Congress is locked in a staring contest with less than 48 hours until the government shuts down. There’s no sign either side plans to blink.

The standoff is raising the odds that agencies will at least partially shutter for the first time since 2019, when President Donald Trump backed down from a record 34-day shutdown sparked by his demands for a border wall. Congressional leaders each insist they don’t want to barrel past the Sept. 30 deadline Tuesday night, but they are quickly running out of time to find a mutually agreeable off-ramp.

A make-or-break moment will come Monday afternoon, when Trump will meet with the top four congressional leaders at the White House. The sitdown, rescheduled after Trump abruptly cancelled a prior meeting set with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries last week, is the most significant development yet in the weeks-long stalemate.

But after spending the past week hardening their positions and trading social media barbs, all corners are offering the same cautious note: The meeting could provide a path for a last-minute U-turn away from a shutdown, or — more likely — it could all be a mirage that sends Washington careening over the funding cliff on Tuesday.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in a statement ahead of the meeting that “fundamentally, nothing has changed.” He said, however, he hoped Schumer “sees the light and listens to the same voice” that led him and nine other Democrats to vote to avoid a shutdown under similar circumstances back in March.

Schumer and Jeffries, in a joint statement, put the onus on Republicans: “We are resolute in our determination to avoid a government shutdown and address the Republican healthcare crisis. Time is running out.”

There are other signs that each side is preparing for conflict, not detente. In a bid to exert maximum pressure on the Senate, House Republicans do not plan on returning to session until after the government funding deadline — and could stay out of town through next week, too. Senate Republicans are likely to wait until Tuesday to vote again on the House-passed stopgap bill that would float federal operations through Nov. 21, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss internal planning.

Democrats, who have already rejected that punt, are so far uncowed. Jeffries is recalling his caucus to Washington Monday evening for a caucus meeting — and to hammer Speaker Mike Johnson over his decision to not bring the House back. Schumer, in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” crowed that the White House meeting was a sign that Republicans are feeling the “heat” but that if Trump uses it to “rant” and “yell at Democrats,” the visit will amount to nothing.

Trump did just that ahead of his last shutdown, in a December 2018 Oval Office meeting. At that time, he gave Democrats a political gift when he publicly took responsibility for closing agencies over his border security demands. So far he hasn’t given a repeat performance. He called Democrats “crazy” Friday and said if the government closes “they’re the ones that are shutting down.”

White House officials now insist Trump will pressure Schumer during the Monday meeting to swallow the GOP-led stopgap without making a deal — at least not right now — on any of Democrats’ health care demands.

Some Republicans remain hopeful that a shutdown can be averted by enough Democrats agreeing to help advance the GOP bill like they did in March. But if not, they warn, Trump will make a shutdown politically painful for Democrats, since the president has wide latitude to determine what agencies and programs shutter and which stay open.

“I’d be much more worried if I was a blue state,” said Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), noting Trump gets to “determine what’s essential.”

White House budget director Russ Vought fired his own warning shot last week, instructing agencies to put together plans for reductions-in-force, or mass firings, that would go well beyond the furloughs otherwise typical of shutdowns.

The Trump administration is seeking to shield Republican lawmakers as much as possible from potential political blowback, but many are worried all the same about shutdown fallout in their districts. It’s unlikely the administration will be able to completely protect key GOP constituencies. Closure plans for agencies aren’t yet finalized, according to three Trump officials, with one adding, “I think it all hinges on [Monday’s] meeting.”

Rep. Adrian Smith (R-Neb.) said Friday he’s most concerned about keeping a complex patchwork of federal farm loans and USDA services flowing to farmers should government funding lapse — right before the heart of harvest season. The White House is weighing plans to keep county Farm Service Agency offices open and other agriculture resources available, according to three other Trump officials. But the current system is fragile, meaning any disruption could delay loans and resources for farmers who are already reeling from the financial toll of Trump’s tariffs.

And Smith acknowledged that Democratic constituencies might not get the same treatment from the federal bureaucracy, adding that Trump has “expanded authority during the shutdown.”

Democrats have so far brushed off those threats, believing that the White House would continue to try to shrink the size of the federal workforce regardless of whether or not there was a shutdown. They are ultimately betting that Republicans — as the party holding the White House and majorities in both congressional chambers — will bear the brunt of any political fallout.

Jeffries rallied House Democrats in a teleconferenced Friday afternoon caucus meeting, where participants aired no dissent with their leadership’s focus on health care as the deadline looms, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the off-the-record phone call.

At the heart of the Democratic demands are Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies that were expanded in 2021 under former President Joe Biden. Some Republicans, including many vulnerable incumbents, believe the beefed-up credits should be extended past the current year-end expiration date. That idea is drawing fierce pushback from hard-line conservatives, several of whom warned their leadership over the weekend not to cut a deal on the subsidies.

