Overview

• In a letter, the Senate and House Democratic leaders requested a four-corners meeting next week with Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune to chart a bipartisan path before the Sept. 30 funding cutoff.
• Democrats identified reversing Medicaid cuts in the One Big, Beautiful Bill as their central demand in any stopgap agreement to keep the government open.
• Schumer and Jeffries warned they will oppose a Republican-drafted continuing resolution without meaningful bipartisan input after reluctantly supporting a GOP stopgap in March.
• President Trump is seeking a $4.9 billion foreign aid clawback via a pocket rescission, a move criticized by Sen. Susan Collins as encroaching on Congress’s power of the purse and labeled unlawful by Schumer.
• With appropriations bills lagging in both chambers, Republicans are weighing a short-term CR or a one-year extension, but Senate passage will likely require Democratic votes to reach 60.