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Republican congressional leaders are making plans for a new spending punt as the shutdown drags on, and any new version is likely to postpone the next deadline until 2026.

House and Senate GOP leaders are debating a wide range of options for a new continuing resolution to fund the government, given that their current preferred vehicle funds the government only through Nov. 21. The most likely option would run into mid to late January, according to three people granted anonymity to describe the private conversations.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise confirmed Wednesday that a longer stopgap is under consideration, but he insisted it wouldn’t jam lawmakers up against a holiday deadline. His comments come after GOP hard-liners warned privately that they will not accept a December deadline, preferring April or later.

“Democrats love the Christmas Eve, you know, omnibus bad deal. We’re not going to do that,” Scalise told reporters Wednesday.

President Donald Trump will have to muscle any reworked CR through Congress, and his sign-off will be key. While hard-liners want a longer horizon, appropriators who are trying to craft new full-year spending bills want a shorter deadline. Speaker Mike Johnson has criticized stopgap bills in the past, at one point saying he was presiding over his last CR, only to pass several more since.

Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas), who was critical of leadership messaging on the shutdown on a Tuesday GOP conference call, said in an interview Wednesday she is wary of voting for any additional continuing resolutions.

“As far as the CR, I was reticent to vote for it to begin with, because I don’t like the spending limits that have been set up by Democrats — I have voted against those spending limits,” Van Duyne said. “So I don’t think that the Democrats, who are voting against this, understand the gift that they were handed.”

Asked about a revised bill with a longer deadline, she said, “I can’t tell you how I’m going to vote on legislation I haven’t seen.”

House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) in a Bloomberg interview Wednesday floated a stopgap into December 2026, an unusually long measure that would extend past the start of the next fiscal year — and the midterm elections.

GOP appropriators are certain to balk at a punt of that length and are floating their own, shorter timelines. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in an interview earlier this week she would be wary of going much past the end of this year.

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Crockett weighing Texas Senate run

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) is “strongly” considering running for Senate, she said on Wednesday, raising the prospect of adding yet another marquee name to what is already a crowded Democratic primary.

Crockett cited the Republican-led remap of the state’s congressional districts earlier this year as a reason she might seek higher office in an interview on SiriusXM’s “The Lurie Daniel Favors Show.”

“I am looking,” she said. “Because if you want to take my seat of 766,000 away, I feel like there has to be some karma in that to where I take your seat that is for 30 million away.”

Crockett has emerged as a prominent — and sometimes profane — critic of President Donald Trump and Republicans since first winning election in 2022. She ran for her party’s top post on the House Oversight Committee in the summer, assailed Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “bleach blonde, bad built, butch body” and drew criticism for referring to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who uses a wheelchair, as “Governor Hot Wheels.”

It’s earned her both the attention and the ire of the president, who has sought to elevate her as a face of the Democratic Party.

“This is a low-IQ person who I can’t even believe is a Congressperson,” he said at the Oval Office in September.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has also sought to goad her into joining the Senate race, believing she is a weak candidate, by commissioning a poll over the summer that showed her leading a hypothetical Senate primary.

The two leading candidates in the race are former Rep. Colin Allred, who lost last year to Sen. Ted Cruz and boasts significant name recognition; and state Rep. James Talarico, who announced his run in early September and is also attracting interest from donors and party powerbrokers both in and outside Texas.

Republicans, too, are in for a long and expensive primary, with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt challenging longtime Sen. John Cornyn. Each has sought Trump’s endorsement.

But the two-term lawmaker insisted her decision will ultimately come down to an in-depth look at her chances in a general election — not the primary.

“The question will be whether or not we believe that we’ve got enough juice to expand the electorate and looking at those cross tabs and looking at which demographics are more inclined to come out, who normally do not vote,” she said. If we can expand the electorate, then I will strongly be considering hopping in the Senate race.”

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K Street rakes in hundreds of millions off of Trump upheaval

Some of Washington’s biggest lobbying firms raked in unprecedented amounts of cash last quarter. But it’s the upstart firms with ties to President Donald Trump or his administration that have been drowning in lobbying fees, lapping their more established rivals on K Street as Trump’s second term continues to scramble the hierarchy of the influence industry.

Ballard Partners led the charge with more than $25 million in lobbying revenues in the third quarter, shattering the firm’s previous record of $20.7 million the previous quarter. Clients flocked to the firm that once counted White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi as employees.