There’s already multiple Republican proposals for how to keep the tax credits going past Dec. 31 and spare a likely premium hike that would result in millions losing health insurance. One group of House Republicans is backing a clean, one-year extension. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has proposed a two-year extension as part of a stand-alone bill or a shorter one-year extension tied to funding the government.

A group of Senate Republicans is also working with senior White House officials and CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz as they craft a proposal that would include new restrictions meant to appeal to conservatives and, hopefully, Trump.

Thune reiterated in an NBC News interview that aired Sunday that Republicans are willing to negotiate over extending the insurance subsidies but not as part of the pending government funding fight. The Senate leader added that the subsidies will need to be changed to win GOP votes, potentially through new income limits or language to prevent potential fraud.

Complicating matters is that House and Senate Democrats haven’t articulated a unified position on what specifically they would need in order to back the GOP-led stopgap funding bill.

Jeffries staked out a new position last week when he declared that not only did any spending agreement have to involve health care, but also that such an agreement had to be “ironclad and in legislation.” That appears to close off the possibility that an off-ramp might be found if Republicans only agreed to open talks on a health care compromise with a later-in-the-year deadline, as a condition of Democrats agreeing to the current Republican plan to keep the government running.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, have unified behind one simple principle — that Republicans have to at least talk to Democrats if they want their votes. That radio silence broke on Friday when Schumer called Thune to encourage him to set up the White House meeting. The call, first reported by POLITICO, is a glimmer of outreach between the two leaders that senators had privately been hoping for.

Schumer said in the “Meet the Press” interview Sunday that Democrats “need a serious negotiation,” leaving himself options for what specifically would generate a shutdown-avoiding breakthrough. Other top Senate Democrats have sent similar signals in recent days.

“We never said that we had to have every single thing and everything is a red line,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the No. 3 Senate Democrat, told reporters Friday, adding that she wasn’t going to negotiate through a Zoom call.

“I’m glad that [Thune’s] willing to talk, but … simply promises that maybe will happen with Donald Trump?” she continued. “My guess is Senator Schumer will say, I need something more specific here.”

A new House panel will re-investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack with an eye toward recasting the narrative about the events in Washington that day.

It’s the latest sign that the deadly riot remains a wound on Congress that might never fully heal amid ferocious partisan sparring. Retribution, not reconciliation, appears to be the prime motivation behind the new probe, with the Republicans behind it still bitter over the work of the panel’s previous iteration, which was largely led by Democrats and concluded President Donald Trump was singularly to blame for the violence inflicted by his supporters.

One GOP member of the new panel, Louisiana Rep. Clay Higgins, did not rule out questioning members of the prior committee.

“They were not invested in actual investigative work anyway,” said Higgins, who has pushed an unfounded theory that FBI agents helped coordinate the events at the Capitol. “That thing was never legitimate. It was always biased. And therefore, if we question them, it may be with the angle of having them implicate themselves in lies that they presented as truth.”

The panel’s chair, Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk, describes the investigation more soberly. He said in an interview that GOP staff have been quietly toiling for months, even before Speaker Mike Johnson moved to formalize the probe this month.

Loudermilk said his team has been “talking to different entities,” reviewing documents and brainstorming potential investigative targets.

“We need to look at it from a factual standpoint,” he said. “It’s dangerous out there. There were a lot of civilians, as well as members of Congress and staff and even press that were here on Jan. 6. And I think we’re all interested to know, why did the Capitol get breached — regardless of who did it — how did it get breached?”

But to Democrats and even some Republicans, that rationale is a smokescreen for the panel’s true purpose: rewriting the history of Jan. 6, 2021, to minimize the culpability of the president and supporters who violently assaulted police officers and entered the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the final certification of Trump’s 2020 election loss.

The security failures Loudermilk cited have been the subject of a slew of wide-ranging investigations: a review by retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, a series of reports by the Capitol Police’s inspector general and two appendices in the final report of the previous Jan. 6 select committee.

That previous select committee concluded that Trump’s incendiary rhetoric, and months of false claims to sow doubt about his defeat in the 2020 election, inflamed his supporters shortly before he directed them to march on the Capitol. But the review also acknowledged that Capitol security officials were underprepared for the onslaught, leading to the breach of the building and several near-confrontations between rioters and lawmakers.

“They can’t even seem to settle on which conspiracy theory they want to advance,” said Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who served on the previous Jan. 6 panel and serves on the new one. “Was it Antifa? Did it not happen at all? Did Donald Trump really win the election? They can’t figure out what it is they want to say, and it’s because it’s just a tissue of lies and conspiracy theories.”

The backdrop for the new GOP-led investigation is Trump’s return to the presidency and his persistent efforts to reject any blame for the attack — and to accuse his political enemies of persecuting his supporters. On his first day back in office, Trump pardoned about 1,000 members of the mob and ordered his Justice Department to drop pending criminal cases against hundreds of others.

