News: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries are asking for a “Big Four” meeting this week with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson to talk about FY2026 funding:
“As Leaders of the House and Senate, you have the responsibility to govern for all Americans and work on a bipartisan basis to avert a painful, unnecessary shutdown at the end of September. Yet it is clear that the Trump administration and many within your party are preparing to ‘go it alone’ and continue to legislate on a solely Republican basis…
“Therefore, we request you swiftly convene a so-called Four Corners meeting this week, for the four of us to discuss the government funding deadline and the health care crisis you have visited upon the American people.”
The outlook for a government-funding deal is pretty poor right now. A shutdown or CR – or both – is a real possibility heading into the Sept. 30 deadline. Or potentially a hybrid situation where Congress passes some spending bills and then adopts a short-term CR (say two or three months) for the other federal agencies.
That would leave Washington lurching along from shutdown threat to shutdown threat throughout 2025-26.
The Senate passed three spending bills Friday by a big bipartisan margin. Schumer and Thune hailed it as a breakthrough, but those good feelings didn’t last long.
House and Senate Republicans (mostly) are moving in different directions on spending. Democratic leaders are under pressure to combat Trump’s every move. And the White House is still threatening to send up another rescissions package, which Democrats say would make a spending deal impossible.
Saturday Senate meltdown: Let’s go over what happened Saturday in the Senate, which is a bad omen for the fall.
A recap: Frustrated with the unprecedented Democratic slow-walking of his nominees, Trump has been pushing Thune to take drastic steps, including recess appointments or changing Senate rules to speed up the nomination process.
In turn, Schumer and top Senate Democrats want Trump to “unfreeze” billions of dollars in funding they believe OMB is illegally withholding. Democrats are also urging the White House to commit to no more rescissions packages.
Schumer saw this as a two-stage deal. Democrats would agree to move quickly on a “small batch” of nominees immediately if Trump unfroze funding for NIH and some foreign aid. Democrats would then greenlight a second tranche of nominees in October if the White House didn’t move forward on rescissions.
White House officials were privately pressing for Democratic signoff on roughly 70 nominees. Schumer — who made sure Thune was part of every conversation he had with the White House — was focused on clearing roughly 20 to 30 Trump picks, with no judges or controversial nominees.
The three-sided talks went back and forth throughout Friday and Saturday. Schumer initially wanted the White House to release $5 billion in NIH funding, and he started at roughly $2.5 billion in foreign aid (including several hundred million dollars for Gaza that Republicans had previously backed).
The Democrats’ ask on foreign aid was whittled down to about $1 billion. The White House tweaked the nominees it was seeking clearance on during the talks.
Thune and Schumer thought they had a deal late Saturday afternoon, according to senators and aides in both parties. Thune called Trump for a final signoff. But Trump surprised everyone by saying ‘no.’
Trump then posted on Truth Social accusing “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” and Democrats of “political extortion” and urged Senate Republicans to go home. This was after repeatedly demanding that the Senate should stay in session throughout August to approve all his nominees.
The Senate ended up approving 10 Trump nominees Saturday night (on top of three on Friday) and leaving town.
Thune and other Senate Republicans warned that a rules change to speed up the nomination process is likely when the Senate returns next month unless Democrats stop slow-walking Trump picks. This rules change can be done by a simple majority vote, aka “the nuclear option,” but it’ll set off a furor that will reverberate throughout this Congress.
So what does this all mean?
1) September could get very ugly. Republicans claimed Schumer changed his demands, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. Schumer declared Trump “got nothing” after the talks broke down.
Meanwhile, the White House won’t take another rescissions package off the table. If OMB submits one to the Hill, then a CR is guaranteed and a shutdown is more likely than not.
2) There was GOP talk about adjourning the Senate and allowing Trump to make recess appointments, a major blow to senators’ “advise and consent” role on nominees.
But the Jeffrey Epstein scandal played a role in what happened. Remember, Johnson had to send the House on recess early because the Epstein scandal paralyzed the House GOP conference.
In order to allow Trump to use the recess appointment power, the House would’ve had to return and pass an adjournment resolution. Yet Republican leaders didn’t think that could happen without Johnson facing an Epstein-related vote, and there’s no way they were going to let that happen.
3) Thune and Johnson face an impossible task sometimes in trying to placate Trump. Although not as unpredictable as he was during his first term in office, Trump can shift his priorities quickly, forcing the two GOP leaders to choose between their roles as institutional leaders or keeping a vengeful president happy. So far, they’ve chosen Trump.
