President-elect Donald Trump said Friday that he is picking the head of a right-wing Catholic advocacy group and critic of Pope Francis to serve as ambassador to the Holy See, potentially teeing up tensions with the Vatican.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that Brian Burch, head of the group Catholic Vote, “loves his Church and the United States — He will make us all proud.” Trump also praised Burch for advocating for him and encouraging Catholics to vote for him in 2024.

Burch will face a Senate confirmation process, but it is unlikely he will encounter stiff resistance from Republicans, as his views aren’t considered controversial in the party.

Burch would be far from the first ambassador to the Holy See with a political background. Presidents from both parties have selected former elected officials who are practicing Catholics such as President Joe Biden picking Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana. Trump picked political activist Callista Gingrich in his first term. He also wouldn’t be the first to have ideological or theological disagreements with the church.

But none of the picks to helm the Vatican to date would come into the role with as much a digital record of criticizing church leadership. On social media, Burch has criticized Francis’ leadership and shared the writings of some right-wing clerics who are critical of him. In 2023, he insinuated that church leaders were collaborating with controversial U.S. law enforcement probes into parishes that celebrated the Catholic Mass in Latin, a practice that was phased out decades ago for liturgy in local languages.

Writing on X, Burch said he is “committed to working with leaders inside the Vatican and the new Administration to promote the dignity of all people and the common good.”

Catholic Vote has engaged in tactics that have prompted criticism from more progressive factions of the U.S. church. In 2020, the organization used “geofencing” to identify Catholic voters who attended Mass in swing states and target them with ads boosting Trump.

At the time, Burch defended geofencing as needed to “reach our fellow Catholics in the pews” and “ensure that our fellow Catholic voters get the facts and hear the truth — not the latest lies peddled by the media.”

House Republicans voted in their closed-door conference meeting to pursue a funding plan that will require Democratic votes and strips out a debt limit measure President-elect Donald Trump is pushing, according to more than a dozen Republicans leaving the meeting.

The plan will also include a one-year farm bill extension and the $110 billion disaster aid package Republicans negotiated with Democrats. Republicans expect they will vote on the package today, with less than 12 hours remaining until a shutdown deadline.

It was one of two options Speaker Mike Johnson presented to his members during the meeting.

It’s not clear whether Democrats will support the new package while they wait to see the details. Text has not been released yet.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his leadership team held a closed-door meeting with purple-district lawmakers Friday afternoon to see how long they could hold the line against Republicans — inquiring whether they faced constituent pressure to cut a deal, according to a person familiar with the meeting who was granted anonymity to detail private conversations.

Hours ahead of the expiration of government funding, the White House warned that a shutdown would disrupt the presidential transition process, hampering preparations for next month’s handoff to President-elect Donald Trump.

“Transition activities will be restricted,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Friday during a White House briefing. “We’re doing everything to ensure a smooth transition, but the choice to allow a transition to move forward is in the hands of Republicans in Congress.”

Jean-Pierre did not offer specifics on those restrictions. But she said the only transition efforts that would be left untouched by a potential shutdown are those needed to “prevent imminent threats to the safety of human life or the protection of property.”

Congressional Republicans are scrambling to pass a spending bill before funding runs out later tonight, after Trump tanked a bipartisan agreement earlier this week that would have kept the government open through March.

Federal agencies began notifying employees at noon on Friday that they may be put on furlough if the government does shut down, Jean-Pierre said.

But the White House has largely stayed out of efforts to solve the funding crisis, blaming Republicans for creating the problem and brushing off questions over whether President Joe Biden should play a more public role in preparing Americans for the possibility of a shutdown.

“This is something that Republicans should own here,” Jean-Pierre said. “This is not for the president to fix. This is not for us to fix.”

Biden did speak on Friday with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, Jean-Pierre said. But she did not offer any details on the president’s message to the Democratic congressional leaders.