Trump has spent the intervening years downplaying the violence that occurred that day, which left more than 100 police officers injured. One officer died a day after the riot after suffering strokes, and several others died of suicide in subsequent weeks. Four Trump supporters died in the violence, including one who was shot by a Capitol Police officer as she attempted to enter the lobby that leads onto the House floor.

The attack remains a raw issue on Capitol Hill. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) helped sink the nomination of conservative attorney Ed Martin to be Trump’s top prosecutor in Washington, citing Martin’s advocacy for Jan. 6 criminal defendants and his comments about the attack. FBI Director Kash Patel has faced intense questioning about his own advocacy for Jan. 6 defendants and his role in producing a rendition of the National Anthem by some of the most violent offenders that day.

There is even an ongoing controversy over whether to hang a plaque previously commissioned by Congress to honor those who protected the Capitol that day. Johnson has refused to display the memorial, and Loudermilk, while expressing personal support for the officers, said that decision is “not in my decisionmaking wheelhouse.”

Meanwhile, the prior select committee, led by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), remains a particular sore spot for Trump and many Republicans. Even after it was disbanded, Trump continued calling its report a “Hoax” and its leaders “Political Hacks and Thugs” while championing Loudermilk’s work.

Reinvestigating the attack has been a longstanding priority for the Georgia Republican, who came under scrutiny by the previous Jan. 6 panel for hosting a tour of the complex the night before the Capitol riot. One person in his party was later found to have posted incendiary videos and marched toward, but not into, the building the next day.

Neither Loudermilk nor anyone in his tour group was accused of any wrongdoing, but the Jan. 6 committee interviewed one of the group members and questioned why Loudermilk did not inform authorities about the presence of his group.

After Republicans retook the House majority in 2023, Loudermilk led a probe “on the failures and politicization of the January 6th Select Committee” as chair of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight. In that investigation, some entities were uncooperative with his requests, Loudermilk said.

This time, in helming a select subcommittee under the Judiciary Committee, he has full subpoena power to compel compliance with his demands. “We think we’ve got a little more cooperation at this point,” he said.

The formal creation of Loudermilk’s panel followed months of negotiations over its scope and powers, with Loudermilk pushing for greater jurisdiction than Johnson’s team had been willing to give — and complaining to fellow Republicans about how GOP leadership was trying to stifle his effort. Then the Trump administration privately applied pressure to get the effort set up, Loudermilk told reporters earlier this year.

Johnson, who was central to the effort on Capitol Hill to overturn the 2020 election, acted quietly — inserting a provision establishing the panel as part of an unrelated procedural measure. One House Republican, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive dynamics around the panel, was unaware the subcommittee even existed before being asked about it by a POLITICO reporter.

Besides Loudermilk and Higgins, the panel’s members are Republican Reps. Morgan Griffith of Virginia, Troy Nehls of Texas and Harriet Hageman of Wyoming, as well as Democratic Reps. Eric Swalwell of California, Jasmine Crockett of Texas and Jared Moskowitz of Florida. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) will serve as an ex officio member alongside Raskin, the top Judiciary Democrat.

These lawmakers are some of the most aggressive political messengers of their respective parties. Nehls sued the government over what he claimed was retaliation from the Capitol Police for his criticism of the force’s handling of the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. Hageman unseated Cheney after she was ostracized by her party for her leading role in the prior panel and her unrelenting criticism of Trump.

The panel is wasting no time in launching an effort to review the findings of that previous committee. Earlier this month, Loudermilksent letters to some businesses and other entities that had been in contact with the previous Jan. 6 panel to request data that was deleted or not otherwise archived. That committee disclosed a host of information in its possession, but some materials — including footage of its interviews — remain unreleased.

Other details of what the panel’s work will entail in the coming months remain sketchy. Loudermilk said he anticipates releasing a final report, while hearings would be called “based on a need and based on the evidence that we’re collecting.”

He added that his team was focusing on the unsolved mystery of the pipe bombs placed near the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee offices the day before the riot and the FBI’s use of confidential human sources who were present at the Capitol.

Patel recently said the bureau’s pipe bomb investigation remained active and promising. The Justice Department’s inspector general reported in December that there were 26 FBI sources present in Washington on Jan. 6 but only three had actually been tasked by the bureau with tracking potential bad actors.

Both issues have fueled conspiracy theories about government involvement in the violence that day. But Loudermilk said he intends to steer his panel away from politics.

“I’m trying to make it clear I do not want this to be a partisan clown show,” he said. “This isn’t about getting clicks or media interviews.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

The top congressional leaders of both parties will meet Monday afternoon with President Donald Trump — less than 48 hours before a possible government shutdown — according to three people granted anonymity to discuss the plans ahead of a public announcement.

The meeting with Speaker Mike Johnson , Senate Majority Leader John Thune , Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is set to take place less than a week after Trump abruptly canceled a previously scheduled meeting with Schumer and Jeffries.

