House GOP leaders are looking to kick off next week in high gear to make up for the six weeks they spent out of session during the government shutdown.

With the end of Congress’ 42-day fiscal standoff in sight, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told Fox News Digital that House lawmakers will be faced with an accelerated schedule to accomplish the GOP’s priorities for this term.

‘I wanted to rework the schedule to create more time to make up for what happened during the shutdown, and the fact that there were a lot of bills that stacked up that we planned to bring to the floor in October that weren’t able to go,’ he said in an interview on Tuesday night.

Priorities for next week include legislation to help reduce federal restrictions on liquefied natural gas (LNG), and a bill aimed at expanding refining capacity in a bid to reduce soaring energy costs.

Measures aimed at D.C. are also expected to see votes, including a bill that D.C.’s pretrial release and detention processes require mandatory pretrial detention for defendants charged with violent crimes. 

Another bill expected to get a vote next week would undo local ordinances that Republicans say place burdensome barriers on the Metropolitan Police Department.

A largely symbolic measure to denounce socialism in the U.S. is also on next week’s schedule.

Lawmakers will be expected to work long into the night in a departure from their traditional day-to-day in D.C. Votes will be scheduled in the evenings when lawmakers have normally departed Capitol Hill for other events.

Scalise also noted the House would have a five-day legislative week from Monday through Friday, rather than the more traditional four days in D.C.

More time will also be allotted during the day for House committees to conduct hearings and advance their legislation, something that has not been done on Capitol Hill since Sept. 19.

‘We’re going to do that for the next few weeks until we catch up on the time that we missed when everybody was back in their districts,’ Scalise said.

The latter point is critical considering Congress will be reckoning with several key priorities in the coming months.

The bill to end the government shutdown, expected to pass the House on Wednesday, kicks the majority of fiscal year (FY) 2026 federal spending to a Jan. 30 deadline. It would also authorize funding for three of Congress’ 12 annual spending bills for FY 2026.

However, it will be an uphill battle for both the Senate and House appropriations committees to strike their remaining spending deals by then.

‘There are nine remaining bills, and we’d like to get all of those done in the next few weeks. And so, [House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla.] and his appropriators will be working overtime as well,’ Scalise said.

Congress also still has to find a bipartisan compromise on the federal government’s annual defense policy bill, called the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

‘There have been a lot of negotiations ongoing. I think we’re getting close on the NDAA,’ Scalise said.

Scalise said Republicans would also be busy at work on a new Farm Bill, legislation that sets agricultural priorities as well as federal food policies for urban, suburban and rural areas across the country, as well as a highway bill — legislation that authorizes policy for surface infrastructure like roads, bridges and rail lines nationwide.

‘A lot of those bills have been very active in the committee process. They just haven’t gotten a lot of attention nationally during the shutdown. But the committees have been working, especially the chairman, to try to get those bills ready to move,’ he said.

‘And so we will have a lot of big ticket items that are important to our America First agenda ready to go. And that’s why we’re going to just add more floor time to be able to get all of it done by the end of this year.’

But in order to get all those ‘big-ticket items’ done, the House will first need to pass the Senate’s bipartisan bill to end the government shutdown.

Asked if his chamber had the votes to do so, Scalise said, ‘I’m very hopeful we will.’

‘I’m very confident our members are really eager to get back to a full House schedule. Many of them have been working overtime in their districts to mop up the mess Democrats created during the shutdown,’ he said.

Former first lady Michelle Obama revealed on a recent episode of her podcast that she was left infuriated by a moment on Air Force One in 2009 when she debated whether to wear Bermuda shorts while on vacation — which ultimately led to controversy. 

‘The fact that we had to spend time thinking about that kind of stuff in ways that my husband didn’t — it was really infuriating,’ Obama said during an episode on her podcast, ‘IMO With Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson,’ which she co-hosts with her brother. ‘Then an article, a negative article, still happened.’ 

The former first lady explained that in August 2009 she and the former president were set to depart Air Force One for a hike in the Grand Canyon while on their first vacation since the inauguration earlier that year. While she fretted over what attire would be appropriate for a first lady and not draw public criticism, Barack Obama did not need to put effort into thinking about his outfit, she recounted. 

