The Senate’s Plan B is in place. Now it’s up to Speaker Mike Johnson to deliver on Plan A — the “one big, beautiful bill” he’s been promising for weeks.

It amounts to a key inflection point for President Donald Trump’s domestic policy agenda, and GOP senators — who muscled through their own two-bill legislative blueprint early Friday morning — are eagerly watching to see if Johnson can finally unify his fractious conference and move forward with his own plan.

“I’m pulling for the House to pull together and get one big, beautiful bill,” said Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). If Johnson can do so, he added, “I will be his biggest fan.”

But Johnson is facing major skepticism as he plows forward this week. The Rules Committee will meet Monday to ready the House GOP budget plan for the floor as a group of holdouts concerned about deep cuts to Medicaid and other safety-net programs raise increasingly sharp concerns.

Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, normally an ally of GOP leadership, led a group of GOP lawmakers to warn against steep cuts to Medicaid, food assistance and Pell Grants. Several Republicans who held town hall meetings during their recess last week faced boos and criticism from constituents concerned about potential cuts.

The public dissent came even after Trump publicly called on both chambers to quickly pass the House GOP budget plan, which tees up $2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years. Republican leaders at this point think they can muscle the effort through with Trump’s support. But just a few Republicans could block those plans, depending on attendance.

One hard-liner, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, has already told fellow Republicans he won’t support Johnson’s blueprint. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.), who fellow Republicans have been watching as a likely source of opposition, posted on X Sunday night that she was indeed a “NO.” And New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, one of several remaining swing-district holdouts, said she was “still undecided.”

Malliotakis has been talking through her Medicaid concerns with House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.). And her final decision, along with other holdouts, is likely to come down to the wire: She said she plans to talk again with Guthrie Monday and also with GOP leaders as part of a larger group of concerned Republicans. Johnson is planning a Tuesday floor vote.

“We may need to get the president involved,” one House GOP aide said.

The cross-cutting political pressures have some Republican lawmakers on both sides of the Capitol looking across the Rotunda curiously.

As the Senate moved forward on its two-bill plan last week, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri openly wondered why, given Trump’s stated preference, the chamber wasn’t simply moving forward with the House budget. Meanwhile, there are House members who still prefer the Senate’s two-bill approach, with some arguing it delivers more quickly on Trump’s border security promises — and others happy that it sidesteps the messy fight over Medicaid.

Some House Republicans are pushing for the two chambers to resolve their differences over the competing budget plans now, rather than forcing vulnerable Republicans to take a hard vote this week that could cost them in next year’s midterm elections. But any compromise could inflame conservative hard-liners who are demanding steep spending cuts — and whose votes are crucial to winning approval for any House budget.

Another option some holdouts are discussing is to try to amend the budget plan before the final floor vote this week, including by adding cuts undertaken by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency and additional energy measures as a way to decrease the Medicaid cuts. Opening the bill up on the floor, however, could quickly spiral out of control for Johnson. Party leaders are opposed to offering any concessions to the holdouts, and senior GOP aides don’t expect any changes to the plans, according to three Republicans familiar with the private talks who were granted anonymity to describe them.

On the flip side, Johnson is still facing skepticism on the right flank — even after agreeing to increase the level of spending cuts in the plans to $2 trillion. The GOP whip team has been making calls about the $4 trillion debt limit increase provided for in the House budget, a deeply controversial vote among conservative lawmakers. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who has never voted to lift the debt ceiling, is among those still undecided, according to two Republicans familiar with the matter.

It’s all making Senate Republicans openly skeptical that the House will be able to get its budget across the finish line after weeks of infighting. And it emboldened GOP leaders in that chamber to move forward despite Trump’s endorsement of the “one big, beautiful bill” plan.

“If that [House budget] had already passed this would be a different discussion,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), who noted that Johnson sent his members home for a recess rather than stay in town to finish up.

Complicating the GOP agenda further: Even if the House can advance a budget this week, Senate Republicans are expected to change some key components of the plan, teeing up a grueling fight between the chambers.

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and seven other GOP senators sent a letter to Trump — conspicuously sending a copy to Johnson — insisting that they won’t support a final bill that only extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts temporarily. That group alone would be enough to prevent any party-line bill from passing.

“The president has called for making the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent. And I am committed to ensuring that any tax bill we consider does exactly that,” Thune said on the Senate floor Thursday.

The Senate GOP budget resolution also doesn’t touch Medicaid — and there are already signs of unease there with the kinds of cuts Johnson is staking out. During the Senate’s overnight voting slog last week, Republicans rejected a budget amendment from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to mirror the House GOP’s $1.5 trillion floor for spending cuts — suggesting a potential fight to come.

And though no final decision has been made, Senate Republican leaders continue to signal that a debt ceiling increase should be handled on a bipartisan basis — not as part of GOP’s party-line agenda.

“My assumption has always been that the debt ceiling will have to be handled the way it traditionally is,” Thune told reporters last week.

