The two big questions looming over the shutdown fight: From the Politics Desk

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Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

Happy Monday! It’s another shutdown week in Washington. We have the latest on where things stand ahead of Friday’s government funding deadline. Plus, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy headed to Saudi Arabia, Alexander Smith examines how the country has become an unexpected diplomatic force.

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— Adam Wollner

The two big questions looming over the shutdown fight

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Congress is racing to avoid a government shutdown days out from the funding deadline.

Speaker Mike Johnson released a stopgap bill over the weekend to keep the government’s lights on through the end of September. The measure, which Democrats had no part in crafting, includes an increase in military spending and a reduction in nondefense money, as Sahil Kapur, Scott Wong and Frank Thorp V report.

It will need to pass the GOP-led House and Senate and be signed into law by President Donald Trump before midnight Friday to avert a shutdown.

There are two major questions that will determine whether that becomes a reality.

Can Johnson unite House Republicans? Johnson is eyeing a Tuesday vote in the House on the continuing resolution — and says he’s relying solely on the support of Republicans to pass it.

That’s a tall order in the House, where Republicans hold a 218-214 majority. That means Johnson can afford only one defection, assuming all Democrats oppose the bill and all members are present. And he’s already likely lost one vote: Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., has made clear he won’t support the stopgap bill.

The challenge for Johnson will be keeping other conservative fiscal hawks in the fold, as well as Republicans who would prefer to see a bigger boost for defense spending. As he did during his speaker’s race and the budget resolution vote earlier this year, Johnson has a key voice in his corner: Trump, who has publicly urged congressional Republicans to support the continuing resolution.

Some House Democrats could end up supporting the bill and give Johnson more breathing room, but the party’s leaders in the chamber are against the measure.

Will Senate Democrats vote for it? If the bill manages to make its way out of the House, the pressure would then fall on Senate Democrats.

Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, so they will need support from Democrats to cross the 60-vote threshold. And like in the House, a Kentucky Republican, Sen. Rand Paul, has already said he will vote against it.

Democrats have demanded guardrails on Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s attempts to slash federal spending, and they are under pressure from their base to more forcefully stand up to the administration.

The stopgap funding bill is one of the few major pieces of legislation they will have some leverage on this year in GOP-controlled Washington. But voting down the measure and allowing a shutdown, even if it occurs under a Republican trifecta, could cause even more pain for the federal workforce and those who rely on government services.

Poll: Do you think the government will shut down? Vote in our poll:

What to know from the Trump presidency today

Major stock indexes tanked Monday, continuing a sell-off that gathered steam last week as rattled investors began zeroing in on the prospect of a significant falloff in U.S. growth amid persistent inflation and a wobbling job market.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he would charge 25% more to Americans who receive electricity from Canada in response to Trump’s trade war.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deported fewer immigrants in February than they did under the Biden administration during the same month a year ago, according to ICE data obtained by NBC News that has not been previously reported.
Around 80,000 employees at Health and Human Services received emails Friday night offering them a voluntary buyout.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expanding research on the links between vaccines and autism, though such links have been widely debunked.
Top Trump advisers have begun scoping out potential sites for a presidential library in South Florida.

Ahead of Rubio-Zelenskyy summit, Saudi Arabia emerges as an unlikely global powerbroker

By Alexander Smith

Saudi Arabia will host a key summit Tuesday between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is trying to repair relations with Washington following his disastrous Oval Office bust-up with President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

It’s another soft-power coup for a country that has deliberately cultivated a reputation as a diplomatic go-between. Whether it’s hosting American officials for negotiations to end the Ukraine war, orchestrating talks about the future of Gaza or rolling out the red carpet for Trump’s first foreign trip, Saudi Arabia has emerged in recent years as an unlikely global powerbroker.

Less than five years ago, then-presidential hopeful Joe Biden called the kingdom a “pariah” and, even after significant reforms, rights groups say the authoritarian Gulf state still has an “abysmal” human rights record.

Tuesday’s summit comes as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is attempting to transform Saudi Arabia’s image from a deeply conservative, oil-rich theocracy whose officials murdered the American-based Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, into a regional giant built on diplomacy, business, tourism, entertainment and sports.

Trump revealed last week that the first foreign visit of his second term would be to Saudi Arabia, just as it was during his first administration. As then, he said that, in return, the Saudis had agreed to invest a bonanza sum in American businesses, this time $1 trillion.

This relationship has raised questions about ties between Riyadh and the Trump family. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the former chair of the Senate Finance Committee, last year raised “obvious conflicts of interest concerns” about Saudi Arabia’s $2 billion investment in a fund run by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has denied any such conflict.

More on the Russia-Ukraine war: Courtney Kube, Kristen Welker and Carol E. Lee report that Trump has told aides that a minerals deal between the U.S. and Ukraine won’t be enough to restart aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

Trump wants assurances that Zelenskyy is willing to make concessions in peace talks with Russia, such as giving up territory. And he wants Zelenskyy to make some movement toward elections in Ukraine and possibly toward stepping down as his country’s leader.

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