Battle lines are emerging on Capitol Hill in the fight to avert a government shutdown in three weeks — and it’s not just Republicans vs. Democrats.

On one side, fiscal hawks are joining with the White House to keep federal agencies running on static funding levels, ideally into January or longer. On the other, Democrats and some top Republicans want to punt no further than November to buy congressional negotiators more time to cut a cross-party compromise on fresh funding totals for federal programs.

In the end, the standoff could hinge on Speaker Mike Johnson’s appetite for trying to pass a funding package backed by President Donald Trump but not Democrats, as he did in the spring — and whether Senate Democrats once again capitulate rather than see government operations grind to a halt on Oct. 1.

“They jammed us last time,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), a top appropriator, said in an interview. “And I am encouraging my Republican friends who want to do appropriations to understand that that won’t work this time.”

Even more irate after Trump’s latest move to unilaterally cancel almost $5 billion in foreign aid through a so-called pocket rescission, Democrats are warning there will be a funding lapse if Republicans don’t negotiate with them. And while they’re being cautious not to box themselves in with ultimatums on funding totals or specific policy demands, they’re starting to flex their muscles by floating concessions Republicans could make in exchange for support across the aisle.

That includes making a deal by the end of the year to head off the expiration of enhanced health insurance subsidies that would result in premium hikes come January for millions of Americans.

There are glimmers of bipartisan talks happening behind the scenes: Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries recently discussed passing a short-term spending patch until November or December, though no decisions were made.

And top House and Senate appropriators are gelling behind a hybrid approach: attempting a bill with a full year of updated funding levels for the USDA, the Department of Veterans Affairs and congressional operations, tied to a short-term extension for other agencies, to allow for more negotiations.

But there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about a bipartisan funding deal coming together, with Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), a senior appropriator, putting the odds of a shutdown at “50-50, perhaps higher.”

As of late last week, the top Senate leaders — Republican John Thune and Democrat Chuck Schumer — haven’t yet spoken about the upcoming funding deadline, in a further sign that cross-party talks are still nascent.

Meanwhile, House hard-liners, backed by some of their conservative Senate counterparts, appear to be digging in to demand a lengthy stopgap bill, rather than a short-term patch meant to facilitate a more comprehensive bipartisan funding measure down the road. One Republican, granted anonymity to share the conservative strategy, said fiscal hawks want a funding patch “to 2026” or for the entirety of the coming fiscal year “if we can get it.”

Continually running the government on stopgaps is part of White House budget director Russ Vought’s strategy to shrink federal spending as he roots for the government funding process to be “less bipartisan.”

Those kick-the-can funding bills give the White House more leeway to shift cash while depriving Democrats of any increases in non-defense funding and GOP defense hawks the military budget increases they seek. Then, using party-line measures like the domestic-policy megabill and the $9 billion clawbacks package Congress cleared this summer, Republicans can add or subtract funding without needing to rely on the votes of Senate Democrats.

The White House predicts that Trump’s more recent, unilateral cancellation of $4.9 billion will only help build support among GOP fiscal hawks for a “clean” continuing resolution, or CR, that simply drags out current funding levels for weeks or months more. In this scenario, Democrats will have to fall in line, a White House official told reporters late last month after Trump nixed the foreign aid funding.

“It’s very hard for me to believe that they’re going to oppose a clean CR that would cause them to be responsible for a government shutdown,” said the official, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

The Senate’s top Democratic appropriator, Patty Murray of Washington, warned it won’t work for Republicans to blame Democrats: If the GOP goes it alone, she said last week, “well, then, that is a Republican shutdown.”

Democrats are also still grappling with how the pocket rescission will factor into their government funding demands. Schatz called it a “point of friction” but added, “I’m not prepared to articulate any red lines to you.”

Notwithstanding the administration’s latest attempt to revoke funding, setting static spending levels through next September would be a nonstarter for many members of both parties. For Democrats, going into next year with a stopgap bill would force them to give up their biggest point of leverage — another end-of-the-year government funding deadline — to try to get a deal on extending the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits that will expire Dec. 31.