The new sitdown was set after Thune and Schumer spoke for the first time in weeks about the spending standoff, according to two other people granted anonymity to describe a private conversation.

In the Friday conversation, the Democratic leader urged Thune “to get President Trump to meet because the deadline for a government shutdown is fast approaching,” according to one of the people, a Schumer aide. The other person said the call was initiated by Schumer.

Democrats are pressing for an extension of health insurance subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year, among other concessions. Trump and Republicans will press Senate Democrats to allow a House-approved seven-week stopgap pass and punt any larger negotiation for later. All Democratic senators except Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman voted to block the continuing resolution earlier this month.

In a statement confirming the meeting Saturday, Jeffries and Schumer said, “We are resolute in our determination to avoid a government shutdown and address the Republican healthcare crisis. Time is running out.”

The earlier meeting was scheduled in the wake of that vote, but it was canceled at the urging of Johnson and Thune, who see no reason for a negotiation at this juncture. “I look forward to meeting with you when you become realistic about the things that our Country stands for,” Trump told Democrats in a Tuesday social media post canceling the meeting.

The people knowledgeable about the new meeting noted Thune and Johnson have said they are willing to discuss the insurance subsidies at a later time. Trump isn’t expected to ask Democrats for anything additional at the meeting, they said, but agreed to meet with Democratic leaders after they asked for the sitdown.

“We want a clean CR, same as it always was,” one of the people said.

The meeting, which was first reported by Punchbowl News, is currently slated for 2 p.m. Monday. Senate Republicans are expected to put the House-passed measure up for a second vote Tuesday just hours before the midnight shutdown deadline.

LAKE CITY, Florida — Rep. Cory Mills tried to convince a Florida judge Friday that he never planned to circulate “salacious” videos of his ex-girlfriend or harm any of her future lovers, suggesting at one point he knew it would be politically damaging to take any such action.

Mills spoke in court as he tried to fend off a request for a restraining order from Lindsay Langston, the 2024 Miss United States and a Republican state committee woman, who is accusing Mills of causing her extreme emotional distress.

Circuit Judge Fred Koberlein said he plans to rule on the injunction request once he receives final recommendations from attorneys that are due next Thursday. The announcement followed the second of two hearings this month where both Mills and Langston testified and answered questions about their relationship and the meaning of a flurry of text messages, phone calls and direct messages between the two of them.

The push for the restraining order against Mills comes amid a swirl of controversies this year for second-term Republican, including a since-withdrawn allegation of assault and an ethics investigation into whether he’s benefited from contracts from the federal government while serving as a member of Congress. Mills has denied any wrongdoing in either matter.

During the first hearing Langston spent extensive time explaining how scared she was of the 45-year-old Mills. She described him as a “powerful” and “wealthy” member of Congress who first became involved with her in late 2021.

The second hearing focused on testimony from Mills. A key part centered on whether Mills had a sexually explicit video that he planned to release. He maintained that while Langston had sent him intimate videos, he no longer had access to them because his phone was damaged and had to be replaced.

Mills maintained the videos he mentioned to Langston were those of her baking and wanted to show any potential boyfriend of hers that the two of them had an ongoing relationship.

“You’re talking about giving up my entire career — for what?” said Mills about the prospect of releasing the intimate videos, adding that he had no “intent to do anything salacious.”

Mills also contended another message he sent where he suggested a future boyfriend would need to “strap up cowboy” was not a potential threat of violence but instead was a rodeo term meant to suggest that a “wild ride” was about to happen.

Mills also pushed back on previous testimony from Langston that he had been “suicidal” at one point earlier year and instead said he was under stress due to the ill health of his mother and the death of a close friend.

Bobi Frank, Langston’s attorney, tried to undercut Mills’ testimony and grilled him over why he was still married after saying he planned to divorce his wife. Mills answered that he has been trying to end his marriage for four years but that it was complicated due to his business interests and that it “wasn’t a typical divorce.”

Mills’ relationship with Langston unraveled in the aftermath of an incident where police in Washington were called to investigate an alleged assault by the lawmaker against a woman. Both Mills and the woman denied that any assault took place, and Mills was not charged in the incident.

Langston testified earlier this month that the incident led her to conclude Mills was in a relationship with another woman.

The attorney for Mills put Langston back on the stand late in the hearing where he tried to suggest that she was not in emotional distress as she previously testified. He also tried to get her to explain why she turned to Anthony Sabatini, a combative Florida attorney who challenged Mills in the 2022 GOP primary, for legal advice.

She asserted again that she was “terrified” of Mills and remains “afraid” to go on a date because of his threats. Asked if she had ever been physically harmed by Mills, she said, “Not yet.”

