U.S. border czar Tom Homan told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday the effort was about “helping TSA do their mission and get the American public through that airport as quick as they can while adhering to all the security guidelines and the protocols.”

“We’re simply there to help TSA do their job in areas that don’t need their specialized expertise, such as screening through the X-ray machine,” he said. “Not trained in that? We won’t do that. But there are roles we can play to release TSA officers from the non-significant roles, such as guarding an exit so they can get back to the scanning machines and move people quicker.”

Various media outlets reported Monday morning that ICE agents were being deployed to 14 airports across the nation — none of them in California.

Officials at Palm Springs International Airport did not immediately reply to a request for comment on Sunday.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump said he would order ICE agents to assist with airport security if Congress did not immediately reach an agreement to fund TSA officers.

In a social media post, Trump said ICE agents could also be tasked with making immigration arrests at airports.

“If the radical left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our country, in particular, our airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE agents to the airports where they will do security like no one has ever seen before,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The proposal comes as a partial government shutdown has left roughly 50,000 TSA employees working without pay, contributing to increased absenteeism and staffing shortages at airports nationwide.

Administration officials said about 10% of TSA workers failed to report for duty on some recent days, compared to typical rates of under 2%.

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The legislation, which the Senate passed Monday night, is expected to narrowly pass the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority. House Democrats are largely anticipated to oppose the deal, which does not include a core demand: an extension to Affordable Care Act healthcare tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he believes the deal is poised to pass by the end of the day.

“We believe the long national nightmare will be over tonight,” Johnson told reporters in Washington. “It was completely and utterly foolish and pointless.”

House Democrats were scheduled to meet ahead of the floor vote to discuss their vote. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Tuesday night that there is a “strong expectation” that Democrats will be “strongly opposed” to the shutdown deal when it comes to final vote.

If the tax credits lapse, premiums will more than double on average for more than 20 million Americans who use the healthcare marketplace, according to independent analysts at the research firm KFF.

The spending bill, if approved, will fund the government through Jan. 30 and reinstate federal workers who were laid off during the shutdown. It will also guarantee back pay for federal employees who were furloughed or who were working without pay during the budget impasse.

Passage of the bill would mark a crucial moment on the 43rd day of the shutdown, which left thousands of federal workers without pay, millions of Americans uncertain on whether they would receive food assistance and travelers facing delays at airports across the country.

A vote is expected to begin after 4 p.m. EST — after Johnson swears in Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who was elected seven weeks ago. Once sworn in, Grijalva is set to become the final vote needed to force a floor vote on a petition demanding the Trump administration release files connected to Jeffrey Epstein.

The swearing-in ceremony will soon lay the groundwork for a House vote that Trump has long tried to avoid. It would come as the Epstein saga was reignited on Wednesday morning when Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released new emails in which the late sex trafficker said Trump “knew about the girls” that he was victimizing.

The emails are part of a trove of documents from Epstein’s estate released to the committee.

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About 40 million low-income people across the U.S., including roughly 5.5 million in California, receive federal food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. But Newsom, a Democrat, warned families should expect an interruption to those benefits next month.

“This is serious, this is urgent – and requires immediate action,” he said.

That’s a starkly different mission from President Donald Trump’s deployment of California National Guard troops to guard federal buildings and immigration agents in Southern California as part of his mass deportation agenda. He’s also deployed or tried to send guard troops to Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon.

Newsom, Trump’s longtime political rival, has fought the president’s deployment of troops to Democrat-run cities, saying last month that Trump can’t “trample a state’s power to protect its people.” A federal appeals court heard arguments Wednesday on Trump’s deployment of troops to Los Angeles. A lower court judge ruled that the federal government violated federal law.

The governor’s office said he’s building off of his efforts to combat food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Newsom ordered the National Guard and volunteers from a state-run program in 2020 to work with food banks across the state to identify needs. Troops helped pack and deliver 800 million meals to people, Newsom’s office said. The governor will share additional details on the new effort as Nov. 1 approaches.

Trump’s big tax breaks and spending cuts law also set new rules for the federal program also known as SNAP, requiring more people to work to receive food assistance.

