Government funding is not on the menu for House lawmakers returning from their Thanksgiving district work period this week, even as the holiday schedule puts Congress in a time crunch to make a deal on federal spending.

The House is expected to hold several votes related to the Israel-Hamas conflict as well as the U.S. border crisis, according to a schedule obtained by Fox News Digital on Monday.  

Not listed are the remaining five appropriations bills that House Republicans are aiming to pass out of 12 total. Similarly, there are no upcoming meetings or hearings on appropriations listed on the websites of the House Rules Committee and the House Appropriations Committee.

The House has been in recess since Nov. 17, returning on Tuesday afternoon. Lawmakers will be gone again from Dec. 15 until the new year.

Just before leaving, Congress passed a temporary extension of last year’s government funding levels, but with two separate deadlines: Passing appropriations bills concerning military construction and Veterans Affairs; Agriculture; Energy and Water; Transportation and Housing and Urban Development, by Jan. 19, while the remaining eight appropriations bills must be worked out by Feb. 2.

Before that, the Senate passed its own three spending bills in a joint ‘minibus’ and is potentially weighing a similar effort with the other nine. 

And despite the solidarity shown by passing the extension to avoid a government shutdown, the two chambers are still far apart on a final deal.

The topline budgets the House and Senate have said they are expected to be working toward are about $120 billion apart. Conservative policy riders on issues like abortion and the LGBTQ community have also made the House GOP’s bills a nonstarter for the Democrat-controlled White House and Senate. 

The lack of expected votes on appropriations this week comes after House leaders were forced to pull key spending bills from the schedule over the last month over opposition from both moderates and the GOP Conference’s right flank.

But House conservatives have made clear that the pressure is on GOP leaders to not only move forward with the appropriations process, but also fight for deep spending cuts along the way. 

‘If the [House GOP] cannot 1) cut spending off of the massive Pelosi omnibus… 2) demand the U.S. border be secured before even mentioning the word Ukraine… & 3) make our military great again w/o social engineering… what’s the point of being in the majority?’ Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, wrote on X.

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., said on the platform, ‘Consistently high inflation is continuing to rage and hurt our economy. Washington must take these issues seriously by working together to cut wasteful government spending. Both parties created this mess, and we must work together to fix it.’

Democrat and Republican lawmakers will hash out the next fiscal year’s military spending budget, also known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), during this week’s formal House-Senate conference. 

The ranking member on the Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., managed to score a victory before Congress broke for Thanksgiving recess to get the conference scheduled. A Wicker aide previously told Fox News Digital that if the conference process hadn’t started before the recess, ‘it wouldn’t have happened this year’ due to other priorities. The chambers will convene on Wednesday, according to the Senate schedule.

According to a Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) aide, top negotiators for the NDAA include Wicker, SASC Chairman Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., House Committee on Armed Services (HASC) Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and SASC ranking member Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash.

In a statement provided to Fox News Digital, which was first reported by Punchbowl, Wicker said Monday, ‘There are a number of things that need to be fixed’ in the NDAA.

‘But things are moving,’ he added. 

The Senate approved its version of the annual military defense bill with bipartisan support in July in an 86-11 vote, granting authorization for $886 billion over the next year to bolster national defense, right before the chamber’s five-week August recess.

Notably, in the Senate’s version, military personnel will see a 5.2% pay increase, and it includes $9.1 billion to foster competitiveness with China, investments in advancing military drone technology, and $300 million in aid to Ukraine.

The Senate’s bill avoids addressing the issues of abortion and transgender services. However, it does acknowledge the concerns expressed by Republicans about what they call an excessive influence of progressive policies within the Pentagon.

As such, Senate Republicans were able to get provisions in the policy that prevent mandating the inclusion of preferred pronouns in official correspondence as well as a proposed hiring freeze on ‘new diversity, equity, and inclusion positions.’

‘Military readiness depends on the guarantee of equal opportunity, without the promise of an equal outcome, because warfare is a competitive endeavor and the nation’s enemies must know that the United States Armed Forces is led by the best, brightest, and bravest Americans,’ the bill text reads. ‘The tenets of critical race theory are antithetical to the merit-based, all-volunteer, military that has served the country with great distinction for the last 50 years.’