Trump, as always, has been an unpredictable player in the process. After he publicly called on both chambers to approve the House’s budget resolution last week, he and members of his administration continued to raise other options — which the Senate took as a green light to move forward with their competing plan. Trump even thanked Thune in a Truth Social post just before the Senate started voting on its budget — a tacit sign that he was OK with the “optionality” the South Dakota Republican has vowed to provide for Republicans.

How the two sides ultimately work out their disagreements remains to be seen: Leadership and key factions in both chambers could informally work out an agreement, with the Senate adopting those changes when they take up a House-passed budget resolution. Though, some Budget Committee members are floating a formal conference committee to work out the differences.

“What I see happening is the Senate is working toward an objective. The House is working toward the same objective,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “We’ll go to a conference committee, and we’ll all have a cup of hot cocoa and hug each other.”

Katherine Tully-McManus contributed to this report.

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan on Sunday mocked those raising alarms about the mass firings of thousands of federal workers.

Jordan, citing an article from The Washington Post which led with the firing of a locksmith from Yosemite National Park, said on “Fox News Sunday”: “That’s the best you can do?”

The Washington Post article in question last week cited the example of the dismissal of “the sole employee with the keys and the institutional knowledge needed to rescue visitors from locked restrooms.” Jordan added: “The real question is, how do visitors get locked in restrooms? This is how ridiculous some of this is.”

The Post article did go on to catalog some broader issues at the nation’s national parks, such as issues for visitors at Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park and the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania. “It’s chaos everywhere,” the Post quoted a former seasonal park ranger at Alaska’s Denali National Park and Preserve.

The Republican representative, a former chair of the House Freedom Caucus, defended the mass firings, saying that President Donald Trump is simply following through on his campaign promises.

“I think American voters like the intensity and the focus they have seen from 30-something days of this administration, going about doing the things he told the voters they are going to do, the things they were elected to do,” Jordan said.

Reports of firings have circulated widely in recent days. The U.S. Forest Service has seen 3,400 workers cut from their workforce, meaning wildfire prevention will be curtailed as the West grapples with a destructive fire season that has destroyed millions of acres in California.

The Pentagon plans to fire 5,400 civilian employees this week as the largest federal agency seeks to eliminate 8 percent of its civilian workforce.

The cuts — which could eventually extend to around 50,000 people — will gut the roster of civilians who have only been employed for one or two years and are still considered “probationary,” meaning the terminations aren’t tied to performance.

Among others, the Department of Education, Office of Personnel Management, Department of Veterans Affairs, Small Business Administration, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the General Services Administration have also initiated layoffs.

The VA, for instance, announced late Thursday the dismissal of more than 1,000 employees. The layoffs are expected to intensify in the coming days and weeks, according to officials in the White House and across agencies, as additional agencies finalize workforce reduction plans.

A Republican senator echoed Jordan’s defense of the Trump administration’s latest actions.

“I would tell you that the majority of the American people want to make sure their tax dollars are being used correctly. I don’t want anybody to lose their job. That’s the last thing we want,” Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“But at the same time, any time you’re trying to secure this country, which a national security risk we have right now is our national debt. We have to make changes and we have to make it quickly.”

But another Republican senator urged “compassion” for members of the federal workforce.

“If I could say one thing to Elon Musk it’s: Please put a dose of compassion in this,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “These are real people. These are real lives. These are mortgages. It’s a false narrative to say we have to cut and be cruel to do it as well.”

NEW YORK — Novelist turned political journalist Molly Jong-Fast wants somebody “serious” to run against Rep. Jerry Nadler in 2026 — so she doesn’t have to do it herself.

The Vanity Fair correspondent and podcast host has been talking to political consultants about a run against the 77-year-old Manhattan Democrat. But Jong-Fast told POLITICO she’s “still really on the fence.”

“If someone who is a good communicator and a serious Democrat will run for that seat,” Jong-Fast said in a phone call Friday, “then I absolutely will not. If there’s someone who’s an AOC or a Maxwell Frost — if there’s someone like that who will run — then I will just be delighted.”

Nadler’s profile could hardly be more different than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Frost, the 28-year-old Florida Democrat. The dean of New York’s congressional delegation, Nadler has held the office for 32 years, since 1992. But in December he was pushed out of his role as the top Democrat on the powerful Judiciary Committee by Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who another member told Punchbowl has “reenergized” the committee.

“It’s not about their age, it’s about their ability,” Jong-Fast said. “And clearly the fact that Jerry has been removed from his committee means that leadership does not have faith in him. If leadership does not have faith in him, then the voters should not have faith in him.”

Nadler has already filed to run for reelection. In fact, he told New York magazine last year he could run for another five terms. His chief of staff, Robert Gottheim, noted that Nadler easily beat veteran Rep. Carolyn Maloney in a competitive primary in 2022 and didn’t even face a primary in 2024 before getting reelected in November with 80 percent of the vote.

“He’ll put his over 30-year record of accomplishments against anyone,” Gottheim said. “The district seems pretty happy with his representation and work in Congress. He takes every election at a time and he intends to run for reelection.”