The California Immigrant Policy Center is concerned that Newsom’s plan could inadvertently have a chilling effect due to Trump’s National Guard deployments, said Josh Stehlik, the advocacy group’s policy director. But Stehlik was pleased to see the governor say that guard would not be acting as law enforcement.

“It makes sense to mobilize the National Guard for the humanitarian purpose of delivering much needed and critical food assistance to people during an emergency that’s been caused by the federal government shutdown,” Stehlik said.

Volunteers through a state-run program will also provide support to food banks.

“During this critical time as DC strips communities of vital resources, Californians are doing what we always do — which is step up for each other,” said Josh Fryday, director of the Governor’s Office of Service and Community Engagement, which oversees the program.

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We successfully argued to the Clinton budget office that our employees were essential because if VOA were to stop broadcasting, those listeners would doubt that the U.S. was still a powerful force. As part of the administration’s program of reinventing government — which led to two years of balanced budgets — we eventually cut our workforce by about 10%. But VOA never stopped broadcasting.

This week, for the first time since it started operations in 1942, the VOA is almost entirely silent. Viewers and listeners primarily hear canned music or see a screen that simply says “VOA will serve as a consistently reliable and authoritative source of news.”

Other international broadcasting operations of the U.S. government have also been removed from the airwaves, while some appear to be defying orders and continuing operations.

International observers report that leaders in Russia and China are thrilled. Those countries continue their robust international broadcasting operations, as do Iran and many of America’s friends and adversaries. CNN reported that “Chinese nationalists and state media can hardly contain their schadenfreude right now.” Affiliate partner stations that need to fill air and screen time are already lining up programs from the international broadcasting services of Russia and China to replace American programming.

For 83 years, VOA has been a reliable source of news and information for people around the world. It operates under a legislative charter adopted by Congress in 1976 that requires its programming to be “accurate, objective, and comprehensive.” By law, VOA’s news programs are not allowed to be false or unbalanced. If they are, that law can be enforced.

VOA and the other U.S. international broadcasters have a regular audience that has been growing rapidly. There are reportedly now more than 425 million listeners in every part of the globe. Its news stories serve as a model of a free press and a vital source of information. When stories about rigged elections or government fraud or human rights abuses are suppressed by the countries where they occur, people in those countries can learn about them from VOA in their own languages and over transmission services they can receive. When people want to learn about how to run businesses, or about medical advances, democratic elections or popular culture, they can learn about them from VOA.

Moreover, VOA’s programs in “Special English” — which present short stories as well as news by using a core vocabulary of 1,500 words — have taught English to people around the world for decades. I once met the leader of a major bank in China, and when I told him that I had been the director of VOA, he teared up and said that his career had been possible because he learned English by listening to VOA.

VOA’s music programs have been a source of inspiration everywhere. For decades Willis Conover brought jazz to the world — often to nations where his program was banned. The great Cuban trumpeter Arturo Sandoval went to jail for listening to jazz on VOA. When Garth Brooks appeared on VOA’s country music show on a call-in program, a listener from China asked him when he would be coming to that country. “When China stops stealing our music,” Garth Brooks responded.

When Russia banned news about the war in Ukraine, people could learn about it from VOA and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

While there will always be ways in which VOA can be streamlined and improved, it remains a vital force for good in the world — and a force for American products, policies and values. I hope it will not remain silent for long.

Geoffrey Cowan, a professor of communication and journalism at USC, is the director of the Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership & Policy.

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House Republicans have been meeting behind closed doors on next steps after Trump doubled-down on his insistence that a debt ceiling increase be included in any deal — and if not, he said in an early morning post, let the closures “start now.”

“We will not have a government shutdown,” Johnson said as he left the basement session at the Capitol.

Johnson declined to disclose the new idea under consideration but lawmakers said it would fund the government at current levels through March and adds $100 billion in disaster aid and $10 billion in agricultural assistance to farmers.

Gone would be Trump’s demand for a debt ceiling, which GOP leaders told lawmakers would be debated as part of their tax and border packages in the new year.

It is almost impossible to meet Trump’s last minute pressure. Johnson knows there won’t be enough support within the GOP majority to pass any package, since many Republicans prefer to slash federal government rather than fund it, and won’t allow more debt.

