Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are struggling with a key question as they stare down a fast-approaching deadline to fund the government: How do they fund federal agencies that President Donald Trump and Elon Musk want to dismantle?

Senior Republicans are seriously exploring how to include cuts made by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency in an upcoming government funding bill — a move that would skyrocket tensions with Democrats and drastically raise the potential for a government shutdown.

Growing calls among hard-line House conservatives to incorporate cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) into a developing government funding bill are complicating efforts to

Congressional negotiators are racing to reach a government funding agreement by a March 14 deadline to avert a shutdown, as several key factors strain bipartisan talks. The government has been operating on stopgap funding measures and fiscal 2024 spending levels since last September.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Wednesday that a stopgap to avert a government shutdown next month is “becoming inevitable” and that it will probably be as “clean” as possible, as both sides have struggled for weeks to strike a full-year funding deal.