Senators believe that after reaching a deal to end the longest shutdown on record, they won’t be in the same position early next year.

The bipartisan package that advanced from the Senate late Monday night would, if passed by the House this week, reopen the government until Jan. 30. Lawmakers believe that extension would give them enough time to fund the government the old-fashioned way, making another shutdown a moot point.

But that all depends on whether they can complete work on spending bills, find agreement with the House, and get them on President Donald Trump’s desk before the new deadline.

There’s also the possibility that if the guarantee for a vote on expiring Obamacare subsidies does not go how Senate Democrats want, that could significantly hamper Congress’ ability to avert yet another shutdown.

‘We’ll take them one day at a time,’ Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said. ‘Obviously, it’s another deadline we have to deal with. But the immediate objective is to get the government open and enable those conversations to commence.’

‘There are Democrats and Republicans who are both interested in trying to do something in the healthcare space,’ he continued. ‘And clearly, there is a need. I mean, there is an affordability issue on healthcare that has to be addressed, and the current trajectory we’re on isn’t a sustainable path.’

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told Fox News Digital that Democrats needed to be united in their demand that ‘Republicans be held to their promise of having a vote on the healthcare subsidies in December.’

Thune reiterated his guarantee on Sunday and teed up the second week of December as the deadline for getting a Democratic proposal to the floor.

‘The future is unpredictable, but we need to continue our fight unequivocally, unyieldingly, for affordable healthcare insurance through extending the subsidies and other measures under the [Affordable Care Act],’ Blumenthal said. ‘Republicans have a reflexive obsession with repealing or destroying the ACA.’

The hope is that funding the government with appropriations bills will be the key to preventing another shutdown.

Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, R-Maine, said that she anticipated Thune to tee up a new package of spending bills, this one combining the defense, labor, transportation and housing bills into one chunk.

‘The more appropriations bills that we’re able to pass, the better off we’re going to be, the better off the American people will be served,’ she said.

Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, was unsure if lawmakers would be in the same spot again come January.

But he believed that the desire to move forward with spending bills, spurred largely by the bipartisan deal struck to reopen the government, was a good start.

‘It makes it a whole lot easier not to have a shutdown again,’ he said.

Despite the rancor and frustration from the Democratic side of the aisle over the collapse of their healthcare demand, they also want to pass bipartisan funding bills, largely in a bid to push back against cuts made by the Trump administration.

However, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., predicted that it would be quite difficult to pass a long-term bipartisan budget.

‘We cannot sign on to a long-term budget that does nothing on healthcare and has nothing to stop the destruction of our democracy,’ he said. ‘You know, there are no real protections in the short-term spending bill against Trump’s illegality.’

For now, some see the January deadline as ‘light years away,’ like Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., while others aren’t ready to make a prediction about what comes next.

‘Just one step at a time,’ Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., told Fox News Digital.

Tensions flared at a House hearing to advance legislation aimed at ending the government shutdown on Tuesday night, with two senior lawmakers on opposite sides of the aisle trading barbs over the fallout.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., clashed with Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee repeatedly at the outset of the hearing. Cole accused Democrats of derailing the federal government, while McGovern railed against the GOP’s refusal to attach provisions extending expiring enhanced Obamacare subsidies to its funding bill.

‘This is the stuff you said you would never do. ‘We would never shut down the government. We would never do this.’ That’s exactly what you’ve done,’ House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said a short while later. ‘You’re putting thousands of people out of work.’

McGovern, who said emphatically that his constituents were ‘getting screwed,’ said, ‘You tried over 50 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act,’ Obamacare’s formal name.

He said he was getting calls from constituents who were ‘out of their minds’ trying to figure out how to pay for healthcare without the subsidies.’

‘Well the most immediate crisis in my district are the thousands of workers that you and your colleagues have put out of work, that aren’t getting a paycheck,’ Cole said.

‘They’re the ones that keep the airplanes flying. They’re the ones that do the national weather center. They’re wondering why they’re not getting paid.’

McGovern shot back, ‘You get no calls about healthcare?’

‘We could have had these debates, we could have had these arguments. Why are they being held hostage?’ Cole continued.

‘The healthcare issue you’re talking about is a subsidy you passed on your own, you said it was COVID-related…The most immediate crisis in my district, you’ve created. My people aren’t getting paid thanks to you and your colleagues.’

McGovern, who tried to interject multiple times, said, ‘So nobody in your district is complaining about healthcare?’