Instead, Johnson has been in talks Friday with Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries whose party’s support will be needed to ensure passage of any deal. Votes are possible Friday afternoon.

“We will meet our obligations,” Johnson said.

Trump, who has not yet been sworn into office, is showing the power and limits of his sway with Congress, as he intervenes and orchestrates affairs from Mar-a-Lago, alongside his billionaire ally Elon Musk, who is heading up the incoming administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency.

“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now,” Trump posted early in the morning on social media.

Trump does not fear government shutdowns the way Johnson and the lawmakers see federal closures as political losers that harm the livelihoods of Americans. The incoming Trump administration vows to slash the federal budget and fire thousands of employees. Trump himself sparked the longest government shutdown in history in his first term at the White House, the monthlong closures over the 2018-19 Christmas holiday and New Year period.

More importantly for the president-elect is his demand for pushing the thorny debt ceiling debate off the table before he returns to the White House. The federal debt limit expires Jan. 1, and Trump doesn’t want the first months of his new administration saddled with tough negotiations in Congress to lift the nation’s borrowing capacity. It gives Democrats, who will be in the minority next year, leverage.

“Congress must get rid of, or extend out to, perhaps, 2029, the ridiculous Debt Ceiling,” Trump posted — increasing his demand for a now five-year debt limit increase. “Without this, we should never make a deal.”

Johnson is racing behind closed doors to prevent a shutdown, but his influence has its limits. Trump and Musk unleashed their opposition — and social media army — on the original plan Johnson presented, which was a 1,500-page bipartisan compromise he struck with Democrats that included the disaster aid for hard hit states, but did not address the debt ceiling situation.

A Trump-backed second plan, Thursday’s slimmed down 116-page bill with his preferred two-year debt limit increase into 2027, failed in a monumental defeat, rejected by most Democrats as an unserious effort — but also Republicans who refuse to pile on the nation’s red ink.

On Friday morning, Vice President-elect JD Vance arrived early at the speaker’s office at the Capitol, where a group of the most hardline Republican holdouts from the House Freedom Caucus were meeting with Johnson.

At one point during the lunchtime meeting of House Republicans, Johnson asked for a show of hands as they determined the path forward, Republican Rep. Ralph Norman said.

Government workers have already been told to prepare for a federal shutdown which would send millions of employees — and members of the military — into the holiday season without paychecks.

“Welcome back to the MAGA swamp,” the House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries posted.

“That is why our country is on the brink of a government shutdown that will crash the economy, hurt working class Americans and likely be the longest in history.”

Jeffries was communicating with Johnson on the path forward, according to multiple people in a closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting.

In the Senate, which is controlled by the Democrats for a few more weeks, there are talks of trying to push forward the original package, the bipartisan compromise that Johnson, Jeffries and the Senate leaders had negotiated to strike a deal earlier this week. That would be difficult, but not impossible.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called the original agreement “the quickest, simplest, and easiest way we can make sure the government stays open while delivering critical emergency aid to the American people.”

“I’m ready to stay here through Christmas because we’re not going to let Elon Musk run the government,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the chair of the Appropriations Committee who was instrumental in that first deal. “We had a bipartisan deal—we should stick to it.”

President Joe Biden, in his final weeks in office, has played a less public role in the debate, drawing criticism from Trump and Republicans who are trying to shift the blame for any shutdown on him.

Biden has been in discussions with Schumer and Jeffries, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday.

But she said, “Republicans blew up this deal. They did, and they need to fix this.”

Johnson faces an enormous task as he tries to keep government running, appease Trump — and save his own job.

The speaker’s election is the first vote of the new Congress, which convenes Jan. 3, and Johnson will need the support of almost every single House Republican from his razor-thin majority to ensure he can keep the gavel. Democrats will vote for Jeffries.

As the speaker twisted in Washington, his peril was on display. At Turning Point USA’s conservative AmericaFest confab, Trump ally Steven Bannon stirred thousands of activists late Thursday with a withering takedown of the Louisiana Republican.

“Clearly, Johnson is not up to the task. He’s gotta go,” Bannon said, drawing cheers. He smiled and cocked his head at the response, “President Trump? These are your people.”