Speaker Mike Johnson laid out two potential paths to avert a government shutdown in a closed-door meeting with the House GOP Friday morning, according to a slide presented in the closed-door House GOP conference and shared with POLITICO.

There’s less than 12 hours left before a shutdown deadline.

Option one was moving a stopgap bill that funds the government through March that largely matches the package endorsed by Donald Trump that failed in the House on Thursday evening, except it wouldn’t include raising the debt limit. Johnson said that package would pass via suspension, meaning it would need a two-thirds majority to pass and therefore a lot of Democratic votes. It would include a one-year extension of the farm bill and $110 billion in disaster aid.

The second plan he laid out would involve three separate votes: one a stopgap funding bill into March, another on money for natural disasters and a third on aid for farmers. Johnson would try to pass that plan through the Rules Committee, meaning it would have to clear a couple of tough hurdles before a simple majority passage vote.

No decision has been made about which path Johnson will choose, according to multiple Republicans leaving the meeting. Two Republican lawmakers who spoke with Johnson on Friday said they do not expect House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to help pass the second option, though it’s unclear if Democrats would back the first plan.

“The speaker is not telling people how it’s going to be,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) as he left the meeting. “There’s not been a play call yet.”

“I think they are a long ways away from deciding anything,” said Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who added he looks forward to joining the Senate in January.

However, one person in the room, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said it seemed like Johnson was pushing for the first option.

Meanwhile, neither option will address the debt ceiling, a demand Trump made on Wednesday when he tanked the original bipartisan spending plan. But House GOP leaders said they have an agreement tackle the issue next year when they pass major, party-line bills through the reconciliation process. They would use either one or two reconciliation bills — which will also focus on taxes, energy and the border — to both raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion as well as cut $2.5 trillion in mandatory spending.

A week into the House’s chaotic attempt to pass a government funding deal, senators are signaling they’re open to near anything — except moving on their own government-funding deal first.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said “the House needs to do its job” when asked whether the Senate needs to get moving on its own bill. Asked what happens if the House is unable to pass something before a government shutdown deadline in less than 12 hours, Tester replied: “It’s what the people elected.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), another Senate appropriator, said House members have to “sort it themselves.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, leading Democrat for the House Appropriations Committee, also said: “We’re going to move in the House. We have to move in the House.”

There is some movement in the House as of Friday morning — the latest plan is to break up the deal into three different pieces, including government funding, disaster relief and farm aid. If the bills come as three individual pieces to the Senate, it could be a difficult lift to get individual time agreements on all three bills, since any one senator could object. If the House wraps up the bills into one package before sending it over, it would only require one time agreement.

Without a time agreement, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would have to wait days before he could get a passage vote. And if the bill is wrapped together in the Senate and not in the House, it would have to go back to the House and be approved before heading to the president’s desk. There’s no guarantee House lawmakers will stick around if they manage to clear something through their chamber.

But senators aren’t placing much stake in the newest House plan until they see actual action. Soon-to-be Senate GOP Leader John Thune said he’s continuing to wait on the House to pass something, stating: “If they can kick a bill out this morning that funds the government for the foreseeable — needed — future, then we’ll take it up as it comes to us.”

There’s no appetite for a shutdown among senators. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a member of current Senate GOP leadership, said Friday that “shutting down the government is a useless exercise” and “continuing government is, I think, crucial.”

But as for whether the plan has legs?

“Will it work? I’m not going to Vegas to put bets on anything,” she said. “We’re sort of in that ‘don’t react to anything’ space, because nobody knows what’s going on.”

Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.

Elon Musk said he’ll be funding moderate primary challengers to incumbent Democrats in deep-blue seats around the country, as he continues to try to influence a wide swath of government.