Cole conceded, ‘People complain everywhere about everything, but you asked me what the most important calls I get —’

McGovern cut him off with, ‘—We have a chance to do something about this.’

‘— is, ‘Why am I not getting paid? Why am I being forcibly furloughed?’’ Cole continued.

‘We have a chance to do something to help millions of people afford their health insurance. And what you’re all telling me is you’re not interested,’ McGovern said.

House Rules Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., was ignored as she banged her gavel multiple times in an attempt to call order.

Cole, meanwhile, said the subsidies ‘have nothing to do with the work of my committee.’

‘But you’re willing to hijack my committee,’ he continued, before McGovern cut him off again, accusing Republicans of voting to ‘cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires’ in the GOP’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ earlier this year.

‘But you could not extend these for people?’ McGovern asked.

The House Rules Committee is the final hurdle for most legislation before it sees House-wide votes. Lawmakers on the key panel vote to advance a bill while setting terms for its consideration, like possible amendment votes and timing for debate.

The funding bill at hand is expected to advance through the committee on party lines. Democrats on the panel are likely to oppose the measure in line with House Democratic leaders, while Republicans have signaled no meaningful opposition.

The vast majority of House Democrats have threatened to oppose the bill over its exclusion of the enhanced Obamacare credits, despite the legislation netting support from eight members of their own party in the Senate.

Republican leaders have signaled a willingness to discuss reforms to the system, which they have criticized as flawed. However, they’ve rejected any notion of pairing a healthcare extension with a federal funding bill that is otherwise largely free of partisan policy riders.

The House will vote on reopening the federal government Wednesday after lawmakers’ funding bill survived a key hurdle earlier in the morning.

The bipartisan deal to end the 42-day government shutdown advanced through the House Rules Committee overnight Wednesday, with all Republicans supporting the measure and all Democrats against.

It now moves to the full House for consideration, where multiple people familiar with GOP leaders’ conversations told Fox News Digital they believe it will pass with nearly all Republicans on board.

Passage through the House Rules Committee is a meaningful step toward ending the shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history by roughly a week.

The panel’s hearing to advance the bill lasted more than six hours, kicking off Wednesday evening and ending shortly after 1 a.m. on Thursday.

Democrats attempted to force votes on amendments dealing with COVID-19-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of this year and other issues opposed by the GOP, though all failed.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., made a notable surprise appearance at one point, testifying in favor of his own amendment to extend those subsidies for another three years.

The lengthy hearing saw members on opposite sides of the aisle clash several times as well, with Democrats repeatedly accusing Republicans of robbing Americans of their healthcare and taking a ‘vacation’ for several weeks while remaining in their districts during the shutdown.

‘I am sick and tired of hearing you all say we had an eight-week vacation,’ House Rules Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said at one point. ‘I worked every day. I don’t know about you. I don’t want to hear another soul say that.’

Democrats and some Republicans also piled on a provision in the funding bill that would allow GOP senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 for secretly obtaining their phone records during ex-Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation.

‘I think there’s gonna be a lot of people, if they look and understand this, they’re going to see it as self-serving, self-dealing kind of stuff. And I don’t think that’s right,’ Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said.

‘I’m trying to figure out what we can do to force the Senate’s hand to say, ‘You’re going to repeal this provision and fix it,’ without amending it here.’

The bill will now get a House-wide ‘rule vote,’ a procedural test that, if it passes, allows lawmakers to debate the legislation itself.

Lawmakers are expected to then hold a final vote sometime on Wednesday evening on sending the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.

Trump signaled he was supportive of the legislation in comments to reporters on Monday.

‘We’ll be opening up our country very quickly,’ Trump said when asked if he backed the deal.

The Senate broke through weeks of gridlock on Monday night to pass the legislation in a 60-40 vote, with eight Democrats joining the GOP to reopen the government.

Meanwhile, travel disruptions have been causing chaos at U.S. airports, with air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers being forced to work without pay since last month. Many of those employees had been forced to take on second jobs to make ends meet, fueling staffing shortages and flight delays that threatened to overshadow the Thanksgiving holiday.

Millions of Americans who rely on federal food benefits were also left in limbo amid a partisan fight over whether and how to fund those programs during the shutdown.

The bill would extend fiscal year (FY) 2025 federal funding levels through Jan. 30 to give negotiators more time to strike a longer-term deal for FY 2026.

It would also give lawmakers some headway with that mission, advancing legislation to fund the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration; the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction; and the legislative branch.

