House passes funding package to end partial government shutdown
U.S. Capitol Building (Photo by Mike Kline (notkalvin)/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Republican-led House on Tuesday voted to pass the government funding package to end the partial shutdown.
The measure, which received some bipartisan support, passed with a vote 217-214. It now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature.
The measure provides funding for the Pentagon, Education, Treasury, Labor and State departments through the end of the fiscal year. The bill also includes a two-week short-term measure to keep Department of Homeland Security funded through the end of next week.
Earlier — after some drama and delay — the House passed a key procedural hurdle that set up the later vote, with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky as the only no vote along with all Democrats. The vote was held open for about 45 minutes as several Republicans held out on casting their votes.
Republican leaders ultimately worked the holdouts to secure enough votes to advance the package.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, who faces an incredibly tight margin, could only afford to lose one Republican vote with all members present and voting.
Johnson earlier Tuesday told reporters that he was confident the package, passed in the Senate after an 11th-hour deal between Senate Democrats and the White House, will pass.
“This may be hard for some of y’all to believe, but I never doubted this,” Johnson said at his weekly news conference Tuesday morning.
The agreement separated a Department of Homeland Security funding bill from five others funding other agencies for the rest of the fiscal year, and grants two weeks of extended DHS funding to negotiate Democratic demands for restrictions on Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid its immigration enforcement operation, including requiring agents to wear body cameras turned on and to not wear masks.
The funding fight over DHS erupted in the aftermath of the death of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, who was killed in a shooting involving federal law enforcement in Minneapolis on Jan. 24.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told Johnson over the weekend that Democrats would not help Republicans expedite the funding package.
Meanwhile, hard-line Republicans also threatened to hold the package up in hopes of attaching an unrelated bill that would require a proof of citizenship in federal elections known as the SAVE Act. Though some hard-liners, including Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Tim Burchett, had backed down on their demands.
Trump said Monday that he has spoken to congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle and expressed confidence in a resolution coming soon.
Senator Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana and chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, during a confirmation hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, April 22, 2026. Photographer: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump’s grip on the GOP and the potential political fallout for his perceived enemies will face another test on Saturday in Louisiana’s Republican primary.
Incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy is competing against Trump-backed U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow (LA-5) and John Fleming, the state Treasurer and a former House Freedom Caucus Freedom member who served in multiple posts in the first Trump administration.
It’s expected the threeway split could cause the race to go to a runoff next month if no candidate wins an outright majority in Saturday’s primary.
Trump upended the race in late January when he encouraged Letlow to enter in hopes of defeating Cassidy, who in 2021 voted to convict the president in his second impeachment trial. She launched her campaign just days later.
Cassidy, asked by CNN on Friday why Trump wants him replaced, said, “I can’t understand the president’s mind.”
He continued, “I’m not claiming the president loves me, no, but you can work with people even if you don’t love each other if you got a common goal. And my goal is to make my country and my state and everybody who lives here better off.”
Throughout the campaign, Cassidy has argued his record proves he delivers for Louisianans. The two-term senator has touted his work helping pass the HALT Fentanyl Act, negotiating the passage of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and championing healthcare.
In 2024, Trump won the deep-red state with 60% of the vote, and if his preferred candidate wins, it would mark another victory for the president in his efforts to oust those he views as disloyal. Trump-backed candidates recently defeated several Indiana state senators who opposed his redistricting plans.
Cassidy could now be staring down the end of a long political career as part of a shrinking class of GOP lawmakers to have broken with the president. He is one of three remaining senators in the upper chamber to have voted to convict Trump.
Letlow has been anything but shy about Trump’s endorsement, casting Cassidy as disloyal and Fleming as out of touch with the president. Her campaign messaging has focused in part on defending parental rights and securing the border.
The first Republican woman from Louisiana to be elected to Congress, Letlow romped to victory in 2021. She ran in a special election for the House after her husband, who was elected to the office, died from COVID-19-related complications before he could take office.
Cassidy’s campaign has labeled her “Liberal Letlow” and unleashed a wave of attacks portraying her as a champion of DEI over comments she made in 2020 while working at the University of Louisiana at Monroe.