“Forgot to mention that I’m also going to be funding moderate candidates in heavily Democrat districts, so that the country can get rid of those who don’t represent them, like this jackass,” the billionaire tech mogul said in a post on X in response to a video clip of Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Neal is an odd choice for Musk — a close ally of President-elect Donald Trump — to single out. He’s been repeatedly hit by progressive groups for what they view as overly cozy ties to industry — and bested a serious progressive challenger in 2020 for the seat he’s held since 1989.

More recently, progressive groups have demanded his ouster as top Democrat on the powerful tax writing panel.

Asked about Musk’s threat, Neal replied simply to POLITICO: “Everyone knows I’m always ready.” And the X account for the House Ways and Means Democrats posted a dismissive meme of a stick figure giving a thumbs up to mock Musk.

It’s not the first time the unlikely pair have jostled. Back in 2020, as Congress mulled additional pandemic aid opposed by Musk, the committee’s account derisively posted: “Thanks billionaire your opinion is noted.”

Neal had been speaking on the floor after a bipartisan and bicameral government funding agreement fell apart due, in large part, to objections from Musk and Trump.

“Can you imagine what the next two years are going to be like?” Neal asked. “If every time the Congress works its will and then there’s a tweet from an individual who has no official portfolio, who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary, they succumb?”

Speaker Mike Johnson has moved on to a Plan C to avert a government shutdown: Breaking up each piece to pass them separately.

Under the House GOP’s latest plan, Republicans will try to pass three separate bills: a short-term funding bill, money for recent natural disasters and a one-year farm bill extension with aid for farmers, according to a person with direct knowledge of negotiations. A shutdown deadline is now about 12 hours away.

The new plan will test his ability to wrangle his conference. Members believe Johnson is taking the proposal through the Rules Committee, trying to pass it through regular order so it only requires a simple majority on the House floor. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who is on the panel, said that he will back the plan, meaning it should have enough support to get out of the committee.

But then things get trickier. Johnson would need near unity from his conference to bring it up for debate on the floor, known as voting for the rule. Democrats typically don’t vote for rules and are loath to help bail out Republicans after they backed away from a bipartisan funding agreement earlier this week.

If Johnson can manage to clear that hurdle, members could then vote for the individual bills that they support and vote against the ones they don’t — meaning Congress could avert a shutdown while other pieces of the previous GOP-backed bill could be dropped, at least for now.

The fallback plan is that Johnson will try to pass the individual bills via suspension, which requires a two-thirds majority to clear the House.

Members across the conference, including farm district Republicans and members of the House Freedom Caucus, began actively floating the idea to break up the bills on Thursday, arguing that it was the best shot of anything passing before the government shutdown deadline. Johnson privately huddled with holdouts for hours after a stopgap spending plan endorsed by Donald Trump collapsed on the House floor Thursday evening.

If it does clear the House, this approach makes it much more complicated in the Senate. Absent an agreement, which requires the blessing of all 100 senators, it will take days for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to bring up each individual bill.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries privately told his caucus Friday morning that communication had restarted with Republicans, according to two people familiar with his remarks granted anonymity to discuss the dynamics.

“Because of our display of unity, the lines of communication have been reopened,” Jeffries said, according to the people in the room.

House Democrats have been fuming since billionaire Elon Musk and President-elect Donald Trump tanked the stopgap measure negotiated by appropriators and leadership earlier this week, and then when Speaker Mike Johnson moved forward with a funding bill that included raising the debt ceiling. That bill failed spectacularly on the House floor Thursday night.

Heading into the meeting, Jeffries appeared to be holding to his position that Johnson needs to bring back the bipartisan stopgap spending deal that Musk and Trump torpedoed earlier this week. The New York Democrat’s statement, however, was careful not to exclude all other options.

“The best path forward is the bipartisan agreement that was reached between House Republicans, House Democrats, Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats,” he told reporters earlier, as he headed into the closed-door caucus meeting.

House Republicans are preparing to bring back a stopgap funding bill Friday through the Rules Committee, according to Rules member Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), which would allow legislation to pass by a simple majority. Their attempt to pass legislation by a two-thirds majority failed Thursday when almost all Democrats opposed it and dozens of Republicans did too.

