Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is anticipating the House could vote to end the government shutdown as early as Wednesday, Fox News Digital is told.

The House GOP leader held a lawmaker-only call late on Monday morning where he urged Republicans to return to Washington as soon as possible for what is expected to be just a single day of voting before a full session week begins on Nov. 17.

‘We’re going to plan on voting, on being here, at least by Wednesday,’ Johnson said, Fox News Digital was told. ‘It is possible that things could shift a little bit later in the week, but right now we think we’re on track for a vote on Wednesday. So we need you here.’

He told House GOP lawmakers that the earliest possible vote he could anticipate would be on Wednesday morning, but he later shifted that estimate to the afternoon or evening that day given some Republicans’ schedules this week.

At least several House lawmakers would have to shift district events marking Veterans Day on Tuesday to return by Johnson’s deadline.

One Republican on the call said they would fly to D.C. early on Wednesday morning due to a large-scale event with military veterans the day prior, Fox News Digital was told.

Johnson signaled the House would not move to fast-track the legislation via suspension of the rules, which would bypass procedural hurdles in exchange for raising the passage threshold to two-thirds of the chamber.

Fox News Digital was told the House Rules Committee, the final barrier before a chamber-wide vote, could consider the legislation as early as Tuesday.

It’s not a surprising move, given House Democratic leaders’ opposition to the bill.

Several House Democrats have also declared they will vote against the measure because it does not include any guarantees on extending COVID-19 pandemic-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of this year.

The House could send President Donald Trump a bill to end the government shutdown as early as Wednesday evening if their current estimates hold.

But their movements will largely depend on what happens in the Senate, where eight Democrats joined Republicans Sunday night to break a filibuster on the shutdown’s 40th day.

But there are several votes left and procedural roadblocks that could be weaponized that could grind the Senate’s march to advance its package to the House to a halt. If all 100 senators agree to fast-track the process, the package could move as quickly as Monday night.

But if not, the bipartisan plan could stagnate in the upper chamber for several days.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was optimistic that the Senate could finish its work Monday night but said that would be up to Senate Democrats.

‘Obviously, there are objections from the left, but as long as the votes are there to proceed, we will move forward, and hopefully without a lot of disruption or delay or fanfare right now,’ Thune said. ‘The point is, we are on a path to get the government reopened, and we should try to get it done as soon as possible.’

Schumer didn’t say whether Democrats would block any attempt to move the process along but did blame President Donald Trump and Republicans for the shutdown, which stretched into its 41st day on Monday.

Whether Senate Democrats are in line with a cohesive strategy to block the package remains to be seen. But Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., told Fox News Digital that he ‘didn’t hear anything’ about objections or blocks during the Democratic caucus’ closed-door meeting Sunday night.

Lawyers for roughly two dozen states will head to court Monday to block the Trump administration’s attempt to penalize them for making full payments to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients. 

The filing is the latest in a chaotic, fast-moving legal saga centered on the status of the nation’s largest anti-hunger program, which supports 42 million low-income Americans and remains stalled as a result of the ongoing government shutdown.  

‘Food assistance is not a political issue,’ New York Attorney General Letitia James told reporters Monday. ‘It is a moral imperative, and no one should go hungry because their own government is refusing to feed them.‘

The request for emergency intervention comes after the Trump administration on Saturday threatened to slap states who paid out the full SNAP benefits with steep economic penalties, despite an order from U.S. District Judge John McConnell, who ordered the administration to make the full SNAP payments fully available compared to just 65%, as had been previously outlined.

Trump officials further urged the Supreme Court in a supplemental brief Monday afternoon to keep in place an emergency stay handed down by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson last week. 

They cited the progress Congress has made towards resolving the ongoing shutdown, and added that, in their view, ‘the answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority.’ 

‘The only way to end this crisis — which the Executive is adamant to end — is for Congress to reopen the government,’ they added.

States have until tomorrow morning to file their response to the Supreme Court.

The judge had scolded the Trump administration for agreeing to fund just 65% of the SNAP benefits. ‘It’s likely that SNAP recipients are hungry as we sit here,’ McConnell said Thursday shortly before issuing the new order, which gave the USDA less than 24 hours to comply. 

In appealing the case, Trump’s legal team had argued that the judge’s order ‘makes a mockery of the separation of powers,’ and accused McConnell of overstepping his powers as a federal judge.

‘There is no lawful basis for an order that directs USDA to somehow find $4 billion in the metaphorical couch cushions,’ DOJ lawyers argued, describing his order as an ‘unprecedented injunction.’ 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture told states in a directive on Saturday that states that failed to comply with the administration’s plans and pay only the reduced SNAP benefits could see a cancellation of federal cost-sharing benefits for SNAP, and would be otherwise fully financially ‘responsible for the consequences’ of their actions.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin spoke out about the actions before heading to court today to seek emergency intervention. 