In a recent debate against Fleming, Letlow defended her position at the time, arguing “the left completely hijacked” DEI and she has “spent the last five years in Congress working against it.”
Meanwhile Fleming, who argues he is the most conservative candidate, told ABC News some pressured him to drop his campaign.
Fleming said he was eventually able to reach Trump by phone and the president called him “fantastic.”
However Trump’s public endorsement of Letlow has not changed.
Despite their fraught relationship, Cassidy has, at times, supported Trump’s agenda. Cassidy, a physician and longtime proponent of vaccines, grilled Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a vaccine skeptic — during his confirmation hearing but cast the deciding vote to confirm his nomination out of committee.
Most recently, Trump blamed Cassidy, chairman of the Senate health committee, for the stalling of his surgeon general pick, Make America Healthy Again-aligned Casey Means.
The shift from open, nonpartisan primaries to a closed system also complicates Cassidy’s road to victory. Registered and unaffiliated, or “No Party” voters, choose between the two parties. If no candidate receives a majority, the race will head to a runoff on June 27.
In Louisiana, Democrats slightly outnumber Republicans with roughly 1 million registered voters in each party, according to the Secretary of State office. There are more than 813,000 “No Party” voters.
Adding to the fire is Landry’s move to postpone the House primaries in the nationwide redistricting battle — even as absentee ballots had been returned — while keeping the Senate race on May 16. Lawsuits have been filed in response and some, including Cassidy and Fleming, warn the move is leaving voters confused.
Fleming hedged on whether he would endorse an opponent should he lose the race, adding he takes issue with what he calls dishonest ads, particularly from those backing Letlow.
“We’ll have to wait and see,” he said.
Business owner Mark Spencer is also running in the GOP primary.
In the Democratic primary, Nick Albares, Gary Crockett and Jamie Davis are vying for the nomination to unseat Cassidy. The Cook Political Report rates the race as solid Republican in the Pelican State.
The polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. CDT on May 16.
US President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House before boarding Marine One in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, May 8, 2026. (Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said on Monday that he would like to temporarily suspend the federal gas tax as prices soar due to the war in Iran.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters before boarding Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport on March 23, 2026 in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Public records show that President Donald Trump voted by mail in the special election occurring Tuesday for the statehouse district that includes his Mar-a-Lago estate in spite of his longstanding rhetoric against voting by mail and his efforts to push through the SAVE America Act, which includes restrictions on mail-in voting.
According to public records available on the Palm Beach County elections website, Trump voted by mail ballot in the special election for Florida’s 87th House district.
Trump has spoken critically about voting by mail for years. As recently as Monday, during remarks in Memphis, Tennessee, the president said that “mail-in voting means mail-in cheating — I call it mail-in cheating — and we got to do something about it all.”
A White House spokesperson, in response to a request for comment, said that Trump has supported “commonsense exceptions” to allow Americans to use mail-in ballots, including for “illness, disability, military, or travel,” but that he opposes universal voting by mail due to it being “highly susceptible to fraud.”
An analysis from the Brookings Institution from November 2025 found that voter fraud is rare in voting by mail.
“As everyone knows, the President is a resident of Palm Beach and participates in Florida elections, but he obviously primarily lives at the White House in Washington, D.C.,” spokesperson Olivia Wales wrote in a statement.
Trump frequently visits his Mar-a-Lago estate and was there as recently as Monday morning.
The SAVE America Act, promoted by Trump, would place some new requirements and restrictions on voting by mail.
Florida’s 87th House district special election was scheduled after Mike Caruso, who previously represented the district, was appointed to a county role. Democrats have been eyeing the district as one they could potentially flip, with an eye toward the irony of flipping the president’s home district. Trump and Republicans, meanwhile, have been promoting Republican candidate Jon Maples in an effort to keep the seat in GOP hands.
This is not the first time Trump has voted by mail while president. He voted by mail in the 2020 Florida presidential primary — after he switched his formal place of residence from New York to Florida in September 2019.
Other presidents have voted in elections in their home states while in office. Then-President Joe Biden, for instance, flew to Delaware to vote in the 2022 primaries.
ABC News’ Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