They are three of 12 individual bills that are meant to make up Congress’ annual appropriations, paired into a vehicle called a ‘minibus.’

In a victory for Democrats, the deal would also reverse federal layoffs conducted by the Trump administration in October, with those workers getting paid for the time they were off.

A side-deal struck in the Senate also guaranteed Senate Democrats a vote on legislation extending Obamacare subsidies that were enhanced during the COVID-19 pandemic, which are set to expire at the end of this year.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., however, has made no such promise in the House.

A senior federal judge in Massachusetts who was appointed by former President Reagan announced he has resigned in protest against President Donald Trump, who he says has been ‘using the law for partisan purposes.’

U.S. District Judge Mark L. Wolf, 78, resigned on Friday and explained that the Trump administration’s actions that he described as threatening the rule of law compelled him to speak out.

In a piece for The Atlantic, Wolf wrote that he had looked forward to serving for the rest of his life when Reagan appointed him in 1985 but decided to step down last week because of Trump’s ‘assault on the rule of law’ that he finds ‘so deeply disturbing.’

‘I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom,’ the former judge wrote. ‘President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment. This is contrary to everything that I have stood for in my more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench. The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable.’

‘When I accepted the nomination to serve on the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, I took pride in becoming part of a federal judiciary that works to make our country’s ideal of equal justice under law a reality,’ he continued. ‘A judiciary that helps protect our democracy. That has the authority and responsibility to hold elected officials to the limits of the power delegated to them by the people. That strives to ensure that the rights of minority groups, no matter how they are viewed by others, are not violated. That can serve as a check on corruption to prevent public officials from unlawfully enriching themselves. Becoming a federal judge was an ideal opportunity to extend a noble tradition that I had been educated by experience to treasure.’

Wolf added that he now wants to do ‘everything in my power to combat today’s existential threat to democracy and the rule of law.’

The former judge noted that Trump cannot replace him with a nominee of his own, as former President Obama named Judge Indira Talwani as his successor in 2013.

Wolf criticized the Department of Justice’s prosecutions of former FBI Director James Comey and Democrat New York Attorney General Letitia James. The former judge also took issue with Trump’s social media post in which he asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute Comey, James and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

He also said that even if a prosecution ends in an acquittal, it ‘can have devastating consequences for the defendant.’

Wolf also wrote that the DOJ must ensure prosecutors do not seek an indictment unless they have ‘sufficient admissible evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.’

‘Trump has utterly ignored this principle,’ Wolf wrote.

Wolf blasted Trump’s ‘unconstitutional or otherwise illegal’ executive orders, criticized the president’s calls for judges to be impeached for ruling against him, said there was ‘corruption by [Trump] and those in his orbit’ and emphasized that attacks on the courts have led to actual threats against judges.

‘I resigned in order to speak out, support litigation, and work with other individuals and organizations dedicated to protecting the rule of law and American democracy,’ Wolf wrote. ‘I also intend to advocate for the judges who cannot speak publicly for themselves.’

‘I cannot be confident that I will make a difference,’ he added. ‘I am reminded, however, of what Senator Robert F. Kennedy said in 1966 about ending apartheid in South Africa: ‘Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.’ Enough of these ripples can become a tidal wave.’

The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts said Wolf’s ‘steadfast commitment to the rule of law, determination in wrestling with novel issues of fact and law, and dedication to making fair, equitable and legally sound decisions without fear or favor are the hallmarks of his time on the bench.’

‘His many opinions on complex issues of law in notable cases have had a great impact on jurisprudence,’ Chief Judge Denise J. Casper said in the statement. ‘In addition, his tenure as Chief Judge led to the increased engagement with the bar and community, including the initiation of the Court’s bench/bar conference and his continued support of the Court’s Fellowship Programs. I, along with my colleagues and this Court community, applaud his years of dedicated service.’

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is anticipating the House could vote to end the government shutdown as early as Wednesday, Fox News Digital is told.

The House GOP leader held a lawmaker-only call late on Monday morning where he urged Republicans to return to Washington as soon as possible for what is expected to be just a single day of voting before a full session week begins on Nov. 17.

‘We’re going to plan on voting, on being here, at least by Wednesday,’ Johnson said, Fox News Digital was told. ‘It is possible that things could shift a little bit later in the week, but right now we think we’re on track for a vote on Wednesday. So we need you here.’