Ballard’s phenomenal growth — the firm is set to add 5,000 square feet of new office space in the coming weeks, despite previously having moved into larger offices in the last few years — is another indicator of a transformation of lobbying in Trump’s second term. The biggest winners aren’t the massive law and lobbying firms that have pulled together deep benches of bipartisan lobbyists with extensive policy expertise and ties to the Hill and party establishment.

Those carefully curated rosters, aimed at insulating firms from the whiplash of transitions in political power, are being supplanted in value by the consolidation of federal authority within the West Wing — and the select group of firms that might be able to get a foot in the door.

“The industry is in an adjustment year as lobbying needs have changed under the Trump administration in a way not normal for a ‘new’ President,” John Raffaelli, a longtime Democratic lobbyist and founder of the lobbying firm Capitol Counsel, wrote in an email.

Ballard is perhaps the biggest winner of all. The firm signed roughly three dozen new clients during the third quarter, including one of Brazil’s top business lobbies, the Swiss watchmaker Breitling, the city of Miami and the Port of Long Beach. It collected six-figure payments from over 80 clients, according to a POLITICO analysis of disclosures and reported holding three of the most lucrative lobbying contracts on K Street last quarter.

The runner-up last quarter was a decades-old mainstay of the D.C. lobbying world, but one that touts its own ties to the White House.

BGR Group, which employs Trump adviser David Urban and previously employed Transportation Secretary (and acting NASA Chief) Sean Duffy, reported $19.2 million in lobbying revenues in Q3 — up from $17.7 million in Q2 and $11.4 million a year ago.

“Every one of our policy practice areas has got something big going on,” said Loren Monroe, a principal at BGR. He pointed to the firm’s leading health care practice, whose clients include marquee drug lobbies, health systems, pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies, patient groups and providers.

The firm also represents top targets of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again movement, including pesticide companies and giant food conglomerates. It has signed up elite universities whose federal funding has been frozen, crypto firms looking for a light regulatory touch and defense companies seeking business.

BGR leapfrogged two of K Street’s more recent leaders, Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which respectively took in $18.9 million and $16.3 million in lobbying revenue last quarter.

Another firm with close ties to the White House, Miller Strategies, jumped into the top five with $14.1 million last quarter, up from $2.9 million a year ago. Miller Strategies is led by Jeff Miller, a top GOP fundraiser who served as one of the finance chairs for Trump’s second inauguration.

When it comes to Trump’s impact on the lobbying industry, the rising tide has lifted most boats.

Brownstein’s third quarter earnings were still a firm record, and while Akin’s numbers were down slightly from the previous quarter, the firm had its best third quarter ever.

Across the top 20 firms by revenue, 14 shops saw their revenue rise by double digit percentages or more, according to the POLITICO analysis and numbers provided by the firms.

Of the top 20, only Forbes Tate Partners and Capitol Counsel saw their lobbying income decline compared to the same time a year ago — and those decreases were minuscule, coming in at 0.3 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively.

“I think for a traditional bipartisan shop we have managed this well,” said Raffaelli, whose firm reported a 2.3 percent increase in revenues compared to the second quarter.

Another Trump-linked firm that has capitalized is Continental Strategy, which was started in 2021 by former Trump administration official Carlos Trujillo. The firm’s lobbyists include former Trump campaign aides and former top aides to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Continental reported $8.3 million in lobbying fees in Q3, compared to nearly $400,000 during the same period last year.

A person familiar with the firm’s thinking said that Continental hasn’t needed to do much outbound client prospecting to fuel its boom in business. New business has been driven more by referrals from existing clients, according to the person, who was granted anonymity to discuss business dynamics.

“Our growth isn’t driven by any specific policies or issues — it’s clients seeking us out for our reputation and the talent we have assembled,” Trujillo said in a statement.

Other firms that saw big increases are Checkmate Government Relations, which is led by Trump family friend Ches McDowell; Mercury Public Affairs, a bipartisan shop that’s been in D.C. for over two decades, but which was Wiles’ most recent K Street home before going into the administration; and Michael Best Strategies, which is led by Trump’s first White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.

(For the full third-quarter rankings of lobbying firms, read (and sign up for) POLITICO Influence, our newsletter on all things K Street.)

A tariff lobbying bonanza

The gold rush on K Street comes despite the fact that Trump signed the year’s shining legislative achievement — the reconciliation package permanently extending prized tax cuts, gutting clean energy incentives, slashing funding for safety net programs and unlocking billions of dollars for an immigration enforcement — just four days into the quarter.

