The House of Representatives appears to be on a glide path to ending the longest government shutdown in history, with lawmakers racing back to Capitol Hill after six weeks out of session.

The House Rules Committee will meet to consider the Senate’s amended federal funding plan sometime after 5 p.m. Tuesday, two sources told Fox News Digital.

In other words, the 42-day shutdown — which has led to thousands of air travel delays, left millions of people who rely on federal benefits in limbo, and forced thousands of federal workers either off the job or to work without pay — could come to an end before the end of this week.

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.

Reps. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Ralph Norman, R-S.C., the two Republicans on the committee who have most often opposed GOP leaders’ legislation for not being conservative enough, both suggested they would be supportive of the funding measure.

Roy told Fox News Digital on Monday night that he would vote ‘yes’ on the bill on the House floor, meaning he would likely not oppose it in the House Rules Committee.

The Texas Republican is currently running to be attorney general of the Lone Star State.

Norman told Fox News Digital via text message Tuesday morning, when asked about both his Rules Committee and House floor votes, ‘My support is based on READING the FINE PRINT as it relates to the 3 bills especially VERIFYING the top line spending limits as we previously passed.’

‘If ‘THE FINE PRINT MATCHES’ what’s being reported, I will be a yes,’ Norman said.

The South Carolina Republican, who is running for governor, was referring to three full-year spending bills that are part of the latest bipartisan compromise passed by the Senate on Monday night.

Terms of the deal include a new extension of fiscal year (FY) 2025 federal funding levels through Jan. 30, in order to give congressional negotiators more time to strike a longer-term deal on FY 2026 spending.

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.

It also guarantees 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.

Extending the enhanced subsidies for Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was a key ask for Democrats in the weekslong standoff.

No such guarantee was made in the House, however, so Democrats effectively folded on their key demand in order to end the shutdown — a move that infuriated progressives and left-wing caucus leaders in Congress.

The full House is expected to take up the measure sometime after 4 p.m. on Wednesday, according to a notice sent to lawmakers.

There will first be a ‘rule vote’ for the bill where lawmakers are expected to green-light debate on the House floor, followed by a vote on the measure itself sometime Wednesday evening.

House schedules for both Tuesday and Wednesday were left intentionally fluid to allow for lawmakers to return to Washington amid nationwide flight delays and cancellations, mostly imposed by the shutdown.

The House was last in session on Sept. 19, when lawmakers passed legislation to keep the government funded through Nov. 21.

It passed with support from one House Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, and opposition from two Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Victoria Spartz, R-Ind.

No further House Republicans have signaled public opposition to the new measure so far.

Frustration is boiling over among Democratic ranks against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., after walking away from the longest government shutdown on record largely empty-handed.

Some argue that Schumer squandered key leverage and failed to steer his caucus through the chaos to victory. 

‘I think that people did what they could to get us out of the shutdown, but what has worked in the past isn’t working now,’ Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., said. ‘And so, we need to meet the moment, and we’re not doing that.’

Slotkin, like others in the Senate Democratic caucus, ‘wanted something deliverable on the price of healthcare.’ The core of their shutdown strategy was to force Republicans and President Donald Trump to make a deal on expiring Obamacare subsidies, but that didn’t happen. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., argued that getting rid of Schumer would be difficult. 

‘Chuck Schumer is part of the establishment,’ Sanders told MSNBC. ‘You can argue, and I can make the case, that Chuck Schumer has done a lot of bad things, but getting rid of him — who’s going to replace him?’

Other Democrats weren’t so resigned.

Graham Platner, a Democratic Senate candidate running to replace Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, placed the collapse of Senate Democrats’ unified front squarely on leadership. 

‘The Democratic Party at the leadership level has become entirely feckless,’ Platner said in a video posted by Our Revolution, a political action organization started as an offshoot of Sanders’ presidential campaign. 

‘What happened last night is a failure of leadership in the most clear terms,’ he said after the Senate passed the bipartisan deal Monday, sending it to the House. ‘Sen. Schumer is the minority leader. It is his job to make sure his caucus is voting along the lines of what’s going to be good for the people of the United States. He could not maintain that.’ 

Schumer and congressional Democrats walked away from the shutdown stalemate in the Senate largely empty-handed, save for some victories on ensuring furloughed federal workers would receive back pay, the reversals of firings made by the Trump administration during the shutdown and future protections for workers.  

Still, they fell far short of their goal to extend the expiring subsidies, which are set to sunset at the end of this year. 

Those subsidies, initially passed as an emergency response to COVID-19 in 2021, were always supposed to be temporary. But Democrats fear that their sudden expiration could leave millions of policyholders with substantially higher premiums overnight if allowed to expire.

But as mounting pressure grew — and no sign of Republicans wavering on the subsidies — eight Democrats voted to put the government on the path to reopening. 

To some onlookers, Schumer had held the party line for as long as possible.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., one of the eight Democrats who voted with Republicans to reopen the government, said she respected Schumer’s leadership.

‘He’s done a good job,’ Masto said. ‘He kept us in the loop and was open to our conversations.’