‘We’re asking the courts to block Saturday night’s guidance and immediately make full SNAP benefits available,’ Bonta said of the lawsuit. 

The group accused the Trump administration of playing politics with SNAP benefits, or the food aid that provides benefits to roughly one in eight Americans.

The New Jersey attorney general, Matt Platkin, described the effort by USDA to halt full SNAP payments and shift the costs to states as the ‘most heinous thing’ he had seen while in office. 

‘There are more children in New Jersey on SNAP than consists of the entire population of our state’s largest city,’ he said, in an effort to contextualize the number of people in the Garden State alone who are served by the food aid program. 

‘The new guidance from USDA ‘claimed that the steps we’ve taken to follow its earlier guidance and a court order were ‘unauthorized,’ and that we must immediately undo the actions, or we would face steep penalties,’ Bonta said. 

Trump officials separately told the Supreme Court on Monday that they will continue to seek their emergency stay of another federal judge’s order requiring them to keep SNAP benefits fully funded during the ongoing government shutdown.

The administration ‘still intends to pursue a stay’ of that order, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the Supreme Court in a filing, barring any eleventh-hour action from Congress to reach consensus and reopen the government after the more than 40-day government shutdown. 

The shutdown stalemate that has dragged on in the Senate officially ended late Monday night, and it places Congress on a path to reopen the government later this week.

Senators advanced a bipartisan funding package to end the government shutdown after a group of Senate Democrats broke from their colleagues and joined Republicans in their bid to reopen the government.

Those same eight Senate Democratic caucus members stuck with Republicans and provided the crucial votes needed to send the package to the House.

The votes went deep into Monday night on the shutdown’s 41st day and resulted in an updated continuing resolution (CR) being combined with a trio of spending bills in a minibus package that is now headed to the House.

Whether the Senate would get to this point was in the air for much of last week and even earlier in the day. On Monday, lawmakers were riding high after smashing through the package’s first procedural test, but concerns of objections and other procedural maneuvers threatened to derail the process.

‘I think everybody’s pretty united [behind] this bill,’ Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, said. ‘We want to reopen the government.’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus demanded throughout the entirety of the shutdown that they would only vote to reopen the government if they received an ironclad deal on expiring Obamacare subsidies.

But that deal, or at least the one that Democrats wanted, never materialized. Instead, eight Senate Democrats took the offer that Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has made since the beginning: A guarantee to vote on legislation that would deal with the subsidies.

Thune reiterated his promise and noted that a vote would come, ‘No later than the second week of December.’ The subsidies are set to expire by the end of the year.

‘We have senators, both Democrat and Republican, who are eager to get to work to address that crisis in a bipartisan way,’ he said. ‘These senators are not interested in political games, they’re interested in finding real ways to address healthcare costs for American families. We also have a president who is willing to sit down and get to work on this issue.’

Senate Democrats did not leave completely empty-handed, however.

Included in the revamped CR, which would reopen the government until Jan. 30, was a reversal of the Trump administration’s firing of furloughed federal workers, a deal to ensure that furloughed workers would get back pay and future protections for federal workers during shutdowns.

‘This was the only deal on the table,’ Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., one of the eight that crossed the aisle to support the package, said. ‘It was our best chance to reopen the government and immediately begin negotiations to extend the [Obamacare] tax credits that tens of millions of Americans rely on to keep costs down.’

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., another of the eight Senate Democrats to break with Schumer, said that it was clear that Republicans weren’t going to budge on their position that healthcare would be dealt with after the government reopened. 

But it wasn’t the guarantee of a vote on the expiring subsidies that got him to splinter, it was promises that there would be protections for federal employees. 

‘If you wait another week, they’re going to get hurt more, another month or even more,’ Kaine said. ‘So what got me over the line was the pledge that they were able to give the federal employees.’ 

On the House side, it appears GOP leaders are eager to move quickly on ending the prolonged shutdown.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., earlier Monday told Fox News Digital that he would bring the House back into session ‘immediately’ upon Senate passage of the legislation.

He later told House Republicans on a lawmaker-only call that he anticipated a vote in their chamber midweek at the earliest, Fox News Digital was told.

‘We’re going to plan on voting, on being here, at least by Wednesday,’ Johnson said. ‘It is possible that things could shift a little bit later in the week, but right now we think we’re on track for a vote on Wednesday. So we need you here.’

Johnson signaled the House would not move to fast-track the legislation via suspension of the rules however, which would bypass procedural hurdles in exchange for raising the passage threshold to two-thirds of the chamber.

It’s not a surprising move given House Democratic leaders’ opposition to the bill.

He said, however, that the House Rules Committee should be ready to move by Tuesday at the earliest.