The third quarter tends to be sleepier for lobbyists because the city clears out for the August recess. But any concerns about an end-of-summer slump did not come to pass.

“I said to someone the other day that if your lobbyist is telling you that nothing is happening in Washington because of the shutdown or because of gridlock or because of August recess … you are missing the forest for the trees,” Monroe quipped.

Efforts to shape how the megabill is implemented are now underway at the agency level. Beyond that, lobbyists repeatedly cited the frenetic pace of activity in the executive branch — on trade in particular — as one of the top drivers of business last quarter.

Brian Pomper, a partner at Akin, said that Trump’s trade policy “has prompted clients from virtually every industry to seek counsel” from the firm’s roster of trade lobbyists, which includes a top trade official from Trump’s first term along with former House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady.

The firm has signed more than two dozen new clients this year to work on trade or tariff issues, disclosures show. They include steel giant Alcoa, Volvo North America, retailers Ralph Lauren and Tiffany & Co., Kimberly-Clark Corporation and Driscoll’s.

Tariffs were mentioned as a specific area of focus in 350 lobbying disclosures last quarter — triple the number of disclosures that listed tariff policy during the third quarter of 2024.

Even though the chaos that marked the initial rollout of Trump’s so-called reciprocal tariffs in the spring has died down somewhat, K Street will be glued to next month’s Supreme Court proceedings to determine whether Trump’s broad tariffs are illegal.

One lobbyist even went so far as to suggest that anxiety surrounding the tariff litigation has exceeded the uncertainty leading up to Trump’s unveiling of the tariffs, dubbed “Liberation Day” by the president.

Not even a government shutdown has managed to dampen lobbying activity.

Though it has snarled efforts to set up meetings for clients across the government, lobbyists are now working to tweak their game plans for convincing lawmakers to use their dwindling floor time to prioritize their clients’ top issues. There’s a whole host of issues vying for that time: appropriations, a defense reauthorization, tax extenders, technical corrections to the reconciliation bill, crypto regulations, health reforms, AI, permitting or another issue entirely.

“We need to look past the shutdown,” said Will Moschella, who co-leads Brownstein’s lobbying practice. “Because that ultimately is going to resolve itself.”

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Capitol agenda: Ingrassia reveals the GOP’s red line

The collapse of Paul Ingrassia’s Office of Special Counsel nomination is exposing an exasperated Senate GOP, where even the MAGA faithful can be pushed only so far by a president demanding total fealty.

Hours after President Donald Trump hosted Senate Republicans for Rose Garden cheeseburgers to thank them for helping staff his administration, Ingrassia announced Tuesday evening he was withdrawing from his scheduled confirmation hearing Thursday because he didn’t have enough GOP votes. The White House is now planning to file paperwork to nix his nomination, according to a White House official.

This week GOP senators took relatively provocative steps to signal their dismay with Ingrassia, after POLITICO reported on texts that showed him making racist and antisemitic remarks to fellow Republicans. It followed another POLITICO story earlier this month that reported Ingrassia, the White House liaison to DHS, had been the subject of a DHS internal investigation after a lower-ranking colleague filed, and later withdrew, a harassment complaint. (Ingrassia’s lawyer did not confirm the texts were authentic and denied wrongdoing by Ingrassia at DHS.)

What started with a subtle but striking warning Monday night from Senate Majority Leader John Thune — “He’s not gonna pass” — quietly escalated through Tuesday. Even close Trump allies voiced worries about Ingrassia, whose Thursday nomination hearing had already been punted in July because of antisemitism concerns.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a sometimes Trump critic who helms the committee vetting Ingrassia’s nomination, revealed the rising tensions in an interview with POLITICO Tuesday, hours before Ingrassia said he was stepping back. He vented over Trump’s handling of the nominee and urged fellow Republican senators to “man up” and bring their concerns about Ingrassia to the president. (He declined to say how he would vote.)

“What I say to the president, and to his administration — you need to read the messages,” Paul said. “And guess what? You need to make a decision on whether you want to send him forward.”

In Trump 2.0, Paul said he was “tired of being the only one that has any guts to stand up and tell the president the truth.”

“I hear a lot of flak from Republicans. They want me to do it,” he said. “They say, ‘Well, you’re not afraid of the president, you go tell him his nominee can’t make it.’ … I’m waiting to see a little courage.”