‘It was 100 degrees,’ Michelle Obama remembered of the conversation. ‘Barack — I was like, ‘Well, what are you wearing?’ He was like, ‘Well, I’m gonna throw on some sneakers, I’m gonna take my jacket off and roll my sleeves up’ because that’s what men can do. White shirt, no collar, no tie. That was how he changed.’

Michelle Obama said she debated whether to wear hiking shorts or a dress before landing on wearing Bermuda shorts. 

‘I can’t wear hiking shorts there, and I can’t wear a dress to hike,’ she said. ‘That would be crazy. People would call me ‘disconnected’ and ‘un-American.’ I’m at the Grand Canyon in a tea-length dress with flats? I was like, ‘That’s not how people go to the Grand Canyon.”

‘I eventually opted for the thing that felt mostly me,’ Michelle Obama continued. ‘And it was the Bermuda shorts. Because if we’re going on a hike, this is how a normal person would go on a hike.’

The former first lady did face backlash for the attire, as pundits at the time criticized that a first lady wearing shorts while departing Air Force One was too casual, with outlets running headlines such as, ‘Who Wears Short Shorts? Michelle Obama,’ ‘First lady’s shorts draw some long, hard looks,’ and ‘Michelle Obama: The Shorts Heard Round the World.’

Michelle Obama said in 2013 that she would not wear shorts again on Air Force One after the 2009 outfit caused ‘a huge stink.’ She explained at the time that she made the more relaxed choice because ‘we’re on vacation.’

First lady Melania Trump also has faced backlash over her wardrobe attire, including in 2017 when she wore a baseball cap and jeans to visit Texas after Hurricane Harvey that was viewed by some critics as too casual, and again in 2018 when she wore a green jacket while on a trip to visit the border that read, ‘I really don’t care. Do u?’ 

Melania Trump later told the media she wore the jacket as a message to the liberal media and other critics: ‘I want to show them that I don’t care,’ she told ABC News in 2018. 

Fox News Digital reached out to Michelle Obama’s office Tuesday for additional comment on the matter but did not immediately receive a reply. 

In 2015, when Donald Trump was running for the Republican nomination for president, a refrain that was often heard from his supporters and mocked by his detractors was, ‘He fights.’

It seemed empty and vacuous, but in fact, it represented a few core issues that GOP voters felt their party was ignoring, or at least not prioritizing. Today, it is the Democratic base that is demanding its party ‘fight.’ But fight for what?

Trump’s core issues, and those of what would become known as MAGA, were a bit obscure at first, but eventually became very clear: Secure the border, abandon globalism and bad trade deals, and fight the culture war.

What are the issues or policies that are animating today’s fighting spirit in the Democratic Party? There are three that are dominant.

The first issue can roughly be called redistribution of wealth. We should avoid using the term socialism here, because it is vague and toxic, and what Democrats are really talking about is the very purpose of the social safety net, from welfare to food stamps.

At least nominally, the position of the Democratic Party for half a century has been that welfare programs are a hand up, not a hand out. As John F. Kenndy put it, they are the rising tide that lifts all ships.

In practice, this has led to a permanent underclass that is funded by high-earning taxpayers, but Democrats have long refused to admit it. Democrat socialists have ripped off the Band-Aid. Soaking the rich to pay for the basic needs of the poor and working man is their proud new mantra.

It turns out, the likes of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani have Democratic voters with them on this about-face. In a recent Gallup poll, 66% of Democrats had a positive view of socialism, with only 42% saying the same about capitalism.

Former President Joe Biden used to whisper that billionaires should ‘pay their fair share.’ Today, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., shout from the rooftops that the rich should pay way more than their ‘fair share,’ and basically subsidize everyone else.

The second major issue that the democrat socialists have locked onto is Israel, and America’s relationship with and military funding of the Jewish state, something that even a decade ago the party supported as bedrock policy.

According to a Pew survey, since 2022, the percentage of Democrats with a negative view of Israel has gone from 53% to a staggering 69%, and the lean and hungry New Democrats know it.