And Democrats exiting the caucus meeting sounded more cautiously optimistic than after the vote failed.

“I think people are feeling a lot better than yesterday, I can sense that,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said. “We’ll take the caucus lead.”

“It feels like what is necessary to get to an agreement is happening,” echoed Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).

Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

President-elect Donald Trump has put his $4 billion stake in the parent company of his social media platform Truth Social into a trust controlled by one of his sons, according to a regulatory filing late Thursday.

The billionaire’s nearly 115 million shares in Trump Media & Technology Group were transferred to the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust on Dec. 17 as “a bona fide gift,” the filing said. Trump did not sell any stock in the process.

Donald Trump Jr., the president-elect’s eldest son and a Trump Media board member, controls the trust and will have “sole voting and investment power” over the majority stake in the company, a separate filing said. Trump is the sole beneficiary of the trust, which was set up in 2014. A revocable trust gives an individual power over another’s assets and can be altered after its creation.

Trump Media, launched after Trump’s exile from major social media platforms, has become an unexpected pillar of the president-elect’s business empire.

The company, built around Truth Social, still loses money and has a small user base relative to other sites like the Elon Musk-owned X, formerly known as Twitter. But Trump Media’s profile — and more specifically, Truth Social’s — has risen since Trump won back the presidency. The president-elect has been rolling out nominations, announcements and critiques of his perceived political enemies on the site, making it a must-read in Washington.

Its shares, which trade under the ticker “DJT,” have been the subject of widespread speculation among Wall Street and MAGA investors that has often led to stunning valuations. Trump Media is currently valued at more than $7.5 billion. As a result, Trump has seen his net worth skyrocket, as his stake in the company is estimated to be a main source of his wealth.

How Trump would handle the shares has been a pressing question since he won the election. Ethics watchdogs have warned that the company could be a means for corporate actors or foreign interests to try to curry favor with the former president. In an open letter this week, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said the stake would pose “a clear conflict of interest” as Trump is in charge of nominating “the very regulators responsible for overseeing [his] company.”

Spokespeople for the Trump transition and Trump Media did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

When asked about Trump’s plans for the stock Monday, Trump-Vance transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told POLITICO in a statement that the president-elect “removed himself from his multi-billion-dollar real estate empire to run for office and forewent his government salary, becoming the first President to actually lose net worth while serving in the White House.”

“Unlike most politicians, President Trump didn’t get into politics for profit — he’s fighting because he loves the people of this country and wants to make America great again,” Leavitt said.

Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that the House will vote on a government funding bill on Friday morning.

“We’re expecting votes this morning. So y’all stay tuned. We’ve got a plan,” he said. Asked if they had reached a new agreement, he added: “We’ll see.”

While no decision has been made, multiple members say there are discussions about passing a short-term stopgap that would only punt funding into mid-January. That would avert a shutdown and allow lawmakers to go home for the holidays, though they’d return to the same problems in the new year.

The discussions around a short-term funding patch option include moving a separate disaster aid package, similar if not the exact same, as the $110 billion one Republicans negotiated with Democrats in the original stopgap agreement, according to two Republicans. Still, GOP lawmakers caution that everything is very much in flux.

“Anybody who’s telling you there’s an agreement is just a little bit ahead of themselves,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.).

But Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) told a gaggle of reporters outside of the speaker’s office that the bill they plan to put forth would likely be similar to the Donald Trump-backed version that failed on the House floor by a wide margin Thursday evening. She said the vote was planned for 10 a.m.

“I think we’re very close to a deal,” she said, adding that it’s “very close to President Trump’s plan yesterday.”

Johnson and House conservatives are huddling in his office Friday morning as a government shutdown deadline looms in less than 24 hours. Separately, House Democrats are scheduled to have a closed-door meeting later in the morning as they wait to see what happens next.

Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.