What else we’re watching:

— Bipartisan shutdown talks hit their limit: With the shutdown now in its fourth week, there are no signs the bipartisan conversations are anywhere close to generating an off-ramp. Senators don’t even agree whether the talks are still happening, let alone what it would take to break the stalemate.

What’s next? Thune is pointing to the end of this week as an inflection point for Republicans to decide if they need to extend the deadline on the House-passed Nov. 21 stopgap.

Dasha Burns and Jordain Carney contributed to this report.

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The Senate has met a problem even a ‘gang’ can’t solve

When Washington first woke up to a government shutdown earlier this month, there was one hope for a quick exit: A bipartisan clutch of rank-and-file senators were at least talking.

There was reason for optimism. Past groups had evolved into “gangs” that had figured out some of Capitol Hill’s most intractable disputes.

But that’s not the trajectory so far. Three weeks into the shutdown, there are no signs that the conversations are anywhere close to generating a solution to what is now the second-longest shutdown in U.S. history.

“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who has been involved in the conversations that sprang up as Congress barreled over the funding cliff in early October but have since stalled. “I don’t see that there’s a path forward at this point.”

Senators don’t even agree on whether there are still bipartisan talks taking place at all, let alone on what it would take to break the stalemate. If they agree on anything, it’s that they aren’t a gang, and they aren’t negotiating.

It’s a stark shift from early 2018, when a Senate gang helped negotiate a deal to end a short shutdown during President Donald Trump’s first term. They built on that with a series of bipartisan deals — including multiple coronavirus relief bills and an infrastructure agreement under Trump’s successor, Joe Biden.

But the Senate has changed dramatically since then. Dealmaking senators such as Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.), Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) have retired, hollowing out the corps of lawmakers with any experience crossing the aisle.

The personnel drain has been exacerbated by the sharp battle lines that have been drawn by party leaders as well as deep frustration with an administration that has taken a sledgehammer to a government funding process that once provided a basic framework for bipartisanship inside the Senate.

“Right now … there’s not enough trust between us,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who has a long history of negotiating with Republicans.

He and others noted the challenges for the would-be negotiators are vast and involve figuring out how to bridge sweeping policy and political divides.

The shutdown impasse isn’t only about government spending; some Democrats have demanded that any off-ramp deal include an extension of key Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year — potentially leaving millions uninsured, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

Democrats say they want a bipartisan negotiation on extending the credits, while Republicans say they won’t negotiate while the government is closed down. None of the would-be dealmakers have strayed from those positions set out by their respective party leaders.

The Senate’s bipartisan talks have instead focused on what would happen after the government reopens. Lawmakers involved have floated several ideas, including the possibility of having a vote to reopen the government followed immediately by a vote on an extension of the insurance subsidies.

But that hasn’t been enough to get Democrats to bite. Asked Tuesday if lawmakers were close to finding a path out of the shutdown, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) replied dryly, “Not that I have seen.”

Asked why senators haven’t broken out the “talking stick” — the device the 2018 shutdown-solving group used to manage their bipartisan meetings — Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a perennial gang member, argued that there was little incentive in either party to break ranks at the moment.

“Both sides think there is political advantage in sticking with the positions that they have,” she added.

The senators aren’t completely throwing in the towel, and some of their colleagues still see the sputtering bipartisan talks as the best path out of the shutdown. But there are simmering flashes of frustration from Shaheen and others in the group that what is needed is hands-on involvement from top leaders to break the stalemate — including from Trump.

“I think he’s an important part of it,” Murkowski said.

Senators believe they are nearing a crucial juncture: Trump will leave Friday for a weeklong trip to Asia, and there’s some private grumbling on Capitol Hill that he’s been too deeply engaged in foreign affairs as the country lumbers deeper into the shutdown. Coming to a deal to end it will be difficult as long as he is out of the country, they think.

But most Republicans don’t believe Trump should come to the table until after the government is reopened — and GOP senators left a lunch with the president at the White House Tuesday pledging to remain unified behind their funding strategy. Democrats, meanwhile, have been emboldened by the “No Kings” rallies against the Trump administration over the weekend as well as encouraging polling that appears to back up their shutdown stance.

Even as senators downplay hopes that a bipartisan gang will ride to the rescue, the rank-and-file group is taking care to keep lines of communication open given the freeze-out between Democratic leaders and the White House. A Tuesday request to Trump from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for a meeting was quickly swatted away by the White House, in keeping with the wishes of top GOP leaders.