Mills first won his seat in 2022 after post-Census redistricting created new GOP-friendly lines for the 7th District, stretching from Orlando’s north suburbs to the Atlantic coast. His campaigns in both 2022 and 2024 were run with the aid of James Blair, a GOP consultant who now works as a deputy chief of staff for Trump and plays a key role in pushing the president’s agenda on Capitol Hill.

New files turned over to congressional investigators from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein suggest the convicted sex offender, in the last years of his life, had ties with President Donald Trump’s former adviser Elon Musk.

The documents, which were delivered to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and published Friday by the panel’s Democrats, come in response to the committee probe into the Epstein case. In what appears to be a copy of Epstein’s itinerary, Musk had a tentative trip to Epstein’s island on Dec. 6, 2014. A note appended to that plan reads, “is this still happening?” At the time, Epstein owned a private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Another schedule notes a planned lunch with tech billionaire Peter Thiel on Nov. 27, 2017, and a breakfast with conservative political strategist Steve Bannon on Feb. 16, 2019 — just months before Epstein was charged with sex trafficking of minors. Bannon was Trump’s chief strategist, and Thiel is a prominent Republican megadonor.

These new files are notable in that they suggest all three powerful men had a relationship with Epstein after his controversial plea deal that forced him to register as a sex offender. Many people have argued that the non-prosecution agreement, which was signed in 2007, allowed Epstein to continue to prey on young women and girls for years before his subsequent 2019 arrest.

“It should be clear to every American that Jeffrey Epstein was friends with some of the most powerful and wealthiest men in the world,” said Sara Guerrero, a spokesperson for Oversight Democrats, in a statement. “Every new document produced provides new information as we work to bring justice for the survivors and victims.”

Musk, Bannon and a press contact for Thiel’s foundation did not immediately return a request for comment.

A GOP spokesperson for the Oversight panel blasted the Democrats’ decision to release information unilaterally.

“It’s unfortunate that Democrats continue to meaninglessly cherry-pick documents and politicize this investigation,” the spokesperson said. “They are intentionally withholding documents that contain names of Democrat officials, and the information they released today is old news.”

However, the person speaking on behalf of the GOP majority declined to name those Democratic officials, saying Republicans would wait to release the files in full once victims’ names were redacted.

Musk’s mention is also significant because he had previously broken with President Donald Trump in pushing for the release of further information in the Epstein case.

In the midst of his fallout with Trump earlier this year, Musk had accused the administration of failing to release the materials in the Epstein case because the files mentioned Trump. In a separate post on X, Musk also questioned, “How can people be expected to have faith in Trump if he won’t release the Epstein files?”

Also according to the newly released files, Microsoft founder Bill Gates had a tentative breakfast party in 2014 with Epstein.

A ledger for Epstein, which Oversight Democrats published Friday, lists massages for Prince Andrew, while what appears to be a record of a flight in 2000 details a trip with Epstein, his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, Prince Andrew and others from Teterboro, New Jersey, to West Palm Beach, Florida.

Epstein’s relationships with Gates and Prince Andrew have been extensively scrutinized.

The materials turned over by the Epstein estate include phone message logs, which had already been produced in earlier litigation; flight logs and flight manifests from 1990-2019; and ledgers detailing Epstein’s and businesses’ cash transactions, and schedules, from 2010-2019.

All told, the Oversight panel received 8,544 documents, according to committee Democrats.

Russ Vought careened into the escalating government shutdown fight this week, threatening mass layoffs of federal workers if Democrats don’t capitulate to President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans.

For those who know the White House budget director’s long history in Washington, it was only a matter of time.

“You could have anticipated what was coming,” Bill Hoagland, a former longtime top Senate GOP budget aide, said in an interview. “He is clever. But he has a clear intent here, which I think is to strangle the beast. And he knows how to play the game.”

With the layoffs threat Wednesday, Vought has cast himself as a main character in the shutdown standoff ahead of the Tuesday midnight funding deadline. It’s a role he is no doubt comfortable playing, having navigated dozens of spending fights as a congressional aide, think-tank operative and Trump official.

Now Vought, 49, is well positioned to further execute his long-held views on government spending if federal cash stops cold, after months of groundwork undermining bipartisan funding negotiations and upending the federal bureaucracy.

His ideological allies are already excited by what Vought might have in store at the Office of Management and Budget if the government does in fact shut down at midnight Sept. 30.

Paul Winfree, who served as Trump’s director of budget policy during his first term, called Vought’s threat a “brilliant” move.

During the last shutdown under Trump, which ended in early 2019, Vought served in an understudy role. Administration officials at the time sought to play down the impact on most Americans, Winfree noted.

“This time, Russ is putting the pain on the bureaucracy,” he said.

Democrats, meanwhile, are stewing and eager to make Vought a bogeyman of the partisan fight after sparring with him for years.

Soon after POLITICO published the OMB memo Wednesday, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called him a “malignant political hack.”

“We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings,” Jeffries wrote on social media. “Get lost.”

