Congress Scrambles To Pass Funding Bills Before Shutdown

With just days left before a critical funding deadline, Congress is racing against the clock to pass the final appropriations bills needed to keep the government running and avoid another partial shutdown. Lawmakers in both the House and Senate have been working through a series of funding measures, but as of this week, four key bills remain, including the contentious Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriations bill. The path to a deal has been anything but smooth, with deep partisan divides over immigration enforcement, health care subsidies, and oversight of federal agencies threatening to derail progress at the eleventh hour.

On Tuesday, congressional leaders released the text of the final four appropriations bills—collectively known as a “minibus”—that would provide funding for the departments of Defense; Labor, Health and Human Services, Education; Transportation, Housing and Urban Development; and Homeland Security. According to CBS News, the House dropped plans to include the DHS appropriations in the main package last week, after the fatal shooting of an unarmed woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis sparked outrage and renewed calls for reform. Democrats, in particular, threatened to withhold their support for any funding measure that did not include new oversight and conduct guidelines for ICE officers.

The timeline is tight: Congress has until January 30, 2026, to pass all remaining appropriations bills and send them to the president’s desk. Failure to do so would trigger a partial government shutdown, though with most agencies already funded, the impact would be far less severe than the record-breaking 43-day shutdown that ended in November 2025. Still, with the Senate currently in recess and the House set to leave town at the end of the week, the window for action is rapidly closing. As reported by The Hill, appropriators had not even released the text for the final four bills as recently as Monday afternoon, leaving little time for debate or amendments.

The DHS bill, in particular, has become a flashpoint for broader disputes over immigration policy and federal law enforcement. Democrats in both chambers have intensified their push for tougher oversight of ICE, especially in the wake of the Minneapolis shooting. They are insisting on new training requirements, stricter reporting obligations, and $20 million in funding for body cameras for immigration enforcement agents. “In this bill, Democrats defeated Republicans' hard-fought push to give ICE an even bigger annual budget, successfully cut ICE's detention budget and capacity, cut CBP's budget by over $1 billion, and secured important, although still insufficient, new constraints on DHS,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democratic appropriator in the Senate, in a statement Tuesday quoted by CBS News.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democratic appropriator in the House, acknowledged that some of her colleagues “may be dissatisfied with any bill that funds ICE,” but argued that the latest package “takes several steps in the right direction.” She added, however, that it falls short of the broader reforms many progressives had hoped for. Both DeLauro and Murray urged their colleagues to support the bill, warning that the alternatives—a continuing resolution to temporarily fund the government at existing levels, or a shutdown—would do nothing to rein in ICE or change the status quo. “Neither of the alternatives in the funding fight would rein in ICE, due to funding allocated in the last year,” DeLauro said, according to CBS News.

Meanwhile, the fight over government funding is not the only high-stakes battle playing out on Capitol Hill this week. Lawmakers are also set to take up a series of headline-grabbing measures on issues ranging from stock trading by members of Congress to deepfake pornography and presidential war powers. On Thursday, celebrity Paris Hilton will join lawmakers for a press conference to advocate for the passage of the “Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act,” a bill that would allow victims of nonconsensual deepfake pornography to sue those who create or distribute such content. The bill, which passed the Senate last week, is now awaiting action in the House. “Imagine losing control over your own likeness and identity. Imagine how powerless victims feel when they cannot remove illicit content, cannot prevent it from being reproduced repeatedly, and cannot prevent new images from being created. The consequences can be profound,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, a co-sponsor of the bill, in a statement reported by The Hill.

Also on the docket is a brewing showdown over banning stock trading by lawmakers and their immediate families. House Democrats are preparing to introduce a discharge petition to force a vote on a bill that would prohibit members of Congress, the president, the vice president, and their families from owning, buying, or selling individual stocks. House Republicans, meanwhile, are advancing their own bill, which would allow current holdings to be retained but bar new purchases. “I’m very disappointed by the bill. I think that it doesn’t really fix the problem. Members will still be allowed to own stocks while we’re voting on issues having to do with those same companies,” said Rep. Seth Magaziner, a Democrat from Rhode Island, who is leading the push for a stricter ban.

The Senate has its own version of the stock trading ban, with Sens. Ashley Moody and Kirsten Gillibrand introducing bipartisan legislation that mirrors the House bill. “We will continue to fight tirelessly to make sure it becomes law,” the senators said in a joint statement, as quoted by The Hill. With public trust in Congress at historic lows, the outcome of this debate could have far-reaching implications for lawmakers’ credibility and accountability.

In another dramatic turn, former special counsel Jack Smith is set to testify publicly before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday about his investigations into former President Trump. Smith previously brought two cases against Trump—one related to the events of January 6, 2021, and another concerning classified documents found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Both cases were dismissed last year after Trump won the election. In his opening remarks to the panel, obtained by The Hill, Smith stated, “The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts.”

The week will also see a renewed push for congressional oversight of presidential war powers. Rep. Jim McGovern, along with bipartisan co-sponsors, plans to call up a war powers resolution to block further U.S. hostilities “within or against Venezuela” without explicit congressional authorization. A similar measure failed in December, but McGovern expressed hope that enough Republicans would join Democrats to pass it this time. “Whether all the Republicans who have told me that they support the war powers resolution will actually vote that way, or whether they … lack a backbone and are afraid of the president. They won’t do what they believe is right, but we’ll see,” McGovern said, as reported by The Hill.

Adding to the political drama, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is moving forward with resolutions to hold former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress for refusing to appear for depositions related to their personal relationships with Jeffrey Epstein. The Clintons argued that the subpoenas were legally invalid, but Committee Chair James Comer insisted, “Defying a congressional subpoena is highly illegal and no one is above the law.”

As the January 30 deadline looms, Senate Majority Leader John Thune struck an optimistic note, telling reporters last week that Congress was “on track” to fund the rest of the government on time. But with so many contentious issues still unresolved and the clock ticking, lawmakers face a daunting task to avert another shutdown and address the mounting challenges before them.

The coming days will reveal whether Congress can overcome its divisions and deliver on its most basic responsibility—keeping the government open and functioning for the American people.