Some cross-aisle outreach continued this week, according to three people familiar with the matter granted anonymity to disclose private discussions. And while there wasn’t much public progress to show for it, Shaheen said Tuesday it hasn’t been a total wash. But, she added, they needed help from higher powers.

“I think people have moved on both sides,” she said, but it was essential that “the leaders in both houses and both sides sit down with the president and negotiate an end to the shutdown. I think that’s in everyone’s interest.”

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Arizona attorney general sues Mike Johnson for failing to seat Adelita Grijalva

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a lawsuit against House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday for failing to seat Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva.

In the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Washington, Mayes asks the court to compel Johnson to swear in Grijalva or allow her to be sworn in by someone else.

“Constitutional rights cannot be used as a bargaining chip,” Mayes wrote in the filing.

In a letter to Johnson last week, Mayes threatened legal action against the speaker if he did not move to seat Grijalva by the end of the week.

Johnson called the lawsuit “patently absurd” and accused Grijalva of suing him to attract “national publicity.”

“We run the House. She has no jurisdiction. We’re following the precedent,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday.

Grivalja won a Sept. 23 special election in Arizona’s 7th Congressional District to replace her late father, former Rep. Raúl Grijalva. Her win came just days after Johnson sent the House home on Sept. 19 amid a standoff over funding the government, and he has refused to bring the lower chamber back as he looks to jam the Senate.

Adelita Grijalva, a Democrat, has accused Johnson of slow-walking her swearing-in ceremony because she has vowed to sign on to an effort to force a vote on legislation related to releasing files about the investigation into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Johnson has repeatedly vowed to swear Grijalva in once the Senate votes to reopen the government. He also criticized the representative-elect for “doing TikTok videos” instead of “serving her constituents” at a Monday press conference.

But Grijalva has said her district’s office has not had access to funds or resources to provide constituent services for nearly a month.

“There is so much that cannot be done until I’m sworn in,” she said at a joint press conference with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Tuesday. “So every moment that passes that I’m not able to provide constituent services or be a voice for Arizona, I cannot bring the issues forward that they sent me here to do.”

Aaron Pellish contributed to this report.

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Schumer, Jeffries reach out to Donald Trump as shutdown grinds on

The top congressional Democrats contacted President Donald Trump on Tuesday to request a meeting as the shutdown drags into a fourth week.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in comments to reporters after a closed-door caucus lunch that he and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries “reached out to the president today and urged him to sit down and negotiate with us to resolve the health care crisis, address it and end the government shutdown.”

Schumer added he and Jeffries told the White House they were willing to meet “any time, any place” before Trump leaves the country Friday for a weeklong trip to Asian countries.

The two leaders met with Trump at the White House a day before the shutdown started Oct. 1 but emerged without an agreement. Since then, Democratic leaders have clamored for Trump to directly engage on negotiations to end the shutdown, including an agreement on soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act subsidies.

Republicans believe Trump is ready to come to the table to talk about the latter, but only after Democrats agree to reopen the government.

Trump met with Senate Republicans Tuesday to tout their unity in the funding fight. Republicans will force a 12th vote later Tuesday on a House-passed funding bill, which is expected to fail.

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Jordan calls on DOJ to prosecute ex-CIA Director Brennan

House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan is asking the Justice Department to prosecute former CIA director John Brennan for allegedly lying to Congress more than two years ago.

It’s the latest move in the GOP’s campaign to leverage the justice system against President Donald Trump’s political adversaries.

In a letter Tuesday to Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Ohio Republican claimed Brennan, who led the CIA during a probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, “knowingly made false statements during his transcribed interview” with the panel back in May 2023.

Jordan’s allegations center around Brennan’s comments at that time regarding the so-called Steele dossier — a series of largely discredited memos created by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, that accused Trump and his allies of orchestrating a sweeping election conspiracy with the Kremlin.

Steele delivered his dossier to the FBI in 2016, and a summary of its allegations was appended to an intelligence community assessment — ordered by outgoing President Barack Obama after Trump was first elected — about Russia’s involvement in that year’s presidential campaign.

“Brennan’s assertion that the CIA was not ‘involved at all’ with the Steele dossier cannot be reconciled with the facts,” Jordan wrote in the new letter to Bondi. “Brennan’s testimony … was a brazen attempt to knowingly and willfully testify falsely and fictitiously to material facts.”