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who has long criticized the OMB chief as the House’s top Democratic appropriator, said in a statement Thursday that the layoffs threat was “Russ Vought’s trademark chaos.”

An OMB spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment about Vought’s approach to the potential shutdown. But what is clear from Vought’s history and his own statements is that he sees a method to the madness.

Speaking on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast last week, he called the shutdown deadline “a very critical juncture” and said that Republicans have Democrats “in a very good position, where they should be with us to fund the government.”

The OMB director’s latest move fits neatly into the playbook he articulated during vetting earlier this year for Senate confirmation, after helping write the Heritage Foundation’s controversial “Project 2025” recommendations during Trump’s campaign for a second presidency.

Put simply, he thinks Congress can set a ceiling for agency funding but a president can spend less.

One first-term Trump administration official said no one familiar with the administration’s strategy was surprised by Vought’s memo to agencies this week. Shutdowns “create a natural inflection point between essential and nonessential,” said the person, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about White House thinking.

“If the government can function with only essential employees and not inflict pain on the American people … then why would we not want that?” the former official added. “It proves the point the administration has been making from the campaign all the way to day one: That there is bloat and excess within the government.”

In the roughly 45 years Congress has been letting federal funding lapse amid partisan standoffs, OMB directors have frequently used their power to either lessen the impact of a government shutdown or maximize it, depending how the White House wanted to sway the negotiations.

Vought is now taking those powers to a new level. Threatening to terminate federal jobs during a funding lapse goes far beyond the usual discretion of a budget chief to determine “essential” and “nonessential” work during government shutdowns, further demonstrating how a motivated ideologue can torpedo norms in Congress as well as the executive branch by testing the limits of a typically bureaucratic and process-focused role.

Not every Trump ally understands the calculus, however. Another official who served in the first Trump administration, also granted anonymity to speak frankly about Vought’s moves, said it could be “just a really heavy-handed way of spooking Democrats.”

There is no obvious advantage to firing large swaths of federal workers during a government shutdown, besides applying pressure on Democrats, because the White House has already been executing those “reduction-in-force” layoffs, the former official said. And after the administration fired federal workers under the Department of Government Efficiency initiative earlier this year, the Trump administration has since rescinded many of those terminations.

“Most people I’ve talked to just assume it’s a scare tactic,” the person said. “Everyone was like: Well, why are they hiring all of these DOGE fires back, and then suddenly want to do another RIF? Why do you need a shutdown to do a RIF?”

Democrats so far are showing no sign of retreat. Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents droves of federal workers in suburban Maryland, said in an interview Thursday that Vought is “clearly the bad cop” in the government shutdown standoff.

“We figured that out a long time ago, and also the fact that he’s not paying attention to following the law or the Constitution,” Ivey said. “So I think for Democrats on the Hill, we understand we’ve got to fight back. And this is the time to do it.”

Over the past eight months, Vought has been far bolder in testing the bounds of his role as budget director than he was during his initial stint leading the budget office during Trump’s first presidency, when OMB withheld aid to Ukraine in 2019, contributing to the president’s first impeachment.

He has since openly questioned the constitutionality of the federal law requiring presidents to get congressional approval before canceling federal cash — asserting that funding for programs Trump considers “woke and weaponized” can’t be spent in a way that’s consistent with the president’s agenda. Last month, he orchestrated a legally dubious move to unilaterally cancel billions of dollars in approved spending without the consent of lawmakers.

Over the summer, Vought told reporters he wants government funding negotiations on Capitol Hill to be “less bipartisan,” infuriating lawmakers of both parties who have long led those delicate talks.

“He becomes enemy No. 1 on the Democrat side,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a senior appropriator, said in an interview this month.

“If you’re a Democrat — even just like a mainstream Democrat — your predisposition might be to help negotiate with Republicans on a funding mechanism,” Womack said. “Why would you do that if you know that whatever you negotiate is going to be subject to the knife pulled out by Russ Vought? That’s a challenge for us.”

Meredith Lee Hill, Nicholas Wu and Sophia Cai contributed to this report.

Congress is on track to spend more than $1 billion on the budget for the U.S. Capitol Police for the first time in history, with even fiscal conservatives pushing for more member security investments in the wake of the Charlie Kirk killing.

Kirk’s assassination and a broader rise in high-profile political violence has activated lawmakers around a renewed push for additional protections for themselves and their families. It’s scrambling Capitol Hill’s typical ideological factions, with some GOP budget hawks accusing Republican leadership of penny-pinching.

“They can find that money just like that for the war pimps, but for us it’s a little different,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who has scolded Republicans for greenlighting Ukraine aid, said in an interview.

The debate over how much money lawmakers are willing to spend on their own safety will come to a head as appropriators rush to finalize the legislative branch spending bill for fiscal 2026, which funds the operations of Congress and member security.

That the Capitol Police budget could soon clear $1 billion is telling enough, a vivid reflection of just how frightened elected officials are amid the recent surge of deadly political violence. But for many members, this sum still won’t be enough.