On the GOP side, some conservatives view a full-year stopgap bill as locking in spending levels set under President Joe Biden, while defense hawks warn that it undermines the military. Those GOP divisions would make it harder, if not impossible, for Johnson and the White House to try to repeat their go-it-alone playbook from the spring.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said he didn’t think a full-year, flat-funded spending bill would come to fruition: “We can talk about it all we want, we always do. Same plot, different actors.”

Passage of a lengthy funding patch would especially sting for Republicans appropriators, who are quietly trying to retain relevance amid Trump’s escalating assault on Congress’ power through tactics to shift, freeze and cancel funding that lawmakers previously approved.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole, who consistently refrains from criticizing the president, told his underlings last week that the best way for lawmakers to protect Congress’ power of the purse is to negotiate a bipartisan funding agreement now, rather than fall back on a continuing resolution.

“The way to be successful is, get a deal done. That’s what we need to do,” the Oklahoma Republican told fellow appropriators during a recent markup. “But please don’t have any illusions that we’re cavalierly surrendering our power.”

Still, Cole hasn’t received the blessing of his leadership to begin cross-party negotiations.

“We are in discussions now with the administration, with the Senate, about how to proceed,” he said. “We don’t have any final goal or deadline. But I would prefer to get this done sooner rather than later, and I don’t want another CR.”

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.

An overwhelming majority of Americans favor banning members of Congress from trading stocks, but efforts to turn that public sentiment into law have long sputtered.

That’s because the lawmakers who would have to approve any overhaul of congressional investing stand to suffer considerable financial impacts — not least of which are potentially hefty tax liabilities if they are forced to sell off long-held stocks.

Now the issue is coming to a head with a new House bill that has a strange-bedfellows coalition of hardcore conservatives and good-government liberals behind it, and they are hoping they can convince their more skeptical colleagues to accept some new financial realities.

Under proposed language, lawmakers would be able to take advantage of a rare perk generally not available to the public, which would allow them to defer taxes on the sale of prohibited securities. On the flip side, they would face hefty penalties if they fail to sell off their holdings.

If passed, the bill would permanently change the financial calculations of any member or would-be lawmaker. The tax arrangement, for instance, could prove immensely useful to wealthy people who want to diversify their assets. But it could dissuade investors who have no interest in abandoning lucrative stakes for workaday mutual funds.

Proponents of the new bill say taking historic steps towards eliminating conflicts of interest for lawmakers who hold stocks is worth the upheaval. A 2023 University of Maryland poll found 86 percent of registered voters support a ban on member trading.

“Eliminating corruption, eliminating conflicts of interest, is the North Star that we have set out to accomplish,” said Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.), the lead sponsor of the legislation, said in an interview Thursday.

“In order for that to work, you have to deal with the tax implications,” he added. “Otherwise, not only existing members, but anyone who wants to run for Congress could face a big tax bill upon being elected.”

According to the bill, which is co-led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), current members would have 180 days to divest from individual stocks, while incoming members would have 90 days to do so. It’s a more aggressive approach than other proposals that would allow for blind trusts, where a member or candidate keeps their stock holdings but relinquishes control of investing decisions.

Selling stocks typically triggers at least a 15 percent tax on all the capital gains accumulated since the individual bought the stock. For wealthy Americans with longstanding holdings, that could mean forking over huge sums that could otherwise sit in their portfolios and continue to appreciate.

But under the Magaziner-Roy bill, lawmakers could apply for a certificate that would allow them to reinvest the proceeds from those sales into mutual funds or Treasuries without having to pay any taxes until they are ultimately sold.

It’s a process that is currently available to executive branch employees to blunt the tax impact of having to divest due to conflict-of-interest requirements. It was first enacted 1989 at the behest of former President George W. Bush, who had tapped a slew of Wall Street executives to serve in his administration who would have otherwise faced big tax bills.