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., argued that the problem wasn’t Schumer, it was his colleagues. 

‘Sen. Schumer didn’t want this to be the outcome, and I pressed hard for it not to end like this,’ Murphy said. ‘He didn’t succeed, let’s not sugarcoat that. But the problem is, the problem exists, inside the caucus. The caucus has to solve it.’

Republicans, however, spent much of the shutdown arguing that Schumer had waged the shutdown to appease his base — a base that had wanted to see some sort of resistance to Trump.

‘This is how it always would end,’ Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said on Monday evening. ‘Chuck Schumer has a political problem. He’s afraid of being primaried from the left. And so, the Democrats inflicted this shutdown on the American people in order to prove to their radical left-wing base that they hate Donald Trump.’

‘I think a lot of Americans have suffered as a result of this political stunt,’ Cruz added.

On the other hand, many Democrats made it clear they believed Schumer had failed to effectively mount resistance to Trump’s agenda on healthcare.

CNN data analyst Harry Enten compiled polls dating back to 1985 comparing the popularity of Democratic leaders among Democratic voters. Schumer, he found, was the least popular of them all. 

‘Chuck Schumer — his days are over. If he cannot keep his caucus together, he needs to go,’ Sunny Hostin, a co-host of ‘The View,’ told audiences on Monday.

‘Chuck Schumer has not met this moment, and Senate Democrats would be wise to move on from his leadership,’ Rep. Mike Levin, D-Calif., said.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom summed up his thoughts in a one-word post to X. 

‘Pathetic,’ Newsom said.

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.’

President Donald Trump on Wednesday morning made a formal request to Israeli President Isaac Herzog to pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption and fraud charges.

Trump asked Herzog to consider fully pardoning Netanyahu in a letter that Herzog’s office shared. Trump wrote that Netanyahu has been a ‘formidable and decisive’ leader for Israel in a time of war and has led Israel ‘into a time of peace.’

‘Prime Minister Netanyahu has stood tall for Israel in the face of strong adversaries and long odds, and his attention cannot be unnecessarily diverted,’ reads the letter.

Trump wrote that while he ‘absolutely’ respects the independence of the Israeli judicial system, he believes the case against Netanyahu is a ‘political, unjustified prosecution.’

Netanyahu is currently standing trial on charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in three separate corruption cases. The trial, which began in 2020, marked the first time a sitting Israeli prime minister testified as a criminal defendant.

Trump wrote that ‘it is time to let Bibi unite Israel by pardoning him, and ending that lawfare once and for all.’

Herzog declined to take a position on the matter, with his office issuing its own statement that a presidential pardon request must go through the proper channels, which includes the person who wants a pardon making a formal request. 

The statement said that Herzog holds Trump in the ‘highest regard’ and ‘continues to express his deep appreciation’ for Trump’s support of Israel and his ‘tremendous’ role in the return of hostages from Gaza.

Trump previously urged Herzog to pardon Netanyahu during a speech in the Israeli Knesset last month.

Fox News’ Yonat Friling contributed to this report.

House GOP leaders are looking to kick off next week in high gear to make up for the six weeks they spent out of session during the government shutdown.

With the end of Congress’ 42-day fiscal standoff in sight, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told Fox News Digital that House lawmakers will be faced with an accelerated schedule to accomplish the GOP’s priorities for this term.

‘I wanted to rework the schedule to create more time to make up for what happened during the shutdown, and the fact that there were a lot of bills that stacked up that we planned to bring to the floor in October that weren’t able to go,’ he said in an interview on Tuesday night.

Priorities for next week include legislation to help reduce federal restrictions on liquefied natural gas (LNG), and a bill aimed at expanding refining capacity in a bid to reduce soaring energy costs.

Measures aimed at D.C. are also expected to see votes, including a bill that D.C.’s pretrial release and detention processes require mandatory pretrial detention for defendants charged with violent crimes. 

Another bill expected to get a vote next week would undo local ordinances that Republicans say place burdensome barriers on the Metropolitan Police Department.

A largely symbolic measure to denounce socialism in the U.S. is also on next week’s schedule.

Lawmakers will be expected to work long into the night in a departure from their traditional day-to-day in D.C. Votes will be scheduled in the evenings when lawmakers have normally departed Capitol Hill for other events.

Scalise also noted the House would have a five-day legislative week from Monday through Friday, rather than the more traditional four days in D.C.

More time will also be allotted during the day for House committees to conduct hearings and advance their legislation, something that has not been done on Capitol Hill since Sept. 19.

‘We’re going to do that for the next few weeks until we catch up on the time that we missed when everybody was back in their districts,’ Scalise said.

The latter point is critical considering Congress will be reckoning with several key priorities in the coming months.

The bill to end the government shutdown, expected to pass the House on Wednesday, kicks the majority of fiscal year (FY) 2026 federal spending to a Jan. 30 deadline. It would also authorize funding for three of Congress’ 12 annual spending bills for FY 2026.

However, it will be an uphill battle for both the Senate and House appropriations committees to strike their remaining spending deals by then.