Rep. Ro Khana, D-Calif., who has been quietly crafting a new vision for his party, recently posted a list of issues at the core of his mission. They included ‘Medicare-for-all,’ child care for $10 a day, housing, and then, right there at the bottom, ‘No bombs to Israel.’

Meanwhile, pro-Israel Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., has all but admitted there is ‘no room’ in the party for those on his side of the issue. That’s not good news for the political future of moderates like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

The third issue that is clearly firing up the Democratic base is immigration, and when I say they are fired up, I mean seemingly normal people leaping in front of the cars of federal authorities to keep them from deporting illegal alien criminals.

Take Mamdani’s acceptance speech in Brooklyn last week: ‘Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city, who made this movement their own. I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas,’ he said. ‘Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties. Yes, aunties.’

The key words here are ‘who made this movement.’

Make no mistake, this new iteration of the Democratic Party will not only seek to give amnesty to every person illegally in the United States, they will open the border again, and their voters will cheer on the invasion.

It wasn’t just establishment Republicans who underestimated Trump’s appeal in 2015, it was the whole country. What we didn’t see then was that on his big three issues, the border, globalism and the culture war, he was tapping into a real popular zeitgeist.

Today, we are at a similar point, on redistribution of wealth, Israel and immigration, the democrat socialists have found popular policies among their base, and all the Chuck Schumers in the world can’t talk them out of it.

Just as Trump took over the GOP before anyone quite knew it, the democrat socialists have found the same fighting path to dominance among Democrats, and for the few moderates left, it already looks far too late to stop it.

The end of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history is finally in sight, with the House of Representatives set to vote on a federal funding bill later Wednesday evening.

House lawmakers are set to take a procedural vote in the 5 p.m. hour on whether to allow debate on the measure. If the legislation survives, a final vote is expected in the 7 p.m. hour.

The government has been shut down for 43 days as Democrats and Republicans hotly debated the merits of the GOP’s initial federal funding bill, a short-term extension of fiscal year (FY) 2025 spending levels through Nov. 21.

The vast majority of Democrats are still against the legislation, including House Democratic leadership, but GOP lawmakers across several ideologically diverse factions have signaled confidence in a nearly unified Republican vote.

House Freedom Caucus Policy Chairman Chip Roy, R-Texas, said he heard no dissent on the bill from his band of fiscal hawks.

‘I’m not going to speak for everybody, but I think there’s general support. So you know, I’m unaware of any opposition of significance,’ he told reporters Tuesday night.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said, ‘Nothing’s ever easy around here. But, look, I didn’t notice any dissent … I think the votes will be there on our side.’

But with a razor-thin majority, House GOP leaders can only afford to lose two Republican votes at most to pass the bill without relying on any Democrats.

‘I’m very hopeful,’ House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told Fox News Digital when asked if Republicans had the votes to pass the bill. ‘I think you’re seeing just a few Democrats come to their senses. It should be a lot more.’

Meanwhile, the shutdown’s effects on the country have grown more severe by the day.

Many of the thousands of air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents who had to work without pay were forced to take second jobs, causing nationwide flight delays and cancellations amid staffing shortages at the country’s busiest airports. Millions of Americans who rely on federal benefits were also left in limbo as funding for critical government programs ran close to drying out.

At the heart of the issue was Democratic leaders’ refusal to back any funding bill that did not also extend COVID-19 pandemic-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of this year. Democrats argued it was their best hope of preventing healthcare price hikes for Americans across the U.S.

Republicans agreed to hold conversations on reforming what they saw as a broken healthcare system, but they refused to pair any partisan priority with federal funding.

The initial bill passed the House on Sept. 19 but stalled in the Senate for weeks, when Democrats sank the bill more than a dozen times.

However, after weeks of stalemate and the clock running down on their Nov. 21 bill, a new compromise emerged that got support from eight Senate Democrats to carry it across the finish line.

The new legislation would extend FY 2025 federal funding levels through Jan. 30, to give negotiators more time to strike a longer-term deal for FY 2026.

