans cut Democrats out of the process.

“The business of the American people must continue, but the red line will be if Republicans continue to adopt the my-way-or-the-highway approach,” he said. “At that point, we’ll continue to say, ‘Get lost.’”