Trump has long harbored hostility toward Brennan for his role in probing Russia’s ties to the 2016 campaign — and the fact that, once Brennan left office, the ex-CIA director continued to be an outspoken critic of the president.

Brennan is also reportedly already under investigation by the DOJ, but his attorney did not immediately return a request for comment.

Criminal referrals from Congress typically carry limited weight with the Justice Department, particularly in matters in which the evidence forming the basis for a potential criminal charge has been public for years. But Trump has made no secret in recent weeks that he expects his prosecutors to criminally charge his political opponents and has publicly pressured Bondi to act quickly in all these cases. In this environment, a referral from a close Trump ally in Congress might draw the president’s attention and spur officials to action.

After a public plea to Bondi to prosecute New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey, for instance, Trump also engineered the ouster of a top federal prosecutor who resisted bringing those cases — instead installing his former personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, to a powerful U.S. attorney position.

In less than three weeks, Halligan brought charges against Comey and James, who now say they’re being targeted as part of Trump’s political vendetta.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Vulnerable House Republicans press Johnson on Obamacare subsidies

Thirteen vulnerable Republicans are urging Speaker Mike Johnson to “immediately turn our focus” to extending Obamacare subsidies after the government reopens.

The group, led by GOP Reps. Jen Kiggans of Virginia and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, laid out its case Tuesday in a new letter to Johnson, reminding him that millions of Americans face skyrocketing health insurance premiums as a result of the expiration of the subsidies at the end of the year.

While the moderate members acknowledge Republicans must not cede to Democratic demands that the subsidies be extended during the shutdown, they also emphasize that Johnson must help the party “chart a conservative path” forward on the credits immediately after the shutdown ends.

“Allowing these tax credits to lapse without a clear path forward would risk real harm to those we represent,” wrote the lawmakers. “Our Conference and President Trump have been clear that we will not take healthcare away from families who depend on it.”

Conversations have already started around pairing an extension of the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits with conservative health care policy priorities. There are discussions about making changes to the structure of the tax credits themselves, for instance instituting new minimum out-of-pocket premiums for all enrollees and imposing an income cap for eligibility.

House GOP leaders are engaged in early, informal conversations with White House officials about potential changes, too. Still, many hard-liners remain dug in against any extension, which Republicans across the political spectrum caution would be a political mistake heading into the midterms.

The Republicans said in their letter that they agree with their conservative colleagues that changes are needed: “Let us be clear: significant reforms are needed to make these credits more fiscally responsible and ensure they are going to the Americans who need them most.”

But with no resolution in sight to the 21-day government funding standoff between the two parties, the letter signals mounting GOP anxiety about the issue as Nov. 1 fast approaches. That’s the date for open enrollment in plans under the Affordable Care Act, at which point it might be too late to avoid massive premium hikes.

State insurance officials have warned that an expectation that the enhanced tax credits will expire has already been baked into updated insurance rates, and it will be difficult to update those rates if Congress passes an extension in November or December.

Kiggans introduced a bill in September that would extend the subsidies for a year, which currently has the support of 28 co-sponsors, equally divided between the two parties. Twelve of the signers of the Johnson letter are supporters of the Kiggans measure.

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John Thune casts doubt on hearing for Trump nominee who sent racist texts

Senate Majority Leader John Thune signaled Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s embattled nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel should not go forward with a confirmation hearing later this week.

Paul Ingrassia used a racial slur in a private text group where he also said the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell” and that he has “a Nazi streak,” POLITICO reported Monday. That followed an earlier report about a sexual harassment complaint against the 30-year-old White House official that was investigated and later withdrawn.

Asked if it would be a mistake for Ingrassia to appear before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for a scheduled Thursday hearing, Thune laughed then said, “Yeah.”

Ingrassia doesn’t appear to have the votes to advance out of the panel, with all Democrats expected to oppose him as well as at least three Republicans, and GOP leaders don’t believe he has the votes to be confirmed by the full Senate.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a senior member of the Homeland Security Committee, said the White House “ought to withdraw” Ingrassia, saying his nomination was not salvageable.

“It never should’ve gotten this far,” Johnson told reporters.

An attorney for Ingrassia, Edward Andrew Paltzik, said in a statement, “We do not concede the authenticity of any of these purported messages” and that “even if the texts are authentic, they clearly read as self-deprecating and satirical humor.”

“In reality, Mr. Ingrassia has incredible support from the Jewish community because Jews know that Mr. Ingrassia is the furthest thing from a Nazi,” Paltzik said.