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va,), a member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee and one of the wealthiest members of Congress, said he knows the tax consequences of divesting first-hand. He’d spoken to a wealthy former House colleague, Dean Phillips, about his experience setting up a blind trust.

“Oh my god, it was so complicated and so expensive that my wife and I just made the decision: We’re just going to sell it all and put it in mutual funds,” said Beyer in a Wednesday interview.

“I got hit with a big tax bill, which was not fun,” he added. “It was a couple hundred thousand dollars. It was way more than I wanted because of the appreciation.”

Proponents of the new trading ban legislation argue that the tax deferral arrangement is preferable to allowing blind trusts from a conflict-of-interest perspective.

Even if a blind trust precludes active management of stocks, lawmakers could still make decisions based on the stocks that they know went into their trust, according to Emma Lydon, managing director of progressive government relations group P Street.

And the bill’s backers say there’s no way to pass a bill ordering members to sell stocks without including the tax break. Said Magaziner, “I would characterize it as a mechanism to help members comply with what would be the toughest ethics reform to be passed in Congress in a generation.”

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who is spearheading an effort to compel a House vote on separate stock trading ban legislation from Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), said members are “not getting any special preferential treatment” and she wants “massive penalties” on her colleagues who engage in insider trading.

“We’re trying to incentivize members who currently engage in stock trades … to actually vote for it, because we need this to pass,” she said.

The penalties for failing to divest vary across several proposed bills. Burchett’s bill would impose a maximum fine of $100,000 per violation, while Magaziner’s consensus bill would impose a fine of 10 percent of the value of the prohibited investment and require any profits from it to be disgorged.

It’s just one part of the bite from the legislation that is making many lawmakers privately balk. Skeptics include House Small Business Chair Roger Williams (R-Texas), a wealthy car dealer who said he has “to think about it because … we give up a lot to come up here.”

Other skeptical members include Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), whom the House Ethics Committee charged in July with violating the House’s code of conduct. Kelly’s wife bought shares of a steel company around the time her husband was briefed on a trade investigation affecting it, though the committee found no evidence he knowingly caused his wife to act on inside information.

Kelly argued his family had many preexisting connections to the steel company, which owns a facility in their hometown, and that lawmakers should continue to be able to trade individual stocks as they please.

He suggested a stock-trading overhaul would not have much effect on public impressions of Congress, citing a conversation he’d had years ago with the late Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska).

“He says people used to complain because we had ice delivered to our offices every day, so if we [do] away with that, maybe our ratings will go up,” Kelly recalled. “So we got rid of it, and our ratings went down.”

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul tore into Vice President JD Vance’s defense of the U.S. military’s strike on an alleged drug vessel leaving Venezuela.

And he cited a long-loved literary classic to prove his point.

“JD “I don’t give a shit” Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the “highest and best use of the military.” Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?” Paul wrote on X on Saturday night. “Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation??”

Paul was referencing Harper Lee’s widely read 1960 novel, the source of a classic 1962 film.

The strike, ordered by the White House and announced by President Donald Trump at a press conference last Tuesday, was an escalation of the administration’s brewing fight with the government of Venezuela and the Tren de Aragua gang, which it has sought to tie together. Trump said the attack killed 11 suspected traffickers.

Inside the administration, officials say to expect more direct action.

“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” Vance wrote Saturday on X.

But others in Washington question the attack’s legality. They are looking for answers as to why the administration elected to fire on the cartel, rather than rounding them up, and some are wary the strike could expand the president’s authority to call upon his war powers. There have also been questions about details of the attack and desire for proof that the boat itself was actually what the administration says it was.

“What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial,” Paul said of Vance’s Saturday post.

Republicans are quickly falling in line behind Ashley Hinson, the Iowa representative running to replace Sen. Joni Ernst in the red-leaning state.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott on Friday endorsed Hinson, who announced her campaign earlier this week.

