The Senate has finalized an agreement to take action on three fiscal 2026 spending bills, breaking a multi-day impasse that prevented the first government funding bills of the yearly appropriations cycle from coming to the floor.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins requested Friday to tie together the Military Construction-VA and Agriculture-FDA bills. Under the agreement, a third bill to fund Congress itself will be voted on separately.

No senator objected, and votes on the so-called minibus are expected to begin swiftly Friday afternoon.

Current government funding runs out on Sept. 30, and lawmakers are expected to pursue a stopgap funding deal because the 12 annual appropriations bills will not be ready in time. This package is unlikely to become law but, if passed, will be used as a basis for future negotiations between the chambers and parties.

Collins stressed on the floor that the three measures “were approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support.”

It was the second attempt in two days to try to assemble a package of spending bills. An earlier request for a four-bill package, also including Commerce-Justice-Science measure, was derailed Thursday night by a single objection dealing with the FBI headquarters location.

The deal also tees up votes on a sizable roster of amendments offered by senators of both parties. The separate vote on congressional funding was set up at the behest of Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who objected to the amount of spending in the $7.1 billion bill and wants the chance to vote against it separately.

The scheduled congressional deposition of Ghislaine Maxwell, a co-conspirator of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, is indefinitely postponed, House Oversight Chair James Comer said Friday.

In a letter to Maxwell, Comer said he would agree to delay the meeting after her lawyers earlier this week requested a postponement in the planned Aug. 11 testimony citing a pending Supreme Court petition regarding her case.

Maxwell’s attorneys also made a number of requests in order to facilitate her cooperation with the Oversight panel’s questioning — some of which Comer rejected outright Friday.

Comer said his committee was “willing to continue to engage in good faith negotiations” but would not grant her congressional immunity, which her lawyers had requested. The committee, he added, also would not send her team the questions in advance, another demand of Maxwell’s lawyers.

“Your testimony is vital to the Committee’s efforts regarding Mr. Jeffrey Epstein, including the 2007 non-prosecution agreement and the circumstances surrounding Mr. Epstein’s death,” Comer wrote.

But he agreed to delay the interview until after the Supreme Court rules on her appeal, which claims that her 2021 sex trafficking conviction was barred by Epstein’s earlier plea deal. That’s not likely to happen before the court begins its annual term in October.

The Senate will try to break an impasse Friday to advance three spending bills in hopes of showing progress after days of discord. A separate holdup over presidential nominations, meanwhile, could come down to direct talks between Democrats and the White House.

A patchwork of objections from senators on both sides of the aisle have held up the spending legislation for days and foiled a plan for what some had hoped would be a four-bill package. But members expressed new optimism Friday that a second, more limited attempt could move forward.

It’s one of two pieces of major business Republican leaders are hoping to wrap up before the Senate starts its traditional summer recess. In addition to the spending bills — where they are keen to show some progress ahead of the Sept. 30 government shutdown deadline — they also want to confirm a broad tranche of President Donald Trump’s nominees.

The nominee conversations appear more dicey, senators said, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Friday that he has put Trump officials “into conversation directly” with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s team. Top White House staffers were also in the Capitol on Thursday night after Thune met with Trump at the White House.

“This is how this is ultimately going to get resolved,” Thune said.

Meanwhile, GOP senators said leaders are running traps on a possible deal that would advance the smaller package of spending bills.

Under the pending proposal, leaders would seek unanimous consent to tie together the fiscal 2026 spending bills funding the Veterans Affairs and Agriculture departments, as well as military construction projects and the FDA. A third spending bill, funding Congress itself, could be voted on separately.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins said Friday morning she expects a unanimous consent request on some constellation of those three bills. The Maine Republican is eager to show progress on bipartisan spending bills before the Senate leaves for its lengthy August recess. Upon their return, members will have only a handful of session days to make further progress ahead of the shutdown deadline.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) has made clear he will object to including Legislative Branch funding in the package and wants the chance to vote against the $7.1 billion bill. It’s the smallest of the 12 annual appropriations bills, but Kennedy maintains it still costs too much.

“They agreed to my proposal,” he told reporters Friday. “They’re going to have one vote on [Military Construction–VA] and [Agriculture-FDA] together and separate vote on [Legislative Branch] so I can vote no. Then they’ll marry them up later if all three pass, as they probably will.”

Coming to a nominations deal could be much trickier, given Trump’s determination to get all of his 150-plus pending nominees confirmed quickly.

Trump on Thursday said on Truth Social that the Senate “must stay in Session, taking no recess” until all of the nominees are confirmed. Even if senators stay in Washington, that goal will be all but impossible to meet absent Democratic cooperation.