It would also give lawmakers some headway with that mission, advancing legislation to fund the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration; the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction; and the legislative branch.

In a victory for Democrats, the deal would also reverse federal layoffs conducted by the Trump administration in October, with those workers getting paid for the time they were off.

A side deal struck in the Senate also guaranteed Senate Democrats a vote on legislation extending the enhanced Obamacare subsidies. Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., however, has made no such promise in the House.

If passed on Wednesday night, the legislation heads to President Donald Trump’s desk for a signature.

When asked about the bill on Tuesday, a White House official told Fox News Digital, ‘President Trump has wanted the government reopened since the first day Democrats shut it down. The action in the Senate is a positive development, and we look forward to seeing it progress.’

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said he doesn’t want to blow up Obamacare, but he does want to give Americans another option.

Senate Democrats, led by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., made their core shutdown argument about expiring Obamacare subsidies that they argued, if allowed to sunset at the end of this year, would lead to millions of Americans seeing their healthcare premium costs skyrocket.

But Scott and other Republicans contend that simply extending the current subsidies would see billions in taxpayer money funneled to insurance companies, without a dime actually finding its way to the pockets of Americans looking for insurance options.

His plan would ‘let the person be a consumer,’ he told Fox News Digital from an interview in his office.

‘I just think we ought to fix Obamacare,’ Scott said. ‘So the way I think about it is, look, if you want to buy off the exchange, you know, an Obamacare product, do it. If that’s what you want. I mean, leave that there.’

‘But I know what a consumer is going to do,’ he continued. ‘Consumers are going to be way more creative of how they take care of themselves.’

Scott said his idea, in a sea of burgeoning possibilities on what to do next when it comes to answering the healthcare issue raised by congressional Democrats, would directly send any kind of Obamacare subsidy money directly to a Health Savings Account (HSA).

His plan, which he’s been working on in the background for some time, was given extra credence when President Donald Trump on Saturday recommended to Senate Republicans that ‘the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over.’

‘In other words, take from the BIG, BAD Insurance Companies, give it to the people, and terminate, per Dollar spent, the worst Healthcare anywhere in the World, Obamacare,’ Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social.

Trump’s post was in response to Schumer and Democrats’ counter-offer to reopen the government, which Republicans quickly rejected, that would have extended the Obamacare subsidies by one year.

Should the subsidies be permanently extended, which was baked into Democrats’ original demand at the beginning of the shutdown, it would cost $350 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Scott viewed the latest proposal as nothing but pure politics and something that Republicans would never vote for.

‘It’s all about politics. It’s not about people,’ he said. ‘So I think Schumer and the Democrats are heartless. They’re absolutely heartless.’

It’s also an idea that Scott said he had spoken to the president about before.

Republicans have railed against the current state of the subsidies, which were enhanced under former President Joe Biden during the COVID-19 pandemic. The enhancement blew off the income cap on the subsidies, allowing people making well above the poverty line to qualify for them.

Scott blasted the current state of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies, but he noted that he was not suggesting that the subsidy be completely done away with.

‘You could be making $250,000 a year, so you’re paying for these people that are making $250,000 a year, and you’re paying with your taxes for them,’ Scott said. ‘How? Tell me how that makes sense.’

He hopes to have his legislative proposal done quickly, as others in the GOP are similarly floating ideas on how to tackle the issue of expiring subsidies and rising healthcare costs.

‘Let the consumer be the buyer of healthcare,’ he said. ‘Any dollars we’re going to give to spend on it goes to the consumer and let them buy what they want to buy.’

The Supreme Court revealed on Monday it will consider a lawsuit, originally brought by the Republican National Committee, over whether counting ballots that arrive after Election Day is lawful.

The case will examine a state law in solid red Mississippi that allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they are received up to five days after the election. 

The RNC, which has fought to stop late-arriving ballots over allegations that they undermine trust in the vote counting process, argues the state law conflicts with federal law and is hoping the Supreme Court will ban them nationwide.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, emphasized that the court would not be weighing in on the legality of mail-in ballots, which are accepted in some form in every state, or whether ballots could be cast after Election Day.

