Shutdown Countdown Goes On With More Cards Turned: Starting Line

Another Card on the Table

Though it might still be a little soon for Congress to hammer out a deal to avoid a shutdown, Democrats have shifted their ideas from rhetoric to bill text. That means there are now full proposals to compare. The core of the minority party’s measure is language to avoid the expiration of Obamacare subsidies that help Americans pay less for medical insurance. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said those proposals have “zero” chance of becoming law right away.

To get their stopgap (H.R. 5371) enacted, Republicans will need the votes of at least seven Senate Democrats. Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she’s worried not enough Democrats will cross party lines. “Those guys have to figure out if they want our votes or not,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said. “Nobody covets a shutdown, but they are acting like meeting with us is some threshold they won’t cross.” Read More

Ken Tran and Jack Fitzpatrick lay out more of the details in this morning’s BGOV Budget, and Jonathan Tamari examines the political side of the appropriations fight in Congress Tracker.

Hard Decisions Coming

Once Congress works its way through its impasse over a stopgap spending plan, they’ll have to make program-by-program and agency-by-agency decisions on what will make the cut for fiscal 2026 spending.

Erin Durkin and Jon Meltzer took a close look at an agency that has touched all the states as they work to reduce the abuse of opioids and other substances: the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. In March, the administration abruptly scrapped nearly $1.7 billion worth of SAMHSA grants that had been promised to help fight opioid abuse and suicides. Most of the cuts hit Republican-led states.

Congress will decide whether to agree to President Donald Trump’s requests to combine SAMHSA and other agencies into a new Administration for a Healthy America while ending another $1.4 billion in mental and behavioral health aid. Senate health appropriators gave an early thumbs-down to much of that proposal. Their House counterparts advanced their own version that slashes $298.5 million from SAMHSA, but keeps the door open to Trump’s proposed Department of Health and Human Services reorganization. Read More

Different Kind of Cut

Parker Purifoy and Rebecca Klar dig into another aspect of Trump’s move to reduce the federal footprint. They report that the administration is quietly downsizing the offices where government employees used to file their discrimination claims. Read More

RFK Jr.'s Vaccine Panel in Action

What shots your kids get and whether insurance covers the inoculations could be changing, beginning with a meeting that kicks off today.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel that helps set federal vaccine policy, is expected to discuss childhood vaccine schedules. It’s the government board at the heart of the dispute that led HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to fire the head of the CDC. Read More

Another Kind of Influence

If your online videos gin up support for — or opposition against — a proposal in Congress, and you make money that way, what are you? A professional advocate? A lobbyist? Just someone expressing a deeply held opinion?

The National Institute for Lobbying & Ethics is ready to unveil a pitch for updating federal disclosure rules to make them also apply to paid social media influencers, Kate Ackley reports.

“These folks are having as big, if not bigger, impact on policy than a lot of the stuff we have done or are trying to do,” said Paul Miller, a registered lobbyist and the group’s founder. “The public should be aware of it, just as they’re aware of how much I get paid.” Read More

Eye on the Economy

It’s Thursday, so it’s a weekly data point day. We’ll get updated figures on new applications for unemployment benefits, adding more information about the direction of the tariff-jolted economy.

The state of the job market was a reason cited by Fed Chair Jerome Powell yesterday to explain why officials decided it was time to cut interest rates. “Labor demand has softened, and the recent pace of job creation appears to be running below the break-even rate needed to hold the unemployment rate constant,” he told reporters.

Three things to know out of that Fed meeting:

• They lowered the benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point;
• They provided data showing there’ll probably be two more rate reductions this year;
• Both the Fed official Trump wants to fire, Lisa Cook, and the White House adviser filling a partial Fed term participated in yesterday’s 11-1 vote (on opposite sides; newly-sworn-in Governor Stephen Miran wanted a half-point cut so he was a no on the smaller reduction.) Read More

Across the Pond

Trump’s still in London, where he is meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and has a business roundtable on tap today.

At last night’s lavish state dinner, King Charles III addressed Europe’s version of the foreign policy elephant in the room, using a toast to urge the defense of Ukraine and the environment. “ Trump nodded along as Charles spoke, but the comments — hitting on two areas where the US president has broken with other allies — were particularly notable given the king’s traditional restraint from engaging in political issues.

The nations are set to solidify joint tech, energy, and digital asset agreements. US and UK officials have said they expect to roll out economic deals worth billions of dollars to coincide with the visit. Read More

The banquet had one glaring omission: a British ambassador to Washington. Starmer has yet to fill the post, as he continues to deal with the departure under a cloud of Peter Mandelson last week. The government is split between opting for another political appointment or re-instating a career diplomat. Trump would welcome a return for Karen Pierce, a top British diplomat and Mandelson’s predecessor. Read More

Before You Go

Kirk Backlash: ABC took Jimmy Kimmel Live off the air indefinitely, citing remarks the late-night host made about the killing of Republican activist Charlie Kirk. In a post on Truth Social, Trump cheered ABC’s decision and called on NBC to fire its late-night hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. Read More

Domestic Terrorism: Trump said he’ll formally designate antifa as a “MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” as the White House begins to fulfill its pledge to investigate what it calls left-wing extremism. Read More

Epstein Documents: Pressed during a congressional hearing to release all material about Jeffrey Epstein that isn’t constrained by court rulings, FBI Director Patel wouldn’t commit, saying he hasn’t reviewed all of the Epstein material in the FBI’s possession. Those comments appeared at odds with a joint statement issued by the FBI and Justice Department in July saying an exhaustive review had been done of all information related to Epstein. Read More

Climate Change: A panel of experts convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said the evidence that greenhouse gases harm human health is “beyond scientific dispute” — a conclusion that could impede the Trump administration as it seeks to roll back the federal government’s authority to regulate climate pollution. Read More

Chip Battle: China-based Huawei unveiled new technology from memory chips to AI accelerators as it tries to challenge US-based Nvidia’s dominance in a growing market. Read More

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