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Lawmakers have struggled to get to this point as the current budget year winds to a close at month’s end. At the urging of the most conservative members of his conference, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., had linked temporary funding with a mandate that would have compelled states to require proof of citizenship when people register to vote.

But Johnson could not get all Republicans on board even as the party’s presidential nominee, Donald Trump, insisted on that package. Trump said Republican lawmakers should not support a stop-gap measure without the voting requirement, but the bill went down to defeat anyway, with 14 Republicans opposing it.

Bipartisan negotiations began in earnest shortly after that, with leadership agreeing to extend funding into mid-December. That gives the current Congress the ability to fashion a full-year spending bill after the Nov. 5 election, rather than push that responsibility to the next Congress and president.

In a letter to Republican colleagues, Johnson said the budget measure would be “very narrow, bare-bones” and include “only the extensions that are absolutely necessary.”

“While this is not the solution any of us prefer, it is the most prudent path forward under the present circumstances,” Johnson wrote. “As history has taught and current polling affirms, shutting the government down less than 40 days from a fateful election would be an act of political malpractice.”

Rep. Tom Cole, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, had said on Friday that talks were going well.

“So far, nothing has come up that we can’t deal with,” said Cole, R-Okla. “Most people don’t want a government shutdown and they don’t want that to interfere with the election. So nobody is like, ‘I’ve got to have this or we’re walking.’ It’s just not that way.”

Johnson’s earlier effort had no chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate and was opposed by the White House, but it did give the speaker a chance to show Trump and conservatives within his conference that he fought for their request.

The final result — government funding effectively on autopilot — was what many had predicted. With the election just weeks away, few lawmakers in either party had any appetite for the brinksmanship that often leads to a shutdown.

Now a bipartisan majority is expected to push the short-term measure over the finish line. Temporary spending bills generally fund agencies at current levels, but some additional money was included to bolster the Secret Service, replenish a disaster relief fund and aid with the presidential transition, among other things.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a temporary spending bill a day before a potential government shutdown, pushing a fight with congressional Republicans over the federal budget into the new year, as wartime aid for Ukraine and Israel remains stalled.

The measure passed the House and Senate by wide bipartisan margins this week, ensuring the government remains open until after the holiday season, and potentially giving lawmakers more time to sort out their considerable differences over government spending levels for the current fiscal year. Biden signed the bill in San Francisco, where he is hosting the summit of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation economies.

News of the signing came late at night. The president signed the bill at the Legion of Honor Museum, where he held a dinner for APEC members.

The spending package keeps government funding at current levels for roughly two more months while a long-term package is negotiated. It splits the deadlines for passing full-year appropriations bills into two dates: Jan. 19 for some federal agencies and Feb. 2 for others, creating two dates when there will be a risk of a partial government shutdown.

The two-step approach was championed by new House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, and was not favored by many in the Senate, though all but one Democrat and 10 Republicans supported it because it ensured the government would not shut down for now.

Johnson has vowed that he will not support any further stopgap funding measures, known as continuing resolutions. He portrayed the temporary funding bill as setting the ground for a spending “fight” with the Senate next year.

The spending bill does not include the White House’s nearly $106 billion request for wartime aid for Israel and Ukraine. Nor does it provide humanitarian funding for Palestinians and other supplemental requests, including money for border security. Lawmakers are likely to turn their attention more fully to that request after the Thanksgiving holiday in hopes of negotiating a deal.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The House voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to prevent a government shutdown after new Republican Speaker Mike Johnson was forced to reach across the aisle to Democrats when hard-right conservatives revolted against his plan.

The bipartisan tally — 336-95 with 93 Republicans voting no —showed Johnson’s willingness to leave his right-flank Republicans behind and work with Democrats to temporarily keep government running — the same political move that cost the last House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, his job just weeks ago.

This time, Johnson of Louisiana appeared on track for a temporarily better outcome. His approach, which the Senate is expected to approve by week’s end, effectively pushes a final showdown over government funding to the new year.

“Making sure that government stays in operation is a matter of conscience for all of us. We owe that to the American people,” Johnson said earlier Tuesday at a news conference at the Capitol.