Both chambers took steps in the days after the Kirk assassination to move existing money around to provide lawmakers with more options for security, with promises about exploring additional changes. The main push for swift action, however, has come from the House.

Burchett was among several GOP firebrands who, less than a day before a scheduled vote on a stopgap government funding bill last week, descended on Speaker Mike Johnson’s office to demand leadership reopen negotiations on the legislation to incorporate more member security money. The package was already slated to provide a $30 million infusion to fund partnerships between Capitol Police and state and local law enforcement agencies.

He, alongside Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, ultimately backed off their threats to vote against the stopgap measure amid promises leadership would make additional investments in the coming months, including in a standalone member security supplemental.

Some of them were advocating for every House member to be able to obtain round-the-clock security details, which are currently reserved for party leaders and lawmakers deemed to be under imminent threat. Expanding them widely is potentially a multibillion-dollar undertaking.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida, the lone Democrat in Johnson’s office for the recent member security talks, wants each lawmaker to have a staffer tasked with protective security duties.

Another deficit hawk, Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), has spent more than $150,000 from his own wallet to secure his home. He isn’t blanching at investing even more federal dollars for member security, for lawmakers as well as staff. “This is about more than the vanity-filled members of Congress,” he said.

Schweikert also said he’s still reeling from being confronted in a Costco parking lot by a constituent who claimed to be irate that his granddaughter didn’t win a prize in the annual congressional art competition. He was with his two young children at the time and describes them as still being traumatized by the event.

The need for enhanced security is obvious. But, he added, “I think the more interesting question is, what’s effective?”

That very question is consuming the lead negotiators in member security funding talks, who are weighing ambitious proposals from the rank-and-file against a hesitation to throw more money at a problem that might not be so easily fixed.

“There’s a lot of members asking a lot of things,” Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that funds the legislative branch, said in an interview. “We’re running the numbers and providing the data to those who are going to be making those decisions.”

The Capitol Police now operates on a $806.5 million budget, which is already up more than 73 percent since 2020.

Valadao said it would be up to members of leadership to determine what dollar amount would constitute “that sweet spot” where “members feel safe.” Asked if he had any idea what that magic number might look like, he could only shrug.

Johnson said in a recent interview that leaders were considering making as much as $25,000 per month available as part of the legislative branch bill that would allow select members to have extra protection “on a case by case basis” if they are deemed to be under “serious threat.”

He didn’t elaborate, however, on who would get to decide which members are under the greatest threat, and using what criteria.

Meanwhile, Reps. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) and Joe Morelle (D-N.Y.) — the chair and ranking member of the Committee on House Administration, respectively — are working outside of the government funding process to shift around existing resources for member security, underscoring there are programs right now that aren’t being fully utilized.

“What we have done is actually provided a lot of communication to members. Every office has a law enforcement coordinator in their office. We’re providing that information to those offices,” said Steil.

“As these concerns have become heightened, I think a lot more members have been more proactive in making sure that they understand the programs that are already available,” he continued, “as well as the expansion and extension.”

Morelle warned that protecting members against every single violent scenario is likely impossible when many perpetrators “are people who have deep, deep issues.”

“The challenge at the moment is, that there are a lot of things you can’t control, and you certainly can’t anticipate things that, in many ways, are random,” he added.

The reality is, myriad programs are already in place to support lawmakers when they’re away from the uber-secure Capitol complex. Members can, for instance, use their office funds for some security equipment, like cameras for district offices and a ballistic vest.

There’s a discussion about making changes to existing policies governing the use of a $20,000 lifetime cap lawmakers can use to install security systems at their private homes.

Some members want to be able to direct those funds toward making so-called capital improvements at their personal homes, such as perimeter fencing or bulletproof  windows. That’s not currently allowed with lawmakers traditionally wary of using taxpayer dollars on construction projects that would increase the value of lawmakers’ residences.

Lawmakers are also permitted to use campaign funds to support security investments during political activities like rallies, including hiring personal security guards. But some members have complained about the suggestion they should be fundraising for their own protection.

“At some point they just build a consensus and let’s go with something,” Burchett suggested to party leaders. “Put it on the floor. Let’s debate it.”

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has received new materials from the estate of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The delivery of documents comes in response to a recent letter from congressional investigators to the estate, requesting cash ledgers, message logs, calendars and flight logs in the estate’s possession.

“[T]he Epstein estate has produced unredacted calendars, call logs, and cash ledgers to the Oversight Committee,” said an Oversight committee aide, granted anonymity to speak freely about the panel’s ongoing investigation into the Epstein case. “We intend to make records public once victims’ names are redacted.”

This tranche of materials is the third set of documents from the Epstein estate. Already, it has turned over the so-called birthday book that allegedly included a message for Epstein written by President Donald Trump.