He told House GOP lawmakers that the earliest possible vote he could anticipate would be on Wednesday morning, but he later shifted that estimate to the afternoon or evening that day given some Republicans’ schedules this week.

At least several House lawmakers would have to shift district events marking Veterans Day on Tuesday to return by Johnson’s deadline.

One Republican on the call said they would fly to D.C. early on Wednesday morning due to a large-scale event with military veterans the day prior, Fox News Digital was told.

Johnson signaled the House would not move to fast-track the legislation via suspension of the rules, which would bypass procedural hurdles in exchange for raising the passage threshold to two-thirds of the chamber.

Fox News Digital was told the House Rules Committee, the final barrier before a chamber-wide vote, could consider the legislation as early as Tuesday.

It’s not a surprising move, given House Democratic leaders’ opposition to the bill.

Several House Democrats have also declared they will vote against the measure because it does not include any guarantees on extending COVID-19 pandemic-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of this year.

The House could send President Donald Trump a bill to end the government shutdown as early as Wednesday evening if their current estimates hold.

But their movements will largely depend on what happens in the Senate, where eight Democrats joined Republicans Sunday night to break a filibuster on the shutdown’s 40th day.

But there are several votes left and procedural roadblocks that could be weaponized that could grind the Senate’s march to advance its package to the House to a halt. If all 100 senators agree to fast-track the process, the package could move as quickly as Monday night.

But if not, the bipartisan plan could stagnate in the upper chamber for several days.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was optimistic that the Senate could finish its work Monday night but said that would be up to Senate Democrats.

‘Obviously, there are objections from the left, but as long as the votes are there to proceed, we will move forward, and hopefully without a lot of disruption or delay or fanfare right now,’ Thune said. ‘The point is, we are on a path to get the government reopened, and we should try to get it done as soon as possible.’

Schumer didn’t say whether Democrats would block any attempt to move the process along but did blame President Donald Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, which stretched into its 41st day on Monday.

Whether Senate Democrats are in line with a cohesive strategy to block the package remains to be seen. But Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., told Fox News Digital that he ‘didn’t hear anything’ about objections or blocks during the Democratic caucus’ closed-door meeting Sunday night.

Lawyers for roughly two dozen states will head to court Monday to block the Trump administration’s attempt to penalize them for making full payments to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients. 

The filing is the latest in a chaotic, fast-moving legal saga centered on the status of the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, which supports 42 million low-income Americans and remains stalled as a result of the ongoing government shutdown.  

‘Food assistance is not a political issue,’ New York Attorney General Letitia James told reporters Monday. ‘It is a moral imperative, and no one should go hungry because their own government is refusing to feed them.‘

The request for emergency intervention comes after the Trump administration on Saturday threatened to slap states who paid out the full SNAP benefits with steep economic penalties, despite an order from U.S. District Judge John McConnell, who ordered the administration to make the full SNAP payments fully available compared to just 65%, as had been previously outlined.

Trump officials further urged the Supreme Court in a supplemental brief Monday afternoon to keep in place an emergency stay handed down by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson last week. 

They cited the progress Congress has made towards resolving the ongoing shutdown, and added that, in their view, ‘the answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority.’ 

‘The only way to end this crisis — which the Executive is adamant to end — is for Congress to reopen the government,’ they added.

States have until tomorrow morning to file their response to the Supreme Court.

The judge had scolded the Trump administration for agreeing to fund just 65% of the SNAP benefits. ‘It’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here,’ McConnell said Thursday shortly before issuing the new order, which gave the USDA less than 24 hours to comply. 

In appealing the case, Trump’s legal team had argued that the judge’s order ‘makes a mockery of the separation of powers,’ and accused McConnell of overstepping his powers as a federal judge.

‘There is no lawful basis for an order that directs USDA to somehow find $4 billion in the metaphorical couch cushions,’ DOJ lawyers argued, describing his order as an ‘unprecedented injunction.’ 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture told states in a directive on Saturday that states that failed to comply with the administration’s plans and pay only the reduced SNAP benefits could see a cancellation of federal cost-sharing benefits for SNAP, and would be otherwise fully financially ‘responsible for the consequences’ of their actions.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin spoke out about the actions before heading to court today to seek emergency intervention. 

‘We’re asking the courts to block Saturday night’s guidance and immediately make full SNAP benefits available,’ Bonta said of the lawsuit. 

The group accused the Trump administration of playing politics with SNAP benefits, or the food aid that provides benefits to roughly one in eight Americans.

