| House Republicans overcame their paper-thin majority yesterday evening and passed a stopgap funding bill to keep the federal government open through September. Now it’s up to the Senate. The upper chamber has had fewer suspenseful votes this Congress as it has confirmed President Donald Trump’s nominees with simple majorities. But the proposal to avoid a government shutdown after Friday is a cold, hard reminder that the Senate still needs 60 votes to get other big things done. And that requires Democrats — seven of them, to be precise, if everyone is present and all 53 Republicans stick together. Senate Democrats said they will meet again for lunch today to chart their path forward. Yesterday afternoon, the Democrats emerged from a longer-than-usual luncheon without a unified position on how to proceed. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) first tried for humor when he faced reporters afterward. “You know why it look a long time?” Schumer said. “We enjoy each other’s company.” But pressed on his conference’s plan for the continuing resolution (CR), Schumer said twice — and without elaboration — that they would wait and see what the House does first. - “There’s a lot of spirited discussion,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) told us after the House vote. King said he was undecided on how he might vote but indicated that he could vote yes. “There’s really only two options: One is to vote for a pretty bad CR or the other is to vote for a potentially even worse shutdown.”
In the House, Democratic leaders are hoping Senate Democrats will take note of their nearly unanimous opposition to the measure. After the vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said the strength of his party’s opposition “speaks for itself.” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar (California) was more direct, saying senators “should vote no.” Senate Democrats were mostly tight-lipped after the House vote last night, though one of them, Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), continued to trumpet his support for the measure, saying on X that he “will never vote to shut our government down.” Senate Republicans appear mostly united. Only Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has publicly promised to oppose the measure, arguing it “continues to fund the very foreign aid” that the U.S. DOGE Service is looking to cut, among other things. “As we’ve done our head count, I think we feel very comfortable that [Republicans] will deliver a majority vote for this,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) told reporters yesterday. Republicans were all too eager to blame Democrats for a potential shutdown. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said in a statement after the vote that it was now “decision time for Senate Democrats: Cast a vote to keep the government open or be responsible for shutting it down.” Johnson’s success getting his scattered conference together was due in large part to having Trump work the phones, our colleague Marianna Sotomayor reports. In the end, just one Republican voted against the measure, Rep. Thomas Massie (Kentucky), and one Democrat voted for it, Rep. Jared Golden (Maine). While House Democrats spent yesterday railing against the measure, Senate Democrats were sounding more tentative. Part of their thinking before the House vote was due to simple political caution: Why stake out a position on the measure when it wasn’t clear whether the House even had the votes to pass it? Also, several contended that they had concerns about the cuts in the measure or feared that it could give a blank check to Trump and his top adviser Elon Musk to make more cuts. But they were also aware that it could become a more politically sensitive issue in the Senate if the chamber turns out to be the last stop on the way to a shutdown. The bill would trim nondefense spending by $13 billion over the rest of the fiscal year, including $1 billion from the D.C. city government budget, but increase funding for defense by $6 billion. Plus, some Senate Democrats are already feeling more sour toward the White House after Musk attacked one of their own, Sen. Mark Kelly (Arizona), as a “traitor” over his trip to Ukraine this past weekend. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Delaware) said late yesterday morning that her vote was “TBD” — to be determined. “We are going to … try to make sure that there isn’t a government shutdown but also that the priorities that have been voted on, that we have worked together on, are also protected,” she said at an event in Washington hosted by Punchbowl News. | 
Meryl Kornfield and 