The new Republican leader faced the same political problem that led to McCarthy’s ouster — angry, frustrated, hard-right GOP lawmakers rejected his approach, demanded budget cuts and voted against the plan. Rather than the applause and handshakes that usually follow passage of a bill, several hardline conservatives animatedly confronted the speaker as they exited the chamber.

Without enough support from his Republican majority, Johnson had little choice but to rely on Democrats to ensure passage to keep the federal government running. Shortly before the Tuesday evening vote, House Democratic leaders issued a joint statement saying that the package met all their requirements and they would support it.

Johnson’s proposal puts forward a unique — critics say bizarre — two-part process that temporarily funds some federal agencies to Jan. 19 and others to Feb. 2. It’s a continuing resolution, or CR, that comes without any of the deep cuts conservatives have demanded all year. It also fails to include President Joe Biden’s request for nearly $106 billion for Ukraine, Israel, border security and other supplemental funds.

“We’re not surrendering,” Johnson assured after a closed-door meeting of House Republicans Tuesday morning, vowing he would not support another stopgap. “But you have to choose fights you can win.”

Johnson, who announced his endorsement Tuesday of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president, hit the airwaves to sell his approach and met privately Monday night with the conservative Freedom Caucus.

Johnson says the innovative approach would position House Republicans to “go into the fight” for deeper spending cuts in the new year, but many Republicans are skeptical there will be any better outcome in January.

The House Freedom Caucus announced its opposition, ensuring dozens of votes against the plan.

“I think it’s a very big mistake,” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a member of the hard-right group of lawmakers.

“It’s wrong,” said Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn.

It left Johnson with few other options than to skip what’s typically a party-only procedural vote, and rely on another process that requires a two-thirds tally with Democrats for passage.

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in a letter to colleagues noted that the GOP package met the Democratic demands to keep funding at current levels without steep reductions or divisive Republican policy priorities.

“Extreme MAGA Republicans have repeatedly demonstrated that they cannot govern without House Democrats,” Jeffries said on NPR. “That will be the case this week in the context of avoiding a government shutdown.”

Winning bipartisan approval of a continuing resolution is the same move that led McCarthy’s hard-right flank to oust him in October, days after the Sept. 30 vote to avert a federal shutdown. For now, Johnson appears to be benefiting from a political honeymoon in one of his first big tests on the job.

“Look, we’re going to trust the speaker’s move here,” said Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-Ga.

But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a McCarthy ally who opposed his ouster, said Johnson should be held to the same standard. “What’s the point in throwing out one speaker if nothing changes? The only way to make sure that real changes happen is make the red line stay the same for every speaker.”

The Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority, has signaled its willingness to accept Johnson’s package ahead of Friday’s deadline to fund the government.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called the House package “a solution” and said he expected it to pass Congress with bipartisan support.

“It’s nice to see us working together to avoid a government shutdown,” he said.

But McConnell, R-Ky., has noted that Congress still has work to do toward Biden’s request to provide U.S. military aid for Ukraine and Israel and for other needs. Senators are trying to devise a separate package to fund U.S. supplies for the overseas wars and to bolster border security, but it remains a work in progress.

If approved, passage of the continuing resolution would be a less-than-triumphant capstone to the House GOP’s first year in the majority. The Republicans have worked tirelessly to cut federal government spending only to find their own GOP colleagues unwilling to go along with the most conservative priorities. Two of the Republican bills collapsed last week as moderates revolted.

Instead, the Republicans are left funding the government essentially on autopilot at the levels that were set in bipartisan fashion at the end of 2022, when Democrats had control of Congress but the two parties came together to agree on budget terms.

All that could change in the new year when 1% cuts across the board to all departments would be triggered if Congress failed to agree to new budget terms and pass the traditional appropriation bills to fund the government by springtime.

The 1% automatic cuts, which would take hold in April, are despised by all sides — Republicans say they are not enough, Democrats say they are too steep and many lawmakers prefer to boost defense funds. But they are part of the debt deal McCarthy and Biden struck earlier this year. The idea was to push Congress to do better.