Just two weeks prior to the Senate’s passage, the House approved its version of the bill, which incorporated several Republican amendments aimed at dismantling the Pentagon’s abortion policy for service members seeking procedures out of state as well as restricting transgender-affirming treatments.

President Biden has previously indicated he would not sign a package filled with hardline GOP priorities like what’s included in the House’s version.

The Pentagon said Tuesday that the USS Mason and Central Park, an Israeli-owned tanker, were not the intended target of Houthi missiles that fired from Yemen over the weekend. 

The missiles came after five armed assailants attempted to seize the MV Central Park, an Israeli-owned tanker operated by Zodiac Maritime, in the Gulf of Aden on Sunday. 

The vessel sent out a distress call and forces from the USS Mason, an American destroyer, responded. The five assailants attempted to flee in their small boats, but the U.S. forces pursued them and fired warning shots, resulting in their eventual surrender, according to Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder. 

Around 90 minutes later, at least one – possibly two – ballistic missiles were fired from Houthi-controlled Yemen and landed around 10 nautical miles from the Mason as it was assisting the vessel. 

Yemen’s internationally recognized government blamed the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels for the attack, though the rebels in control of the capital, Sanaa, did not acknowledge either the seizure or the missile attack.  

The Pentagon said that the five armed assailants who attempted to seize the Israeli-linked vessel were likely Somali pirates and not Houthi rebels. 

On Tuesday, Ryder told Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin it was the Pentagon’s assessment that the Mason and Central Park were not the intended target of the missile. 

Ryder could not speak to the intended target and referred further questions on the matter to the Houthis. He could not confirm any potential U.S. military action against the Houthis. 

‘I’m not going to telegraph or forecast or speculate on any potential airstrikes that we might take in the region other than to say we will do what’s necessary to protect our forces,’ Ryder said. 

Recent attacks on commercial vessels have been conducted by Houthis, seen as part of a rise in violence in the region due to the Israel-Hamas war. Global shipping had increasingly been targeted as the Israel-Hamas war threatens to become a wider regional conflict — even as a truce has halted fighting and Hamas exchanges hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Zodiac Maritime has been targeted previously amid a wider yearslong shadow war between Iran and Israel. In 2021, a drone attack assessed by the U.S. and other Western nations to have been carried out by Iran killed two crew members aboard Zodiac’s oil tanker Mercer Street off the coast of Oman.

The Central Park seizure comes after a container ship, CMA CGM Symi, owned by another Israeli billionaire, came under attack Friday by a suspected Iranian drone in the Indian Ocean. Iran has not acknowledged carrying out the attack.

Earlier in November, the Houthis seized a vehicle transport ship also linked to Israel in the Red Sea off Yemen. The rebels still hold the vessel off the port city of Hodeida.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

The U.S. military on Tuesday delivered its first of three rounds of humanitarian aid intended for the people of Gaza, according to the Pentagon.

Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters that the U.S. airlifted 24.5 metric tons of U.N. humanitarian supplies to provide ‘vitally needed medical supplies, warm clothing, and food and nutrition assistance to the people of Gaza.’

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) requested that the supplies be flown via a U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo plane, Ryder said. The aircraft arrived earlier Tuesday in Egypt and the aid was to be transported into Gaza and distributed by U.N. agencies.

The 54,000-pound shipment is the first of three U.S. military humanitarian aid flights to northern Egypt for Gaza’s civilian population planned for the coming days.

Ryder said the aid is in addition to the more than 500,000 pounds of food assistance delivered by the United States last week via USAID. 

The humanitarian aid comes after Israel and Hamas agreed to extend a truce and continue swapping hostages for prisoners.

In the weeks since Israel declared war on Hamas for its Oct. 7 attack, thousands of Palestinians have fled south. The U.S. believes that roughly 2 million Palestinians are now in south and central Gaza.

The Biden administration has told Israel that it must work to avoid ‘significant further displacement’ of Palestinian civilians in southern Gaza if it renews its ground campaign aimed at eradicating the Hamas militant group. Administration officials have highlighted that an already stretched humanitarian support network would be overwhelmed by further displacement.

More than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to estimates from the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israel has disputed those figures.

More than 1,200 have been killed on the Israeli side, mostly civilians killed in the initial attack on Oct. 7. At least 77 soldiers have been killed in Israel’s ground offensive.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.