Portal: Political climate gets tougher for bipartisan priorities

This shutdown may be brief, but the events leading up to it don’t spell success for Congress to do much else for the rest of the year.

Lawmakers have been ambitious this year, setting goals for early action in 2026 on a farm aid package, movement on permitting legislation and markups for a bipartisan highway bill. The biggest question of whether any of these items can actually get done, though, is whether the Trump administration will come in and rattle bipartisan negotiations.