‘There are nine remaining bills, and we’d like to get all of those done in the next few weeks. And so, [House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla.] and his appropriators will be working overtime as well,’ Scalise said.

Congress also still has to find a bipartisan compromise on the federal government’s annual defense policy bill, called the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

‘There have been a lot of negotiations ongoing. I think we’re getting close on the NDAA,’ Scalise said.

Scalise said Republicans would also be busy at work on a new Farm Bill, legislation that sets agricultural priorities as well as federal food policies for urban, suburban and rural areas across the country, as well as a highway bill — legislation that authorizes policy for surface infrastructure like roads, bridges and rail lines nationwide.

‘A lot of those bills have been very active in the committee process. They just haven’t gotten a lot of attention nationally during the shutdown. But the committees have been working, especially the chairman, to try to get those bills ready to move,’ he said.

‘And so we will have a lot of big ticket items that are important to our America First agenda ready to go. And that’s why we’re going to just add more floor time to be able to get all of it done by the end of this year.’

But in order to get all those ‘big-ticket items’ done, the House will first need to pass the Senate’s bipartisan bill to end the government shutdown.

Asked if his chamber had the votes to do so, Scalise said, ‘I’m very hopeful we will.’

‘I’m very confident our members are really eager to get back to a full House schedule. Many of them have been working overtime in their districts to mop up the mess Democrats created during the shutdown,’ he said.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is glad the Senate finally managed to break through its weeks-long standoff on the government shutdown, he told Fox News Digital on Monday morning.

‘It’s a great development. It’s long overdue. It vindicates our position in this all along,’ the House leader said.

He added that he would have ‘a lot more to say at a press conference this morning.’

Asked how soon the House would return to session, Johnson said, ‘Immediately.’

‘We’re going to get everybody back on a 36-hour notice, so it’ll be happening early this week,’ Johnson said.

The House has not been in session since Sept. 19, when lawmakers there first passed a bill to avert a shutdown by extending current federal funding levels through Nov. 21. Democrats rejected that deal, however, kicking off weeks of a worsening impasse where millions of Americans’ federal benefits and air travel were put at risk.

Eight Senate Democrats joined all but one Senate Republican in breaking a filibuster to advance an updated government funding deal late on Sunday night.

It came on Day 40 of the government shutdown — which already holds the record for being the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

Terms of the deal include a new extension of fiscal year (FY) 2025 federal funding levels through Jan. 30, in order to give congressional negotiators more time to strike a longer-term deal on FY 2026 spending.

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.

It also guarantees 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.

Extending the enhanced subsidies for Obamacare, formally called the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was a key ask for Democrats in the weeks-long standoff.

No such guarantee was made in the House, however, so Democrats effectively folded on their key demand in order to end the shutdown — a move that infuriated progressives in Congress.

‘Tonight, eight Democrats voted with the Republicans to allow them to go forward on this continuing resolution,’ Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said in a video he posted Sunday night. ‘And to my mind, this was a very, very bad vote.’

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., also announced his opposition over the lack of concrete movement on Obamacare.

‘We will not support spending legislation advanced by Senate Republicans that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits,’ he said in a statement. 

Several Republicans also pointed out the final deal was not dissimilar to what Senate GOP leaders had been offering Democrats for weeks.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is sending a critical warning to House lawmakers as the government shutdown continues to wreak havoc on air travel.

‘As of Sunday, nearly half of all domestic flights and U.S. flights were either canceled or delayed, and it’s a very serious situation,’ Johnson said in comments to reporters on Monday.

‘So I’m saying that, by way of reminder, I’m stating the obvious, to all my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats in the House, you need to begin right now returning to the Hill. We have to do this as quickly as possible.’

The House leader was referring to taking up the Senate’s bipartisan measure to finally end the government shutdown, now on its 41st day.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is expected to reduce air travel at the nation’s 40 busiest airports by 6% as of Tuesday, amid widespread staffing shortages that have been attributed to the shutdown.

Thousands of federal employees have been furloughed as agencies and critical programs run low on funds, while government workers deemed ‘essential’ have been forced to work without pay for weeks.

People in the latter group include air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers, many of whom have been forced to take second jobs and call out sick to make ends meet.

‘The problem we have with air travel is that our air traffic controllers are overworked and unpaid, and many of them have called in sick. That’s a very stressful job, and even more stressful, exponentially, when they’re having trouble providing for their families. And so air travel has been grinding to a halt in many places,’ Johnson said on Monday.

He delivered a statement to the press less than 12 hours after the Senate broke its weeks-long impasse on the shutdown, with eight Senate Democrats joining the GOP to overcome a filibuster.

Johnson told Fox News Digital exclusively earlier Monday that he would call the House back ‘immediately’ upon Senate passage of the bill — which he suggested could come sooner rather than later.

‘We’re going to get everybody back on a 36-hour notice, so it’ll be happening early this week,’ Johnson said.

The House has not been in session since Sept. 19, when lawmakers there first passed a bill to avert a shutdown by extending current federal funding levels through Nov. 21. Democrats rejected that deal, however, kicking off weeks of a worsening impasse where millions of Americans’ federal benefits and air travel were put at risk.