The legislation also extends farm bill programs through September, the end of the current fiscal year. That addition was an important win for some farm-state lawmakers. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., for example, warned that without the extension, milk prices would have soared and hurt producers back in his home state.

“The farm bill extension was the biggest sweetener for me,” said Pocan.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a man who stays in motion — enthusiastically greeting tourists at the Capitol, dashing overseas last week to the G7 summit of industrial world leaders, raising funds back home to elect fellow Republicans to the House majority.

But beneath the whirlwind of activity is a stubborn standstill, an imbalance of power between the far-right Republicans who hoisted McCarthy to the speaker’s role yet threaten his own ability to lead the House.

It’s a political standoff that will be tested anew as the House returns this week from a long summer recess and McCarthy faces a collision course of difficult challenges — seeking to avoid a government shutdown, support Ukraine in the war and launch an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

“They’ve got some really heavy lifting ahead,” said the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, John Thune, of South Dakota.

McCarthy, of California, is going to “have his hands full trying to figure out how to navigate and execute,” he said.

Congress has been here before, as has McCarthy in his nearly two decades in office, but the stakes are ever higher, with Republicans powered by an increasingly hard-right faction that is refusing to allow business as usual in Washington.

With former President Donald Trump’s backing, McCarthy’s right-flank pushed him into the speaker’s office at the start of the year only after he agreed to a long list of conservative demands — including the ability to call a quick vote to “vacate the chair” and remove him from office.

That threat of an abrupt ouster hovers over McCarthy’s every move, especially now.

To start, Congress faces a deadline to fund the government by the end of the month, or risk a potentially devastating federal shutdown. There’s just 11 working days for Congress to act once the House resumes Tuesday.

Facing a backlash from conservatives who want to slash government funding, McCarthy may be able to ease the way by turning to another hard-right priority, launching a Biden impeachment inquiry over the business dealings of the president’s son, Hunter Biden.

For McCarthy, running the two tracks — a government funding process alongside an impeachment drive — is an unusual and politically fraught undertaking.

But starting a formal impeachment inquiry into Biden could help to appease Republican allies of Trump, who has emerged as the GOP frontrunner to confront Biden in the 2024 election for the White House.

“He’s being squeezed,” Brad Woodhouse, a veteran Democratic operative, said of McCarthy. Woodhouse is now a senior adviser to the Congressional Integrity Project, which is preparing to criticize Republicans over the Biden impeachment.

The White House has said Biden is not involved in his son’s business dealings.

But Trump’s allies among House Republicans are working furiously to unearth any links between Biden and his son’s business as they portray Hunter Biden as trading on the family name for financial enrichment and work to erode public support for the president ahead of the presidential election.

Republicans have not yet been able to produce evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden.

White House spokesman Ian Sams said, “Speaker McCarthy shouldn’t cave to the extreme, far-right members who are threatening to shut down the government unless they get a baseless, evidence-free impeachment of President Biden. The consequences for the American people are too serious.”

Meanwhile, what should have been a fairly prescribed process to fund the government after McCarthy and Biden negotiated a more than $1 trillion deal earlier this summer over the debt limit appears to be falling apart. Even a stopgap measure to simply keep government funding at existing levels for a few months while Congress tries to finish the spending bills is a nonstarter for McCarthy’s right flank.

Conservatives powered by the House Freedom Caucus are insisting federal spending is rolled back to 2022 levels and they want to add other priorities to the legislation.

If not, they say they will oppose a temporary measure, called a continuing resolution, or CR, to keep government running.

“We must rein in the reckless inflationary spending, and the out-of-control federal bureaucracy it funds,” the Freedom Caucus wrote in a statement at the end of August.

With command of dozens of votes, the hard right can deny McCarthy the support he needs to pass a Republican bill on its own. But relying on Democrats for votes would bring other problems for McCarthy if he is seen as disloyal to his ranks.

The conservatives want to beef up border security and address what Republicans deride as the “weaponization” of the Justice Department’s prosecutions, including of those charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. They also want to end what they call the Pentagon’s “woke” policies as the Defense Department tries to provide diversity, equity and inclusion to service personnel.

Signaling the hard road ahead, Trump-ally Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., mockingly reposted one of McCarthy’s recent videos welcoming tourists at the Capitol.