Trump has denied connection to the letter, which includes the outline of a woman’s body, and sued the Wall Street Journal, which was first to report on the message.

The estate has also turned over Epstein’s last will and testament, pages that appeared to be from a contact book, along with other materials.

Epstein’s estate has been cooperating with the panel’s request, as House GOP leadership has continued to face an insurgent effort among lawmakers to force a floor vote on a full release of the Epstein files in the Justice Department’s possession.

The so-called discharge petition to bypass leadership and force that vote is a joint effort led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), and it’s poised to reach the necessary 218 signatures in the coming days — Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) is expected to sign on once she is formally sworn into office.

In recent months, House GOP leaders have pointed to the Oversight probe as a better alternative to the Massie-Khanna bill. House Oversight chair James Comer (R-Ky.) has argued his investigation goes far beyond what would be required for the DOJ to turn over, pointing to the documents that have been produced from the Epstein estate.

If the White House thought its threat to fire federal workers during a government shutdown would spark a Democratic retreat, so far, it’s not happening.

Instead, multiple congressional Democrats brushed off the prospect of mass layoffs — floated in an Office of Management and Budget memo first reported by POLITICO — as a negotiating tactic and vowed not to bend as a midnight Sept. 30 shutdown deadline approaches.

Among the Democrats still standing firm against a Republican-led seven-week funding punt include those representing many of thousands public employees who would be most at risk if President Donald Trump and OMB director Russ Vought follow through on their threats.

“President Trump is engaged in mafia-style blackmail, with his threats ultimately harming the American people,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland said in a statement, calling the potential layoffs “likely illegal” and pledging that Democrats will be “fighting back with every tool we have.”

Said Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse in a succinct social media post, “These weird sickos enjoy cruelty.” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, added that Trump is a “petty wannabe tyrant.”

“President Trump will try to abuse a shutdown — just like he’s trampled our laws for months — but that doesn’t mean he gets whatever he wants as a result,” Murray said in a statement.

Democrats are pushing Trump and GOP leaders in Congress to negotiate on a bipartisan shutdown-averting funding bill, noting that Senate Republicans will need a handful of Democratic votes to vault the chamber’s 60-vote filibuster threshold. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries say they want health care to be the centerpiece of those talks.

But it’s not only Democrats who are showing signs of unease with the layoff gambit spearheaded by Vought. It’s emerging as the latest crack in what had been, until this week, a united GOP messaging front.

“No I don’t support mass firings,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said in a brief interview. “But there’s a very simple way to avoid it … pass the CR, which Schumer and Jeffries have repeatedly supported in the past.”

Top Republican leaders, meanwhile, have stayed mum on the layoff threats and largely stuck to their previous messaging.

“Democrats are holding the AMERICAN government HOSTAGE — in an attempt to give FREE health care to NONCITIZENS, which was just outlawed by Congress. This isn’t governing. It’s putting illegal aliens FIRST and Americans LAST,” Speaker Mike Johnson posted on X on Thursday.

Johnson’s reference to “illegal aliens” is connected to a Democratic proposal to roll back parts of the recently enacted GOP megabill that would create new roadblocks to prevent states from enrolling undocumented immigrants in public benefit programs.

A spokesperson for Johnson didn’t respond to an inquiry about if he supports permanently laying off federal employees during a shutdown. Spokespeople for Senate Majority Leader John Thune also did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the same question.

The OMB memo told agencies to start drafting “reduction-in-force” plans for agencies and programs that do not have an alternative funding source after Oct. 1, when the government would shutter, and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.”

The layoff threat comes as Congress and the White House barrel toward the deadline without a clear off-ramp. Trump initially agreed to — and then backed out of — a meeting with Schumer and Jeffries to discuss a path forward.

The OMB memo aligns with concerns Schumer outlined earlier this year when he enraged the Democratic base by shoring up the votes to advance a GOP funding bill — that a shutdown would only empower Vought and Trump to take a sledgehammer to the federal government. But the New York Democrat signaled Wednesday night that Vought’s latest threat was nothing more than an “attempt at intimidation” that would not change his strategy.

“This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government,” Schumer said in a statement, adding that the actions would be challenged in courts or that the administration would ultimately backtrack and bring workers back on the job — as Trump has already done.

Other Democrats have joined Schumer in arguing that, shutdown or not, Trump is determined to wage war against federal employees and would pursue mass firings in any event.

“We know that Republicans wouldn’t stand up to Trump for doing any of these things at any other time anyway,” said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.). “That’s part of the problem is because they’ve shown to have no spine, no ability to stand up to a rogue administration. These threats just aren’t as strong as they could be.”

Every Senate Democrat save for Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman voted last week to reject the GOP-led funding bill, which would fund the government until Nov. 21. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, rejected a Democratic alternative that would reverse portions of the megabill, restore some funding cut by the Trump administration and also extend health insurance subsidies that are set to lapse on Dec. 31.

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.