The New Jersey attorney general, Matt Platkin, described the effort by USDA to halt full SNAP payments and shift the costs to states as the ‘most heinous thing’ he had seen while in office. 

‘There are more children in New Jersey on SNAP than consists of the entire population of our state’s largest city,’ he said, in an effort to contextualize the number of people in the Garden State alone who are served by the food aid program. 

‘The new guidance from USDA ‘claimed that the steps we’ve taken to follow its earlier guidance and a court order were ‘unauthorized,’ and that we must immediately undo the actions, or we would face steep penalties,’ Bonta said. 

Trump officials separately told the Supreme Court on Monday that they will continue to seek their emergency stay of another federal judge’s order requiring them to keep SNAP benefits fully funded during the ongoing government shutdown.

The administration ‘still intends to pursue a stay’ of that order, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court in a filing, barring any eleventh-hour action from Congress to reach consensus and reopen the government after the more than 40-day government shutdown. 

The shutdown stalemate that has dragged on in the Senate officially ended late Monday night, and it places Congress on a path to reopen the government later this week.

Senators advanced a bipartisan funding package to end the government shutdown after a group of Senate Democrats broke from their colleagues and joined Republicans in their bid to reopen the government.

Those same eight Senate Democratic caucus members stuck with Republicans and provided the crucial votes needed to send the package to the House.

The votes went deep into Monday night on the shutdown’s 41st day and resulted in an updated continuing resolution (CR) being combined with a trio of spending bills in a minibus package that is now headed to the House.

Whether the Senate would get to this point was in the air for much of last week and even earlier in the day. On Monday, lawmakers were riding high after smashing through the package’s first procedural test, but concerns of objections and other procedural maneuvers threatened to derail the process.

‘I think everybody’s pretty united [behind] this bill,’ Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, said. ‘We want to reopen the government.’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus demanded throughout the entirety of the shutdown that they would only vote to reopen the government if they received an ironclad deal on expiring Obamacare subsidies.

But that deal, or at least the one that Democrats wanted, never materialized. Instead, eight Senate Democrats took the offer that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has made since the beginning: A guarantee to vote on legislation that would deal with the subsidies.

Thune reiterated his promise and noted that a vote would come, ‘No later than the second week of December.’ The subsidies are set to expire by the end of the year.

‘We have senators, both Democrat and Republican, who are eager to get to work to address that crisis in a bipartisan way,’ he said. ‘These senators are not interested in political games, they’re interested in finding real ways to address healthcare costs for American families. We also have a president who is willing to sit down and get to work on this issue.’

Senate Democrats did not leave completely empty-handed, however.

Included in the revamped CR, which would reopen the government until Jan. 30, was a reversal of the Trump administration’s firing of furloughed federal workers, a deal to ensure that furloughed workers would get back pay and future protections for federal workers during shutdowns.

‘This was the only deal on the table,’ Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., one of the eight that crossed the aisle to support the package, said. ‘It was our best chance to reopen the government and immediately begin negotiations to extend the [Obamacare] tax credits that tens of millions of Americans rely on to keep costs down.’

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., another of the eight Senate Democrats to break with Schumer, said that it was clear that Republicans weren’t going to budge on their position that healthcare would be dealt with after the government reopened. 

But it wasn’t the guarantee of a vote on the expiring subsidies that got him to splinter, it was promises that there would be protections for federal employees. 

‘If you wait another week, they’re going to get hurt more, another month or even more,’ Kaine said. ‘So what got me over the line was the pledge that they were able to give the federal employees.’ 

On the House side, it appears GOP leaders are eager to move quickly on ending the prolonged shutdown.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., earlier Monday told Fox News Digital that he would bring the House back into session ‘immediately’ upon Senate passage of the legislation.

He later told House Republicans on a lawmaker-only call that he anticipated a vote in their chamber midweek at the earliest, Fox News Digital was told.

‘We’re going to plan on voting, on being here, at least by Wednesday,’ Johnson said. ‘It is possible that things could shift a little bit later in the week, but right now we think we’re on track for a vote on Wednesday. So we need you here.’

Johnson signaled the House would not move to fast-track the legislation via suspension of the rules however, which would bypass procedural hurdles in exchange for raising the passage threshold to two-thirds of the chamber.

It’s not a surprising move given House Democratic leaders’ opposition to the bill.

He said, however, that the House Rules Committee should be ready to move by Tuesday at the earliest.