“Kevin thinking this was the video we needed at this moment is depressingly revealing,” Gaetz said on social media.

“We need a SPEAKER not a GREETER.”

Congress also has a pending request from the White House to provide an additional $40 billion on three fronts — some $21 billion in military and humanitarian relief for Ukraine as it battles the Russian invasion; $12 billion to replenish federal disaster aids after floods, fires and other problems, including to curb the flow of deadly fentanyl at the southern U.S. border with Mexico.

McCarthy has vowed there won’t be any “blank check” for Ukraine as he works to appease skeptical Republicans who want to end U.S. involvement in overseas affairs, particularly involving Russia.

While the shutdown is the more pressing problem for McCarthy, the Biden impeachment inquiry is his bigger political gamble.

McCarthy has signaled an impeachment inquiry is coming. But there is “no date circled on the calendar,” said a person familiar with his thinking and granted anonymity to discuss it.

Not all House Republicans are eager for impeachment proceedings. “We can waste our time on issues that are not important, or we can focus on issues that are,” Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., said Sunday on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki.”

Trump faces his own more serious charges of wrongdoing, including the federal indictments over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election he lost to Biden and his refusal to return classified documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate. He has been indicted four times this year.

Watching from the Senate, which has been working to pass all 12 of the regular bills needed to fund government operations through committees ahead of floor votes starting next week, Republicans hope cooler heads in the House will prevail on all fronts.

Several Republicans have made no secret of their disinterest in impeachment proceedings against Biden.

And GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski said those who don’t think a federal shutdown of government operations is a big deal ought to visit her state of Alaska and see “real life.”

During a previous government shutdown, Murkowski said crab fisherman couldn’t get out in the water because federal permits could not be issued.

“You know, we’ve got a lot of things going on here in the Congress right now,” she said. “So the House is going to have to sort through their priorities and hopefully, they’re going to be priorities that are in the best interests of the operations of good governance.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of struggling to find agreement on just about anything in a divided Congress, lawmakers are returning to Capitol Hill to try to avert a government shutdown, even as House Republicans consider whether to press forward with an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

A short-term funding measure to keep government offices fully functioning will dominate the September agenda, along with emergency funding for Ukraine, federal disaster funds and the Republican-driven probe into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.

Time is running short for Congress to act. The House is scheduled to meet for just 11 days before the government’s fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, leaving little room to maneuver. And the dealmaking will play out as two top Republicans, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, deal with health issues.

The president and congressional leaders, including Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, are focused on passage of a months-long funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, to keep government offices running while lawmakers iron out a budget. It’s a step Congress routinely takes to avoid stoppages, but McCarthy faces resistance from within his own Republican ranks, including from some hardline conservatives who openly embrace the idea of a government shutdown.

“Honestly, it’s a pretty big mess,” McConnell said at an event in Kentucky last week.

Here are the top issues as lawmakers return from the August break:

KEEPING THE GOVERNMENT OPEN

When Biden and McCarthy struck a deal to suspend the nation’s debt ceiling in June, it included provisions for topline spending numbers. But under pressure from the House Freedom Caucus, House Republicans have advanced spending bills that cut below that agreement.

Republicans have also tried to load their spending packages with conservative policy wins. For example, House Republicans added provisions blocking abortion coverage, transgender care and diversity initiatives to a July defense package, turning what has traditionally been a bipartisan effort into a sharply contested bill.

But Democrats control the Senate and are certain to reject most of the conservative proposals. Senators are crafting their spending bills on a bipartisan basis with an eye toward avoiding unrelated policy fights.

Top lawmakers in both chambers are now turning to a stopgap funding package, a typical strategy to give the lawmakers time to iron out a long-term agreement.

The House Freedom Caucus has already released a list of demands it wants included in the continuing resolution. But they amount to a right-wing wish list that would never fly in the Senate.

The conservative opposition means McCarthy will almost certainly have to win significant Democratic support to pass a funding bill — but such an approach risks a new round of conflict with the same conservatives who in the past have threatened to oust him from the speakership.

Democrats are already readying blame for the House GOP.

