The Senate has a short week on tap, with senators returning Tuesday and likely to head out for the Thanksgiving recess on Thursday afternoon.
As we detailed above, the House’s bill to compel the release of Jeffrey Epstein files will dominate the conversation both on and off the floor.
We’ll note that back in September, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer engineered a rarely-used procedural maneuver to force a vote on a similar Epstein bill as part of the annual defense policy bill. GOP Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) were the only Republicans to vote with Democrats on the measure.
There’s also likely to be new action on government funding, as well as continued fallout from last week’s bipartisan deal that ended the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
Approps. With the shutdown in the rear-view mirror, Senate Majority Leader John Thune is eager to tee up the next slate of full-year FY2026 funding bills. Thune said last week he’ll move to combine the Defense, Labor-HHS, Commerce-Justice-Science and Transportation-HUD bills into one “minibus.” The Interior funding bill could also be in the mix.
The Senate could hold an initial procedural vote on the effort at some point this week, we’re told. Thune intends to use last month’s failed procedural vote on the FY2026 Defense appropriations bill as the vehicle for this funding package.
Moving forward will require 60 votes, but it’s unclear whether enough Democratic senators will be ready to formally kick off the floor process, especially as the Democratic Caucus is still reeling over last week’s shutdown-ending deal.
Thune will also need unanimous consent to group the funding bills together. That’s going to be extremely difficult, with objections expected on both sides of the aisle. We scooped last month that Democratic leaders were surveying senators for objections to packaging the funding bills together, with the exception of the Interior measure.
The Senate could try to bypass the objectors by voting to suspend the rules — which requires a two-thirds vote — but the GOP leadership is generally hesitant to go down that path.
It’s important to note that these are the Senate versions of each funding bill, so they haven’t yet been conferenced with the House. The bipartisan deal that ended the shutdown included three full-year funding bills that were already negotiated with the House, paired with a CR that extended funding for all other agencies until Jan. 30.
Dem in-fighting. It’s been a week since eight Senate Democrats joined Republicans in voting to reopen the government, prompting fierce backlash from progressives.
That tension continued over the weekend and seems likely to last a while longer — a big problem for Schumer.
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who helped craft that shutdown-ending deal, fired back at a state representative who interrupted her speech during a New Hampshire Democratic Party event on Friday.
And Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), one of the eight, pushed back on House Democrats calling for Schumer to be ousted from his leadership role.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Kaine said those House members should “let senators do what we need to do to keep this country moving forward.”
While Schumer’s job isn’t in any real jeopardy, the infighting will make it much more difficult for him to manage the upcoming appropriations fights.
For example, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said on ABC’s “This Week” that Democrats shouldn’t vote to fund the Justice Department when it’s engaging in “witch hunts” against Democrats.
Murphy said Democrats “can’t continue to be split like this” and that Schumer “is gonna have to explain to us how we’re gonna run the caucus differently [and] how we’re gonna be more united.”