Time will tell if the first midterm election of President Donald Trump’s second term results in the same fed-up-with-the-old-guard energy that helped Ocasio-Cortez topple longtime Rep. Joe Crowley in 2018 — and if so, whether a 46-year-old Upper East Sider who’s about to release a book about being the daughter of feminist author Erica Jong, is the one to seize it.

Jong-Fast understands that and put the odds of a campaign at 80 percent not running, 20 percent running — down from 50-50 at the start of the interview.

Nadler may already have a well-known challenger in Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who has become an unlikely “resistance” hero for testifying against the president. Cohen decided against taking on Nadler last cycle, but then told New York mag he’d announce a 2026 run the day after Election Day. That day has come and gone with no announcement, but Cohen told POLITICO Friday he is still planning to run.

There are also a handful of Manhattan elected officials who would be eager to jump in the minute Nadler gets out of the race. Among the names in the mix are Assemblymembers Micah Lasher, Alex Bores and Rebecca Seawright, City Council Members Erik Bottcher and Julie Menin and state Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal.

“Jerry has godlike status in the district,” Lasher said.

A Capitol Hill clash over President Donald Trump’s extraordinary moves to take control of federal spending is upping the chances that lawmakers won’t have a deal to fund the government before a shutdown deadline in just three weeks.

Talks between the top appropriators in the House and Senate have soured in the past week, with lawmakers still searching for an agreement on topline spending levels that are a prerequisite for funding individual agencies and programs for the remainder of the fiscal year.

Negotiators have insisted they are staying at the table to hash out an accord. But there’s no clear strategy to break the logjam, and House Republican leaders privately acknowledge that contingency plans need to be drawn up in case the impasse continues ahead of the March 14 deadline.

“Time is running out,” Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins of Maine told reporters.

The stalemate has been driven in part by partisan distrust over the Trump administration’s remarkable seizure of the federal purse strings. Democrats want assurances from Republicans that the administration will adhere to Congress’s wishes on spending as Trump and billionaire ally Elon Musk summarily cut jobs and programs.

“The one thing Rosa DeLauro and I are asking for is simply an assurance that if there’s going to be Democratic votes, that the president and Elon Musk will follow the law, and they won’t just take our bill that we’ve worked really hard on and rip it up and it doesn’t matter,” Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters Thursday, referring to her counterpart on the House Appropriations Committee.

Though more GOP lawmakers are starting to speak out against the executive branch’s unilateral freezing of federal funds, Republican leaders are not likely to agree to checks on Trump’s ability to slash spending.

That has made a continuing resolution, which funds the government under the prior year’s spending levels, look more appealing to members of both parties — though even this alternative poses a risk of a shutdown.

A core group of House Republicans have repeatedly threatened to revolt if their leaders move forward with anything other than 12 individually negotiated spending measures. They want those bills to include certain conservative policy riders and spending cuts.

Democrats, meanwhile, are signaling they won’t bail Republicans out: DeLauro has said that if a long-term continuing resolution were to come to the floor — one that lasts beyond just a few days to let lawmakers put the finishing touches on a full-year bill — it would be “the job of the majority” to pass it.  

Murray in a floor speech Thursday called a full-year continuing resolution a “nonstarter” that would end up creating “slush funds for this administration to adjust spending priorities and potentially eliminate longstanding programs as they see fit.”

A stopgap spending bill would also force Congress to lurch weeks or months at a time on status quo spending, bringing uncertainty to agencies that are already besieged by Trump and Musk’s unpredictable personnel cuts. Short-term, flat funding can halt military equipment upgrades, hinder strategic planning and prompt hiring and procurement freezes.

A sign negotiations were beginning to nosedive came Thursday afternoon, when Collins and Murray volunteered within an hour of each other very different readings on the state of the discussions.

Murray insisted negotiators are “extremely close” to landing the topline numbers and that she was in “constant communication” with her Republican colleagues, but didn’t explain how she squared her confidence with the fact that she and DeLauro are pushing for commitments to rein in Musk and Trump that Republicans are unlikely to accept.

Meanwhile, Collins said talks “appear to be at an impasse” after she and House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole of Oklahoma made a joint offer to Democrats on Sunday that had gone without a substantive reply “other than just a perfunctory acknowledgement.”

“I am very disappointed,” Collins said in a brief interview.

The House has been in recess this past week, but members’ return on Monday could bring more clarity to the state of the talks. In interviews at the Capitol over the past few days, senators have expressed hopes of landing a deal so their efforts to negotiate individual funding bills don’t go to waste.

It typically takes at least a month for lawmakers to close out negotiations on the dozen appropriations bills once an overarching agreement on topline spending levels is locked in, but some Senate Appropriations subcommittee chairs say they will be ready to go when — or if — those numbers are delivered.

“We’ve been ready to go for a long time — we get a top line number, we’ll be done like that,” Sen. John Hoeven, chair of the Senate Appropriations Agriculture subcommittee, said in a brief interview, clapping his hands to emphasize the speed at which his panel is prepared to act.

“We’re looking forward to it,” said Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), chair of the Homeland Security subcommittee, of a toplines deal. “We want to get to work.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, who leads Democrats on the Agriculture subcommittee, offered a more sobering assessment: “It will be challenging to get something done by the 14th.”