“Having traveled Iowa with Ashley, I know she is the fighter the Hawkeye State needs to deliver President [Donald] Trump’s agenda in 2026 and beyond,” Scott (R-S.C.) said in a statement. “Iowans are all-in for Ashley Hinson, and that’s why the NRSC and I are proud to stand with my friend, a proven conservative and staunch Trump ally.”

Though Iowa is not one of the top pickup opportunities for Democrats this year, the party hopes it could be in play as Democrats need to net four seats to flip the Senate. Avoiding a competitive GOP primary could help stave off the opportunity for a Democratic pickup.

In addition to Thune and Scott, Senate Leadership Fund — the super PAC linked to GOP leadership — also said it would be backing Hinson.

Trump has yet to weigh in on the race, even as Hinson and other Senate Republicans look to closely tie the Iowa hopeful to the president.

Hinson hopped in the race the same day Ernst, who served two terms in the Senate, announced she would retire. Hinson has been viewed as a potential Ernst successor, who despite indicating last year she would run for reelection has faced several setbacks in recent months.

The former TV news anchor is a strong fundraiser and seen as a rising star in the party. She reported $2.8 million in her campaign coffers earlier in the year.

“We need conservative fighters in the Senate — and that’s exactly what we’ll get with Ashley Hinson,” Thune said in a statement. “Ashley has been a fierce advocate of President Trump’s America First agenda and has been instrumental in delivering big wins in the House for Iowans and the American people.”

The White House has a messaging hurdle with President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” – and they’re looking for Congress to help clear it.

Senior administration officials, including Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, met Wednesday with lawmakers to make the case that they should be selling their constituents on the more popular elements of the bill and their impact on working families, including tax cuts.

“There’s a lot of really good, popular stuff in there when you break down the bill individually,” said a person familiar with the thinking of senior White House officials granted anonymity to speak about strategy.

Republicans can only lose a handful of seats to retain control of the House and prevent Democrats from thwarting the president’s agenda in his final two years in office — which makes selling the megalaw a major priority for the White House.

Democrats were able to attack the “blob of the bill,” the person said, referring to the unpopular nature of the overall law. But, “now you’re going to have the individual parts.”

White House aides, including press secretary Karoline Leavitt and deputy chief of staff James Blair, urged Republicans to underscore the law’s tax cuts such as those on tipped wages and an increase in the child tax credit.

The pair also warned them against shying away from Democrats’ attacks on Medicaid, according to a senior White House official granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

“We encourage them to remain firm on messaging the fact that Medicaid spending is actually going to increase,” the same official said. “We did not cut Medicaid, as the Democrats are lying and saying we did.”

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that nearly 8 million fewer Americans will have access to Medicaid by 2034 because of the new law, including a work requirement that the GOP has long supported.

Leavitt and Blair also equipped lawmakers with a tangible midterm playbook closely following Trump’s 2024 strategy, according to the White House official. The key components: target low propensity voters and blitz the local media market.

Wednesday’s meeting, widely attended by House Republicans fresh off the August recess, included a polling presentation from Tony Fabrizio, Republican pollster and strategist, who guided members toward the economic components of the megalaw that White House aides believe polls better with constituents, according to the same White House official.

Two senior White House officials say Trump will hit the campaign trail to galvanize some of those atypical, unmotivated midterm voters but is unlikely to do so until 2026.

Republicans have their work cut out for them. A Pew poll conducted last month found that 46 percent of Americans disapprove of the law, while 32 percent approve. Another 23 percent said they’re unsure, perhaps providing an opening for Republicans – or Democrats – who are trying to brand the effort.

After months of pushing the legislation through Congress under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” label, the rebranding effort isn’t rolling off the tongue on Capitol Hill.

“Remember all the machinations getting to the conclusion of the – what are we calling it now? Working Families Tax Act something?,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) mused to reporters Thursday morning.

“It’s the Big, Beautiful Working Families Tax Act,” Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) jumped in.

“Correct,” Roy laughed. “Exactly.”

Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.