Democrats under Schumer are exploring whether to quickly confirm a smaller subset of nominees in exchange for other concessions, such as the release of government funding they claim has been illegally “impounded” by the Trump administration.

Hailey Fuchs contributed to this report.

House Republicans are beginning to face rowdy town halls as they try to sell President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending law.

Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin had a hostile crowd Thursday night, with jeers and boos from the audience, according to local media reports. Democratic organizers in particular spoke out against Steil. Attendees pressed him on topics spanning from Trump’s tariffs to immigration.

“It’s completely fine that we disagree,” Steil said, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and urged attendees to “help us engage in a more productive dialogue.”

NRCC Chair Richard Hudson discouraged GOP members from holding in-person town halls earlier this year amid backlash to the Trump administration’s DOGE cuts and Republican plans to cut Medicaid spending. But Hudson and the NRCC recently started advising members to aggressively sell Trump’s big domestic policy law to constituents over August recess — though they didn’t explicitly mention town halls.

Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska is holding a town hall in his district on Monday. In an interview this week, he predicted it could be another unruly crowd if it’s “along the lines” of his last in-person town hall, which included heated encounters with constituents over the GOP megabill and Trump.

Asked if he expected questions on the GOP’s Medicaid spending cuts in the megabill, Flood said: “I do.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report misstated the name of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The Senate’s summer exit is getting complicated as lawmakers brace for some weekend work.

Tensions are running high over government funding negotiations. And Senate leaders have yet to seal a deal to advance dozens of President Donald Trump’s nominees as Majority Leader John Thune shuttles between the White House and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Here’s the latest on where things stand.

Funding meltdown — The prospects for two major appropriations bills are dimming after a flurry of drama.

The odds of including the Commerce-Justice-Science bill in an appropriations “minibus” withered late Thursday night. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who has used the bill as a platform to fight the Trump administration’s plans for keeping FBI headquarters in Washington, objected to including the CJS legislation in the broader funding package. Van Hollen wants the agency’s campus to move to his home state of Maryland, per a prior agreement.

Van Hollen’s hardball tactics rattled Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), the lead appropriator on the bill, who teared up as he spoke about it on the floor.

Moran said he knew “no path forward” that would allow Van Hollen to amend the bill to address his FBI concerns.

“Our appropriations process is fragile,” Moran said.

The Agriculture-FDA funding bill is still a contender for inclusion in the package. But Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said she’s seeking answers first from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins about USDA’s plans for a major reorganization under Trump.

The Senate’s legislative branch funding bill still faces a snag with Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). Thune is optimistic the Senate will at least get military and VA funding through before recess.

“We’re trying to work out the rest of the package,” Thune said late Thursday. “And the Dems are now sort of changing their demands with regards to amendments, etc., so we’ll have to see if we can land it early tomorrow morning.”

Noms, noms, noms – Thune met with Trump on Thursday to update him on his talks with Schumer to confirm the president’s nominees. It’s the biggest factor threatening to keep the Senate in town longer, given the need to secure unanimous consent to speed up confirmations.

Trump isn’t signaling that a deal is in hand. In a 9:52 p.m. Truth Social post Thursday, he wrote, “The Senate must stay in Session, taking no recess, until the entire Executive Calendar is CLEAR!!!” (Trump separately lashed out at Maine’s senior senator, saying, “Republicans, when in doubt, vote the exact opposite of Senator Susan Collins.”)

Thune staff and Schumer staff are exchanging paper. Senators believe, if it were just up to them, the two leaders could get there. The bigger question is whether any deal they strike can get Trump’s blessing, including Democrats’ demand that the president unfreeze funding for certain agencies.

“It would be easier if Chuck Schumer and Donald Trump would talk, bare-knuckled New Yorker to bare-knuckled New Yorker,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said.

What else we’re watching:

— Republicans eye rules revamp to confirm Trump picks: Senate Republicans are heading toward a potential rules change in the fall to speed up confirming Trump’s nominees. Thune would need support from nearly all Republicans, and it’s not clear he has that yet.

— Mullin plots security boost for senators: Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who leads work on legislative branch appropriations, says he’s still working through potential security protocols for lawmakers back home, after House leaders unveiled increased funding for their members’ residential security. The Oklahoma Republican had previously said a “test program” could be unveiled as soon as August.

“We’re working with Jennifer [Hemingway], the Sergeant-at-Arms, and working through some protocols that may take place and working with state police,” Mullin said. “But yes, we’re very much looking into it.”

Jordain Carney contributed to this report. 

Rep. Sarah McBride believes Democrats need to become more likable to recover from their record-low approval among voters.

“I think voters feel like Democrats have sort of been assholes to them,” McBride said.