“The last thing the American people deserve is for extreme House members to trigger a government shutdown that hurts our economy, undermines our disaster preparedness, and forces our troops to work without guaranteed pay,” said White House spokesman Andrew Bates.

In a letter to his colleagues Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote that the focus when the Senate returns Tuesday will be “funding the government and preventing House Republican extremists from forcing a government shutdown.”

It leaves McCarthy desperate to get the votes to keep government offices running and avoid the political blowback. As he tries to persuade Republicans to go along with a temporary fix, McCarthy has been arguing that a government shutdown would also halt Republican investigations into the Biden administration.

“If we shut down, all of government shuts it down — investigations and everything else — it hurts the American public,” the speaker said on Fox News last week.

IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

Since they gained the House majority, Republicans have launched a series of investigations into the Biden administration, with an eye towards impeaching the president or his Cabinet officials. They have now zeroed in on the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and his overseas business dealings, including with Ukrainian gas company Burisma.

The inquiries have not produced evidence that President Biden took official action on behalf of his son or business partners, but McCarthy has called impeachment a “natural step forward” for the investigations.

An impeachment inquiry by the House would be a first step toward bringing articles of impeachment. It is not yet clear what that may look like, especially because the speaker does not appear to have the GOP votes lined up to support an impeachment inquiry. Moderate Republicans have so far balked at sending the House on a full-fledged impeachment hunt.

But Donald Trump, running once again to challenge Biden, is prodding them to move ahead quickly.

“I don’t know how actually how a Republican could not do it,” Trump said in an interview on Real America’s Voice. “I think a Republican would be primaried and lose immediately, no matter what district you’re in.”

UKRAINE AND DISASTER FUNDING

The White House has requested more than $40 billion in emergency funding, including $13 billion in military aid for Ukraine, $8 billion in humanitarian support for the nation and $12 billion to replenish U.S. federal disaster funds at home.

The request for the massive cash infusion comes as Kyiv launches a counteroffensive against the Russian invasion. But support for Ukraine is waning among Republicans, especially as Trump has repeatedly expressed skepticism of the war.

Nearly 70 Republicans voted for an unsuccessful effort to discontinue military aid to Ukraine in July, though strong support for the war effort remains among many members.

It is also not clear whether the White House’s supplemental request for U.S. disaster funding, which also includes funds to bolster enforcement and curb drug trafficking at the southern U.S. border, will be tied to the Ukraine funding or a continuing budget resolution. The disaster funding enjoys wide support in the House, but could be tripped up if packaged with other funding proposals.

LEGISLATION ON HOLD

The Senate is expected to spend most of September focused on funding the government and confirming Biden’s nominees, meaning that major policy legislation will have to wait. But Schumer outlined some priorities for the remaining months of the year in the letter to his colleagues.

Schumer said the Senate would work on legislation to lower the costs of drugs, address rail safety and provide disaster relief after floods in Vermont, fires in Hawaii and a hurricane in Florida.

Senators will also continue to examine whether legislation is needed to address artificial intelligence. Schumer has convened what he is calling an “AI insight forum” on Sept. 13 in the Senate with tech industry leaders, including Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the CEO of X and Tesla, as well as former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.

HEALTH CONCERNS

Senate Republicans will return next week to renewed questions about the health of their leader, McConnell.

McConnell, 81, faces questions about his ability to continue as the top Senate Republican after he has frozen up twice during news conferences in the last two months since falling and suffering a concussion in March. During the event in Kentucky last week, he fell silent for roughly 30 seconds as he answered a question from a reporter.

Dr. Brian Monahan, the Capitol’s attending physician, said Thursday that McConnell is cleared to work. But the question of whether McConnell — the longest-serving party leader in Senate history — can continue as Republican leader has sparked intense speculation about who will eventually replace him.

Meanwhile, the health of California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 90, has visibly wavered in recent months after she was hospitalized for shingles earlier this year. She suffered a fall at her San Francisco home in August and visited the hospital for testing.

And in the House, Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 Republican, disclosed last week that he has been diagnosed with a form of blood cancer known as multiple myeloma and is undergoing treatment.

Scalise, 57, said he will continue to serve and described the cancer as “very treatable.”

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