‘What this case is about is whether a ballot that was cast on or before Election Day, sealed in an envelope, placed in the U.S. Mail and received by a state some days later can be counted if a state law says that that’s okay,’ Becker told Fox News Digital.

Mississippi’s rule went into effect in 2020, when many states implemented new emergency election policies over COVID-19. Well over a dozen, both red and blue, accept late mail-in ballots if they are postmarked by Election Day. 

The RNC sued over the law and secured a win at the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, leading Mississippi to bring the matter to the Supreme Court. The state argues ‘election’ means voters’ final choice, which occurs when ballots are cast by Election Day. Receipt of ballots that are marked and submitted effectuates the voters’ choice but are ‘not part of the election itself,’ Mississippi told the Supreme Court in a filing. As such, the state argues, federal law does not prohibit short, post-Election Day windows to receive ballots cast on time. 

Becker warned of repercussions that could come of the Supreme Court upholding the 5th Circuit’s ruling, saying it could invite a host of new litigation because close races could come down to ballots cast by Election Day that arrive a day or two after the election because of U.S. Postal Service delays.

‘We as a society do not want a bunch of ballots coming in the day or two after, delivered late, not because of the voter but because of the Postal Service, and having those ballots being the margin of victory in a close race,’ Becker said.

In a statement, RNC chairman Joe Gruters echoed broader sentiments of election security hawks who have taken issue with late-arriving ballots.

‘Allowing states to count large numbers of mail-in ballots that are received after Election Day undermines trust and confidence in our elections,’ Gruters said.

‘Elections must end on Election Day, which is why the RNC led the way in challenging this harmful state law. The RNC has been hard at work litigating this case for nearly two years, and we hope the Supreme Court will affirm the Fifth Circuit’s landmark decision that mail-in ballots received after Election Day cannot be counted.’

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that President Donald Trump ‘remains in exceptional physical health’ after concerns have swirled in recent months, including when the president received an MRI scan in October. 

‘As stated in the memo provided on October 10th, President Trump received advanced imaging at Walter Reed Medical Center as part of his routine physical examination,’ Leavitt said during Wednesday’s White House press briefing. ‘The full results were reviewed by attending radiologists and consultants, and all agreed that President Trump remains in exceptional physical health.’ 

The response followed a member of the media asking for additional details as to why Trump received an MRI during a checkup at Walter Reed National Military Center in Maryland in October. 

‘I got an MRI, it was perfect,’ Trump told reporters on Air Force One in October. 

‘I gave you the full results,’ he added. ‘We had an MRI, and the machine, you know, the whole thing, and it was perfect.’ 

The checkup in October has been described as routine by the administration, with Trump’s physician reporting that Trump is in ‘exceptional health.’ 

Media outlets and others have fanned the flames of concerns around Trump’s health earlier in 2025 when he was spotted with swollen legs in July while attending the FIFA Club World Cup final in New Jersey, as well as when other photos that same month showed him with bruises on his hands.

Leavitt said in July, while reading a health memo, that Trump’s swollen legs were part of a ‘benign and common condition’ for individuals older than age 70, while the bruising on his hands was attributable to ‘frequent handshaking and the use of aspirin.’

Navy Capt. Sean P. Barbabella, the physician to the president, wrote in a memorandum to Leavitt following the October checkup that the visit was part of an ongoing health maintenance plan that included ‘advanced imaging, laboratory testing and preventative health assessments conducted by multidisciplinary team of specialists.’

Barbabella said in his October summary that Trump, ‘remains in exceptional health, exhibiting strong cardiovascular, pulmonary, neurological, and physical performance.’ 

The checkup was Trump’s second in 2025, following an April visit that Barbabella said found Trump ‘remains in excellent health.’

Leavitt added Wednesday that Trump is slated to hold a dinner later that evening, which she said might include press attendance where the media could see Trump’s physical state themselves. 

‘I know all of you will see with your own eyes later this evening when he opens up his dinner to the press, and perhaps you will see him when he signs the bill to reopen the federal government,’ she said. ‘So stay tuned on plans for that.’ 

Fox News Digital’s Brie Stimson contributed to this report.