The first-term representative from Delaware told POLITICO’s Dasha Burns in an episode of “The Conversation” that she believes the Democratic Party’s brand problem can be traced to voters feeling as if the party doesn’t respect them.

“I do think that a voter asks two questions when they’re considering who to vote for. The first question is, does this candidate, does this party like me? And by extension, do they respect me?”

“If you can’t answer that first question to a voter’s satisfaction, they won’t even get to the second question, which is, what does this party think? What does this candidate think? And I think we lost that first question,” she said.

Democrats around the country have been trying to figure out how to regain support from voters after Republicans won control of the White House and both chambers of Congress last year. Democratic leaders have conceded the party has a brand problem, but intraparty debates on party strategy have yet to produce a clear path forward.

A Wall Street Journal poll released last week found that 63 percent of voters view the Democratic Party unfavorably — the highest level of unfavorability for the party in a Journal poll since 1990.

McBride said she believes the party’s brand going forward should focus on working-class people and protecting democracy and stressed again that a core tenant of the party’s brand should be “we’re not going to be assholes to voters.”

“I do think that we have to basically create a tent that is united on three fundamental principles,” she said in the interview, which was taped Wednesday. “One is working people need more support and help. Two, democracy and freedom are good. And three, we’re not going to be assholes to voters.”

McBride suggested that voters may be forming negative opinions of the party based on online discourse, rather than from party leaders, and that “the loudest voices online” may be pushing voters away who might otherwise vote for Democrats.

“The reality in today’s environment is that your party ecosystem is defined not just by politicians or the party, but also some of the loudest voices online that in voters’ minds reflect and represent that broader coalition,” she said.

“When we have an environment where we’ve got some very loud people who are shaming and calling people who disagree with them — even in rhetoric — bigots, when we have those folks saying that to a wide swath of voters, including voters we could win, and we aren’t explicitly stating something to the contrary, then a voter will then just paint us all with one broad brush,” she added.

The full interview with McBride is available on Sunday’s episode of “The Conversation.”

President Donald Trump is going after Republican Sen. Susan Collins despite hopes among some in the party that she will run again next year and help the GOP hold the Senate.

Trump, who has privately discussed finding someone to run for her seat, attacked the Maine senator’s voting record in a post on Truth Social.

The senator has voted against two of Trump’s signature legislative achievements this year — the domestic policy megabill and the measure to claw back $9 billion in foreign aid and public media funding.

“Republicans, when in doubt, vote the exact opposite of Senator Susan Collins,” Trump said. “Generally speaking, you can’t go wrong.”

Democrats have targeted Maine seat as one of a small number of opportunities to pick up a Senate seat in 2026. The party has won all of the state’s electoral votes in every presidential election since Collins was elected in 1996.

Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, has yet to announce whether or not she will run for reelection.

GOP megadonor Paul Singer was the largest donor to a super PAC seeking to oust Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) last month, according to a filing submitted to the Federal Election Commission on Thursday.

The group, MAGA KY, raised $2 million between its launch in late June and the end of the month:

• $1 million from Singer
• $250,000 from hedge fund manager John Paulson
• $750,000 from Preserve America PAC, a super PAC tied to Miriam Adelson that backed President Donald Trump last year

Trump allies launched the super PAC last month after Massie voted against Trump’s signature “Big, Beautiful Bill.” The Kentucky lawmaker has also criticized the president on a range of other issues including war powers and the Epstein files. MAGA KY has spent $1.2 million so far on ads opposing Massie, according to AdImpact, as the group aims to take him out in next year’s primary.

Massie, who has staved off primary challengers before, has raised just over $1 million this year, and he ended June with $1.7 million in the bank. It is not yet clear which Republican might be favored by Trump to challenge him.

Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley on Thursday officially launched his campaign for the North Carolina senate seat currently held by retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis.

Whatley decided to jump in the race after Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, passed on a possible bid, POLITICO reported last week.

“I am humbled and excited to begin this campaign, and I would be honored to earn your vote, your support, and your prayers,” Whatley wrote Thursday afternoon on X.

President Donald Trump announced his support for Whatley in a social media post last week, simultaneously throwing his weight behind Florida state Sen. Joe Gruters to take Whatley’s spot at the RNC, where Gruters currently serves as treasurer.

“Mike would make an unbelievable Senator from North Carolina,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “He is fantastic at everything he does, and he was certainly great at the RNC where, in the Presidential Election, we won every Swing State, the Popular Vote, and the Electoral College by a landslide!”

Whatley’s decision sets up what is likely to be a costly battle for Tillis’ seat, with former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s campaign already breaking fundraising records in its first 24 hours.

Democrats see the state as a promising window to pick up a seat in next year’s midterm elections with Cooper — who has won statewide six times — likely to lead their ticket.