Democrats blink in shutdown fight, hand Trump and GOP win before midterms

House Democrats relented to Republicans in their quest to prevent a government shutdown after spending months raising the possibility ahead of the crucial midterm elections.

Tuesday’s successful vote in the House, the second such attempt since July, means that lawmakers have officially punted funding the government until after the November election and are sending the short-term funding patch, known as a continuing resolution (CR), to President Donald Trump’s desk.

It also marks the end of months of concerns that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., would again shut the government down for political gain as they vie for control of Congress.

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Both top Democrats caved on pushing for another shutdown, for now. And that gave House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who needed Democratic votes to pass the bill, a win.

But while House Democrats agreed to support the bipartisan CR that passed the Senate last month, conservatives raged about certain changes that negotiators in the upper chamber wove into the bill.

Conservatives were outraged over an unrelated measure to delay a congressionally approved hemp product ban by 30 days and a provision curbing the Trump administration’s control over federal grants.

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House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., and members of Johnson’s right flank have criticized the CR over the hemp ban delay and grant rule change, a sentiment shared by Republicans in the Senate.

“The Senate did violence to our bill,” Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital. “Hemp and the grants are the two big ones…and frankly, I just don’t think CRs ought to be on suspension…when you put it on suspension, you’re not asking for my vote, okay, you’re going to get Democrats.”

Voting on a bill under “suspension” means it gets fast-tracked past multiple procedural hurdles in exchange for raising the threshold for passage from a simple majority to two-thirds.

But the modification to the grant rule doesn’t permanently kill it.

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Senate Republicans were assured by the administration that the push for more control over federal grants could be ready to go by the time the stopgap expires in December. Democrats argue it could be used as a tool to dictate which states do and don’t get federal dollars.

Meanwhile, the CR punts the deadline to avert a government shutdown to Dec. 11, giving lawmakers a little over a month to create a new federal budget for fiscal year 2027, which begins Oct. 1.

But House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., whose panel is in charge of writing those spending bills along with its Senate counterpart, told Fox News Digital that would not be enough time.

He placed blame squarely on Senate Democrats, who he argued were trying to hinder Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, and her bid for re-election come November.

“They clearly do not want Susan Collins to have any success. So all of America has to suffer until they figure out who’s going to win in Maine,” Cole said. “We’re going to risk a year-long CR, if not a shutdown. So they’ve just been incredibly irresponsible.”